I've done the structure but yet it feels weak

I have two years behind me.
I have 10 children.
I have funding.
I know where we are going.

So why the trepidation?
Why the insecurity?
Why the intense feeling of wanting to let it all go?

Who has answers? Efua, tell me something!
 

What comes next?

So what then?

I'm still on ON mode. Expecting the flow to continue to surge. it's in the trickle parts of the river that I start to question the finer details. The focus blurs and I scramble around looking for the familiar signs that everything is going to be OK. What if the camp doesn't go well? What if I end up doing it all on my own? Will i be able to hold a space with 10 children all on my own?

The gnawing question that remains is, how do I share my heart clearly and openly so that I can continue to build my dream?

What would it take to find the balance between my life service and my well-being?

New Beginnings

It's been a BEAUTIFUL and daring journey this past month. I have been given so much support just at the right time. I was feeling desperate and enormously challenged. Sharing my anxiety with a few friends was just the right medicine!

My two years running the project has offered a great many learning points and I now know that if I want to make it a sustainable initiative, I need to transform CEED into a different form. The essence remains the same but the structure needs a complete overhaul. Hence, I have decided to direct all my attention to transforming CEED into a wilderness awareness/holistic healing learning school. To this end, I have two wonderful friends helping me realise this vision. It has not yet solidified and I am resting in the tall grass waiting for just the right moment to pounce!

My last major event that I held for the children living in Blikkiesdorp was to take them on a camp to Greyton. Effectively, I would like to see CEED grow into that space - where we would be able to do concentrated, intensive, deepening sessions with children living in temporary relocation camps. The 5 children that form the core Creative Collective will act as mentors/ "big sisters and brothers" (as they are fast becoming young teens) and will help facilitate and organise the rest of the camp attendees. I have shared this vision with the children and they are so excited. Their enthusiasm and joy is so much fuel to the passion I have to continue working with and learning from them.

So, whilst I am not working every Saturday with the children, I do see them a few times within the month. They continue to grow in beauty and although they face a lot of very challenging emotions everyday, they are well. We are well.

Being tired

I've held Creative Education for 2 beautiful years.
I've given my love and attention to it and cried, laughed, fought, meditated, planned, improvised, shared - I lived it for 2 years.

I chose to leave South Africa at the end of 2011 to generate a greater flow of income that would enable me to ground down into living with Creative Education sustainably. On my return 9 months later, I had accumulated some money, but unfortunately not enough to meet my needs of financial stability to run the project smoothly.

I met with the children and their parents. So much time had passed and with the passage of time, so much in turn had changed, shifted, grown. My conversations with the children have taken on a more inquisitive, curious slant as they express and share their knowledge about sexuality and relationships. It is wonderful!

It has been beautiful and it has also been very challenging. So, after two years, I'm tired, tired of reaching in, pulling in, pulling out, tired of feeling sad and experiencing sensations of being overwhelmed, so I am allowing my project to rest until I can sustain both my Self and my project without effort. It has been a lot to hold.

It was enriching, enlivening, truly beautiful to be part of the children's lifeworld's and to feel the comfort and ease in which we all expressed. Being, just simply being with the children is the essential part of Creative Education. It has been a privilege to be so welcomed, so received and so connected to them.

I will stay in communication with them and when the moment is ready to hold this space again, I will.

Thank you to everyone who supported us throughout the 2 years. Thank you for making my wildest imagination become reality. I am grateful.

Moving on up

It has been a busy 2 and a half months.

After much thought I have decided to move forward with Creative Education. Moving forward means that I have now registered us as an Nonprofit organisation (NPO) and have joined the ever-growing fleet of collectives working in different places around the world. I was hesitant to move us in that direction as I had/have my reservations about 'bureaucratising' community work, but paper-work aside, I think and feel that more good will come from opening up channels that allow for a greater flow of inspiration and staying-power. So, after a year of working with the Creative Collective, I am happy to report that we are moving full steam ahead!

In the process of registering us, I had to draft a Constitution and gather a Board and Office-bearers to keep things afloat. It takes two months for the Directorate of Nonprofit Organisations to give us the "OK". When our application has been approved, they send us a certificate after which we will be officially recognised as a community initiative/charity with a registered number. Having us registered means that we can pool in more funds, which means I can begin to employ people, which means that Creative Education can begin to stand in its own center, independent of my direct influence. At a later stage, I will pull out from the Director position, at which point someone wonderful will continue with the running of it.

...But all of that is still some time in the future, and I have to keep reminding myself not to run too far ahead of myself. In the mean time, our work together has not come to end despite Creative Education being a one-year educational model. We continue here in south Africa as I try and secure them a place at a fantastic school called Christel House (http://www.sa.christelhouse.org). Here, their growth will continue to be fed, nurtured and cared for, so we are looking forward to the success of their applications.

I am also about to start a new job in Coimbra, Portugal, and will be pushing my boundaries a bit as I attempt to take Creative Education there. I am hoping to work with refugee children there but obviously, I have to get a better sense of my place, space and capabilities in Portugal. Having two sites on different continents to work from is great because it means that I may begin to grow Creative Education globally and also (as a by-product) it will allow for better communication between children around the globe. In terms of stewarding the NPO ship here in Cape Town, my first job is to create some in-flow of capital. For the next couple of months, I will be fundraising and marketing as much as I can. So, let me begin her: If anyone knows of an institution that wants to support Creative Education in any way, please contact me on, Createducation@gmail.com

One year later, I found myself getting out of my car in Blikkiesdorp for possibly the last time in a long while. This past Wednesday, I had to say good-bye to the children. Although of course I will be seeing them from time to time (hopefully throughout their lives) the finality of our year working together bore heavily down on me as I hugged them, my mouth barely able to shape the words "bye guys". In reflection, it is undeniable how much healing these 6 and at one time 10 children have brought to my life. I have learnt significant amounts from my work with them, and as I move forward, they remain stalwart guides showing me the many ways to love. 

When fullness marks the beginning

This week for the children was a particularly difficult week. Drug-related gang violence presented itself in several rounds of bullets that lasted hours at a time.  The children explained that they had to "sink" during the night, forcing them to find sleep on the cold cemented floor. The violence had begun between "merchants" (drug-dealers/gangsters) from differing blocks who were fighting over drug-selling territory. But of course this is just the tip of the ice-berg. What lies beneath the surface is seemingly a moving mass that holds layers of traumatic experiences that for now I can only describe as the residual effects of inherited generational trauma.

When I arrived to pick them up, we greeted each other as we always do - with hugs, smiles and laughter. I had heard the night before from a friend of mine about the gang war that had broken out. Had I not received the news the night before I would never have guessed that their experience that week was terrifying. They were their usual candid selves. It was only when we began the 30 min drive into the city that they began to tell me about the shootings. In their re-telling of the past events, they expressed the details in a manner that reflected their own fascination of the unfolding drama. Additionally, they told me about a young girl of 10 who was found hung in her tin home. One of the children had witnessed the girl pass from life into death and had heard her last whispered words.

Even to write about it I find difficult. How can express the complexity of human emotion I felt and still feel as I digest these stories. Their stories remind me of a time when I was about their age and I was staying in Ghana. We were living near a military training school and on a few of the evenings the soldiers would have shooting practice. I remember the complete and utter terror that enclosed my racing thoughts. I was immobilized in my bed, and so wrapped in fear. The reality in that situation was no where near their reality. I was in a double-storey house two huge blocks away from the military school. I was in no danger.

It was the sound that ripped recklessly through my ears. The sound of the bullets cracked every defense I had, shatterring any logical thought. I just remember being too afraid to breathe. So, when the children tell me these stories I remember those moments of fear that were only remedied with the reaffirmation that I was adequately sheltered, and situated very far from the bullets, which is not the same for the children.

They say when the sun sets they have to be indoors. Anyone seen walking at night will immediately be ambushed and knifed as it is assumed that if you're walking around at night then you are a drug-dealer. So not only have the kids been imprisoned internally with fear they are also locked behind doors after 6pm.

It was with this emotional charge that we arrived at the University of Cape Town (UCT). I had chosen this place as we have no formal working space and so it was the next best learning environment that I could think of. My intention was for us to work through their new play that they developed on camp and talk about what needed to be done in order for it to materialise into a wonderful performance. In reflection, our day together now seems like a perfectly situated deviation from a fear-full week. It makes complete sense to me now how they just wanted to lie languidly in the sun. How for them doing absolutely nothing but lying in the sun on the green grass was their way of coping. The day was beautiful. The sun shone without intimidation and the quiteness of campus on a Saturday morning nursed the children's unspoken emotions.

Subsequently, they have chosen not to perform a play. They have chosen instead to write a book. As we sat altogether, a volunteer and I tried to encourage them to plug into exploring their creativity. I realised that their minds and hearts are too full for now. Their creative expression is seemingly under strain as they continue to load their lived experience with one trauma after the other. Perhaps there is a link between ones capacity to learn new things and ones level of experienced suffering. I worry that their disengagement from learning new things, is the beginning of a dangerous dance that may lead them to a precarious edge. Should I have been more insistent that they stay focused on using their creativity?

I see them again in one months time and it is then they have said they will hand me their written book ready for typing-up and publishing. My suspicion is that the book will not be written in my absence, but this is an assumption and assumptions have never gotten me anywhere.

I'm left wondering if I should continue seeing them every weekend, providing them with what they have requested (a space to just hang out in) or stick to my time allocation for Creative Education. Technically, our time together is approaching the end, and our last two months together signal my "exit" plan which means I only see them twice in one month as opposed to every weekend.

Should I stay with them every weekend or should I go? What should I do? How do I go?

How do I leave knowing their world is hanging between a great divide.

Camping, Filming and Having it Good

We took a month break after our very successful final project, "Theatre on the Move". For those that either could not attend or are unfamiliar with what this project is all about, the children wrote, set-designed, costume-designed and directed a theatrical performance entirely on their own. The play they conceived explored themes of violence, gangsterism, drugs, teenage pregnancy, multiple partners and generational conflict. They called this play 'Neighbourhood' and reflected upon it as a descriptive performance about their daily lives.

The performance was held at The New Africa Theatre to a full house on both the morning and afternoon shows. The morning show was open to family, friends and the wider public, and the afternoon show was performed to school-going children between the ages of 15 and 18. Both audiences responded positively and the children were thrilled at the reception of their performance. They said that they felt like "superstars" and were visibly moved by the comments and congratulations they received. Additionally, they gained a tidy sum of money that they wanted to use toward a celebratory party and our future camp. Half of the proceeds they divided amongst themselves and the rest they put towards their camp.

One month later, we were heading out passed Sir Lowry's Pass to Greyton for our camp. Our destination was the Blue Hippo Tipi Village. We set out in the late afternoon and arrived there in the early evening where we settled into where we would spend the next four days. Our intention for the camp was to go deeper into the emotions that the themes in the play brought about. Broadly reflecting, the next four days would be a "detox". We practiced yoga and meditation, held reflective sessions, went on walks and ate a healthy, well-balanced diet.

I had also had an idea a few months ago to create a film about the lives of the Creative Collective. They had impacted my life in so many brilliant and dynamic ways that left me wanting to create more avenues of growth and prosperity for them. I shared the idea with my sister who is a film-maker and we immediately began preparing how we could materialise this idea into reality. We weaved together a narrative to drive the film through the creative genius of my sister's mind and before we knew it, filming had commenced centering around the play, the camp and how the children wanted to develop their creativity. 

Four days went by in a flash. The morning of the departure back to Cape Town crept in, in a way that felt too soon. The bus journey back was mostly in silence as we left the grand mountains and lush green hills behind us. When we arrived back in Blikkiesdorp, the children 'comedically' pretended that they didn't live there. They described their home as if they were outsiders who were observing the overwhelming poverty around them. They said, "Who lives here in such poverty?! These people are so poor"! They laughed at one another as the van came to a stop outside their tin homes, refusing to get out as they adamantly (in humour) stated that this was not where they lived.

Although they had made light of their environment on returning home, I was deeply saddened. I felt the foreboding charge present at the centre of their humour and knew it came from a total and utter dissatisfaction of their environment. I am still digesting those last few moments in the van.

We all loved the camp tremendously and it remains a stalwart guide in our journey. We wrapped up filming yesterday (5th July 2011) and hopefully with some more funding we will be able to add to what promises to be an already beautiful, engaging, and informative film.

Getting to know the children over the passed months has been an honour and is a continued pleasure.