township tours

A township tour is a must-do if you're ever in one of the large cities in South Africa. It's the only way to get a vague idea about how the majority of South African blacks live (unless you actually live there, you will never know)...

The guides for the township tours live in the townships you visit. Our guide, Godfrey, comes from Langa township outside of Cape Town, which was established in 1927 and has around 40,000 people. We also visited Guguletu and Khayelitsha townships.

Among some of the shocking eye-openers, you have this "shack" with one bedroom that houses 3 families, each family consisting of 5 or so people. The sanitary conditions aren't great either – if you're lucky enough, your shack has running cold water. Otherwise, you have to use the common water faucets outside. Some places have (reliable) electricity, and some don't. Though it seems like all the townships had an Internet café or two... heh...

If you're "rich" by township standards (earning R 6000-7000 a month), you could live in the "Beverly Hills" of the townships – tiny brick houses that look decent enough. They're a lot better than the shacks or the "cardboard box houses" that are set up illegally. You still have a lot of people/families living in these nicer houses though. Privacy seems to be non-existent. People who live in these often hire people living in the worst of the worst cardboard box houses as maids...

According to Godfrey, the blacks prefer living in the townships as to stay together. One big happy family; everyone looks out for one another. I can sort of understand that mindset, though it comes with a lot of other things and thoughts that I would rather not post here. At the same time, South Africa has a very high rate of rapes and violent crime, most of it within these townships... one big happy family? Hmmm... I can only imagine the tensions that brew when so many people are living so close together...

Anyway...

A township isn't a township without a shebeen, and our tour included a visit to a shebeen. Township shebeens are run by women but frequented by men (excluding female tourists). The drink of death is called umqombothi. One must be brave to drink that... and lots of township men sit in the shebeen and drink this stuff all day long. A cannister of that stuff costs R 7. It only has around 2% alcohol, so you really can't get drunk on it...

We also visited a witch doctor. We were told his specialty is love potions. OK. Whatever...

Our final stops were to Vicky's Bed and Breakfast in Khayelitsha township – a B&B intends to give tourists a more "real" township experience – and a daycare that was right next to Vicky's. Vicky's was interesting – the rooms were actually quite nice, and for R 190 per night, you get dinner and breakfast in the package. I would consider staying there for a night; it would be a good chance to get some more insight into township life once the tourist minivans are gone.

I'm still not sure how I felt about the daycare visit – if there's anything that made me feel like I was going on a "people safari", this was it. It was nice to see the kids so enthusiastic to see the tourists and sing for us and all, but I also got the "performing for us like trained animals" feeling :-/ Aside from that, despite cramming a lot of small children into two very small rooms, they seem to get a decent deal. They have a regular schedule of learning and play, and they get breakfast, a hot lunch (we arrived as lunch was being prepared), and snacks as well.

The kids were very cute...