Soweto

This past Saturday, me and three of my roommates decided to take a trip to a nearby township called Soweto. Soweto is about 40 minutes east of Johannesburg. As I mentioned, Soweto is a township. For those who don't know about African townships, they can be a bit of an eye-opener. In a typical township, the standard of living is much worse than in the suburbs or even cities. The typical house is one or two rooms, no plumbing, heating, or usual amenities. Along with the low standard of living comes a high level of crime and poverty. As well, within the townships are usually squatter camps. These camps are a series of one room shacks composed of only four walls. When it rains, these camps are destroyed. Soweto is no exception.

However, over the past ten years Soweto has turned into a tourist attraction because of the former houses of Nelson Mandella and Desmond Tutu. Since we were with two native South Africans, one from Soweto, we got the entire tour. When we pulled up to Nelson Mandella's house, there was quite the crowd of both whites and blacks. We decided to walk up and see if we could get in. In the middle of the site, there was a larger mass of people with cameras. When we came in to see what the fuss was about I could not believe my eyes. In the middle of the crowd was Mandella's second wife who stopped by to see how things were going. I reached over and grazed her jacket. WOW. I could not believe it!!!

With each tourist stop we made there was a common theme - craft markets. The traditional African crafts at these markets were incredible. But even more incredible was the fact that they were all hand made by the people selling them. These people were very warm and vibrant when ever someone approached them. I found this to be a common theme in Soweto. Where ever we visited, the people were extremely inviting. In this rough looking township, the spirit and enthusiasm was like I had never seen before.