Last week I accompanied students and staff of one of the primary schools where I volunteer on a field trip to Mapungubwe, a national park where South Africa meets the borders of Zimbabwe and Botswana. The three countries are separated by two rivers, the Shashe and the Limpopo ("the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees," where the "Bi-Coloured Python Rock-Snake" dwells, wrote Rudyard Kipling in his Just So Stories). The confluence of these two rivers is in a beautiful hilly desert locale with Baobab trees and other native plants, birds and wildlife. But the park is more than a beautiful place to visit. It has a great deal of history. Artifacts discovered at the site indicate that 1,000 years ago it was the home of the first powerful indigenous kingdom in southern Africa, forerunners of the Zimbabwe culture. The people of Venda, where I live, are descendents of this culture and of Zimbabwe. "This is the place of our ancestors," said the principal (pictured above with students), who was born in Venda -- as were most of the teachers. But the powerful history of Mapungubwe was marred by the fact that it was also apparently the place where some members of the once banned African National Congress (ANC) were put to death by the former apartheid government, a teacher explained. He said he had mixed feelings about being in the place.
The kids, the first generation born after apartheid, just enjoyed being out of school, riding a bus and having fun in the park -- oh, and also listening to the same song by South African band Malaika over and over again, thanks to a bus driver who generously let the kids pick the music. For primary school students in South Africa (and most adults here too), you can't hear "Two Bob" enough!