Well, a few days ago, I was doing my usual web prowling, scouring for information on South Africa and the many places we will be traveling. My wanderings took me to Nelson Mandela's organization, called the Centre of Memory. As I looked over the many resources and projects featured on that site, I noticed there was a link for something called Mandela Day. It turns out South Africa - and it looks like many other places in the world - celebrate Nelson Mandela's birthday on July 18 as Mandela Day.
The webpage explains:
The overarching objective of Mandela Day is to inspire individuals to take action to help change the world for the better, and in doing so build a global movement for good. Ultimately it seeks to empower communities everywhere. “Take Action; Inspire Change; Make Every Day a Mandela Day.”
They even created an awesome graphic to capture this sentiment:
Something about that date, July 18th, nagged at me. It turns out we will be landing in Johannesburg on the 18th. To make the occurrence even more unusual, our landing time (8am) is exactly the time scheduled for school children in South Africa to sing Happy Birthday to Mr. Mandela!
According to our itinerary, after arriving at the airport, we're scheduled to check in at our B&B, which is in Melville - only a 12-minute car ride from the headquarters of the Mandela Organization...!
Putting all those things together (same day, same time, same general area), it seemed almost too good to be true. I started thinking Where might Nelson Mandela be on Mandela Day? Could he actually be making a public appearance somewhere near his offices??
So, in the spirit of "You Can't Win if You Don't Play", I wrote to the Mandela Organization. I told them about this amazing trip, and asked if they could tell me where Mr. Mandela might be during this event. Imagine being able to get a glimpse of Nelson Mandela? It would be the ultimate!
Stay tuned for more...
