Teaching Piano and Touring Johsannesburg



Martha teaches her first piano lesson to Alicia Redebe as three little Primary boys watch with great interest
(then Alicia told them she heard their mother calling)

Another week has sped rapidly by. We were both plenty busy in our day jobs this week, and we both had meetings with the Area Presidency. Our Area President, Elder Carl B. Cook and his wife took us out to dinner at Moyo, a beautiful restaurant by the Zoo Lake, where we had magnificent meals out in the summer air, and we got to know each other on a very casual, personal basis. We felt like we had a lot in common and see things very much alike. They also took us to a neighborhood where they like to go walking/jogging that is well guarded and very safe, secure and beautiful.

This morning was another great experience in the Protea Glen Ward. The three sacrament meeting speakers were excellent. The ward family history consultant, the high priest group leader and the stake family history specialist took three different and effective approaches toward motivating everyone to get onto FamilySearch, do family research and take family names to the temple. The stake specialist, Sister Madela , was especially impressive.

We attended Sunday School with the Young Single Adults. The bishop introduced as the new ward YSA Coordinators at the beginning of class.  There were 24 in the class, about half men and half women, taking every seat in the classroom, and most of them looked very young but participated in a very mature way. It appeared that most of them were 20 or younger. We were very impressed with the teacher, a YSA herself, and we decided right away that we don’t want to take her place as a teacher because she related so well with the class and had their full attention. We’ll just get to know them in class and find other ways to visit with them about serving missions and about dating and marrying, when the time is right.

After Priesthood and Relief Society, Martha had her first piano student, the ward music specialist and chorister, Alicia Redebe, who doesn’t know how to conduct, play or read music. Martha was very pleased about how it went and Sister Redebe’s attitude. She is 56 years old and really wants to learn. And she has a keyboard at home to practice on. By the time her lesson was over, Martha had four more students lined up for next week!

 

Yesterday we took our weekly Saturday P-Day and got all the laundry and cleaning done, then we drove to Park Station and took the open-top, double decker, hop-on, hop-off bus tour of Johannesburg. It provided a very valuable and interesting orientation to the city, and we enjoyed it very much. We learned a lot about the political history and apartheid and other aspects of the unique history and culture of Johannesburg, including how it sprang up from the world’s richest diamond and gold mines. Gold was discovered on a farm in what’s now the center of the city by three farm workers who were all named Johannes.

Here are a few photos from the tour:

Gold Reef Casino and Theme Park

 

 



Building painted with
South African flag

African National Congress HQ



Largest Building,
Carlton Center Hotel, 50 stories high
(now totally vacant!)



City Hall

Beautiful Architecture 

 




        

Carlton Center Sidestreet 



Colorful Marketplace Downtown 



Artful Graffiti

We learned how white business owners vacated prominent downtown buildings when the white population moved out to the suburbs, and black squatter gangs hijacked the buildings while the owners were away and insisted that tenants pay them rather than the rightful owners. To prevent further building hijacking, all openings on the ground floors were bricked shut. Many huge, prominent buildings remain vacant today, including the city’s largest hotel.  The central business district that was essentially all-white during apartheid has become all-black over the past 20 years.

One of the things we learned by taking the tour is that Joburg is not as beautiful or fascinating a city as Cape Town, Rome or Paris, where we had recently been on similar hop-on, hop-off tours with the same company. In fact, the final words of the tour were, “Johannesburg is not much to look at, but it is full of wonderful people.” There were only 10 stops on the tour, which took about two hours, and we didn’t feel an urge to hop off at any of them. But we may go back to a couple of the sights, like the Gold Reef theme park and the Apartheid Museum.

Well, it's a new week and a new African adventure lies before us.