Catching up Jo'burg

Wow! It’s been a while! Basically, I didn’t have an adapter to charge my computer, and it died, then by the time I got an adapter we moved and I no longer had Internet. So, I'm in Namibia now, and will hopefully update about that later today after I finish catching up on South Africa!!

Wednesday August 19th
After the apartheid museum we had a speaker come talk to us about the economy of South Africa, and the difficulties SA faces. I learned a lot about the problems in SA such as high unemployment (over 40%) environmental degradation (from mining especially) and the economic segregation that still exists as a legacy of apartheid. We then went to a play called Ma Raven, and it was a very artistic representation of slavery in the French colonies. There were essentially four men doing modern and interpretive dance to different chants and music, in their underwear. It was very interesting, and very artsy, but not really my thing.

Thursday August 20th
We went to the office of the Anti-Privatization Forum. They spoke to us about their organization’s attempts to both lobby the government and mobilize grass roots campaigns to prevent and undo the privatization of previously government owned services such as water, electricity, transportation etc. They also work with women’s issues, and are branching out all over the country to provide support for likeminded nonprofit organizations.
Later we went to the Bruma Market. This is a local marketplace where people sell everything from food to crafts to electronics to soccer jerseys. After a yummy Indian curry lunch I bought a pair of earrings made out of banana leaves, and a few cool hand made dishes. The sales people were super aggressive, one even chased me about a block into another store to try to get me to buy a doll I was looking at. On the one hand I knew I should try to bargain because the prices were set high for tourists, but on the other hand I felt pretty guilty trying to get cheaper prices by 3-5$ (which is 20-40 Rand) when I know that amount of money would mean a lot more to them then it does to me.