Ex Africa semper aliquid novi: Out of Africa always something new (Pliny, The Elder)

My last full day in Africa turned out to be just about the best.

We spent 4 hours biking through Soweto today and felt completely comfortable and not at all threatened.   The Township, with between 4-6 million people, is vibrant and pulsates with energy and the lively beat of life.  Created in the the early 1900's to segregate blacks from the white community, it was built only 17 km from the center of Johannesburg so that cheap labor could commute to the nearby gold mines, white homes, and other businesses.  While there is extreme poverty in the “3^rd class” neighborhoods, the 1^st  &  2^nd class areas are clean, well-maintained, walkable and typical of many Saturday morning lower and middle-class suburbs all over America.

We drank homemade beer from a calabash in a shebeen (pub), had lunch in a local restaurant and visited Nelson Mandela’s house.  We walked Hector Pieterson Square, the birthplace of the anti-apartheid movement which began when Hector, age 13, was shot dead in 1976 while marching peacefully for the abolition of South Africa’s racist laws.   Desmond Tutu and Winnie Mandela, as well as many black South African musicians and other celebrities have chosen to continue to live in Soweto, rather abandon ship and move to “better” (i.e. white)  neighborhoods, a fact that is so very different from the reality of African-American stars, professionals and successful business owners,  who leave their childhood homes as soon as possible rather than stay and improve the ghettoes in which they grew up.  

We would have stayed longer and taken the night tour of the local shebeens, jazz clubs and other music venues, but its dinner at a fancy African restaurant and early to bed.   I have plans for us to drive to Pretoria, South Africa's capital, tomorrow, only 50 km away.   (Ssshhhh ...... don't tell Yosy).   We don't have to be at the airport for our flight home until 5pm.

Hector Pieterson, 1976, in arms of his friend)

Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno;

It is a photographer’s paradise, a hunter’s Valhalla, an escapist’s Utopia.

It is what you will, and it withstands all interpretations.

It is the last vestige of a dead world or the cradle of a shiny new one.

 It is all these things but one thing – it is never dull.

                                                                                      - Beryl Markham