Little Pink Houses

Well I goofed and put today's pics with yesterday's blog and vice versa. Under yesterday's you can see the Malay Quarter and the giant aloe tree in the Company (as in Dutch East Indies). The pics listed here are from yesterday when we worked in the gardens (see the greenhouse we fundraised for) and went to the gold museum.

This morning we went to another school in a township to work in their garden. (On the way I saw a LaFarge cement truck.) The school was closed b/c the strike continues. A reminder that we are still in Africa and so things don't always run on our schedule. We worked for several hours to do an Extreme Makeover Garden style. We made and prepared beds, pulled weeds, etc. We then left to return to the hotel for a late lunch. The colored (South African for mixed or mulatto) woman who works for the AB Foundation as their garden/environment expert said that they are doing the gardens to teach these city kids how to grow food, take care of their environment, and eat healthy meals. She also talked about how unsafe she felt at times, b/c she doesn't belong in that township, and South Africa has a well known record for rapes (and children are quite vulnerable too). We were safe though as a group.

In the afternoon we took a tour called the Freedom Tour beginning with the District Six Museum . It's an awesome museum!!!! District Six was a neighborhood where the apartheid gov't made a colored area white and forced everyone else out by tearing down their houses. Like similar situations of urban renewal in the States it rips apart families' extended networks and puts people into new communities where they are anonymous. This raises the stress level, lack of support (critical esp. in places without social security/welfare/etc.) and leads to increased crime. After a while the gov't promised to rebuild and put the families back but they still haven't. The land is now being promised to developers for the World Cup. It's a hotly contested issue.

The tour continued to give some history of the area in general. We went past the Parliament Buildings originally home to the Dutch East Indies Company (the first big international corporation/gov't like entity...like on the tv show Serenity). Most people think of slaves as coming from Africa but in South Africa most of the slaves were imported from the Malaysia/Indonesia/etc. The Dutch Reformed Church baptized slaves and freed them after 25 years (did not return them home). Slaves you can't sell though aren't much of an asset (ie they don't have a marketable value). Eventually that practice changed.

We moved on to walk past the gardens. Ironically the parliamentary building were where the apartheid policies were voted in but across the street is the church of archbishop Tutu. We passed by the Garden House where the president works (not lives). There was a big statue of Rhodes. People either love him or hate him here. He was the founder of Debeers (sp) diamonds. I don't hate him b/c he was wealthy but b/c he took away Black and coloreds rights to vote and participate in gov't. In the gardens we saw squirrels brought over by Rhodes from the US b/c he liked them so much. We also saw a huge Aloe tree--like two stories high at least! (here I'm supposed to mention something about a rat that Margaret saw...)

Our last stop was the vibrant and colorful Malay Quarter where the houses are painted in bright hues (including a pink house). This area is on Signal hill, so named b/c a shot was sounded at high noon daily (except on Sun) so that ships who were entering the bay could set their chronometers. The houses are neat and is the area that the freed Asian slaves lived. This area is a largely Muslim area. Religious divide is not an issue here b/c no religions are oppressed. This part of town is being gentrified and houses are now being sold for $600,000. This is of course changing the composition of the community.

One last thought...at dinner there was a hot sauce on the table bottled here called "Bushman's Fire". ha.