susys running away to sea

"The rigors (sic) of an expeditionary lifestyle"

Saturday, November 29, 2008

In which Thabang takes us for a trip to the townships and I swig maize beer ..

Thabang bursts into the guest house in a whirl of neat black dreads, lime green fleece and the ever-gusting wind. He's taking us and four other people on a tour of the townships, those miles of shacks, tin huts and block houses spreading miles over the sandy flatlands beyond the city limits. A result of apartheid and enforced social engineering and forcible removal, the first sight of these shanty towns is daunting - and makes me feel like a prying whitey visiting an alien species in a ragged zoo. I'm uncomfortable - definitely not frightened, despite dire warnings about murder, mayhem and mugging back in the UK - and ask Thabang if anyone minds being stared at. He assures us they want people to visit the townships. And that's what we are - not tourists, but visitors.

We visit, admittedly, the legal areas. Not the better block houses, nor the illegal worst cobbled together bits of wood and plastic sheeting, but the middling wooden and tin shacks


Oh, eyes closing .... more later, peeps.

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