Our Tour of the Township Khayelitsha.

Today we went on a tour of the township Khayelitsha. It was the most fascinating and wonderful experience. Khayelitsha is the third biggest township of Cape Town and between 500.000 and 1 million people live there. The township is situated on the outskirts of Cape Town in the Cape Flats. The name Khayelitsha means New Home.

During our tour of this township we went to Mama Amelia's house. Mama Amelia takes in abandoned children and raises them as her own. This place is not an official orphanage and she runs it with a few other women volunteers. We we're all lucky enough to meet her and visit the children she cared for. At the time that we were there she had 95 children, the older ones were at school so we met all the very little children. It was so nice to see what she had done for these kids and so nice to meet them. The children were extremely friendly and not shy at all! Even though we couldn't understand each other we got on very well with the children and played with them for some time. They were all so cute and very friendly!

Here are just a very small amount of the pictures I took today:

Here are all the little children singing a song for us as we left the house. The sang in English and said good bye.

One of the little girls. She was fascinated by my digital camera and loved being able to see the pictures that I had taken of her.

This was the little friend I made. She was so sweet and sat on my lap for the entire time that we were there.

These two little girls must have been the happiest two there, they couldn't stop smiling.

Another little girl who liked her picture being taken very much.

A local shop.

The shacks, these were also called 'smartie box houses' because of the beautiful colours.

The tour of Khayelitsha really was the most amazing experience. As poor as the people lived there they still had a wonderful community and everyone was very friendly. Some of the houses really were the most basic shacks, made out of any material the people could find, but there were also other houses in the township made out of concrete which actually looked very nice. I definitely think though that the visit to the children was the best part, it was so nice to see them and actually interact with them. We also all made donations to Mama Amelia for all that she had done for these kids.

That was it for now. We are going to Katherine's Aunt's farm this weekend, so I will probably only update sometime next week.

Kirsten