Cape Town Tour

     Ok, this one is gonna be a big one.  Today was the Cape Town tour and I will try to remember as much as I can about today.  First of all, Tyler accidentally forgot to click the Saturday box for the alarm so we were almost late which freaked me out super bad.  that was kinda a stinky way to start off the day, but then we found out that our buses were air conditioned, so a good for a bad I guess.  The fist thing we drove by was the biggest township in South Africa: Khayelitsha.  Anyone who doesn't like reading about sad things can skip through this part.  This Township is about 1.8 miles long and 1.5 million people live in it.  There will be pictures below at the end of the paragraph.  I have never seen poverty like this before, nor do I think that I truely thought it existed.  There are so many people in these two miles that they can't even build schools in the township big enough for all the children.  It was extremely hard to look at.  Our tour guide was really wonderful, and he was telling us about what it's like in this township.  He said that even though it is so poor and so cramped the people have high spirits because they have hope.  I can't imagine living in a place like that when I can see Cape Town in one direction and the vinyards of Stellenbosch in the other and have hope.  It has been said that the average person living in the townships survived on 1 rand a day which is about 13 cents.  The government is really trying very hard to help them.  They have started building houses for people who make 3,000 rand a month (386.27 a month) or less.  Unfortunately, there are still many people moving into the city trying to find a job that it is impossible for the government to provide for everyone, but at least they are trying.  Not only are the townships insanely poor, but they are very dangerous as well.  I am not even talking about the people.  These houses are so close together that if a fire started the fire trucks would be unable to get to the house to stop the fire.  This means that whenever one house catches on fire, thousands of people are homeless.  As I am looking at this seemingly hopeless place our guide (who was absolutely wonderful) started quoting Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela about hope and freedom and it really touched me.  I don't know what else to say about this place, so I will just post all the pictures.



These are the new houses that the government is building.




Only some of the poeple in the township get electricity.  Those lines at the top of the picture are the lines to the people who get them.  Some people in the townships are doing it illegally which is making the chance of fires go up.



     Our guide was explaining to us about how during apartheid the government used rail roads to seperate where the black people lived from where the colored people live and where the white people lived.  It was really interesting driving through because even now there is a clear difference in quality of housing between the three.  Despite how bleak the township looked, Cape Town (only a few miles away) is absolutely beautiful.  The first place we went in Cape Town was the Company Gardens.  These gardens were originally used to grow vegetables for the markets and such, but now it's just a really beautiful park.



Squirrels at this garden are not afraid of people at all.



Sneak Shot!



I have no idea what this is, but there were quite a few of them walkin around.



Rose garden =]



Oldest Synagogue in South Africa.

     The garden was really cool, but it was really hot.  After the garden we went to this MASSIVE mall.  When I say massive, I mean there is a Farris Wheel at this mall.  We ate there and then went to the beach.  The beach was actually not very hot, but the sun was very bright so we both got burnt.  The water was freezing.


That's Jonatan in the corner.

Another sneak shot =]

     After getting burned we went back home and ate.  Of course Tyler had a sandwich, but I had curry top ramen.  It was so good!!  We need it in the States.  The bishop is picking us up for church tomorrow morning so I should be able to tell everyone all about it in my next post.