First Views of Johannesburg

Day 3 – November 21

We flew into Johannesburg (Joburg) nearly 12 hours later. As we flew above the clouds and began our descent, I had no idea what to expect as the city is situated in the middle of South Africa. Was it lush and green or was it dry and brown? A cover of clouds obscured the view until we got closer to the ground, revealing a land that was vast and green, kind of like you expected it to be, yet unlike anything I’ve flown over before. We were both anxious to get off the plane, find our driver and head to the hotel.

We cleared customs and got into area outside customers where friends and relatives met up with their friends and families who were arriving from somewhere else. We searched for our driver but to no avail. No driver, no ride, no sign saying Kraus or Poullos/Saxon hotel. Plan 2. Call the hotel – but first you have to figure out how to dial the hotel from a US cell phone but you’re on the cell network of the country you’re in. Having gone through this in January in Paris and Germany, we got through to the hotel who tracked the driver down and who found us in about a minute after we had placed the call.

Finally, the final leg, a 40 minute ride to the hotel. As we drove down the highway, we could have been anywhere. The buildings and the types of businesses were all the same as you find anywhere, except of course that driving is on the left side of the road, not the right as we in the states drive.

Of course, not everything can go to plan. An accident slowed traffic to a crawl. After 40 minutes of that, our driver took a long, roundabout way to get us to the hotel but avoided what we later learned was a 10km backup (and we were at the end).

That detour gave us a unique perspective on Johannesburg -- and that was an eye opening experience.

I had recently watched a movie Tsotsi about a hustler and thief in South Africa and thought it might have been filmed in Joburg. After seeing the townships and neighborhoods, I knew it was filmed here. Beautiful homes were surrounded by 10 foot high walls and electric wiring at the top. Modest homes were surrounded by 6 foot walls and fences and electric wiring at the top. And you’d break out of those neighborhoods to vistas not of wide-open green space, but of places Alexandra Township that stretched as far as you could see. These were miles of shack towns, built by the government and given to citizens to live freely as they were mostly unemployed…they simply had to pay for water and electricity.

My sense of wonder about Africa and all the romance associated with it (maybe Out of Africa wasn’t so relevant anymore) quickly gave way to reality. And harsh reality. This is a city that has issues and I couldn’t help but be saddened by the woman at the side of the road cooking something and selling it. At the unemployed at many intersections who were begging, or passing out flyers, or selling everything from a child’s bright red inflatable vest for swimming in one hand to handful of car cell phone chargers, dangling like the legs of some bizarre sea creature in the other. Or collecting empty cans and bottles to trade in for change.

One driver in the car next to us rolled down his window and placed an empty Coke bottle in a young man’s plastic bag, taking its place alongside a cornucopia of cans and bottles of different shapes and sizes. It was his lucky day as the driver placed a coin in his hand as well. The young African man thanked him profusely, as if this was not a simple coin, but a gold Krugerand, worth hundreds of dollars. To this young main, it may have well been a Krugerand, for you could see the value he placed on it in his eyes.

I was thankful to have seen part of Joburg I may have missed if it was just a simple trip down the highway.

So 90 minutes after leaving the airport, we made our way down winding roads through a residential neighborhood full of mansions behind 15 foot walls, eventually coming to the gates of the Saxon Hotel.