Over the past 24 hours, Sandra, Joanne, Boyd, Dale, Frank and I all touched down in Johannesburg. We are spending 2 days here before we head to Tshwane where we will be for the remaining time. The CDC Development Solutions organization is one of our NGO partners which specializes in Global Citizenship and Volunteerism. They ensured we got here safely and are handling all the logistics locally.
We spent the day at IBM Johannesburg with our country general manager (Abe Thomas) and his team to gain a better understanding of the region of Tshwane. As South Africa gets more and more integrated, many people are migrating in from neighboring countries such as Zimbabwe and prefer to live closer to a metro like Tshwane where employment might be easier. This of course adds to the issue of constrained natural resources such as water.
We also had an interesting dialogue on the sheer size and complexity of this continent with over 1 billion people in 54 countries. To put it into perspective, flying from Johannesburg (in the South) to Casablanca (in the North) takes 10 hours which is the same amount of time it takes to go from Johannesburg to Singapore(essentially crossing the entire Indian Ocean). And did you know that the US, China, India, Japan and most of Europe can fit into Africa?!
We headed to dinner at Nelson Mandela square tonight. After all these months of correspondence, it was so nice to sit down with the team and just get to know each other!
#ibmcsc
We spent the day at IBM Johannesburg with our country general manager (Abe Thomas) and his team to gain a better understanding of the region of Tshwane. As South Africa gets more and more integrated, many people are migrating in from neighboring countries such as Zimbabwe and prefer to live closer to a metro like Tshwane where employment might be easier. This of course adds to the issue of constrained natural resources such as water.
We also had an interesting dialogue on the sheer size and complexity of this continent with over 1 billion people in 54 countries. To put it into perspective, flying from Johannesburg (in the South) to Casablanca (in the North) takes 10 hours which is the same amount of time it takes to go from Johannesburg to Singapore(essentially crossing the entire Indian Ocean). And did you know that the US, China, India, Japan and most of Europe can fit into Africa?!
We headed to dinner at Nelson Mandela square tonight. After all these months of correspondence, it was so nice to sit down with the team and just get to know each other!
#ibmcsc
Great to see your updates. Look forward to more about the trip. Amazing, the size of Africa. Imagine if half of the continent could come together and work as one...
ReplyDeleteHey Latha,
ReplyDeleteLooks like you are about to have an amazing experience. Enjoy the great opportunity, and look forward to further updates.