Langa

You can goole Langa, but from the satellite view, you won't see what I saw.

Random thoughts ......

there is only one road into Langa.  This is so that if the police need to "contain" the area, they only have to contain one road to prevent anyone from coming in our out.

There are 13 different barriers to exit Langa and get into the other Townships where Langa people work. This means that if you live in Langa, and you work in Pinelands (where I am living), that you might have to navigate a major highway crossing, a double barbed wire fence, a ditch, an empty space where the power lines go, or 9 other obstacles to get in and out of Langa.

Random images of Langa:

Trash in the gutter
Trash behind shanty-town shacks
The smell of feces
A pair of purple boots on a 2 year old - boots that I would have paid top dollar to own
Sheeps heads cooking on an open grate by the street
Cows heads cooking on a different open grate across the street
Trash
One room hovels - no electric, no plumbing
People, sitting, standing, milling around .... people just having nothing to do.  Not today.  Not yesterday. Not tomorrow.  People just sanding around.

Kevin (one of the fellows) was talking about the sense of community that he saw, beyond the poverty. People joking around, being happy with where they are, a sense of family.

Many of the students that attend LEAP Schools live in Langa.  Each morning, the bus drives through Langa and picks up children.  Each evening, the bus returns them to Langa.  During the day, those children often get one meal at the school. Many days, that is their only meal of the day.

And yet, everyone I saw had on clean clothes.  Women wash the clothes in a big plastic bucket outside of their homes. Maybe kids in Langa are more careful with their clothes and don't get them dirty, or don't spill chocolate or ketchup on them, because I think I would be hard pressed to keep my kids clothes that clean and unstained.

And, everyone had cell phones.  Not cheap cell phones, such as the South African one I bought the other day for $70 Rand ($10 US).  No, these kids have iphones and Blackberries.

Why??  Because it is a status symbol, and their key to the world.  Through these smart phones, these kids can get the internet.  They have access to the world.  They don't know what to do with it, but they do have access.

I took no photos of Langa, it just didn't feel right.  The poverty felt sooo huge .... it would have been flaunting that I was there to have photographed it.  The White Woman goes to Langa ... sort of thing.

I am thinking now that, as the sun drops, that many of those people are going into their tin shacks.  They are sitting on the dirt floor, or the broken plastic chair they bartered for. They are eating the part of the sheeps head that they did not sell.  Or more likely, they are not eating at all.  Students from the LEAP Schools have been dropped off by the bus, earlier in the day, and maybe they were able to do homework.  But how much homework can be done in a one room shanty town shack that doens't have electricity??

Of all of the days I have been here, today was by far the most difficult.

And tomorrow is Guguleta. Which, according to others, is even worse.  And my big Med Clinic project is in Krafontaine.  Krafontaine makes Langa look like the luxury suites at the Marriott Hotel.

I know I can do this, I have been through worse emotional situations.

I  can do this.