I'm Back!

I know it has been a while since I've posted a Blip... but if you recall I was preparing to travel to South Africa and create a photographic journal comparing and contrasting poverty in Toronto and Cape Town. The dynamic of my project changed quite a bit while over there, but I'll tell you more about that in the future.

I'm currently in the middle of producing my photo journal. Here is one of my favourite pictures I took while in South Africa, along with the story behind the image. Enjoy!!

ALL FEEDBACK IS WELCOMED AND APPRECIATED :)

This image was captured on my last day volunteering in South Africa at Kewtown Primary School. After meeting and developing relationships with some of the students, like Duke, that attend Kewtown, our group decided to do some physical, hands on work to improve the school?s facilities. Half of us removed garbage that had been dumped on their field, while the other half primed and painted their playground and garden. I helped with the painting.

We arrived at Kewtown around 10:00am and needed to leave by 1:30pm at the latest. This only gave us about three hours to paint at prime the playgrounds! At first I felt like doing this was an annoying chore and a bit of a waste of my last few, precious hours in South Africa. Priming the playground was not fun. It was 30+ degrees out and we were standing there simultaneously covering the jungle gym with what looked like white paint and being scolded by the intense African sun.

The group began to complain that the trip leaders did not allocate enough time to paint the playground and worry that we would not be able to get it done; as at 11:45am we were only just finishing applying the primer. As everybody began to doubt the possibility of completing the project on time, the concrete quad rapidly covered by the young students on interval (recess). The children stormed the playground and garden! They were overwhelmed by excitement. The students could not believe that the Canadians were at their school to begin with, but on top of that we were painting their playground! They were overjoyed, the only thing stopping them from trampling over us and climbing all over the wet jungle gym was a thin fence. Blissfully screaming and yelling the student charged, grabbed onto and wildly shook the frail fence.

Surrounded by this mayhem, I froze in awe. After digesting the situation and realizing what was going I dropped my paintbrush and quickly grabbed my camera, not noticing my hands were covered with primer. I ran over to the uncontrollable mob of students and asked if I could take their picture. I got quite the enthusiastic response. I managed to take a couple photographs of the raging students and show them a couple just before their break ended.

The appreciation and excitement the students conveyed towards both us and the work we were doing really changed the entire group?s dynamic towards the project. We realized the affect that our contribution had on these students. The task was no longer a miserable inconvenience, everybody was eager and determined to finish painting the playground.

With our new attitudes, we quickly and efficiently finished applying the primer and were able to finish all of the painting before 1:30pm! After everything was done I thought it would be cool to leave some handprints on the jungle gym. Despite the many warnings and suggestion against doing, I dipped my hands into the bucket of white paint and began making handprints on the play-structure. Although I thought it looked good, I quickly realized this was a bad idea; it was oil-based paint. There was a thick, rubbery layer of white goo covering my hands. I ran my hands under water, and aggressively scrubbed them with turpentine, but the solid layer of paint refused to come off. After viciously scrubbing and violently scraping my hands for about thirty minutes I was able to get the majority of the paint off. The rest of the paint stayed on my nails, hands and arms for the next week (it was still on me when I got home!), constantly reminding me of this day.

Although this project started off being tedious and depressing, it was amongst the most rewarding things I did while in South Africa. I felt like I really made a tangible difference. Teaching students to read and developing relationships with South Africans was rewarding, but this was rewarding in a different way. It was concrete.