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South Africa trip report, part 2
[Based on an email sent on 8 April:]
I'm writing this offline sitting outside the SABC on my first day in Johannesburg, waiting for my work-provided driver, Gift (his car has stripes like a zebra) to come and pick me up to take me to the Apartheid Museum (if he can get there with sufficient time before it shuts!). He says he'll be twenty minutes, so I thought I'd make use of the time to write a brief report, given that this evening I'm going to want an early night.
The reason I want an early night? I sleep on my front. I can manage brief daytime naps on my back or my side, but not for a portracted period of time—and I spent last night in an aeroplane seat that didn't tilt back an appreciable amount, certainly not enough to allow me to sleep on my front.
It's nice and warm and sunny here, about 23°. Unfortunately, it's forecast to cloud over and drop to 17° after Wednesday afternoon—i.e. it'll only stay nice whilst I'm cooped up indoors [in a windowless office, to booy] working. Still, maybe it'll turn nice again afterward. [Turns out the north of the country has a dry-winter wet-summer climate, the south of the country the other way around. Since I was there at the turning of the seasons, I got rained upon, but also had good weather in both places.] I've brought my star chart with me, and am looking forward to seeing the night sights of the southern hemisphere—the Milky Way at its most impressive, the Magellanic Clouds, the "Coalsack", Alpha Centauri (the nearest bright star to Earth). I'd hoped to get good viewing when I'm on my safari, away from the city, but I might try my luck within the hotel here in case the next couple of nights are the last clear skies I get. [The skies of the southern hemisphere turned out to be a little disappointing to the naked eye, though I did get to see everything listed above apart from the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. I did try doing some star photography with my camera, but, without a tripod, I couldn't really point the camera steadily at interesting bits of sky for long enough exposures—though I was surprised to discover sixty seconds was enough to result in colourful star trails, due to the rotation of the Earth.]
I did, in the end, just about manage to make it to the Apartheid Museum, but wasn't able to see the lot: Gift didn't get my text until half an hour after I sent it; and when I called him up after fifteen minutes, he was twenty minutes' drive away. I should have cancelled and called a taxi, but someone had told me the museum only takes twenty minutes to see. [I spent an hour there, and saw half of the museum. I asked a later tour guide where else I should go in Johannesburg, and he said whatever I wanted to learn more about, I could learn more about at the Apartheid Museum, so I went back, where, I reported on the twelfth, I] spent a further three hours there. I was not surprised to see a panel in the display about my distant relative Benjamin Pogrund, but I was flabbergasted to see a photograph of Jesmond Blumenfeld, a man I've met. (He's the father of Rebecca Blumenfeld, whom I was friends with at Marom, and who is now in New York training to be a cantor.) I'd got no idea he was involved in the struggle against apartheid. The photo was of the last meeting of the Liberal Party before it was banned.
One thing I've realised was missing from my Pretoria tour yesterday was a look at the outside of the grand old building that started life as a shul but by the 1950s was the location of the courthouse where Mandela had his first trial. Ah well; it was only a half-day tour; there wasn't time for everything.
I'm writing this offline sitting outside the SABC on my first day in Johannesburg, waiting for my work-provided driver, Gift (his car has stripes like a zebra) to come and pick me up to take me to the Apartheid Museum (if he can get there with sufficient time before it shuts!). He says he'll be twenty minutes, so I thought I'd make use of the time to write a brief report, given that this evening I'm going to want an early night.
The reason I want an early night? I sleep on my front. I can manage brief daytime naps on my back or my side, but not for a portracted period of time—and I spent last night in an aeroplane seat that didn't tilt back an appreciable amount, certainly not enough to allow me to sleep on my front.
It's nice and warm and sunny here, about 23°. Unfortunately, it's forecast to cloud over and drop to 17° after Wednesday afternoon—i.e. it'll only stay nice whilst I'm cooped up indoors [in a windowless office, to booy] working. Still, maybe it'll turn nice again afterward. [Turns out the north of the country has a dry-winter wet-summer climate, the south of the country the other way around. Since I was there at the turning of the seasons, I got rained upon, but also had good weather in both places.] I've brought my star chart with me, and am looking forward to seeing the night sights of the southern hemisphere—the Milky Way at its most impressive, the Magellanic Clouds, the "Coalsack", Alpha Centauri (the nearest bright star to Earth). I'd hoped to get good viewing when I'm on my safari, away from the city, but I might try my luck within the hotel here in case the next couple of nights are the last clear skies I get. [The skies of the southern hemisphere turned out to be a little disappointing to the naked eye, though I did get to see everything listed above apart from the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. I did try doing some star photography with my camera, but, without a tripod, I couldn't really point the camera steadily at interesting bits of sky for long enough exposures—though I was surprised to discover sixty seconds was enough to result in colourful star trails, due to the rotation of the Earth.]
I did, in the end, just about manage to make it to the Apartheid Museum, but wasn't able to see the lot: Gift didn't get my text until half an hour after I sent it; and when I called him up after fifteen minutes, he was twenty minutes' drive away. I should have cancelled and called a taxi, but someone had told me the museum only takes twenty minutes to see. [I spent an hour there, and saw half of the museum. I asked a later tour guide where else I should go in Johannesburg, and he said whatever I wanted to learn more about, I could learn more about at the Apartheid Museum, so I went back, where, I reported on the twelfth, I] spent a further three hours there. I was not surprised to see a panel in the display about my distant relative Benjamin Pogrund, but I was flabbergasted to see a photograph of Jesmond Blumenfeld, a man I've met. (He's the father of Rebecca Blumenfeld, whom I was friends with at Marom, and who is now in New York training to be a cantor.) I'd got no idea he was involved in the struggle against apartheid. The photo was of the last meeting of the Liberal Party before it was banned.
One thing I've realised was missing from my Pretoria tour yesterday was a look at the outside of the grand old building that started life as a shul but by the 1950s was the location of the courthouse where Mandela had his first trial. Ah well; it was only a half-day tour; there wasn't time for everything.