This is the story of crystal clarity

Something's up at PPG.
Something that has never happened before.
A lifechanger is taking place at the center.

[Life, part I]
It may occur, every once in a while, far too rarely, that people astonish.
Surprise.
The size of their hearts blast every expectation and lets no tunnel vision unbroadened. 
They literally blow your mind.
For what they have on the inside.

[Eyes]
A team of opticians booked a flight to Cape Town not long ago.
Equipped to their teeth with lenses, optic machines and frames.
They had an objective. One star to follow. One common goal. Crystal clear.
Eyes.
Make people see.
Make trolls see.
Trolls who can never and will never afford to pay to see.
The eye-team aims to give a herd of trolls one of the five senses.
No chance of giving up until every single child has been examined.
Open your eyes.

[Misunderstanding]
One guy could hardly read and write.
Mentally disabled, was the conclusion of the board of education.
They shipped him off to a "special school".
He stayed there.
The eye-team found that this boy was nearly blind.
He could merely count his own fingers.
As they put the correct lenses in front of his eyes something happened.
Something that had never happened before.
He could see.
Full vision. Crystal clear.
As he red the letter-board tears filled up his eyes.
Pure, sincere and uncontrolled happiness.
I CAN SEE!
This is what it feels like to see!

[Life, part II]
More than half of all trolls need glasses.
Without the eye-team, their vision would never have been considered or even thought of.

Your effort has blown minds.
You are a group of those people. 

The boy, who now is able to see, is 20 years old.

The weight of the world

A day of pain.
Weight on one's shoulders.
Wobbly to stand.
Tough not to fall when the wind starts challenging how much storm you can put up with.
The air feels a bit sticky and heavy to breathe.
Surrounded by poverty, drugs and injustice.
The echo of the loneliness leaves the eardrums bloody.
The smell of the tears of the people corroding both heart and mind.
The vision of a neverending struggle like a thick grey fog, closing in from every direction.
Make it stop hurting!
The dark temptation of just letting go. Give in. Give up.
Void.

Friday in Langa.
Around lunch time at the center.
The rain was pouring down as if this were its last chance to wet the earth.

A long staff meeting had just taken place.
A really good one.
At Fridays lunch always follows. One of those together-lunches. Bonding through food.
A circle of lunch-eating PPG employees.
A team of friends.
Smiles, more grins and chattering.
Hopes and ideas for the improvement of the future of the little ones.
A better life.
Beliefs. Dreams. Fight. Action.

In that moment the load was lifted.
Gone.
Just like that.
That instant could not fit heaviness and despair.

The weight of the world.
Its ponderousness was overcome by a lunch in a township somewhere in Africa.

That thing

As the car turned left from the highway at the sight of the "Langa" sign, I felt it flow through me.
As the trashy sidewalks leading up to the roundabout whooshed by outside my window, I could almost taste the purity of it.
As I glanced at the typical township kiosk to the left, I got the soft chills.
As I saw the people sitting down in the sun at the side of the road, just being, I heard it as if being shouted out loud.
As the bricked PPG-walls appeared behind the gates, the air filled up with it.
As the staff came to embrace me, one by one, with all their uncomplicated sincere joy, I was overwhelmed by it.
As I sat down in silence on the porch letting the dusty Langa-winds take a hold of mind, I perceived nothing but its peace and warmth.
As I hugged the smily Play on Wheels-trolls again, my veins would almost burst from the content of it.

This is it.
This must be it.
What else could it be?
The closest you can come to the core of it.
The true meaning of it.
As pure as its essence can get.

The L-word.

I'm back in Cape Town.

Dreams, engagement and a soccer tournament

The first PPG soccer tournament ever.
The 29th of June it took place.
Langa Stadium.
12 teams competing, on knock-out terms.Three age categories (under-11, under-13 and under-15) with four teams of each.
A full day event, with lunch-serving for the teams & the accomodators.

Forward planning
Everything was planned.
Since weeks and weeks.
The fixing of catering, the printing of registration lists, the calling of volunteers, the ordering of  banners, the go-through with the DJ, the writing of speeches, the designing of trophies, the information meetings with all involved parties, the structuring of tasks, the creation of press releases, the contact with sponsors, the setting-up of posters, and the rehearsals with the performing trolls.
And of course, all the recurring check-ups.

The buildup
The morning of the 29th came.
The very VERY early kind, pre-sunrise.
It rained.
The whole night it literally poured down.
Last pep-talk, go-through and loads of preparations.
Minor panic.
It stopped raining. 
Carry, fix, print, tape, cook, mount, call, search, check.
Run run run.

The deadline
At 9:00 AM the first match would start.
At 9:15 AM the first match started.

The day, in pictures

Everything clicked
The major sponsor amazingly flew in from Sweden to take part of the day.
It stopped raining.

All teams signed in.
The DJ rocked.
S-c-o-r-e!
The spectators at the stand loved the games. 
The players and the artists (more than 400 persons) all got their lunch.
The opening ceremony was perfect.
The finals were well-played and cheered.
S-c-o-r-e!
All finalists got new kits (socks, shorts and t-shirts).
Sunset. The lack of sunbeams devolved omnipotence to the icy Capetonian winds.
The prize-giving was emotional and the winning teams were thrilled.
Proud parents hugged their winners.
All staff and volunteers performed marvelously. As a team, they pulled everything through.
There was that feel-good feeling all around and a smile on people's faces.
Langa saw how sports bring us together.

Thoughts of the whole
As I sat in the audience, watching the opening ceremony, it hit me.
The hundreds of dancing trolls with angel-wings at the soccer field.
The marimba guys doing their magic.
The PPG-staff running around all over.
The hundreds of spectators at the stand.
The sponsoring banners along the street.
The table with the prizes.
The catering gazebo filled with braaied hot-dogs.
The engaged volunteers, all wearing the yellow South African soccer shirt.
The whole.

Dreams
A dream.
All of the above. Everything. Every tiny little detail.
It sprung from someone having a dream.
A dream of a real soccer tournament in a township, sure.
Even more, a dream of building something that would make life better.
Give children a chance to grow up differently, feeling good about themselves.
The desire to wake the inner pursuit of happiness in the growing generation by simply shedding a light on their own extravagance.
The vision of a society where people treat each other with respect, equality and tolerance.
The knowing that I matter.
The belief that change is possible, and that it must start somewhere.
Why not with MY dream?

All of this.
Because of a dream.

Incarcerated

We had a PPG excursion today.
The peculiar kind.
The type which is nothing like you what you had expected.
The sort which makes so much more than an impression.
An imprint.

 Starting shot at 07:00.
We drove for nearly one and a half hour to get there.
The sky cleared up along the way and the stunning countryside unfolded around us.
Green fields. Green leaves. Green feelings.
Whooshing by outside the window.

Green green green.

The steep mountains sideswiped the heavy rainclouds still trying to beat the sunshine up there.
Last night was a persistent harsh storm.
The air was still chilly.

We arrived.
Somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
Leave the cell phones.
No cameras allowed.
Barb-wire.
Guns & orange.
Metal-detectors.
Escort in uniforms.
Bars & bricked walls.

|P|R|I|S|O|N|
Medium security. For those of you who are not familiar with the concept; it means that all the inmates at place have passed a psych-evaluation. It also includes that one can survey the walls from the inside and actually catch a glimpse of the mountains far away.

We were invited to celebrate a youth day with them.
Join them behind bars.

All these orange inmates.
Hundreds, gathered in the outside square, awaiting us.
Walls with barb-wire on top. Mud & puddles everywhere.
Some chairs and a home-made stage in the middle.
Standing right beside us now. All around us. No fences. No walls. Nothing between us.
Completely unexpected.
A slight twinge of fear.
Pulse.

They sang. They danced. They acted out poems.
We sang. We danced.
One stage.
One square.
One blue sky above us.
The same will to be at that very spot in that very moment.
Sudden unforgettable together-ness.

A PPG-employee, who has spent years in jail, held a speech.
He is a legend in bad circles. The old him, as he puts it.
His name was said out loud. He went up on stage. He took the mic.
Silence descended like an invisible veil over the whole crowd.
Everyone listened.
Respect.

"You are my brothers. I was here".
He spoke about life on the outside. About the difference between fear and respect.
About education versus just "tagging along" thoughtlessly, not-knowing.
"Change is possible" he said.
"Look at me. I work in a NGO in Langa. We have more than 200 children coming to us every week. We make a difference in their lives".

Change is possible.

Emotions.
One could hear his voice crumble.
"Do not fear to do good".

Full of emotions. Brimful. Ready to blow-up.
Orange murderers dancing in gumboots.
Prayers of mercy to a common God.
Memories of cruel betrayals and vain wishes of forgiveness.
Tears shed for brutal, heartless mistakes and failures and sincere hopes of a second chance.
People for whom it is eternally too late.  
Entire lives spent in captivity.
The deep sadness and the concurrent mindless  joy. The raw reality. The beauty.
The unlikelihood of the experience.
The overwhelming realization that all people are somehow nothing but broken children.
The gratitude.
The children performing for the inmates.
The bottom and the summit.

They are people
We are people.
Everyone is just people.

Incarcerated.
Yes. 

Change is possible.

Behind those bars, I was captured.

Friendship at a bad night

Yesterday, after sunset.
Night in Langa.
Something bad happened.

One PPG-employee was on her way home.
A woman who has been through everything; poverty, unemployment, divorce, raising children all alone, assault, attempted murder and complete loneliness.

She was no one.
She had no one.
No one cared about her.

A pregnant woman asked her for help by the side of street.
Then she did something she knows you should never do, especially when it is dark.
She stopped to lend a hand.
This pregnant lady was part of a scam, teamed up with two other men who suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
They pushed a gun to her face.
They robbed her of everything she carried.
She founded from the fear.

Her little niece accompanied her to the police station.
This girl called some of her colleagues. 
A group of them dropped what they were doing and immediately went to see her.
Just to be there for her, support her, hug her.
They did not want her be alone on a night like this.
 She is one of them.

In truly ugly moments.
Real friends stand by your side.

She is someone.
People care, about her.

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.