Day 5: The Curse of the Black Stars

After an adventurous day, we took it easy on Day 5. We took a while to get going and eventually headed to the former home of Nelson Mandela, where he lived with one of his former wives, winnie (A strong woman herself), and which has now been turned into a small museum in Soweto. The house was small but very cool.

The 'zeys in front of the Mandela House. Courtesy of Alli.

I've now had two chances to stand where this man once stood, and I gotta say it feels different. Kind of a range of emotions. Fear--when you see a metal trashcan lid with holes that was used by students to shield themselves from police bullets during the famous Soweto Uprising. Or the bullet holes in the walls and charred brick that stand as evidence of the various intimidation tactics used by the police during his lifetime. Empowerment--when you see the wall covered with certificates, honorary diplomas, official government apologies (which the US government refused to issue even though the CIA assisted the South African government in Arresting Mandela). These stand as the most superficial indications that incredible persistence has created change that reached the entire world. Love--pictures of his children, all but one of whom Nelson Mandela has outlived for sometimes bizarre reasons. Tradition--the family buried the umbilical cords of all the Mandela children under this tree in the corner of the yard to as a traditional custom to connect to the family ancestors.

Tree where children of Nelson Mandela have their umbilical cords buried.
This is a traditional custom in some African cultures
that aims to connect with the family ancestry.

The tour was short, as the house was very small--probably the size of a one car garage. We then walked down the street to just get a picture of Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu's family home. This is the only place in the world in which two Nobel Peace Prize winners have lived. I'd say that Soweto owns the world in neighborhood per capita Peace Prize medals. The street was crowded with tourists, so naturally there were many street vendors and there was also a group of children in traditional tribal dress performing dances for cash.

They dressed and danced for tips. Not sure about the origin or meaning of these dances.

Here we bought some of those annoying but obligatory vuvuzelas and we all got Bafana Bafana jerseys. Alli bought a cool elephant made of beads and wire. I learned how to haggle...sort of. I just sat there trying to do the math conversion in my head to figure out how much it would cost, and he thought I was driving a hard bargain. So, he kept pushing the price lower. Got a pretty good quality jersey for 200 Rand just because I'm slow at dividing by 7.5 in my head. Silence is golden.

Alli and I in our awesome new Bafana Bafana jerseys!

We sat to have a beer. I noticed that Castle beers have a promotion for the South African soccer team that prints a profile of one player on each can or bottle. Smartly, we ordered 6 Castles, only to be foisted by six bottles all depicting the same player.

Then we headed to the Sandton Fan fest where we ate again at Mythos and then took the far walk to watch Ghana against the US. The park was MUCH emptier than the South African game we saw a few days earlier, and the US fans didn't come out in force. As the last African nation alive in the world cup, the fans were against us supporting "The Black Stars." We lost 2-1 in overtime, to the majority of the crowd's delight, and headed home hoping that in four years we won't have to play Ghana again. This is the second time in consecutive world cups that Ghana has ended the USA's world cup run.