Observing the Cycle

Every visit feels as though it is my first time. The environment of Blikkiesdorp (Blikkies) strikes me. I am silenced on entering the gates. The compacted, rocky, barren sand sends my thoughts into a myriad of interwoven, internal narratives as I try to make sense of what is going on there. There are so many people living there and for all my critical analysis, I cannot seem to make head or tail about how government policy has completed failed to provide the basic requirements of health and education given that they have forcibly placed people to make a life there temporarily. How did this barren field of depletion become home to thousands of people?

Blikkies is a site where people are waiting for the promised government subsidised housing (a promise far too grand for any government to deliver on). It is also home to refugees, foreigners, asylum seekers and people who have been evicted off public land. All the people of Blikkies have been 'forcibly' removed. I have yet to meet a resident who is content with living in Blikkies. People seem to be resolute in their displacement. One woman likened Blikkies to a concentration camp, asking me, “How can we be expected to live like this?” So, many people recognise the abnormality of living conditions but are seemingly immobilised by what I imagine is the sheer magnanimity of their external environment.

Conditions are appalling. Each shelter is approximately 6 meters long and 3 meters wide. These shelters offer no insulation and are made out of corrugated iron sheets. They house up to 6 people and 4 of these shelters share one public toilet that is often blocked/dysfunctional/unhygienic. There are no public bathing facilities and so I assume people collect water and wash  in buckets at home.

On one of my first visits there, I learnt that a WONDERFUL crèche that was started by residents of the community shared a toilet with 'a noncompliant' tuberculosis (TB) patient, making contraction and spread of TB extremely easy. Moreover, there is no health facility on site, (the nearest clinic is several kilometres away), no state facility for the education of children, no entrepreneurial initiatives to encourage skills development and reduce unemployment, no counselling programmes (there are too many children, adolescents and adults who have experienced violence and continue to live with violence who are in desperate need of counselling), no rehabilitation centres....nothing. Blikkies is just a collection of tin shelters inadequately housing the lives of people who continue to be traumatised by movement, displacement, and violence.

So, I'm left wondering, in a situation where housing has been promised and people have been placed in ‘Reserve-like’, spaces, surely government policy would include the uncontested notion that the basic requirements of health and education be met. This is not the case in Blikkiesdorp. Thousands of people are caught in an endless cycle, where people learn violent ways of communication and expression and both children and adults sink further into crime, drugs, and violence.

Being in Blikkiesdorp

Every Saturday we head into Blikkiesdorp to spend a greater part of the morning and afternoon with some of the children who live there. Preparation begins at the beginning of each week, using the lessons we have learnt from the past weekend. I build the lesson-plan for the following Saturday, and on each Saturday, things never go exactly as I "planned". Each week is something different. I find that I am exhausted and often quite spaced-out because I am challenged both physically and emotionally.

On a physical level, I have to manage the lessons and try and ensure that each of the 6 children are not too distracted by their external environment. Essentially there are only two of us who are trying to accomodate about 50 other children AND work specifically with 6 children. I am constantly aware of keeping calm and energised despite the sometimes overwhelming action around us. In one scene, some young people were playing soccer about 10 meters to the right of our tent, a volunteer working with us was playing with about 25 toddlers directly in front of our tent, and to the left of us, about 3 meters away, two women were physically fighting each other whilst several other children looked on, their faces and bodies frozen in the heat.

I remember allowing my eyes to perform a panoramic mental picture. There was sound all around us. Young boys engaged in team sport, children laughing, two women shouting at each other, the thudding sound of fist on flesh, and then the silence of the children watching the violence unfold. This scene to me remains a haunting reminder of the myriad realities that are constantly unfolding.

On an emotional level Blikkiesdorp not only challenges me because it is one of the starkest, barren pieces of land I have ever seen, which saddens me deeply but also because the obvious injustice of its existence brings to the fore massive socioeconomic cracks. There is a fissure in Delft (Blikkiesdorp is situated in Delft) and it exists somewhere between nowhere.

Building Creatively

It has been about one month since we launched Creative Education. There has been MUCH learning, which is brilliant. The children we are working with are phenomenal people who constantly augment my knowledge about a number of things. They consistently remind me to remain flexbile, sensitive and communicative.

We have finally also got out very own domain name!!! You wouldn't believe what a learning it has been for me (Efua). I have designed so very many websites on various online programmes. "Yola. com" was suggested to me by a friend and I have slowly plodded along until this stage.

This first blog post is just an opening few lines. There is so much to say and so much to internalise still. All this and more later. Satnam!