This week we had the pleasure of hearing from our very own Mike Keehan.
In May, Mike and his wife Jenny were part of a golf tour group that travelled to South Africa. They spent time in Johannesburg, played golf and did a safari tour in Kruger National Park.
Highlights of their time in Johannesburg included a guided tour of Soweto (3 million people currently live there). They visited 2 museums, The Apartheid Museum and The Hector Pieterson Museum. Hector Pieterson was a 12 year who was shot by police in 1976 when College students demonstrated after the government of the day declared all secondary schools would be taught in Afrikaans. English was the dominant language of Black residents, while Afrikaans was the language of white South Africans. He (along with 15-year-old Hastings Ndlovu) were the first protestors shot and killed by police during the Soweto Uprising. The museum includes a memorial for all the students that were shot.
They visited Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela’s houses. Two Nobel Peace prize winners that lived in the same street!
Mike shared photos of abandoned Central City trains. During Covid, cartels went and ripped out lines and tracks and have taken over a number of the surrounding buildings.
The golf part of the tour included 11 games in 18 days and they played 6 of the top-10 courses in South Africa. We saw photos of a couple of holes where the greens were in the far distance and that looked almost impossible to play.
The Kruger National Park is a 7-hour drive start to finish and while on the safari tour (with a group of 30 people) they stayed in Jocks Lodge (about an hour into the Park. The first couple of nights lions were roaring all night long. Mike chose not to sleep out on the verandah.
They talk about the “Big 5” - Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Rhino and Buffalo and they were able to see all of those. They also saw giraffe, zebra, antelopes, crocodiles, vultures, gazelles, kudu and monkeys.
Mike tested us on our knowledge of names for groups of animals.
A “Tower “of giraffes A “Dazzle” of zebras
A “Sounder” of warthogs A “Troop” of baboons
A “Crash” of rhinos
We were treated with some amazing photos and videos of these animals.
Thank you, Mike, for a very entertaining evening.
