To Everyone!
***For all newcomers to this email/blog list, please visit www.kukummi.org for more information. We’re excited to share this update on our progress with a six month trip to enable the use of bodymapping, an artistic tool for storytelling and empowerment***
We had the pleasure and excitement today of going around to different townships today delivering bodymapping supplies. Siya, in Phillipe, was coaching basketball with twenty-five youth. We were so impressed by his leadership skills, the respect he commanded from the young people. When we explained we had brought the supplies he was excited to tell us he would start bodymapping immediately.
We spent the entire weekend making up five bodymapping ‘kits’. We went from restaurant to restaurant asking for containers for a “community art project for youth”, entering into the backs of kitchens to retrieve boxes of containers, lids, anything that you could put paint in or on. Each of the five kits have 60 paintbrushes (30 small, 30 large), 7 jars with different colors of paint, a packet of ‘pallets’ of lids or other materials, containers for water, pencils, markers, newspaper (also laboriously collected from newspaper stands and quickly grabbed from free magazine containers), forms and instructions, and a card of contact info to local organizations/helplines. We got carried away decorating them with hand-prints and other bodymap inspired ‘art’ (proving to the all stars who all think we are artists that, in fact, we are not).
Next we visited Thabo at his house in Nyanga to bring him his kit. He was blasting music from his house and dancing with some kids. He is starting bodymapping tomorrow. Thabo has been a really interesting part of this project. At first we thought he would be hard to reach. His first body map, last Friday with all the all star leaders, was very dark. When explaining it to the group, he said “You give me black, I give you black”. Last week Thabo facilitated a workshop with his MVPs (MVPs are the leaders under the guidance of their respective all stars in each community, in this case, Thabo). We were so impressed that getting girls involved and giving them leadership is a priority of the organization as well as working with young men to respect women and it is really being practiced. We were at the workshop as a support. Thabo had a drill sergeant, or basketball coach, style yelling “People of the South, these are your lives!”. They responded with incredible creativity and articulation of their own struggles and hope. Half way through facilitating Thabo ceased his pacing and loud instructions to begin to sketch on an empty brown paper. By the end he had drawn a tree with fruits and leaves off of the sides. The tree represented the way he wants to now look at his life, since thinking about his last bodymap. He now sees possibility and strength to grow. He is enthusiastic about having people continue to reevaluate their body maps as they change their lives. We are the active facilitators of change, he believes and practices. At the end of the workshop he facilitated with the MVPs, Thabo said,
“These are our lives…what the people are sharing here with you they are trying to make you understand as to what is going on with them so that you can treat them differently. So that you can walk and walk and walk with them because you understand. You cannot walk with someone you do not know. You cannot even walk by yourself because you do not know who you are, where your from, where the hell are you moving until you know about the map of your body. That’s how your life becomes something else so that you can make it something else. No one has chains here. I can see you all are free. But there is one thing in common. Everyone has the same heart. I haven’t seen a dark heart. I have also not seen a white heart. They are all red. We all have love… After this work, you take this, go home, paste it (bodymap) on your wall .. let it remind you as to what you want to do. Look at the phases in your life. Look at it every day. Change your life. Not me. I will support you. We will all support one another. That is why we are here.”
We are looking forward to seeing Thabo continue to facilitate bodymapping with hundreds of kids in his community this week. Tomorrow we go to two more communities to help them get started. This week thousands of kids will bodymap! The equipment/kits we made up for them will last them a long time so that they can continue to do bodymapping in their more regular programs. We are going to work with them, post writing a detailed evaluation of this holiday program, to find ways of their continuing this work as a way, as they put it, to “check in with their kids” (Hal, management) and to “break the silence” (Devina, all star).
Bodymapping fits their needs so perfectly. The organization has been around for four decades because it uses fun as the basis for it’s programming (highlight the ‘fun’ in fundamental). Alongside playing sports and having fun, they are teaching very important life skills that directly impact kids lives. But they have never had a way of connecting with their kids. Bodymapping has given them this opportunity.
We’re so excited that it has taken off and that we are now in a support role, helping it happen, while they have become the facilitators. The logistics of getting supplies to thousands of kids are overwhelming but we’ve been able to pull it off (thanks to lots of recycling, huge tubs of paint, and really friendly and helpful South Africans).
Please forward this email widely. We want people to know about this work, about these youth. Even though we don’t have the video footage to you yet, we hope you get a small sense of what incredibly important things happen when kids who have historically been ignored are given a paintbrush and the freedom to express themselves.
For us to continue to be able to support them in implementing both immediately and for the long term, we need your support. As Thabo says with paint, “a little goes a long way”. Anything you can send – from old paintbrushes to $25 bucks (that will support one workshop where thirty kids’ lives will be impacted). You can send donations to:
26 Maple Terrace
Auburndale , MA 02466
USA
Make all checks payable to Nicole le Roux.
For tax deductable donations contact us for instructions.
…And we continue to bodymap with other groups as well and have begun planning exciting things for the future stops on this bodymapping trip!
As always we are very happy to receive all of your wonderful responses and look forward to hearing from you!
All the best from Cape Town and the team of all stars at Hoops 4 Hope,
Katelin & Nicole
ps. We will put lots of pictures on the web site as soon as we have a minute between body mapping!
