I refuse to leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth about my prior post. So I wanted to share my experience when I took the Township tour to see first hand what the living conditions were and to report my findings. The really amazing part of this tour is that the local residents lead the tour and take you thru their neighborhoods. The neighborhood would be any project development anywhere except that there are whole communities of people living is squalor/poverty. The oldest community is full to capacity with 200,000 people. Across the street the largest Township has roughly 1million, yeah 1,000,000 people living in poverty. I decided that it is not the conditions in which they live that are important to share but what was moving were the people themselves who invited us into their homes and communities so that we might tell others to come as they earn a meager fee for allowing tourist to visit. The Township tour was born out of previous Westerners driving thru the communities mostly to buy drugs, solicit prostitution or cause trouble with the residents. So the local people developed this tour of which their community can now benefit monetarily from curiosity seekers and many caring souls not just the trouble makers. These are just a few of the friendly faces I met while visiting.
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| These are the 1 room, 1 bath government provided housing that residents are lucky to receive after a long time being without. |
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| This was my walking tour guide and yes these are frozen sheep heads left out to thaw for purchase later in the day to make the daily soup for the residents |
At the end of the tour we were escorted into a local Township nursery school where about 50 kids crammed into a small room and sang school songs for us. It brought tears to our eyes. Where just outside there was such poverty yet in this place they were safe, fed and allowed to learn. Money well spent a generous donation to boot. Made my Day!
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