Johannesburg Architecture

Johannesburg is a city of contrasts, and architecture is no exception. Here are some photos of some of the shiny, the dusty, the modern, the old, and I think the most interesting to me--the once shiny and new but now old and dusty. For example, the Vodacom building must have been a state of the art technical hub at one time but has been humbled through the years to a high density apartment building with satellite dishes bristling from almost every window. I can't imagine what happens when elevators stop working for any reason as they often do in the older part of town. I would love to see a time lapse movie of the evolution of this city.

Lesedi Village

One of the places we wanted to be sure to go to here in Johannesburg is Lesedi village. It is set up as a cultural experience on the order of the BYU Cultural Center in Hawaii, but not nearly as slick or elaborate. Still it was a very nice experience where guides take you through forest area in which small villages are set up to represent each of the main five tribes including Zulu, Xhosa, Pedi, Basotho and Ndebele. They claim that families actually live permanently in each of the homesteads, but they didn’t look quite lived in enough to convince me of that. Guests could actually rent the little houses and stay in them though which would be fun. They also have a much fancier part of the village but we went only the cultural center part.

We actually went on this adventure a while ago, but I waited to post it until now. The PegBuddy families of all of my children have now accompanied us to some African location except for Tim’s family so I wanted to make this post in order, but I wanted his family to go to Lesedi because Sydney worked at the Polynesian Cultural Center when she went to BYU. Syd, even though they didn’t have quite the same kind of dancing that you did there, I’m sure they would have found you a spot somewhere in their production. The performers all seemed to really enjoy what they were doing. I wish their energy could be attached to the pictures.

Oliver helped with the drumming

Baby Peter

Our new flat

Sydney wanted to move into this little house.

All of the Tim Davie Family with some of the resident vendors, happy because I bought some things to send home.

This guy loved the PegBuddies; you can tell that he was delighted to have his photo taken with Tim.

Day to Day

            Here’s a little post on what we do from day to day as Church Education System missionaries. I’m sure that these patterns would vary somewhat from one CES mission to another, but many of our activities would be common for such missions.

            We get up each morning at about 6:00 and go for a walk for about an hour, come home and have breakfast (Elder Davie is always the breakfast cook just as he was at home.) Sometimes we study in the morning together, but we usually do it later in the day. At about 8:00, we leave to go the CES office, which is on the same grounds as the MTC training center in Roodepoort. We are not required to be at the office, but because we don’t have a reliable Internet connection at home, and since so much of our work is done online, we need the Internet. Also, that is the way we keep in touch with our family so we do most of that there as well. We do have a mobile wi-fi that we use at home. Sometimes it works quite well and other times it is in and out. They are building a new cell tower at the end of our street so hopefully that will help. The data is also purchased in a pay-as-you-go system. It’s expensive and it often runs out when we don’t expect it. At the office, we set up seminary and institute classes in an online record keeping system called WISE. In WISE we record names, attendance and assignments completed for home study students.

            As you would expect, the system can only find students by the name recorded in church records. Just trying to read their names can be a puzzle because records are almost always handwritten, sometimes badly, and because we are just not used to the letter combinations possible with tribal based names. Students often have several names, which can be a mixture of African and English, and then they may use none of those but instead a nickname that they have gone by all of their lives, sometimes so long that they have no idea what their name is on the church records. So some are difficult to find because of that and others may not have their records in the stake. I still have a number of names in those categories that I’m trying to do some detective work.

            Often the most difficult part of recording is actually getting the records. Some teachers are just not used to doing administrative work as part of a calling, but others have a challenge in getting records to us. They don’t have access to computers or scanners or even phones that can snap pictures and send them, so a few of the records are picked up in person. Others just take lots of reminding. We are also responsible for making sure teachers have the books and supplies they need to teach their classes so there is some messenger work in that way.

            One of the great challenges in our area is transportation—distances are great and many teachers and students rely on taxis or combies to get anywhere. They are not sedan type taxis like in the states, but usually twelve or 15 passenger vans that are stuffed with half again as many riders as will fit. Because of transportation, we give three separate in-services during the month to try to help teachers learn to teach in a way that involves the student in learning and teaching so that they become independent learners and not only know information but understand principles and doctrines and will hopefully choose to apply them in their lives. During parts of the month, preparation for and presentation of those classes take up a good part of our time.

            A little side responsibility is inspecting the flats (apartments) of the full time missionaries. That only takes a couple days out of our month and it is fun to meet the young elders and see how they’re doing. There are no sister missionaries in Johannesburg because the country is not considered safe enough for the young women to be out unaccompanied in villages and townships as they would need to be. In every case except one, the apartments have been well cared for. We’ll go next week and see if the questionable one has improved.

            Saving the best till last in this overview of our work here, I’ll say that the part we enjoy the most is going to visit the classes and meeting the kids. Right now we have eighteen seminary programs and seven institute programs that we visit. We like kids wherever they are in the world, but seeing the challenges that a lot of these young people face and how they are still happy and hopeful and progressing really humbles you. Also being in the classroom settings that vary from the typical chapel classroom to the humblest of homes is such a dramatic illustration that things don’t really matter that much. Some of these young learners would impress anyone with their knowledge and their drive to progress. We just pray for their country, that jobs and opportunities will be there for these young people. There are several programs here that are meant to support that, and we are just learning about a new more orchestrated effort that is being developed that may help young church members find pathways to education and jobs. We will have a small role in that effort and look forward to learning more.

            So that is a little overview of what we are doing day to day when we’re not posting but just working--recording, requesting, planning, teaching, driving, inspecting, administrating, visiting, supporting and best of all learning.

Beauty Where You Might Not Expect It

This is a photo that I just casually shot in one of the townships that our area covers. Our daughter Amie did some photo editing with it and made it into a work of art. It's interesting how beauty exists in places where we might not expect to see it.

Entrepreneurs

Johannesburg is a huge city with thousands of the businesses that we would normally think of as “businesses.” These are in tall glass skyscrapers or in shopping malls or in strip malls much as you would see in the United States or in any part of the world. The businesses that I want to comment on, though, must make the number of businesses in Johannesburg swell into the millions. These are the very small, sometimes miniscule businesses that are created by a people with such an entrepreneurial spirit, who know that unless they do something to earn their food for the day, there will be no other source waiting to fill that need. It seems that if people can afford the tiniest building or structure of any kind, they will create a businesses. In most cases, their business and their home is the same although it may be a single room. If there is no structure, they will find a crate and set up a selling stand. If there is no crate, then a blanket or a grassy patch will display what they are selling. Their fruit stand might be a beautiful display of colorful fruits and vegetables or a few clumps of bananas and some small bags of corn puff snacks. If they have nothing to sell, they will offer to take your trash at a stop sign, they will claim that they are keeping the intersection safe and clean for you, they will guide you out of or into parking spots, hoping for a small tip. There are hundreds of men here who are trash recyclers, sorting through garbage to pick out bottles or cardboard which they pull through the streets on low wheeled carts or if they have no cart, carry on their backs. By the end of the day, these bundles can be massive.  hunger here in South Africa but it seems that there would be a lot more if it weren’t of all of these creative business builders. There are of course those who just beg, but it seems that so many try to find something, anything to offer for sale or for service. Set side to side with areas of modernism and plenty, there is a lot of hunger here in South Africa but it seems that there would be a lot more if it weren’t of all of these creative business builders.