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Genie Tyburski,
Web Manager, The Virtual Chase |
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29 June 2005. I had the honor of
presenting a workshop and keynote address during the
Eighth Southern
African Online Information Meeting. Held at the CSIR Conference
Centre, Meiring Naudé Road in Pretoria, the meeting took place from
21 - 23 June 2005. I stayed at the lovely
Casa Toscana
in the suburbs of Pretoria near the conference center.
While I am not a skilled photographer, and I used
a cheap disposable camera, I make the pictures below available for
those who may have an interest.
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Union Building
in Pretoria, where government officials reside. The
architecture, which comprises two wings identical to what
you see on the left, represents the Boerish and English
origins of the country. |
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Voortrekker Monument
in Pretoria. Using three-dimensional murals, it depicts the
Great Trek of the Boers from the Cape area to the then
Zulu-dominated part of the country. |
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Church Square
in Pretoria. Look in the distance between the men sitting on
the wall. Black women, who carried children on their backs
or bundles on their heads, were a common sight. |
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Soweto,
inside the home of a friendly black family. The matron
explained that she and her 10 children lived in the two-room
hut without running water or electricity. The picture shows
the coal stove they use to heat the hut and to cook. |
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Soweto,
owner of the two-room hut mentioned above. Soweto
was the site of the 1976 uprising over public
education in South Africa. Blacks protested against
the forced teaching of certain subjects in Africaans.
A
brief account of the uprising appears in the CNN
archives. |
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Soweto,
a group of neighborhood boys who accompanied our
tour and asked as many questions of us as we asked
of them. All of the children were at least
bi-lingual. They spoke English extremely well. |
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Casa
Toscana in Pretoria, the young woman who greeted
us nearly every morning. The staff at the bed &
breakfast was friendly, accommodating and eager to
answer our questions. |
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Casa Toscana
in Pretoria, the young woman who served breakfast most
mornings. Though we both spoke English, there were many
South African terms and expressions with which I was
unfamiliar. We had fun learning to communicate. |
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Aloe plant
at Fort Schanskop in Pretoria. The sheer size of the plant
was amazing, although this size was quite common in the
areas we visited. |
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Me at the
entrance to Pilanesberg National Park, a
wildlife preserve. We saw 17 different animals in
their natural habitat, not including a wide variety
of birds. We saw at least one baboon, elephant,
giraffe, red hartebeest, hippopotamus, brown hyaena,
impala, kudu, vervet monkey, ostrich, white rhino,
springbok, tsessebe, warthog, waterbuck, blue
wildebeest and zebra. |
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Blue
wildebeest at Pilanesberg National Park. Most of
the pictures I took of the wildlife did not turn out
well. They were too far away for a camera without a
zoom lens. |
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A
family of warthogs in Pilanesberg National Park.
There were 6 or 7 of them chowing down on the winter
grass. |
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The
giraffe seemed to be as curious about us as we
were about them. They came quite close to the
vehicle and challenged us to a staring contest. We
lost.
Though
it's hard to see, there are zebra feeding in the
background. |
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Zebra
crossing the road in front of us. There was actually
a herd crossing the road, but I was only able to
capture a picture of one of them. |
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