Another side of Joburg

Photo: Dylan Harbour

After the last weekend, that was quite calm and relaxed, this weekend was much more exciting and eventful.

On Friday everything started with the later celebration of Heritage Day in our project.  Everyone was supposed to come in his heritage wear or favourite sports team jersey. I unfortunately didn’t know about it early enough so that I didn’t have a very good heritage outfit, but everyone else was dressed in a variety of different outfits from typical Zulu clothing to traditional Indian Saris.

In the afternoon after work we met a South African friend that is sometimes volunteering for Cotlands and he took us to Greenside, another Suburb of Johannesburg with many small restaurants and bars.

On Saturday we met with a friend from Germany who is staying in Johannesburg as an au pair. But while we are staying in the city’s south, where mostly poor suburbs and townships are situated, she is living in Randburg, a richer northern suburb. So far we hadn’t really been in the north of Joburg and it was interesting to see the city’s differences the farer we got to the north.  Turffontein, where we live, is a very small suburb and appears to be home to many illegal immigrants. That’s why it is regarded as dangerous by many people and why we mustn’t really go out there on our own – at least not after 4 o’clock. The street scene is characterized by small houses that are surrounded by fences, sometimes like Cotlands for example even with electric fences. Cotlands actually also has its own security guards that observe the buildings 24/7. Randburg on the other hand is a chic suburb with many villas that are often hidden behind high malls, additionally secured with electric fences. There also are lots of shopping malls and other entertainment facilities.

When we arrived the family was kindly welcoming us to their home. After a short shopping trip Stella and I were having our first Braai in the evening. Braai is Afrikaans for barbecue. As South Africans seem to love their meat more than anything else, braaing seems to be a very social and cultural practise to them. Typical South African Braai meats are Boerewors, a tangy sausage,  and Sosaties, marinated cubed and skewered meat.

Of course I tried all of these delicacies on the Braai and I really loved it, especially the Boerewors. I was even permitted to help braaing as you can see on the picture (even though I thought that only men were allowed to do it).

After the Braai we went to Montecasino, a leisure complex that was designed to replicate an Italian village. When we entered the complex we could barely believe that we still were in South Africa cause everything was indicating that we were in a small Tuscan village. 

In the next morning we were having tasteful omelettes for breakfast and then we went back home. We still had to do some household chores, but after that Lea, another volunteer from Germany that is staying in Pretoria, came over with some friends. To round the weekend, we went to a nice Pizzeria and had very tasteful Pizzas for only 35 Rand, what’s only about 2,50 Euro. But I think that is even for South African standards very cheap, because most things are only slightly cheaper than in Germany.

All in all we had a very nice weekend, tasted a lot of good food and met many new friendly people. At the end of the week I will write a little more about Cotlands and our duties here.

You will hear from me!

Frederike