Having ended my journalistic adventures at the Daily Voice I am now spending my last days here in Cape Town working in a nursery.
It is located in Vrygrond (pronounced: Fry-krund), an extremely poor area that is just a 15-minute drive from the middle-class Southern suburbs where I am staying.
On the approach nothing prepares you for the sight of a McDonalds on one side of the road where there are nice, big, heavily guarded houses all around and on the other side decrepit, one-storey shacks as far as the eye can see.
I’m working in a crèche on the edge of this township where you feel a bit safer then you would if you go further into it. All around are homes constructed from brick, wood and corrugated sheeting, cobbled together from whatever can be got.
There is electricity and water but there is high crime and the stories you hear are not pleasant. The remains of a two-year-old child dug up and a six-month old baby being raped are just two horrific stories I’ve been told in the last week.
The government has long promised to move these people in to proper housing but they are slow on that promise. So millions remain in these unplanned settlements where there is a real sense of community but a real lack of facilities that we take for granted.
That said, facilities at the crèche I am working in are very good when compared to others nearby. There is water, electricity, brightly painted walls, toys and books, desks and chairs, and lots of room for the 40 children that attend.
I and three other volunteers act as help to the three full time teachers who look after three different age groups, all pre-schoolers, all ridiculously cute. They are inexplicably delighted at the sight of this giant, lump of an Irishman coming in every morning and attack me from all angles with hugs and high fives.
It’s not so much a job having to look after, play and read with these children for a few hours every day as an honour and joyous privilege.
Across the road from the crèche some of my fellow volunteers are running an enterprise project, helping local people to set up their own businesses. They also run workshops, training locals to use computers so they can have a better chance of being employed.
It’s just a shame these people seem to rely on the help of foreign volunteers and are not afforded these kinds of opportunities from the government.
I learned recently that South Africa has one of the biggest poverty gaps in the world at present and on the evidence of areas like Vrygrond that is not about to change anytime soon.
Making New Year's non-resolutions.
(Sun 17/01)
Taking over the Mersey trains
(Thu 05/11)
A very alternative trip to Leeds
(Thu 15/10)
South Africa's modern day apartheid
(Thu 20/08)
Working in a Cape town nursery
(Tue 28/07)
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