Jo Burg Day 2

Today we met up with a lady named Marianne. She was in one of Philip's ward recently and he helped reactivate her. She took us to the Vortreker Monument in Pretoria. It's a monument that celebrates the "Pioneer-esque" trek of the Boers into South Africa away from the coast. It was really interesting to see the early interactions between the Dutch, British and the Zula people. All were invading from far off lands and all were willing to do such horrible things to each other like put women and children in concentration camps, commit massive murders, burn crops and live stock and other things too horrible to write. Those British were especially mean.
After that we had a Brai (aka BBQ) at her house. She had all sorts of good food, but I didn't really get a chance to eat a lot of it. Her daughter's boyfriend plays cricket for one of the South African teams, so we got a little lesson on that. They are so into sports there its crazy and they are so excited for 2010.




We then went to Lesedi, a cultural center that shows the 4 major tribes of South Africa. The Xhosa, Zulu, Lesotho and I some other one. There were people from each village and showed their traditional dancing and apparel. One tribe wears Scottish kilts because they went to battle with the Scottish and when the tribe leader saw them, he thought it was a bunch of women so he told his men to put their arms down. Well, they lost that battle and now wear kilts.
The Zulu women have very interesting apparel. An unmarried woman wears really short skirts, then she is abducted by her future husband. Their dads talk about lebola(dowry) while she is living with his family. To prevent her from taking off, she has to war lots of metal rings around her ankles and neck to weigh her down so she can't run fast. Once she is married, she will wear very heavy and long goats skins and long coats because she doesn't need to be showing off to anyone else. It was fun to see the dancing and the differences between the tribes.
The Lesotho are very peaceful people who live in the mountains and have hats that look Asian and wear really long blankets because it's so cold. The Xhosa is pronounced with the clicking noise. The X=clicking and I love saying it.






That night we had dinner with the De Kock family. They are Afrikaners in JoBurg and live in a very nice area. Their block is surrounded by armed security with semi-automatic weapons and electrical fence. There is a huge crime problem in the city and everyone is cautious. We had a wonderful curry dish. Their home was very Mormon-country and nice. Curtis and Tamara stayed with them. Philip, Mr Kim and I stayed with the Director of Temporal Affairs for the church. They were a fun family to talk to and his job was so interesting to hear about.