|
Turtle Essays Archives Index
|
Subscribe
|
|
| << August01, 2005 - Turtle Essays Edition no 141 dated 1st August 2005 |
August15, 2005 - Turtle Essays Edition no 143 dated 15th August 2005 >> |
|
Turtle Essays Edition no 142 dated 8th August 2005 ** Watch this space for Cape Town tours I will soon be offering. Interested in what I will be doing Email me today at Geoff@turtlesa.com ** In this edition: Editors Blurb Visit to the Townships Peers Cave Fish Hoek ** Editors Blurb Hi there folks! Welcome to this weeks edition of Turtle Essays. Winter has arrived back in Cape Town again this weekend with rain and wind. The past week we had great weather while I was out touring Cape Town in a coach with the other learners on my Tour guides course. I've lived in Cape Town my whole life and have only ever been into a township once and that was when I was invited to a boxing tournament. This week I had another opportunity and what I saw and learnt has changed my attitude towards the townships. Yes there are a lot of horrible shacks along the N2 highway but once you get in close things are not as bad as they look from the outside. Read the article below to see what I'm on about. The second article today is how Cape Town lost an opportunity to have an important archaeological site by not following laid down procedures on archaeological digs. Read all what happened below. Enough from me for this week. Geoff Fairman ps I've included some photographs of the townships on my webpage which can be found at Http://www.turtlesa.com/ezine142.html ** A visit to a township. The first thing visitors see when leaving the Cape Town International airport after arriving in Cape Town are the squatter camps. The huts built by the squatters line the N2 highway into town are an eyesore and must leave a lasting impression on new arrivals. The shacks are usually built of wood, iron or plastic on any small piece of open ground that can be found and sometimes so close to rivers that when it rains they are flooded and washed away. There is absolutely no planning and when a fire breaks out as often happens hundreds of shacks are burnt down and people lose all their possessions and sometimes their lives. The shack dwellers live under awful conditions with whole families living in one small room. Adults have no privacy and have to share the one or two beds that can fit into the shacks with their children and any other persons who happen along. Those who don't fit into the bed sleep on the floor. Toilet facilities in shacks are non existent and people have to make their way to toilets that have been built on the outskirts of the settlements to use one. Shacks have no running water and people have to walk long distances in certain instances to get some. Water is free at taps provided by the authorities. What visitors to Cape Town and even some of the locals don't know is that what they are seeing along the highways is not what the entire township looks like. There appears to be three or four levels of recognised housing in the townships. In the centre is the formal township where roads are laid out and brick housing exists for those who can afford it. These houses have one or two bedrooms and modern facilities such as you will find in the so called white areas. A second type of house is being built at present for those people without houses. They are built of brick or cement blocks and are a basic unit with one room and very few other amenities. Most of them are linked to the electricity grid and may have running water. The third type of housing is the semi permanent shacks which have been around for a long time and have been audited by the authorities, given street numbers and have electricity in many instances. The shacks seen from the highways are those of squatters who are not supposed to be there. If they were removed as is being done in Zimbabwe at present many thousands of people would be left homeless. Over the past few years Cape Town has become the number one city in Africa and as such is recognised as the place where people have the best chance of getting work. This unfortunately attracts 50,000 new jobseekers to Cape Town every month. Authorities are doing their best to house all the people arriving in Cape Town but it is just about an impossible task because as soon as someone is placed in a formal house some one else moves into the shack that he/she has just vacated. Another interesting observation is that the centre of any township is its taxi rank. It is there where people gather each day to travel to and from work and it is there where money enters the township from outside areas. A visit to a taxi rank will be an eye opener for any visitor just as it was for me. It is quite unbelievable what actually happens around it. Merchants selling everything from a needle to an anchor trade informally in close vicinity to the taxi rank. The meat market is really rough and ready and a westerner with a sqeamish stomach will be appalled at what goes on. In some instances sheep and cows are slaughtered in the streets and cut up into meat. The traders then sell off different parts to other traders who specialise in meat or tripe or some part of the animal. Sheep heads are very popular and driving around the townships you will see many merchants displaying them for sale. The markets also sell clothes, water bottles to store water and even used tyres amongst other things. Many of these wares are spread out on the pavements for people to see. In amongst some of the formal shacks you will find places such as Vickis Bed and Breakfast where African entrepreneurs are climbing onto the tourist bandwagon and offering accommodation for visitors to Cape Town to spend a night in the townships. In the above example another entrepreneur has opened a shebeen more or less opposite the B&B and offers evening entertainment for visitors to Vickis. The economy of the townships is very fragile and if any large organisation were to move into any of them and open a supermarket the locals would lose their livelihoods and many of them would starve. Visiting a township always raises the question - Is it safe? Townships are places where people live and want to do so peacefully. Ninety eight percent of township dwellers are peaceful but unfortunately as in any part of the world there is always a criminal and not so pleasant element present. Your safety depends on whether this element is allowed to operate in the area where you are visiting. By utilising companies who specialise in township tours your chances of meeting up with the criminal elements is reduced as they will not put clients at risk and get a bad name in the process. My advice is to use the tour guides and companies who know the area. These days a visit to a township is on most travellers itineraries and can be quite an eye opener for the uninformed. Interested in doing a tour? Please contact me and I will arrange one for you. See you here soon. Geoff Fairman ** The Fish Hoek Valley. When one studies a map of the Cape Peninsula there are two areas which show up as lowlands on the map. The one area is the Cape Flats which extends all the way from Table bay in the north to False Bay in the south. A second area which is not as large is the Fish Hoek valley which extends from False bay in the east to the Atlantic ocean in the west. These two areas were once covered by sea and evidence of this can be found by looking at the sand found in the Cape Flats and the Fish Hoek Valley. The northern rim of the Fish Hoek valley is also lined with sand dunes adding to the evidence that the valley was once covered by water. It is on this sand dune that some interesting discoveries were made in the early 1900's. Victor Peers a resident of Fish Hoek who was an avid collector of succulents and bulbous plants was walking along the top of the sand dune ridge when he passed by what was known as Schildergat cave near the top of the ridge. On entering the cave he found some rock splinters which looked like ancient implements used by early inhabitants of the Cape. He took them home with him and showed them to a friend who at the time was the only trained South African Archaeologist in Cape Town and was employed by the Cape Town University. John Goodwin confirmed that the rocks were stone age implements and decided to do an archaeological dig at the site. As there were no other archaeologists in the Cape at the time and he was too busy setting up the archaelogical department for the university he asked Victor Peers whether he would like to do the dig seeing as he had discovered the implements. Peers agreed and he and his son Bertie were quickly trained in the techniques to be used in an archaelogical dig. To round off their training they were sent on a training dig into the Kalk Bay caves before being let loose on the Schildergat Cave. Over the next two years Peers and his son worked in the cave and made some very interesting discoveries. The first thing they discovered was a shell midden which was up to one and a half metres thick and said to be several thousand years old. Middens are ancient rubbish dumps and indicate the presence of ancient man in the area. Digging into the midden layer Peers unearthed six bodies, those of two women and four children. With them he found ostrich egg beads, shell pendants and a piece of iron said to be part of an old arrow head. The remains of small leather bags containing what appeared to be medicine were also discovered. Digging deeper two more people were found and then a skeleton of a man of about thirty was unearthed. It was this skeleton that attracted the attentions of the press and the international anthropologists. The skull was sent to England and was examined by Sir Arthur Keith who described it as the largest brained type of humanity so far discovered in South Africa. The skull became known as the Fish Hoek Man and was at first dated as being 15000 years old although later investigations amended its age to 12000 years of age. Unfortunately all the publicity of the discovery of the skeletons brought out amateur archaeologists who visited the caves and tried their hands at archaelogical digging. Experts have no doubts that many more stone implements and other interesting artifacts were found by them and carried off. In 1941 H S Jager the first mayor of Fish Hoek who was also an avid amateur archaeologist decided to honour Peers for the work carried out on the cave by naming it Peers Cave after him. It was also suggested that the cave be declared a National Monument but due to wranglings between the various parties who had an interest in the cave this never happened. Sadly an important part of the Capes' archaelogical history that could have been preserved for future generations has been left to the ravages of the weather and vandals who deface its walls with graffiti. For those who are interested the cave can still be visited after quite a strenuous climb up the sand dunes that guard the route to the cave. Geoff Fairman ** ** Turn your dog into the best behaved pooch on the park with Secrets of a Professional Dog Trainer Guide Book http://www.dogproblems.com/clicksecrets.htm?hop=brerrabbit ** Turtle Travels new blog is online now. http://turtleessays.blogspot.com There are some interesting new articles being posted today. Be sure not to miss them. ** Start your own home nursery and earn yourself some pocket money! Find out how to do it from an expert. Here is his link: http://hop.clickbank.net/?brerrabbit/mcplants ** Sometimes one gets lucky! I did when I came across this site by accident. Its offers stunned me so I decided to try it out to see if it was for real. It Was! This amazing members-only website run by a top internet marketer, is UNIQUELY available: at http://www.pr-pl.com/a.php?ELn Check it out today and get some of the free stuff offered as bonuses. ** For my personal details, contact address, and warnings regarding products advertised in this ezine please read the disclaimers which can be found at: http://www.turtlesa.com/Disclaimer.html |
|
| << August01, 2005 - Turtle Essays Edition no 141 dated 1st August 2005 |
August15, 2005 - Turtle Essays Edition no 143 dated 15th August 2005 >> |
|
Turtle Essays Archives Index
|
Subscribe
|
|
|
Archives powered by Zinester's Mailing List Service
Details on Turtle Essays |
Browse for more newsletters at Zinester's Ezine Directory
Managed by Zinester's Mailing List Management |