Blogs from Gauteng, South Africa, Africa - page 76

A group of Bahá’ís, music, plenty of ice cream and lots of toppings is a good combination; even if you don’t eat sugar, like me, the mood is joyful. We got together at Denny F.’s house in Jo'burg to make some plans for the community and have a good time. Our laptop is in the shop. I almost didn't want to hand it over, since I wasn't sure of the quality of the work I was in for, but it is an established Apple repair shop, and the dang thing isn't worth much if it won't come on. It isn't the battery; it is the logic board, which has to come from Europe. It will be weeks before we can have it back. Meanwhile, we got a land line yesterday, and the ADSL is hooked up ... read more

Johannesburg is built on a number of gold mines that propelled many persons to immense wealth and the development of the city. These mines are no longer operational, but, the effects remain, typically in the form of what are called "artificial hills". From a distance they look like very pretty pale hills, but, we discovered from our tour guide that they are the result of the deposits from digging the mines. They needed to put the extra dirt somewhere! Of course at that time, people were less concerned with the environmental effects of these deposits on peoples' health and well-being and more concerned with accumulating wealth by any means necessary; yet, these hills for the most part face the townships of Soweto - so guess what air the township residents get to breathe on a regular ... read more

Upon our return to Jo’burg, we invited Khanyisa to have dinner with us. We appreciated his traveling with us, even though he had spent most of the time sleeping as we traveled to and from Duduza. He declined because he had a friend from college who was awaiting his return. We then extended the invitation to include his friend, and that was immediately accepted. We picked up his friend, Tafadzwa who is attending graduate school at the University of Fort Hare. Both Tafadzwa and Khanyisa had completed bachelor’s degrees at this prestigious black college. During the days of apartheid, Fort Hare had been one of the only institutions of high education to survive in the homeland of Ciskei. It had become a haven for black intellectuals and was also supported by white faculty. The alumni list ... read more

Having enjoyed Sin City so much - that’s Las Vegas in case you weren’t sure - we thought we’d check out South Africa’s own version, Sun City. This is a complex of 4 hotels about 2 hours outside Johannesburg in the middle of nowhere, with loads of fun things like water-sports, water-slides, a giant wave machine (that hosts surfing competitions!) and golf. Oh and casinos. Getting there proved surprisingly difficult - we couldn’t find a shuttle bus company or anything like that. In the end, Ted had managed to find us a chauffer-driven limo - a new Mercedes C200 Kompressor - for roughly £100 for the day. Our driver Lennox duly arrived at 8am and we climbed into the back seat to find the morning paper and 2 chilled bottles of water waiting for us. Backpacking ... read more

Beginning on December 15 we joined several groups that had arrived at the National Baha’i Center for institute training classes. Baha’is all over the world are studying the Ruhi Book series, which was developed in South America as a means of teaching the Faith and deepening believers. We had taken books No. 1 and 2 in the series, and we were now enrolled in book No. 3, which dealt with the subject of teaching young children. As the institute was being offered over the summer break, we found that most of the participants were school age children and young people. In fact, Sherri and I were the oldest students enrolled in the institute. A young man named Joshua, who we had met in Pietermaritzburg, was tutoring the book we were studying. He is a newlywed who ... read more