Lunch at Liziwe's Guest House

After leaving the LEAP School, we headed into the Gugulethu Township in Capetown for another deleicious home cooked lunch. This time we stopped at Liziwe's Guest House, a South African version of a B&B. Liziwe Ngcokoto is the proud owner of the guest house along with her husband, Donald. The guest house is right in the township among shacks and simple homes. The story of her guest house which she shared with us is quite remarkable and illustrates the entrepeneurship of S. AFricans trying to rise out of poverty. The story goes like this: Liziwe used to work as a tea lady while her husband Donald worked in a factory in Cape Town. One day Donald noticed they were knocking down surrounding walls of the factory to expand. Donald asked the owner if he could use some of the bricks. The owner said he could have them if he would take them away. Donald found an old plot of land in Guguletu that was being used as a rubbish dump. He bought the land and lived in a shack on the land while he dreamed of building a house. He spent months carting the bricks and cleaning them off, one by one. In 2 years he started building his house. In 3 years it was finished and Liziwe and Donald opened their small guest house. Eventually they added more rooms and now run a very successful business . How privileged we were to be invited into their home and meet these truly remarkable, warm, and kind South Africans!