I'm going to skip to today, Sunday, since it is so fresh in my mind. If I would have been smarter, I would have just blogged in Pages and then copied and pasted it here. Now I know for tomorrow.
This morning five of us decided to take the "Walking Township Tour." What a wise decision we made! It was really amazing and quite an eye opening experience. To see how people live and how many live this way was shocking! We were are truly, truly blessed!
We started by heading to District 6. While we sat on a road that was situated between the two roads that served as boundaries, our guide Ivey, gave us a brief history of the area. I can't even begin to share it with you as I don't want to get it wrong, so here is a link to the museum website.
From there we traveled to what they call the "Cape Flats." They call them this because when you look out from Table Mountain, all that you see is flat lands. Here is where the Cape Town townships lie. There are several and we visited two or three this morning. Ivey seemed to know everyone as we traveled along, which was great to see.
The first place she took us to had many hostels. We were able to view the inside of two. One original and the other refurbished. To know that more than one family stayed in the first hostel location was amazing. They were squeezed in, all family members sleeping in one bed with two other families in the room as well. There were few furnishings and they had very few things. It made me very sad to see these living conditions, but this was not the worst we would see today.
The second hostel that we visited had been refurbished and the people that lived their were the owners. There was fresh paint on the wall and the family had furnishings and a tv. This was much more livable and yet I still thought back to my first apartment which was much bigger just for me and there were at least 7 people living in that small environment. These people were very lucky and very proud of their home.
Before we left, we shopped at her friends stand near the hostels. He was from Nairobi, Kenya and a very thankful man. We each bought trinkets to bring home and share and he thanked us very much for supporting him and his family.
I think this is all I have time for tonight as we have an early morning. Maybe I will work on typing more on my way in tomorrow morning.
Before you go to sleep tonight, be sure to thank everyone around you for all you have.
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