A couple weekends ago, I joined some friends in a really interesting endeavor in one of the Cape Town townships. The Niall Melon Townships Initiative (NMTI) is a Habitat for Humanity type project, which brings volunteers into South African townships to build houses for the community. Now some may think this should be the work of the government, but the reality is that the demand is huge and millions of South Africans have been waiting since democracy arrived here for that moment that most of us all look forward to – that moment when one has a house to call one’s own. Many of South Africa’s poorest people (those severely oppressed under the racist Apartheid regime) have now moved into small brick houses built by the government over the past 13 years, but a walk through any township makes it clear that the supply is nowhere near meeting the demand. Meanwhile, those waiting for their house continue to live in shacks, dwellings usually made of pieces of metal or nailed strips of wood (often built almost on top of each other) that don’t offer the shelter, comfort, space, security or peace that a house does. This is where the NMTI is making a difference. Niall Melon, an Irishman, like so many visitors to South Africa, was shocked by the hard living conditions for so many South Africans, and started a project to build houses.
He donated one million Euros to start up the charity and continues to pay for all the administration costs.
The houses themselves are built in three ways:
First, volunteers overseas raise 4,000 Euros and come to South Africa for a week. Approximately 2,000 Euros covers their flight, hotel and related expenses. The other 2,000 Euros help pay for the costs of the houses that are being built. Today, 1,350 volunteers from Ireland, mostly professional builders, plumbers etc. arrived in Cape Town as part of NMTI’s biggest building blitz so far. Their goal: To build at least 200 houses in the Freedom Park township. These volunteers will work morning till night each day to help make at least 200 families’ dreams come true. Half of the money that they raised (half is 2.7 million Euros/more than 23 million Rands) will pay for the materials for these 200 houses, and another 700 houses that other volunteers (like me) will work on.
None of these donations pay for administrative costs, but they might help support the NMTI’s paid workforce of around 1,700 people, largely from the townships (the second type of builders) who work all year round. This not only helps build more houses, but also contributes to the training of the people in the townships, and provides employment opportunities.
The third type of builder is the local volunteer – like I was. Dozens of South Africans are recruited to spend a weekend day in the township working on houses through the program. I participated on a “Do It Day”, when a South African organization JDI, with their “Just Do It” – Nike-esque philosophy, puts out a call to South Africans to do something worthwhile. And arriving at the NMTI, we do very much just do it:
We arrive at the Mfuleni township in Cape Town early in the morning, put on the NMTI shirts and JDI hats we were given when signing in, and we then join the group for the task we will be working on that day (My friends and I find out we are in the painting group.).
All the volunteers combined are working on dozens of houses during the day, doing anything from the initial foundation tasks, to the finishing touches such as the painting. It’s a fantastic experience. Firstly, many South Africans never go into townships. Fear of things both real and imagined make them think it’s just not safe, and so they stay away, and that separation that was created in Apartheid continues to work its “black magic” in South Africa’s communities. Projects like this one help to dispel the fear, or to at lease allow those South Africans who want to experience part of their culture to enter a township, and to see what life there is really like.
Of course we stick out: huge groups of us walking around in our bright matching t-shirts, with building supplies, and while there are volunteers of all races, a normal day in a township does not see that many White faces, so there’s no such thing as blending in…but in this township – Mfuleni – and in this specific section of that township, where volunteers must come all the time, we are welcomed, witnessed, and (as so often is the case in these situations) followed by the kids.
Some people seem to want something, to tell you their story, to get something from you…the kids try their luck – One asks me for my water, I give it. Later, another one keeps asking me for chips. I don’t have any, and scoldingly tell him to stop asking me for chips…but it’s not all take…As we start painting, around a dozen youth from the township come to join us. The little ones all want to paint with our paintbrushes. At the beginning, we let them help, but soon, it’s too chaotic and we have to take the paintbrushes back. We’re painting someone’s home, and we need it to look good. But the older ones, who have already proven themselves an immense help, continue to help us, working hard, side-by-side. A language gap, and the huge task at hand limit the talking, but we are all in community, sweating in the very hot sun, and feeling as one by the project we share. We finish one house, and move to the second. Now, it’s lunch time.
Unfortunately, the organization has no arrangements for the ad-hoc township volunteers, so it’s quite awkward (for us) leaving them while we go to the staging area to get our meal. As we walk to lunch, we talk about how amazing it is that they’re there. All of us are wondering why they’re helping out, what they get out of it. It even crosses my mind, and I think perhaps they too are living in a house built by volunteers.
But as one of the volunteers asks why these young men are helping without anything to gain from it, I answer with a question: Why are we there volunteering?
When she then asks why these men are helping out, but not the other people in the township who were just watching, I remind her that there was more help than we could use on our task, and again I answer with another question: “Why are we here, and not our friends?”
I think we realized that the spirit of volunteering is something we have in common with the young men who joined our team. We return from lunch, and bring back sandwiches for them, and together we finish the second house.
Our time there is almost over, so some of us go to help another group to put the last touches of paint on one more house.
These are not large houses. They’re around 40-48 square metres/430- 516 square feet. I was happy to see inside plumbing in one of the houses we worked on, and to hear from the NMTI that all the houses are installed with tiled roofs, solar panels, open planned kitchens and most of all inside bathrooms [A woman I recently met who also lives in another section of Mfuleni complained to me about the government’s failure to bring the toilet inside: Many new houses are being built without indoor plumbing, relying on the outside toilet system that was already in place from the shack system. This woman told me that she’s too scared to leave her house late at night to go to the bathroom so she will use a bucket inside instead.]! Recipients of these NMTI houses will get the “luxury” most of us consider a basic necessity – a toilet inside the house!
Over the past five years, more than 3,500 houses have been built by the NMTI, not including the 200+ that are expected to be built by the 1,350 Irish volunteers in the next week (starting tomorrow). While this is only a drop in the bucket when one considers the millions of South Africans still waiting for a home, one only has to walk into a township like Mfuleni to see how important this project is to the communities it is able to serve. In Mfuleni, row after row of houses (an Irish flag is even painted on the front of one) are all clearly houses built by the NMTI – their uniform size, shape, and the solar panels on the roofs show how many houses the NMTI teams have built in just this township alone. The way the community interacts with us also illustrates that they recognize the impact of this work.
It seemed that many of the people in Mfuleni think all the volunteers coming in are from overseas, perhaps because of all the foreign volunteers they’ve met…but hopefully those that talked to us realized that South Africans are helping out too.
The day I went was the day that South Africa later won the Rubgy World Cup. The rugby match was something we were all unified about – volunteers and people in the community shared their common support for the “Bokke” (Springboks) as they passed by each other. That rubgy match was the thing that all South Africans knew we had in common. I left the township that day, thinking that every South African should do this at least once. It’s an important thing having South Africans interact in this way – for people who never go into townships to work side by side with township youth, for everyone to see that we are a community, a country tackling its problems together…to see that there are so many things that we are unified in (besides sports) and to work together towards a better and more just future.
Just before I left the township, we had a ribbon cutting house hand-over. One of the houses that other people in the painting group had helped finish that day was handed over to the Gantsho family. Yolanda Gantsho, unlocked the door to the house, and entered with her husband and their two small children. Yolanda was glowing, holding her 5-month old son when she came outside. I asked her if she was happy. She answered joyfully: “More than anything. It’s my first time to have a house. I must be happy.”
— Posted by Czerina Patel for Yenza
[Except for top photo (courtesy of Niall Melon Townships Initiative), All Photos and Videos Copyrighted - Czerina Patel 2007]
