James Fernie of Uthando, a Fair Trade in Tourism enterprise based in Cape Town, raised over R8000 last week in just under two days to buy a new house for Mama Gayiya, an older community member who attends the NOAH (Neighbourhood Old Age Homes) outreach program in Gugulethu.
Actually, more accurately, Cape Town raised over R8000 last week when James Fernie of Uthando put the word out on Facebook that Mama Gayiya was in dire need of a new home.
In her seventies and originally from the Eastern Cape, Mama Gayiya was living in Gugulethu under the most appalling conditions. With no direct family in Cape Town and nobody to care for her, James was concerned that not only was she living in conditions unfit for any human being, but that (being older and more fragile) she was at real risk with the approaching winter weather.
Our visit to Uthando coincided with the day that the project was busy with the removal of Mama Gayiya’s old shack, and we accompanied James as he stopped in to see how she was bearing up, and how things were progressing so that he could be sure that the plot was cleared in readiness for the new home that was to be erected the following day.
Even though there was a support base arranged to help and reassure her, old Mama Gayiya still cut a lonely figure as she watched with concern etched into her face as her previous shack was slowly brought down. It was obviously hard for her to watch and she kept darting in to salvage odd bits and pieces of wood and wire.
But amongst the concern on her face was also one of strength. I could only imagine what sort of challenges the world had thrown her way over the past seventy years, and yet here she was, on her feet and standing.
And then the same thought struck me again. This was the essence of Fair Trade Tourism. This wasn’t a tour bus or microbus with sympathetic tourists waving and smiling from the windows. This wasn’t about that at all. This was about spending a day with people who lived and worked in the community, and even though we only got a small taste on the fringes, at least we were getting a sense and feeling of what happened in those communities.
By the time you read this Mama Gayiya will be living in a new corrugated house with a cement floor on the same plot of land she has occupied for the so long, and Uthando, James Fernie, Cape Town and Fair Trade Tourism, will have made a real and meaningful impact on her life.
If you would like to visit Khayelitsha, Nyanga or Gugulethu, accompanied by somebody who knows the area and the community well, then contact James at Uthando via their website www.uthandosa.org.
For more information on these or other Fair Trade Tourism adventures, visit the FTTSA website, or join FTTSA on Facebook.
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