Friday August 15th
Durban
To continue the tale…
Saturday last, after a very deep sleep, I accompanied Deyana to Santarama Miniworld, for a meeting about a new maths and science module she is developing. It’s a surreal place. A giant statue of Gulliver stands at the entrance. We had Quintin, Dingani’s five-year-old son with us, and the eight-foot replica of King Kong next to the table football just past reception took him aback somewhat. In the park itself, miniatures of well-known South African buildings sit next to models of Zulu villages and a gold mine; a full-scale tall ship is near a Gulliver-scale statue of…Michael Jackson?! The latter is painted in shades of battleship grey…
Post meeting, Deyana, Valencia and I took Quintin, Junior (Valencia’s son) and his friend on the boat trip around the man-made lake. I was taking in the landscape of the far shore -weeping willows, tall reeds and a profusion of birds- when someone exclaimed
“There’s a naked man!”
In amongst the reeds, in gaps by the shore, were refugees (I now understand from the nearby camp created after the recent disturbances) washing themselves and their clothes. One had a small brazier to hand.
“I cannot believe I have seen this”
said Valencia, shaking her head.
It was disconcerting. People living their lives and unwittingly becoming another curiosity for a passing boatload of visitors to this already strange place.
We headed off to Eldorado Park to pick up my new spectacles. Deyana had recommended her optician to me last year. His identical twin is Imam in the local mosque - and he runs his Optometrist’s shop from his mother’s converted garage. Thanks to his ministrations, I now have specs and a pair of prescription sunglasses for less than half the price I paid for my last pair in the UK. Plus the experience of going to an optician who can see you in the evening in between his own appointments at mosque.
We paid a visit to Maponya Mall in Soweto on the way home. It is astonishing that it and the informal settlements sit in the same area. Soweto is a big place – 3 million people live there – and is an object lesson in inequalities. We had gone there briefly last week:
“You are being stared at, Marykins” said Deyana
“That’s because I am the only white person here”
Our waiter at the coffee shop had asked where I came from and was keen that I tell people in the UK that Soweto is can be a positive, safe experience. This time, we “looked like the United Nations” according to Deyana, because we had Quintin with us. More stares from folk trying to work out the connections between the three of us. Maponya has black mannequins in the shop windows whereas elsewhere in Jo’burg I had only seen the occasional coffee-coloured figure. On the way out, you have to stop and restart your car for the security staff to check that you haven’t hot-wired your lift home.
Deyana and her husband Ibrahim dropped me off at CDP later. I was to stay with Charlotte for a couple of nights as they were off on holiday. Deyana and I had become even closer over the week and had so enjoyed working together. It was a wrench when they drove out of the gate.
Ruth and Daniel were at Charlotte’s too. It was good to see them before they flew back to Zim. Ruth commented that whilst she was happy to see friends and family, she wasn’t relishing the prospect of being back in the country.
‘Everyone complains and complains,” she said “but there comes a point when there is no point any more.”
Sunday was indeed a day of rest. Hallelujah. Charlotte and I went out for breakfast and talked of the socio-political implications of the work in Bertrams and then moved to Rosebank market for some light shopping. We came across an unusual stall, run by an Ethiopian couple. We were there for a while, talking of Orthodox and Coptic Christianity and the man’s journeys through life that had taken him from his homeland to South Africa via Canada and the UK.
I flew to Durban on Monday and was met again by Kate Wells. Tuesday and Wednesday, I ran a paper-cutting workshop with second-year Graphic Design students at the Durban University of Technology. Last year, we dreamed of lanterns here too, but it proved practically impossible this year. I first met Kate some years ago when she and her husband Bob visited Happy Hearts lanterns in Wrekenton. As well as leading the Masters’ students in the graphic design department, she runs the Siyazama project. Set up in 1996, Siyazama (‘We are trying’) interweaves the health education, life skills and economic development of rural women through the regeneration of traditional bead crafts. I recommend Kate’s PhD thesis on the project. It’s a great read, informative and fascinating.
Kate told me that keeping students informed about HIV/Aids in as many ways as possible is vital. As she put it in a recent presentation:
• All of our students are very vulnerable
• Keep the AIDS topic alive – embed it in debates and discussions and curricula. WE are morally bound to do this.
• Create environments for open discussion
• Get creative
• Know just how much is enough! Do not overdo it!
• Be alert + listen
• Get real about the magical benefits of good physical and mental health
• Stand back and watch how the students respond
• Never judge
• Be adaptable…
• Lets keep talking! Lets make DUT “the University that really cares!”
To put it into very sharp perspective, the new infection statistics in South Africa are now just over sixteen hundred a day (15-34 age group).
…These are the same numbers as when I started my PhD! In short the numbers of new infections are growing and we already have a large pool of infections. People may think that prevalence is levelling off but according to Caprisa (AIDS vaccine unit) this is definitely not true.
Our AIDS/Open Door clinic now sees on average 20 students per day (that’s 100 per week) for VCT, CD4 count checks etc.
Email update on DUT AIDS Conference. August 1st 2008. Kate Wells.
This made me think that the modest paper-cutting workshop I was about to begin could make some contribution. We began by exploring the world of the papercut, from Mexican, Jewish and Chinese traditions through Matisse’s ‘drawing with scissors’ to contemporary fine artists and illustrators. I showed them examples of paper cutting applications – high-fashion fabric, laser-cut metal, book cover design, campaign posters and community arts practice. The department runs an impressive online classroom and by the end of the first workshop day it was up and running with visual references, signposts to further study and a blog.
The students are usually found in front of computer screens, so this was also seen as a way of getting them connected with other ways of producing imagery. Firstly, they were asked to produce papercut lettering and then explored the technique further by cutting an emotion – fear, horror, love etc – in the style of the word. There are sixty students in the group and whist all didn’t participate fully, a core of 35-40 stayed the course. A good result, I am told.
They were then invited to choose a beadwork doll from the Siyazama Project archive and use it as stimulus for a papercut image. Conversations with students revealed that some were thinking laterally about AIDS messaging. For example, that instead of going on and on about condoms, to stress making friends with people with AIDS, to reduce the stigma and therefore hopefully increase more effective communication about it.
The resultant images are great and have sown the seeds for more projects. The students will continue working with paper and have a free rein over what they might produce – from postcards and print through to installations and animation. I suspect some will stay with an AIDS theme and others will use it for another subject. In any case, there is already a wealth of new images of the dolls that will be of great use to Siyazama.
Kate had a visitor on Wednesday morning. Mr Apostle Msila rang early and was waiting to meet us on our arrival at DUT. He was sitting patiently in the corridor, with a large market bag of artefacts from the rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal. He buys things from local people and then brings them to Durban, contacting the likes of Kate to see if they are interested. I bought two small beaded dolls from him. They came from his neighbours, the Ndlova family. Probably fifteen or more years old, they were made as love tokens. Young men would hang them from their belts. They have little beaded topknots, crowned with old military buttons that were allegedly taken from the uniforms of dead soldiers…
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