Wednesday September 13, 2006
Shopping, packing and travel home
Sandra R. Gourdet

WOW! A morning for shopping and relaxation!

Before taking off for shopping, we had one final piece of business to take care of. We were invited by the Reverend Bernard Spong, a UCCSA pastor in Johannesburg to go to Constitution Hill to “see the hope for the future” of South Africa. Constitution Hill is the site of one of the most dreaded prisons in the history of apartheid. The original structure has been renovated and a very modern museum added. In addition to the museum, the Court of Appeals is located on Constitution Hill. We saw the gruesome women’s section of the prison where many women had been held and raped by police officers. We did not get a chance to go into the cells but learned that Winnie Mandela had been incarcerated there. We saw the men’s section and that knot at the bottom of the stomach would not go away immediately while looking at the little cubby holes that served as windows.

As we moved away from the men’s prison, we saw the “steps” that divided the “old” and “the new”. The old was represented by the prisons and death cells where one was tortured, raped, beaten and starved to death. The new was the museum that contained stories of struggle and victory, stories of pain but resilience. There were stories of people like Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, stories of young people proud to be South African. And of course, there was the court (was being prepared for a session that morning), that says that even people like Jacob Zuma, former vice-president of the country, could be tried as well for wrongdoings. In the middle of the passageway, one could walk the steps and see the darkness of the “old” on one side and the bright light of the present on the other side. Walking those steps reminded me of Nelson’s Mandela’s book, Long Walk to Freedom. What a wonderful way to bring closure to the intense emotional journey of the previous week..

From Constitution Hill, we went shopping at Rosebank Mall. Some of us were low key shoppers, some were “born to shop” and others literally shopped until they dropped. We had lunch, grabbed our goodies and rushed back to the Guest House to grab our things. Off to the airport for a scheduled 5:40 departure rather than the 7:25 pm erroneous departure listed in our itinerary. At check-in, we learned that the flight would depart at least an hour late. Unfortunately, we were not able to make up the lost time and many of us missed our connecting flights in Washington. God’s grace shined on all of us and we arrived home safely.

The journey is over but Ubuntu has become a reality for all of us and we thank God for the challenge of interpreting the ministries of our partners and the challenge to be real partners prepared to act with a difference.