The Niall Mellon Township Challenge was the most amazing experience of my life. You might see this type of thing on television, but after 30 minutes you can turn the television off. I was there for 8 days and once I got there, I was amazed at the poverty and how close hundreds, probably thousands of millionaires lived to this poverty. It's literally in their back garden, and they couldn't care less.
Our first day, we left our hotel to go to work. The journey was very strange in that the coast of Cape Town looks very similar to California. It was like being on the set of Baywatch (e.g.; everyone drove big expensive cars, all the beach houses were beautifully built, there were lots of people relaxing and surfing on the beach. Everyone looked as if it were holiday time). However, as we kept driving along the coast, we came to a mountain. As soon as we turned the corner all along the foot of the mountain, there were tin huts, thousands of them. At first I thought, "This isn't right, how can this be?" But then I heard one of last years volunteers say, "Here we are", and then it hit me. We had arrived at the township of Imizamo Yethu.
When we got off the bus, there was a lot of confusion. After 20 minutes of walking around I finally found my team and got straight to work. Although I was sent as an electrician, I only spent one day out of the eight doing electrical work. There wasn't much to it really, everything was very basic.
The first four days I was labouring for bricklayers, just shovelling muck and moving bricks around. The rest of the days I spent plastering. The work was very intense and everyone worked really hard which meant the day flew in. We only ever stopped once a day to grab a quick bite to eat and 5 times a day there was a water round, just to make sure no-body de-hydrated. At 2pm the kids finished school which meant there was a break around 2.30pm to talk or get some photo's with the children. I was told before I came over to get soccer shirts. So I got two old kits from my local club to give out. One chid started crying with happiness when he received a brand-new Manchester United jersey. After that, the same kids followed me around for the rest of the week.
There were one or two late nights. We were supposed to have Friday off but because of the rain, some of us came in to finish a few things off. On the second last night, Niall Mellon organised dinner at the Radison with Bishop Desmond Tutu as a special guest. It was a great night.
At the end of it, all 50 homes were built in 8 days. I enjoyed it so much, that I plan to raise the money myself next year and go again. Maybe I can rope a few of my mates into coming.
