The Landing

February 26, 2007

It is 4:20 p.m. South African time when we land at the Oliver Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg and Juanita shouts in celebration.

“Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!”

The rest of us are just as enthusiastic but we’re still in morning mode. It is 9:20 a.m. in the U.S. and it is taking a minute for some of us to get adjusted to the fact that in South Africa it is nearly night.

Harold Cook, a seasoned traveler who has escorted hundreds on international travel helped us navigate our way through customs, change our dollars to South African rand and rent cell phones that those of us on a limited budget dare not make out-of-country calls on. An hour later we are all loaded and boarded on the small bus that Juanita has rented for the week that we will be here.

“We are at home. I feel it,” says Roy as he snaps pictures of city scenes along the way to our hotel. I feel like I’ve been coming to this place for a long time.
We arrive in the suburb of Rosebank where we will be staying at a hotel of the same name. The Rosebank Hotel is where the acclaimed African American journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault stayed when she first covered South Africa during apartheid while working as a correspondent for the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.

Charlayne whose civil rights era claim to fame was her role as being the first black woman to attend the University of Georgia, now lives in South Africa and is a special correspondent for National Public Radio. We’re hoping that we’ll see her during our stay.

There is not much time to settle before we are out again for dinner. It will be our only activity for the evening since we will be getting an early start in the morning.

Juanita treats us to dinner at Moyo’s, a trendy restaurant located in the suburb of Melrose. We were seated in a cavernous dining room with a heavy Moroccan theme. Most of us decided to do as the Romans do and order something outside of our comfort zone. We sampled exotic dishes with names that I could not pronounce and cannot spell. No problem identifying Derrick’s dish. Not quite ready to make the transition to international cuisine, he ordered French fries.

Before dining Juanita offers a toast. “Here’s to coming back home,” she says as she walks around the table to clink glasses with each member of her on-the-road family and ‘documentary dream team.’

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