Written Wednesday, February 27, 2013
The reason we're in South Africa is because Elizabeth is involved in a project trying to encourage kids to choose healthier after school activities. So not drugs, sex and alcohol.
Today, we took a tour of several of the schools she's working with, along with the surrounding neighborhoods. I've seen poverty in the U.S., but my god this is on a new level for me.
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| Khayelitsha area outside Cape Town |
We got the opportunity to walk into a few schools and talk to a few teachers. Well, Elizabeth and her co-worker talked. I just stood there hoping not to not get them in trouble. But I paid more attention to the students, all dressed in uniform, anyway. Mostly, it was that there is no cafeteria in any school, so either they bring lunch or they visit local vendors that set up just outside the school gates and sell cheap favorites. Like the lady with an huge pot full of cooked chicken feet. I felt bad for all the complaining I did about cafeteria food growing up.
Throughout our tour we saw thousands of homes in the township of Khayelitsha built out of sheet metal or corrugated metal, many leaning against each other. There are electrical poles spread all over and apparently people climb up them and just attach their own connection to a pole.
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| Standard house in the township |
The subsections in the township were mostly divided by race, with most being black and some being "coloured". To explain, blacks are, well, black. And coloured are people of mixed backgrounds. In the days of apartheid, coloured people ranked below whites but above blacks. And since that was not really that long ago, the echoes can still be felt. God knows the U.S. is far from the ideal in race relations, but it seems SA still has some major issues to deal with. After seeing the place we're staying compared with shacks just a few miles away, it's tough to reconcile.
