Last thoughts for this trip

Dumela n'date ("greetings" in Sotho)!

Well, tomorrow I'm heading back to the USA. Currently I'm in Melville (a neighborhood located in north central Johannesburg) at the back of a dusty old bookshop that has a tiny internet cafe. I had a meeting with a BU professor yesterday based here in Jo'burg. The meeting took place in a public hospital right next to the renal dialysis unit. Walking through the dialysis unit was beyond depressing. I've seen tenement buildings that look friendlier. I can only imagine what the patients must feel like. I confess that the prof was about as helpful as a barracuda in a school of small fish. With friends like these....

Jo'burg is an interesting city. I now have a good idea of what Fort Knox or Dante's 5th or 6th circle of hell must look like. The CBD is being revived but it currently feels like Lebanon circa 1988. The level of security here is mindboggling. The B&B that I'm staying at looks like it could survive an attack by the 82nd airborne division. Razor wire, concertina wire, steel doors (even to the outdoor loo by the pool!), 24 hour security, AND the street is patrolled from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning by additional security. I can only imagine what the wealthy suburbs to the north must be like.

I think the thing that has made me the most uneasy about South Africa is the sense of paranoia about violence, which in some sense might be justified, but not to this degree. Lesotho on the other hand, although nowhere near developed as its neighbor, is definitely more accessible and open. In South Africa there is an intoxicating mix of hope and danger, wealth and poverty, beauty and sheer despair. In Lesotho there is a strong sense of Basotho tradition that is having to cope with the onslaught of modernity, globalization, and an epidemic which threatens the very roots of this small mountain kingdom. It will be interesting to see where these countries end up in a decade.

I hope to post some photos when I return!