Friday, July 07, 2006

Up the Coast

British Rob and I took a trip up the North Coast today, heading first to Groutville and the Luthuli Museum, some 76 km north of Durban, and then back down to Umhlazi Rocks for a bit of lunch and a short hike along the beach. It's my last day here in Durban. Tomorrow I'll be up early and Rob and I will point the car back toward the highveld. I fly out of Joburg at 9:30 tomorrow night, with the next stop being London and Oxford.


The Luthuli Museum honors Chief Albert Luthuli, the Zulu hero of the anti-Apartheid struggle and 1960 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. The museum consists of a visitor and education center, the house in which he lived his entire life, and not far away his church and grave. Luthuli is a vital and fascinating figure in South African history, and his home and museum, while somewhat off the beaten path, is an understated testament to his greatness. It only opened in 2004 and is still growing into what it will be, but already is worth a stop on anyone's itinerary.


At the end of our private guided tour, we were shown a (long) dvd of Luthuli's life that had some amazing, unexpected and very rare footage from the antiapartheid struggle, including footage I had never seen from the 1957 bus boycott in Alexandra that makes up such a vital part of my next book project. This trip has been useful to me in providing a springboard to starting writing as well as to helping me to solidify my grasp on certain aspects of the struggle in the 1940s and 1950s.


The sun is setting on this latest visit to South Africa. Every time I leave I am more and more committed to a quick return, though with wedding planning and a subsequent honeymoon almost certain not to take us here, it is unlikely I'll get back anytime soon. This realization makes me a little sad, but also appreciative that I have been able to spend so much time here in the last eight months.


In the UK, the Armitage Shanks reunite for what should be worthy of a segment of its own on the inevitable Behind the Music episode, and several among us will be rooting for the cheese eating surrender monkeys in the game on Sunday. Rumor has it that England also has pubs and in those pubs they sell a fine assortment of ales, bitters and stouts. I will report what I see.

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