Walmer Township

Life continues on in beautiful Port Elizabeth despite the approaching departure of its two favorite temporary residents. The last part of our adventure is being spent filling up on experiences. Although there is not a lot to tell, there is a lot to show.

While we were in Port Alfred we mentioned to Mrs. Lees-Rolfe that we would like to help out in one of the townships and get more involved there. She suggested we get in contact with the Summerstrand United Church. Following our weekend getaway, Gretchen began sending out e-mails while I continued my student teaching at Pearson.

We were able to get in contact with a program that reached out to Walmer Township…

Just a re-cap. Townships are areas in which the black population of South Africa was forced to relocate during Apartheid. Although Apartheid has ended, there is much work to be done and much of the black population still live in these areas. Unfortunately, the townships are rampant with poverty and there is a large drinking problem. These two facts contribute to squalid living conditions for the people there. One could write volumes of books about why things continue to be so bad. However, ours is not to question why, ours is but to serve and try.

Continuing…There is a soup kitchen there as well as a brick-building project. Soup kitchen is fairly self-explanatory. The brick-building project is actually a great idea. Unemployment in South Africa is somewhere in the range of 40% at this point so it is difficult for the few men in the townships who WANT to work to find jobs. With the help of Summerstrand United, men spend the day making bricks and then sell them. The church barely makes enough to pay for the materials, but the hope is to get the people in the township to take ownership of their situation and work towards getting themselves out of it.

In addition to the brick-building project and soup kitchen, there is also a vegetable garden. This is another attempt to make Walmer Township residents more self-sufficient…to paraphrase, if you give a man a cucumber he eats for a day, if you teach a man to garden he eats for a lifetime!

It is not surprising that I have found myself working more with the children. They are in desperate need of love and attention. So, I spend my time there reaching out to the children. There is one girl who speaks fairly fluent English, but I have found that with a little effort (and translation from Nomala) I communicate with the other children as well. Gretchen and I were a little timid with them at first because the children are not well kept and disease was on our minds. However, we have gotten over that and now greet the children with hugs and high fives for all.

Here are some pictures of the place we go in Walmer Township. It was incredible how much the kids liked getting their pictures taken.

This is a typical residential area in the townships

We served soup to the children first. They would come up and get the soupe out of plastic buckets and put them into any container they could get a hold of.

This is a picture of me with the children we see every Wednesday.

We have had amazing adventures joining lions on the hunt and seeing the incredible beauty South Africa has to offer. This was an experience of a different type that will remain with us for the remainder of our lives.