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Christinas travels!
This will shock some of you but today I actually paid to go to a museum!! It was part of going out to the townships to visit the local people and before you could go they want you to go to the museum to get a history and understanding of their backgrounds.
On the trip thats now finished we were not allowed to actually see how the local people live as it would be intruding on their privacy and so we would just drive past all the towns and just see shack after shack. But now in Cape Town there is a specific tour you can book that the local people organise and they encourage you to go and visit them and see their way of life. The money we pay goes into building new facilities like libraries and schools so they appreciate and welcome you into their homes. When the literature said we would be allowed to see how they live I thought we would see their houses from the outside, but when you get there they invite you in and you can see exactly how they go about their day to day lives. The people were forced to move to this area because their houses were bulldozed several years ago to make way for what now is the trendy bars and restaurants. They were moved up to an area near the airport but were given water pumps and facilities to assist them in living. What then happended is some of the starving people who live out in the more remote areas heard about their being water and food here and they all moved down and now the area is competely overcrowded and there are millions of people living here. The goverenment want to revamp the whole area though as you can see this shanty town when you drive from the airport into town and so new concrete blocks are going up to rehouse some of them and so the parts near the road can be knocked down.
It certainly makes you appreciate their way of life and you can also see the changes they are trying to make with the help of others. The pcitires that I took are on the photo album page under local people and children.
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