Lanternland, Jo'burg style.

Sunday August 3, 2008

Koorsboom Street, Johannesburg

Since our visit here last year, all has gone to plan. March saw us hosting CDP visitors in the UK: Deyana Thomas,  Sibongile Busakwe and Nancy Kubu, principal of the Land of Joy pre-school in Soweto , took part in Lanternland at Chickenley school and King Edward’s school’s Africa project.  Charlotte Schaer,  director of CDP, gave a presentation at CAHHM’s schools seminar at the Wolfson Research Institute.

Relationships were further nurtured and the resolve to have a lanterns event in down town Johannesburg strengthened.  Thanks to my Nesta Fellowship, I am back in South Africa. We are holding a small lanterns event in Bertrams next Friday, August 8^th, a precursor to a larger one next year…

On August 11^th, I’ll be travelling to Durban to run a workshop with second year Graphic Design students on papercutting.

This is my first chance to post since arriving here on Wednesday. It’s been a blur of preparations for and delivery of lanterns workshops. Then yesterday,  Deyana whisked me out of the city to Hartebeespoort Dam.  En route, we  saw lions and fed giraffes, like you do, and visited the Cradle of Humankind – a World Heritage Site – and toured a 60m deep cave where the fossils of some of the earliest hominids have been found. I found the latter unexpectedly moving. From such simple beginnings we have made such a spectacularly complicated hash of things.

Lanterns

Materials

Deyana has done a magnificent job in sourcing materials. We were determined to find a South African equivalent to withies (willow sticks) and by George, I think she’s done it.

Her beady eye caught a man making baskets and such for flower arrangements.  When she investigated  his premises further, she came across gum tree sticks and bought a goodly amount for the workshops. They have been rechristened gummies. They are heavier than withies and somewhat less flexible, but we have adapted the making process to suit. They are cut to order – in one or two -metre lengths. She also found some bundles of a nameless flexible cane from a florists’supplier and went to the Johannesburg Society for the Blind for rattan.

Bernie's Stall. Official Supplier of Gummies.

Weirdly, SA is a desert when it comes to deep bottletops (essential to hold the candle in the lantern) so I came with  90 of them in my suitcase, along with rattan and tissue and masking tape. We have since shopped together for wire and more masking tape and have been to a glue factory to sample latex. We are hoping that F101 as it is called will do the job – it’s thinner than Copydex. The tissue paper isn’t as wet-strength as we may have hoped. We’re doing The Big Test tomorrow morning.

The Workshops

We visited Bertrams Junior School on Wednesday afternoon to finalise plans. It is situated in the heart of Bertrams, with some 340 pupils. Many are from refugee families. Many have had difficult lives. Deyana had already given a presentation to the children, explaining how the light from Chickenley lanterns had been passed to her to bring to Bertrams. It would be their job to accept it and pass it along to their community and, next year, to other communities in Johannesburg.

We had places for forty children in the workshops – seventy applied. I felt we had to stick to the plan for forty children, given they could only come for two hours a day. To give them a quality experience, we split them in to two groups. Twenty  children started on Thursday and will hopefully finish their lanterns tomorrow. The next group comes Tuesday-Thursday.

The first group have had a great time. Aged between 9 and 14, they are from Burundi, Rwanda,  Congo and South Africa. When they arrive, they have their ‘snacks’ – bread and peanut butter and jam and juice and fruit – as they have done a full day at school. The first day, we talked of community and what it meant, of respect and friendship and tolerance, and why we were making lanterns to celebrate all that is good about community.  They were amazed at the workshop environment at CDP. Some couldn’t believe that it existed, just down the road from their school. It has an innocuous exterior, hiding its Tardis-like interior.

Their initial shyness gradually disappeared. They took to making lanterns as if they had been doing it for years. And just like children from Southwick and Chickenley, there is the argumentative pair, the laid back pair, the serious engineers and the giddy kippers. We are encouraging their teachers to visit, convinced that they will see a very different and more positive view of their children.

We have other participants  - Yvette is principal of one of the shack and shelter schools being supported by funds raised by Chickenley and King Edwards’ children. She does a day of work at the school and then comes rushing to the lanterns workshops with her children and their friends. Mercy, a Nigerian student of Community Development is working with us for the duration. Dingani Ngcube is an artist who  is an indispensable helper at CDP. He brought his friend Thando along and they made small lanterns. Dingani’s five year old son Quintin will be helping to finish his Dad’s work. Two artist/performers from a Harare theatre group will be joining us tomorrow. Others have been invited – we’ll see who turns up.

Comments

[Kathryn Edwards]

O WIZARD! So good to have news of this precious initiative once more accessible in the blogosphere. I have been weeping at your caves and kippers. You are doing fabulous worldwork, and I am cheering you on from behind my desk (currently awash with papers about embodied cognition and LKJ's reggae elegies). Keep writing, and photographing when you can. Commiserations about all technical hiccups: don't let it stop you scribbling, even if you can't post.
Love and admiration,
Kx

[dawn williams]

Let your little light shine shine shine!

Well done on the materials gathering. I am sending all positive thoughts that the glue sticks. Really wish I was there to meet the giddy kippers. Have been singing with south african vocal group Amandla Esandla all week so you have been much in my thoughts.
Love Light and laughter. Dawn x

[Madeleine Irwin]

Can't wait for the next installment Mary - hope it all continues to go fantastically well.
Madeleine x

[Tracy]

I can but marvel, and smile at the picture of you merrily dealing with soggy tissue and non-stick glue. It's fantastic to think of that golden thread running from Chickenley to Jo'burg and beyond. Keep weaving your magic. Tracy xx

[Jane]

Hi Sis,
Hope all is going well. Everyone sounds as though they are having fun and that is what will make the happy memories. Lots of Love Jane