bitter.sweet: soweto...the largest township in the southern hemisphere

we went on a bike tour of soweto yesterday. the hospital that we are working at is in soweto so most of our patients live in this township. there's about 5 million or so people that live there. it was a cool experience to see where our patients are coming from. we had little african kids running out of houses everywhere, chasing after us on our bikes, wanting high fives. it was awesome. we also saw some really sad things. the government started building new apartment type things for the people there years ago. when we were there workers were working on them. the guide told us that it was only because the election is coming up in 2 weeks and they are trying to win people's votes and as soon as the election is over the work will stop again. we live in a world with such broken systems. we stopped at the hector pieterson museum and the guide told us the story. he was a 13 year old boy that died in a student rally in the 70s. the cool part of it was the guide talking about the way south africans feel about it now. he said that often times tourists come to the memorial and are really sad but he said that south africans have healed and look at it as a good thing. he said they see the progress they have made from that day and the change that it brought. his perspective was really good.

Soweto

I obviously am disgusted at this african beer. or maybe it's the fact that everyone drinks out of one jug that i'm disgusted at. probably a combination of both:) they serve the beer warm here and it comes in milk cartons....such a foreign idea to me.

outside the "shebeen"-african pub. it's so hot in there and dark. no tvs in there for watching sports while you drink a beer. definitely not an american style bar:)

this was our lunch. we didn't have a choice on the tour. everyone was given the same thing. let's just say our stomachs didn't feel so good after this one...bread, cheese, ketchup, egg, french fries, and mystery meat all piled on top of each other!