Bye bye Africa

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Last stop on the African continent - Johannesburg. I spent 3 days in the capital before catching my flight to Sydney. Joberg is an interesting place. I'm sure you've all heard how terrible it is with violent crime statistics flying about all over the place. I'm not going to try and paint a different picture, though my time there was rather uneventful. Had I put myself at risk who knows what would have happened - but I didn't. We played it very safe getting private taxi's everywhere and not really going out after dark. As a result I found Joberg incredibly boring. There's nothing I like more when exploring Africa than to get on a bus with the locals to see how things are really done and you just can't do this here, especially when staying for such a short lenght of time. So I'm afraid I hung out in shopping malls where it was safe! We visited one museum, which turned out to have an 'India' exhibition on (we didn't stay long) as the one we wanted to visit - The Apartied Museum - was too far away in a private taxi. There is a very popular tour you can do of the Soweto Township (a distinctly Black community) but I hate that kind of thing where you pay to go and look at Black people and after talking to some people that went and had a rubbish tour guide decided not to bother.

One fun thing we did do was get taken to visit Pretoria (just outside Joberg where all the government offices are) by some Tanzanian friends of Caroline's mum. One of them had spent 15 years in prison in Zimbabwe. He had only been out a couple of years but had worked really hard to establish a furniture removal compnay with his brothers. They are lovely guys. They drove us around Pretoria and showed us the sights, they really wanted to go to the zoo as they had never been but it was closed! Then they took us out to dinner at a traditional African restaurent which they insisted paying for before driving us back to our hostel in Joberg by about 8.30pm!

Unfortunately Joberg wasn't the best place to end my 10 month affair with Africa, but at least I was ready to leave after staying there! 10 month, WOW! It's all gone so fast. I've learnt a lot about myself and Africa, and how the countries vary so much on this massive continent. Uganda will always have a special place in my heart (afterall I feel like I know it so well) as I've only brused the surface of all the other countries I've passed through. Will I come back?? Good question! There's a big wide world out there and all I know is next stop is Australia. I don't bother planning too far ahead.

Bye bye Africa. We had some good times, I'll miss you for sure.

Hannah xxxxxxxxx

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Photos

Pretoria
Outside the government buildings

Pretoria
The view from Faraji's flat

Dinner
Faraji, Miki, Caroline and Sedat

Johanessburg
These beautiful Jackaranda trees line the streets everywhere