Yesterday

...I went to the Apartheid Museum, which is a brilliantly conceived and executed institution which was incredibly educational and emotionally resonant. The doors to the museum are segregated by race, and when I bought my ticket I was given a laminated piece of paper that identified me as non-white, so i entered through the door on the right as several of my friends went left.

After a few minutes of walking through segregated corridors we were reunited and thus began my 3 hour journey through exhibits ranging about the history of Johannesburg, Steve Biko and Black Consciousness, gay marriage in South Africa, and of course a thorough chronicling of racism, Apartheid, and resistance. One of the most horrifying parts of the museum was the section that commemorated the 131 political prisoners who died in detention by having 131 nooses hanging from a ceiling. It was eery and heartbreaking, and immediately after I walked into a cell like the ones used for solitary confinement during the Apartheid regime, a tiny, empty concrete cage. I closed the door and began to cry.

After a few hours in the museum I felt overwhelmed and oversaturated with information, but I find myself thinking about my visit constantly and I will surely return before I leave. In the parking lot outside of the museum it occurred to me that I've never been to the Holocaust museum. When I was about 11 we began studying the Holocaust in Sunday school, and I think I had been previously unaware of its depravity and brutality, despite the many books on the topic that were available to children and "young adults". I started having nightmares and began to panic on Sunday mornings before class. I think I even stopped going for a while. I think I am scared that if I go into the Holocaust museum I will lose composure in the middle of the museum. Why would that be so bad, I wonder. I've decided that when I get home I will go to the museum. I have to. Anyone want to tag along?

After the museum I went with my friend Morwa to Soweto, a township in Johannesburg, for a braai (barbeque). I rode in a kombi (a form of public transportation that is called a taxi. 18 people can squeeze into one of these vans for about a dollar per person) to and from Soweto. At first it was pretty terrifying to be racing through the roads of Joberg at breakneck speed without a seatbelt in a rattling old van, but soon I got used to it. It's a much more economical way to travel, although I don't know how often I will use them since they rely on a complicated system of hand signals to communicate their destination, and the last thing I want to do is get lost and stranded in the city.


P.S. Last night my bee-stung finger began to itch terribly and swelled up again. Why?