CANADA’S MAIN STREET
YONGE STREET
VUYANI’S GOODBYE
Decades after the fall of Apartheid, the AIDS pandemic is ravaging South Africa’s townships. Every Saturday, dozens of funerals are performed at a single graveyard outside Grahamstown. This grim ritual is a factof life for township residents, many of whom spend every Saturday burying their young.
VUKANI MEANS “WAKE UP!”
Vukani squatter camp grew from the mud on the edge of the townships outside Grahamstown, South Africa. People who lacked income came here to build homes from earth.
In July 2003, Vukani had no schools, no electricity, no stores, no parks and no houses of worship. It had four communal water taps and no flush toilets. Unemployment for men ran upwards of 80 percent, and crime was prevalent. Like all of black South Africa, AIDS is exacing a heavy toll on the younger population. Most families depended on old age pensions funds from the government to survive.
The name Vukani means Wake up! and was meant as a cry for help. In late 2003, the long awaited help arrived in the form of another government housing project.
FISH STORY
The endangered Species Act mandates governmental agencies to reinstate species on the ist. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Colorado has spent more than $100 million trying to reinstate four native species of fish to the upper Colorado river basin just decades after they tried to poison them in favor of non-native predatory sport fish.
REDNECK RIVIERA
Carolina Beach has attracted North Carolinians for more than a century. The blue-collar beach town’s reputation as Redneck Riviera thrived after WWII and remained largely unchanged. Until now.
A $12 million, 128-room, nine-story Marriott Hotel opened in 2003 on the south side of the boardwalk. The town’s first-ever national chain hotel is expected to kick-start revitalization.
Opponents fear the real aim is to replace the boardwalk with new, upscale shops. With the imminent influx of new business and wealthier tourists, the buildings, businesses and people that have made Carolina Beaches boardwalk a distinctive North Carolina micro-culture may begin to fade like postcards in the curio shops.
