Zimbabwe - Dismal politics, stunning nature

On our long drives through Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia or Malawi, we often see similar images flash by through our car windows:the life on the side of the road, the bustling markets with loud music blaring, the colourful clothesworn and the patterns on them, thewarm smell of burning grass or rubbish in the air, seeing people walking for miles and miles, women and children carrying enormous bundles of wood, baskets, or water canisters on their heads. Yet as soon as you cross a border and take in your surroundings, the unique feel of each country engulfs and consumes you. The distinct energy of each place and its people is of course shaped by a complex combination of its culture, socio-economic situation, history, and attitude of it’s people, amongst many other things – discovering the essence of that new energy each time we spend time in a new country is one of the highlights of this trip.

When we entered Zimbabwe through Mutare, situated in the beautiful eastern highlands, it didn’t long for us to dive right into the new atmospherebuzzing around us. It’s difficult to describe, but having witnessed their country’s decline over the past two decades and having been forced to sacrifice so many things, Zimbabweans are resilient and down-to-earth people. As often happens in the face of hardship, people move closer together, and in Zimbabwe there is a community spirit that could teach the world a lesson. The common Southern African expression to ‘make a plan’ is central part of life here. ‘If something is not working, fix it. If you can’t fix it, live with it, or, change your life’ (overnight if need be) – is the commonly accepted attitude. No one sits on their hands and complains. People work hard and take all the hardship in their stride. This kind of mental strength and generosity, combined with a deep love of their country and culture, are the keys to their survival.

The first night we stayed with the parents of one of my Zimbabwean colleagues from PASSOP. We cooked local beef stew and sadza (the staple food made out of maize meal eaten in most Southern African countries) with them over the fire (the electricity was out on most nights, they explained) and asked lots of questions about what life was like for them. The father, now retired, told us how tough things have been and still are: “I worked my whole life at the national railway company. Now I am getting a pension of $25 per month. It is difficult. And there are many, many people like us here.”

Around a third of the country’s educated work force (teachers, nurses, mechanics, etc.) is estimated to have emigrated over the past 10 years, when unemployment rose to between 70-90%. The people that were employed by the state saw their salaries plummet to $180 a month and were often not paid for months on end. No wonder Zimbabweans have had to be so resilient and inginuitive. Everybody seems to be doing something on the side to bring in some cash. But that is not enough. It is estimated that up to two-thirds of families (particularly in the southern regions of the country) are sustaining themselves through remittances sent from relatives working abroad in Botswana, South Africa or further afield.

We drove around Harare a few days later, taking care of the obligatory errands that need to be done whenever we are in a big city. The city centre was, as most major African cities are, buzzing with people pouring over the traffic-packed streets from all directions. Harare’s city centre is an odd mix of a few modern-looking sky-rise buildingsand South African fast food chains that seem out of place against the backdrop ofthe deteriorating sidewalks, faded old street signs, and the poverty that is apparent all around.

Needing a break from the busy streets, we found a park and decided to go for a walk. We had only walked 200 metres when I heard our car alarm go off. I turned and saw one of our doors open and a guy inside the car. We yelled and started sprinting back, when we were just 50 metres away they jumped in another waiting car and sped off around a corner before we could see their license plate. They had smashed a window. Luckily, we have a solid metal ‘safety box’ in our car chained to the chassis in which we keep our most valuable things (laptops, cameras, passports, etc.)’ but the thieves had grabbed my wallet and two of our backpacks. Nothing too valuable, but frustrating to try to replace nonetheless.

As I sat for several hours in the police station that afternoon to report the theft I couldn’t help but notice the uncanny way in which the the station mirrored the state of Zimbabwe today. It was in a once beautiful old house that looked like it had weathered many storms. But once inside it was plain  to see that the years of neglect had really taken their toll: the old wooden floorboards had several huge holes in them, the walls were brittle and the plaster was crumbling off, debris that had fallen from the ceiling was laying around on the floor, and a thick layer of brown dust covered the whole place. The room smelled musty, the little sunlight that trickelled in through the cracks in the dirty windows was not enough to lighten the dimness. The grim-looking police officers – all armed guns several decades old – sat around looking bored and Comrade Bob’s (aka His Excellency President Robert Mugabe) framed picture hung above them on the wall,over-looking everything with fierce eyes, anauthoritativeexpression and his irritating trade-mark Hitler mustache. It was eery; it was sad.

But what happened to Zimbabwe is just that: sad. Like many other African countries it had such promise when it gained its independence. After a productive first decade of independence, in which large gains in life expectancy, education and health were achieved, the last twenty odd years have seen the country slide deeper and deeper into political repression, turmoil and economic failure. 

“I am tired of politics” Nyasha, a self-taught aircon mechanic told us the next evening in Kariba, 300km north of Harare.“I’m 40 years old now – all of my adult life I have had to be confroted with it.It’s always the same: the ‘liberation fighters’ are the only ones who think have the right to make decisions. If you were too young during the liberation struggle, you have no voice. Until those dinosaurs are gone, nothing will change. At the moment we are stuck.” We met many people like Nyasha that told us the same thing: they have given up on the hope of change while Mugabe remains in power and are doing the best they can in the face of the circumstances. They have just been through too many years of disappointment; it has drained them of their fighting spirit. (continues after the pictures)

Tendai's family making us feel at home

Harare's busy streets

Azure blue water in some caves a few hours north of Harare

The highlight of our brief time in Zimbabwe were the three days we spent in Mana Pools National Park. The magic of the place stems from its remoteness and pervading sense of wild and natural – you won’t find many other tourists here, especially not since Zimbabwe has received so much negative attention over the last decade. What makes it unique is that it is none of it is fenced in. We camped on the bank of the majestic Zambezi– during the days we watched elephants swim through the river, while hippos lazed out in the sun and monkeys launched a steady flow of stealth attacks to steal whatever they could from our campsite; at night hyaenas brushed up along the side of the tent looking for scraps of meat, while a pack of lions growled in the distance somewhere.

In most national parks you get in trouble for just leaning out of your car window too far; here you are allowed to walk around the wilderness amongst the animals. The first afternoon there we wanted to double-check, because it seemed a bit of a stupid idea to be walking around with lions and leopards without a trained guide with a weapon, so we asked a local ranger whether we had understood the rules correctly. “Well, there aren’t really any rules when it comes to walking around.. Just use your sensible judgement. And if a lion or an elephant charges you, just stay calm.”

Umm, ok, great advice.

The ranger’s response left us with more questions than answers. What ensued between the three of us was an hour long debate about how safe it was to walk around, and how far from the car we should go. Yanis held the view that the only reason there was an absence of rules was because Zimbabwe was a ‘failed state’, and therefore we should be very cautious. I took another view, and tried to rationalise it by comparing it to being in the ocean with sharks, who are just as scary predators but 99% of the time they are not interested in us humans. Elias just wanted to go shoot things with his little bow and arrow. But in the end curiosity outweighed caution, and so we got up at 6am the next morning after a sleep-deprived night (the hippos grunting close to our tent was so loud – and I admit we were nervous of what lay ahead the next morning), drove to a remote spot, parked our car and went into the bush just as the sun was rising.

As we started walking we reminded each other of the three rules we had agreed on: keep quiet, stay alert by looking in different directions, and stay within 20 metres of a climbable tree. We felt on edge when we first started walking, but our nerves soon calmed down and a feeling of endless freedom took over, washing through us, clearing our senses and allowing us to take it all in. Over the next four hours we walked across meadows, climbed trees, crawled through high grass, jumped over streams – all the time surrounded by elephants, herds of big and small antelopes, warthogs, crocs and hippos, as eagles soared above. The early morning sun bathed everything around us in a soft golden and green light. It didn’t feel real… but then again, it felt as real as it gets. What is sure is that it was humbling – the kind of feeling you can only get when you are somewhere completely remote in nature and are overwhelmed at just how small you are.

At one point we stumbled across a herd of 200 buffalos that started stomping the ground and walking towards us when we got too close. A little later we found the massive paw prints of lions, followed them for a while, butwhen we heard them growl a few hundred metres away in the bush out of sight, we quickly walked the other direction. (last short part below these pictures).

Lion tracks

Freedom

Our night-time visitor

Zambezi sunrise behind at our camp

To understand this picture, read the next short part

After a few hours, when the sun had risen higher in the sky, it became hot quickly and we started the long walk back. Back at the car we were sweating, parched and dying to get a drink of water. “Open the car man, I’m so thirsty, what are you waiting for?” I told Yanis impatiently, who had the only bag we were carrying. “I looked everywhere, the keys aren’t in here.” Pause. “What!?” For the next 2 minutes we searched and re-searched the bag and our pockets desperately hoping that the keys would appear. But we soon gave up as the reality of the situation sunk in: we had somehow, somewhere managed to lose the keys on our 4-hour mission into the wild. What an ‘oh shit’ moment that was.

We knew there was a spare set of keys in the car, which left us with two options: go back into the bush, try to re-trace our steps and hope to find the keys, or break a window and use the spare set of keys. But we all soon agreed that we had to go back and at least try to find the keys, so without much ado, we set back off, this time on a jog – more or less abandoning our three rules. With the African sun now high in the sky, everything felt burning hot, sweat was pouring down our faces and our mouths were completely dry (we still hadn’t had anything to drink) - and we all hate jogging. Needless to say, spirits weren’t exactly high. “Well, at least we’re making dad proud” we joked as we got going. (If you don’t know my father, let me just say that he considers this kind of physical strain ‘fun’.)

Our hope was based on the one reference point that we had deduced: the car keys could have fallen out of the bag if they hooked on to something else that we took out - the only thing that they could have really hooked on was the slingshot we had taken with us (it couldn’t really hook to the camera, sandwich, etc.) - and Yanis had only taken the slingshot out once (to shoot the base of a tree on top of which a massive Fish Eagle was perched – Elias wanted to take a picture of it taking off in flight). So we set out to find that tree – the unfortunate thing was that it was pretty much at the farthest point away from the car on the hike.

We ended up being able to trace our own footprints most of the way and made fast progress. When we reached the base of the tree, looked around, it wasn’t long before  Elias shouted “Victory!” holding up the keys. At that moment, it was all worth it.  I guess the lesson we learned took from it is if you try to bother a fish eagle to get a nice picture, karma is going to get you back.

That night we were so exhausted that the hippo grunts did not wake us from our sleep.

Roadtripping Africa - Part 1: S.A. and Mozambique

I’m sitting under a palm tree looking out onto a white sand beach where the fishermen are just bringing in their catch. It feels like I’m in some cliché post card of a tropical paradise with torqouise blue waters in the background. Yanis is sitting next to me in the shade under the tree (he’s trying to stay out of the sun at the moment, because he’s worried that his first-time beard is going to get more ginger than it already is) and Elias is helping the fishermen pull one of the boats ashore. We’re in Vilankulo – half way up the Mozambican coast – and life is good.

Since we rarely get to be online (this is one of the few hostels with wireless internet) I thought I’d update all of you guys on what we’ve been up to over the first month of our trip.

Leaving Cape Town was tough for Yanis and me. After spending the last three years there I’ve grown really attached to the place, to say the least. The easy lifestyle, the massive waves, the nature, the amazing NGO I helped build up, the good friends, our infamous adopted dog Marty – they were all hard the leave behind, and so I found the good bye harder than usual. But we’ll have our family home in our little spot in paradise there for years to come!

After picking up Elias in East London, we spent the first few days in the Transkei, a rural area in the Eastern Cape province, one of South Africa’s poorest, and most beautiful, areas. We camped for three days on a deserted beach at a river mouth, spending our days hiking down the coast looking for waves (and finding them – although we also saw a serious looking Zambezi shark – so we didn’t surf for too long), fishing and diving for crayfish; and the nights sitting around our bonfire braaing our catch of the day, laying in our sleeping bags looking up a night sky with more stars than I have ever seen, and catching up with Elias and all his stories from his first year at University. (continues below)

Our campsite in the Transkei

Rolling hills and ocean

The view from the top of our Transkei campsite spot

Getting mobbed by kids at a local school

We have quite the ideal set-up for this road trip, by the way. Not only do we have the perfect offroad car, we also have all the camping gear, from a car fridge, to a cooking stove, a hammock, an awning for shade, a table and chairs, a solar heated shower thing, mosquito nets, etc. – we even have a dual battery system in the car with an adapter with which we can charge our computers and carmeras. Long gone are the days which we spent backpacking around Europe sleeping on park benches and under bushes because we couldn’t afford hostels – this is roadtripping in style, my friends. We are spoiled for sure.

After leaving the Transkei, we drove through Durban and we were almost at the Mozambican border when something we didn’t see coming at all happened – Arnie, our beast of car, overheated and went on strike. I guess on a roadtrip, especially one this long and ‘extreme’, something is bound to wrong with the car. Yet still it was a shock that it happened. Apparently the fan cooling system wasn’t working properly, but neither was the temperature gage, so we couldn’t tell that the car was getting hot, until it was too late. It was very expensive to fix and we were stranded for a week - it so it was a bit of a nightmare that awoke us from our bliss, but we tried to not let it get us down and made sure it wasn’t lost time.

We spent the week in the little town of St. Lucia while we waited for our car to get repaired.  It’s in a beautiful wetland nature reserve, with hippos walking the streets of the town at night and crocs lazing on the shores of the estuary during the day. We even saw a leopard on an early morning drive to a nearby beach. The owner of the hostel we stayed at made us feel at home – introducing us to all kinds of locals, taking us around and making sure that we had a good time. He and all his friends were Afrikaaners, and they braai-ed meat for lunch and dinner every single day we were there. (continues below)

Sunset behind our hostel in St. Lucia - hippo in the water

Not impressed by the bad news

Visiting the local school for Letters to Juba

Kudu - king of the antelopes

Getting back on the road felt good. We crossed into Mozambique through the southern-most border, at Ponto d’Ouro, which is only accessible by 4x4. Being back in Mozambique after 15 years felt amazing. Although I was only 10 when we left, as soon as we got to the outskirts of Maputo, and saw the city from the other side of the bay, many memories that were gray for so long were filled in with colours, sounds and smells. It felt like very little time had passed - the jacaranda trees lining the sides of the streets, the people walking down the broken sidewalks, the beautiful but decaying old portuguese architecture, and the rhythm of life there were all just like I remembered it.

Some things had certainly changed: there were lots of new developments and construction sites, fancy cars driving in the streets, prices that were comparable to those in South Africa, and corrupt police officers that pulled us over every 10 minutes seeing our foreign license plates and looking for an easy bribe. Patience is of the essence, because they came up with all kinds of ‘infractions’ which we were allegedly guilty of. Apparently you need a reflective vest, a fire extinguisher, and two red safety triangles in your car – we had done our research beforehand, so we came prepared. But after one said that the mistake we had committed was to drive leaning our elbow on our rolled down window, I lost my patience. Pointing at another car driving past us, with the driver also leaning his elbow on the open window (as one does when it is 30 degrees and humid), I told him quite firmly (as good as I could in my broken Portuguese) that they can’t just make up laws, and that I would rather have him try to take us to the station and lock us up than pay him a bribe for such a lame attempt. Eventually him, and all the others, let us go, once they realised that we’re not the easiest of targets. And besides the one case, we usually manage to joke around with them. One young police officer even admitted that he needed the money from bribes to pay for his studies. (continues below)

Back in Maputo after all these years

The fish market in Maputo

Elias has talent in taking pictures - most of these are from him

Domingo showing us around his village

We only spent three days in Maputo, but we filled our days with all kinds of things. One afternoon we went to the famous fish market, where you can choose from a hundred different types of fish, shrimp, lobsters, crabs or calamaris, and they cook it for you while you listen to the local Marabaneta music and drink a cold Laurentino local beer. Elias said it was the best meal he’s ever had.

After Maputo we headed 7 hours north to Tofo, a little beachside spot with a great surf break and famous for its many whalesharks and mantarays. During our four days there we got quite good at cooking different types of seafood, using lots of garlic, lemon and spices – and of course coconut rice. The gardener at our hostel, Domingo, became our friend, taught us some Mozambican cooking skills, showed us around his village and spent hours answering our many questions. We left him one of our surfboards, and he told us he’d be ready to come surf the point break with us by the time we come back in a year or two.

Now we are on our last stop in Mozambique, in Vilankulo, which is right next to the famous Bazaruto Archipelago. We are taking a boat trip there tomorrow, and I’ll be sure to have my go-pro charged to get some amazing underwater shots. On Wednesday we’re on to Zimbabwe, where a whole different type of experience awaits us, I’m sure. For now, let me get back to enjoying the view from within our little tropical beach postcard. 

The next adventure: Letters to Juba

Letters to Juba

...sharing experiences of 50 years of independence

It has been fifty years since most African states were granted their freedom from European colonial powers.

 Looking back, the first half century of independence has for most of them been one plagued by corrupt rulers, economic mismanagement, extreme poverty, conflict, hunger and rampant disease.

On July 9^th 2011, South Sudan officially gained its independence and became the world’s youngest state. As this country begins on its long and surely arduous journey towards development, one can only hope that it will avoid many of the same pitfalls and mistakes that lead to underdevelopment in virtually all other African countries.

The conditions do not look promising.

For the better part of the last fifty years there has been war between the South and the North of Sudan. Shortly after independence fighting erupted in several regions as armed rebel groups from either side of the border are demanding power. Most of the fighting is in the border regions where the oil is located. Every other week there is an attack on a village, refugee camp or oil pipeline.

About 98% of national income is derived from oil revenues. Oil has been a curse to development in so many other African countries, exacerbating corruption and stifling innovation in other productive areas.

The country also suffers from severe underdevelopment. It has the lowest literacy rate out of any country in the world: only a quarter of the population can read and write. It also has the highest infant mortality rate: one in every nine children dies before they reach their first birthday. 

For a country that faces so many simultaneous challenges, where does on start? For a nation of people that have only known violence, how do you make it stop?

I want to go there to see all of this for myself. I want to contribute my little part in the birth of this new nation.

In late February 2012, my brother Yanis and I will be packing up our little VW and driving from Cape Town to Juba, South Sudan’s capital.

En route to Juba we will drive through South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda.  The journey will take three months.

Along the way we will engage as many people as we can in each country. Teachers, artists, youth leaders, doctors, elders, refugees, politicians, beggars, academics, children, journalists, dissidents and whoever else wants to share their opinions with us.

We will ask them three questions:
1. What do you think are the most important issues facing your country?
2. What do you think are the causes that lead to these issues?
3. What advice, warnings or messages of support do you have to offer to your newest African brothers and sisters in South Sudan?

What can the South Sudanese people learn from the failures and successes of its many African neighbours?  This project is based on the belief that the answer to that question is ‘a whole lot’.

South Sudan is a democracy, at least on paper. The people have the power. If the people are educated they will be able to hold their government to account.

To guide and share experiences of fifty years of independence, Letters to Juba hopes to become a pan-African platform for the sharing of ideas and knowledge that has the ultimate goal of promoting real positive change.

There will be a number of concrete outputs from this project

1. A blog in which we will detail our journey, the impressions we gather and the people and places we encounter. The blog is meant to become a platform for the sharing of ideas. We will market it widely to encourage people to submit their thoughts to the three questions.

2. A number of articles about the things we encounter during the journey, published in various newspapers and magazines in South Africa, Europe and the U.S.  

3. A photo journal. It will tell the stories and show the pictures of some of the many people we speak to.

4.    A youth leadership project in South Sudan. The aim of the project will be to educate and motivate future leaders of the country. Funds for this project will also be raised through donations from the public and donors.

5. A report of the key findings of our discussions with the many people we meet along the way. Our target is to collect the contributions of at least 1,000 people in the eight African countries we will travel through. We will submit this report to the Minister of Social Development in South Sudan, as well as representatives from the United Nations and various embassies. We will also try to get the findings published in an academic journal.

Refugee Stories - Patrice from the Eastern Congo

Although continuously overlooked by the international media, the situation in the Eastern Congo is among the worst in the world. The Second Congo War, beginning in 1998, devastated the country, involved seven foreign armies, and lead to the death of 5.4 million people, making it the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II. Although peace accords were signed in 2003, fighting continues to this day, as warring rebel groups continue to rape, torture and murder unabated. It is estimated that around six million people have fled the region in the conflict broke out thirteen years ago. 

Over the past year I’ve met quite a few refugees from the Eastern Congo through my work at PASSOP. A few weeks ago I wrote down Patrice’s life story in order to help him apply for asylum in South Africa. His story is full of violence, pain and loss. It’s hard to believe that it’s all true. But it is. Perhaps what is even harder to believe, is that there are millions of others from the region who have a similar story. I’m just telling one of them. 

Patrice was born in South Kivu Province in the Eastern Congo in 1980. He grew up amongst poverty and violence. Mobutu, Congo’s (US-backed) dictator from 1971-1997, used international aid money and the country’s vast minerals to enrich himself while letting the country deteriorate into a kleptocracy. He is said to have embezzled over $4billion and kept it in Swiss bank accounts. He ordered that every bank note and public building had his picture on it. He also renamed himself Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga – which translates as ‘the all powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, shall go from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake’. (It seems I have finally found someone who has a bigger ego than my brother Yanis.)

Patrice’s, and the country’s, fortunes did not improve when Mobutu was disposed of in 1997. The fragility of the new government triggered the outbreak of the Second Congolese War in 1998. Patrice’s father was brutally murdered by Hutu rebels as the violence erupted.

A week before his 18^th birthday, and shortly after his father’s murder, rebel fighters attacked his home village. Patrice was severely beaten and forced to watch as his mother and 15-year-old sister being raped.

The violence continued until Patrice was finally forced to flee his home in 2001 to seek refuge in neighbouring Zambia. For the next six years he lived in different refugee camps in Zambia along with tens of thousands of fellow Congolese refugees.

Zambia did not offer Patrice a reprieve from the violence. In the massive refugee camps he was targeted for having a Rwandan name and accused of being a government spy. Patrice was threatened, robbed and beaten several times. On one occasion in 2007 he was beaten so viciously, his attackers broke his jaw, nose and ribs, puncturing a lung, and was left lying unconscious. He spent two weeks in hospital recovering. Although he reported the threats and the attacks to international NGOs, his warnings fell on deaf ears. The international NGOs and the UNHCR had time and again shown that they were unable to ensure his safety. He made up his mind that he would return home to South Kivu in Congo.

His hope of returning to find his family healthy was shattered when he got home and found out that his mother had fled the area, his older brother had been murdered, his younger sister had been raped by soldiers, and his family’s land was gone.

Aggression from his community forced Patrice to flee his home once again. He hid in a nearby city and slept under trees and in the local market to survive.

In 2010, Patrice found a new job at a mine in North Kivu Province. It wasn’t long before violence caught up to him there. After just a few months on the job, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu rebel group, attacked the mine, killing 80 people and forcing Patrice and nine others to carry stolen supplies into the bush. Deep in the bush, Patrice was raped, along with all the others. The rebels mutilated the women’s genitals and breasts. Patrice and the other survivors were then left in the bush for dead. They spent a week surviving on fruit, and eventually forged through the forest to return to the mine. 


Concerned by the lack of response from the Congolese army officials in the community, Patrice spoke out  and suggested solutions to the local commanding army officer. For these criticisms of the army and the government, Patrice was targeted by the army. Patrice was once again forced to leave his country and return to Zambia.

Patrice at our office

However, after being refused asylum in Zambia, Patrice was deported back to the Congo and subsequently arrested by state security on June 20th. Luckily, he managed to escape jail after five days and decided to flee to South Africa in order to save his life. En route, he made his way through the Congo, Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique. In Mozambique Patrice was arrested for being an illegal immigrant, robbed of his money and stripped of his clothing. He was left for two days in a jail cell covered in feces before being eventually abandoned on the side of the road.

A month ago, Patrice finally made it to South Africa. After helping him apply for asylum here last week, he is now starting the long waiting process for the result of his application. But he’s safe - for the first time in a long time. 


After he finished telling me his story I told him how moved I felt, and asked him how he is doing in South Africa now. He said: "It is sometimes hard but I believe I am now out of that sphere. Since I arrived in SA my mind is quite okay. I haven't found any job, I am always just promised but never fulfilled. But I will be okay."

No better place - my friends and I surfing in Cape Town

Two months ago I got a GoPro waterproof camera from my parents and my friend Robin. Since then we've tried to record some of our adventures here in Cape Town. I am working on putting it all together in a short movie - the clip below is a trailer for that movie. It's my first time editing - hope you enjoy it!

Wake up

I came across this poem today. It spoke to me in its simplicity and honesty.  

The funny thing about fairy tales is that we forget about them so fast

We grow up, we buy things, we build up fences

We sell our innocence and forget our dreams

We forget who we are in order to be something we’re not

And we’ll keep believing in these so-called truths, until we forget how to live

Or until we open our eyes, and wake up.

Fire in Masiphumelele

The fire swept through Masiphumelele township in the middle of the night. It started just after midnight and grew to such a force that firemen could not contain it until six hours later. Not one of the 40,000 people in township slept throughout the night. 

When the sun rose, 1500 shacks had been burnt to the ground – almost 5000 people displaced.  

This is how my friend Sipho retold the experience to me the next morning:

‘We could smell the smoke in the air before we heard the shouting outside. I opened the door and went outside looking in the direction of the fire. The air was black with thick, heavy smoke.  It was hard to breathe, hard to see. I could hear the fire rumbling in the distance, like a monster growling for food. I could hear the muffled shouting that the stiff wind carried to us from the direction where the smoke was coming from.

Cleaning up - the metal on the left will all be used again

‘All you can do is pack as many of your things as you have time for and get out of your house. I knew I still had some time before the fire would reach me and I thought of my sister, whose shack was where the smoke was coming from. I ran towards the fire.

‘When I got there, it was like a movie...The fire was so big, it looked like it was moving in slow motion. It was ten metres high and 100 metres wide. People were running everywhere, carrying as much as they could and dragging their children behind them. I couldn’t get to my sister’s shack, the fire had already swallowed it. 

‘I went looking for her, and found her at a friend’s house. She was fine, but crying. She had only had time to grab her ID documents and a handful of small valuables before the fire forced her to flee. She knew she had lost her house and all her belongings.’

I went to Masiphumelele that morning, after I woke up and saw the lights of the emergency vehicles in the distance from my bedroom window.

When I got there, the heavy smell of burnt waste lingered in the air. It was a grey day and rain was quietly falling, turning the ash into a black sludge.

If only the rain had come a few hours earlier.

The destruction I saw was immense. Hundreds of makeshift shacks made from wood and corrugated iron were burnt to the ground. Where once stood a maze of hundreds of haphazardly built homes was now reduced to nothing. What was left were charred cars, burnt furniture and melted plastic toys.

I heard stories of people who just had time to grab their children and run before the fire wiped out their homes. It is a miracle that only a handful of people died.

The black ashes had not yet cooled, smoke was still rising from everywhere, and yet people all around me were starting to clean-up, sort through the burnt rubble and to rebuild their homes with whatever useable materials they could find. Everyone was helping each other.

What else, but to rebuild, could they do?

What is left of the PASSOP Help Desk Office

Whereas most other NGOs had their offices in the more developed part of the township, safely away from the maze of shacks that so easily light up in flames, our humble help desk office was in the heart of the township. It too got burnt.

My colleagues and I helped our neighbours rebuild and they helped us clean up. We felt proud to be one with, and be part of the community in such a sombre way. We heard that some of our volunteers and neighbours had poured water on our little office for hours in the middle of the night to try to stop it from burning down. They saved most of our furniture and supplies.

We repaid their loyalty to us by spending several days organising clothing and food donations and raising money to contribute towards all they had lost.

But in many cases, money or food or clothes, don’t provide the help where it is needed. One of our Zimbabwean volunteers had had an appointment to get married three days later – he lost his birth certificate and passport in the fire and so will now have to wait for many months, if not over a year, before the inefficient Zimbabwean authorities issue him with replacement documents.

It has been five days since the fire, almost all the shacks are now standing again. It looks like the same maze of wood and scrap metal shacks, leaning slightly to one or the other side, only now most of them are empty inside. No beds, no chairs, no stove, no pots and pans. 

All of this - and all the little prized possessions - like a CD player or a fridge - takes people months and months of saving and borrowing to be able to buy. Now they have to start over.

But despite that, there was no feeling of resignation anywhere. The attitude was one of acceptance; as one local volunteer summarised: ‘It happened before, it happened now, and it will happen again. It’s part of life in a township.’

People have been hardened in the face of poverty, HIV/AIDS, unemployment, exploitation and other hazards, like fires.

How much tougher they are than us.