A Picnic in Our Park.

Last Sunday Refilwe hosted a fundraising picnic for the Bel Canto Philharmonic Orchestra Chorus. The Orchestra Chorus comes from Soweto and was created by a man who is incredible passionate about sharing his love of music with others. He has found the Orchestra Chorus is a unique opportunity to expose many young people in Johannesburg (as well as all over the country) to that particular form of music. The Orchestra is made up of musicians of varying age, background and talent and is providing meaningful growth and experiences for many who participate. The Orchestra is completely non-profit; it relies on concert sales and donations to keep it going, so Refilwe agreed to host a picnic by our river. The above photo gives you an idea of what the 'picnic grounds' look like!

One of the main aims of the Orchestra Chorus is to reach schools and other places where there are groups of young people and help to start concert bands, choruses and orchestras. It is a completely different form of community development than what Refilwe does, however it employs many of the same theories: by giving young people the opportunity to explore talents and gifts they may never have realised before, these musical groups may touch and even change lives.

 The BCP Orchestra Chorus played for almost 5 hours while many people came, picnicked, enjoyed the sunshine and enjoyed the music. Many of the Refilwe families took the opportunity to bring their picnic rug and the kids and enjoy a relaxing afternoon. I was one of the designated photographers of the day; below are some of the pics I snapped of a couple of our families.

  

 

 

An Easy Recipe for Safety

During the school holidays, Refilwe held a children’s program at our community hall. Its main focus was the children from the local communities and each day about 30 or 40 children and teenagers walked from their homes in the surrounding informal settlements to Refilwe to participate in the day’s activities.

The informal settlements surrounding Refilwe are meant to be a form of temporary housing for people who have work in the area, but live further away than is possible to get to work every day; however the reality is that this is not always the case. For some residents these settlements are their only homes. For others, they may have family far away, but very rarely do they leave here to go back to visit. Within 5km of Refilwe in any direction there are several settlements, each with its distinguishing name: Joe Slovo, Malachi, Sandspruit and Renos are a few. Most of the homes in the settlements are tin shacks, held together with nails or rope, roofed with corrugated iron held down by bricks. Some are brightly painted and well cared for, others are viewed as only temporary and have no work put into them. There are many social issues in these settlements, such as poverty, alcohol abuse, violence, lack of sanitation and clean water and a lack of access to education. Refilwe's main focus is the individuals and families living in the settlements.

The holiday program runs for a number of reasons: it provides engaging activities for the children and youth to enjoy during their time off from school. I recently learned that vulnerable children are made up to 50% more vulnerable during periods when they are not in school, specifically because there is nothing to keep them engaged and safe during these periods. The children who attend the program also receive lunch: some schools provide meals for students who do not get food at home, so when school is closed so is the opportunity for a meal. For the older children who attend, the program includes interactive education sessions about health, wellbeing and safety. An issue that is regularly discussed is healthy relationships, along with HIV/AIDS awareness.

During the holidays that have just passed for us, myself and Amanda were involved in the program for a few days. One one of the days we helped to organise some fun outdoor activities, like egg and spoon races, obstacle course relays and water games. We also helped with an Easter Treasure Hunt on the last day of the program. During the school term, I don't have the opportunity to interact with any of these children, as I am busy with our school here. It was fun to meet them and to see the enthusiasm and joy that came from the activities they joined. Keeping children engaged is such a basic concept that is easily arranged, yet for some of these children it makes the difference between health and sickness, hunger and satisfaction, safety and vulnerability to crime. 

A Taste of Africa

The Easter Weekend came and went quickly for us! I can't believe it's already a week ago as I write this! To give you a short rundown of our weekend, we were joined by a friend of Cliff's from his Nyack days, Lisa, who has been doing an internship in Durban for the past four months. We then did some fun 'South African' activities with our time off. 

At the beginning of the weekend, I had my hair braided by a couple of the girls here. The process took about 8 hours from beginning to end (we took lots of breaks!) and wasn't as painful as I expected it to be. You can see the end result for yourself!

On Saturday we went in Refilwe's old combi van to a Lion and Rhino Nature Reserve that is about 15 minutes away from here. We spent the day driving through the reserve, hunting various animals (that were all mostly lazing around in easy to spot places) and disobeying the 'only open your window 33% at all times' rule as we hung out the windows snapping pics. While it wasn't a true 'safari' experience, it was definitely fun to see some African animals actually in Africa for the first time!

Sunday night we had a traditional South African meal: The Braai. The Braai involves cooking a lot of meat over hot coals and then eating said meat. The meat-cooking and food-preparation process always creates natural segregation- the men somehow always end up around the meat, the girls around the salads- and we had a great time with everyone just eating and relaxing (once we couldn't move anymore from eating so much! 

At this point, you must be wondering if we've actually done any work lately! The school holidays gave us a bit of an opportunity to get out and explore a bit, but there has also been so much going on here that I haven't had time to fill you in! You can expect a couple more posts soon!

April 22 2009

Coming up next week here in South Africa are the national elections. These will be the fourth democratic elections  to occur since the end of apartheid and takes up much public attention right now. I personally find interesting and controversial elections great food for thought and discussion and recently enjoyed becoming overly opinionated in terms of the American elections. Regardless of your opinion about the outcome of the election, it was exciting to experience the nomination and election of President Obama and to feel like history had just been made. 

Voting is optional here, however many people recognize the importance of their right to vote.  This election in South Africa is far less glitz and glam than America’s election process, however it is every bit as important. The majority of South Africa’s population has only possessed the legal right to vote for 15 years. The picture above was taken on Election Day, 2004, showing just one line waiting for one voting station. Similar scenes were all over South Africa.

The major contenders are:

 ANC: The African National Congress is the party that Nelson Mandela led to victory in 1994. It was the political party that stood as the main opposition to the government in power during Apartheid and was very involved with the peace negotiations that headed off a civil war in the early 90s. The ANC naturally became the party in power after the country became a democracy. They have led the country through the difficult processes of repair and reconstruction following the Apartheid years, however are not immune from corruption and questionable behaviour from time to time. Jacob Zuma, the ANC candidate in the upcoming election, has faced various corruption charges over his political career. In fact, some were just dropped against him last Monday. Google him if you’re interested…

COPE: The COngress of the PEople was established as a result of a schism within the ANC in 2008. The President at the time, President Mbeki, was asked to resign because of questions regarding corruption, and when he did, much of his senior cabinet resigned along with him in solidarity. They then formed COPE as an opposition to the ANC. There has been much drama in terms of people defecting from the ANC to COPE and back to the ANC again over the past months. The current candidate for COPE is Mvume Dandala.

 

The DA: The Democratic Alliance stands in direct opposition to both the ANC and COPE in terms of policy and coins itself as having a lot of progressive policies promoting better social change than what is currently occurring. The candidate is Helen Zille, who is the white female mayor of Cape Town. They are working very hard to raise their profile, however are probably not a large enough party yet to stand a real chance of taking the majority.

In South Africa, there are 11 official languages and several different people groups. The different political parties have different associations with different tribes and therefore often have difficulties with factions within the party. It is obvious that corruption is an issue, and the parties seem to be making all sorts of promises to voters to win their vote. The ANC has given out many more food vouchers in this area of late in an attempt to win favour with the people around here.

It seems pretty clear that the ANC will win the election; according to the political analysts we see on the news, none of the opposing parties are large enough to be a serious threat to the ANC. This means that not much will really change for the time being. What is important to remember is the historical significance of the fact that democratic elections are happening here at all. Change takes time: the South African people reached a great victory 15 years ago with the peaceful end to Apartheid; rebuilding and restructuring will take a generation or so of hopeful growth and change.

An Education and A Familiar Face

This past week or so I have had the opportunity to learn a bit more about some of South Africa's history. Being school holidays, I have not been working with the school so have been able to get involved in a couple of different things going on. One day last week I was able to go out with Cliff to see some of what he spends his days doing. We visited a couple of small businesses in the local area: these small businesses constitute the majority of the program that Cliff is involved with. I promise I will soon give you some more details of exactly what he does. On another day, Amanda and I had the opportunity to go to Soweto, one of the most famous townships in Johannesburg. Annatjie (prounounced Anakie), an Afrikaner who works here at Refilwe took us with her to Soweto while she was on some errands and gave us a bit of a tour of some of the significant places. Soweto was notably involved in The Struggle against Apartheid in the 1980s and early 1990s. We  visited the June 16 memorial site, which commemorates a student movement that began in Soweto on June 16 1976. Over 560 students were killed by police after protests about the right to equal and fair education turned into violent riots. The picture above is of the famous Soweto smoke stacks which bear the largest murals in the world.

As I have mentioned before, there is always something going on at Refilwe! Last week we also had a visit from some local park rangers who brought with them Percy the Vulture. They came with an educational talk about the dangers vultures face and the damage their extinction could cause the South African ecosystems. It was an incredible bird to see up close.
This weekend Cliff, Amanda and I went into Johannesburg to see our friend Boyd perform as one of the Ten Tenors. We were very excited to see a friend of ours performing on the world stage! It was a fantastic show, and even better we were able to spend some quality time with Boyd over the two days. It is always so great to see a friend while overseas- though there is always something quite surreal about it. On Saturday the three of us visited the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, which was an incredibly educational experience. The tour of the museum is meant to take about an hour and a half, and we were definitely there for over 3 hours! The museum gives a very detailed history of South Africa before and during Apartheid. Having been here for a little while now, it was good timing for us to go and really spend time educating ourselves on the history of this place. While there are many things that we could say are still wrong with South Africa, we realised just how incredible it is that the country has come as far as it has. I'm sure I will write more about this over time! And rest assured that anyone who comes to visit us will be dragged there!We are already well into another week, and are looking forward to the Easter Weekend coming up. We have some fun plans, which I'll update you about next time!