One of the things that got me most excited about going to Johannesburg was that I was going to try Couchsurfing for the first time! If any of you aren’t yet familiar with Couchsurfing.org, I can’t encourage you more strongly to check out the site and get involved in any way you feel comfortable. It’s a global non-profit organization that functions through this free website by connecting people all around the world who have a bed or couch available to travelers who are seeking a free place to stay with local folks. It’s brilliant! I know it may seem strange at first, or maybe even scary, but I will still encourage you to read up about the project. The website is actually pretty effectively self-regulating to ensure that people have safe, positive experiences. As a traveler, there is no better way to get to know a new place, and no better way to gain insight to someone’s culture than by staying with them in their home. You get instant friends and connections to hang out with and give you tips on places to go and things to do, totally free. Even if you aren’t traveling, I highly recommend you give Couchsurfing a shot by hosting a traveler. It really is incredible to be a part of this global community, learn about others’ cultures, and make awesome friends all around the world.
I had gotten in touch with Izaan, a woman living in a suburb outside of Johannesburg, maybe a month before I arrived in South Africa. Since I had never couchsurfed before, I wanted to choose my host very carefully, especially tricky because I was hoping to couchsurf through Christmas. Enter: Superwoman. Izaan was a single mom with no plans because her kids were going to be at their grandparents’ place for Christmas for the first time. She was happy to have someone to spend Christmas with, and so was I! All the feedback others had left on her profile page commented on how much fun she is, and what a great time you’ll have if you stay with her! Obviously a great match. :)
When I landed at the airport and got through customs in Joburg it was around 8pm, and I met Izaan and a friend of hers at one of the airport restaurants. She met me with a very warm smile, but I soon learned that she had come down with an awful tummy bug and had been terribly sick the last couple days. She felt so bad about not being able to host me that she had her friend drive her out to the airport to meet me, then drove me to her other friend’s house where she arranged for me to stay until she felt better. What a lady! I enjoyed chatting with Izaan in the car on the way to the house. It felt so comfortable and natural, I kept forgetting that I didn’t know her before that moment. She said I was going to stay at her friend Hanneke’s place, who originally introduced Izaan to Couchsurfing some time ago. I fell in love with Hanneke’s house the moment we arrived, it was unreal! Her two pet wolves met us at the gate, Jorna and Koda, and the beautiful gardens and pond led us to her home, every surface covered with earthy, funky pottery and sculptures, lit by colorful, eclectic hanging lamps. Hanneke greeted us wearing a rainbow tie-dyed t-shirt and offered us all a glass of wine. Izaan and her friend left pretty quickly so she could rest, and Hanneke and I stayed up until the morning hours chatting about mutual environmental concerns. I know they say opposites attract, but in my experience so far it sure seems that like attracts like with a truly incredible affinity.
It was quiet when I woke up the next morning, so I relaxed and made myself coffee. There was an electric kettle with little jars of tea bags, instant coffee, and sugar in the guest room where I stayed. I came to learn that Hanneke was a veteran Couchsurfing host, so much so that it almost seemed the house was designed for her periodic short term guests to be more comfortable. I took my coffee to the back garden and soon met Netanya, a girl living in a granny-flat style portion of the house that had been sectioned off, just next to my room. She is an incredible artist, and we got to know each other a bit while she prepared a canvas for her next painting. I spent most of the rest of the day running errands with Hanneke while I got better acquainted to the suburbs around Randburg—veggie markets, a small Chinese market for tofu, and an outdoor scrap yard that reminded me of Urban Ore in Berkeley, CA. That night we had dinner with one of Hanneke’s local Couchsurfing friends, Doron. I don’t have much of a concept of the Couchsurfing community in California, but I was really impressed with what was happening in the Joburg area. It seemed like it was becoming relatively popular, and they even had regular events (that people actually go to!) to connect with other folks who host/surf/participate in the site in some way. It was really interesting getting to know Doron a bit, as he was preparing for one hell of an adventure! He has officially embarked on a hitch-hiking trek from South Africa to Morocco, completely solo. Check out his blog, it’s significantly more interesting than mine:
http://thumbing-my-way.blogspot.com.au/
The next day I hung out with Netanya at her shop at a nearby mall, where she sold a bunch of her paintings and little craftie things. It was an awesome sunny day, and we just hung out in the shop chatting while she painted and people cruised by to check out her work. One of the best parts was that the vendor at the stall next to hers just so happened to be a Kamba from Kenya. He was surprised enough to hear this random American girl speaking Swahili, but you should have seen his face when I started speaking Kikamba! He kept raving to people, “This girl is speaking my mother tongue! She knows my mother tongue!!” I even sang a song for him in Kikamba that the girls at the orphanage had taught me, and he nearly pissed himself laughing.
When we got back to the house at the end of the day, Hanneke was organizing a group of women and their daughters who had just arrived for a tie-dye fiesta! Hanneke’s friend, Melanie Brummer, is a tie-dying expert (she’s authored an awesome instruction book on tie-dying techniques called Contemporary Dyecraft), and Hanneke is a big time tie-dyer herself, among many other crafts. Melanie had initiated a project to donate 10,000 tie-dyed shirts to orphans/children in need in South Africa, handmade with love, in contrast to the normal and often drab second-hand clothing donations they receive. To achieve her goal, she had been hosting tie-dye workshops and parties where the participants dye two shirts each: one to keep, and one to donate. We began the party by introducing ourselves, and before my turn was through, one woman called out, “OH, you’re Hanneke’s couchsurfer!!” Most of the guests had an eyebrow raised, scanning the faces of other guests for a clue. The woman then explained what Couchsurfing was, and said that she had recently hosted her first traveler, a young man from Brazil, and had an absolutely fabulous experience. The women were intrigued and asked me so many questions, both about Couchsurfing, as well as my travels.
My 15 minutes of fame were extended further after the tie-dying when the younger girls hit me with all kinds of questions about California and Orange County, and whether or not it really was like the TV series. We shared laughs over popular misconceptions we hear about our homeplaces; they had often heard people assume that they live in the bush, in danger of lion attacks, just because they live in Africa. (Which was interesting to hear, because I hadn’t really seen any indigenous Africans at that point and nearly forgot I was still in Africa at all) Toward the end of the night I got to hear stories from some of the girls’ moms who saw the end of the Apartheid regime and what life was like while it was still in power. I was shocked to learn how recently Apartheid ended, as well as how little I had learned about it in school in the US. Granted, the American civil rights movement wasn’t very long ago in the scope of history, but I was pretty horrified to realize that conspicuous, institutionalized racism of that degree was still a reality up until the mid 90s there in South Africa.
After all the guests left, Hanneke instructed me to pop by next door where loud music had been raging all evening, and invite our neighbor Nina over for drinks. Nina followed behind me back to the house, ipod and speakers in hand, and the three of us girls spent the night drinking bottles of port, and singing at the top of our lungs to everything from Alanis Morrisette to Miriam Makeba. Hanneke even let a few of her exotic birds come out and party with us as we sang. Nina kept remarking, “Such a pretty chicken!” as she gazed sweetly at the white cockatoo.
The next morning Tom and Maddie arrived, two new Couchsurfers from Melbourne, and I couldn’t help but revel in the cosmic affirmation of my choice to go to Australia being the right path for me. Their arrival did remind me though, that I needed to get my Australian visa approved before arriving there, and I was down to only a couple days, with Christmas holidays cutting the number of business days ahead of me in half! I spent hours on the computer that day sorting out my visa application and digging up all the details they required. I was informed that in order to complete my application, I would need to get a chest x-ray at a designated medical clinic. I started to worry. I really didn’t have time to wait for test results, paper work, or any other bureaucratic nonsense! I made an appointment for the next day and crossed my fingers, although I knew something had to work out. After all… the cosmos were behind me!
Hanneke gave me a lift to the clinic the next day, and Tom and Maddie came along to explore the hood while I did the damn thang. After a lengthy chat with the constantly distracted receptionist, who just couldn’t understand why I came from California to get a chest x-ray in Johannesburg if I’m going to Australia, I finally saw a doctor and got the x-ray. She told me that they do everything online these days, so the Australian Immigration guys should get my information within minutes, and I need not to worry! I was so thrilled that I skipped right on out of that hospital and realized later that afternoon that I never paid them a single cent. Sorry, Dr. L Sulman and Partners.
From there, Tom, Maddie and I took the public transportation, called “black taxis,” into Johannesburg. (I remember being assured that it’s not a racist term, but I still don’t know why they’re called that? Can any South Africans reading this explain?) There are a set of different hand signals local folks use to indicate to the drivers of oncoming taxis where they are going, so the drivers know whether to stop for them or not. We rather pathetically just stuck our arms out and asked the drivers if they could take us where we were going, which worked out just as well. The older, more ghetto black taxis were akin to the nicest of dala dalas or matatus I had ever seen in East Africa, while the newer ones were pimped out! I remember taking one with sparkling new cherry red paint on the outside. Going into the city center was interesting, and nothing like I expected it would be. I must admit I didn’t do much exploring and I surely only saw a fraction of the city, but what I saw reminded me of images of really poor, run down, and inadequately managed areas of inner city New York or Chicago. The buildings were tall, the streets were dirty, and I was once again surrounded by people with brown skin. I had expected to be able to compare it to Nairobi, representing a broad range of levels of affluence, but still bustling with students, business people, and tourists. What I saw was nothing like that. I will say again that I did not see the whole of Joburg so my perspective is limited, but the economic divide between the classes seemed to pit most of the city in a generally impoverished state, while the wealthy lived in gated homes and communities in the surrounding suburbs, well outside of the city center. I know the placement of people had a lot to do with designated townships under Apartheid, but I have yet to learn much about that and its relationship with the distribution of people today.
The three of us spent that afternoon at the Apartheid Museum, and I was really taken by Nelson Mandela’s story. Of course there were many people involved with the fight to end Apartheid, and frankly it was a struggle to take it all in. It reminded me a bit of the Holocaust museum in Washington DC. I felt so disappointed that so little of what I saw was taught in the schools I went to, and I wondered if it’s the same in all American schools. Tom and Maddie seemed to feel the same way. The American civil rights movement is taught in history classes, but I think it’s rare that students are really shown the big picture. The fight for social justice is not strictly a matter of history, but rather it rages on the whole world over (including the US of course), and I think a lack of discussion earlier in life creates apathetic adults, and political borders help to divide us by making us feel like it’s not relevant to us when people of other countries face oppression. This reminds me of a fabulous quote by author Tom Hodgkinson. “Education is like pruning: it wrecks the natural growth of the tree in favour of a form that is useful to commercial society.” I guess if we learn to be apathetic, we’re less likely to stir up trouble. While we’re at it, let’s hear from the legendary reggae artist Peter Tosh: “Everyone is cryin’ out for peace, no one’s cryin’ out for justice. But there will be no peace, until man gets equal rights and justice.” Amen! Quotes are fun.
The following day my Australian posse and I did a bicycle tour of Soweto, one of the oldest townships in the Joburg area. Although the suburbs around where I was staying looked as though it could have been transplanted from any American suburb, being in Soweto reminded me that I was still in Africa. Navigating our bicycles around potholes in dirt roads with folks chatting in tribal languages all around us, I was once again the out-of-place white girl… with a whole mob of out-of-place white folks, on bicycles no less! We could have charged for the entertainment that provided people on the street. It was fun giving little kids high-fives as we rode past, and we got to stop and try some local food and home brewed beer. The part of the tour that resonated with me most was when we were shown a memorial for the Soweto Uprising. In the 1970s, the government had decided that all schools in the area would be taught entirely in Afrikaans, which would obviously disadvantage students as it isn’t spoken anywhere else in the world… not to mention the fact that it was the language of the oppressor. Thousands of high-school aged students protested in the streets peacefully, until police made the shocking decision to open fire (based on claims that some kids began throwing stones). Over one hundred kids were shot and killed. The images were horrific.
We made the long trek back home on public transportation, where I found some good news in my email inbox. My Australian visa had been granted! Hallelujah. Izaan was well again, so I packed up my stuff and moved over to her place that evening. We went out for pizza with Tom and Maddie to a shop that wasn’t licensed for alcohol, so when we asked for beers, they “found” some and gave them to us. Apparently you can’t sell alcohol if you’re not licensed to, but it’s perfectly fine to give it away as a gift! The extra bit on our bill was just, eh, gratuity. We then met up with Pascal, one of the girls I met at Hanneke’s tie-dye party, at a club nearby where she introduced me to some friends and we girlishly bonded over stories of dreadful ex-boyfriends. The club was cool but very loud and my friends wanted to move on, so we soon found ourselves at Corner House, a notoriously dodgy yet delightfully unpretentious pub with live rock music. I sat down with Izaan, she ordered us some drinks, and before the essential “cheers,” she looked at me with a devilish grin and said, “Tonight, you and me… let’s get pissed!” Clink went the glasses. She introduced me to caramel vodka that night, before which I had never had a shot of liquor so tasty that I actually preferred to sip it. Izaan said, “If you see any guy you think is cute, just tell me!” Before I knew it she was up on the dance floor, whirling around from guy to guy before she came back with a couple appropriately good looking Afrikaans guys, pointing to me saying, “She’s from California!!” I was laughing my ass off, and wondering why Izaan couldn’t be my big sister forever. It was a gloriously crazy night of drinking and dancing, after which we stumbled into each other with smeared make up and bed head in the living room well after noon the next day. All we could do was laugh.
We spent the next few days hangin’ out at the house, chatting, watching movies, visiting with friends, and cooking together. I was thrilled to be able to cook for myself for the first time in ages, and Izaan seemed to enjoy learning a bit about cooking vegetarian. Being back in a more Western environment where vegetarian options were at my finger tips, I was happy to go back to the way I ate in the US. On Christmas day we were invited back to Hanneke’s place for a braai (a South African barbecue), where we had Mongolian barbecue with friends and some of Hanneke’s family. The best part was getting to see my family for the first time since I had left home on Skype! Everyone was together for Christmas, so I had a crowd of people huddled around the laptop to say hello to me! After Christmas I went with Izaan to pick up her kids, where her son Corban greeted me with a Christmas gift of a lovely hand painted candle. We spent some time with family that day before I reached a computer and realized that my plans for Australia had become a bit uncertain.
While in Kenya, I had organized to meet up with a family living in the Perth area that was looking for a live-in au pair. I liked the idea of being in another homestay-like scenario, and was happy to help cook, clean, and look after the kids with a place to stay free of rent. It sounded like a nice situation, until Tom and Maddie asked how much the family offered to pay me. Granted, I had the perk of free rent and food, but Tom told me he made more in one shift at restaurant that I would make in a whole week. I did a bit of research at that point and realized the rate of pay really was unfair, so I contacted the family and explained as amicably as possible that I hadn’t understood what a reasonable rate of pay was for that job, and wondered if they could pay me a bit more. We had already coordinated for me to land in Perth and meet up with them, but the response I received (the day before I was to arrive!) said it would be impossible to pay me more, and best of luck to me. I hadn’t intended to indicate that I wasn’t interested in working for them if they couldn’t pay me more, but at that point I didn’t have time to send another email explaining and wait for another response. I didn’t get more internet time until the next day, only hours before my flight, where I sent some very last minute Couchsurf requests in Perth, explaining that my accommodations had fallen through last minute. I noticed a new option where you could select to make your couch request and open request, so others in the area could offer you a place even if you didn’t ask them directly. I sent my requests, crossed my fingers once again, and said my goodbyes before heading back to the airport.
I bought a Lonely Planet Australia guide book in one of the airport shops, and got on my plane. I felt surprisingly calm for a girl who was about to land in a new country by herself with no idea where to go. I had some ideas of backpacker hostels from my guide book in case I needed to resort to paying for a place to sleep… what a concept! But I was in good spirits, feeling adventurous, and thinking that the miscommunication with the family I originally planned to work for might have been a blessing in disguise.
With just days before the new year, I landed in Perth, Western Australia.
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