Flight To South Africa

April 14, 2012 I leave for South Africa with a lot of different feelings. I keep flashing back to I don't know how many years ago when the minsiter of the Anchorage Baptist Temple, Jerry Prevo travelled to South Africa with Jerry Falwell. They came back saying that apartheid either didn't exist or wasn't all that bad (it's hard to remember it's been so long.) It is clear things have changed but it will be interesting to see just how much. The flight to Johannesburg has been uneventful. The last night of Pesach (Passover) dilemma was solved with the time change. The airline timed dinner perfectly to be after sundown in Johannesburg. The piece of cake for desert didn't do much for me but the cookie M had brought from New York certainly did.  E and B met us at JFK and we boarded together. Same row opposite sides of the plane. We've caught USA little but we have weeks ahead of us to finish.  One of the patterns we learn from history is that it is normally the case that when there is a popular uprising against an oppressor and the oppressed take power, their rule is at least as oppressive as the previous rulers and often much, much worse. From reading before the trip and now being on the plane it seems as though South Africa, like the United States when it was formed in rebellion may be, to a degree an exception. Watching the crew interact with each other I am not perceiving any issues surrounding hierarchy. It appears to be all about cooperation. It will be interesting to compare this observation to what we actually find after we land and start touring.