Wanderlust

Botshabelo is just as striking and memorable as Vienna, Paris, and Madrid. These global centers continue to be shaped by political and cultural forces. Botshabelo is as well.

Fascinating places are rich in cross-sections and overlapping mixtures of history, great architecture, cultural evolution, commerce, the arts, and colorful personalities. The best places globally are thought to contain all of these. Some, however, lack cross-sections which makes them even more compelling.

Botshabelo was created when apartheid reigned in South Africa. The imaginations of the oppressive regime led to the location of this township on flat and vast farmland nearly 50 kilometers from Bloemfontein.

The township was equipped with limited infrastructure. The N8 corridor connects a van filled with gas-fumes and domestics and laborers to Bloem before dawn and back at sunset. Young and old walk through muddy, dirt roads to get to departing and arriving vans.

Homes in Botshabelo are not like the social housing found in the Netherlands or Germany. Starter homes are clad with rusted, corrugated aluminum siding and roofs hammered into wooden posts and gray concrete cinder blocks.

Red ants climb the walls inside along side generations of family members from newborns to great grandparents. Families who work hard may one day afford a brick home in one of Botshabelo's other alphabetized sections where they may have better services.

Life there is hard by outside standards, including standards in Bloem. Despite all this community lacks in material progress, residents who live there are warm and welcoming.

My mission in Bloem and in Botshabelo was to deliver to the regional government a series of recommendations to improve conditions for township residents. A visit to Botshabelo was required.

A hotel worker named Sani mentioned to me that he lived in Botshabelo and eventually offered to take me there to see the township. The journey to and from Botshabelo was long, and the gas fumes were nauseating.

When we arrived in Botshabelo, Sani and I were joined by others who recognized a visitor. His family happily welcomed me and purchased a goat that would become the main course at an impromptu neighborhood festival.

The spontaneous music and ethnic dancing were atypical, but fascinating and very enjoyable. The goat was a luxurious expense and one of the best meals ever.

Botshabelo is indelibly ingrained in my memory as one of the best places to visit.