While the first half of my South African odyssey was
rich in discoveries and motorcycle adventures. I have come here to practice
medicine and this is quite exactly that which has taken most of my time lately.
With the submission of CaRMS on November 2, I now had the freedom to take up
more call shifts and get to witness first hand what I had come to experience. I
thus had less time to get out of town but this limitation lent itself to open
the opportunity of JoBurg exploring.
I have already shared my wild animal sightings on my frequent jogs to neighboring Klipriviersberg nature reserve. I have also spoken about having lunch in Soweto and having a guitar voice duo make me completely forget about hunger. I have spoken about the braai with medical students from six different countries, and life here I'm general. I have not however spoken about visiting the apartheid museum, having lunch at Chaf Pozi, a restaurant in the shade of the Orlando towers in Soweto, and an unforgettable drinking night in Greenside.
Johannesburg does not have a Louvre, a Hermitage, nor
a Prado but it does not have to blush in embarrassment for it doth have the Apartheid
museum. While many countries had used segregation as “only” a social line of
conduct, South Africa went as far as legalizing
it; that it was law that a white man was superior to all other races. Some bad
tongues would say that the early Afrikaans settlers which migrated from Cape
Town towards the East and the interior, having only a bible as reading
material, created a narrow minded society… But there is obviously more than
just blaming religion to the origin of one of the world’s most reprehensible
political systems in modern history. In the late XIXth century, gold
was found in the area of today’s Johannesburg. So much of it was found that the
following gold rush had the city grow exponentially, producing close to a
quarter of the world’s gold in the early XXth century. Many laws in
the first half of the XXth century were enacted – following already
entrenched societal rules – to keep the rapidly growing black and immigrating Asian/Indian
populations from gaining power and to physically separate racial groups keeping
the white race “pure”, culminating in the establishment of full out legalized
segregation in 1948: Apartheid… as far as I understood and can explain this
complex history in a few lines.
Once
my ticket purchased, I walked towards the entrance, or rather entrances: one
for “blankes”, one for “nie blankes” – your “race” determined by a random
selection inscribed on the back of your ticket. I had not paid attention to my
ticket and being subjected to this reality took me by surprise. For a brief moment,
my automatic reaction was “I hope I’m white” which I initially thought was a funny
thing to think. But it was a very powerful realization. It was fear. Fear that
I could be treated in a different way even if it was in a pretended scenario. That
in the span of one second, in the safe, consequence-less confines of a museum,
the possibility of a double standard made me instinctly uncomfortable. Now try
that for a lifetime.
Your
race was not only determined by your skin, but by your language, where you
live, the race of your parents, your culture, etc… A completely man-made
classification to suit the whites’ agenda to maintain control based on a
completely artificial reasoning. A person’s identity – and written as such in
their identification documents – was determined by another’s false vision of
the world. On top of being a second class citizen which alone is maddeningly infuriating,
your identity did not even belong to you; hard to imagine something more
frustrating.
The
visit is obviously a sad and somber one, but it ends beautifully with the birth
of a new democracy, with a story that restores our faith in humanity and what open
mindedness, empathy, and hope can accomplish. South Africa’s transition did not
come to pass without setbacks and the road ahead is not without its share of
challenges. But there is a road. Its
encouraging destination in the eyes of an entire population traveling it side
by side, the rear-view mirror only confirming and encouraging them to keep
going forward.
Everyday
for lunch, we usually go out. Food being so cheap, the cafeteria so bland, and
time so scarce to prepare lunches that going out is the natural answer to this situation.
One of my favorite destinations is Chaf Pozi, a restaurant found just between
the two massive painted Orlando towers a five minute drive from Bara. It is a
place that only does one thing and it does it fantastically well: braai. Braai
is the Afrikaans term for barbecue and Chaf Pozi one of its best ambassadors.
Despite the name of its cuisine however, the majority of its clientele primarily
speaks Zulu because this is Soweto after all. There is no menu, only two
counters: food and drinks. And food here really means meat. T-bone steaks,
chicken drumsticks, pork chops, chucks, lamb chops, boerewors (sausages) etc…
Side dishes include pap, a maize based mashed-potato substitute, as well as
chakalaka, a spicy carrot-bean dish.
Chaf
Pozi is well known to the students at Bara and their frequent visits over the
years have granted us the favors of the owner and generous portions. But aside
from the delicious food and the amazing service, the ambiance is probably what
I appreciate the most. The place is full on any day of the week with music
guiding the digestive dance of its replenished guests. This was no metaphor: people
actually dance. At lunch. On a weekday. And once, to the amusement of the crowd
and to the hilarity of my colleagues, so did I. I am usually easy to pick out
from a crowd, but being the only white dancer both in appearance and technique…
I stood out. I made such an impression that I was asked to dance again by a few
people whose wishes I was only too happy to grant.
It
was a Tuesday evening. On a short back and forth Facebook messaging exchange, I
asked Kevin, a fellow Canuck also doing a trauma elective, if he wanted to go
for an easy, simple, casual drink. Thinking it to be a good idea, we shared our
plan with others and met at Gin, a bar in Greenside, an area in the North West of
Johannesburg. Rounding up our duo were Kiwi Kevin from New Zealand, Pascal from
Switzerland, and Jeff from Ottawa. It was student night. Beers were ten Rand
each… roughly one dollar. There was a beer pong table. It was a good night.
We
started around 8 PM in an almost empty bar and began playing beer pong with the
few other patrons present. After a few games, the place quickly filled up and
we decided to change things up a bit. Memory fails me, but the blurry bits I do
remember had Jeff organize a first game of flip cup against a random set of people we gently forced to join us. We made a ruckus
both singing the “Oleeee ole ole ole” Habs song cheering for the onset of
drinking hostilities and celebrating our flawless victory at the game’s triumphant
conclusion. The entire bar noticed. And there were many, many, many more games
played highlighted with plentiful high fives, random stranger hugs, and general
good cheer.
At
one of our frequent bathroom pit stops, Kiwi Kevin found an ID card by chance belonging
to a good looking brunette. In a fantastic example of inebriated disinhibition,
we exploited this fortuitous discovery by meeting every single brunette in the bar… and their non-brunette friends. In
another good example of inebriated disinhibition, I enjoyed a flirtatious
exchange with a lonely cougar on the prowl. I forget how the conversation ended
but I did not get slapped despite my best efforts. After a countless number of
beers and flip cup victories, I left the bar with Pascal around 2 AM leaving
both Kevins and Jeff behind. Pascal, with Swiss exactitude, was the only one to
show up on time for work that morning. A few days ago, the two Kevins and Jeff
came back to the same bar: they were greeted like rockstars. It was a good
night.
Cheers
folks
TF
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