Day 13: A Stroll to the Clinic

Today, Lungelo took me on a walk through the township to drop off some blood sample at the clinic. It was the first time that I actually got to walk around Nyanga, sadly, the highest crime and murder rate township. Houses are patched together with scrap metal and wood. Rain “proof” from black plastic bags nailed on the roof. A Monday midmorning, yet, the streets were filled with people. Children of school age, women with infants wrapped in towels on their backs, and men sitting in the shade. Why are they in the streets!! Is this why Lungelo says... people need to wake up and do something about it!? Is there no jobs offered? There is. But people don't have the adequate education to get a job. Why not? Poverty. Isn’t that a vicious cycle. No money, no school. No school, no money. At the same time, I also heard from some other social workers that the school books given in townships are also lower in advancement than regular schools – people says that it is the government’s effort to keep them dumb, so they would listen and behave. Is that true? How about social grants!? Teresa put it gently and jokingly. People get these grants and all of a sudden their life is easy. People stop going to work and just relax into the African way – live day by day. By the time the social grants are up, people haven’t done anything actively improve their living condition. They having start a shop or take some skill classes… why!? When people get money, they use it for cell phones, as you can see, cell phone booths in ALL over in the townships. Why don’t the government help them find a better avenue for their spending? And why do people do that to themselves? I asked Stephanie later on, how do you deal with the South African pace, the South African way? … You can only live with it or don’t. You need to try to push them further, but also understand that is their way of life. But, but... why. why not.