See you again soon! & time to see the unseen...

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That night it was time to go out for Kim and Kevin’s farewell dinner as they were leaving to continue on with their travels. We invited Steph and Liz and Cassidy to Africa Café- a really neat restaurant that specializes in all different types of African Cuisine. When you are seated they start bringing out small sample portions of food from all over Africa, if by then end of the samples you are still hungry you are welcome to ask for seconds of any of the food, there was NO way any of us were hungry after eating all that they had to offer. We also ran into Don and Laurie who were also out on their last dinner in Cape Town., turns out Cape Town is a pretty small city, seeing as that we ran into EVERYONE left in South Africa from the tour in the week we were here. Don and Laurie were nice enough to treat us to a round of Amarula liquor as an after dinner treat.
The next morning Kim and Kevin left early and I took a day to wash and organize my bags for my stay in London, it was couple of days early for packing, but I wanted a head start. That night Liz and Steph took me to one of the 2 Irish pubs in Cape Town to watch my first Rugby match. Liz was an excellent coach and helped me to understand all of the basics of the game.
Monday morning we joined a township tour to see the illegal settlements and shanty neighborhoods of Cape Town. Our tour was supposed to start in one section of the townships, but it had been blocked off due to riots. The Cape Town government is trying to relocate the people from the townships so they can build proper housing but the people don’t want to leave. The problem resides in the sheer number of people who are crammed into the townships. When the new housing is built only a fraction of the people can move back as the new housing can hold so many thousand. So if there are 60 thousand living in the township, they have to be relocated, then once the housing is built there will only be room for about 22 thousand people to move back. So everyone is very worried about whether or not they will be able to return.
So our tour actually began in the 2nd quarter of the township. We went to a child care and employment center. Inside the mothers from the area bring their kids to the child care center while they weave mats, bags, coasters and much more that they then sell from the office. We were able to walk through the workshops and see how they weave their mats- some of them are so intricate! There were some amazing pieces here- I chose a green, black and orange bag, it felt good to know that the money was going to such a great program and such talented women!
From the workshops we drove through the streets looking at all the “houses”- I use that term loosely, I don’t know if you can call some of these structure houses. Most of the houses were built out of corrugated metal, scraps of press board and anything else that one could find to build with. The roofs are held in place with discarded tires and chunks of cinder block bricks… And how many houses there are!! It is amazing to think that in a neighborhood no bigger than mine back home there are about 30 thousand people living there! These houses are sooo small, but a family of 5 might live in a house the size of some of our backyard sheds… It was incredible and sad at the same time.
We stopped at a school in the area that was partnered with Liz and Steph’s hostel, it was full of kindergarten aged kids- they were amazing! So friendly! They all wanted you to pick them up and once you had them in your arms they didn’t want you to put them down. And talk about wanting their pictures taken! I thought I was going to lose my camera to some of them. They love looking at themselves and trying to figure out what all the knobs and buttons on my camera did. 
From the school we went to a local shabeen- an illegal pub. Here we were treated to the local brew…. This time I had to drink it out of a metal pail… I still can’t say I like the taste of sorghum beer. There was a very nice local man who decided I should share a seat with him so that I could watch how to properly drink beer and get a couple of good snap shots.

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