Broken Glass

This was my second time in KwaThema. We left Wits University at about 13h00 and took a slow drive and got to KwaThema at about 14h00.

We met up with some of the volunteers that we had met the previous Thursday. We were familiar with some of them but introduced ourselves to the people that we hadn’t met on Thursday. Khula and myself walked to the beerhall structure with Lawrence, Wandile and some of the other volunteers. I chatted a little bit to Lawrence on the way to the beerhall and found out a bit about him- he was born and raised in KwaThema but lived in Cape Town for a few years whilst studying Chemical Engineering at Belville Technical College. He is back in KwaThema now until he figures out his life path.

Arriving at the beerhall, we all climbed the stairs to the first floor of the structure where we sat and started throwing around ideas regarding our design. My first impression of being up on that upper floor that day was that the structure was very unsafe. There were children using the structure as a giant piece of playground equipment which disturbed me in a way because of the poor safety of the building- it is covered in bits of broken glass and the first floor is completely open to the ground floor and it would be very easy to fall of the structure and get hurt.

Children have really taken ownership of the building. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that it does resemble a piece of playground equipment. Children are oblivious and sort of fearless of the fact that there is broken glass scattered all over the building and that they could be badly hurt if the fall but they don’t have the same reservations that an adult would have. They just use the building for fun. I really want to see this space being safer for children as well as drawing older youth and adults into the space.