Egans in Johannesburg: Ali Joins Us for a Tour of Soweto and an Adventure with Elephants

We have just completed a remarkable two-week South Africa tour with our daughter Ali and have over 1,300 photos to prove how amazing the experience was, but we will only share a few here on the blog. Bob and Martha both had to continue working in their assignments, as missionaries don’t get vacations, and Bob, especially, had to put in lots of late evening hours in hotel lobbies addressing missionary issues with mission presidents, doctors, psychologists and general authorities, frustrated somewhat by shaky Internet service. But all in all, it was a pretty incredible couple of weeks. Here's a summary of the first few days in Johannesburg...

We moved into our new flat at Dukes Court, #410 on Thursday and Friday, 14-15 May, our first two days back from the states for Martha’s dad’s funeral, and Ali arrived the following day, Saturday, 16 May. Elder (Dr.) Barton and his wife were on the same flight, coming home from his dad’s funeral in Idaho, which was the same day as Martha’s dad’s. We took Ali directly to the Spur at Rosebank Mall for dinner and got her home to our new apartment to go to bed. She was exhausted. The day before, we had carried a mattress and bedding from one of the twin beds in the second bedroom of our former apartment on a trolley (shopping cart) and had it all set up for her on the floor in the lounge of our new flat. She slept very well through the night. Martha and I were finally feeling over our jetlag by then.

The next day was Sunday, and after breakfast Ali rode with us out to our Protea Glen Ward in Soweto and enjoyed meeting our friends there and all the Young Single Adults we meet with for Sunday School. She even brought a little doll for the Nzimande’s little toddler who we had noticed previously rocking and cuddling a bottle of lotion as her baby. The meetings were great, and it was a beautiful day. Then we went to the weekly African flea market, which is held every Sunday afternoon (only) at the Rosebank Mall, and Ali got a huge dose of Africana, welcoming her to the continent.

Ali presented a black baby doll to the Nzimande baby

Ali & Martha with Elder Khumbulani Mdletshe at Soweto Chapel

Monday morning, we took Ali with us to our weekly devotional and introduced her around, then we drove out to the Johannesburg MTC, where we met Elder Khumbalani Mdletshe of the Seventy, who gave us a 30-minute history lesson about South Africa, then he drove us on our personal guided tour of Soweto for about four hours, including lunch at a township restaurant on the street where Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu (Nobel prize winners) had lived during apartheid. Elder Mdletshe grew up in Soweto and was the first branch president of the Soweto Branch and the first bishop of the Soweto Ward (which is now a stake). It was fascinating and colorful and included stops at a Catholic cathedral where a gun battle ensued during apartheid and a museum commemorating one of the saddest events of apartheid, the massacre of young students who gathered for a peaceful demonstration protesting Afrikaans as the language they were forced to be educated in from elementary school through high school, and we visited a cemetery and some impoverished informal settlements as well as some surprisingly nice neighborhoods. We took Ali to dinner at one of our favorite spots, the eclectic Moyo Restaurant at the Zoo Lake, where our meals were fabulous.

At Moyo Restaurant at Zoo Lake with waitress who is Church member

Tuesday was our Adventure with Elephants, an amazing up close and personal introduction to five rescued elephants who demonstrated their incredible memory and skills, sprayed Martha and Ali with water and let us touch, feel and feed them. Then we went on an elephant-back safari through the game reserve. Martha and I were with Duncan on one bull elephant and Ali rode with Sugar on a female elephant. We saw warthogs, antelope, buffalo and other game as we rode through the bush. Bob’s inside thighs got very sore from stretching across the back of that big bull elephant, and walked bull-legged and sore for a few hours, but Martha and Ali did fine. Afterward, Martha and Ali had fun playing with a pet meerkat named Trouble who loved having his belly scratched. It was truly an amazing day, about a 2-hour drive each way from our flat. Martha and Bob had a Dukes Court board meeting Tuesday night and left Ali at home resting in total darkness, as we experienced another load-shedding power outage for a few hours. Then, on Wednesday, we were off to Cape Town.