Leanne experiencing dichotomies of South Africa

Bea Abrahams, board member of Africa Unite, congratulates Leanne on the completion of the Human Rights Training Weekend

I saw the oddest thing while running yesterday.  I was approaching the Liesbeek Parkway, (a busy four way intersection bustling with 2 lanes of traffic speeding in each direction) at the same time that a horse-drawn cart with three tired looking black men sitting on the back and one guy steering the horse pulled the cart up to the red light.  The driver had the cart centered in the lane, and when the light turned green, pointed the horse across the intersection, keeping pace with the car to his right for the first few steps.  The horse’s hooves clicked sharply on the pavement, a noise that was soon drowned out by the whir of accelerating engines.  It seemed, to me, the ultimate juxtaposition of industrial and developing worlds. 

I had been warned of this.  On the plane ride to Johannesburg (which feels like an episode from another life,) Julian and I sat near a man named Graham, a Jo’Burg native returning home from a ski trip in Canada and the States.  He explained to us that for South Africans, a trip to the States is nothing unusual, as they are quite used to the way things work in an industrialized nation.  On the other hand, Americans are often at a loss for what they find in South Africa.  Learning to function in a place with both a “1^st and 3^rd world economy” is something that, he observed, Americans have trouble learning to cope with.  I think he’s right.  Another oddity to my American eyes was running along the river by the park and seeing young couples playing fetch with dogs, or pushing their children on the swing set while not 200 feet away, under a tree, two homeless men were settling in for the night, laying down on blankets they had pulled out of their shopping carts.  Unreal.  I feel as though the world around me has been glued together from pieces of other worlds.  I am not yet used to the strange dichotomy.