Heritage Day

Yesterday was a National Holiday called Heritage Day.  It has a pretty interesting history because it used to be a day dedicated to Afrikaner traditions but Nelson Mandela, in his presidency, changed it to be about all types of heritage especially African Tribal traditions.  I went with two other girls from the program (Kim and Shannon) to Ushaka. Named after the Zulu king who unified all of Zulu and I think defeated the British in a war, it is a marine park with a shopping complex.  We went to look at the shops and found all sorts of cute stores.  There was also a lot of traditional dancing going on - that was Awesome!!! There was traditional Indian dancing, with women in Saris and all sorts of lip synching going on.  people of all ages were dancing and watching. 

Later in the mall structure was a recreation (I think) of a traditional Zulu homestead as well as men and women in traditional grab (lots of beaded clothing and converse shoes?) dancing.  We have seen some of this before but it was still really cool to see it outside of the more traditional tourist context.  Also we saw some men doing the same type of a cappella done by the men in the shack settlement.  these other guys were not nearly as good.

Later we went to find some food and went to another part of the beach.  we walked along and met a nice police officer (strange!) who took us to a store we were looking for.  Once outside the policeman's watchful eye some people came and begged us for money.  While this is always a difficult experience I reflected that it was really the first time since I had been in SA that begging had happened.  

anyway, when I got home, we had food - obviously - and watched TV.  last night we watched a soccer game and it kept the whole house up until 10:30 pm which is super late for us.  my mom would run around and scream 'heibo' something like 'oh gosh' in english whenever her team got close to scoring or vice versa.  

all and all a great day off. 

soon we are going to the rural homestay (sat morning) so I will likely not have email access but maybe an opportunity will arise - who knows!

Much love, 

Adina