My house in Randpark Ridge

So, here' s a video of the house that I'm renting in Johannesburg in the area called Randpark Ridge. It's a thatched house and very open and lots of light, which is what drew me to it initially. As you will see in the video, it has a huge back yard and I've got plenty of room to host people! At the end of my blog is a link to the video, hopefully it will work because I can't seem to load it. If it doesn't work then I'll try something else.

The address is 6 Haakdoring. The people that own it and live there are moving to Australia. If your audio works, you will hear the owner, Kerry, telling me about the move and that it's for two primary reasons: 1) the overall crime in Joburg, and 2) opportunities for her young sons. As she was telling me, it is difficult for white males post-apartheid in getting a job. And as I've come to learn, there is a similar version of affirmative action here in South Africa, so you'll hear me make a reference to black and coloured males. Race is talked about very differently here than in the US. Coloured is an official racial category and is used openly, which of course is outdated and insensitive in the States, so it's an adjustment.

Tomorrow we're going to the Apartheid Museum and Soweto, which I'm really looking forward to. Two of my colleagues are white South Africans in the 30's who have told some stories about being a youth and growing up in the apartheid era of South Africa and seeing its collapse in the 90's. Both of them went to integrated schools, which was rare for the times, and in fact, Alison's father was an educator who was involved in this very famous social movement called Edu-train where, back in the 80s, black and white South African high school students were put on a train together and traveled around South Africa. This was during apartheid and there were still separate cars for the two races to sit in and this caused quite a stir, as you can imagine. I'm anxious after tomorrow's visit to learn more about this time period.

Here's a picture of two of my colleagues that weren't in the group photo, Samburu and Dinah. Gavin is on the left and I'm on the right. This is at a mall before we went and saw a movie last Friday night. I'm the one without anything fancy around my neck.file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/user7/My%20Documents/My%20Flip%20Video%20Library/house/Thatched%20house.AVI

Welcome to Joburg!

Hi everyone!

Yes, I know I had promised a blog and here it is! A little late, but here nonetheless.

I've been here for just about three weeks and it's been an interesting three weeks. As a member of the inaugural faculty at ALA, I have been doing a lot of work, work, work, work, and work. And more work. We started working on the 15th of July and worked straight through until July 26th-- 11 days in a row without a break, and often going until 8 or so at night. There finally was an outcry for personal time and a near mutiny, and now we actually are getting days off to go explore the city of 3.5 million people that is Johannesburg.

But, I have come to a very clear and powerful conclusion in my short time here so far: this school is going to transform Africa. I am working with amazing people from all over and I've had the chance to meet several students who are exceptional human beings who are going to lead the African Renaissance. It's quite exciting and I feel both humbled and privileged to be down here. If you have not had a chance to check out the school, please take a moment to at: www.africanleadershipacademy.org.

The staff are amazing, as I said. Here's a quick rundown of us so far:

The Dean-- from Kenya, led two schools to the top ranking in Kenya. Amazing, humble man
Alex- from the UK but living in Hong Kong last 9 years-- teaching African History
Alison- from South Africa, teaching languages
Beatrice- from Kenya, teaching languages
David- from US, teaching fellow (I'll explain what this is below)
Dinah- from Ghana, teaching fellow
Eugene- from Ghana, teaching fellow
Gavin- from Zimbabwe, teaching drama
Jess- from US, teaching Entrepreneurship
Jordan- from US, teaching fellow
Michael- from Ghana, teaching science
Mohammed- from Morocco, teaching languages
Rhobhi- from Tanzania, teaching fellow
Samburu- from Kenya, teaching fellow
Sani- from Nigeria, teaching science
Scott- from US, but living in Kenya previously- teaching science
Tanya- from South Africa, teaching languages

(In this picture, left to right: Gavin, The Dean, me, Alex, Sani, Michael (standing)

We still have a few positions left to fill, so our staff will grow in the next month before we open, but that's it for now. The teaching fellows are all people with 1-3 years of work experience post college, who are living on campus with the students and will have a hand in a variety of the classes offered here at ALA. They're all in their early-to-mid 20's.


(In the picture above: 1st row- Rhobhi, Tanya, Maria (our guide), Alex, Alison, The Dean;
2nd row- David, Gavin, Sani, Michael; 3rd row- me, Scott, Jordan, Jess, Eugene
not pictured: Samburu, Dinah, Mohammed, Beatrice)

So, I've said that we've working a lot and haven't had much of a chance to explore Joburg and the area. The few times we have gone out, we've seen a few sites worth mentioning. Our first outing was to Sterkfontein caves, where the oldest human remains have been found, thus confirming the claim of Africa as the "Motherland" and the origination of humans. The caves are part of an area called "Cradle of Humankind" because of the remains that have been found over the years. The picture above is from this day.

Another outing was to a theater production called "Ten Bush" which was a fascinating play about tribal history, among other things. Part of the play was spoken in Zulu, which I hope to learn a little bit of while I'm here.

We've gone out house hunting and I did find a house that I'm really excited about! I'll have plenty, plenty, plenty of room, so I am making a request that you all come and visit me! I'll post a video tour of the house on my next post. It's a thatched house and it's so cool!

I have found Joburg to be less expensive overall, than living in the States. In particular, going out is quite cheap! For example, our crew here have discovered how cheap movies are. The unit of currency is called the rand, and currently, 1 US dollar is equivalent to 7.5 rand. So, going to a movie costs R 29.50, or about $3.94 US. And it gets even lower because we all have Discovery health care at ALA and with one of their plans called Vitality (which I got) you get a discount on the movies which takes the price down to R12! That is less than $2 USD per movie! That is unheard of yeah? So I've taken in two movies so far, with plans to take in a lot more! Perhaps two or three or four times even...

And food and beverages-- quite cheap. There were a group of 5 of us that went out last night and we hit three spots in a hip part of Joburg. Each of us got a drink at every place and the cheapest bill was R88 and the most expensive was R102-- so we're looking at liquoring up 5 people for under $14-- love that! (Of course we ate too! And that was cheap as well.)

There are some fun things that I'm finding out about the culture here in Joburg. Among them: instead of saying "I'll see you in a bit" or "I'll see you soon," you would say "I'll see you just now." How "just now" means "in a bit or soon" is beyond me, especially given we're all speaking English! But it's one of those fun things about learning about another culture.
I've managed to learn how to drive on the other side of the street, and driving from the driver's seat, which is now on the right side of the car. 99% of the cars are manuals, which is what I had anyways. I hear that doing things opposite of what you're used to keeps your brain sharp, so thank God for that!

This week we're going to the Apartheid Museum, which I hear is an amazing experience. And we're going to tour the largest township of Sowetho, so this should be an exciting week. I'll tell you all about it in my 3rd blog installment (remember my house comes next!)

Oh yeah-- you can get a hold of me on my cell phone: 011 27 073 954 2593. That's what you'd do if you picked up the phone and called me straight up. Also, I'm going to get a skype number, which is a US number so then it's very inexpensive. I'll keep you posted. And my address here is as follows:

Peter Myers
African Leadership Academy
Post Net Suite
#143
Private Bag X 1
Northcliff 2115
South Africa

The campus is gorgeous and has about 20 peacocks living amongst us, including an albino one. Apparently, there was another albino one but a staff member thought it was a chicken and killed it. I'll assume that he or she was informed of the error and hence, the other albino lives on.

Love to all and make plans to come see me!