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Tuesday 3/6: Cape Town, South Africa
I went to bed last night around 1ish and had to leave for my township tour at 8am this morning. Ugh! I was totally sleep deprived from the safari, so getting 6ish hours of sleep just wasn’t good for me. BUT, the township tour was THE BEST. It was my favorite SAS trip by far. I thought the day at the circus in Salvador was pretty darn amazing, but this was just unbelievable!
The townships in SA are basically slums that are located on the outskirts of the suburbs. They really sprung up during the Aparteid when white people started destroying black communities in Cape Town. The people were forced to relocate outside the city. One of the big districts in Cape Town that was affected was District Six. Anyways, we visited one of the biggest townships in the area called Khayelitsha township. There’s about 1.2 million people living there. Within a township, you can find formal and informal types of housing. Formal ones have a bathroom/outhouse attached and informal ones do not. Some of the housing structures are only about 1.5m x 1.5m and they hold about 7 people. Can you imagine living like this? 55% of the people in this township are unemployed, and 45% work at stands to make money for food and to send their kids to school. Surprisingly, 89% of the kids attend school; although, it is not very high quality at all. I was surprised that there were so many kids involved in schools to tell you the truth! There’s primary schools and even a college of education in the township. In some parts of the township, the powerlines are completely illegal. They steal lines and set them up, which is dangerous because this type of activity can result in bad fires. Anyways, they government doesn’t bother to arrest people for this because of the potential of large fires.
The government has taken the initiative to start projects in some of the townships, so they actually are a lot better and safer than they were years ago. The projects create jobs for people. We stopped at one project where women make bags from 4am to 4pm everyday. People migrate from all over the country to townships around Cape Town in search of employment. Township tourism has really benefited the communities because the money goes toward improving their educational programs and facilities in the communities. Tourism benefits the people who visit because it makes us realize what a luxurious life we live. We have such luxurious lifestyles compared to these people, yet we are much more unhappy than they are. That doesn’t seem right!
We made a few stops in the township. The first was at a Vicky’s bed and breakfast. Vicky told us that she decided to open up a bed and breakfast because she saw people driving past townships in buses and taking pictures from the bus. She wanted people to be able to walk around and see what the townships are really like instead of just observing them behind glass. I think it’s a brilliant idea. I wish I had more time in Cape Town because staying overnight in a township would have been an amazing experience. We walked behind Vicky’s because we heard children singing. Turns out there is a school right behind her place. It was similar to our nursery schools. The school was no bigger than my triple back in the dorms at Ithaca! It was split up into about 4 rooms. There were little toddlers and other children that were 4 or 5 years old. The kids are at school from about 5am-7pm. They sang some songs for us! I got down on the floor to talk to them and I took some pictures of the kids. They absolutely love having their picture taken. Most of them have such big smiles for the pictures, and then right after you take it, they want to look at it on the camera to see themselves!
Next, we got to explore one of the projects. There were women that were weaving blankets and bags with pretty designs on them. I wandered upstairs and talked to one of the women. People in the townships generally can speak a little bit of English, but it’s fairly broken. She told me that she was making a bag. It takes 1 day to make a bag. She works from 4am-4pm every day. I asked her if I could take a picture of her and then afterwards she asked me if she could see it. I bought some flowers from the shop downstairs. They’re really neat! A lot of the crafts that people make here are made out of cans. Kind of hard to explain…but they’re really cool and I know the money was going to a good cause.
Our next stop was at a craft market. I found a really cool sculpture/painting hanging for on the wall. I got a picture of myself with the guy who makes them. He explained to me how he made them. I didn’t even argue with him for the price of the thing because once again, I knew that the money was going to a good cause and I think it’s great that he actually has a job and is making money so my $11 was well spent even though I probably could have paid about 4 or 5 dollars. There was a band playing in the tiny market, which was really awesome. It was a group of 4 guys playing drums and xylophones. They did some African stuff and then they sang “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright” and that was just really cool to hear. It was cool because knew the song, but it was also so hopeful because these people are basically living day to day and hoping that they can put food on the table at night. I took some videos of them singing that and a couple other songs because they were so great!
We crossed the street to visit a school…As we were pulling into the market, the kids saw the big bus and they started jumping up and down and waving and climbing up the fence. It was crazy! I have pictures to prove it! When we walked into the playground area, kids just started clinging to us. I would pick one up and spin them around real fast and while I did that, another one would almost knock me over because they wanted a turn. One thing that’s interesting about the school is that even though they’re in the poor townships, the children wear uniforms. This is good because then the kids have at least one good outfit to wear and it just shows that education really is valued in the community. A lot of the girls and even some of the boys liked to touch my hair. Since there’s no white people in their community, I’m a whole bunch of them had never touched blonde hair before! It was really cute. I took tons of pictures. Everyone wants their picture taken so they can look at the camera and see what they look like. One of the girls in our group got the contact info for the school (which is inside a church by the way) so she can send pictures to them. There was only one guy in our group, he’s actually from Philly, and I was surprised that he was having such a blast with the kids too! He started scaring them…A bunch of them would crowd around him and he would roar so they would all run away screaming. Honestly, they could have done that all day and it wouldn’t have gotten boring to them! I had one little girl that was clinging to me and she gave me a big hug…after that, she just kept giving me hugs and a couple other girls came up and did the same. These kids are so happy and even though most have families of their own, they just can’t get enough love!
I’m going to stop there for now because it was such an amazing experience and I can’t put it all into words. I’ve decided that I want to come back and do volunteer work here in the townships in Cape Town, or just anywhere in Africa. I don’t know how I’ll manage to do it because I’d pretty much have to do it this year since I’m in school all next summer…but I’m sure I’ll find a way to do it at some point. I think it would be so rewarding to make a difference in a community like this! Anyone want to look up some info for me?!! I know you do…
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