The man looked scared. He was frantically waving us down on the side of the rural road. Barb was the first to see he had some kind of sword or machete. Marc - her son - told us to lock our doors. We listened. Marc has been living here in africa for 8 months and in fact we - and his parents - were about to see where he has been living.
None of us expected what happened next.
The panicked man ran over to the other white van. The one carrying the other half of our team as well as fellow calgarian Dan and Crystal from Lloydminster. Both live with Marc at the farm house.
From our van we see the window in the other van roll down. As the man speaks quickly, Dan gets out of the car ... Soon Marc joins him and after telling us to stay put and keep our doors locked, Marc, Dan and the man are speeding up a dirt road standing in the back of a hands at work truck that had sine pulled up.
And we were left to wait...
Left to wait and wonder what on earth was happening.
Left to wait as Marc's parents wondered what exactly has their son been dealing with all these months and what exactly had they come to see.
Left to think about the xenophobic violence we had been watching on bbc.
After some time we were told it was okay to come up the road too.
We soon learned what and happened. The panicked man was a guard hired by hands at work to keep watch on the property when its residence are all away. He was doing just that today but 5 men from a nearby community challenged him. Badly outnumbered the guard was forced to run. He jumped the fence and took off down the road whn he found us.
The truck carrying Dan and Marc managed to scare off the men but not before they knocked down a door and robbed one of the homes.
A tv was gone...some property damaged and a lot of nerves were rattled but for a team of canadians here for the first time...there was also an important point.
Up until that we had only seen South Africa's first world. Coffee shops, convenience stores and ATMs. But closeby to the world so similar to the one we left in Canada is a world in desperate poverty.
"When things like that happen," we were later told "its not because they mean anyone any harm. Its because they need something to sell to feed their families."
The crime is one of the reasons having groups like Hands is so imortant - because just as it is in so many other cases...the best way to make communities safer is make everyone more secure. And security can only happen when there people aren't left in desperate need.
Tomorrow: our first look at that need
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