A paradoxical country

Today was my day, a day where I could venture out into the city and see what this city is besides a couple of offices and taxis. With my trusted driver we made our way out first thing in the morning off to one of the 15 most productive gold mines worldwide in history. It was shut down in the 70s and has been turned into a tourist attraction for those that would like to venture just under a kilometer down under the earth’s surface, or for those of you in the US, just over a half a mile straight down. This city that was founded on the desire for easy money has turned a rusted old mine into a capitalization. A theme park, one of the largest in the county, combines with a huge casino has resurrected around the mine. In fact to gain access to the mine for the tour you actually have to pay entrance fee into the theme park. Pictures that are being shown in the blog actually show the disparity between old world and new world. This mine used to hold as many as 30,000 workers at any given time and ran at full capacity at a depth of 10,000 ft, about a third of the height a plane travels at. I am sure these numbers just blow by, but when you get into that steel elevator that lurches straight down for minutes getting progressively hotter and hotter well it starts to become more real.

In my group that traversed into the depths of the mine were 8 US school teachers. Yes your tax dollars at work sent approximately 22 world history middle school and high school teachers to an emersion program for 6 weeks to learn a little more on the subjects they teach. There are some real benefits to some of our social programs, it was just ironic I find out about them on the other side of the world. Following my tour of the mine I took a short walk over to the apartheid museum. To try and describe what you see in the museum would be to try and describe any museum detailing the history of any atrocity ranging from holocausts to genocide. People left the museum emotional and distraught, I guess that is the purpose of these museums.

The paradox emerges when you see in the museum pictures of massive ghettos designed to be simply for colored citizens. They were over crowded, and full of disease and filth. On the way back from Gold Reef City which included the mine, the casino and a huge theme park, we passed through one of the largest shanty towns. Such squalor and filth can only be imagines but when the scope is literally square miles it becomes unimaginable. The sight of such is enough to take your breadth away and question what could possibly be done to repair a system that has gone so far wrong. AIDS that is so rampant (we passed three funerals just going to the mine) and although numbers are not fully understood they estimate up to 35% of the country is afflicted. In a couple of major cities they estimate almost 25% of the population will be dead by the year 2010, the same year the WorldCup will be in South Africa. It does not help when the president states that AIDS is caused by poverty and not by sex. Sure it affects more in the poverty stricken regions but are we not sending the wrong message? My driver was not hopeful to the chances of a country that will see much death in the coming years.

And yet I return to my five star hotel with the high walls, beautiful courtyard with goldfish in ponds surrounding the pool and feel a profound sense of guilt. Maybe helping the economy can help those afflicted, and maybe we are simply fooling ourselves. In a few hours I will be on a plane in a comfortable seat drinking wine and afterwards back to my comfortable life in the states. I have much more respect for my sister than ever who lives to help.