The township tour covers mainly the interesting points within the community of Shabalala
On the Shabalala township tour our guests get to live like a local, eat local food and everything in between.
Depending on the day or season of the tour, we visit various points that could be of interest for someone who wants to explore the kasi lifestyle.
Points of interest may include local schools, local taxi rank, the baobab tree local homestead ,meeting the village induna and a traditional healer.
Giving our guests an insight of the typical lives of kasi people, this tour is flexible and can take place at any time of the day although the tour itself takes up to 3 hours including a lunch at the local shisa nyama or a home cooked meal at a resident’s house.
What makes our township tour different from any other tours is that we offer our guest an authentic experience of the township as it is, nothing is planned we just rock up to our destinations like any other resident would.
Township tourism has a potential in providing the growth of the economic activities for the local entrepreneurs and tour operating businesses.
The introduction of township tourism in Shabalala has provided light to the lives of the locals about the importance of sustaining responsible tourism.
This initiative will alleviate poverty in the community as it is still a developing township, it brings the local people a sense of pride and dignity as well as a sense of recognition from tourist visit, there are tourists who might come visit and get touched by the living conditions of the residents, especially for children ,some may wish to donate the little they have to make a difference in the community. This will motivate residents to protect their areas and keep it clean.
On Friday the 7th of July 2023, we had the honor to host a family of five from Belgium, their guide for the day was Goodman who picked them up from their hotel at 9am in a safari vehicle.
The tour started at the local taxi rank in Hazyview where the locals take their taxis to their designated areas.
The next stop was the Shabalala village where Frank and his family got to meet and greet the people in the community and surprisingly to them the people were very friendly and welcoming unlike the people in their country ,the people there are more reserved.
They came across kids who were playing netball and got to interact with them the children got to talk about the backgrounds of their lives and shared what they want to do when they grow up career wisely.
Some want to be doctors and others want to be teachers, they got lucky because one of our guests is a teacher, they were so happy and wanted to take pictures with her as they grew inspiration.
Our guests are very fond of kids, so it really brought them joy .
Our guests got to meet the local Induna and visit a homestead, unfortunately it’s the winter school holidays so we couldn’t visit the local school.
What is a township tour without a township meal? Of course, its lunch time back by the taxi rank where they devoured themselves with a hearty African meal served with a soft drink and a local beer only for the Head of the family, they acknowledged that the food was delicious and that they enjoyed their meal cooked by a resident of Shabalala Goodness.
This tour is a perfect peek into the authentic life of an ordinary resident which will one feeling richer.
Our guests got to experience south Africa their highlight was that south Africans are so friendly and welcoming, they didn’t feel like outsiders even for once.
This is what our guests had to say.
“South Africa is a great country we always felt safe, the weather in winter is not too breezy like Belgium so we could easily explore everything in our bucket list the food is amazing we learned that south Africa has 9 official languages, we also learned a new word ubuntu which means humanity that south Africans live by “
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