Disbelieved, shocked, awed, saddened, upset, amazed, smiles, high-fives, young kids, soccer, sports, amazed, happiness…some of the words to describe what I saw/felt today, but barely even scratch the surface.
In a country with major cities, so much technology and so much modernization within the city centers it is hard to belief there is such a large percentage of people who live with absolutely nothing and such a disparity between races. What I am referring to is the townships surrounding Cape Town, the conditions are hardly describable and do not translate well through pictures. Most homeless people in the United States have a better overall quality of live than many of those who live in the townships. Of course there is a broad range of townships and the word township in itself does not define the quality of the area but in South Africa tends to be a grouping of black people together after being forced out of the city by the apartheid government.
Today I went on a Semester at Sea trip titled "Cape Town, Apartheid and Robben Island," it was my first SAS trip and I wasn't amazed by the trip itself, but rather the people we met along the way. Our first stop was the "District Six Museum." I am going to give a little bit of history for each place I went, not only to remember the facts for myself years from now, but also since I think most Americans have little knowledge on South African history such as myself before this trip. District Six is an area in Downtown Cape Town that was a culturally diverse neighborhood (except for white), it was filled with much poverty and disease. As a result the Apartheid government decided to expel everyone from this area and bulldoze the area completely demolishing everyone's homes and businesses. These people were then relocated to what is now known as the townships in the outskirts of the city and divided into areas based on cultural group. The word "apartheid"in essence means to segregate, so this was the goal of the Apartheid government to group each ethnic group into individual sections of the city known as townships. The District Six Museum is in dedication of what occurred in the past and a collection of many artifacts in an old church (one of the few buildings that was left standing). After the area was demolished it was completely redeveloped and is now mostly comprised of office buildings.
From the District Six Museum we headed out of town and we were not quite sure where we were heading. We had to take the same highway there that you would take if you were heading to the airport. On both sides of the highway, there were hundreds of thousands of "homes"packed together very tightly. When I say "homes"I really mean the most temporary, lean-to houses possible. Most are comprised of aluminum and have rocks on the roof in order to prevent the roof from blowing of their homes. There more structurally sound buildings are converted cargo containers. We finally got off the highway and were told we were heading to a bed and breakfast in the Khayelithsha Township. From the highway you couldn't really see any people in the Townships so it gave you a sense of separation and you couldn't really grasp the full extent of them, tending to forget people actually live there. The feeling of driving through the townships is hard to describe but depressing to say the least. There was utter silence throughout the bus as people tried to process what they were seeing. After about 5-10 minutes I turned to Lauren and I said "I feel like we are driving through a zoo,"that was the general consensus throughout the bus. I felt like we were intruding these people lives just driving through their neighborhoods and snapping pictures while in this capsule being a large tour bus. Within several minutes the bus stopped and we were told we could get out of the bus and walk to the bed and breakfast. The bus stopped right in front of a day care and we were immediately greeted by many smiling face and waving by the kids, this immediately changed the way we felt. A few of us had little interest in going to this bed and breakfast so we stayed back for as long as we could and just met the kids, brining a reciprocation of smiles for both parties involved. Eventually we were told we had to move along and turned the corner to the street "Vicky's Bed and Breakfast"was located. There was many kids playing in the street and even more began to come out as they found out we were there. A lot of us chose not even to go inside right away, we kept exploring and a few of us went off to play soccer with one kid. We played soccer with him for about 20 mins and he sure made our day so I am quite sure we made his day if not even his whole month. It's really amazing to have no common language with people but communicate through mutual gestures and hand motions as we did with many people in that Township; a smile is universal. We couldn't really figure out why all these kids were giving us "thumbs up"when we went to give them "five." Apparently there many of the kids do the "thumbs up"motion and then have their thumbs come in contact with one another as their greeting to each other. Its also really hard to resist temptation in giving these people some money, giving them what we consider only $5 is equal to 50 Rand and would be equal to what most of these people make in a month or two. We finally went into the bed and breakfast a few minutes before everyone was leaving, She rents out rooms in her home in order to provide for her family and also to give tourists the "experience of a township." It’s a really cool concept but I'm not so sure how I would have felt about being in the township after the sun went down. We all left knowing our prospective on many things had changed forever.
We got back on the bus to get some lunch and we assumed we would be going to a KFC or some place quick to eat. Instead we headed to "Lelara Restaurant"which is located in someone house and you literally feel like you are eating in this persons really large dining room that seats 100 or so people. We had traditional South African food that was amazing, I have no idea what I ate or what it was called but it had the most variety and vibrancy of tastes I had ever experienced (I took a picture of my plate).
From there we went to the "Guga S'thebe"Community Centre. It is a community center as well as a place that provides hands on training in various labor skills. For example they showed us a group of students who were learning how to make ceramic plates. They also have very expensive kiln equipment to be used by the artisans in the community, free of charge. Their intent is to create job skills for the people in their community in order to benefit the community as a whole. The purpose of the free equipment is because it would be very expensive for an individual to buy on their own but allows people to make pottery and ceramics in their home to be sold in town.
Our next stop was Robben Island, home of Nelson Mandela for 27 years. We had to take a boat (not ship) over to the island which was about 30 mins away (just what we wanted to be doing after spending much of our semester on the water). Our first tour guide looked no older than us so we figured he wouldn't be that good and not that knowledgeable, but we were shockingly surprised. He never went to college and knew nothing about Robben Island before his first visit only a few years prior. He was really amazed by the place and started doing a lot of research about it and now can answer any question you throw at him. He gave us a tour of the island and showed us an amazing view looking towards Cape Town. The second part of the tour was conducted by a former prisoner who was jailed at the same time as Nelson Mandela and knew him. It was very interesting to here his insight and we couldn't believe he not only works on the island but also lives on it!
We got back around 6:30 and Phil, Lauren and I went out for dinner a little bit later. We went out for dinner on Long St. and then for a few drinks at "Dubliner"but we were all pretty tired and had to get up early the next day so we called it an early night and had a lot to process from the events of the day.
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