The centre reopened on January 12th with a bang. We have been so busy that I forgot to blog. The first week we had a group from New York City called Broadway in South Africa. BSA is a non-profit comprised of 14 New York City based professional actors, dancers, singers, directors, musicians and producers with such Broadway hits as "The Lion King", "Rent", "Wicked" and "Hairspray". They came to Cape Town to conduct a 4 day arts intensive workshop with 50 children, ages 7 to 14 and chose the JL Zwane Centre as their venue. The work to coordinate the event started before I even left Minneapolis to come to Cape Town. I received an email from Spiwo asking me to work with Sean from BSA. I organized what the centre needed to do to accommodate BSA but all the really hard work was done by 4 people, Nceba, Bongani, Ntutu and Nkcubeko, the last three are members and the director of Siyaya, the musical group from the centre. (I will be blogging about Siyaya in the future.) They went to five different townships, both coloured and black, and auditioned children for 5 days to find 50 to participate in the workshop. Nceba even videoed the children. I was able to watch one of the auditions and it was incredible. The children were lined up outside the centre, there were over 100 of them. They were so cute, groups would come in with matching costumes, many songs were modern hip hop dance tunes and a few traditional African songs. The children were so excited and tried so hard to become one of the 50! This was not an easy job for our judges but they were always positive and I thought of American Idol, we just had all Paula's, not one Simon on our panel!
So for 4 days the children came to the centre each morning at 9:00 AM. We organized all the transport, you have to remember that most of the families of these children do not have cars or rand for taxi's, so to ensure the children would arrive each morning we had 3 drivers go to 4 different sites to pick them up. They would have a breakfast snack before classes began, the classes would run until 1:00, then they would break for lunch and continue the classes until 4:00 PM where once again they would be transported back to the meeting sites. Some of the parents even came along to watch their children perform. This was the first time for these children to participate in a program like this, they were able to meet other children from different townships, they formed friendships that they would have never had if not for BSA. The final day of the workshop they put on a show. They were divided into 4 groups. Two groups performed plays that they had written and two groups sang and danced to show tunes along with their instructors. The finale was the whole group singing a song from "High School Musical". The hall was filled and they were given a standing ovation after the final song! They were magnificent! There is definitely a lot of talent in the townships surrounding Cape Town, if only they had the opportunity to participate in programs like this all year long.
Besides Broadway in South Africa, we had a group of 14 from Louisville Seminary. The group was made up of two professors, 3 clergy from different religious organizations and 9 Presbyterian seminary students. I took them on a tour of Guguletu to see township life. We started out visiting Lydia (Lydia was the woman who I introduced you to on World Aids Day), her son Neo, who is 5 and is also HIV positive and suffers from seizures and her mother who they live with. We brought her a food parcel and she told her story to the group. After Lydia talked about what it is like living as an HIV positive person we all said a prayer together and as we left her home I noticed that there was not a dry eye within the group. Home visits can be very emotional and draining on both the visitor and the visitee. You feel a bit of a voyeur, but you have to understand that Lydia wants to have visitors, she feels that by telling her story that they will go home and tell her story to other people, and in doing so it helps to make her feel like a person not just another statistic. HIV has a face and this face has a life that needs to be known and cared for.
After Lydia, we drove past the Amy Biehl memorial and the Guguletu 7 monument. These are two places that represent the history of Apartheid. On to Khayelitsha to meet with Mandla the leader of TAC that I blogged about in an earlier entry. After TAC we went to Philani. Philani is an NGO started in 1979 by a Swedish doctor and community health workers. The focus at Philani is child heath and nutrition. Philani is known for their rug weaving and textiles programs. These are income generating programs where the women are able work on the premises and bring their children to a creche (day care centre) that is provided for them.
After Philani we returned to the centre for lunch prepared by Nkqo and Eureka (you met them earlier also!). Spiwo gave a talk on Justice and Reconciliation after Apartheid. After Spiwo it was time to return to our tour of Gugs. We went to Mitchell's Plain, a coloured township where we visited another NGO, St. Luke's Hospice. St. Luke's has 20 beds for HIV/AIDS patients and 6 beds for cancer patients. The patients come to the hospice for two weeks, after two weeks the social worker makes the decision if the person is able to return home or needs to be transferred to a hospital or another facility for longer term care. There are 14 carers at the hospice with funding coming from PAWC, private donors and bequests.
From there we proceeded to drive through the hostel area, this area represents dwellings that were initially inhabited by the men that came from the Eastern Cape to find work in Cape Town. They have since become homes for families, they are brick buildings much like townhouses but in very poor condition with each unit housing more than 7 people. I am not sure if I explained the different styles of homes. There are brick and stucco homes, hostels, and shacks made out of zinc, wood or any other material that can be scavenged. Near the hostels we visited Noluyolo who is 19 years old, an orphan who has been raising her 9 year old little brother Aso for over 2 years now. They actually live in a zinc shack donated by friends of her mothers after she passed away. Noluyolo also received a food parcel and shared her story of raising her brother on her own and with the help of the zone (neighborhood) she lives in. There are many times that Noluyolo goes with out food and her neighbors help out so when she receives food from visitors and the centre, she also shares with them. On to another home visit. Priscilla is a 62 year old go-go (grandma) who is raising 12 orphans (yes 12) after raising 4 of her own. She lives in a brick home with 2 bedrooms. Priscilla can only receive government support for 6 children, she relies on help from the JL Zwane Centre and from visitors like Louisville that brought a rather large food parcel.
We returned back to the centre emotionally and physically drained. It was a long day for the group but they wanted to see and experience as much as they could in one day. I hope this gives you an idea of a township tour. There are many more things to experience and see in Gugs and hopefully you will join me again soon.
Pictures: The finale for Broadway in South Africa, The Broadway in South Africa group, Lydia and Neo, Philani children, and Priscilla with her children!
Bye for now...
