First impressions

Thursday 12 April 2007
Back from Kwathema, dusty and sunburnt after a long day, but feeling very positive about the project. We met the volunteers and then traipsed inefficiently from site to site, and, over the course of the day, started making connections with each other. I was surprised at how serious about the project the volunteers seem; they are mainly high school and college students and all seem to have incredible direction in their own lives. The discussion exercise at the end of the day was amusing and rewarding, with almost everyone in our group – Gugu, Nathi, Wandile, Sifiso, Tom and Kasia – participating very enthusiastically in the brainstorming and roleplaying. The township itself has a friendly, cared-for air – the scale is small with narrow, intimate roads, though there are some stretches of roadside (along the bigger roads?) which are bare. Everywhere the school kids wore fully accessorised school uniforms and even the pre-schoolers carried little satchels. I think a lot of us have concerns about the impact of our interventions, given their scale, and their capacity to endure once these six weeks are over. Hannah’s plan, though, seems to be to extract from the exercise a way of working which will be able to inform future, larger scale interventions in other townships. The three sites which stand out are the chess park, beerhall and cbd.