Fiona Brophy Daily Diary

Well in short, the experience was absolutely fantastic. It has, and is, very difficult to get back into Irish life since I returned. It really puts a lot of things in perspective. Everyone on the trip was touched by the experience.

We were up at 6 / 6.30 each morning and the busses left our hotel at 7.30 so we were on site by 8am and worked until 6pm. Then each evening you would get about half an hour before we headed out to dinner. Everyone paid for their own evening entertainment – Niall didn’t want people back home thinking we were getting a free holiday on their donations. On three of the nights there were arranged meals including one big dinner at which Desmond Tutu spoke, the rest of the night people just went out for dinner in groups.

My team had 70 builders on it and they were absolutely brilliant The way that the site was laid out meant that my 9 houses were furthest from both compounds where the materials were stored. It meant that I got a lot of mileage in walking to and from the main office getting stuff that the guys needed. Most of the day was spent walking around my 9 houses just to make sure that the guys had everything they needed. You had to give them everything from suncream to rehydration drinks, missing lunches to spirit levels, gloves to water. I was basically their mammy for the week!

Our team did brilliantly and had all the houses finished within the week. Some of the teams struggled a little but I think by the last day the target of 50 houses was met - bar a little external plastering and painting. The only reason that this was not finished was because we were rained out on two of the days which meant this outdoor work could not be done (the plaster was just falling off the walls and the paint was running into the ground).

The people of the township were amazing. We were working in the more well off area of the township – if more well off is even the right term to use. Basically, the lower part of the township has roads (some tarmaced and some dirt) but in the higher part of the township (the township sits on the side of a hill / mountain) the shacks were built on rocks and boulders. although the shacks people live in are little more than cardboard, wood and tin, & not much bigger than the size of a double bed, the people are happy, and the children are beautiful.

The most striking thing about life in the township is how clean they keep their clothes. You see these people that live in a tin or wooden shack with no running water and yet their washing hanging on the line has pristine white shirts and towels hanging outside. The children go to school in uniform and take great pride in their appearance. So much so that if a child does not have a clean uniform on a given day, they will not go to school. Most black and coloured people you see working in Cape Town live in townships too. Again, they go to work in immaculate uniforms and we were told that they have to put their clothes into plastic zip-lock bags when they get home in the evening to prevent them from getting wet if it rains or dirty from the dust and dirt of the ground. When it rains in the township the rain runs like rivers down the mountainside. That means that it can run through people’s houses, and fall in through the roof.

There is a primary school located just outside Imizamo Yethu, the township we were working in. We were also told by the primary school principle that before the Niall Mellon township challenge began there was not the same pride in how the kids looked. It is only since there have been real houses that they have started to wear their uniforms and look as great as they do. The same goes for school books – they used to come back to the school in tatters – if they came back at all, but now the books always come back and they are in perfect condition. Over the last year the teachers have also noticed that the kids are not out sick from school as much and, again, this is a direct result of them living in houses.

Most people you meet there have perfect English. All the children are taught through English. They then speak Xhosa (pronounced Cosa – with a bit of a click) at home with their families – which is the local language and some would also have Afrikaans too – but not all.

This was better than any holiday I have ever had. By the end of the week I was mentally, physically and emotionally drained but would have been ready to do it all over again. On the last day our men walked out of the township in their bare feet wearing only their shorts. They had given away steel toe cap work boots to the men the went out to work, their socks, all of their t-shirts, hard hats, sun hats, hold-all bags, rain jackets and even their own tools that they had brought with them from Ireland.

It really was a once in a lifetime experience… well hopefully not just a “once” as I would love to go back there next year again!