Kayla on the amazingly helpful people of Khayelitsha

For this blog post, I just wanted to comment on the amazing people that I have met the past 2 times I have been to one of the townships, Khayelitsha. The 1^st time we went, we traveled with our friend Bongi who lives there and he showed us how to take the public bus to get there. I went there with Susie because we work with Amanda and Bongi with some children in an afterschool book club. The ride was about an hour and 15 minutes and it didn’t seem too hard getting there. After the book club was over, we had to take a minibus to the main taxi rink in Khayelitsha and then find the one going to Mowbray and take that one to get home. When we were on the 1^st one, a guy got in and sat in front of us. He turned around and started asking us questions about ourselves and where we were from. We got to talking and he told us how welcomed we were and how everyone there is so grateful to have us. Once we got to the taxi rink, he got out so he could show us where to find our next minibus. He made sure he talked to the guy to assure that the taxi would be going to Mowbray and that it could drop us off where we needed to be. Then he shook our hands and said it was great to meet us and then was on his way. It was amazing to feel that welcomed and to have someone care to go out of their way to make sure we were okay literally just to be nice and not to benefit him.

The next Friday when Susie and I went to go back to the book club, it was our first time taking the Golden Arrow busses by ourselves and we were a bit nervous. Once we got into Khayelitsha, we started paying attention to the stops to recognize where we had to get out. Since Khayelitsha is one of the biggest townships in South Africa, we both felt kind of lost. So Susie asked the woman next to us about the community center we had to be at and we soon realized there were at least three in Khayelitsha. After about 5 minutes, the whole bus was involved in trying to find out where we were going and how they were going to get us there. After a little while, we thought we saw the building and were going to get off but all the women didn’t think it was it. So they were saying, “stay on the bus girls! Don’t get off we don’t want you girls to get lost! It’s not safe to not know where you are, we will help you!” and so Susie and I stayed on the bus and called Bongi who also works there with us. One of the women asked to talk to him and then she figured out where we needed to be. It ended up being the building we thought and they all called to the bus driver to stop and let us out. They all made sure we knew where we were going and waved goodbye until the bus drove away. Susie and I could not believe how genuinely concerned everyone on that bus was with our safety and getting to the right destination. They all cared so much and it was absolutely amazing.