On Friday 10th September 2010, Peter Daly a two year veteran volunteer from Ballygar, Co Galway wrote a memoir about his time volunteering on the 2007 Building Blitz in Freedom Park, Cape Town, South Africa. It is a beautifully written piece and was read live by Maxi on Risin’ Time with Maxi on RTE Radio 1.


Peter Daly September 2010 – “I will travel out again with the Niall Mellon Township Trust in November, on my third mission. It is a great privilege to be able to so, and try a make a little difference for some of the poorest people on the planet, living in townships around Cape Town, South Africa. I have enclosed a memory from my first trip that I hope captures a very personal image that I would like you to have”


PIECE READ BY MAXI
Building Blitz, Freedom Park, 2007

 “Late in the afternoon as our sixth working day drew to a close, the wind started to gain in strength, a heavy cold mist soon enveloped the entire building site where thirteen hundred Irish volunteers continued to work tirelessly to meet our end of week target of 200 houses for some of the most impoverished families in the world that lived in the surrounding township of Mitchell’s plain. Most of us were now beginning to feel the cold. We were weary and tired. The woken wind had materialised into one of the many frequent sand storms we had to endure on the reclaimed site that week. A former dump, this infected and polluted waste area had been covered by many layers of sand and stone in order to make room for the impending project.    One of my duties as a builder’s labourer for that week was to keep all of the fifteen sites allocated to my team clear of debris that included discarded timber.

With my dumper full to the brim I was escorted by another team member who guided me through the very narrow passage ways on the site to the appointed recycling dump. This escort was very necessary in order that we followed the health and safety regulations very stringently. Children roamed freely darting here and there in awe of the giant machinery while hoping to pick up scraps of anything that looked edible. Such is their miserable existence; living is a shack they call home, in a township where human statistics are grim in the extreme. Fifty percent unemployment, forty percent AIDS both fuelled by the daily scourge of gangland and drugs. Murder and rape are common place. Life as it exists has no value. In an unreal world that exists alongside the opulence of Capetown in the shadow of Table Mountain, makeshift retail units epitomise life in the townships. Poorly hand written signs advertise funeral costs for all ages with discounts for juveniles and babies. A good trade to be in but very competitive. Open butcher shops sell the remaining entrails of old sheep to those that can afford it. It is not a delicacy but a luxury akin to our Sunday joint.

It was then that I broke the rules. We were detailed to deliver our cargo only to the allocated area where it was separated into different piles depending on what it was. From there local people from the township could come and collect what they could use. Timber was particularly valuable for use as firewood.

I noticed five local schoolgirls gathered around an open fire, shared by those families in the immediate surrounds. Immaculately dressed in pristine proudly worn school uniforms they talked and laughed while trying to stay warm against the turning weather. Without a further thought I dropped most the timer we were transporting to them. It was the beginning of December, but this was Christmas for them. They don’t ask for much. Quickly we were talking and swopping stories about our respective lives, though they were worlds apart. My life was a fantasy in their minds, and I was uncomfortable about that. We are all born equally, or so we have been told. “Do you have a fire in a fireplace in your house? “asked one of the brown eyed, gentle smiling girls called Mona, and before I had gathered my thoughts “and does it make your home nice and cosy?”. What could I say. “Yes”, I said, apologetically. She smiled as she probably often dreamed of what it felt like. Then I straightened up and with great pride I said “You will be sitting in front of one in your own home for Christmas”. I knew she and her family would be receiving one of the new houses. Her eyes lit up and her hug will stay with me forever. The mission was so worth it.

Peter Daly.