Joburg: A Short Stay in the City of Gold

Hello from Qatar!

It’s been a while since my last post – I wanted to get one uploaded before leaving South Africa but interviews, exploring, and packing for this 22-hour journey (of which I’m currently in the middle) caught up to me. 

I’m writing this blog post from the airport in Doha, as I have a 3-hour layover here before I hop on a flight to Singapore. Landing in Doha, where my family lives and where I graduated high school, was definitely more surreal than I expected it to be – as I stepped out of the plane and onto the tarmac to await a shuttle bus at around 10pm Doha time, I was greeted by the familiarity of warm, humid summer air and the soft yellow glow of the city’s skyline in the distance. Everything from the Qatar Airways boarding music to the selection of films onboard felt familiar, so it is definitely strange to be merely passing through here for a few hours. 

As for Joburg, I arrived last Wednesday afternoon and had my first interview on Thursday. This interviewee was the marketing manager for Ditsong: Museums of South Africa, an amalgamation of eight museums in Pretoria and Johannesburg. Their offices in Pretoria – where we met – are about an hour away from where I was staying, so I decided to make a day trip out of the meeting. Before the interview, I was able to visit Ditsong’s Museum of Natural History, which gave me some good signage material and a better sense of the style of Ditsong’s exhibitions. My contact welcomed me with a beautiful spread of coffee, juice, and scones in the sunny courtyard behind Ditsong’s administrative office, which was also connected to the garden of their Kruger Museum. She and two of the women who work in her office also gave me a gift – a hat and a mug, each featuring Ditsong’s logo. It was such a warm welcome and there was so much to talk about that I ended up staying there for 3 hours! Since I was in Pretoria, I wanted to visit both Freedom Park and the Voortrekker Monument after the interview, but I was only able to make it to the first before sunset, when I embarked on the hour-long return to my hostel. In the following days, I was also able to talk to a sociolinguist, a local restaurant owner, and a tour guide. More about these conversations and other Joburg findings in the next post. 

Since then, my week has been filled with a mix of sightseeing, going to various museums, subsequent interviews, and staying up late playing card games and sharing pizza with my hostelmates. This has been my favorite hostel so far. One night, we held a braai (the South African version of grilling/barbecue) in honor of someone’s last night in Joburg, turning the simple meal into a warm farewell – my first time trying ostrich (which tastes like a mix between chicken and beef)! Also, every morning at around 11 am, a local man would drop by selling amagwinya for R2 each – South African fried dough balls, made by his wife. They were delicious and instantly took me back to the oliebollen I used to enjoy living in the Netherlands. Those little tastes brought a surprising comfort amid the constant change.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I visited the Apartheid Museum and Constitution Hill, both of which give an amazingly vivid depiction of life under apartheid and the conditions under which political prisoners lived. While visiting Constitution Hill, I was able to walk into the cells in which Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela were held, and the Apartheid Museum had a lengthy exhibition dedicated to telling the story of Mandela’s life. This is what is given to you when purchasing a ticket to the Apartheid Museum:

The slip of paper given to me reads, “Your ticket to the museum has randomly classified you as either ‘white’ or ‘non-white.’ Use the entrance to the museum indicated on the ticket.”

This is the entrance to the museum:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the very first step, this museum created an incredible educational and emotional impact. Behind the revolving doors, signs from the apartheid era are also showcased (in English and Afrikaans). 

On Sunday I walked the grounds of the Johannesburg Botanical Gardens, and on Monday I went on a biking tour of Soweto. Soweto, its name an abbreviation of South Western Townships, is an area of Joburg that became an epicenter of the fight against the apartheid state in the 1950s. It also is home to Vilakazi Street, the only street in the world to have housed two Nobel Peace Prize winners – Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela and Desmond Mpilo Tutu. Mandela’s former residence has now been turned into a museum, so I was able to go inside and look around. Soweto is also where Trevor Noah is from!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I sit here in Doha, between continents and places I’ve called home, I’m still processing all that the past week in Johannesburg held – conversations, stories, histories, and late-night hostel laughter. A week was barely enough to scratch the surface of a city so layered in history, energy, and lived experiences. I’ll be sharing more soon from Singapore, including a post with some of the research insights from my time in Joburg.