The Council Chambers

What an intense few days! We arrived in Kwa Thema this morning after getting no more than 2 hours sleep each. Our group had worked really hard for this presentation, our first marked piece, and we had very little time to pull it off. The presentation was in the council chamber which we finally managed to occupy after about an hour of running around looking for a suitable space. We pinned up our individual, paired and group presentations and then waited for the other groups to arrive. After some time, a huge audience had formed, and we were finally ready to start the talk. It was very successful, our plan for the beer hall seemed to have been widely accepted by the attending community representatives, who often didn’t seem to quite grasp our intentions. Tseleng was very good at explaining the fact that we are there to kick start the community into action, our small interventions should be seen as what is possible for a community to create, learn from and grow. It was amazing how many ideas emerged from the audience about the beer hall, all because we shone a spotlight on it. The chess park also made a successful presentation. Our paired groups went generally well, with Ahaka and mine seeming to grab the most criticism. I’m still very happy with the idea we proposed, and it was worked through and made presentable in the same two days in which we had to complete our group and individual presentations. We ran out of time and the individuals never happened, a few hours more sleep seemed to be running away laughing. I thoroughly enjoyed the process which we went through at the talk today, it seemed really constructive.

Back at our beer hall site, the place is still an awful mess. It’s incredibly disheartening to find it in such a state every time we visit. We drove around the hot township sticking up the newspapers in the afternoon. This next week will involve lots of planning and hopefully we will get numerous substantial sponsorship deals. The flat bar for our balustrade alone, came in over our R10 000 budget! Now it’s time to get building, I really hope this all works out.

Interview Sound Clips:

http://web.omnidrive.com/APIServer/public/z6wuGYW3nhTkLJbpd8agz2yP

Gift (Phone booth, snack container) - interview about container

Arthur (Cell C) - interview about container

Dumisani (Vodacom) - interview about container

Angie (Stan's)- interview about container

Electric

One of the strategic decisions we made at our meeting on Sunday was to pursue an electricity connection for the beerhall so that it could be made safe at night. Guy and I thus met with Warren Mathers, the acting chief area engineer for Brakpan electricity, this afternoon after discourse, while Robyn and Gareth were collecting the paint donated by Plascon. The meeting was incredibly brief (almost pointlessly so!) and we have emailed through the information that Mathers requested in writing (an explanation of the project plus proposed lighting options) so all we can do is follow up and hold thumbs. I got an sms from Mr Cindi to say that the skip that Guy had organised and the trees from council had been delivered.

03.05.2007

The group pulled an all nighter, last night, to get everything ready for Council Presentation today. Guy and I even managed to complete are paired project as well! The Council Presentations went relatively well, especially the Chess Park presentation, the paired project, where we combined the themes of our individual reports to come up with a recycling centre housed in a shipping container was mostly well received but a few people had some reservations about the idea. I personally thought the idea of painting a shipping container and converting it into a recycling point was a great idea, especially since the Beer Hall was already being used as a dumping ground! At least by providing a nearby alternative to dumping we could encourage people not to dump on the Bee Hall site! At least that’s what I think?!

The red circle indicates the proposed site of our recycling centre. The darker red shape is the beer hall.

I was also surprised at how official and what an impact our interventions were having on Kwathema. This realisation was brought about by the number of people who had come to see our presentations and also the number of council and government officials present.

Council Meeting

Today was our presentation of our design scheme for the Masimini Beerhall to the council. I was quite nervous for this presentation because I was unsure how they would receive our ideas. I was also concerned of how many people were going to attend because I get nervous talking in front of lots of people.

We arrived at about 08h45 for a 09h00 meeting. We waited a little while for someone in the council offices to allocate us a venue in which to present our work and after some deliberation we were told we could use the council chambers. We were quick to pin up our group work, paired work and individual research work.

After a brief introduction from Hannah it was our groups turn to present our design scheme for the beerhall. I believe our presentation was good and it was well received by all who attended.

The chess park group were next to present. I enjoyed their presentation and was impressed by their ideas. I was happy to see how they were bringing Anthony Shoba’s chess board idea to life.

Sifiso Hadebe and I then presented our paired project which went down well with the people in attendance at the meeting. We receive a few useful comments which we will definitely be looking at in the further design and realization of the project.

After a rather mentally exhausting day it was time to leave, but not before we glued up the weekly KwaThema newspaper.

Funeral Woes

I went to KwaThema today to do some research on Funeral Infrastructure for my individual research report. When I chose this topic I didn’t think it would affect my like it has today.

I started off my research by visiting Regina at Tilly’s Funeral Plan on Moshoeshoe Street opposite the civic centre. She agreed to an interview with me and was very helpful in explaining her role in funerals in KwaThema. This small business offers life insurance to the people of KwaThema.

I then went to Kanyile Funeral Services. This is an undertakers also situated on Moshoeshoe Street. I spoke to Cecilia there who was very willing to help me since I told her I was from Wits University and was doing research on the funeral infrastructure in KwaThema. It was this conversation that unsettled me a bit. Death has always been a subject that I have been afraid of confronting, and hearing about the funeral industry and how remarkably efficiently it runs (due to the fact that there are so many deaths in KwaThema on a weekly basis) really upset me. It was disturbing for me to hear how Cecilia (who obviously deals with death on a daily basis) could be so without emotion about the topic of death and funerals. I’m not sure what to do with these emotions because although it saddens me that so many people are dying, I am very interested to find out more about funerals in townships as the culture surrounding death here seems to be very different to how I’ve experienced it in ‘white’ culture.

Fencing & Welding Styles

Mood: "Eish"
Song in mind: "Senzeni na?..."
Site: Kwa-Thema
Mission: Research about fences and welding styles

"Senzeni na, senzeni na....’ was the song on my mind since I had to wake up so early in the morning on a holiday. "Eish" was what I uttered as I ressurrected from my bed, but the research had to be done. Off we were to Kwa-Thema to perform our individual research. You can imagine what a scene it was-four black guys, in a black car, with black shades and black leather jackets, listening to Bricks, "sweety my baby" and most of all with Khula sitting at the back.

On our arrival, we headed straight for Steers-even dedicated students such as ourselves need to have breakfast. We walked together most of the time as we were researching our individual topics. I was fascinated by the waist-height transparent fences prevailing in Kwa-Thama. The residents still embrace ideals of neighbourliness as they interact with each other across the low fences. I was also moved by the iconography used in the fences. One can determine the status, wealth and culture of the residents by looking at the fences and welding methods used.

I interviewed a welder who helped me to understand the different styles of welding and fences used in Kwa-Thema. He stated that there is a high level of creativity amongst the residents, which shows some levels of compaitiveness from neighbours. My favourite fence that I saw was a fence made of old empty gas tanks, which were linked with an angle at the top and looked like a balustrade more than a fence.

Recycling is performed unconsciously in Kwa-Thema and i suppose this is the whole idea of the project-to bring about an awareness of this skill in the community and perhaps create a sense of pride in how they treat their environment.

On our way home, Tseleng (Co-ordinator) took us to see a famous artist’s double storey house which he built single-handedly. I think that this just confirms the creative attitude within which Kwa-Thema residents approach their environment.

spaces between

we received a mail from hannah last night. it was a lengthy and seemingly impossible-to-accomplish list of her requirements for our thursday presentation to the council. we had tried to negotiate the list with her but she insisted.

we left early for kwa thema, 7:45am, to document our surprise individual project requirements for the presentation.

i walked the green tracts of land between the beerhall and the chess park in order to document the use of open green space. the vast open tracts of land were scattered with billboards. the intrinsic movement of people, water and vehicles carved dry, dusty ribbons into the landscape. it appeared people had claimed bits of open land for themselves – demarcated with glary white rocks, distinguished with manicured grass. entrepreneurs crowded the spaces with endless carwashes. on every corner of every space was a dumping ground – household waste, building rubble, nappies, rats, tyres, burnt patches of ash and cinders.

we returned to johannesburg quickly to spend hours on the beerhall.