two worlds - one cape
just when i was about to become frustrated about everything in south african society that remains hidden from me since i'm staying in this comfy bubble of white upper class adolescents, the horizon became a bit expanded: on wednesday, the first of our involuntarily free days, we accompanied antonella to her project in the philippi township. she's helping out in a creche there, and we decided to do the same for a day. so we drove down from their office (pass golf course on highway, 5 minutes later arrive at makeshift iron shacks) to the sakhinghonso educare centre, a daycare for children from 0-6 run by a very resolute lady named phelisa.
after several cases of child abuse in this area of philippi, as parents had no choice but to leave their children behind when traveling up into cape town every day for work, phelisa decided to open up a daycare centre. since shack facilities and lack of running water do not meet the requirements from the government for funding such projects, phelisa couldn't rely on that - but the community to support her in setting the place up. right now she is in discussions with saep, the organisation where antonella is working, and which provides support mainly in the form of donated goods.
the centre is up and running, being financed mainly through the parent's contributions (100 rand a month) and support from the community and church. about 27 xhosa kids are in the pre-school class and although i promised myself not to make comparisons any longer: the conditions are FAR better from what i've seen in kenya. it starts with the fact that corporal punishment indeed is not happening (at least towards pre-school-children) and the children seem to be so much more social among themselves as towards others. it's all very simple and basic, but there are toys, learning materials and three nice ladies taking care of them.
apart from all that, it was so GREAT to finally see the 'other side' and talk to other people than those who know everything about you and you about them anyway. and when aire decided to try some chicken feet, apparently a xhosa speciality - and i tagged along - the ice was broken. had to pass my chicken foot on to one of the staff eventually...there are nicer things than that.
and then? later that day i went down to blouberg to watch the sunset with arianna and sabs - and that is probably one of the poshest places around cape town. the view on the mountain as well as the sunset was however splendid.
and the story continues: aire and i went down to the city centre today (for the first time since i'm here...) after having spent the morning surveying at an 'organic market' - very nice and bourgeoise foodstuff, even fair traded coffee in the offers, and a very interesting insight from a half german half south-african survey participants: "fair trade is a nice idea, but what south africans, and especially those of the upper class, care about, is quality and value for money. they wouldn't buy a product for the appeal of fair trade, but rather because it's organic or because of outstanding quality". so far so good - after this white upper class meeting market (new term: economic apartheid) we took the minibus down to the centre, arrived at cape town central station and all of a sudden were no longer part of the crowd but outstanding again: public transport, i.e. train and shared taxis (minibusses) are not used by whites - maybe some students and backpackers, but that's it. it's not considered secure and we've been told not to do it several times, but if you stick to a few simple rules the only hazard might be the ruthless driving, and even that is an exaggeration. on the other hand: whenever you start feeling secure and think you got the hang of something, another horror story will be told to you by your neighbours or colleagues...
coming back to the point: south africa is responsible for 47% of the co2-emissions of the ENTIRE african continent. concerning the ecological footprint of a large share (sic! i'm not saying that poverty or wealth is entirely confined to skin colour, but it's a big factor) of the none-white population, it would be interesting to see figures concerning how many percent of the south-african population are actually responsible for the co2-emissions - remember that whites are a minority in this country.
ok. enough. from mondy onwards we at least ALL won't have electricity any longer, massive power cuts are coming up and 'load-shedding' starts again: the brilliant answer of the government to deal with the energy crisis - we'll just all use a bit less of the sparse resource! (coming back to the ecological footprint: the possibilities of alternative/renewable energies are marginally if at all considered in the government's scheme to solve the electricity crisis. AND yes, i am trying to follow south african news, although that's not always easy, but i've been recommended to do so by many many people!)
so apart from eros who's still whining, this is what my mind is constantly busy with at the moment: to finally discover and understand a small portion of the large part of south africa, which is not the upper class cape town bubble.
PS: a small note from a very small world: aire and i were browsing some souvenir stalls on green market square in the city bowl today. some guy wanted to sell us maasai jewellery - aire has one of the tanzanian beadworks bracelets and said she'd rather prefer that. out of that we started talking about tanzania and kenya, since the salesguy was from tanzania. when i mentioned to him i had stayed in the kilimanjaro area, we figured out that we know the same places and even some people. he went to fetch one of his friends from entarara, where i spent last year's july - and that friend was the son of a teacher who had invited us for dinner last year. he only left for cape town in august last year ("in search of greener pastures"...), so we met, and although he couldn't remember me, he remembered RUBEN FROM AUSTRALIA (who actually was urban from austria, but in the course of a few days became ruben since nobody could deal with his name, and austria is also a rather difficult concept) - an integer part of out group. we had quite a big laugh in one of these most touristy places. small world!
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