South Africa

I’ve come to realize that red-eye flights are the way to go.  After two flights and a total of 8 hours in the air, we arrived in Cape Town, South Africa in the early afternoon.  The plane rides were fun as well as the 4 hour layover as we had each other to keep ourselves occupied.  During the layover, we stuffed our faces with delicious airport food and bought some precious cargo for the next leg of our trip.  I purchased a journal and a converter so I would be able to charge my electronics in South Africa.  We used the plane rides to get some rest, so, when we landed, I felt completely refreshed and ready for the new adventure to come.

We met up with a Projects Abroad representative and rode with her by minibus to our new home.  Our home is incredible.  The 16 of us (one more added on here in South Africa after missing Ghana) occupy 7 bedrooms and enjoy the ample amount of showers and sinks with flowing hot water.  Not only do we have running hot water, but we also have the luxury of a washing machine. And a hang out room.  And pets.  And a guitar.  And wifi.  Oh. I didn’t mention to best part:  the cooking.  We are staying in the home of a former caterer named Faye and her husband Aslam.  Faye can cook like no other.  And, she is the happiest woman I have ever met; her personality is electric and welcoming and we all appreciate her love and warmth so much.  Aslam is a jokester.  You ask him any question and he will come up with the most ridiculous answer imaginable and will utter it with a straight face.  He cracks a sly smile every now and then, but mostly he is stone, but a loving stone at that.  They are an amazing couple of people.  They have been receiving and housing volunteers from Projects Abroad for 15 years now.  And although the work must be exhausting, they continue to be the absolute best host and hostess.  They make this house a home for us and we couldn’t be more thankful.

 Our lovely dining room fit with scrumptious food

 

 My bedroom. I have one roommate

 

 

 Our bathroom fitted with running hot water

 

 The house is a bunch of individual compounds connected under a roof. This is where we hang up our clothes.

 

One of the 3, soon to be 4, dogs that live here.  This one is called Lady and is very old.  The other 2 are puppies called Blackie and Rusty.

 

I get to stay in this place for 2 months.  We are in an area called Grassy Park, in a neighborhood that is mostly Muslim.  Grassy Park is not the nicest area.  It consists of many townships, which are essentially slums containing houses made of metal and wood and other scrap materials.  They are built by the people who plan on inhabiting them, so they are made out of whatever the people can get their hands on.  In the township we work in (Lavender Hill), there is a 70% unemployment rate.  If you live in an area filled with townships, you are not in the safest place.  We will go out into town and people will ask what area we are from, and when we respond “Grassy Park”, they look shocked, concerned.  And when we say we work in Lavender Hill, they are even more surprised.  Still, we are safe inside our lot.  I feel at home here.

 

 

South Africa is a very interesting place.  The poverty mixes in seamlessly with the type of living we are used to back at home.  One minute you’ll be driving down a paved road with decently nice houses lined up, and the next you’ll be on the dirt roads of a township.  Homeless people are scattered around the more metropolitan areas and beggars have taken to the streets, asking drivers for some extra Rand (the South African currency) in order to sustain their lives.  You’ll find strange people hanging out in the more suburban areas as well as in the city.  It’s a unique dynamic Western Cape has with the intense social stratification and income gap.  I’m eager to learn more about this area and see what there is to see.

 

 

 

I’ve been putting off writing this next part.  I find it hard to articulate how incredible my experiences in the township have been.  I need to find a place to start so I can share what I’ve seen, done, endured in Lavender Hill.  Okay. I’m just going to see where this goes.

After a day dedicated to inductions in the Projects Abroad office that introduced what we would be doing for the next two months in South Africa, we were ready to actually head to the building site the next morning.  So we embarked by minibus to a place avoided by many, by most South Africans.  There we met Deen Singh, one of the most inspirational people I have ever had the joy to meet.  He would be our Building Manager at the project, our father for the next 2 weeks.  He took us through the building site and showed us around, stopping at the room for the kids, the library for the kids, the playground for the kids, and lead us to the area outside of the premise including the sandlot, the mounds of litter, and the rest of the nature reserve.  Deen told us the story of the township as we walked and led us outside the fences to the piles of garbage.  He explained the origins of the township and how people squatted on open land without any consent from the government, building clusters of highly flammable, unstable houses that spread and spread until they formed townships.  He told us about the gang violence and the shocking 70% unemployment rate and the appalling amount of water sources (a solitary spicket for 14-15 families).  The conditions are brutal from the violence to the lack of resources.  And there are a ton of children there.  We are building is a sort of sanctuary/day care for around 20 children from ages 1-5 that live in the township.  Some live with their parents, but others were abandoned or had lousy parents so they live with other family or with generous adults they aren’t related to.  Still, the kids are full of life.  They run and play and shout and love to cuddle!  Many of the kids don’t receive the love and adoration they deserve, so we do what we can to give them attention.  Although the township is not the best living arrangement with its dangerous conditions and cramped, claustrophobic feel, the people inhabiting them live their lives freely and happily.  After all, they have roofs over their heads and lives to live. 

 My goodbye picture with Deen, our building manager

 

 The litter and junk outside of the fences of the building site. People scavenge and burn their garbage out here.

 

  This picture shows the proximity of the playground to the mess outside of the site.

 

  The garden at the building site.

 The library for the kids

 The school room, which is also used for playing and eating.  The kids get fed leftover porridge from a nearby prison most days.  For some, it is the only meal they get.

 

 The inside of the school room, filled with the children

 The door into the restroom installed by Deen and some volunteers.  It reads "Projects Abroad (Associated Partner)".

 

So that was a high school graduate’s attempt at setting the exposition of a township.  Now it’s time to talk about the work we have been doing at the building site, which is located in a day care for the children aforementioned.  Under the loving instruction of Deen, we have been working on installing a gutter, and building and plastering some walls.  It’s a lot of manual labor, but seeing your work grow and grow as you build is such a remarkable feeling.  We have been working on the walls using sandbags and concrete and also on a drain that leads from the day care’s central compound out through the garden.  If you don’t want to hear about how we worked on the walls and the storm gutter, then skip the next paragraph.

Plastering a wall is a lot harder than you would think.  First thing you have to do is fetch sand--about 4 wheelbarrows full per bag of cement—and take it over to your mixing site.  For us, this involves going to the sandy area outside of the fences, digging a large and unstable hole going deep enough to find the “good sand” (sand that has no gunk or rocks in it and is fairly light in color), filling the wheelbarrow (we have just one because we don’t want any excess to be stolen), and then once you have enough sand, refilling the hole up with sand.  Next is the most strenuous part, mixing the sand, cement, and water to make a nice and strong plaster.  So you dump the sand and go get the ridiculously heavy cement bag and you struggle a ton while pouring it onto (or next to if you can’t extend the bag out far enough) the sand mountain.  Next is the ludicrous amount of water you need to convert the dry ingredients into a perfectly thick and moist mixture.  You pour and pour and stand there with a hose for probably 20 minutes while maybe 4 people with spades (flat shovels) mix it all up.  Boy is it heavy.  Not only are you at an awkward angle because you don’t want to stand in it, but the water makes the dry components weigh so much more than they did when they were dry.  The water gets absorbed into the sand and cement very quickly and it takes a ton of water, but after a little while, the job is done and you can finally get to plastering.  Plastering takes little skill and can be done by an absent-mind and a couple of hard-working hands.  There are a couple of methods, but the way I do it, I take a flat scraper tool, I put a little bit of plaster near the edge and smush it in a swift upward motion, scraping it against the wall, forcing it to adhere.  Then you do this over and over, building out the wall, making it stronger, making it smoother, making it straighter.  You do this process on a wall that has already been built, but now I am going to explain how we built those walls.  Well, we use sandbags and, you guessed it, plaster, to build up the walls.  It’s very simple.  You put a relatively thin layer of concrete down, stick some sandbags that we had previously filled on top, hammer them down to make them dense and flat, and put more concrete on top to begin the next layer.  Next you plaster the outside of bags creating the smooth face of the wall.  You have to fill all of the divots the layered sandbags create and thicken it up in some places to make the wall level.  Again, it is very mindless. The final task we were assigned to work on was the installation of a storm gutter.  We set off hacking up an aisle of concrete that has been laying there for who knows how long.  Then we dug up the sand that sat underneath the concrete and laid connecting pipes down at a slight incline into the hole.  We put two drains in and then carefully filled the aisle back up with sand and then covered it up with concrete (the same mixture that we use for the walls).  The drain leads from the center of the compound out into a garden, so as we were installing it, we had to be very mindful of the plants’ roots to not disturb the flora.  Sadly the two weeks we had in Lavender Hill weren’t enough to extend the pipe out all the way through the garden, out into the reserve.  The next batch of volunteers will have that job. 

The area in which we dig for sand to mix the cement and fill sandbags.  This is outside of the fence of the building site and is on the boundary of the township.

A wall we have been plastering as well as a bag of cement.

Sandbags we filled.  They will be used to build up a wall.

A wall with new plaster on it, some sandbags, and 5 spades (flatter shovels) are all pictured here.

This wall will eventually be a wall of a greenhouse.  We are building it higher using sandbags.  Sadly, we could not rescue the paintings of the animals.

A close-up of the top of the wall from the last picture.  You can see the sandbag is in the process of being covered with plaster.

We had to break these steps in order to insert the gutter.  We laid the concrete back down and re-formed the steps.  There is a drain under that wet concrete.

This is one of the drains that will lead water into the gutter, out through the garden, and outside of the site.

The work in the township, although strenuous and heart-wrenching at times, has been a wonderful experience.  With Deen as our father first and building manager second, and with the energetic and alive children running around playing, and with the team of volunteers joining together to work as a family, I have learned so much from the site.  I’ve learned about suffering, and being grateful for what you have, and about the harsh realities of life in a township and elsewhere.  I’ve seen children playing in garbage and I went to work even though there was a shooting near the site the night before (that happened twice in two weeks) and I’ve seen the malnourishment in the animals and the children.  You can’t do justice to experiences like these with words.  And I’m sorry about that. I wish I could express to you what working on this project has been like, what it has done for me and the rest of the global gappers. 

 

Selfie with Wayden, a very sweet boy who loves cuddling and pretending to be a lion.

 

I have so much more to say about the building project, so many more stories to tell, but I’ll save that for the next post.  For now, on the eve of the transition from the building project to the human rights project, I just wanted to say I’m excited to conquer the next challenge I will face, and although I’ll miss the building project, I’m sure the human rights project will create the same welcoming and fun work environment. 

I know I’m making change.

 

Thanks for reading.  Have a good one!