Four weeks teaching and playing with art with AIDS orphans outside of Jo’burg

Today was my last art class with my teen class. For the last four weeks, I’ve been teaching art classes to some of the teenagers and they have shown great improvement!! It’s been so exciting. Today was an especially good class. We worked on figure drawing with charcoal, and I was showing them how to do 15 and 30 second gesture drawings. As they got more comfortable doing them, they started to really enjoy it. It was great fun to then see the improvement when my co-teacher, Willem, who is a masters student at the University of Johannesburg, did a twenty minute pose for them.

Still life from second class.

It was really awesome to work with these students over the past couple of weeks. It started out rough, as they were not used to having roll taken at an after school activity, or being expected to be on time. Nor were they used to committing to a 1.5 hour pose or still life drawing, they’d previously only really doodled or drawn sketches from memory.

Willem posing for the final pose of the day.

But, I think they are finally getting into the rhythm. I’m really thankful that Willem’s commitment is until the beginning of September. He and I have already planned and talked about what we want these teens to explore and learn and on Monday we are going on a great big shopping trip right before Robyn and I fly out. That way, he will have all the necessary tools to continue to do drawing, as well as start painting (his real forte) in a few weeks, and then do some sculpture.

The class, focused intently on Willem's pose.

There is some real talent in the group, and I am so excited that they are now in a solid, consistent class. I’m just hoping someone will step in in September and continue the class.

The best two drawings from each student from the last two weeks.

Though it was our last class, I get to hang with my class again on Saturday when we head to not one, not two, but three galleries! I’m hoping they won’t be overloaded, as this will be their first gallery experience, but thankfully, the first two are very small galleries. I’m extremely excited. It will be really interesting to see their reactions to the work that will range from contemporary South African art to permanent collections that include Monet, Degas, Picasso and many other big names of European art.

It’s been awhile since we’ve posted!

After Kruger, we were both absolutely exhausted, and Robyn had a bad case of the chills. We both got right back into the swing of things, teaching the art class, feeding the babies, etc. But neither of us were feeling well. By Saturday afternoon Robyn was wrapped up in a blanket on a couch and I wasn’t feeling much better!

On Sunday we took it easy before friends of ours came to pick us up and take us to Soweto in the late afternoon. We didn’t have much time there, but it was great to get a quick glimpse of Soweto.

We stopped quickly at Nelson Mandela’s house (where Winnie Mandela was put under house arrest and then evicted by the state while Nelson Mandela was on Robben Island) which has been turned into a museum. Unfortunately the museum was closed. The friends we were with said that up until about six months ago the gated museum wasn’t there and the house was basically open for the community. They told us that because SA is gearing up for FIFA 2010, everything is being cleaned up and commercialized.

Robyn and I are both steadily making our way through Nelson Mandela’s epic auto-biography “Long Walk to Freedom”, and it was incredible to see the places where the story takes place. It was incredible context in which to tour Soweto.

We then went to the Hector Peterson memorial. Peterson was the first young boy shot dead during the ‘76 Soweto Student Uprising when 20,000 students peacefully took to the streets on a march to protest the governments attempt to impose Afrikaans as the language of tutelage. The uprising turned into a bloody riot when the police opened fire without warning, and I was reading yesterday that it was more than a year before order was properly restored to Soweto.

After the Hector Peterson memorial, we went to eat at the world famous Wandie’s (http://www.wandies.co.za/). A restaurant famous for it’s distinctive ” Soweto African Soul Food”. It was delicious. It’s tradition that everyone who comes in signs or tapes a business card on the wall. There wasn’t much space left but we found a little corner and proceeded to scratch our names onto the wall with Robyn’s blue bic pen. (If only I’d had my sharpie on me!)

On Monday, both Robyn and the weather took a turn for the worse. The weather went from sunny and warm to overcast, raining and freezing cold. Robyn spent the day on the couch with chills, a sore throat, stomach pain and a cough.
In the afternoon, I mustered the energy to teach a voice lesson and go visit the babies. We’ve taken to calling them ” our beh-behs”, and it’s hard to go a day without cuddling and tickling them. By Tuesday, I’d joined Robyn on the couches. Neither of us moved, let alone left the house!

Thankfully, we’re both starting to feel better. This morning was the first time we actually got up and got dressed and left the house! We’re supposed to be shadowing a woman here while she visits a Sparrow ‘Grannies’ project in a nearby township this morning, so we’re just waiting in our chillly living room (yes we can see our breath when we breathe) for a call from her. The grannies project is an initiative to help out the grandmothers who have taken in their grandchildren after both of their parents have died, usually from AIDS. We don’t know much more than that but I’m sure we’ll have much to report.

We’re gearing up for our last few days here. Even with our extra week at Sparrow, our time here went by in the blink of an eye. It’s that funny simultaneous ” feels like we’ve been here for years” and ” like we just got here.”

Friday we are hopefully going to be helping with a day long food and blanket drop in one of the townships. Saturday, we take the teenage art class to two downtown galleries, the Johannesburg Art Gallery which has a broad range of works and the Standard Bank Gallery, a gallery that seeks to promote contemporary South African art. I am so excited for them to see both. It will be their first time in a gallery. Sunday we will hopefully hit up a market after church and then I’ll teach my last couple of voice lessons. And then Monday evening we will blubber in the nursery and the hospice for awhile as we say our goodbyes and then fly out.

We’re then headed to Europe to see some good friends before heading home at the end of June.

We can’t believe that six weeks of our adventure have already gone by!

by Robyn and Kaili

We returned to Jo’burg Wednesday night after an exhausting 3 day trip up to Kruger National Park to see some more of South Africa’s beautiful terrain and wildlife.

Early Monday morning we hopped on a bus with a bunch of other backpackers and made our way North East to Kruger through an INCREDIBLE scenic route. We left home at 5:45 to be at our pickup place at 6:30. We arrived at our lodge at 6 pm. Needless to say, we were pretty exhausted!

Tuesday was a full day drive! We were supposed to meet at the bus at 5:30, so we set our alarm for 4:30. At 5:45 our pleasantly gruff Afrikaner driver hammered on our door with the shout of ” LADIES. BUS. NOW.” We had no idea why somebody was hammering on our door before our alarm! We were dressed and in the bus no more than two minutes later. Thankfully, our newfound friends remained friendly.
The day drive was marvelous. We were out in the park for 14 hours in total! It was tons of fun. We were lucky enough to see four of the big five. We saw elephants, buffaloes, lions and a leopard! The only one we missed was the rhino. We also saw myriad giraffes, impalas, zebras, wildebeast and vervet monkeys.
Wednesday we drove home. It was a long day! When we arrived home we were both too tired to speak of the awesome trip we had!

We’re still pretty exhausted, but we’re pumped for our last ten days here at Sparrow. We decided to extend our time here by a week. So instead of leaving this Monday we leave on the 15th of June. We’re sad to be leaving so soon, but we have learned so much about service and ourselves. And, we know we will be back in South Africa as soon as possible.

by Robyn

Last week I met a boy who stole my heart. He’s a two and a half year old boy named Rafile (that’s just a guess at the spelling). I first noticed him last week during our daily morning feeding routine. He sat there quietly with his huge brown eyes just starring and starring. When I picked him up he immediately wrapped his entire limp body around me and lay his head down on my chest. He just lay there until I had to put him down. This became a daily routine.
When I asked one of the Sisters (this is the name they use for all for the caregivers in the Hospice) about his story she told me he’d been at Sparrow off and on for the past 4 months or so. Apparently his mother had also been a patient at the Hospice but had died not too long ago. As the story so frequently goes, Rafile was left in the hands of his grandmother. With insufficient means to provide for him, Rafile returned to Sparrow soon after- malnourished and dehydrated. The Sister told me when she comes to visit you can sometimes catch a smile, but other then that he stays pretty quiet and reserved.
This broke my heart. This little boy looked as if he could never smile again. I have never seen a more sad, depressed baby. His face was engrained in my mind, but I was at a loss of what to do. How do you comfort such feelings of abandonment for a two year old boy? The only comfort I knew was to hold him and pray over him.
Yet in the past few days Kaili and I have noticed some changes in this boy, and today I walked into a wonderful surprise. I spent 45 minutes with a laughing, giggling, and squealing little boy! It was amazing.
It may have been a freak moment of happiness, but to know that God can bring those moments of joy amongst such feelings of heartache, is a wonderful thing. It was a wonderful reminder that God does know our pain and does care for each and every one of us.
A couple of girls from the Orphanage came to visit the babies tonight when I was there as well. One of them stole my camera right out of my pocket and luckily grabbed this shot of smiling Rafile and I.

A friend of ours emailed us today with the very gracious question of ” what, exactly, is a cluster?”. We’ve gotten so used to the very sci-fi architecture that we just assumed that our few mentions of clusters would be sufficient description.
Here are some photos of clusters to help you visualize.

This is where we live. This is the guest house cluster. The first pod on the left is the kitchen and bathrooms, the second is the living room and dining area and the third is our bedroom and our housemates' bedroom. They are all connected together by archways.

These are cars that form a part of the central playground in the middle of the childrens cluster complex. Behind them is Cluster 5 of 10.

by Robyn Howitt

This afternoon we watched some of the children do gum boot dancing. It is one of the activities that is run here. This afternoon was a hectic one as some of the marumbas were practicing, the choir was practicing and there was gum boot dancing. Didn’t leave much time for the children to do homework. We made our way over to the Lappa, which is the thatched rec room amid the childrens clusters because there was no one in the homework room.

Some of you have mentioned that it seems like commenting on our blog doesn’t work. This is not true. The issue is that our comments are set up to be approved by one of us, because of the frequency of blog spamming.
Do not fear, we approve everything as soon as we get a chance to check the comments.

by Kaili

It was a great weekend, even if Friday night I was sleepless (literally) and Saturday night Robyn was restless. I was up almost until sunrise, but I fell asleep just 15 minutes shy of it. Saturday night, Robyn slept on and off, but had the presence of mind to take advantage of that fact when she woke up just before sunrise. She took many gorgeous photos, but this one is my favorite.

6:45 am.

Saturday, there was a very long marumba practice outside on the lawn. marumbas are large wooden xylophone-like instruments, and a marumba band often has a drummer, steel pans and djembes as well. On Saturday, a Soweto based Marumba band, led by a Canuck like us (though he’s been living here for ten years), joined the Sparrow band on the lawn between the hospice and the children’s clusters. As soon as we realized where the music was coming from, Robyn and I shook off our Saturday morning stupor and ran out of the house with our cameras.

We hung out outside with the children all morning and afternoon. It was a beautiful day and it was great fun. I tried to film a bunch of it with my digital camera, but a child from my art class took over as cameraman. I haven’t had a chance to look at the footage but I saw him doing some VERY interesting things with the camera.

On Saturday evening, we hung out with some of the teenage girls in their cluster and they braided our hair. After drenching our hair in Vaseline they spent over an hour pulling at our hair and making it beautiful. My stylist, unfortunately, could not make up her mind, so I ended up leaving with only one cornrow.

Hangin’ out in TC with Ntokozo, Wendy and Mbali

The view from our doorstep early yesterday morning.

I was running out the door trying to catch up to Robyn who had already left for nursery duty when I almost ran right into one of our housemates, Linda. She was standing on our doorstep taking in this beautiful early morning sight.
I couldn’t help myself. I ran back into the house and grabbed my camera. I’m glad I did.