Township volunteers close eyes to hazards

A FIERCE wind drove coarse, dirty sand across the Freedom Park township in Cape Town throughout the weekend, caking a layer of grime over skin, clogging ears and turned the snot in your nose jet black.

It was the single biggest hazard for the 1,350 Irish volunteers on the Niall Mellon building blitz. But it is everyday life for the 50,000 people living in shacks surrounding the construction site.

By Friday, 1,500 of these people, who lined the streets to welcome the workers, will move into 200 new concrete homes — the result of the world’s largest overseas volunteering exodus since the Second World War. In the meantime the soon-to-be beneficiaries watched from outside their shacks.