Kwamashu -- A Durban Township

Last weekend I had the opportunity (along with about 15 others) to visit one of Durban's townships, supposedly one of the best-known townships in South Africa. I was very excited about the trip, and I'm happy to have done it.

Our trip wasn't just to the township though... we also went to a lower-middle class area of multi-family houses and an area where the government is building more houses in a township. These stops were to give us something to compare the township to, and to give us a wider perpsective on living situations within South Africa. Our trip was guided by two of the local South African students who live in the guys' residence hall.

This is the first place we went... a lower middle class neighborhood I guess you could call it, with all these buildings that had tons of little apartments in them. We went in two different units in this area... one only had 2 rooms (including the kitchen, and the bathroom was essentially in the same room as well) and we were told it usually holds about 7 people. We also went into a slightly nicer unit which had a living room / kitchen then two bedrooms and a separate bath. I thought it was strange that they would have such different units within the same building, because it would be hard to deal with some living in fairly decent conditions and others living more or less unsanitarily. The electricity in these units kind of work like my cell phone here... on a pay-as-you-go system where you buy cards and put them in the machine and you only have electricity on when you need it, and if you can't afford another card then you don't have electricity.
The kids here loved our digital cameras! They thought it was so much fun to take pictures of us and eachother. Some of them were quite insistent on keeping the cameras for a while, and they thought they were really good photographers.

There were monkeys playing in the trees... they were really cute. These are the same kind of monkeys as we have on campus (which I've still not had my camera with when I've seen). They usually put on quite a show.

This is the view from the road... you can see there are tons of units. The van thing in the pictures is what I refer to as a combi or public taxi... it's how we get most places in town because it only costs $.50 one way.

The kids were pretty cute! Peter (below) really wanted to take one of the kids with him... the young ones were pretty shy though and kept running away from us and not talking much.
(Below) Gideon was trying to get his camera back from the horde of kids... it took him about 5 minutes and was pretty amusing.

The view of a fairly new township that is being expanded on.

These are the new government houses that are being built. We didn't know anyone who lived in this township so we walked around one of the new, empty ones to try to get a feel for it. It was obvious that they're poorly constructed, as these particular houses were probably less than a week old and the cement was already cracking and crumbling.
You can see how tightly packed they are, making the most of the land.

The inside was pretty small, and although these new versions had two separate rooms, neither of them was really big enough to serve any real purpose. Sleeping arrangements in this house for a family would be pretty cramped. The South African students we were with said a lot of times the families who are allocated these houses end up abandoning them and returning to squatter camps eventually because life isn't much more comfortable here.


This is in the old township, Kwamashu, where we spent most of our time. In this township, we went into one of the old government built houses (above) that again had two rooms (one being the kitchen) so people are basically forced to sleep everywhere. There was also no refrigerator... which made me wonder what they do for eating meat etc. but I guess they figure it out or just buy fresh. This tap and basin (below) serve as the sink for washing hands, cleaning dishes, and preparing food. It was a little unreal to imagine life like this... the brick structure is the outhouse (shower included -- with cold water). Definitely made me feel a bit spoiled. The government issued houses oftentimes serve as the started point for houses in this township... with people adding on when they can afford it. Additions are made with various materials and sometimes don't look very nice (below) but it's amazing that they're able to make a better home and life for themselves.

Animal slaughter is a big part of Zulu culture, and there are specific rules for its procedure. The slaughtering has to occur in specific ways in specific places. The shack below is used for skinning and cutting up the animals after they've been slaughtered.
This is inside one of the houses in the townships that had been expanded on. It's much nicer and has many more amenities than most houses seemed to have. They even had a computer. They made Zulu beer (in the black bowl above) and the drinking of it is almost a cultural ceremony. They burn the incense and pray to their ancestors, then drink in a certain way. While we were in there all the men had to sit on one side of the room and women on the other side. Men were always served first, with women following. The woman whose house it was makes her living by beading. The pictures below are some of her creations. They were pretty amazing. Unfortunately I didn't find any jewelry I liked, and the large beadings were very expensive. An amazing talent though, and not a bad way to make a living I suppose.


There's probably more I could say, but it's almost midnight and I've been trying to write this for a while... so I'm going to leave it at that. Hope you enjoyed the pictures and my story.