School today was so great. As I was walking through the campus this morning, I got a shy smile from a Nomkhitha, sitting on the steps writing a poem in her journal. She had written a poem the previous night and then another poem that morning and she shared both of them with me. They were devastating. I’m still devastated at the thought of this girl, this 16 year old girl and what she’s endured so far in her life, how incredibly strong she is, and how eloquently she can express her experiences. She said that she used to write poetry but that she hasn’t in a while…I tried to encourage her to keep writing, that she is so talented and has an important message…and she was very sweet and embarrassed at my compliments. And then of course there’s Wisani, an amazing young poet, so full of passion, such an amazing natural spoken word poet. And little, shy Lerato who just rocked it today when they were practicing their poems, speaking out so clearly and loudly. They are emailing their poem to me tomorrow, so I will try to share some of them, with their permission of course.
Here's a picture of them working together in our class -- which is an 8-car garage turned into a computer lab
Tomorrow is our celebration day, where each group will share what they’ve been working on for the week. Our group is pairing up with the music group, who are making instruments out of found materials – drum, shakers, even a guitar of sorts. The poets will read what they’ve written and the musicians will accompany them. It’s going to be amazing. The practice today was so so so cool.I can’t wait.
We’ve gotten to know this group of musicians pretty well – seriously the coolest group of people I think I’ve ever met.
This is GuGu...one of my new musician friends.
After school for the last 3 days we just sit out on the grass and talk about music (they’ve given me names of SA artists and even brought in mix cd’s of artists that they like), politics, media, culture, etc, etc…all stuff I love talking about. I’m going to be seriously bummed next week when they aren’t here, but I know that we’ll at least still hang out on weekends – I really hope anyway!
Here's a picture of John playing soccer with some of the kids here this morning. He was stoked because he scored his first goal (I'm thinking the kids felt sorry for him and gave it to him.)
Here's a picture of Marc's disgusting feet after a day working int he garden.
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