The good, the bad and the ugly

After nearly an 11 hour flight overnight, we arrived in Johannesburg early Friday morning. For the past two days we've been staying at the Ritz backpackers in Johannesburg which has been really nice.

On Friday we got a chance to rest (I was very happy about this as I only ended up getting about a hour and a half of sleep on the plane) and shower before having lunch and heading to the local mall to get South African sim cards for our phones.

Yesterday, we went on a bus tour to Soweto, a township just outside Johannesburg. This was quite eye opening as not only did we visit a church and museum about the uprising in Soweto and see Nelson Mandela's house but we also got the chance to walk through and meet people in a squatter camp. In geography last year we were learning about the favela's in Rio and heading to the squatter camp I had an impression of what it would be like. What I didn't expect however is the real sense of community everyone has and how welcoming they were to us. Our guides were lovely and gave us a very good insight into what life is like there. They are using tourism as a way to make money and improve not only their lives but also the community as 30% of the donations they receive go towards others living in the area. We were also shown some dances by a group of young boys who have been taught some traditional zulu dances as a way to avoid being caught up in crime. Soweto has the phrase 'the good, the bad and the ugly' due to the fact that there is extremely wealthy houses right next to both the middle class and squatter camps. It really does show the divide between the rich and poor.

The weather here is also not what I was expecting. Spring day is the 1st of September however we've been told by our country rep that it's still very much winter just now. Which is quite strange to get my head around since winter usually means snow, rain and the freezing cold in Scotland unlike here in Johannesburg it's still around 21°C during the day, however it does get quite cold at night.

Unfortunately, Talitha's visa didn't arrive in time so hopefully she's going to fly out in 2 weeks time but me and Scott are flying down to George this morning which is a half hour drive from our project. All the South Africa volunteers have bonded really well and I can't wait to meet up with everyone again but I'm very excited to head to my project and start learning everything we need to be able to start helping run courses.

Rachel