Inspiration

Thursday, July 8th

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Today, I took a day off from work to go meet up with Talia again (Yay, BN awesomeness!) to go to Khayelitsha (the largest informal settlement in South Africa, whose name is Xhosa for "New Home"). Talia discovered this amazing organization that has an extremely environmentally friendly guest house in the heart of the settlement. She thought I'd be interested in helping out with their website; indeed, I am.

The place is called Makazi's Guest House, and it's basically the most awesome thing I've encountered in a long while. Everything is environmentally friendly: it uses solar power (they're adding a wind generator soon), minimal running water, it composts all human waste, and it's entirely made of sand bags. However, from the looks on the inside, you would think you were staying at a first-rate hotel. The pictures I've uploaded really don't do it justice, but I hope you get the idea:

Sooo cool.

Inside Story: Sandbags. Roughly 1% of the carbon expenditure of a standard brick house.

Me at the creche!

The engineer in me just couldn't stop getting excited every time I saw another lamp that had been re-made into something else, or an old cabinet made from a locker, etc. We met Di, who was the leader of the initiative, giving us a preview of what was to come. Apparently, the guest house is part of a larger coalition called the Indlovu (means Strength in Xhosa) Project - read more about it in this article here - which runs a soup kitchen, free health clinic, creche for local children, and much, much more. They are constructing more space next to the Guest House to make room for conference rooms, computer training area, and skills development rooms (ranging from hospitality industry work to sustainable gardening to modern cooking!). Di said that the idea is that the people who partake of these services are able to begin to make a living for themselves and get out of the informal settlements. However, she stresses that the ultimate goal of the project is not pure charity (while of course remembering that sick and elderly people often can't provide for themselves) : "I believe that everyone has to work for something if they want to get something; so we recognize that for real results, people are going to have to put these skills we teach to use."

Di's vision was some of the most inspiring work I had heard about in a long while. Best of all.. I really think it's going to happen. Apparently, she's starting to get some media exposure (Sir Ian Mckellen donated a large sum to them!), and with a newfound media team (with me onboard!) working on the website and social media in our spare time, she'll be well on her way to getting the resources she needs. The main thing she said she needs is more volunteers staying there and working there. She currently had only one staying in the guest house and volunteering for two months (he was from Canada).

Anyway, after we left, I just couldn't get over how amazed I was by the whole ordeal. The hope within this community is inspiring - you can't leave this place and not want to just go out and CHANGE THE WORLD, after you see how hard everyone else is working to do it. I keep seeing more and more that the people in poverty here don't simply want charity - they want to show the world that they are ready to be self-sufficient. With more people like Di, these dreams can become a reality.

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There's only 9 days left in my stay in Cape Town. Has it been a long time? Yes. Am I thankful for the experiences? More than you could ever imagine. I've started to realize that there is so much of the world still left to see; so much to experience, to encounter. I'm realizing that the essential goodness of the human nature is a powerful force, something more powerful than government or crime or anything else. But more than anything, I am thankful to God for the opportunity that I've been given to give back to the community here, and have the community give back to me. If there's one thing I've learned from the BN Summers of Service, it's that service is NOT a one-way street; it's an experience that changes both parties involved in often unspeakable ways.