This is the [Midsummer] story about the long, harsh road to smiling

Heavy rain over Langa.
It had already darkened and the pallid lamp-light outside the big hall barely caused reflections in the little pool of water in the middle of the square.
Chilly air, the damp windy kind.

Then I set my eyes on her. Again.
A girl. She is around 10 years old.
Very bright, very good in English, very well-aware and very very skinny.

Then
Last time I met her (in December) she was devastated.
Completely broken she embraced me, with those big tears falling down her cheeks she whispered "I am so hungry...".
As I held this tiny child, feeling the ribs on her back, she told me her lifetime story.
How she, her sister and her mom fled from Jo-burg to Langa.
How her mom cannot find a job and thus cannot give her kids food every day.
How they are lodgers at someone else's shack cause they cannot pay to have one of their own.
How she asks her teacher at school for food "under the table".
How her little sister cries when she thinks no one is watching.
Her voice crumbled as she started telling me about her mother.
"I am so worried about my mother. I am afraid her heart might stop beating. Because of the sadness she feels... For me and my sister. I am afraid she will die away from me and we will be all alone!"
This girl cried. She would not stop.
Desperation. Complete and utter desperation.
As I asked her if there is anything I can do for her she simply replied "Yes... Could you please talk to my mother? Tell her that everything will be alright... Please..."

We did. We spoke to her mother.

Now
Six months later.
I spotted her at a distance.
I picked her up in the rain.

When I asked her how she is doing she simply said "I am OK now. My mom found a job".
The smile on her face.
It stretched all around the planet, from one side of the universe to the other.
Completion. Just like that.
Endlessness, somehow.
She looked at me without saying a word for a long time. 
"She is OK now. Me and my sister can have bread almost every day."

They have their own shack now.
She asked me to come visit her, at their new "house". Their place.

She loves maths, this little brainy troll.
Reflecting is her thing.
Actually, smiling is her thing.

It was wet.
It was gloomy.
It was humid and raw.
It was cold.

Then I met her.

This is the story of a strong heart

This story tells of  a woman.
She lives in a shack in Langa with her three kids.

Though I have no idea neither how her life begun, nor how it is going to end, one thing is certain; just knowing a piece in the middle, makes a difference.

Her tale is rough and shivery, brutal even.

She has a daughter with cerebral palsy. She is 11 and cannot move, not eat, not talk.
She has a son, called "Angel-face". He is 5 years old now and so damaged inside he every now and then looses contact with reality. Gone, just like that.
She has another daughter. A tiny little troll. She is a bit more than a year now.
 
She was poor. Very, very poor. Her severely disabled daughter can only drink "special nutritious milk" from the hospital due to her condition. It is expensive. Too expensive at times.
Her shack has holes in the roof. It rains both outside and inside in wintertime. Tape. Pieces of plastic. Whatever she can get her hands on to seal. Mold.
At night her kids are freezing. Her disabled daughter with weak immune defense starts coughing more and more and eventually gets pneumonia.
Emergency room. The doctors cannot fully explain how that little girl can still be alive.
A new winter ends and another one begins. The same story.

Somewhere, years ago, she met a man and fell in love. He was one of the bad ones. The aggressive, abusive kind, whenever there was some alcohol in the system. And he drank. Often and a lot.
He beat her bloody, in front of her children. Angel-face tried to stop him at times, screaming to let go off his mom. He abused him too.
He made her pregnant. He tried to kill her, stabbing her, when she was expecting his child. She survived, but the scars of that knife never go away.
She left him, but he still came around at night, threatening to kill her and all of her children.

Around this time she came in contact with PPG. She got a job at the center.
The way she approaches, handles and loves kids is amazing to see. She just "has it". They all, staff and trolls, fell in love with her. PPG became her family. She eventually started smiling.
The staff often went to see her. Trying to do whatever they could to lend her a helping hand.
Observing, suspicious eyes watching her getting "white visits" at her shack.
Gossip. Malarkey. Jealousy.

We embraced each other when I saw her again.
"Thank you... For coming back to us."
A sincere faint smile. Her eyes were filled with tears. A deeply touched gratitude.

The other day she told of the new lodgers (a woman and her child) she just took in at her shack. "They have nowhere to go", she explained. "I can share what I have with them, they have nothing".
She has nothing, but the will to share everything.

Yesterday she cried. A neighbor ballyragged, yelled.
She did not ask for permission to "borrow the common clothes-line".
The jealousy. Again. She is constantly bullied by the people in Langa. Treated like dirt, because she "is clearly privileged, since whites are seen at her shack".
She asked someone to come fetch her kids. "I do not want them to see me cry. They are sensitive".
All alone, she sat down inside, letting the tears fall from her broken heart.

Evening came.
It was time now. Time to pull herself together.
Time to get the kids. School tomorrow.
Time to see another day.

One cannot measure the dimension of the content of someone's heart.
One cannot judge the worth of the strength of someone's inside.

One can only wonder what this woman is made of.
The strongest heart I ever came across.

The end of her story is still unwritten.
It should be a "happily ever after".

Support group

I experienced something yesterday afternoon.
Something that initially gave me one of those right-on-the-spot nasty kidney-kicks.
The same something ended by letting a shed of hope sweep right through me. 

A support group session.
A place where people who have disabilities in their close family can meet and discuss their feelings freely without being judged or laughed at. Disabilities are highly stigmatized in black townships here, they are seen as "curses". A consequence of this false-belief is the complete outcasting of families who have some member with a disability.

Kidney-kick
The meeting was not what saddened me. The opposite, really.
The look of the people was.

Roughly 20 persons attended, sitting in a circle with weighted hearts.
Their auras. Their body language. The perennial tiredness in their eyes. The quiet tone of their voices. Their battered skin.
"Life did this to me" written all over their faces.
You could actually see what a life of poverty, alienation from society, fighting to take care of disabled loved ones without assistance or help, loneliness and degradation do to a person.

Hope
Since the initiation of the support group sessions, the number of participants constantly grows.
Good news travel fast. They are almost quicker than the speed of light.
Rumor has it you do not have be completely alone in this world anymore.
People who want to listen, support or even just sit down next to you and not have the feeling of being an outcast. People who have each other.

All beginnings of something new must start by ending something old.
Like say, loneliness turned into brotherhood.

A familiar return

Afternoon.

The light in the sky is a bit more faint now, casting a yellowish color onto the trees.
The breeze is cooler when it hits my face.
The sun is already low and the air is "thinner" to breathe.

As I look out over the vast ocean I recognize the strong wind and the smell of algae.
The insane traffic and the downtown chaos all come back to me now.
The smiling people look the same. The coffee tastes the same.
Once again I find myself standing speechless glancing at the (somewhat flattened) mountains surrounding me.

Summer has ended. Autumn has come and gone.
Winter is now upon us.

Six months have passed.
Seems like yesterday. Was I ever really away?

I cannot help smiling.
I am back in Cape Town.

Closure

Project Playground
The 10th of December a family day took place to end the semester and celebrate Christmas.
All trolls were invited. Their parents too.
Togetherness.
Overflow.
Nearly 50 unregistered persons showed up!
Breakfast before taking two crowded buses to the beach.
Cheering & singing in the messy vehicle-qeueue. Great expectations. Joy.
The ocean under a sky weighted with rainy clouds.
Drums.
Dance together. Staff, kids and parents.
Contagious motion spreading with the rhythm.
Lines with kids in bathing suites, ready to throw themselves into the water.
Humid, chilly air.
Complainless goose-bumps.
Pic-nic in the grass.
Games.
Ride back to the centre and gathering in the lightblue hall.
Songs, chilling, bonding, feeling of belonging.
Dinner-in-a-box.
In the end all the little ones were asked to line up beside the stage.
Christmas gifts.
One each!
Speechlessness. Total fuddle & wonderment; "What do I do with this?"
Analysis. Thorough study of the present. Realization.
IT IS MINE! JUST FOR ME! ONLY FOR ME!
Rip it open!
Madness! Astonishment! Happiness!

Thank you everyone for 2011.
Merry Christmas & happy new year.


Play on Wheels
I came to Cape Town to help the crew of Project Playground start up a brand new division, for children in Langa with disabilities.

Participants have been located, visited and immensely hugged.
Remarkable employees have been found and interviewed.
Other centres for disabled children have been seen and studied.
Equipment manufacturers have been researched, contacted and finally visited.
Laws have been inquired and most thoroughly ransacked.
Tons of templates and documents have been prepared, written and archived.
Tears have been shed as the sensation of injustice at times has been too much to bear.
People have proven that the dimension of a heart can really be limitless.
Fundings have been deeply desired, applied and fought for.

I left Cape Town knowing that Play on Wheels will be able to start in the begining of 2012.

Finally I just want to say.... 
To all the amazing trolls I have encountered...
To all the brave parents who never surrender no-matter-what...
To all the Project Playground employees who have overwhelmed me with their sincere wish to make things better and who over and over again have shown me that anything is possible...
To the board who gave me the chance to be a part of the team and the family...
To all the engaged people out there who in one way or another have shown their support and contributed to the opening of Play on Wheels...

Thank you. For everything.
Unforgettable.

 And just so you know....
We WILL remove "dis" from disability.

I will return to Cape Town.
...Until then.

/Josefin - a proud member of the "We love Africa"-club.

This is the story of the "lost in time and space" charmer

A vague grin at afar.
The sweetest eyes.
An almost unnaturally beautiful face.
Always wearing flip-flops.

This is a tale of a four-year old boy with his head in another world.
He lives in a shack in Langa with his mom and two sisters.

His father.
He used to be a part of the boy's life, until his mother left him due to abuse.
Best friend with the bottle.
He beat him up regularly.
Holding him upside-down, shaking him, hitting him.
At night he still comes by their shack.
Knocking at the door.
Drunk.
Yelling.
Frightening.

His mother.
Loving her kids to death.
Raped.
Stabbed by the father while she was expecting his child.
In front of the little boy.
Bravery.
The boy tries to defend his beloved mother from this man, telling him not to hurt her.
Report to the police. Restraining order. Noone cares.
No money.

His bigger sister.
Nearly completely paralyzed since birth.
Cannot speak nor hear.
Lays on the bed all day.
Got her teeth wiped-out when she was little, so she would not bite her tongue off.
The beauty of her face runs in the family.

He looses himself.
All of sudden the world cannot touch him.
As if all the people around him were passing by in slow-motion, circling his bubble with no hope of breaking it.
Staring into nothingness.
He does not see.
He does not hear.
He does not respond nor react.
He is someplace else, where noone can reach him nor disturb him.
Where are you?
Processing. Thinking. Trying to make sense out of it. Torment.

He sobs.
For no apparent reason or event, he goes to pieces.
Crumbling in silence. Not real cries, just soft sobs.
The kind of tears not shed to achieve comfort, but which fall because the heart they derive from is completely broken.
Where are you? 
Sadness of fear, lack of safety and pure raggedness.

His face melts everyone.
This kid smiles every now and then.
Especially when he hears the words I love you.

His tale. A mini-version of it anyway.

I love you

A date in the dust

Somewhere in South Africa.
In a gravel yard in a township.
Our eyes met.
We both froze. Glancing at each other.
The wind was blowing and the mouth filled up with crackle as soon as you opened it.
No adults around.
No shoes.
Smell of dirt and mold.
She suddenly approached me.
When she was standing right beside me she did the universal "pick me up" sign with her arms.
Come here.
Her face and my face at the same height now.
The weirdest thing just happened.
Nothing.

She looked at me.
She did not move a muscle.
Silence.
Perplexed. Surprised. Stunned almost.
Studied & observed.
All of a sudden she raised one of her little hands.
Gentle touch.
She let her fingers stroke my face.
Everywhere (she even tried to poke the inside of my light eyes).
Amazed.
"What are you? I have never seen something like you up-close before."
We never took our eyes off one another.

She stopped.
Hand down.
Afterthought.
A smile arose. It got so big it seemed it might even break her tiny cheeks.
Her mouth full of rotten teeth.
"You're approved."

A throw around my neck.
We simply stood there.
Just she and I.
Hugging in silence.
Letting time pass by.

An unknown troll.
The dust continued swirling around us.