January 4
After much discussion and debate we ended up deciding on going on a tour of the township for the event of the day. The group was split on this idea because it seemed odd for us, as white people, to go into a township and look at the people and their poverty. Others thought that it would be a good experiance for us to see how these people really live. The tour van picked us up from our B&B. The first stop was a muesum about the history of South Africa and the feuds between the blacks and the whites. The heighlight for many people was a specific information board that described the types of personal identification the people of South Africa had to carry with them at all times. The identification cards seemed to look normal except for their skin colour was typed on the card! You were either labled as white, black, coloured (which is the mixed race but also includes portugese and any other europeans) and Indian. My dad was especially surprised to hear that if both a black and a white person invested money the white person would get more return than the black person.
Township
The next stop was one of the many townships in South Africa. This one contained over 250,000 people but the largest one is over 1 million people! The driver pulled off onto the side of the road in the township and we all got out of the car to have a walking tour. The tour paied a local boy to show us around their neighbourhood and every place that we visit the owner of that house or pub gets paided for letting us look around. Once we got out of the car some people in our group got a little bit nervous (the moms) because we were alone with this local boy in the middle of a township. The first place we went to was a pub! We all sat around the perimeter of this shack on wood benches. We were there at 9 in the morning and already there were 3 or 4 men sitting in the pub drinking the local brew. The brew is made by a women and she is the only women allowed in the pub. No women are allowed to enter or even drink alcohol unless they are making it for the men. The women poured some of the brew into a bucket that looked like a paint can and everyone was permitted to take a drink. The local boy started it off and then we all had a sip. Some of us hated it and others thought it was barable but overall it was not very good. It tasted like foamy yeast! This was my favourite part of the day even though it was weird that we all had to drink from the same bucket including the local boy! Probably not the smartest thing considering all the diseases. We then went into a couple of the houses which were super small. The local boy said that only a couple years ago 3 families would stay in one tiny room with 3 beds for the parents and the floor for the children. To me it is a wonder how they even have so many children! The local guy also showed us around the neighbourhood. He pointed out the different sections of the township which was divided into the very low class, the middle class, and the upper class. The upper class is normaly teachers, accountants, and doctors. He called the area they lived in "Beverley Hills" but it was very far from being Beverly Hills. Throughout the tour I found myself comparing this township to the villages we saw in Kenya. It seemed to me that the people in the township were not happy at all compared to the people in Kenya who were very happy and proud of what they had and accomplished. I was also thinking about how organizations could possibly help these people. Where do you start? Free the Children helped the people in Kenya by building schools, water wells, and clinics and much more. The people in the township had clean water, electricity, and some technology like cell phones yet there was garbage everywhere and houses made of tin and wood and people, mostly men, hangingout on the side of the road not doing anything at all! The situation is not good.
After the tour we went to one of the beaches in Camps Bay (the same one as yesterday). It is interesting to people watch on this beach. You can see the separation between the black and the whites clearly. Very interesting! A beautiful beach!
Natalie