Khayelitsha

Growing up in South Africa, I never believed I would ever set foot into a township let alone find myself doing dishes in a home in Khayelitsha but this trip I have found myself doing exactly that! It was an amazing experience.

We intially went in to Khayelitsha to deliver some of the donations we had brought to South Africa. We were blessed to have Otto, the new minister at my old church, as our guide. He took us to the home of a lady who cares for children who are disabed in some way. Back in Australia these children would be placed at one of the many schools adapted speciafically for children with special needs but in Cape Town facilities for these children are almost non existant! There are two special needs school in Cape Town but both of these only take children who are 'high functioning', the type of children that in Australia would be intergrated into main stream schools! In South Africa if you have addititional requirements there is no-where for you to go and many of these township children are kept locked in their shacks with no carer while their parents go to work. What other option is there when you are barely living on the breadline! Disability is truly invisable in South African culture.
So bless Patience, she cares for as many of these children as she can while their parents are at work and sees to it that the children get to their appointments at the Red Cross Children's Hosiptal.


Two of the children in Patience's care.

After our visit with Patience we visited a lady who had recently lost her brother. Titi had been a school teacher before she retired and unlike the thousands of shacks that blanket the landscape Titi lives in the type of house you would find in any middle class suburb. I never imagined Khayelitsha had brick homes! Anyway, we had a lovely tea there and while the girls were chatting I went and washed up. It was almost that in those few hours I had a revalation. Much of what I had been taught at school under the National Party Government had been false and like so many white South Africans I was living under false assumptions and fear of things that had happened decades ago.

On the way home we stopped at Langa (another predominantly black suburb) for vetkoek! Vetkoek is kind of like a doughnut with no filling and these were some of the best I had ever had! Who would have imagined.....