My work in Gabon had come to an end but I was not quite ready to say goodbye to Africa just yet. So, my colleague Keary and I headed to South Africa for a few days to see what Johannesburg had to offer. You may remember her from a previous blog involving a sinking boat. And we were not disappointed.

We booked ourselves into a hostel called Brown Sugar – a 4-story mansion that had once been the humble abode of a notorious drug lord in the 1970s but is now the residence of carefree travelers from around the world and some very friendly hostel staff. Having been away from home for so long I was struck by how homey the place felt. There were big swallow-you-up couches in every room, bookshelves heaving with novels, encyclopedias and magazines, a giant kitchen laid out for communal cooking - I almost expected to find my father stretched out at the table reading the Journal.

Our first day began with a complimentary breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast. We then met up with the hostel’s resident chauffeur and all-round cool guy Chris who had agreed to show us the city. Keary and I gingerly hopped into his car and then we were off into the unknown, a place we’d both become familiar with in Gabon.

As we drove through the city center Chris pointed out different landmarks to us but all I could pay attention to were the hoards of homeless people, the dilapidated buildings and the utter chaos that was central Johannesburg. The poverty was palpable. He explained to us that there are no restaurants, no nightclubs and no hotels in the city center because it’s so dangerous. Come 5pm when all the shopkeepers and office workers clear out the city is a ghost town and only the very hardened or homeless (or both) roam the streets. We didn’t hang around long.

He brought us to a skyscraper, a building called the Carlton Center that towered above the rest of the city. As it turned out, it also towered above the rest of Africa, being its tallest building. So there we stood on the roof of Africa gazing down at the urban jungle as it sprawled out towards the horizon. Above is a photo of us with the view in the background. After spending/surviving a year on this wonderful and challenging continent it was fitting to look down on it, and I felt a small sense of accomplishment.

Next stop was Soweto. The word Soweto is an acronym for ‘South Western Townships’ and it was a place where black South Africans were segregated during apartheid times while their white counterparts resided in the city of Johannesburg.

It was a great day to be there. It was South Africa’s Youth Day – a national holiday set aside to commemorate a wave of protests that swept across the country known as the Soweto Uprising. These protests, which began on the 16th of June 1976, were lead by black high school students who didn’t want to learn through Africaans in school. They led to the police shooting and killing of 176 students (some reports estimate many more) and highlight the brutality of the Apartheid Government. Hector Pieterson, the first student to be shot on that awful day, is the poster child for the uprising, in every sense of the term.

So it was under that shadow of oppression that Keary and I strolled through the streets of Soweto. But there was no sadness in the faces of the Sowetans. They were beaming, some skipping around in school uniforms, both adults and children alike. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a buzz from a place before. There were crowds of people singing, other groups dancing and everyone smiling. It was a celebration of the efforts of those children and how far the country has come since their untimely deaths.

Two large towers loomed on the horizon. When we drove closer I could see that their exteriors were painted with the most beautiful murals. Chris informed us that they were the cooling towers of the Orlando Power Station that had been decommissioned in 1998 and subsequently they had been used as gigantic canvases to portray the heart and soul of Soweto. A smiling Mandela, a soccer ball and a saxophonist are among the colourful images on display. Above is a photo of me beside the towers.

While we were there we decided to pop into Nelson Mandela’s house, the one he lived in before being sent to prison for 27 years. It was a homely red-bricked bungalow with about enough room to swing a very small cat, maybe. On a normal day that place would have been full of tourists but given the day that was in it it was quite literally bursting at the seams. So we peeked around, squeezing between shoulders and under elbows and admired the cabinets and old photos and then slowly made our exit through the thick wall of sightseers.

Back at the hostel that evening we were reunited with our new multinational friends. We chatted over a game of pool, which Keary dominated, and drank some tasty local bears. Just when I thought we’d squeezed the maximum amount of fun into one day we were invited to a nearby party in a place called ‘House of Legends’. How could we say no to that? So off we went.

A guy called Prophet greeted us at the door with big hugs, as if he’d been expecting us, and if his name is anything to go by perhaps he was. Inside was a large courtyard with a barrel-fire in the middle and a DJ booth at the back. There was also a bar, which could easily have been a kitchen counter in the corner. A blanket of stars carpeted the sky above. I couldn’t quite decide if the place was a nightclub or somebody’s home. Either way the craic was mighty! Everyone was either dancing or chatting, or both. We quickly gelled into the eclectic crowd of revelers and danced the night away.

And so that’s how we ended our first day in Johannesburg. It was a very good start indeed!