Cultural Tour Day!

The interior of an herbal healers shop in the township of Lana

Today was my cultural tour day. I spent the day going around to three of the different townships in the Cape Town area. We started the day off with a stop at the District 6 museum. District 6 was an area of Cape Town that housed blacks, coloureds, and cape malays (using the terms they use) before an an act during the apartheid era (sometime in the '60's) that forcibly relocated the people in the community.  Since the end of apartheid, the South African government has given areas of the land back to some of the original residence of district 6, and they're rebuilding the area. It's slow going however, and this is what the area looked like today:

This was once a bustling road. Now it's a dirt track with a few remnants of bricks that used to pave it.

We then toured around the townships and got to interact with some of the people. We stopped at a B&B, Vicky's, that's world renowned. It was kind of crazy as it was right smack dab in the middle of these shanty homes, and it was a very nice B&B. The people in the area and Vicky, the owner, were really friendly and awesome. There was a krish, a day care center, in the back and we stopped in and hung out with the kids for a bit. I brought my video camera and turned the LCD screen around so they could see themselves, check out their reactions. They were so excited to have visitors! Apparently it was less packed than usual, as most of the kids are on holiday. You can see the size of the room, and there are normally 70 kids in there. (I had to make it super tiny to make it upload, I'll get to an internet cafe at some point while I'm here and post a hi-rez version)

- (The video is SERIOUSLY not working... I will try again soon, trust me its worth it, they're adorable)

A lot of these townships offer their communities support through arts centers. Basically, they take a segment of the population, usually women, have them come into the arts center and teach them skills like pottery and weaving. They then sell these goods and the money goes back into the community, and in some cases they offer child care. I ended up buying a hand crafted mug and a hand weaved bag from two separate places. 

That's all I've got for now. I've got some more penguin stories to share that I'll get uploaded this week - WITH PICTURES! and hopefully some video! I finally worked in Pen 10 and helped wrangle Lionel. More to come!