Human Rights Day

Hi there! Happy Human Rights Day (the reason my favorite vegan restaurant is closed today). So, big update. On Monday we had site visits and were all split up to go to various townships. My group went to Delft. We arrived at Ma Africa Tikkun, an NGO that is involved in many aspects of the community and thus was assigned to show us around. They first took us to the Delft Farmers Assocation which is a group of people who took a plot of sand by the highway and turned it into a profitable vegetable garden that sells lettuce to grocery stores. Urban agriculture-sweet! Next we visited the TRAs which are Temporary Relocation Areas. This was probably the saddest and worst thing I've seen on this trip so far. The people living in this areas were put there by the government until the gov can get these people houses on the housing waitlist. Some of the people we met there had been on the housing waitlist for 20 YEARS! Housing is a serious problem here. So basically these housing areas are row upon row of alumninum siding shacks that have no windows, electricity or water. There's one out door toilet for every 4 families to share but one can't even use them at dark for fear of being raped. The houses are just 5 pieces of metal put together and are about 15 feet across and 8 feet wide. It doesn't matter how big your family is, you still get the same size house and we saw one lady who had 8 kids living in one. The TRAs are situated on a plot of land that is nothing but a desert of sand and can't grow anything. The people have no kitchens or other way of cooking their food except to collect sticks nearby and start a fire outside their house. And as we walked through and looked in a bunch of people's houses people and kids are yelling for us to take them to America and are so excited that Americans are there because it must mean we are going to help them. This is one of the hardest parts of IHP-coming into these poor communities and giving people the impression that we're there to help when there's really nothing that we can/are going to do.
After this we drove through town observing the different kinds of housing. We also passed a funeral at someone's house where a mother had killed her 22 year old daughter recently. Did I mention townships are extremely dangerous? We visited the police station where the white cops all told us thing weren't so bad and that we should come back and have a BBQ with them. Then we went in a hospital which was also sad because there are just 100s of people waiting in long lines to be seen and apparently some people wake up at 5 in the morning so they can be there when the hospital opens and already there will be a long line.

Lastly we went to lunch which we thought would be at a restaurant but restaurants are lacking in Delft so we went to someone's HOUSE where this big ol lady had prepared a feast for us....a feast featuring chicken in every dish. So the disproportionately high number of vegetarians in the group (4 out of the 10) had nothing to eat.

On Thursday we visited Muizenberg, another township and specifically went to the neighborhood of Vrygrond. It used to be an area only made of sad little shacks (not even made of metal like the other ones I saw). But the government gave them grants or something (I didnt' really understand...) and now the area is much nicer. We first went to an elementary school and went to the recess area while the kids were having recess-CHAOS. These kids LOVED us and they were all clinging to us and playing with our things and posing for picture and running at us and playing with us. Cute little African kids, shucks. Next we went to a scrap metal shop...I guess they wanted to show us how people could make their own businesses there? But it was cool. We visited another school and they sang "The Other Side of the Mountain" and "I'm a Little Tea Pot" for us. Then we visited the library which was...a library. But very small. Then it was lunch time for us and we went to this house (where I feared a repeat moment as in Delft) but it turned out this guy was opening a restaurant in his house and they had made veggie samosas and veggie rice with lentils. The samosas were good, although at one point on of the ladies told me the plate of samosas she had placed before me were vegetarian and I ate half of one before realizing it had meat in it. )-:

After Delft we went to Kirstenbosch which is a huge botanical garden. We listened to a guy give a speech about the loss of biodiversity in South Africa and Cape Town. This area is home to some of the rarest plants on earth but the government does very little to protect it.

On Friday we had a talk from a former IHPer. It was really sad actually-the first part was amount all of the rodenticides kept in peoples' houses that children get into and eat and die. One kind of rodenticide gets covered with food and left on the floor so the rats will eat it but some children in the township are so hungry they eat the food on the floor and then they eat the poison and get sick. One little girl was so hungry so was just LICKING the dust off a rat poison pellet and got sick from it. Another type of poison is a clear liquid put into reused bottles that previously had drinks in them. then they are sold at drink places next to real drinks and when they sell the rat poisson they don't tell people it's not WATER do people DRINK it. Yikes. We also learned about child labor on farms, particularly vineyards and the poor conditions. Many children are sent to work starting at the age of 5.
This is me on my bike, about to bike from Cape Point to the Cape of Good Hope.
This is a ray from the aquarium I went to. He's smiling!
One of the lovely little penguins from Simon's town. They love posing for pictures.
Simon's town beach-pengis!
The first part of the hike at the cape of good hope.

YEAH. atlantic ocean.
view of cape of good hope. isn't south africa pretty?
the evil babboons that will steal your camera and beat you up. notice this guy getting the hell away
this sign says "babboons are dangerous and attracted by food"


So that's it for now. Actually, I regret to inform you that I may not post again until...Vietnam? I'm leaving for Langa tomarrow, a township (I know, you're all thinking "why would she go to a township after all the stuff she's just said about how dangerous they are?") and there's pretty much nooo internet there and chances of me getting back into town are slim. And then I'm on a weeklong spring break with my parents so....signing off for now. Love you all!