Thursday August 14, 2008
Durban
Well, here is a bumper edition. This is the first chance I have had to do the get-the-blog-online business.
It has been quite a time…
Sunday August 3rd saw our Zimbabwean friends Ruth Makumbirofo and Daniel Maphosa arrive, fresh from Harare. They are part of a the Savanna Trust, an arts for development organisation that produces community plays, radio and video. In spite of the constraints of life in Zimbabwe, they are a subversive force with their hit-and-run performances.
http://www.savannatrust.org/
They are very interested in lanterns and their potential inclusion in their work. They came to the workshop on Monday. I showed them slides of lanterns events from home and we had a lengthy discussion about how they could operate in Zimbabwe. Running with lanterns came up – the idea that small, portable battery operated lanterns could take to the streets in a mass light-up protest. They began work on their own lantern contribution to the Bertrams event. Its design incorporated the two most potent symbols of Zimbabwe – the ruins of the Shona Empire and the great bird.
The ruins at Great Zimbabwe are the most extensive in sub-Saharan Africa, and arguably the most emotive. The name 'Zimbabwe' probably comes from the Shona phrase Ziimba dza Mabwe, meaning 'Houses of Stone'. Thirty km south-west of Masvingo in Zimbabwe, the ruins sit on a 1000m plateau, at the base of some low granite hills on otherwise open plains, with few trees.
Read more at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Zimbabwe
As we worked, we talked of life in Zim. The news here is full of the power-sharing talks between Mugabe et al yet the reality of life for people there is incomprehensibly poor. Here are examples from these two young professionals, fresh off a plane, taking part in our workshop.
Ruth told us that when Charlotte took them to a supermarket, the sight of shelves occupied by goods was almost too much to bear. They are used to empty shops. Their usual fare – let us call it the Mugabe diet, although he would never follow it -is:
Breakfast:
Black tea with sugar
Lunch:
Cold sadza - a kind of maize porridge, equivalent to the South African pap.
Dinner:
More Sadza, with vegetables. and some meat if you are very fortunate.
Sugar is bought from the black market. Milk and bread just don’t exist any more. Meat is at a premium – chicken skin, intestines, necks and claws are the more readily available cuts. Foreign exchange – whether UK Pounds, US Dollars, or SA Rand – is necessary for survival . New Zimbabwean bank notes, to the value of a trillion dollars and more, are printed on a regular basis. A teacher’s monthly salary will buy two packets of crisps.
Deyana had been to our official supplier to get more gummies. She returned with a bonus – a couple of sections of trellis that became the foundations for the Great Zimbabwe.
The Big Test of glue and paper happened. The glue was fine, but the tissue is not all that it could be. We used the tissue I had imported and then the local stuff, but covering became an adult activity as it was too difficult a task to workshop with the children.
Tuesday morning found Deyana and I taking a trip to Soweto. It is home to two of the pre-schools that the children of Chickenley and King Edwards have helped. Their contributions have funded the training of women from nine such schools. The women have formed a network and plan to come together once a month to share ideas and experiences. The training has included:
- How to better manage finances
- Health advice including hygiene, menus that are affordable and nutritious and safety.
- Creative and educational activities that include painting, storytelling, songs and games.
We plunged – and I mean plunged as the tarmac stopped and we didn’t – into the informal settlement behind the painted cooling towers of Soweto. It has been unseasonably warm this past week or two, with daytime temperatures reaching 24/25 degrees, so all is very dry. Clouds of dust everywhere. We had made a phonecall to check we were heading in the right direction as the townships can prove difficult to navigate. The shacks in this particular settlement are cheek by jowl, all greys and browns, corrugated iron and wood cobbled together.with a few fences to indicate boundaries between plots. Numbers were painted large on doors or walls. I couldn’t work out the system, but saw numbers over 800 and so reckoned it could run to at least a couple of thousand.
Lots of curious eyes, children and chickens checked us out as we edged up the track. I have never in my life felt so conspicuous. The very bluey whiteness of me – skin and hair; my clothes, camera, specs, watch, everything about me screamed difference. No hiding place. I was never scared, though, and after a little while I didn’t feel so out of place. I just determined to be myself and take those I met for the people they are rather than the situation they find themselves in.
Another phone call to our hostess – she could see the car and so guided us in. She had moved the school which accounted for the confusion. In the midst of the grey and brown were rows of child-sized brightly coloured plastic chairs, set out ready for breakfast. Indoors, the children were waiting for us. All under six, they were dressed in an extraordinary assortment of clothes. It transpired that this was for our benefit – they were wearing the best garments available to their household, irrespective of size, age or gender. So boys wore dresses over their jeans and satin scarves on their heads. One was wearing a man-sized red shirt with a jauntily placed baseball cap. One girl had a mass of chestnut corkscrew curls topped with a pink knitted hat. On closer inspection the curls proved to be an adult’s wig.
We were there for story time and singing and breakfast. One child of about three was crying, arms stretched out. I picked her up and distracted her by admiring the strings of beads around her neck. She is called Busiswe. She fell in to a fire at five months old and bears the scars above her right eye. She walks haltingly and is developmentally impaired. She was fascinated by my hair, whispering words to me that I couldn’t understand. Whilst she was somewhat sidelined because of her disability, I felt sure that she could communicate and understand more given more stimulation. Deyana’s involvement means that she is no longer invisible and some further help might well be forthcoming.
Busiswe is something of a symbol for me of how this work makes a difference. The invisible made visible as persons, to each other, to themselves . The small network of women created has already made a palpable difference. They are obviously able to advocate more powerfully for what is best for the children because they now have more knowledge. What has been a hand to mouth activity – poor women looking after other poor women’s children for very little money – that has meant a perpetuation of their poverty is very slowly changing. We talked together of how they are beginning to challenge parents’ perceptions of what childcare is. Simply counting in English shouldn’t be seen as a pinnacle of acheivment for a four year old ensuring a more successful adulthood. Eating well, playing, making friends and being safe will ensure far more.
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