Sorry, couldn’t resist that one..... Here’s a photo of our group on the last day
today. This was a good group and a good job.
Got up early this morning and tried to follow the Houston Dynamo/Puntarenas soccer game on line but couldn’t get updates so I called Devin on his cellphone at half-time and when the game was over. Using the Internet phone service is really easy. We won: 2-0.
Today is Friday and we wrapped up early and then spent a couple of hours driving around the c
ity. We drove by Nelson Mandela’s home and office and then went back out to Soweto to the scene of the 1976 police attack on the students. The area is now made into a monument and museum and not that many tourists get to visit it unless they are on organized tours. The protest started when the South African government tried to force the students to speak and study in Afrikaans. On June 16 the police shot several students including a 13-year-old boy and the photo of him being carried away by another child while his younger sister was crying became one of those “known around the world” photographs and the incident led to wider protests and the eventual overthrow of Apartheid. At the museum we spoke briefly with the younger sister who is now the museum director and visited the site of the shooting which is now a monument. I could tell the visit made a big impression on our group—even the non-South Africans. While in 
Soweto we also drove by Nelson Mandela’s old home there and the prison where he was held for 27 years for protesting against the government.
After returning to the hotel I took a taxi over to the South African Museum of National Defense and spent severa
l hours there looking around. The South African army was active in both world wars and the earlier Boer War and had a guerrilla war in Angola and Rhodesia for several decades. They had a temporary exhibit of Sadham Hussein’s military medals that was interesting.
Tomorrow I fly to Addis Ababa which is the highest capital in Africa at about 9000 feet above sea level. I’m really curious what that experience is going to be like but I know Ethiopia is very, very old—Biblical-era old—and the Orthodox Churches there are supposed to be very ornate and interesting. We’ll see…… 2-0!!!
today. This was a good group and a good job.Got up early this morning and tried to follow the Houston Dynamo/Puntarenas soccer game on line but couldn’t get updates so I called Devin on his cellphone at half-time and when the game was over. Using the Internet phone service is really easy. We won: 2-0.
Today is Friday and we wrapped up early and then spent a couple of hours driving around the c
ity. We drove by Nelson Mandela’s home and office and then went back out to Soweto to the scene of the 1976 police attack on the students. The area is now made into a monument and museum and not that many tourists get to visit it unless they are on organized tours. The protest started when the South African government tried to force the students to speak and study in Afrikaans. On June 16 the police shot several students including a 13-year-old boy and the photo of him being carried away by another child while his younger sister was crying became one of those “known around the world” photographs and the incident led to wider protests and the eventual overthrow of Apartheid. At the museum we spoke briefly with the younger sister who is now the museum director and visited the site of the shooting which is now a monument. I could tell the visit made a big impression on our group—even the non-South Africans. While in 
Soweto we also drove by Nelson Mandela’s old home there and the prison where he was held for 27 years for protesting against the government.After returning to the hotel I took a taxi over to the South African Museum of National Defense and spent severa
l hours there looking around. The South African army was active in both world wars and the earlier Boer War and had a guerrilla war in Angola and Rhodesia for several decades. They had a temporary exhibit of Sadham Hussein’s military medals that was interesting.Tomorrow I fly to Addis Ababa which is the highest capital in Africa at about 9000 feet above sea level. I’m really curious what that experience is going to be like but I know Ethiopia is very, very old—Biblical-era old—and the Orthodox Churches there are supposed to be very ornate and interesting. We’ll see…… 2-0!!!
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