These photographs are from the township of Kayamandi, which is situated on the outskirts of Stellenbosch. They show what daily life is like in this community:

There are no services. Rubbish is left to lie in the streets with dirty washing water occasionally washing it away, to further clog the unmaintained storm water drains. The matchbox homes are built on top of each other, out of whatever can be found - pieces of wood, plastic, tin… in summer they are hotboxes and in winter, they are death grippingly cold.

Kayamandi means ’sweet home’ and that is what it is for the 33 000 people who live there. It is home. No matter what us first worlders thing of it. Where ever you look, there are laughing and smiling people. Happy to be alive. Happy to have opportunity and a chance to make something of themselves, to be successful. For me, I see more success in Kayamandi than anywhere else. People who have so little and yet are so happy.

There is a general excitement amongst the kids, who are waiting for the first bit of earth to be moved on the BMX track site. But the songo.info team has along way to go, there are still kilometers to be bought and donations to be made. I wish I could take everyone into Kayamandi, to experience a gratefulness like never before.

Christoph Sauser and Burry Stander are riding the Cape-Epic for this cause, to generate money so that the songo.info BMX project can become a reality. I urge you, be part of making a difference through this South African Charity Project.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 2:28 pm and is filed under categories: ABSA Cape Epic, Burry Stander, Christoph Sauser, Kayamandi, South African Charity, Stellenbosch, buy kilometers, songo.info and tags: , ABSA Cape Epic, Burry Stander, buy kilometers, Christoph Sauser, JAG Foundation, Kayamandi, songo.info, South African Charity, Stellenbosch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.