Cape Town day 3

We've had a couple of busy days. On Friday the focus was community engagement. Some days we walk to our destinations and other days we use a tour bus company to take us places around Cape Town.  On Friday our bus took us to the Edith Stevens Wetland Park.  This conservation area lies between several townships in the Cape Flats area, and was started by a woman who bought land to try to save a rare plant species. (Isoetes capensis for those that are interested - endemic to a small part of the Western Cape). The city of Cape Town added more property and it is now about 96 acres.  Local community members were involved in cleaning out construction debris from the property and community engagement has been part of what happens there ever since.  Environmental education and just the fact that this beautiful green space is available to the community make it a gem.  But what seems just as important is how it is used as a place to bring together people from various ethnic groups.  The divide and conquer strategies of the apartheid government have had a lasting impact and deep impact.  The awareness of apartheid designated racial categories remains strong - "native" (black), "coloured," "Indian" (or "Asian"), "white."  Mixing of non-whites to break down barriers is important work here.  

      Our day also involved splitting into two groups to walk through part of a township that had suffered a tornado in about 1999.  Tornadoes are a very rare event here and one of our guides was astonished to know that we come from a state that could have a hundred in a year.  We were able to go into several homes, with our guides pointing out the much better quality of the older buildings (not destroyed by the tornado) compared to those built by the current government in 2000.  (There is a lot of discontent with delivery of services by the ANC run government!).   A highlight for a couple of our fashion and apparel majors was encountering a woman running a clothing design business out of her home.  A visit to a preschool (called an educare center) was a highlight for the other group.  

      Next was a visit to a local high school.  Underfunded schools is a universal problem.  Although there is some level of government funding, schools in more affluent areas can charge school fees to decrease class size, etc.  The per pupil spending by the government is higher in poorer areas, but it can't make up for the disparities.  Unequal educational opportunities is a clear problem.  The school we visited was in what was (and still is)  a coloured township.  They were proud that the school was getting more mixed - we were puzzled at first, seeing not one white student, but soon realized they meant the black student population was increasing.   You can tell it never gets very cold here.  Some hallways were covered porches. 

     Lunch as a fantastic picnic catered by a group of young people learning to do catering and work in the tourism industry.  We tasted foods for a variety of cultures, listened to the drumming of a very talented 8 year old boy, and were treated with a demonstration of some traditional songs and dances.  We ended the day back at the Edith Stevens Wetland Park with a small project where we helped remove several nonnative plants (from North America!) from a small area of the park.  

   Busy day!