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I'm a little bit drunk now writing this update after finishing up our tour in a township shebeen ( aka a local pub) drinking a few black labels and playing pool with the locals..
The township we visited was a pretty run down area of Cape Town as to be expected. Our tour guide Muzi, another nutjob.. brought us around his neighborhood and introduced us to lots of the friendly locals. The town we visited has been receiving a lot of support by the Niall Mellon Township Trust in Ireland with over twenty thousand of the houses built by his charity foundation, and many more still in the process of being built. As you can imagine the locals were loving the fact that I was Irish..even Muzi was very hyperactive, but somehow I think he is like that on a daily basis..
We visited lots of local homes, a few businesses( barber shops are everywhere here also..), an elementary school ( full of overly excited kids) and ended up in the local pub.. It was a very worthwhile trip to see how poorly they live, yet still they got on with their lives with big smiles on their faces! Tiny shacks sleeping up to ten people and in some areas one outdoor toilet for hundreds to share are just two examples of the poverty here.
The smell from the open sewers was beyond belief and the rubbish piled up all over the streets shows that a lot more aid is needed here. 40% of the people living there have aids, with an estimated two million people in the area, that's 800,000 people with the disease in a place similar in size to Tralee.
The beers were well needed after the tour..The local pub was actually not that bad of a place, I've been in a lot worse..then again that's probably not saying much..
Back to the lodge at 6pm for a few more beers and a Braai- not a bad Monday..tomorrow it's off to a place called Heatfield to meet the relations and crash there for the night. Rain forecasted all day, here's hoping it happens, I need some rain in my life...
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