Soweto, Rockville, Slovoville

(follow up - added after we returned)

We visited Nelson Manella's home which has now been turned into a museum.

We then had lunch at a famous resturant in Soweto (name now escapes me). We were joined by Buhle (Boothlai) and Pastor Timba.

After lunch we visited the church that they both run in Rockville. Two million people live in Soweto and I'm sure we only saw a small portion of it, but from what we saw it looked like a lot of development had been going on since Apartheid fell in 1994. Buhle had the children sing everyone a song. Everyone in Africa can sing.

We then took a trip to some squatter camps where Buhle does a lot of her ministry. She used to walk between the various camps, but has recently received a donated car and drives to each location and brings as many as she can to Sunday services. The area we visited was called Slovoville. The first stop was at an abandoned farm house.

The next stop was a camp near a cemetary where the cemetary is building a fence around the homes to deny them access to water and resources.

The last place was an abandonded mining area called Bottom. A number of abandoned industrial buildings where people have taken up residence. In the center of the buildings is a small flat cracked cement area that is probably the remnants of another building. It was about the size of a basketball court. There were about 100 kids hanging out on this cement area playing football. Within seconds the kids rallied around Buhle and began singing songs. She has an amazing ability to inspire and lead children.

Water in this area was a single shared spigot for at least 50 entrances to the abandoned industrial buildings. It would be hard to estimate the number of people, but I would guess a few thousand lived there. We left the area as night approached.

We returned to Timba and Buhle's home where we continued our discussion. She also sells goods created by people in squatter camps to help build commerce for the people there. Buhle and her daughter sang a song called "Mango" for Matthew's birthday. They were an amazing duet.

Timba and Buhle were leaving the next day to visit the U.S. for a month where they would be visiting other partner churches.