This has been an awsum experience. You guys really dd a great job and I am proud to have been a part of it.
I was quite fascinated by the way you coordinated everything. There was no outright leader by\ut you all knew what roles you had to play and stuck to them, making everything run smoothly. I know you feel you could have done better, perhaps, but what you left us with is amazing. I will keep everyone posted about how things are going this side.
the launch was great, you guys are awsum!!!
Showing posts with label Beer hall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beer hall. Show all posts
Monday, May 28, 2007
Sunday, May 27, 2007
reflections
i woke up this morning feeling lighter, with a smile on my face. i felt confident that we had succeeded in what we had set out to do. in retrospect, the launch didn’t perform as planned, but the organic evolution from what we had organized into what it rather wanted to become was satisfying. the children had delighted our jungle gym – and that was what we had strived for all along.
my family arrived at 10am and we set out on our way to kwathema. the drive was familiar and strange. i talked them through the project as we drove.
its our time. mr cindy was on site, watering. to my amazement, the whole structure was animated with little moving bodies. the activation of our space brought warmth to my body, all the while aching from the strangely situated bruises i had acquired along our turbulent journey.
it finally became clear to me. the success of this project was not by any means based upon the realization of ifg ulm’s designing politics brief, nor upon hannahs ephemeral agendas, and not even upon our group’s sometimes controlling and most-times sensible and aesthetic considerations. its success was based upon the subsequent appropriation of the space. our space. the community’s acceptance of it, in order to permit expressions of liberty and individuality.
what we strived for was a mouldable place; a jungle gym. an open-endedness rather than a prescription – a place where people would have a significant degree of agency over their environment.
today, a certain spirit was reincarnated, resuscitated. the little bodies energized with life, excitement, relief, liberation. their spirits lifted the heavy, smoky clouds of struggle, more so than the trails of traditional incense ever would, all swept away by the ever-persistent gushes of wind; that same wind that carried their unassuming kites across kwathema’s sunny skies.
my family arrived at 10am and we set out on our way to kwathema. the drive was familiar and strange. i talked them through the project as we drove.
its our time. mr cindy was on site, watering. to my amazement, the whole structure was animated with little moving bodies. the activation of our space brought warmth to my body, all the while aching from the strangely situated bruises i had acquired along our turbulent journey.
it finally became clear to me. the success of this project was not by any means based upon the realization of ifg ulm’s designing politics brief, nor upon hannahs ephemeral agendas, and not even upon our group’s sometimes controlling and most-times sensible and aesthetic considerations. its success was based upon the subsequent appropriation of the space. our space. the community’s acceptance of it, in order to permit expressions of liberty and individuality.
what we strived for was a mouldable place; a jungle gym. an open-endedness rather than a prescription – a place where people would have a significant degree of agency over their environment.
today, a certain spirit was reincarnated, resuscitated. the little bodies energized with life, excitement, relief, liberation. their spirits lifted the heavy, smoky clouds of struggle, more so than the trails of traditional incense ever would, all swept away by the ever-persistent gushes of wind; that same wind that carried their unassuming kites across kwathema’s sunny skies.
initiations
A roof wetting is the end of the process of the design of a building. In recent times it suggests the passing over of the building from the control of the architect and builders to its owners. The practice apparently came from a medieval custom of throwing a party when the main roofbeams had been lowered together to meet. But there’s also the belief that after a roof was finished, the men would all drink a lot, climb the roof, undo their breeches, and collectively test its resistance to liquid. In Africa, new buildings are greeted with parties and acknowledgments to their ancestors.
Most cultures leave buildings to decay when their life is over. But sometimes there are more abrupt endings. In African practices of inititiation, the hut used to shelter initiates is burned down after they leave.
The beer hall has been initiated in this way before, in 1976, when the youth of KwaThema set it alight in protest against the state’s monopolist control of alcohol sales, and the destructive social patterns of institutionalized drinking.
By burning herbs gently in the corners of the building, the students and community suggested that the building was being renewed, while recalling, through the trails of smoke, some sort of connection to its previous lives.
The chess park is sited next to what was planned as a buffer zone to separate white owned land from the township. The symbolism of chess suggests both the blurring that warfare can bring about and the possibility of erasure, of one space being taken over by another. The resurgence of the little park around the chess board as a vibrant public space on Saturday was a vivid illustration of how the non-spaces of the modern apartheid city, spaces designed to separate communities and water down urban friction, contain the potential for a rich public life.
The launch on Saturday doesn’t end the KwaThema Project, but it marks a moment where the projects designed and executed by the students shift their status. The event suggested an appropriation, an incipient life for the spaces, that will unfold in ways we haven’t predicted. Already little traces have been left: someone wrote FALLEN HEROES on the road outside the beer hall, and already, someone else called for that same person to be arrested for recycling the beer crates.
The KwaThema project is a sort of initiation for the Wits students because in becoming an architect, you're considered wet behind the ears until you get your first building built. So the cause for celebration is multiplied.
I guess the conclusion this brings me to is the sense that you just had to be there. It was a great day in a wonderful project. We'll post all the thank yous over the next week when we finally recover.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
the d-day
after only a few hours sleep, i rolled out of bed at 4:15am. i had to be on site by 6am to strike the shuttering for tagging kwathema. the volunteers i had employed were waiting diligently, in the blistering cold, smoky breaths and numbed hands.
after hours of manual un-screwing of the shutterwork, and many a curse to tom’s over-design, we finally struck the first bollard at 7:30am.
the morning became a blur. frantic rushing around, enough phonecalls to warrant shares in vodacom, cold sweat and aimless, nervous wandering around, finally brought us to 10:30am. the day progressed from the burning of traditional incense to the giant tournament at the inaugurated chess park, a raw piece of boerewors, a couple of ciders and then a rush of a million children to the oily snacks at the beerhall. hannah had suggested we serve bags of salted peanuts; we objected, once again, and were glad we had, once again…
the swarms of grubby children, pushing, shoving, biting, crying engulfed us. some older children took the lead with belts and loud voices. ONE LINE. ONE LINE. vetkoeks and hotdogs were dished out, one by one. tears welled up in a volunteer’s eyes at the sight of the last tray of food – children stared at us in desperation. the girls were submissive; the boys abusive and vexatious. maybe we were succumbing to the sympathy vote we have all been told about. the volunteers were mixed with emotion – angry at the disorder, traumatized by the aggression, saddened by the yearning for what seemed like such simple food, exhausted from little sleep and lots of policing.
my day was rounded off by a sneaky drink at stan’s. i felt guilty for abandoning my group in its final hour – but i did it anyway. the sun set and more and more people dribbled in. lawrence recited some poetry he had written about beauty, and phumi followed suit. we attempted some group poetry. once upon a time… there was a man… who came from kwathema… and decided… phillip, the chesspark welder didn’t get it. i would just like to thank everybody for… he kept saying at his turn. well I guess many thanks were in order for such a victory.
after hours of manual un-screwing of the shutterwork, and many a curse to tom’s over-design, we finally struck the first bollard at 7:30am.
the morning became a blur. frantic rushing around, enough phonecalls to warrant shares in vodacom, cold sweat and aimless, nervous wandering around, finally brought us to 10:30am. the day progressed from the burning of traditional incense to the giant tournament at the inaugurated chess park, a raw piece of boerewors, a couple of ciders and then a rush of a million children to the oily snacks at the beerhall. hannah had suggested we serve bags of salted peanuts; we objected, once again, and were glad we had, once again…
the swarms of grubby children, pushing, shoving, biting, crying engulfed us. some older children took the lead with belts and loud voices. ONE LINE. ONE LINE. vetkoeks and hotdogs were dished out, one by one. tears welled up in a volunteer’s eyes at the sight of the last tray of food – children stared at us in desperation. the girls were submissive; the boys abusive and vexatious. maybe we were succumbing to the sympathy vote we have all been told about. the volunteers were mixed with emotion – angry at the disorder, traumatized by the aggression, saddened by the yearning for what seemed like such simple food, exhausted from little sleep and lots of policing.
my day was rounded off by a sneaky drink at stan’s. i felt guilty for abandoning my group in its final hour – but i did it anyway. the sun set and more and more people dribbled in. lawrence recited some poetry he had written about beauty, and phumi followed suit. we attempted some group poetry. once upon a time… there was a man… who came from kwathema… and decided… phillip, the chesspark welder didn’t get it. i would just like to thank everybody for… he kept saying at his turn. well I guess many thanks were in order for such a victory.
Control
The big day arrived with an annoying alarm clock bleep, way too early for any sane person to wake up on a Saturday. We rushed off to KwaThema, and got straight into finishing the last few outstanding projects before the start of the launch. Gareth and I hung the mattresses, we all placed the rubbish bins, the grass was glued, and the basins were filled with bottle tops. The African Incense was placed and paint spills were removed. Catherine’s husband Harry arrived to start pinning up photographs and hoards of children looked on with eager, gruelling anticipation in their eyes.
Dennis arrived with his learners from Sakhelwe Primary School, and some of our respective family members arrived. Linda was still painting our paired project sign, much to Ahaka and my dismay, and we made the final arrangements with the Kwasa-Kwasa dancers and their performance for our paired launch.
In no time, the incense was lit and smoke streamed from the building as it once did in 1976. This smoke was cleansing, halting the decay of the building, symbolising its renewal. Catherine was spontaneously drafted into the cleansing ceremony. The choir sang while the smoke burned. A far cry from the violent scenes of rampaging students and screaming residents described by those who witnessed it’s burning. The building has been spiritually healed, its dark, rubbish collecting bowls are now alive with the laughter of children, no person holds the key to this door, it is held open by the spirit of community. In this project we rejected the idea of initially investigating what select individuals wanted to do with the structure, moulding our brief around a person. Instead we made a decision that seeing as though no individual owns the building, no individual should. I think we have saved it; we have saved its history and preserved its message. A building always represents its owner, their strength, choices and history. We have denied the beer hall this burden, and allowed it to represent itself.
We left the beer hall and visited the Recycling Container project. Ahaka and I said a few words, and the Kwasa-Kwasa dancers turned our brief about a dance which involves the recycling of rubbish into a sexy recycling saunter. They oozed and folded their way around the refuse area, flicking and twisting glass and cans into the right bins. They were fantastic, and the crowd seemed to love it. I am very happy with the outcome of our paired project. We supplied a brief to the artists and they returned a sign, full of their own interpretations. I am amazed at how Ahaka studied waste and I studied containers and our result was a piece of mural art, whereas Tom studied mural art, and Robyn studied open spaces and they produced a pavement element. We are happy that Stan will be able to make more money off recycling glass, that the park will now be a cleaner place, and that we’ve been able to organise refuse bins for the area.
What an incredible day, such an unbelievable project, such a successful result. Today the building belonged to the children of KwaThema, in the evening it was the youth’s. One volunteer never saw the end of the revelries. He was arrested for stealing beer crates and pulling out flowers. Here ownership was enforced over the building; we all felt it shiver as the police approached. Today resembled its demise, police arresting a youth for being a nuisance, as in 1976. They were asked to come out by those who seem to have assumed an authority over the building. Control is a dangerous drug. What honestly gives them the right? Their involvement in the project.
World shift
After not much sleep we left Wits at about 7.15am. At site, Robyn and her volunteers were unpacking her street sign from its shuttering. We had a list of things that still needed to be done. Gareth put up the no-dumping signs and started on erecting the mattress springs, though Guy took over from him so that he could do the beercrate panels. Guy, Robyn and I intermittently cut up and stuck the fake grass under the swings. A little bit of last-minute painting was done. At about 10am people started arriving. We were delighted to see Lone and Melinda drive up and then our families started to appear. I fetched Thuli, our traditional healer, from the market along with her sister and daughter and installed them upstairs. The choir kids who had been knocking about under the beady eye of their choir mistress got into position and we began just before 11am. The burning of the imphepo required my reluctant participation. We were pleased, though, with the idea of cleansing and new beginnings that this ephemeral ritual symbolised and the gentle, poetic echoing of the smoke that must have risen from this structure 31 years ago. Our three brief welcomes from Kwelemthini, Abedniago and Mr Cindi worked well to give the proceedings a slightly formal edge (the idea had been to have more relaxed festivities in the afternoon but a more solemn feel in the morning). We had also hoped that representatives of each of the main stakeholder groups would take some kind of public ownership over the beerhall by speaking. I was glad we’d decided that none of us should speak as it might have come off as being self-indulgent and self-congratulatory and in many ways the success of the project is really out of our hands by this point. Tseleng, our MC, forgot to announce the good news that it was 99% certain that the council would put lighting in the beerhall. (A barrage of phonecalls to Warren Mathers over the course of the week had resulted in an answer that his department would definitely reconnect the power and that they were sure they could also cover the cost of the lighting, the price of which they were waiting to hear from the civils department.) Then began the procession past the paired projects to the chess park. At ours, we asked KIbas and his friends to say a few words as just before the crowd had arrived they’d been saying that this project should be replicated elsewhere in KwaThema and in other townships, but when it came their turn to speak, embarrassingly Kibas just thanked us for what we’d done. Kasia and I had done our best to improve a space, acknowledging and appreciating fragile local economies and methods – but I still felt that all of out attempts to think about alternative ways of making and improving spaces should be seen as interim ones only that must one day soon be addressed properly by the authorities and thus superceded. I believe there is a risk in idealising the largely non-material, spontaneous infrastructures of townships because this amounts to sanctioning lack and inadequate provision, notwithstanding the fact that these are often accompanied by richly creative survival strategies.
The chess park looked spectacular – and the contest was in full swing. It was at this point that I realised that Khula hadn’t been at our site at all in the morning (and he wasn’t to come back to it in the afternoon). The formal proceedings seemed to be weighted towards the site on which they happened, which was quite sad and the chess park’s builders got a mention for their superb work but our subcontractors didn’t. Back at the beerhall, the planned programme of performances was wrecked by Lunga’s faulty sound equipment – we had some music but none of the nine singers and dancers could perform. It was a perfect, windless day, the first we’d experienced in KwaThema, and so kite flying was eliminated, though a few boys did bravely try. The basketball was at least a success with the prizes going to the professionals, friends of the guys whom Lawrence and I had found on Thursday. The music and activity, and perhaps mainly the swings, attracted a huge number of children from the surrounding areas. I had envisaged that the launch would involve adults as well as children but very few attended, despite lots of promises – perhaps they were as intimidated by the children as we felt! We were inundated with delirious small beings running up and down the stairs, queuing for the swings, and generally having a marvelous time. They were quite scary when it came to the handing out of snacks and coke, but a couple of teenagers appeared from nowhere and fiercely kept them in line.
In the late afternoon light, the red coke crates glowed. It struck me that we might have succeeded at setting out a stepping stone towards a redefinition of this area. We had certainly captured people’s imaginations – by the end of the seven weeks, we were being stopped regularly by passers by to find out what was going on and to discuss possibilities for the beerhall’s future. Its value seems to have suddenly been recognised by residents. It felt as though the beerhall, once invisible, had taken on a symbolic charge (although the strikingly iconic building always had a great power) and I hoped, perhaps naively, that the boy’s power salute might speak to people of action and agency. The visual language we used in the end might be seen as a combination of local methods and materials with an urban, modern twist to illuminate a giant piece urban furniture. There was probably very little about our scheme that spoke to logic or functional need, despite what the Germans had said about the finiteness of our design and its relationship to high modernism – it combined a single practical element (the balustrade) with memory, whimsy, porosity. It allowed for contingency and change; it did not fix meaning.
The whole area was littered with cups and peanut packets by about 5pm and not many of the kids were interested in helping to clear up. Once Lunga switched off the music, though, and Thabang announced hometime for the children, there was a little more peace and the ANCYL guys started up the party again. After re-erecting the danger tape to protect the grass and generally tidying up, we retired to Stan’s for a much-needed drink and some left-over vet koek with the chess park guys. A congratulatory sms from Lone came as a nice surprise. After persuading the poets, Lawrence, Mpumi and Tseleng, to do their thing since they hadn’t had a chance earlier, we had a raucous time making up bad poetry together.As I write this, I feel as though my world has shifted, that things won’t be quite the same again. I have learned so much about so many things. New possibilities for practice have been opened up. I have become more enchanted than ever with the dynamics of group work. It will be strange not to spend every free second thinking about KwaThema.
The chess park looked spectacular – and the contest was in full swing. It was at this point that I realised that Khula hadn’t been at our site at all in the morning (and he wasn’t to come back to it in the afternoon). The formal proceedings seemed to be weighted towards the site on which they happened, which was quite sad and the chess park’s builders got a mention for their superb work but our subcontractors didn’t. Back at the beerhall, the planned programme of performances was wrecked by Lunga’s faulty sound equipment – we had some music but none of the nine singers and dancers could perform. It was a perfect, windless day, the first we’d experienced in KwaThema, and so kite flying was eliminated, though a few boys did bravely try. The basketball was at least a success with the prizes going to the professionals, friends of the guys whom Lawrence and I had found on Thursday. The music and activity, and perhaps mainly the swings, attracted a huge number of children from the surrounding areas. I had envisaged that the launch would involve adults as well as children but very few attended, despite lots of promises – perhaps they were as intimidated by the children as we felt! We were inundated with delirious small beings running up and down the stairs, queuing for the swings, and generally having a marvelous time. They were quite scary when it came to the handing out of snacks and coke, but a couple of teenagers appeared from nowhere and fiercely kept them in line.
In the late afternoon light, the red coke crates glowed. It struck me that we might have succeeded at setting out a stepping stone towards a redefinition of this area. We had certainly captured people’s imaginations – by the end of the seven weeks, we were being stopped regularly by passers by to find out what was going on and to discuss possibilities for the beerhall’s future. Its value seems to have suddenly been recognised by residents. It felt as though the beerhall, once invisible, had taken on a symbolic charge (although the strikingly iconic building always had a great power) and I hoped, perhaps naively, that the boy’s power salute might speak to people of action and agency. The visual language we used in the end might be seen as a combination of local methods and materials with an urban, modern twist to illuminate a giant piece urban furniture. There was probably very little about our scheme that spoke to logic or functional need, despite what the Germans had said about the finiteness of our design and its relationship to high modernism – it combined a single practical element (the balustrade) with memory, whimsy, porosity. It allowed for contingency and change; it did not fix meaning.
The whole area was littered with cups and peanut packets by about 5pm and not many of the kids were interested in helping to clear up. Once Lunga switched off the music, though, and Thabang announced hometime for the children, there was a little more peace and the ANCYL guys started up the party again. After re-erecting the danger tape to protect the grass and generally tidying up, we retired to Stan’s for a much-needed drink and some left-over vet koek with the chess park guys. A congratulatory sms from Lone came as a nice surprise. After persuading the poets, Lawrence, Mpumi and Tseleng, to do their thing since they hadn’t had a chance earlier, we had a raucous time making up bad poetry together.As I write this, I feel as though my world has shifted, that things won’t be quite the same again. I have learned so much about so many things. New possibilities for practice have been opened up. I have become more enchanted than ever with the dynamics of group work. It will be strange not to spend every free second thinking about KwaThema.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Late Night Crates
Catherine and I left Wits this morning, and made our way to the Carnival Mall in Benoni, we were on a morning of errands, We were at the mall to buy prizes for our Basketball challenge at the launch, we were very lucky to find two well priced Nike sports bags. They will definitely do. Then we went to a nursery somewhere out in some obscure farmland where a lady with a beehive haircut sold us more vygies. Our adventure then took us into Springs on a mission to find shackles for our swings, well we toured the town, twice, and eventually found them after brief confrontations from an ogre looking man and a very sassy sales assistant. Then we had to collect our sponsored Coke from a depot in Nigel. They had might as well refer to Nigel as half way to nowhere, because that’s exactly where we went. In the middle of a dead maize field, in what must have been planned as an industrial development, which no one but Coca Cola and a dead maize field saw as a viable place for development. Catherine and I were intrigued to be sent away from the depot to collect our Coke elsewhere. They no longer do wholesale because of rampant crime. We both looked at the dead maize as we drove out of the depot wondering where the criminals were and why they would rob a place so far from any obvious human habitation.
We finally got to KwaThema at 12:00, where Gareth and Robyn had been preparing an argument as to why the swings should be positioned where they want them. We were frightened by their enthusiasm and newly developed upper body strength so we relented. The rest of the day was filled with controlled mayhem as we rushed around completing everything for the launch tomorrow.
At the Recycling Container site, our painter Linda had not yet arrived, and had finished about 10% of the sign. In our complete panicked hysteria, Ahaka managed to find an excellent artist, Wilson and we immediately employed him. By the time he reached the site, Linda had too, so we had two artists completely reinterpreting the sign, but managing to complete it. They worked until 9pm that evening.
I have no photos of today because of the amount of work we had to achieve, from last minute painting, to the erection of the basketball hoop and general cleaning up. We managed to fix the swings, which look fantastic and left the mattress, fake grass and beer crate wall fixing for tomorrow morning.
Well our day didn’t end as most have, it reached 6pm and we didn’t go home but moved to the back of Mr Cindy’s house with a mass of about 60 beer crates. Here, armed with a drill, hundreds of nuts and bolts and a quartz each, we set about building the beer crate walls. It was utterly chaotic, but we managed, emerging cold, slightly bruised, yet determined, straight backed and glossy eyed.
Tomorrow it all comes together.
The final week
This last week has been a cold blur. On Monday morning the light was clear and sharp as I drove to varsity – the maximum was meant to be 12 degrees and it got even colder on Tuesday. We achieved a huge amount, though, and somehow managed to get to a point very near to the level of completion we were aiming at, though I guess a few loose ends and some open-endedness would not be seen as a bad thing. We got through the week with the help of kotas for lunch which was Gareth’s suggestion and find - they were a good antidote to the cold weather - and with sweet, creamered coffee from the Cindis. It became harder and harder to give tasks to the ANCYL – for some reason I really felt this during this week, perhaps because the pressure was on and I was constantly aware of the fact that everyone needed to be as efficient as possible. The beginning of the week was marred by the fact that both steel deliveries (the long pieces previously ordered from Fleet Steel and the flat and round bar from Mac Steel) delayed January’s welding work. When it arrived, things progressed smoothly with Gareth and January collaborating on a fantastic floating fixture on the stair balustrade. Khula pulled his weight and got going with the lines for the basket ball court. The landscaping also really took shape with the first delivery of crusher stone on Monday proving to us that we needed to address the area on the south east of the beerhall with more grass and stones. When it was complete, we were very pleased with the integration of the scheme into the landscape. Unfortunately over the weekend someone had, according to Mr Cindi, out of jealousy pulled out some of the vygies donated by Peter – an indication perhaps of other claims on the site within the community.
An interesting event was a meeting that I went to on Tuesday afternoon with Mr Cindi and Stan with Tshidi Mohlabane, the regional executive manager of SRAC for the eastern region of Ekurhuleni. They had had dealings with her when she’d been a manager in KwaThema and we went on the pretext that we still hadn’t had the large pile of rubble removed. However, I suspect that their motives were somewhat different as she belonged to the wrong department to do anything about this. Just before we went into the meeting, they told me not to mention the KwaThema Working Group or Kwelemthini or Stuma. Mohlabane was enthusiastic about the project but extremely concerned that we had not gone through the correct procedures to obtain permission for it. I felt that the meeting was a mistake and that there was the possibility of her shutting us down, while Stan and Mr Cindi held that as soon as she saw it she would fall in love and wouldn’t be able to stand in our way! They admitted to me that they wanted someone to adopt the project to ensure its success.
On Wednesday, Robyn started painting the tyre bollards; this little bit of articulation made a huge difference, and Thabang and Lungu completed the job on Thursday. They also helped me to paint the lines across the road between the swings and the trees. In fact, painting got underway in a big way with undercoats being done on the sides of the concrete blocks on the ground floor and the slabs in the landscape out to the north of the building. We also decided to play with the basketball lines, extending them beyond the constraints of the ‘court’. Mr Cindi stepped in to do the undercoats on the basketball backboard. By Thursday morning, everyone had a task, and there was a hum of activity accompanied by loud reggae from one of the houses nearby. At mid morning a man in a BMW sped up followed by a front end loader and an enormous truck. A visit from a bus load of councilors the previous morning seemed to have galvanised someone into action and this man whose company was contracted to the council was sent to help us out. The huge pile disappeared, as did the areas of rubble dumping to the north of the structure, and the lumps of earth at the vehicular barrier to the south, but it took several loads. We replaced the concrete lumps in a more orderly fashion, and Thabang in fact managed to create very low benches by laying pre-stressed concrete beams across the other rubble. This was a great improvement and was later painted, though it turned out to be pale pink the next morning! The bins and no-dumping signs that Guy had ordered arrived. We managed to source crates for our panel from Simon at the Mississippi Tavern on Thursday, getting ten then and there, and having the others promised to us the next morning. We set about working out the details of their fixing and bought the required materials. Fischer sent an agent to help us install our abacus with chemical mortar and it almost immediately had a group of children playing games on it. By Thursday, Veli’s fabulous mural of the power salute from the 1976 uprisings had been completed and he moved onto painting all the particpants’ names on a beam along the side of the court. We came up with an idea of changing the painted advert ’IT’S MILLER TIME’ on the west side of the building to ‘IT’S YOUR TIME’ or ‘ITS OUR TIME’, eventually settling on the latter – a variant of Kwathema’s ubiquitous speaking walls. Veli did this early on Friday morning in a quite translucent red which gave the impression of it having been there for some time. From time to time groups of kids would appear as spectators and either watch or help – often I pulled out the black dustbin bags and got them to pick up the never-ending stream of litter.
At the Thursday braai, our group felt quite hard done by (as usual?): there was no plan for the snacks promised to our site for the afternoon, despite my having asked whether we had to organise these ourselves and being told we didn’t. Also, Hannah objected to our initiative to have Kwelemthini address the beerhall crowd briefly early in the morning. The promotion of Anthony’s chess academy is indisputably crucial, but it seemed as though this was being done at the expense of our project. On Friday, therefore, we organised that Lizzy would do the catering and Hannah fortunately gave us the go-ahead.
Through all this, our paired projects were progressing too. Kasia had found a builder through the Chess Park called Richard who would work for R150 a day. The previous week we had discussed our ideas and so he began on Monday shifting the large pieces of concrete around and preparing the soil for the paving and slab we were going to throw. On Wednesday, Kasia and I placed the plates that she had got from Liebermann Pottery plus some small blue tiles that I had on the new slab, while one of Kibas’s friends chatted to us about how this decoration was going to attract women to their stall! The whole process of the construction of what amounted to an extended plinth around Kibas’s stall was a very organic, responsive and flexible one, with Kasia and I talking through things constantly and changing things as other possibilities arose. The notion of reusing all the rubble on the site rather than dumping it in another inappropriate place grew out of this so in the end, Richard was commissioned to use the rubble as a hard core of sorts for another screeded slab on the south of the stall, where we placed more plates. The trees were happily planted, though they were looking as though the cold might have got to them. The last touch was crusher stone to form a driveway for the carwash, and a specific request for a spot to shine the cars’ tyres. Towards the end of the week, I was very neglectful of the project in the face of the pressures of the beerhall and I’m afraid that Kasia carried it substantially.
Friday saw Guy and I race around trying to buy the last items needed on the east rand which included prizes for the basketball competition and collecting the donated coke which Robyn had organised for the launch from Nigel. I also, probably rather impertinently, went along to the muti market near Cash Build and found a traditional healer who was prepared to help with the ritual of cleansing the building. On Friday night we sat in Mr Cindi’s back courtyard until 10pm bolting together the panels of red beer crates (and sharing beers) so that they could be erected in the morning. When we left we saw that someone had painted a message in the road in front of the beerhall about fallen heroes.
An interesting event was a meeting that I went to on Tuesday afternoon with Mr Cindi and Stan with Tshidi Mohlabane, the regional executive manager of SRAC for the eastern region of Ekurhuleni. They had had dealings with her when she’d been a manager in KwaThema and we went on the pretext that we still hadn’t had the large pile of rubble removed. However, I suspect that their motives were somewhat different as she belonged to the wrong department to do anything about this. Just before we went into the meeting, they told me not to mention the KwaThema Working Group or Kwelemthini or Stuma. Mohlabane was enthusiastic about the project but extremely concerned that we had not gone through the correct procedures to obtain permission for it. I felt that the meeting was a mistake and that there was the possibility of her shutting us down, while Stan and Mr Cindi held that as soon as she saw it she would fall in love and wouldn’t be able to stand in our way! They admitted to me that they wanted someone to adopt the project to ensure its success.
On Wednesday, Robyn started painting the tyre bollards; this little bit of articulation made a huge difference, and Thabang and Lungu completed the job on Thursday. They also helped me to paint the lines across the road between the swings and the trees. In fact, painting got underway in a big way with undercoats being done on the sides of the concrete blocks on the ground floor and the slabs in the landscape out to the north of the building. We also decided to play with the basketball lines, extending them beyond the constraints of the ‘court’. Mr Cindi stepped in to do the undercoats on the basketball backboard. By Thursday morning, everyone had a task, and there was a hum of activity accompanied by loud reggae from one of the houses nearby. At mid morning a man in a BMW sped up followed by a front end loader and an enormous truck. A visit from a bus load of councilors the previous morning seemed to have galvanised someone into action and this man whose company was contracted to the council was sent to help us out. The huge pile disappeared, as did the areas of rubble dumping to the north of the structure, and the lumps of earth at the vehicular barrier to the south, but it took several loads. We replaced the concrete lumps in a more orderly fashion, and Thabang in fact managed to create very low benches by laying pre-stressed concrete beams across the other rubble. This was a great improvement and was later painted, though it turned out to be pale pink the next morning! The bins and no-dumping signs that Guy had ordered arrived. We managed to source crates for our panel from Simon at the Mississippi Tavern on Thursday, getting ten then and there, and having the others promised to us the next morning. We set about working out the details of their fixing and bought the required materials. Fischer sent an agent to help us install our abacus with chemical mortar and it almost immediately had a group of children playing games on it. By Thursday, Veli’s fabulous mural of the power salute from the 1976 uprisings had been completed and he moved onto painting all the particpants’ names on a beam along the side of the court. We came up with an idea of changing the painted advert ’IT’S MILLER TIME’ on the west side of the building to ‘IT’S YOUR TIME’ or ‘ITS OUR TIME’, eventually settling on the latter – a variant of Kwathema’s ubiquitous speaking walls. Veli did this early on Friday morning in a quite translucent red which gave the impression of it having been there for some time. From time to time groups of kids would appear as spectators and either watch or help – often I pulled out the black dustbin bags and got them to pick up the never-ending stream of litter.
At the Thursday braai, our group felt quite hard done by (as usual?): there was no plan for the snacks promised to our site for the afternoon, despite my having asked whether we had to organise these ourselves and being told we didn’t. Also, Hannah objected to our initiative to have Kwelemthini address the beerhall crowd briefly early in the morning. The promotion of Anthony’s chess academy is indisputably crucial, but it seemed as though this was being done at the expense of our project. On Friday, therefore, we organised that Lizzy would do the catering and Hannah fortunately gave us the go-ahead.
Through all this, our paired projects were progressing too. Kasia had found a builder through the Chess Park called Richard who would work for R150 a day. The previous week we had discussed our ideas and so he began on Monday shifting the large pieces of concrete around and preparing the soil for the paving and slab we were going to throw. On Wednesday, Kasia and I placed the plates that she had got from Liebermann Pottery plus some small blue tiles that I had on the new slab, while one of Kibas’s friends chatted to us about how this decoration was going to attract women to their stall! The whole process of the construction of what amounted to an extended plinth around Kibas’s stall was a very organic, responsive and flexible one, with Kasia and I talking through things constantly and changing things as other possibilities arose. The notion of reusing all the rubble on the site rather than dumping it in another inappropriate place grew out of this so in the end, Richard was commissioned to use the rubble as a hard core of sorts for another screeded slab on the south of the stall, where we placed more plates. The trees were happily planted, though they were looking as though the cold might have got to them. The last touch was crusher stone to form a driveway for the carwash, and a specific request for a spot to shine the cars’ tyres. Towards the end of the week, I was very neglectful of the project in the face of the pressures of the beerhall and I’m afraid that Kasia carried it substantially.
Friday saw Guy and I race around trying to buy the last items needed on the east rand which included prizes for the basketball competition and collecting the donated coke which Robyn had organised for the launch from Nigel. I also, probably rather impertinently, went along to the muti market near Cash Build and found a traditional healer who was prepared to help with the ritual of cleansing the building. On Friday night we sat in Mr Cindi’s back courtyard until 10pm bolting together the panels of red beer crates (and sharing beers) so that they could be erected in the morning. When we left we saw that someone had painted a message in the road in front of the beerhall about fallen heroes.
loose ends
catherine and guy spent the morning on a mission to tie up loose ends. they collected the coca-cola donation just around the corner in nigel! they bought nike tog bags as prizes for the basketball games, shackles and contact adhesive for our astro turf. they arrived back at site just before lunch.
we ordered kotas lunch from our new favourite shop across the road from stan’s container. catherine had decided that we needed enhanced sustenance in order to get through the day’s tasks. there was a lot to accomplish. our launch is tomorrow and we had an a4 list of things-to-do.
i wrote a list of tasks after lunch and assigned jobs to all of our volunteers, our anc youth league heroes and ourselves. the afternoon was productive but haphazard. i spent a lot of time overseeing work and answering questions. the team worked flat-out until sunset. we had made a huge dent in the list. still outstanding however, was the erection of the mattress springs and the beercrate walls and the fixing of the astro turf.
a group powwow assumed to assess our progress. catherine suggested we stay in kwathema to assemble the beercrate panels. reluctantly we agreed – we had all known that it was inevitable but had all tried to evade the issue.
we assembled the beercrate walls until 10:30pm. mr cindy’s family made us instant coffee and tseleng, who needed a lift back to the city, told us of the aphrodisiac-properties of peanuts. we were glad we objected to hannahs suggestion of providing peanuts as the sole snack for the beerhall launch! tseleng took orders for quarts and traversed the dust bowl to stan’s container in the smoky darkness. we had not eaten, bar a couple of packets of spar maries catherine had stashed in her boot – her motherly instincts always seem to pay off in times of desperation! deliria and fatigue began to set in under the glary halogen spot mr cindy had perched on a chair. insects swarmed the warmth of the globe. we battled, tired, for the spacer guy had made. it was never anywhere to be seen.
hannah was expecting us at the friday session with rene spitz from ifg ulm and then in fordsburg for dinner at bizmullah and finally at the femi kuti concert at mary fitzgerald square. we sms’d her, but she didn’t respond. i guess she was disappointed that she would have a small turn-out from us again, but we had more important things to do – we had two beercrate walls to finish.
we left mr cindy’s feeling exhausted but relieved - we had completely underestimated the time required to assemble 48 crates. all that was left now was for our macgyver-gareth to fix the panels to the concrete structure in the morning. the end seemed nearer; i felt more excited about tomorrow than i had – everything seemed to have come together.
we ordered kotas lunch from our new favourite shop across the road from stan’s container. catherine had decided that we needed enhanced sustenance in order to get through the day’s tasks. there was a lot to accomplish. our launch is tomorrow and we had an a4 list of things-to-do.
i wrote a list of tasks after lunch and assigned jobs to all of our volunteers, our anc youth league heroes and ourselves. the afternoon was productive but haphazard. i spent a lot of time overseeing work and answering questions. the team worked flat-out until sunset. we had made a huge dent in the list. still outstanding however, was the erection of the mattress springs and the beercrate walls and the fixing of the astro turf.
a group powwow assumed to assess our progress. catherine suggested we stay in kwathema to assemble the beercrate panels. reluctantly we agreed – we had all known that it was inevitable but had all tried to evade the issue.
we assembled the beercrate walls until 10:30pm. mr cindy’s family made us instant coffee and tseleng, who needed a lift back to the city, told us of the aphrodisiac-properties of peanuts. we were glad we objected to hannahs suggestion of providing peanuts as the sole snack for the beerhall launch! tseleng took orders for quarts and traversed the dust bowl to stan’s container in the smoky darkness. we had not eaten, bar a couple of packets of spar maries catherine had stashed in her boot – her motherly instincts always seem to pay off in times of desperation! deliria and fatigue began to set in under the glary halogen spot mr cindy had perched on a chair. insects swarmed the warmth of the globe. we battled, tired, for the spacer guy had made. it was never anywhere to be seen.
hannah was expecting us at the friday session with rene spitz from ifg ulm and then in fordsburg for dinner at bizmullah and finally at the femi kuti concert at mary fitzgerald square. we sms’d her, but she didn’t respond. i guess she was disappointed that she would have a small turn-out from us again, but we had more important things to do – we had two beercrate walls to finish.
we left mr cindy’s feeling exhausted but relieved - we had completely underestimated the time required to assemble 48 crates. all that was left now was for our macgyver-gareth to fix the panels to the concrete structure in the morning. the end seemed nearer; i felt more excited about tomorrow than i had – everything seemed to have come together.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
acceleration
after a 2am night and 5:30am morning finishing the shuttering, tom and i headed for the cement and concrete institute in midrand to pour our concrete. we had arranged the session with mathews, their education facilitator. he had obliged and agreed to supply us with concrete and a set accelerator as we had to strike the moulds in two days!
the cnci workshop was surprisingly sterile and clean and organized. mathews seemed very knowledgeable and advised us on a 3:3:1 mix. it seemed too dry but tom assured me it wasn’t.
the work was physical and heavy. my knuckles were battered from last night’s shuttering assembly. the cuts were raw and scabs struggled to latch on as i scooped aggregate, sand and cement into buckets. we worked hard and fast in order to get back to kwathema at an hour reasonable to complete some tasks.
after mixing 36 buckets of stone, 36 buckets of sand, 12 buckets of cement and 26.4 litres of water in 12 batches in the mixer, the moulds were filled. the vibrating table was rigorous and bucked like a rodeo bull. tom, mathews and another man transferred the 100+ kg moulds onto a trolley for relocation to the store.
we left the cnci just before lunch and raced back to kwathema.
i arrived to find much progress. white lines were being painted across the tar towards our trees, the concrete slabs were being primed, the tyre bollards had been completed, a fischer representative was on site chemical mortaring the abacus rods into the brickwork and a front-end loader was roaring across the adjacent site dumping rubbish into a tip truck. veli was completing the beam of names and was soon to move onto the donors logos. i was relieved that i had such a motivated and focused group.
children had begun to gather at the abacus and as soon as permissible, started a game of spin-the-block. they jumped and high-fived and shouted.
i slotted in by attempting to assemble the tyre fixings that had been delivered by fischer. fischer had been so reliable and accommodating and so unexpectedly generous. guy and i battled with alignment and gareth drilled the holes. hannah arrived and commented on the handrail. she said she quite liked the yellow colour of the steel primer. she said it was far more discrete than the red would be.
catherine started to black-out miller for veli to write our. it finally seemed that we were generating big developments.
we headed back to johannesburg satisfied after making such big strides.
the cnci workshop was surprisingly sterile and clean and organized. mathews seemed very knowledgeable and advised us on a 3:3:1 mix. it seemed too dry but tom assured me it wasn’t.
the work was physical and heavy. my knuckles were battered from last night’s shuttering assembly. the cuts were raw and scabs struggled to latch on as i scooped aggregate, sand and cement into buckets. we worked hard and fast in order to get back to kwathema at an hour reasonable to complete some tasks.
after mixing 36 buckets of stone, 36 buckets of sand, 12 buckets of cement and 26.4 litres of water in 12 batches in the mixer, the moulds were filled. the vibrating table was rigorous and bucked like a rodeo bull. tom, mathews and another man transferred the 100+ kg moulds onto a trolley for relocation to the store.
we left the cnci just before lunch and raced back to kwathema.
i arrived to find much progress. white lines were being painted across the tar towards our trees, the concrete slabs were being primed, the tyre bollards had been completed, a fischer representative was on site chemical mortaring the abacus rods into the brickwork and a front-end loader was roaring across the adjacent site dumping rubbish into a tip truck. veli was completing the beam of names and was soon to move onto the donors logos. i was relieved that i had such a motivated and focused group.
children had begun to gather at the abacus and as soon as permissible, started a game of spin-the-block. they jumped and high-fived and shouted.
i slotted in by attempting to assemble the tyre fixings that had been delivered by fischer. fischer had been so reliable and accommodating and so unexpectedly generous. guy and i battled with alignment and gareth drilled the holes. hannah arrived and commented on the handrail. she said she quite liked the yellow colour of the steel primer. she said it was far more discrete than the red would be.
catherine started to black-out miller for veli to write our. it finally seemed that we were generating big developments.
we headed back to johannesburg satisfied after making such big strides.
Recycling
Today was a day of much activity. The morning started with a visit from Busi, a representative of The Glass Recycling Company. She was here to meet Stan and me to discuss his options in operating a glass collection facility in KwaThema. She was most positive about Stan’s position and felt that her board would approve the application which Ahaka and I draughted for him. In organising the skip, Stan would have an additional form of income and the community would have a real alternative to dumping their glass, or throwing it away in their general rubbish. Stan spoke about a person he would employ to collect glass, thus spreading his earnings further into the community. We were very happy with Busi’s visit as she showed some real commitment and belief in the viability of the recycling of glass next to the beer hall site.
As soon as Busi left, Dudu arrived with her assistant from Mondi Recycling. They were here to head our recycling workshop. In no time, around 100 Grade 6 learners, accompanied by their headmaster Dennis, joined us from Sakhelwe Primary School. They sang songs and thoroughly enjoyed Dudu’s talk about recycling waste and saving the environment.
The rest of the day was spent on various projects around the beer hall. We managed to finish the basketball lines, the props were finally painted, the balustrade was almost completely up and we received the first few beer crates from the Mississippi Tavern, down the road. Catherine finished the painting of the road stripes which stretch out to the next park and the concrete plinths in the landscape were also painted.
We were extremely relieved when a front end loader and a massive truck arrived to remove the mountain of rubbish. They worked for a long period, and made a great difference. Fischer also joined us today to chemical mortar our abacus which looks completely fabulous. Each face of each block is a wonderful piece of work, I could spend a long time looking at the paintings which the children did on our blocks at the workshop. We finished the day at Stan’s, as we do every Thursday, discussing the launch.
Interview Sound Clip:
http://web.omnidrive.com/APIServer/public/z6wuGYW3nhTkLJbpd8agz2yP
Busi, The Glass Recycling Company visit.
Stanley Sibanyoni on ownership of the Beer Hall.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
white on black
gareth and i met at build plumb and tile. he bought blue paint for his paired project. i ordered the final shuttering and polystyrene required for our tagging kwathema moulds. mario was very obliging and outstandingly helpful after last saturday’s abacus-blocks delay. laserfab called to notify me that our steel alphabet was ready for collection. we went to kwathema via troyeville to collect them. they were so perfect and slick and exactly what i had hoped for. each letter was individually labeled and packaged. rupesh and flavio had been so obliging and generous with our tight deadline and minuscule budget. catherine and guy went to kwa thema via kerry at fischer to collect another fifty anchor bolts.
on site, i assumed the role of tyre-bollard painter. the wind was relentless - we had strung up danger tape around our new grassy oasis and it flapped in the wind like the black bag kites. the noise was so serene and surreal. i felt calm and content. i was the sole proprietor over my bollards; my own agent. nobody to consult and nobody consulting me. my mind was still and my concentration intense. the tape oscillated insistently with the rhythms of the wind.
i completed the khumbuza street bollards and surrendered to the battle of the wide brush upon the narrow treads. the white on black.
on site, i assumed the role of tyre-bollard painter. the wind was relentless - we had strung up danger tape around our new grassy oasis and it flapped in the wind like the black bag kites. the noise was so serene and surreal. i felt calm and content. i was the sole proprietor over my bollards; my own agent. nobody to consult and nobody consulting me. my mind was still and my concentration intense. the tape oscillated insistently with the rhythms of the wind.
i completed the khumbuza street bollards and surrendered to the battle of the wide brush upon the narrow treads. the white on black.
Black on Black
Catherine and I dashed off to KwaThema this morning after picking up the last batch of our bolts from the fantastic people at Fischer-Upat. We arrived in KwaThema at around 9:30. We started the morning by spreading out our new crusher stone delivery, and laying bricks for a small one course wall which will stop the stone from spreading everywhere. January, our welder, continued with the hand rails and I began to paint the steel undercoat with Lawrence, a volunteer.
Ahaka managed to bolt up the sign boards onto Stan’s container this morning, our sign painter Linda was there punctually and immediately started his undercoat.
This evening I was standing alone, taking photographs of the building, when I was confronted by an interested man. He claimed to have wanted to have been a part of the project, but just hadn’t had the time. He expressed his enthusiasm for the work that we were all doing but became quite angry and violent when he worked out that we didn’t have any long term management plan for the beer hall. He referred to his community as a something parasitic and expressed that the community was still suffering as a society in a post-violent state. He certainly had some violence issues to confront, in the way in which he spoke to me. I am very interested to see what happens to the beer hall after we leave. A building designed to now function under the ownership of the whole community will undoubtedly be seized by an individual or group. I have a strong inclination as to who that might be.
We have been promised that our 4m high rubbish pile will be removed tomorrow morning, fingers crossed tightly.
Interview Sound Clips:
http://web.omnidrive.com/APIServer/public/z6wuGYW3nhTkLJbpd8agz2yP
A Parasitic Community
Video:
23 May 2007 (low quality)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuWTgL96pfk
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
fleeting steel
guy and i left late for kwathema – guy had to buy paint for his paired project. catherine and gareth went via b&r lawns to collect more grass.
after much leveling of the proposed grassy area by the anc youth league, we laid the instant lawn strips and once again began the torturous bucketing of water from mr cindy’s house. the area that the volunteers had cleared and leveled had opened up the beerhall site to the open, dusty tract of land to its east. the memory of the builidng seemed more interactive now, less prescriptive.
after not much mention of the anc youth league in my previous blogs, i must note that they have been outstandingly dedicated and enthusiastic about our ventures and we will be perpetually grateful for their involvement.
work on site was intense. our steel from macsteel had not arrived as promised and catherine was especially irate – she had assured mike stuart yesterday, that she would kill herself if the steel did not arrive on time! he guaranteed that it would. i followed up on the delivery and was confronted by an un-obliging and seemingly irritated mike on the end of the line. i eventually tracked-down phineus-the-driver who was lost in kwathema. i went to fetch him. finally the bulk of our flat bar had arrived, although the delivery as promised was not complete. fleetsteel had also arrived with our remaining c-sections and were instantly sent back to strydom park as the sizes of the members were incorrect. the laborer responsible for the error was fired.
we seemed to be having such bad-luck with the steel. i was longing for the day where we actually accomplished something substantial - where there was a noticeable development on site.
after much leveling of the proposed grassy area by the anc youth league, we laid the instant lawn strips and once again began the torturous bucketing of water from mr cindy’s house. the area that the volunteers had cleared and leveled had opened up the beerhall site to the open, dusty tract of land to its east. the memory of the builidng seemed more interactive now, less prescriptive.
after not much mention of the anc youth league in my previous blogs, i must note that they have been outstandingly dedicated and enthusiastic about our ventures and we will be perpetually grateful for their involvement.
work on site was intense. our steel from macsteel had not arrived as promised and catherine was especially irate – she had assured mike stuart yesterday, that she would kill herself if the steel did not arrive on time! he guaranteed that it would. i followed up on the delivery and was confronted by an un-obliging and seemingly irritated mike on the end of the line. i eventually tracked-down phineus-the-driver who was lost in kwathema. i went to fetch him. finally the bulk of our flat bar had arrived, although the delivery as promised was not complete. fleetsteel had also arrived with our remaining c-sections and were instantly sent back to strydom park as the sizes of the members were incorrect. the laborer responsible for the error was fired.
we seemed to be having such bad-luck with the steel. i was longing for the day where we actually accomplished something substantial - where there was a noticeable development on site.
Steel
Seeing as though yesterday was the day that everything was supposed to happen, and it didn’t, I assumed that today would be that day, and it wasn’t. We really are on track, it’s just that I’m excited to have a day which makes significant, marked changes to the structure. So Robyn and I arrived in KwaThema expecting to find a huge load of steel which should have been delivered yesterday evening. Well it wasn’t there. The weather is minutely better, with Mr. Cindi’s morning outlay of coffee was welcomed as usual.
I offloaded the plywood boards which Ahaka and I are using for our sign. Robyn and I positioned the remaining props. We sent our welder, January off to weld plates and our volunteers began to lift soil where new grass was going to be painted. Soon Catherine and Gareth arrived with a fresh stock of lawn and the basketball back board. The day continued with numerous phone calls to our two steel suppliers, with neither delivering. The phone calls got quite heated, with our need for urgency portrayed very accurately. Some steel arrived finally, but it was the wrong length, so the driver was sent back and was apparently fired. Well at the end of the day we finally had most of our steel.
Ahaka and I spent parts of the day trying to stick our boards up for our paired project on Stan’s container. He was very eager and helped us a lot. The glue was awful, so we used bolts instead.
The end of the day left us with some balustrade flat bar up, three fixed props, new lawn and the beginnings of a basketball court. We also received our two ‘no dumping signs’ today and about 8 refuse bins from the council. Khula has been in charge of painting the lines.
Monday, May 21, 2007
A Cold Start to the Last week
Today was freezing. Completely, unbelievably burning cold, but we continue to toil for the greater good of humanity and because we only have about 5 days left. This morning we met in the architecture workshop and Catherine and Gareth drilled holes into the abacus blocks which the children painted at our workshop on Saturday. We darted off to KwaThema, and were greated by a bleak, freezing 8:30 in the morning beer hall. Mr. Cindi made us coffee, while we wondered aimlessly around the building, all our strategic planning reduced to a cold sludge, slipping around in our heads.
Gareth got started on the remaining uprights in our balustrade, because that is very important to finish. Catherine drove Mr. Cindi around and went to the shops a couple of times, and I filled in where I could. We received a truck load of crusher stone today, the second step in our landscaping scheme. It looks fantastic spread around the front of the building. It looks so good, we are getting more. Catherine and I also managed to mark out the primary lines of the basket ball court, and the ANCYL guys built a one course wall next to our new grass.
Today 4 of our plants were missing. Mr. Cindi says that people jealous of our project have removed them in spite. Well its a good thing then that we still have 5 more left in the tray, ready to replace those lost.
Ahaka and I had a very successful meeting with Linda, a local sign writer, about our recycling container project. We have designed a bright, colourful, information packed sign which will hopefully send out a clear message about the advantages of keeping your public space clean. The sign was influenced by the many painted around the township and the way they use people in portraying the message instead of heavy text. Linda was fantastic, completely enthusiastic and positive. We will surround the sign with red bricks to demarcate a place where recycling could take place, hopefully our glass bank will arrive in time. We have also tried to organise a group of council rubbish bins for the site, hopefully they too will arrive before Saturday. We had kotas today for lunch, kotas, a reinterpretation of ‘quarters’ (of a loaf of bread), are bread with chips, cheese, polony and a Russian sausage. Heavy stuff.
Tomorrow will be 9˚C, need I say more.
Interview Sound Clip (Open with QuickTime):
Joseph Cindy on the community's reaction
http://web.omnidrive.com/APIServer/public/z6wuGYW3nhTkLJbpd8agz2yP
Video:
21 May 2007 (low quality)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4FhB1RgJhk
Saturday, May 19, 2007
paint and plastic bags
we held our saturday kite and abacus workshop today. the children were gathered at the site when we arrived. they seemed excited and apprehensive. i guess they we not completely aware of what was install for them.
the timber blocks for the abacus had not been ready for collection when we had left johannesburg at 8am. we sent the children off to collect shiny, clean bottletops to pass time until the blocks arrived. r5 for 50.
after the children had returned with the tops, guy split the group into kite makers and painters. catherine headed the kite making. the painters sat on the black plastic sheet that we masking-taped to the floor and sang. the girls chose the songs and boys lowered there voices in harmony. the sound echoed through the ruins and resonated off the blackened soffit. it was loud and peaceful – like heavy rock at full volume.
gareth arrived after 10am. i was so disappointed that build plumb and tile had let me down on the completion of the blocks. i felt like i had let my team down. and the children too. but all dissipated upon their eventual arrival.
the kite flyers spread their black-bag triangles all over the central space and battled with controlling the red wool in the gusty winds. the painters were quiet and concentrating.
catherine made hotdogs for lunch. she dished them out from the elevation of the stairs, the single line of children passing slowly by for their fill.
the children left with their r5’s and we packed away thirty kites. the day ended on a low note – we planted more trees and grass and then gathered in mr cindy’s living room for a group discussion on our way forward.
it was a small space, warm and personal. the discussion was productive and heated and conflicting at times – we had a lot to accomplish and only a week before our launch. i was tired and irritable and was adamant that we should not begin painting until all heavy construction and erection was completed. the others disagreed. i surrendered my fight out of sheer exhaustion rather than submission. i compiled a list of monday’s duties and goals.
we left for johannesburg after dark.
the timber blocks for the abacus had not been ready for collection when we had left johannesburg at 8am. we sent the children off to collect shiny, clean bottletops to pass time until the blocks arrived. r5 for 50.
after the children had returned with the tops, guy split the group into kite makers and painters. catherine headed the kite making. the painters sat on the black plastic sheet that we masking-taped to the floor and sang. the girls chose the songs and boys lowered there voices in harmony. the sound echoed through the ruins and resonated off the blackened soffit. it was loud and peaceful – like heavy rock at full volume.
gareth arrived after 10am. i was so disappointed that build plumb and tile had let me down on the completion of the blocks. i felt like i had let my team down. and the children too. but all dissipated upon their eventual arrival.
the kite flyers spread their black-bag triangles all over the central space and battled with controlling the red wool in the gusty winds. the painters were quiet and concentrating.
catherine made hotdogs for lunch. she dished them out from the elevation of the stairs, the single line of children passing slowly by for their fill.
the children left with their r5’s and we packed away thirty kites. the day ended on a low note – we planted more trees and grass and then gathered in mr cindy’s living room for a group discussion on our way forward.
it was a small space, warm and personal. the discussion was productive and heated and conflicting at times – we had a lot to accomplish and only a week before our launch. i was tired and irritable and was adamant that we should not begin painting until all heavy construction and erection was completed. the others disagreed. i surrendered my fight out of sheer exhaustion rather than submission. i compiled a list of monday’s duties and goals.
we left for johannesburg after dark.
The First Workshop
It’s Saturday and our apparent love affair with Kwa Thema continues, we just can’t seem to get enough of the place – or do we have a serious amount of work to do? Our lives have been reduced to a total dedication to Kwa Thema, we spend the whole day there, leave in the evening, get home, jump onto the computer to write blogs and plan our next steps. Get to bed really late, wake up really early and off to Kwa Thema for the next day’s onslaught.
The kite makers faced the gusting wind with much zest as they desperately tried to make their kites. These kites, made from plastic and reeds, are usually made by children in Kwa Thema, we wanted them to make as many as possible to fly at the launch on Saturday. Both workshops running simultaneously was a real sight. I found myself in the position where Catherine and Robyn were busy elsewhere (Gareth was collecting the remaining grass) and Khula was generally disinterested. I was faced with a band of marauding children, painting each other’s faces, climbing up the structure, tangling each other’s kites, and I felt completely overwhelmed. Children really do need constant attention, I’m not sure if I have the stamina to sustain it for long periods. After both workshops were complete, we handed out hot dogs to the participants and our volunteers who were continuing to plant trees. Mr. Cindi’s kitchen made the perfect base for Catherine to cater from.
We spent some time planting 5 more trees, and were rolling in hysterics trying to fit tyres over the trees, to act as a protective barrier at their bases. We spent the rest of the afternoon in Mr. Cindi’s lounge, out of the sun, sand and wind, planning our next step. Tomorrow is reserved for our paired projects, so we don’t have to go into Kwa Thema. Monday will be an amazing day, everything should happen then.
Today we activated the beer hall with children from the surrounding community. Their presence now marks a significant deflection in the path of the structure’s life. We have involved the community on every level, and are eagerly awaiting our next workshop, one on recycling, this Thursday.
Interview Sound Clip (opens in QuickTime):
http://web.omnidrive.com/APIServer/public/z6wuGYW3nhTkLJbpd8agz2yPStanley Sibanyoni on the community's reaction.
Video:
Children's Workshop 2http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1cRMlcm6U8
KIDS R US
Today we held two very successful workshops making kites and painting blocks for the abacus. To distract the kids (some of whom came from Sakhelwe Primary down the road and others of whom were kite flyers we’d met and invited) before the blocks arrived (Build Plumb and Tile let Robyn down), we sent them off to find beer bottle tops. They had to find 50 to earn R5. We now have a huge number of bottle tops ready for the launch. Then I started the kite workshop with the group of boys, while the painters sang like angels to keep busy until they could get going. There was a howling wind, probably the worst conditions for trying to make kites, if the best for flying them in, and the kids seemed not to speak a great deal of English, and crowded around impatiently so Khula helped me to keep the chaos at bay by telling the kids to ‘Hlala phansi’ with space around themselves and by helping to distribute wool and plastic. But we got a system going and the boys resourcefully used the half bricks from the pile on the court to hold down the plastic while they tied it onto the sticks. We used danger tape for the tails. After a few test flights, Guy gathered up all the kites in readiness for next week’s launch: he looked like a multi-limbed monster walking around with a great pile of them in his arms. The painting workshop run by Guy and Robyn produced wonderful results. Mrs Cindi allowed us to use her kitchen to prepare the hotdogs. After we’d fed the masses of kids who seemed to have gathered, we planted another group of trees – this time on the north east of the beerhall where the path across the open space begins at the road side (our ANCYL volunteers had spent the morning virtuously digging these holes). We completed the invasion of the poor Cindis’ house by holding a meeting in their lounge to discuss our way forward with one week to go. En route home, Robyn, Guy and I commiserated about how difficult it is to relate what we’re doing to other people. We are so immersed in something and it is so far from the realities of our families. I think this – as well as our exhaustion - is why we are so difficult to live with at the moment! I’m sure that if I’d had more sleep, I would have been able to react more quickly in my accident last night.
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