Social pornography

With only a week to go in Cape Town, I've realized it is necessary to speed up the sightseeing and stop spending time getting annoyed over (once again) the new Facebook. On Thursday I had talked the Sudanese friends of ours in to come on a wine tour to Stellenbosch. We started at Cheetah Outreach Centre, an awareness centre for cheetahs and I got to pat six-year-old Joseph. Considering he can get from nought to eighty in three seconds I was quite impressed with my dare devil attitude, but then again, when people have been coming up to me with sloppy, slimy dogs who bark and smell, I've always sneered - I'm a catperson!

Anyway, after this introduction to the African wildlife we continued our very civilized wine tour (at least compared to last time). We only managed to down one bottle between the three Norwegians, and the one tasting we could've done we were late for, so no wine for us, really.

Then yesterday, I'd decided it was time for a reality check and a visit to the shantytowns of Cape Town. You wouldn't want to enter the townships by yourself, and even in the company of our guide I felt extremely uncomfortable. Not because I felt unsafe, as I am quite sure these tours are banned from being robbed by the locals, if not they'll stop running and there'll be no tourists spending their tourist money on pearl bracelets, but because of how I felt we intruded people's privacy. It is social pornography, walking into people's homes, entering their bedrooms (one guy was asleep), and leaving a few coins at the door. Anyway, the guy took us around the Beverly Hills of Langa, and only stopped 100 meters from Joe Slovo, the biggest informal settlement in South Africa, with 20 000 inhabitants, unemployment of 70-80 per cent and an HIV statistic not to be proud over. I think I'm glad we stopped there.

After Langa we went to Khayelitsha and visited a pre-school. The cute children sang and danced for us, and I felt really obliged, and quite happy, to buy some souvenirs from the shop where their mothers worked. From Khayelitsha we went to Waterfront which is the rich as, posh Aker Brygge/Darling Harbour lookalike area and onto the boat to Robben Island. We were taken around the island, visited Nelson Mandela's cell, and enjoyed the panoramic view of the city. As we were going back in, we were all tired, exhausted after a long day with many impressions, but at least it had made us realize that there's a heck of a long way from Camps Bay to Khayelitsha.