Baphumelele House

Our last stop was at one of the large NGO social service projects in Khayalitsha.  We met Mama Rose, the founder of the project, and she told us how she got started in the 1980s, by finding an orphaned child on her doorstep, and then having the police bring her a second child.  She suddenly found herself caring for more and more orphaned and abandoned children, and the project was born.  As of today, the project has taken in more than 5000 children, who live on site or in private homes, or group homes.  What was once a tiny one room house in the middle of the township has expanded to take up about the equivalent of a city block and includes such things as foster care, hospice, a preschool, a soup kitchen, elder care, and a health center.  All this is done with help from partners and donations, as there is little government funding.

We had stopped earlier in the day at a grocery store where we bought a bunch of corn meal, beans, rice, onions, fruit, milk packs, and cooking oil.  This was our donation, which we hauled in off the bus and piled on a table in the small main office.  And then...we went to the baby room!  It was literally a room full of adorable babies!  These are the orphans and abandoned children who live there, and these were the youngest of the bunch.  There were 11 of them, and they wanted hugs, and patty cake and they wanted to touch our cheeks and grab our hair and they were generally the cutest babies in the world.  They are obviously well-fed and well-loved, and they were--all of them--very social, which suggests they get a lot of loving visitors.  Their room was small, with a tile floor and an 8 by 10 area rug.  There were colorful murals on the walls, and severals small bedrooms with 5-6 cribs in them.  It was not a fancy place, but it seemed like a happy place.  As we left, one baby broke free and toddled/ran after us for about 50 feet before being scooped up by a worker.  I'm pretty sure that it was just as hard on us to say goodbye as it was for that baby!

I'm not posting photos here, for privacy reasons, but I suspect the baby room was the highlight of the day!

Community Garden in Khayelitsha Township

This morning we went into one of the townships outside of Cape Town.  Cape Town is a famously beautiful city, but it has a secret.  The secret is that the other side of the mountain, totally hidden from the city, on the sandy flats, is where all the less wealth people live.  During apartheid, this is the area where they built the townships where Blacks were forcibly concentrated.  Now it's home to many poorer people, living in small houses, new government built housing, old shacks, and recently built informal housing (what we might call slums).  There are a number of townships here, and we spent the day in one of the larger and more vibrant ones, Khayelitsha.  There is a gleaming new hospital, relatively new schools, and stores amidst the brown-fields and shacks.  BMWs slip in with ancient beaten up cars on the streets.  We rounded a curve at one point and two men pushing a stained king sized mattress set on a single shopping cart were right in the road, the mattresses the size of a vehicle moving way under speed.

Our destination was an amazing community project, the SCAGA community garden.  This project teaches people to grow fruits and vegetables in their backyards, and gives the people of the community small garden plots.  They have also worked to create direct markets for the fresh organic vegetables that come from these gardens, which helps provide steady income to a number of people.  There are a number of garden spots in the townships sponsored by the NGO that operates this project and the one we visited was the oldest and most developed site.  It was amazing!  They had several buildings, some greenhouse tunnels, gorgeous garden beds in various stages of production, a seed and bedding room, and mature fruit bushes and trees.  This garden is an amazing oasis in an area surrounded by barren sandy ground and small tiny houses and shacks.

There was a team of people waiting for us, some of the 'mamas' from the community, the older ladies who have garden plots on site, and some of the younger newly trained farmers.  There were kids from the school across the street, who sang for us as we arrived.  We were welcomed by one of the administrators, and we broke up in teams to help work in the garden.  The high school students and mamas worked with us.  We had three tree-planting teams, a group who were planting trays of seeds, and a large group that was clearing beds and putting in seedlings.  We also carted compost to a new large indoor bed in the new greenhouse, for a 40 foot by 8 foot spinach bed.  We worked for a few hours, got dirty, talked with kids, used unfamiliar tools, and learned how to plant seeds, prep beds, and put in trees.  After we were finished, they served us a light lunch starring a very fresh salad made of veggies from their own garden.

The view from Table Mountain

This afternoon we went to the top of Table Mountain in a gondola that rotated inside so we got a 360 view of the ascent.  Table Mountain is the giant gray rocky mountain that stands flat and long behind the city of Cape Town, dominating the city and the view.  The top isn't quite as flat as it appears from below, and it's possible to walk the top to see the view from all four sides.  There's a little cafe on the top, and of course a gift store.  There are also some really cute looking little furry creatures called dassies, looking like the cuter cousins of the woodchuck.  In fact they are a kind of a mountain badger, but they are fat and sweet and really really placid.  They were happy to pose for photos and participate in all kinds of selfies. We were lucky and the weather was perfect and clear, and there were not many clouds (important because we were above the cloud line.  A cloudy day means not being able to see down over the city or the sea).

Leaving the Kalahari

Our trip to the Kalahari was made even better by the amazing guides we had.  “Uncle” Ed, the main guide, was a quiet and really nice man with a lot of knowledge of the area and of game sighting.  Hermann, our other guide, became known among us as  “Determined Hermann” because he was so dedicated to helping us see and experience everything we wanted to see.  Both of these men are what here are called “North Cape,” which is a kind of shorthand for mixed race.  This was an area that was forcibly resettled during apartheid with a number of mixed race people, and their descendants dominate the area still today.  Hermann is actually both North Cape and from Cape Town, which is another place many mixed race people were settled.  Just like our amazing guides in the Transvaal, these two shaped our experiences in such wonderful ways. 

When we drove out of the Kalahari yesterday, we bunked down back in Upington, which is the small dusty and industrial city that is sort of the gateway to the Kalahari.  This whole region was originally colonized by the Afrikaners, so it is divided into large farms that exist to today, and huge pieces of land are still privately owned.  In fact in the 200 km drive to the Transfrontier Park from Upington, all of the land along the way is fenced and privately owned.  When you stop to think about it, it’s really kind of a powerful example of how land reform is key to changing the future of some parts of South Africa. 

This morning, we had one group that was up early, and went with Hermann into the downtown looking for the booths that sell goods on the street.  They weren’t set up yet, so we drove around the town, with all the long low buildings that looked like they were built mid-century and for purposes that valued efficiency over all else.  It’s not a pretty place, which is strange, because the incredibly gorgeous Oranje River runs right through town.  But all the buildings seem to turn their backs on the river, which is a real shame. 

The poverty here is evident.  Hermann drove us to the Pabalelo township just outside the city, and we drove through the old part, with small one or two room houses and some shops and churches.  It’s a Sunday morning here so we saw a lot of people, mainly women, dressed in their finest clothes and wearing big hats.  Here and there, we saw small groups of women dressed in white dresses, which is a sign that they attend the apostolic church (which is quite prominent here in South Africa).  As we left the old township, we drove through the new township, which is mainly tin shacks.  We noted that some of them have nice yards, with gardens and chickens, while others have cars, even really nice cars parked in the sandy yards.  That’s because the government is trying to put in basic services like water and electricity before they allow people to build more permanent homes in the new areas.  The land has been granted, but people have been living in these temporary shacks for several years, waiting and waiting for the government to move ahead.

We also had a chance to see a memorial to the Upington 26, who were convicted by the government for being part of a crowd that was protesting Apartheid when a police officer was killed.  Only one of the 26 actually killed the officer, and the others were widely seen as unfairly sentenced to death or long prison terms for political actions. The ANC government now has built nice homes in the area for their families, and the memorial has a photo of each of them.  There’s also a memorial to the police officer around the side.

Unemployment is high in this area, and while the area is highly westernized, it’s also quite poor.  At one point, as we were driving through the downtown, we saw three skinny barefoot kids sitting on the curb, and one was sniffing glue fumes through a plastic bag.  Alcoholism is a terrible problem here, with a particularly widespread grip on the young adult generation who are caught between the old and the new.  At the same time, we also met people who were full of positive energy for the future of the area, including both Ed and Hermann.  It’s interesting how in some cases poverty takes away hope, but in other cases, poverty gives people dreams about what the possibilities could be.  The end of apartheid gave a giant boost of positive energy for so many people and so much progress has been made.  Schools are being built, clinics are being started, electricity and water are coming to areas that have never had it, social workers are creating better care policies, state discrimination has been dismantled, and the Transfrontier park has been opened (and the road there has been paved!).  Eco-farming and sustainability initiatives are growing in the area, and a whole new massive solar park has been built outside of Upington.  This mix of challenge, natural beauty, amazing people, and hopefulness is sort of at the heart of what South Africa is today. 

We arrived in Cape Town in mid-afternoon.  We are free until tomorrow morning.

Bulungula photos

This was the gorgeous little Xhosa village where we stayed in the Transvaal.  The river mouth emptied into the Indian ocean right where we stayed.  Here are some photos of the the roundhouses we called home for a short while, and the beauty of Bulungula.  The photo with the cow was the view from the front door of my roundhouse.

The Mandela Museum

This is another post that's out of order.  We didn't have internet for so many days, and when we did, blogger isn't working particularly well for posting photos.  We want to post them so now we are trying to play catch-up while we can.

These are some photos from when we visited the Mandela Museum in Umthata.  They have turned a former colonial administration building into a new museum telling Mandela's life story.  They part I liked best about the museum was the rooms and rooms displaying the beautiful and meaningful gifts that Mandela received while he was president.  Everyone from school children to heads of state gave gifts that are displayed here and there was some amazing art.  I took photos of just a few examples, and I'm posting some of the art here.

Photos--the leopard's tree

We didn't spot a leopard in this visit, but we did find a leopard's favorite tree.  We could see he liked this spot as it was a nice thick trunk branching outward, with lot of leaves to hide him.  He gave his spot away, though, because he's not good at cleaning up after himself.  The leaves in the tree below his favorite branch are filled with feathers, and underneath is a big pile of bones, skin, and debris.  Nearby is the remains of an oryx dinner.