Township Tales
Sun 18th -Mon 19th March
I arrive in Durban and get dropped off at Home Backpacker's. It is indeed very homely, with sofas and a TV, although most people are out when I arrive. I am befriended by an Israeli Divemaster called Ud and an English couple who have been volunteering with GVI in Kenya, who allow me to share their meal seeing as I have yet to find a supermarket! Very lovely people, and we had a great laugh.
The next morning I have booked to go on a Township Tour through the hostel. I have mixed feelings about these, as they are offered all over the place and although I know the value of seeing places like that first hand, I can also see the potential for exploitation if the schemes are run insensitively. However, I had a better feeling about this one, and for lack of any other ideas I agreed to go. There were just 2 of us, and the tour was organised by a guy called Victor, orginally from Kenya and identifyable by a big laugh and even bigger dreadlocks.
He took us to Umlazi, which is the second biggest township in South Africa, after Sowetho. It ran on for miles and miles, as far as the eyes could see. He estimated that close to half the population of Durban lives there - the average family size being 16 children. The government gives money for each child under 13 years, so poor families keep on having babies. Big families live in small houses, often only one or two rooms, and it's not uncommon for fathers and uncles to sleep next to the daughters of the household. The biggest crime in the townships is indecent assult, and the perpertrators usually get away with it because they are the main breadwinners so the family does not want them to go to jail - how would they eat? Other crime is really quite low in the township areas, because everyone knows everyone else and so they would soon be caught if they tried anything in their neighbourhood. The diet is very poor - based mostly on potatoes and tomatoes and maize. Very starchy and often fried in oil, so obesity and health related problems are rife, which in turn means individuals are more susceptible to problems associated with AIDS.
One of the biggest problems is the lack of good jobs availble to these communities. We visited a family who were in a "richer" area (relatively speaking of course). They had been better off when the daughters were working and had been able to afford a permanent house and running water, a TV etc. Since then both the daughters have died from AIDS, leaving the aging grandmother to support the grandchildren on her pension. We spoke to her about her life and she said that in some ways things were getting better. I asked what she hoped for the future, and she said there was no hope for her grandchildren because there were no jobs for them - once they had finished school and the government stopped paying money for them, all they can do is stay around the township.
Next we moved on to the "poorer" area - the house we visited looked like someone had tried to set up home in a scrapyard. The walls were made from corrugated iron, rusting away in places and leaving great holes in the sides. The roof was supported by a huge tree branch, which had cracked under the weight and would need to be fixed soon or the whole house would collapse. There was a tatty, smelly sofa and an old iron bunkbed frame that was so bent out of shape it didn't look stable. A family of about 5 lived here, pushing aside what furniture they had each night and bedding down on the floor. It was hard to be welcomed into to this place to sit and look the lady in the eye, watching her prepare a meal of maize for her child, knowing all that I have at home. Yet I saw in her an optimism lacking in the previous house. A knowledge that she didn't have to settle for what she had, that she was worth more than this but that she was the only person she could rely upon to change things. She had saved up some of her child benefit and started buying small goods, like cooking oil and selling it on in her neighbourhood. This had expanded into selling on second hand clothes bought in Durban. She was doing what little she could.
A few hundred meters up the road, we passed what I first thought was a pile of scrap metal. No, said Victor, someone lives there - can you see his bed through the gap? I felt sick.
I arrive in Durban and get dropped off at Home Backpacker's. It is indeed very homely, with sofas and a TV, although most people are out when I arrive. I am befriended by an Israeli Divemaster called Ud and an English couple who have been volunteering with GVI in Kenya, who allow me to share their meal seeing as I have yet to find a supermarket! Very lovely people, and we had a great laugh.
The next morning I have booked to go on a Township Tour through the hostel. I have mixed feelings about these, as they are offered all over the place and although I know the value of seeing places like that first hand, I can also see the potential for exploitation if the schemes are run insensitively. However, I had a better feeling about this one, and for lack of any other ideas I agreed to go. There were just 2 of us, and the tour was organised by a guy called Victor, orginally from Kenya and identifyable by a big laugh and even bigger dreadlocks.
He took us to Umlazi, which is the second biggest township in South Africa, after Sowetho. It ran on for miles and miles, as far as the eyes could see. He estimated that close to half the population of Durban lives there - the average family size being 16 children. The government gives money for each child under 13 years, so poor families keep on having babies. Big families live in small houses, often only one or two rooms, and it's not uncommon for fathers and uncles to sleep next to the daughters of the household. The biggest crime in the townships is indecent assult, and the perpertrators usually get away with it because they are the main breadwinners so the family does not want them to go to jail - how would they eat? Other crime is really quite low in the township areas, because everyone knows everyone else and so they would soon be caught if they tried anything in their neighbourhood. The diet is very poor - based mostly on potatoes and tomatoes and maize. Very starchy and often fried in oil, so obesity and health related problems are rife, which in turn means individuals are more susceptible to problems associated with AIDS.
One of the biggest problems is the lack of good jobs availble to these communities. We visited a family who were in a "richer" area (relatively speaking of course). They had been better off when the daughters were working and had been able to afford a permanent house and running water, a TV etc. Since then both the daughters have died from AIDS, leaving the aging grandmother to support the grandchildren on her pension. We spoke to her about her life and she said that in some ways things were getting better. I asked what she hoped for the future, and she said there was no hope for her grandchildren because there were no jobs for them - once they had finished school and the government stopped paying money for them, all they can do is stay around the township.
Next we moved on to the "poorer" area - the house we visited looked like someone had tried to set up home in a scrapyard. The walls were made from corrugated iron, rusting away in places and leaving great holes in the sides. The roof was supported by a huge tree branch, which had cracked under the weight and would need to be fixed soon or the whole house would collapse. There was a tatty, smelly sofa and an old iron bunkbed frame that was so bent out of shape it didn't look stable. A family of about 5 lived here, pushing aside what furniture they had each night and bedding down on the floor. It was hard to be welcomed into to this place to sit and look the lady in the eye, watching her prepare a meal of maize for her child, knowing all that I have at home. Yet I saw in her an optimism lacking in the previous house. A knowledge that she didn't have to settle for what she had, that she was worth more than this but that she was the only person she could rely upon to change things. She had saved up some of her child benefit and started buying small goods, like cooking oil and selling it on in her neighbourhood. This had expanded into selling on second hand clothes bought in Durban. She was doing what little she could.
A few hundred meters up the road, we passed what I first thought was a pile of scrap metal. No, said Victor, someone lives there - can you see his bed through the gap? I felt sick.
posted by Susie at
11:32 AM
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