Facing Reality

Today was a very moving, life-changing day in my opinion. We had a city tour of Port Elizabeth today, and the tour guide took us right into the townships. If you don't know this, townships are those huge areas where people live in "houses" they make out of tin, cardboard, wood, and anything else they can find. There is no running water, no electricity, and no effective waste removal system. Just walking through them and seeing this reality surrounding me really hit hard. I had to fight against the urge to feel pity because the residents would find that offensive. We came across some really nice people who took pictures with us and two little boys who followed us around for awhile. Although I know that the residents would probably love to have the basics that we have, they enjoy the community-feel of it. We ended up at a preschool for 2-5 year olds....wow, they were super cute! And energetic. And they love sunglasses; they snatched Beth's right off of her head! So we took lots of pictures with them and really didn't want to leave. Next we drove into a part of P.E. that our tour guide was from, and we ate at a pub there. The food was amazing and they had these two groups sing and play marimbas for us, and I ended up buying a CD from one of the groups. We then had a free afternoon and hung out, playing cards and talking and going to bed early.