Founders Day, Hermanus and the Townshiptour!
Hi! How are you? That is how most of the conversations start here :D I usually just say 'good thanks, and you?' but there are so much more different replies on that! Some say 'fine and you?', others just say 'good good', of they just ignore it. This must sound boring, but it's actually quite interesting if you listen to it! Anyway, I'll start my real story now! Last friday, it was Founders day. This means that it was sort of the school's birthday. It was very nice though! First we had assembly, which was so funny! The drama director, Alan Comittee, dressed up as a woman and acted out an old Herschel girl. He was hilarious! After assembly we had 3 lessons. Then we had Eucharest. I don't know if I've explained that already, but it is a sort of servus in the church about the school. We sing, listen and sleep because it's actually quite boring! Then we went back to the school, where all the girls made a very long arch where the new girls and the exchange girls had to run through. It was so much fun! We ran through and tripped sometimes, but it was nice! Oeh a teacher just came up to me and said: 'These are nice earrings, but unfortunately they are the wrong ones. Take them out now!' You might say like yes that's the school rule so take them out, but the earrings that I'm wearing are the tiniest earrings I have. Very small diamonts, you don't even recognise them! I think it's good to be strict about the rules you have, but this is really a bit to much! Carrying on, I spent the weekend with Melissa and Sasha in Hermanus. Hermanus is a small village close to Cape Town. It's very nice and the food they have is delicious! We stayed in a very nice guesthouse and spent almost all the time we had lying next to the pool! The first night for dinner we went to an upstairs restaurant. I ordered the 'Rib and calamari combo' and it was the best thing I've ever had!! Delicious! The next night I had calamari again and that was very good too. I don't know if you know what calamari is, so I'll explain. It's fried octopus rings. Very nice! Tuesday Sasha and I went on a townshiptour. This was amazing, so interesting! We started at the Bo-Kaap. That is the place where the first Dutch people, 116 males and 16 females, lived. The houses where still in their original style and it looked very nice, because all the houses have such nice colors. One is blue, then the next is pink and then there is one yellow, etc. After the Bo-Kaap we went to District Six. This is an area that was greatly affected by the Apartheid. All the people who lived there had to move out and it became an area for only white people. When that happened, all the area's where people could live where devided in districts and people got placed in a district according to their skin color. Some families were split up because for instance the father was a white Dutchman, the mother was a Native African and so the children were neither Dutch nor African. They were called the 'Coloureds' and had to go to a different districts than their parents. It was horrible! Our last stop was Langa, a shanty town. It was already greatly improved though, there were also houses and hostels were families lived in. We first went to the community centre were people learned how to make pottery, clothes, art, etc. It was very nice to see how they were doing that and the things they made were really nice! Then we went to hostels. First the old hostel. It consisted out of 6 bedrooms and a living room. The bedrooms were very small, about 2 by 3 meters, and there were three families living in one room! Of course this isn't really a nice way of living, but they didn't have another option.  The building on the right is the old hostel we visited. The new hostel was much better. Each family had its own little appartment which consisted out of 3 rooms: a living room, a bedroom and a bathroom. We talked to a woman who was living there and she was so happy! She said that she loved their little house and I must say, it looked quite nice. After that we went to visit a school. We went in and all the boys and girls sang songs for us, including the South African national anthem. It was very nice. The last area we visited was the area with the real shags or 'informal houses'. It was quite shocking to see how they lived, but it wasn't that bad either. It was at least better than the old hostels we saw. That was really horrible!  I liked this image of a shanty town. It is also the background on this page. It shows that even though the people are poor, they are happy. I'm very sorry of the long update this week, must take a long time to reed, but so much has happened! The electricity went dead! This whole week, the power went on and off. We had evenings that we had to read and do everything by candle light, and days at school when we couldn't use the computers and there were no fans so that it was so hot! Apparently the inhabitants from Cape Town used too much electricity over the past few years and the generaters can't produce enough electicity to keep up with it! It doesn't happen often, so we're very happy to be here right now! (:P)  |
