South Africa is both familiar and at the same time intensely exotic to anyone educated in a British school of the fifties and sixties, as I was. We were taught more of the British colonial adventure in that far away land than we are about the history of the land we were intimately connected to – Ireland.
Being here now, has been exciting, profoundly thrilling and horrific too. This nation is in flux and there are still vast problems to solve before Nelson Mandela’s dream of ‘the Rainbow Nation’ is made real. However I will not dwell on that since I’ve been here only a week and can’t pretend to understand the cultural complexities faced by our overwhelmingly generous hosts.
The images here are largely self explanatory and give a very small glimpse of what we’ve seen in this past seven days.
I will need to have been at home and have bubbled this experience for a few weeks before I offer any meaningful views of our time here.
David Rory ONeill 