Day 2 - Johannesburg, 5 Dec 2011

Day 2 - Johannesburg

Today we slept till 10:30am after staying up until 1:30 in the morning with Gulshan's cousin and his wife. They had extra prepaid SIM cards that they were kind enough to let us use while we're here. After lunch we set out to visit some of Gulshan's family in Lenasia, a suburb of Johannesburg. They use the word "suburb" here to mean a subdivision or neighborhood, as well as an outlying town. But when you see how the city is laid out, you realize there's not much to the distinction. Much of Joburg is very flat and spread out, rather than vertical like you'd see in New York, for example, so a residential neighborhood can look as if it were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright - winding loops of roads, lined with ranch houses, each with a carport and small yard and enclosed by a low wall. In recent years those walls have been extended a bit, but Lenz, as the family calls it, is still cozy and quaint.

There we visited Gulshan's eldest uncle on her father's side and his family. I've heard stories about stress visiting in-laws, but they were the most pleasant and delightful people to visit with. Her uncle is a charming old man, very active, animated and youthful. You'd never guess he's 74. He chatted to us about all the traveling he's done to Saudi Arabia (for Hajj), India and other places, the whole time punctuating his stories with his hands and eyes. I spoke with his son-in-law about his garden and his animals for a while. He's very proud of it and should be: he planted or raised every living thing there, from the peach tree to the chickens. It was nice on a first visit to find something so familiar to talk about.

After a few hours visiting everyone, Gulshan's cousin brought us back to his house. He has the most darling children, two fraternal twins, a boy and girl. His son spent the evening chatting away to me about his soccer team and his family's bicycles, all the while riding his bike in circles on the back patio. What a sweet family. They're in the middle of moving to a new house and still they're putting us up and taking us to visit people. 

Not bad for a first day in country. Below is a photo of the Soccer City Stadium, built for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and the sunset view from the front porch.