Pretoria

• Lots of beautiful purple hillsides, saw a couple zebras, some springboks, and a few gemsboks
• Voortrekker Monument: Built to commemorate the movement of the Voortrekkers (aka Boers, aka Afrikaaners) from the Cape of Good Hope into the South African interior. We had a speaker who gave a very thorough historical overview of this exodus (I think the only people who actually enjoyed this speaker were me and Helen, the other history major here). The monument it HUGE (I think it’s something like 40m by 40 m, and really tall) and is designed so that at noon on December 16 every year, the sun enters the monument and hits the ceremonial grave inside. There’s a big mural carved out of marble inside which depicts the struggles and triumphs of the Voortrekkers. There’s also a museum in the basement, and you can climb a lot of stairs to the top, where there is a spectacular view of the countryside.
• Freedom Park: This is a park built on one of the hills in Pretoria, and the park was made so that all South Africans can celebrate peace and harmony. It’s very inclusive – there are elements of the park representing all 11 official languages of South Africa and the 9 provincial districts. The Wall of Names lists all the people who have died from South Africa in the different conflicts (civil wars, movements of resistance, under colonialism, during slavery, during the world wars, etc.). There are lots of other interesting aspects of the park and, once again, you are able to see much of Pretoria.
• U.S. embassy: We visited the U.S. embassy in Pretoria and met with two officials, one in the political cone of the State Department and one in the public relations cone. It was interesting to hear about the mission of the U.S. embassy in South Africa and about what their jobs consist of.

That’s a quick summary of our day and a half in Pretoria. We stayed in a fancy guesthouse with a pool and a resident kitten, and it was near a lot of embassies which were fun to look at. The drive there was gorgeous, but we had to leave early in the morning for the Joburg airport while it was raining so we weren’t able to see anything on the way back.