moving day -

(this post has been ammended - apparently I was mistaken, the occupants were not being moved for RDP housing to be built

... but rather to widen a road boarding the township. )

this week 75 families in Zandspruit are getting new homes. Well, at least their homes are being moved and they are getting new yards and a new neighborhood. The government has decided to widen one of the main roads bordering the informal settlment and these houses need to be moved in order to make room for the extra lanes. Today was moving day... literally moving day. Teams came in with crowbars and trucks to tear down the existing shacks to clear the strip of land.. The families were all given a small square of dirt at a nearby field to rebuild on their own ... using the rubble from the deconstruct. We watched as the trucks threw pieces down on the ground in big piles. I wondered if they took care to keep things straight... like a puzzle. You have a much better chance of putting it together if you at least know you are starting with all the right pieces.

Emthonjeni decided to take the money from the last yard sale we hosted and use it to buy bread, jam, peanut butter and juice concentrate. We built mountains of sandwiches, filled a rubbermaid tub with juice and headed down to the field to feed the new occupants and their friends who had come to help them construct a home out of the scraps.

.

Billy, Thabo, Sabata and Jaco noticed one family who had no one working with them. Their belongings piled up in the dirt, poles boards and corrugated tin lying in a heap while the husband was beginning to dig post holes. The guys offered to pitch in... and soon were seeing the frame emerge together.

.

.

Tonight, there are 75 families in homes they tore down and re-constructed in a few hours work. There are 5 port-a-johns, two big blue water tanks and no electricity. There are new neighbors to get familiar with, new routes to take home from one edge of the settlement to a plot deep inside on the other end, new gardens to plant. Establishing all over again from scratch. Hoping the walls fit. For these 75 families, it is a part of their reality, to be stable, but not really... I hope they sleep well tonight.

.