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Published: January 25th 2008
It’s been a while so this contains a lot of news - be warned! So, where to start? Back in Cape Town - seems like years ago - with our amazing last night meal at Khaya Nyama a game restaurant. We started the evening with mind blowing cocktails (a BB King & a Bob Marley) at Zula’s then sat in a restaurant full of stuffed animal heads and tacky “pretend you’re out in the bush” décor. However, looks can be deceptive - fantastic carpaccio’s of crocodile, kudu, springbok and ostrich, followed by juicy & mouthwatering warthog ribs and a skewer of eland, springbok and kudu (apologies to all vegetarians!) served with samp - made from corn (or mealie as it’s called here). And great jazz music from a duo on drum and guitar.
Next morning we loaded up for the long Greyhound bus trip to Durban. Packs are bloody heavy!! We stop to say bye to Wouter at Flight Centre then rush to the station for a 2½ hour wait; the coach is delayed! Entertained by a guy from Durban who shares his local knowledge and his lunch -great chips!
The journey is surprisingly good. We’re upstairs so have
good views of the countryside and manage to sleep quite well overnight. They also play about 5 films which are great for distraction (Coyote Ugly and Die Hard etc). M also making really good progress with Long Walk to Freedom - never seen him read so much or so fast.
First impressions of Durban are mixed. It’s a blazing hot day and humid , and the seafront is packed with families. They have loads of facilities - free pools and funfair things for the kids as the sea can be quite rough with lots of rolling waves - it’s a surfers paradise. Where we’re staying though - Banana Backpackers - is on the edge of the central area and not hugely salubrious! Decide to move on the next day. (There’s a great resource for backpackers in southern Africa, a book called Coast to Coast. Has details of hostels and other services e.g. tour companies in all the main destinations where the Baz bus takes backpackers. We’ve used it a lot.) Wake to find the police staking out the neighbouring building!
Central Durban is like any seaside city with high rise flats & hotels etc around a large bay
area, however the city spreads for miles - and everyone seems to complain about how hot it is. We never realised anyone else in the world would be so obsessed by the weather as the English are. We found the weather great & comfortable in most part - it was a bit uncomfortable some evenings when the humidity got higher & the sea breeze didn’t come in far enough.
Tekweni backpackers in Morningside is great - much better vibe and a nice area. Here for a few nights as TAFTA (The Association for the Aged.) have arranged for us to stay at their homes. We have some great food experiences though! A wonderful Indian restaurant (Chicken Tikka Palace) where we get mutton curry, butter naan, chicken tikka and kebabs - go there for take outs and M’s birthday, and beautiful fish and chips from Skippers. Also, good pizza’s at Europa’s near Tekweni which also has free wifi! Use this to webcam with the family back home. Durban is has a large Indian population & their main area for food etc is Victoria market where we head to for the locally famous bunny chow - vegetarian curry served inside a
hollowed out loaf of bread - tasty or what!
TAFTA is an impressive organisation. They achieve a huge amount with limited government funding but a lot of hard fundraising . Femada, our main contact who heads up the social workers team, and Seema who manages the volunteers programmes, meet us and give us a run down of their work. This year they need to raise 6 million Rand to provide their services and meet the costs of opening new projects (so if you are reading this and looking for an organisation to support, think of TAFTA). Rental income is based on the incomes of those they accommodate so they provide economic (ie more upmarket homes) to subsidise the sub-economic provision.
Their services include sheltered housing, assisted living and frail elderly care together with community projects such as meeting rooms/halls, pension collection points, health clinics, meals on wheels, home help, and the amazing Amaoti project which is a departure from the normal work but ground breaking & much needed (more later).
The standard of sheltered housing is very much like the UK 20 years ago; bedsit rooms with shared facilities. All meals (3 a day) are provided though.
As supper is at 4-00pm many take along Tupperware boxes and keep it for later or use them as doggy bags & save food from lunch time.
They have arranged for us to stay and work at two homes; John Dunn House(JDH) which provides 30 “golden years” ie sheltered homes and 57 frail elderly beds, and John Conradie House (JCH - right on the seafront) which has over 225 residents - mostly active elderly but some assisted living and frail elderly provision. Both are predominantly sub-economic.
We’re taken to JDH by Marshnee, the social worker, and we meet Lynette, the manager, and her husband Graham, the handyman, and also Sister Jane who leads the nursing teams; she’s from Surrey originally and has lived in Zimbabwe and SA for 27 years. Lynette is a powerhouse and soon has us working putting up new curtains, serving meals and washing up. She & Graham look after us really well, taking us to the shops and beach. Very much appreciated. Once a week the project has a health clinic at the Service Centre - nurses, doctor and optometrist - open to all the community. On the day we assist 250 attend &
we try & help out! The centre was funded by the community and is managed by Patsy - a great woman with a sharp wit. We’re invited to the committee meeting, and are inspired by how much these volunteers do to support the vulnerable in their neighbourhood.
JCH is managed by Barbara - another great woman, backed up by Connie, Dinah and Kenny (in the kitchen). Here we meet more inspiring volunteers; Cecil and his wife Carol who run Good Luck Foods providing meals and outings for the elderly and vulnerable people including lunches to 1500 children (many orphans) daily, and another project - MAD (Make a Difference). They are at JCH providing a tea party for the frail elderly residents where we assist & get fed. They rely mainly on donations and work virtually full time.
The residents at both schemes are incredibly welcoming and there are some great characters and we learn a great deal about how life has changed over the years from people of all races with their stories of life under the old order. At JDH we meet the Dunn sisters from Eshowe - great grand daughters of the white Zulu Chief John
Dunn (a Scotsman); he married 48 Zulu women and had 117 children so probably most of Eshowe are related! Not quite sure why he was the chief - clearly took advantage of the local women folk - randy sod!!
Jane (a resident) at JCH takes us under her wing and is a bundle of energy and mischief despite her age. She relates that under apartheid white children went to school at 5, coloured’s at 7 and blacks at 9. Black kids also had to leave school at 15 to do 2 years work before they could carry on to further education. Pensioners were also differentiated; white pensions were higher than those for coloured’s, which in turn were higher than those for blacks. And whilst pensions were paid monthly for white’s and coloured’s, blacks only got their’s every 3 months.
For two days we get to visit Amaoti Village - a community development project. We are taken by Teresa the senior social worker in that team and Bukisani a qualified teacher & now trainee social worker, who amongst other things runs the after school club. The village was established after a local landowner (Mr Brooks) gave some land to the
local community association, Ilongo Labadala, to be used for the elderly. They brought in TAFTA who have now provided 16 bedsit cottages for the elderly - some of whom have grandkids living with them as their parents have been aids victims, a 6 bed assisted living unit, after school centre for 42 deprived kids (mainly orphans due to HIV/AIDS), an organic community garden project, community hall, second hand shop, beads and crafts work room and a community kitchen that feeds the people that use the hall as well as the kids in the after school project (to make sure they get at least one decent meal a day). They also have two children’s cottages - which accommodate orphans with a foster mother, and employ a paralegal to help the community with claims for grants, and make court applications in domestic violence cases - many of which involve elderly abuse. They did get some provincial funding but most of it was funded by donations.
We meet Mimi who lives in the children’s cottage. She was looking after her 3 siblings from the age of 10 when her parents died and only came to the authorities attention when she took her
baby brother to a clinic as he was malnourished. A grandmother in another cottage has two grandkids she is supporting out of only her pension as their mother is too ill. She isn’t able to get any income for the children until the mother dies.
It puts our challenges in the UK firmly into perspective!
Sabatha runs the organic garden project which is focussed on skills development as well as enabling the pensioners to supplement their pensions with home grown food. He provides an explanation of the current political machinations within SA which is very insightful. He also takes us for a visit to the John Dube memorial (founder of the ANC) where we meet Dube’s 77years young daughter; she relates that he established the first school for black children, taught by black teachers. We then go on to the house where Gandhi lived in an area called Phoenix. It’s now a museum to his life and hugely informative. Great bonuses that we hadn’t anticipated.
Part of the arrangement with TAFTA is that we make a presentation to a multi agency committee on the provision of affordable housing in the UK. Susan pulls out the stops and gets
some photo’s of Hastoe’s schemes to us (thanks Suse!) and we exercise our brains on work matter for the first time in 2 months ( giving us a headache)! We’re supposed to speak for 20mins but with all the questions and discussion it takes over an hour. We think they found it useful - we certainly learnt a huge amount too. They’re very envious of our funding opportunities and also interested in shared ownership as a model! Margie Smith, CEO of TAFTA, was at the meeting. It was her daughter Lisa that put us in touch. Thanks Lisa - and thanks Margie too. We had a terrific experience.
Beyond TAFTA we also managed to fit in some exploration of KZN outside Durban. Hiring a car for a weekend we travelled to Eshowe and Zululand where we visited a Zulu village and enjoyed some amazing singing and dancing. The landscape is stunning too; lots of very craggy but very green hills - not at all what we’d imagined from films etc. One of the challenges in SA currently is the over demand for electricity. The result is load shedding - or power cuts to you & me - by rotation
in most areas. It hits Eshowe at lunchtime just when we fancied a Nando’s! Hey ho!
We also spend a day at the North and Central Drakensberg’s. Again, stunning scenery. We head for the Ampitheatre in the north in the Royal Natal NP which is a sheer escarpment at the top of which is Lesotho. We picnic lunch by a stream with the Ampitheatre as a backdrop. Then head for the central bergs which are possibly even more scenic. Would have been great to have time to go trekking but not possible within the time. Really pleased though to see outside Durban; we’d been told that KZN was beautiful and it is.
And so we are now at the end of our African adventure. Tonight we meet with Femada, Seema and others from TAFTA for a goodbye meal which will be a lovely way to say farewell, and tomorrow we head to Jo’burg (meeting Mandie from the last leg of our overland trip again for dinner) before flying out to India on Sunday. See you then!
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Myriam
non-member comment
Hi
Hi both. Thanks for those wonderful updates. I am really impressed with their length and quality. Don't worry, you are not missing much back here! Lots of love xx