The 'burg

If you've just logged on and started reading here, I've written up three weeks worth of stories in one go, in 4 separate posts - so scroll down to read them in order and finish with this one.

I'm in Johannesburg at the moment. First thing I did when I got here is track down some Kosher meat - I was living as a veggie for 3 weeks and not liking it! Stumbled upon a deli run by a proper yiddishe couple, straight out of a cartoon.

I spent a day at the Apartheid museum and in Soweto (the township where Mandela lived, and a lot of rebellion started). It was an amazing day, the museum was really thought-provoking, and the township eye-opening. We went into the poorest part of the township, where tens of thousands of people live in small corrugated metal shacks, with no electricity or water, about seven people living in a space smaller than a regular bedroom in the UK. At lunchtime, I picked up a newspaper - the front page was about a school where 131 kids were Aids orphans, and inside the paper were loads of stories about sexual abuse, poverty, and crime.

Despite all this, Jo'burg doesn't feel depressing, and I really like the city. To be fair, I haven't seen much of it, and I've stayed away from the dangerous parts. But there is a real feeling of a city that is moving (hopefully getting better), and even the people in the shacks were full of positivity and hope. I enjoy being in a city where the things people worry about are things that really matter.

I'm travelling on my own now, which is incredibly scary and exciting all at once. Tomorrow I go to Durban, where I plan to learn surfing. Then to Sodwana Bay, one of the top diving sites in the world, and on to Swaziland, a small country where hopefully I'll watch the festival when all the teenage girls dance in front of the king with reeds they've collected, for him to pick his next wife.