Sawubona, Soweto

After, oh, about 12 hours of being in our fancy-schmancy W-style hotel in the middle of our fancy schmancy shopping complex, Ty and I decided--we need out. Like I've said, it's not that it wasn't lovely. But if I wanted to sip cocktails in a hip bar surrounded by white people, it's a lot cheaper to go to Cherry Creek. As long as we were in Africa, we wanted to see real Africa stuff. So we went to Soweto.

What most people, including me, know about Soweto, we learned from the news. Or heartfelt books. Or crusading fundraising rock stars. And what we heard about is the uprising, struggle, the symbolism, the hope. But there's a lot I didn't know about Soweto. For instance, this collection of townships forms a city of between 3 and 5 million people. It's HUGE. They don't know exactly how many because much of the population is undocumented. And Soweto is not all tin shacks and dirt roads. It's as varied as any city, with dirt poor slums sitting beside brand new housing developments, across from neat 4-room houses, down the street from bona fide mansions with BMWs in the driveway. It's home to many people from the native South African ethnic groups, like the Zulu--also to a huge immigrant population from other countries in Africa. I didn't know any of that stuff. Until I spent four hours biking through the place.

There are lots of tours of Soweto, but we didn't want to see the area from an air-conditioned bus. I'm also wary of tours in general, especially tours whose main theme seems to be, "Let's point and take pictures of poor people!" So I did some looking (thank you, Lonely Planet!) and found a good alternative--a bike tour of Soweto. Over the course of four hours, a guide will pedal with you around the neighborhoods of Soweto, where you'll see everything, smell everything and talk to everyone. The tour also included all of the major Soweto sights like the Hector Petersen Memorial, Nelson Mandela's house and all the stuff that you really shouldn't miss if you're going to go all that way. So we booked spots for the next day.

At 9am, a van picked us up from our hotel for the 20Km or so trip to Soweto. The van trip itself was a fascinating journey. First it took us through the posh northern suburbs of Johannesburg and wound down the main drag (a Sunset Boulevard of sorts) past the leafy green--but empty--parks closer to downtown. We passed the zoo. Apparently Johannesburg has a lovely zoo, but seriously--a ZOO? In AFRICA? I just can't get down with that. Then we got on the freeway that closely bypasses downtown. I wouldn't call Jo'burg a beautiful city--it's more concrete jungle than architectural treasure--but it's intriguing, with its towers and a deserted amusement park called Gold Rush City in the shadow of the skyscrapers. The mean streets we heard so much about were down there, looking burnt out and ghetto-ish. It reminded me of the scariest parts of West Oakland or Chicago's South Side, with trash-strewn vacant lots, sad looking corner stores and people hanging out on those corners without much to do. But we saw signs of the impending World Cup--sparkling new plazas and loft-like apartments standing out amidst the blight.

The new Soccer City is just past downtown on the way to Soweto. The main stadium for the World Cup is designed--no joke--to look like a traditional clay pot of African beer, down to the canvas roof with its many peaks looking like the foam at the top. There is so, so much right with a football stadium designed to look like a giant beer. Well done, South Africa.

mmm....beer

The first thing you see when you get to Soweto is a rolling sea of red--the red tile roofs of the classic 4-room houses. Most of the homes have tin shacks in the back yard, additions to hold extra family members or to rent out to the many recent immigrants from other parts of Africa. There are thousands of these houses with their shack appendages, stretching out far along the horizon. Look back the other way and you see the towers of Jo'burg in the distance, and thestripped out yellow mounds left over from gold mining.

Soweto, far as the eye can see

The hostel that runs the bike tour is across the street from a neat little park and playground full of local children. The hostel is like a little oasis on a quiet street, with neat rooms and a plant-lined patio with a hammock, a mini-cantina and a foosball table.

Chillin' in da backyard

It looks like a terrific place to spend the night, and many backpackers do. There were about 15 people on our tour, and they soon issued us bikes and helmets. My bike was no-frills, to say the least. About 1.5 of the gears worked and about halfway through the ride my quick-release seatpost stripped out. I could either pedal out of the saddle or in low position with my knees akimbo, like I was riding my daughter's bike. But it got me from place to place, and I'm all about the flow.

For the next four hours, we pedaled in and out of different worlds--the first one full of modest 4-room houses and paved roads. It was simple, but there were signs of at least the second world, if not necessarily the first.

We turned a corner and we were somewhere else. Tin shacks outnumbered brick houses. Trash littered some areas and piled in others. An open sewer ditch ran along the road. We stopped in front of a tumbledown main "street," in front of a tiny tin shack. This was a "shebeen," a small illegal tavern. I've seen storage sheds larger, but the shebeen was packed to the gills. About a dozen older African men sat on benches that ran along all four walls, all smoking and trading jokes. We joined them and soon there were a couple dozen of us squeezed into the tiny space. In summer. In Africa. The term "sweat lodge" comes to mind. It was smoky. And sweaty. And dark. And fascinating. I lost my sunglasses through a crack in the floor. I didn't go after them because I truly wasn't sure what was living down there. I looked at the older guy next to me and we both smiled and shrugged.

"Shebeen," African for "dive bar"

Our guide brought us two white buckets. One contained a non-alcoholic beverage (bootleg African root beer, if you will.) The other contained fermented hooch. The contents of the first bucket smelled like bubble gum and tasted vaguely like a day-old papaya smoothie. The stuff in the second bucket tasted like finely aged vintage ASS. Really gross. I took a polite sip and passed it along to my quiet, smoking hosts. Cheers, fellas.

For the next hour or so we wandered through this neighborhood, and it. was. AMAZING. This is how the rest of the world lives. The poverty was jarring at times. There's nothing happy about children playing directly next to a spot where six dead rats are rotting. But the thing is--the children are playing. Just like children do everywhere. They were thrilled to see us. They smiled, hugged and gave us hearty welcomes. They tried on our helmets and sat on our laps and looked at our photos. Africans have the most genuine beautiful smiles. All of the people we met in Soweto greeted us with smiles and handshakes, and I'd like to think it's not just because we had tourist dollars to spend. Even in the poorest, hardest corners of Soweto I felt more welcome than I have in some U.S. cities, and definitely safer than I did in Jo'burg

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our hosts

We continued to ride and walk through the lower-rent district of Soweto, down back alleys and past hanging laundry and throngs of children giving us high-fives as we walked by, until we got to a small food stand with piles of fruit and veggies and some cooked meat on a plate. They invited us to dig in. My basic philosophy on food is: is it a mushroom? No? Then eat. I will try anything once. So with out looking too closely or asking too many questions, I grabbed a piece of the meat, rolled it in salt and ground red pepper, and popped it into my mouth. First impression? Hot as HELL. Holy holy. The meat wasn't bad at all. I steeled myself to hear that it was some kind of brain or intestine or foreskin, but it turned out to be the meat of the cow's head, around the skull. Wives tale has it that if you eat the meat of the head, it will make you wise. I think I ate at least 5 IQ points' worth, so I've got that going for me.

Don't ask, just eat

After our, uh, tasty snack, we pedaled out of the slum and wound up at a modern town square for the historic portion of the tour. We were at the Hector Petersen Memorial, the site where, in 1976, Soweto schoolchildren were gunned down by police for protesting the mandatory teaching of Afrikaans in schools. Hector Petersen was the youngest boy killed, at age 12, and a museum and memorial fountain now stand a few hundred yards from the site of the shooting. It was incredibly emotional, I teared up looking at it, thinking of my own son, who is not much younger than Hector was. We spent 15 to 20 minutes here, mostly in silence.

We went from there to a neighborhood that is clearly the Beverly Hills of Soweto--big gates, swimming pools, movie stars...or at least political and musical luminaries. We saw Desmond Tutu's sleek modern home and a couple of phat pads that were bigger than our home in Boulder.

We ended up at Nelson Mandela's home, which has been turned into a museum next to the Mandela Family Restaurant. It was lunchtime and nearly the end of our tour. We sat down and chatted with our tourmates, a really interesting bunch. They included a doctoral student from Luxembourg who was researching the effects of Chinese economic growth on the South African economy, and three young women--two English, one American--working at NGOs and on fellowships in Swaziland. They had driven over for the weekend to see The Killers in Jo'burg. We were all starving and watched excitedly as our neighbors were served heaping plates of very African-looking dishes of meats, curries and rice.

So imagine our shock when we each got one of these:

That's right, a big starchy bun stuffed with French fries, topped with a hot dog and a few Kraft singles, and then topped with more bread. It was like a processed food sundae. And it was perhaps the weirdest, most out-of-context lunch I've ever seen. It was like, hey, Whitey's coming, get out the hot dogs and American cheese! And African ketchup? Don't ask. It's the thought that counts but it actually made me nostalgic for the cow's head.

Right before we got back to the hostel, we pedaled up a hill and hiked up a small ridge to look down on the expanse of Soweto once more. Our guide pointed out a very large house on a well-appointed lot directly below us. It was Winnie Mandela's house. After two days in Jo'burg, we had seen big walls coiled with razor wire on every dwelling we passed. But at Winnie's house the walls were low and not festooned with spikes and barbs. We were perhaps 30 feet and a simple stucco wall away from the yard of the former first lady of South Africa. Can you even imagine standing less than 50 feet away from Hillary Clinton's back yard without at least a dozen people trying to tase you? But no one, not military, not law enforcement, not civilian, tried to so much as ask our intentions. It was just us and Winnie. It implied a trust that doesn't seem to exist in the rest of the country and I'm surprised it existed there of all places. Not because people are untrustworthy, but after so many years of shit, why should the people of Soweto trust anyone? But there we were, in the bars, on the roads, eating the food. And it was all good.