Category: Africa

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Touring the Cullinan Diamond Mine in South Africa

We toured the Cullinan Diamond mine!  We did not get to go down into the mine but we did get to see the outside machinery.  We had to wear hard hats and reflective vests and we had to blow into a machine that tested our breath for alcohol.  The diamond mine was very loud.  The diamonds are found in a rock called Kimberlite.  The miners bring out 11,000 tons of Kimberlite from below the surface and get only a handful of diamonds each day! 

They have 3 shafts but only two of them are in use.  Shaft one is used to bring up the kimberlite and shaft 3 is used to bring down and up people.  The shaft used for people has a giant elevator that can carry up to 103 people in one trip! One fact I learned that I found very interesting was that if a machine can’t fit in the elevator they will dismantle the machine, and re-build it below the surface! The kimberlite is brought to the surface via shaft one, then dumped onto a conveyor belt that goes to two more conveyor belts that go to the plant where the diamonds are harvested.

Overall I really enjoyed learning how diamonds go from sitting in a rock to in a ring or necklace.  I would highly recommend touring or just visiting.   

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Dinner at Saint Restaurant in Johannesburg

Dinner at Saint was so amazing!  The bathrooms were super awesome!  I got pizza but the home-cooked kind.  It was plain cheese but it was so good.  The service was amazing!  For dessert, I got a milkshake and it came in a silver goblet.  The goblet was not real silver but the color was silver.  I would very highly recommend this restaurant. Five Stars!!!!!

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Soweto Township Walking Tour in Johannesburg, South Africa

apartheid museum statue

Soweto Walking Tour

After Constitution Hill, we did a walking tour of Soweto. Our tour guide’s name was Tobago. We started by walking by the Hector Pieterson Memorial. Hector Peterson was a 12-year-old boy that was shot and killed in Soweto. He was walking home from school and crossed paths with a massive group of school kids that were marching to the capital building and a group of police officers that were trying to shut down the peaceful protests. The police started open firing on the children, and many were shot. Hector was thought to be the youngest one to be killed, but it was later found out that there was an eight-year-old girl who was killed. Hector was famous because of a photo of him being carried to a clinic where he was pronounced dead.

Visiting the Mandela House Museum

Next, we went to Nelson Mandela’s house, which had been turned into a museum. His house was surprisingly small. It had three rooms, and in the front, it had bullet holes in the brick from when the police would shoot at the house for no reason. The police probably would come up with ridiculous reasons for shooting at the home, but I think they were trying to invoke fear.

After Mandela’s house, we went to Desmond Tutu’s house, but it was not a museum. Then we went to Winnie Mandela’s huge Soweto house, which was also not a museum. After the place, we went to a brewery, and dad tried some beers.

Up the Soweto Towers

Then we learned how to signal a public taxi bus to take us to the Soweto Towers. At the towers, some of us, not me, were going to do a free fall, but Bardez could not do it because his back and Emmy and Zeb were too chicken. I won’t say I was chicken because I was turkey. No, I just do not do those kinds of things. We ended up just riding up to the top of the towers, which was scary enough for me.

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Constitution Hill Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa

apartheid museum statue

Today was a day at Constitution Hill. Constitution Hill was a jail turned into a fort, then turned back into prison, then turned into a museum. Since it was women’s day, the museum entry fee was zero dollars. We went down into a room with a video interviewing former prisoners. The things that the warders made them do were horrendous. Completely inhumane!

One of the things that I read that stuck with me was the food service. The jailers would not give Bread to black people because “it would hurt their stomachs.” The number of silly things that the warders would say was innumerable. There was also ridiculous brutality in the jail, and you could be punished for the smallest of things and even things you did not do. Constitution Hill was a great museum, and I hope we get to go back to look at the Women’s section of the museum. I enjoyed

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Johannesburg Holocaust and Rwandan Genocide Museum

This museum was amazing!  Even the front courtyard had so many symbolic things in it!  We had lunch at the cafe here and for a small cafe the food was amazing.  I got a salad and strawberry smoothie and I thoroughly enjoyed them.  I went pretty quickly through the holocaust part because we had all been to the holocaust museum in NYC.  Before we came to this museum I knew absolutely nothing about the Rwandan Genocide Acts. 

I was shocked at the brutality and how people were killed in such violent ways. One fact that I thought about a lot was how people believed you can’t hurt someone in a church and you can’t be violent in a church.  So they would all go to the churches only to be massacred and left. 

The museum made me think, how can anyone be that hurtful to another human?  We are all humans, right?  It feels like the people like Hitler and the people who ran apartheid were maybe crazy to even think about wiping out a whole race of people or controlling and hurting people based on their skin color.  I would highly recommend this museum and I would go again if I could.