Getting serious

You can't go to Africa and not see it. It's not an attraction, rather an inevitability, and it's there, no matter how hard you try to ignore it. For us it was right next door, even in front of us, while we went to work. I'm talking about poverty.

There were suggestions floating around the house of a township tour, which to me sounded initially insensitive. It seemed wrong to go to the homes of poor people as though it was tourism. The thing I decided in the end, though, was that to get an idea of Africa as a whole, you've got to encounter its scars. Look at District 6, which used to be an interracial area full of blacks, coloureds, whites, Malay, etc. Until apartheid (still only 14 years ago!) meant that the area was evacuated of any people of colour and declared a white-only living space.

We knew that walking to work each day we would brush against the Site 5 township -- now called Masiphumelele ("we will succeed, in Xhosa) -- 30-40% of its 50,000 inhabitants were living with HIV, and all on top of each other.

Our tour was regrettably voyeuristic for the most part -- us in the van trying not to look as though we were taking photos, but unable to resist it when we saw the children. They were beautiful, standing in front of the most appalling conditions, but as soon as they caught your eye they would break out into a wide-mouthed, white-toothed smile, and it was impossible not to smile and wave back, and open the window to chat to them and show them the photos you just took. The acrid smell of roasting sheeps heads and corn would drift over the road, and tin shebeens would almost shake with the amount of people inside. Of course, just as you began to relax a little too much, there was a shout from our driver, who rolled up his window and put his foot down hard on the accellerator -- we all looked to the left to see the flash of a machete as it was weilded in a knife fight further up a side-street. That's the kind of thing that reminds you you're in a totally different world.

To counter that experience, however, we were shuffled along and out of the van (thank heavens) to listen to street performers and dance with the children along the side of a road. It's the cheerfulness and the love that shoots up in little pockets in those townships that make you really stare. The fact that love can survive or even flourish amongst those conditions, and the sense of community that means all these people would band together to help one another.

My perspectives on life were being shifted significantly.