The Kids Are Alright

The truth is their not. The ones in the rural hinterlands of the Eastern Cape at least. These are images I was only to happy to snap at the time. I was thereabouts on first few days of 2012 in the almost idyllic beach village area of Ubomvu and Coffee Bay to 'escape', 'discover and enjoy a unique taste of rural Africa!' in the words of the online brochure. It was that. But I suppose it was too the holiday season and Coffee Bay is a working holiday destination. The job is to enact the allure in language in locale after all. But lest I stray too far from the message I wish to carry in this post, about the little people.

Ingane zasemakhaya are growing up granted against the backdrop of a wealth of land covered at every corner with the unspoil of fauna and flora, littered in the most intimate of common place fashion with the four legged means of livestock and transportation, the same four legged means that double in as company and guides. The setting so picturesque is rendered hapless by the poverty of the people who remain behind and the receding remoteness us holiday makers turn our heels on when the tide dies down. When left behind the village ceases to inhabit an escapist ideal and resembles more and more a place of little choice and slim chances.

In the morning on our drive out whilst taking in the vast surface area I spotted a pair. Adolescent black girls in uniform seemingly on their way to school, some far away building, I imagine, as there was nothing but grass as far as certainly our eyes could make out, when we looked back and ahead. It was early morning. We drove on and the girls marched on.

What it must then be for the little girls above to whom we gave a lift on our way upwards and into the remote hills I keep asking myself. School is far. The shops are far. The clinic is far. The doctor further. Couldnt spot a bank or a government building and whilst this may appeal to me for a dazzling moment it is a potential halving culture in which to be brought up. I greatly enjoy the area for all of the above but its signficantly lamentable economic captivity for those living in it, those growing in the face of it. I cant acurately tell if I am sounding patronsing in the vain of the opportunistic American man who took to 'The Internets' with that kony2012 sorcery but honestly what black people in Coffee Bay - and pretty damn much everywhere - need is economic freedom without further adue.

When.