A community of shack dwellers in the dusty Cape Town township of Mfuleni gathered on Monday to thank a group of Irish volunteers building brick homes to replace their corrugated iron ones.
A group of around 350 volunteers are in Africa’s southernmost city this week to help build 50 houses in Mfuleni as part of a larger project to build 720 houses for the 25 000-strong community over two years.
The builders said the work has been an eye-opener while the beneficiaries of their labour are delighted.
”For the first time, I will have my own sink and my own bathroom. That is why I am happy,” said Pretty Koyana.
The 36-year-old mother of three has been living with her husband and children in a one-room shack but they are now about to get a four-room house.
The community of Mfuleni, about 30km outside Cape Town, gathered in a small tent to thank their benefactors and rub shoulders with the likes of Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
”I am so happy,” beamed 26-year-old Valencia Ncaphayi, who will move into a new house with her husband, two children and brother-in-law. She has never lived in anything other than a shack.
”I am going to have two bedrooms, a dining room, and for the first time ever, my own bathroom!”
For the volunteers, too, it has been a life-altering experience.
”It has given me a new attitude towards life,” said 51-year-old Maurice Costelloe. ”It changes things once you realise how the other half of the world lives.”
Twenty-year-old Sean Murphy said he had had his own lifestyle put into perspective: ”I don’t take things for granted anymore.”
Niall Mellon, the project’s founder, said around 1 200 Irish volunteers attached to the Niall Mellon Township Challenge have travelled to South Africa in the past five years and built more than 600 houses for shack dwellers.
Each had to raise at least â,¬4 000 (about R36 000) to make the trip, half of which was used for building materials. Tutu praised the philanthropists for giving hope in a world plagued by violence and hatred.
He lamented the war in Darfur, the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, and the ”ghastly things” happening in Burma and in Zimbabwe.
As for South Africa, Tutu cited men raping children out of a belief that sex with a virgin would cure them of HIV/Aids.
”It is enough to make God wonder … ‘whatever got into me to create that lot?”’ Tutu told the audience. But people like these volunteers reminded one there was good in the world, too.
”God is crying and then God looks down and sees those Irish … and there is a smile breaking over God’s face, and he says: ‘They have vindicated me’,” said Tutu. – Sapa-AFP