170813, Absolutely Awesome Exhibition Evening...!!!

What an incredibly blessed night I had last night!  Thank you so much to everyone who braved the wild weather and came out into the night to give me support at my exhibition “Makhelwane (My neigbour)”.  It meant the world to me.

After spending two years with my Eastern Cape neigbours, apart from my family and friends that was an indescribable experience to have so many of you there together in one room.  I wished I could instantly clone myself and spend the whole evening with each one of you individually but it was also a dream come true to have so many friends from different walks and times of my life together and meeting each other.  My cup overflowed with love and blessedness!

And those of you that weren’t able to make it I felt you there too in spirit and it means so much to me to know you were thinking of me and wishing me well.   I trust that we will get together soon.

I want to give a big thank you to Nicoletta and her family and the Associazione Piemontesi who sponsored this event and for giving me this wonderful opportunity to showcase my work at this time and turning it into one of the most special evenings of my life.

Thank you for all your hard work of the past months and weeks, putting this together, from getting everything printed and mounted, (sorting out the bubbles and what more!),  to presenting my work in such an original and uplifting way, I absolutely loved the Pilchards and Peanut butter idea, it was so close to home and such a true reflection of the unpretentious lives led by my “Makhelwane”! And thank you for all the finer details, wine and lovely snacks! Well done!!! 

Thanks Ian, you are the best wine pourer and multi-task man to have as a friend!! Una, you are an angel..x

I want to give thanks, praise and glory to my God of love, the great orchestrator, for leading me in His way, opening doors for me, protecting me always, working His love through me and blessing me with so much love.  I can always hold on to Your word.

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory which shall be revealed in us.”  Romans 8:18

MAKHELWANE (MY NEIGHBOUR)

A PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITION

FRIDAY 16 AUGUST 18:30

@ EC LANGUAGE SCHOOL

CAPE TOWN

75 CHURCH STREET 

(Opp. Christiaan Barnard Hospital) - (Park your car @ Heritage square)

140713, Sunday. I hate goodbyes...

The kids on their way to their umakhulu Gloria

One of Gloria's neighbors with his dogs

Gloria, my Xhosa mama

Yes, unfortunately it is good bye... (FOR NOW). Due to circumstances out of my control, I had to leave for the moment. Hoping to return in the future with more support! All in God's will. Being a single white female in Africa comes with it's share of problematic situations which I needed to leave behind and trust God to lead the way to either a new adventure or provide the means for me to come back as a stronger unit and continue the work... Time will tell!

130713, Family day in prison

On Wednesday morning  I set out with one of the bead mamas and 2 of her sons to go and visit her other son in prison in Umtata. I’ve been with them to visit him a few weeks before and we planned to go again this week for the official ‘family day visit’. 

We were under the impression that there’d be a braai, so we stopped at a shop in Umtata to get some supplies and then wasted another hour to go deeper into town on the mission for cheaper meat which turned out to be just a greater waste, because arriving at the prison we found out that there is indeed no braai happening at all.  (Don’t ask me about the misunderstanding, I’m the only umlungu in the whole place and don’t understand everything that’s going on…Xhosa…)  So in the end we had apples for lunch.

There were a good number of people that turned up for family day and we had to wait in queues for the prison taxi to escort us with our food packages and djembe drums to the prison gate.  We were clever this time and left all our cell phones in the car which meant we could skip this great long queue of checking in cellphones and move on to the next one to get into the door.

After that there is yet another queue for strip-searching (After the packages have been searched).  The previous time they had a male / female cubicle where you went in to be searched one at a time.  This time, I guess because of the greater number of people, they did it right in the waiting room (Male and female apart).  So people were being strip-searched right there in front of everyone else.  Very interesting.  They basically felt you up and down and then you had to take down your pants or lift up your skirt.  (At least you’re allowed to keep your underwear on). And I must say the people who did the searching were nice enough. 

Reaching the outside people pointed me into the direction where the music was coming from, I had seemingly lost the rest of my party and people thought I must be part of the entertainment being the only white person and carrying a djembe drum under my arm.  When I got there I found my friend already playing his drum next to the speakers.  The man with the mike saw me and called me closer to join my friend, which I did although it was not really in the plan.  I actually brought the drum for who-ever of his friends wanted to play with him, which in the end turned out to be only me. 

So there I was having a rather epic moment, playing drums together with my inmate friend in front of a couple of thousand prisoners and their family members inside Maximum Prison.  It was fun and I was almost disappointed when it ended after not too long.  But he wanted to spend the time with his family rather, which I understood cause after all the delays and queues we weren’t left with a whole lot of time.

He told me that he has very few friends in the prison and rather keeps to himself than to be part of the gangs.  There is apparently a great deal of weed smoking going on inside the prison and the police themselves are the biggest dealers who sell to the inmates.  I know that sort of thing goes on in prisons all over the world, but really, we think our police are there to uphold the law and some of them try their best, but in actual fact a lot of them should be locked up themselves.  

070713, Elliot

050713 Friday, photos in a forest

For only the second time in a whole year of staying at this campsite in Coffee Bay, I have a camping buddy for a few days who happens to make the best coffee I've possibly ever had.  Donald is doing a couple months road trip with his big dog Luka and I've been lucky enough to have them join me on a little area exploration today at Umtata river mouth and Umdumbi.

Since the April flood this year, the sea is coming up much higher than before at the Umtata river mouth and much of the forest area has been under water.  Quite a surreal landscape...

A dead mule along the way.

A small section of the view at Umdumbi, my own little serengeti.

300613, Hole in the Wall

300613, Portraits of my neighbors

The Reading Hut got broken into a couple of times now.  The weekend before last, someone got in and stole the pvc pipe that I'd just bought for the long drop.  They got in by wiggling the window from the outside in such a way that the lever came loose on the inside and they could open the window.  When I saw what happened I secured the window just a little by hammering in some bent nails so the lever won't lift so easily.  

This just gave me more problems because the next time they came, they simply broke the glass and got the window open again.  And stole my little bookshelf that I brought all the way from Cape Town.  They also took the only chair in the place and the special alphabet carpet that was the only warm spot on the floor for the kids.

Anyway, I'm sure it must be someone that stays not too far away, for them to come back almost every day to steal something else.  So I decided to take a little walk around in the village to let everyone know what happened and let them keep their eyes open for any of the stolen items.  So far no-one has seen a thing but who knows.  

Either way it was a nice walk and good to see all my neighbors again.  I've also decided to call my next exhibition 'Makhelwane' (My neighbour). 

210613, A visit to Mama May's house

The view from her house.

Here Mama May (Mavis) is just finishing a fresh layer of cow dung for the floor.

I really liked her house, such a colorful and happy place.

One of the guys also staying there.

Some of her grand kids

The mother goat

Mama Mavis in her church outfit

061713, Monday - Youth day

  

My 'adopted kids' Snooks and Asefika.

This is my friend Lucy.  Here she is collecting sand for building.  She has already built a rondavel and a flat building and now she is building another flat building.  She does most of the work herself in between selling beads and working as one of the 'mentor mothers'.   She is possibly one of the most hard-working people I know.  

16 June, Youth Day in the Transkei

Tomorrow we celebrate what we now call ‘Youth Day’.  Here in Coffee Bay, rural Transkei, previous apartheid homeland you can sense a little something in the air.  It is long weekend, some tourists have arrived at the backpackers and we also expect the 'shebeens' to be pumping tomorrow and won't be surprised to hear of some stabbings or other violent acts happening amidst the drunkenness.  

But how many of us actually remember what Youth Day is about.  37 years ago, during the apartheid regime, Afrikaans (together with English) was introduced as the languages in which children be instructed in all black schools in South Africa.  In fact, they were forced to use these languages.  Indigenous languages would only be used for religion, music and physical culture.

This meant that black children would rather have to focus on the understanding of the language than learn much about the subject taught in it.  English as international language was of course preferred over apartheid associated Afrikaans, but because the government was Afrikaans dominated it wanted to reverse the decline of Afrikaans among black South Africans by enforcing the 1974 decree that recognized only Afrikaans and English as official languages.

This sparked much rebellion that eventually grew to the mass rally of June 16, 1976, when between 10 000 – 20 000 students walked in protest to Orlando stadium.  The protest, which was intended to be peaceful, turned violent after students took another route when their intended route was barricaded off by the police.  The first shot was fired by a policeman, who said that some of the children were throwing stones.  This started panic and the police let their dogs loose on the children who retaliated by throwing stones at the dogs.  Then the police started shooting directly at the children.  23 People, including 2 whites died on that day.

Following this event, The ANC was established as leading party in the liberation struggle and the Soweto uprising was a turning point to white rule in South Africa that eventually led to the release of Mandela and the end of apartheid.

I think it is important for us to remember our history and make sure we don’t make the same mistakes again.  I also ask myself what can be done by us and our government to help the people, that were previously oppressed by our forefathers, because I find it ironic that now, 37 years later, they are still being taught in English (no longer Afrikaans) and mostly the rural people don’t understand English, so after all these years their education has not improved much.  

110613, Thanks Nal'ibali

A big thank you to Nal'ibali for the books we have received from you!  It is much appreciated!

040613, Port St Johns, The Pont

260513, Cook Stoves For Africa

Smoke costs 1.9 million lives a year, nearly double that of malaria.  One of the leading causes of death for women and small children. And I'm not talking about cigarette smoke.  Across Africa, millions of women in rural areas spend hours every day exposed to the smoke from their cooking fires.  Inhaling of smoke causes lung and heart diseases and many rural  people die, probably not even knowing why.  Other than that, forests are disappearing because of the amount of  wood needed to fuel these cooking fires.

Recently I have been getting involved with a company called 'Global Eco projects' that has developed a cooking stove that needs significantly less wood and at the same time greatly reduces carbon emissions.

The distribution of the stoves has started recently in the OR Thambo District Municipality  of the Eastern Cape (which is where I am) with an initial pilot project of 30 000 stoves.  I've had the privilege to join Kate (SA Operations Manager for Cookstoves for Africa) on some home visits to see how the people are getting on with the new stoves.  The feedback is indeed very positive and people have already been using much less wood than before.  The 'istovu' also seems to be replacing the paraffin stoves that are used in most homes.  

This is a very exciting project that is still going to save many lives as well as many trees!

For more, check out:

www.cookstovesforafrica.com 

Using the new cook stove

the 'istovu'

On a home visit with one of the new users of the stove

150513, Tea with Beate

At Beate's birthday tea in the village.

150513, New Montessori School Coffee Bay

Last week I had the privilege to help out for two days at the new Montessori School (Ikhaya Labantwana) in Coffee Bay, while some of the other teachers were receiving their training. Previously the Montessori school was much smaller but the new school which opened its doors just a few weeks ago, already has about 30 kids attending. 

I had loads of fun and was happy to spend time with my little friends, some of whom I've already known for a while from around Coffee Bay and the Reading Hut.  Personally I think this school is one of the best things that exist around here.  These kids are learning so much and already have such a high step up in an otherwise very sad educational system.  There are four year olds here who can already put letters together to form words whilst I daily spend time with 9 year olds from the regular public schools around, who still don't know the complete alphabet!  

I really believe that to make a change in the education of a nation (that has lagged behind for too long because of apartheid, poverty etc.) the best place to start is with the little ones and laying for them a solid foundation.  This is what's being done here.

Well done to the magnificently passionate Dawn Brochenin and all her hard work together with those who helped her make this school a possibility!  May the futures of these little ones be blessed.