Our sponsors were busy on Tuesday (29/10), so we spent the
day at lodge debriefing about what we saw on Monday and planning the rest of
the week. Wednesdays are typically
reserved for meeting with our advisors, getting some writing done as a group,
and sharing our experiences with other groups. However our liaisons (Baraka,
Sizwe, and Olwethu) wanted to meet with us on Wednesday to discuss their ideas
for our project. Since we had used
Tuesday as a writing day, we agreed.
At Scott’s suggestion, we decided to take the train to the
CORC office in Mowbray, Cape Town. We
left the lodge around 13:30, and as we were walking downtown we saw a lot of
trash in the street, which seemed uncharacteristic of the clean city of Cape
Town we had been seeing so far. We also
noticed some police activity and wondered if something was going on, but it
didn’t hinder us from getting to the train station. We found out later that apparently there was
a political riot around where we were at about exactly the time we were walking
through there. We’re still not really
sure how we missed all the excitement, but we got through it completely
unscathed and unaware of any commotion.
We were a bit confused by the train station, but after
talking with some friendly workers, we were able to purchase our tickets and
made our way to the correct train. As we
were sat on the train, we heard two women walking through the cars singing for
money. It was a hauntingly beautiful
song accompanied by the jingle of coins in a tin. Three of us avoided making eye contact with
the beggars as they walked by us, but one of our team members noticed that the
serenading duo consisted of a young woman leading an blind elder, presumably
her mother. After they passed, we all
looked at one another, and knew that we had witnessed a scene of true African
poverty.
We got off the train in Mowbray, and realised that in our
primary concern of getting to and navigating the Cape Town train station, we
had neglected to find directions to the CORC office from the Mowbray train
station. Though we had been there on
Monday, we had taken a cab to get there.
All we knew was the words of our advisor “It’s about a 5 block walk from
the train station, the route should be rather obvious.” In light of this advice, we made the obvious
decision to cross the tracks and head toward what signs indicated to be the
centre of Mowbray. We reached a major
intersection and intended to cross the first of our presumed 5 blocks, when a
man yelled and pointed at us from across the street. He clearly wanted something from us, and
began to cross toward us. Unnerved, we
quickly decided to turn right instead.
In my peripheral vision I saw the man give up his pursuit of us and
board a “crazy taxi”. Relieved, we
decided to cross at the next intersection and head back on track.
At some point in this our directional skills apparently
failed us, and after walking about four blocks we realized that we were utterly
unaware of our whereabouts. Panic
threatened to descend upon the team with the realisation that we were in fact
lost in a foreign country. At least we
still had half an hour until our meeting. We inquired at two different shops if
anyone could point us in the direction of the road we knew we had to go
to. None of them seemed familiar with
the street. Thankfully, one man pointed
us in the direction of the police station.
The clerk at the station showed us a map on the wall and informed us
that we were actually on the wrong side of the train tracks, and pointed out
the route to get to our destination. I
took a picture with my iPhone (I carry it around out of habit, though it
doesn’t work as a phone here), which he recommended hiding while we were in the
street.
We set out, embarrassed, and finally found our way to the
CORC office. We arrived at 3:10 for our
3:00 meeting, so on time for Africa. Our
sponsors didn’t even say anything.
The meeting was very productive – we learned so much about
our project and what our sponsors want us to do. One thing we learned is that there is a
section of Langrug called Zwelitsha where there are roughly 500 families and no
toilets. The problem with this area is
that since Langrug is built at the base of a mountain, this area is at the
highest point and it is very difficult to pump clean water up there and manage
the sewage/runoff water going down.
Thus, dry sanitation options (i.e. toilets that don’t require water) are
probably the best options for this neighborhood. It is likely that our project may involve
working in this area.
We called a cab (a company called Sport Taxi) on the way
back to the lodge, because we had a project centre dinner at 5. We waited on the curb, and a cab pulled
up. I asked if it was from Sport and the
driver said yes. However while we were
halfway home, Sport called us and said they had arrived. Oops.
However, one of my group mates left her South African phone in the cab. A little while after we got back, several of
the people with us who were in her phone got a call from the cab driver
explaining that he had it (though he was really hard to understand). Apparently when he noticed the phone, he came
back and rang at the gate, but whoever answered sent him away because they
didn’t know him and couldn’t understand him.
But this cab driver called her contacts until he reached my partner, and
came back at 11 pm when he was in the neighborhood again to drop the phone off. So even though he lied to us about being from
the company we called, my faith has been restored in humanity.
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