Oh my golly gosh.. says Yola!! FAMOUS!

Hi everyone, I'm really sorry, I know I've been lazy as since I got back from Bots, but I just had to share this with you. Someone from Monash Abroad approached us a few weeks ago to write a bit about what we've been up to here, so that some lady could write a piece about the exchange! Little did we know that they would basically take everything and quote me as having said it, and put it on the Monash South Africa home page!! Haha!! We're such nerds! Or at least I am....

http://www.monash.ac.za/news/2009/study-abroad-students.html

Aaaawesome......

Bots for the weekend.. back Sunday again

All packed and ready for our little weekend getaway to Botswana, 10 aussies, Tamar the dutchie and Alex, our host. We will be staying at his house in Gaborone tonight, camping at Khutse Game Reserve on Friday and then back to Gaborone to go out in town Saturday night!
More fun stories and hopefully exciting photos to come, thinking of you all jealous at home :p

~Y

Insert Lesotho blog here!

Sorry for being so lazy.. the second half of the Drakensberg bloggy goodness is still coming!!

The incredible Drakensberg!!

Hello everyone! So you thought I'd be away for the weekend.. you thought wrong! Of course I'm away, but this is the 21st century and there is internet everywhere so I thought I'd write a blog before I forget today's amazing adventures!! I'm currently at Ampitheatre backpackers in the Northern Drakensberg, which is an awesome hostel with the works (bar.. jacuzzi.. amazing views..) and aside from the odd cockroach or two is fabulous! We got here yesterday evening after a pretty shitty rainy day of 6ish hours driving (not that I drove :p) and found this place we'd booked for two days in the foothills of one the most incredible mountain ranges around. The Drakensberg are rugged but naturally beautiful and just fascinating to look atwith their jagged edges and strangely flat peaks. After some bevs at the bar last night we made friends with a couple of german guys and decided to go on a hike with them today, the 'Gorge Walk' into the Ampitheatre.

Ruth, me, Elsa, Vince & Lily with Royal Natal National Park behind us

Elsa and I stunned at the view into the ampitheatre

The weather was perfect on the hike up (3 hours each way) and the views stunning! I can't even begin to describe how great it really was! In search of Tugela Falls (apparently the 2nd biggest waterfall in the world) we clambered over boulders, climbed a rope ladder up a cliff face and climbed between rocks only to find the falls were hidden by mist. It didn't matter though, we were so proud of ourselves for getting so far and it turned out the mist was actually rain so we headed back. It was a real mother nature experience trudging back to the car for 3 hours with the sky grey and thundering and lightning around us (no Mum, I made sure not to stand in an open space with my hands in the air!!). AMAZING!!

Very proud of ourselves (with Lily)

Now it's just relaxing time in the TV lounge upstairs at the hostel with our new friends, completely buggered from today, my knees are absolutely hating me!! Tomorrow we are going into Lesotho with an organised trip our backpackers does, and after that we don't really know.. we'll just see how we go... there are plenty of things to do around here!!

~Y

Away til Sunday

This weekend, Elsa, Lily, Ruth, Vince & I have made plans to go to the beautiful Drakensberg ranges and Lesotho (the small landlocked country within South Africa). We will be staying at backpackers, but are hiring a car so won’t actually be ‘backpacking’, and will be away Wednesday midday until Sunday afternoon. Very excited & looking forward to telling you all the stories! And yes, I will be careful and stay safe- ‘harm minimisation’!!!

~Y

Soweto

I know, long time no blog.. well here is a nice fat essay style blog to keep you occupied!!

Last Tuesday (make that Tuesday 24) Monash Abroad took us to Soweto, as you might have seen in the photos on Facebook. The history-rich but poverty-ridden suburb of central Jo’burg is an amazing place, very sad and thought-provoking. It's a place of beautiful people with the most tragic stories- the heart of South Africa's history.

A man playing the South African national anthem with his nose!

We drove into town in a mini bus of just the Australians and Stephanie (who is a German girl that we have befriended who lived in Soweto when she was 17 and whose boyfriend lives around there). As you can imagine, we immediately felt out of place, staring out of our safe little bubble into those completely different lives. Such tourists! It felt a bit wrong to just look, but it would probably happen often considering the history of the place. The pro-vice chancellor international at Monash here, Simon Adams, is an Aussie and has a pretty cool past being part of the ANC in their struggle against apartheid. Our guide Ayunda (spelling.. unsure..) is a friend (“comrade”) of his from back in his ANC days and was a child during the Soweto uprising in 1976. I’ll try to give you a brief history lesson so that the rest makes sense... (don’t quote me, this is more the world according to Yola!!)

So a few hundred years ago, the Dutch came over to South Africa in hordes and like the British in Australia, became the wealthy class and were not particularly nice to the local people. They were known as Afrikaners. Things were pretty bad, especially when the National Party came into power in 1948 and introduced apartheid. As you can imagine, it was pretty grim. Things really kicked off in Soweto on the 16th of June 1976 when the Afrikaners decided that they were going to make Afrikaans the official teaching language in schools. To put that into perspective, there are 11 official languages in South Africa, and only about 13% are first-language Afrikaans even now. So obviously the school children (not to mention the majority of everyone else) hated this because until then the official school language was English (there are heaps of African languages here so they can't use just one) and to make all subjects taught in a language that no one speaks was ridiculous! So on June 16 the school students in Soweto organised a peaceful rally against the use of Afrikaans in schools. Then -this bit is a bit different depending on whose story you believe but it’s pretty obvious who was in the wrong- the police ‘felt unsafe’ and shots were fired into the crowd OF CHILDREN. People scattered, kids started throwing stones and the police got out of control and killed quite a few people 'in defence'. One fourteen year old boy (Hector Pieterson) died on this day, and there is a very famous photo of him being carried down the street which has become symbolic of that tragic day and the apartheid struggle. As terrible as the uprising and deaths obviously were, when the world heard about what had happened they got behind the South African people (not the Afrikaners) and from then on things started to change for the better. It was obviously a really slow and tough process and wasn't until the 90s that real positive change occurred. Victory was felt in 1994 when Nelson Mandela became president and finally the majority won their right to be heard.

Nelson Mandela's home in Vilakazi Street, now a museum

Freedom Square

So, back to our day trip... Ayunda was there on the 16th of June, and it was just incredible to know we had him showing us around places that are not only part of South Africa’s history but that were quite personal for him too. They took us to Nelson Mandela’s house in Orlando West (in the same street Desmond Tutu lived) and to the Hector Pieterson memorial where you can see where the children marched. Nearby is Freedom Square, which is where the Freedom Charter was written and signed in 1955 and also where Simon explained that he and his comrades had met (it used to be woods) to plan their movements. Ayunda showed us the church that people sheltered in during the uprising, which has a gallery and messages of peace on the walls upstairs. We had lunch at Wandie’s, which makes traditional meals and was deeelicious! After lunch, we went back to Orlando to go inside the Hector Pieterson museum, which was sad but I’m really glad I went there even just to understand the place a little better.

Regina Mundi church, a safe haven during the uprising

To bring it back home, it made me realise how little we have recognised our Australian aboriginal past. There are so many similarities between the histories of the two countries in terms of the treatment of their black people. Obviously, the scale here is much larger with the majority still not being white, but I think it’s that that bothers me most- the way this is a major part of South Africa’s history that they are not proud of, but have recognised, whereas we are still very much in denial. You don’t see museums and monuments up all over the place in Australia in recognition of the tragedies that happened there. There’s something to think about for a bit!
It was a really fascinating day, heavy at times but definitely something that has to be seen. I feel so enriched to have learnt a bit more of the history of this country, and even from just a day can see why some people have the opinions they do today. For someone who didn’t really like history as a subject at school all that much, South Africa is turning me around!!

~Y

Internet

Many apologies if you have tried to Skype or Facebook chat me lately, but our internet here has decided to be basically non-existent during weekdays. In the middle of the night and on Sundays it is bearable but on any other day it is nearly impossible to even check my Monash email which is internal as well! Even making my blog is having difficulties, so I hope this message gets out ok. Have got some blogs on the go, so keep a look out for some new ones soon, when I can actually get them up with photos! Sorry for the wait. If you see me going online and offline a lot, it is just Skype trying to work and failing.. I will be on when I can be!
~Y