Mapusha's splendiferous arches!

It took over a week to complete the three arches in the central support wall at the new studio and each day I found myself rushing to the building site to see the next step. I was fascinated, took numerous pictures and marveled at the inspirational effect these structural curves had on me.  

I drove home with images of rainbows, Chartres Cathedral and the Arc de Triumph floating through my head. I was trying to feel my way into an understanding of why these simple structural curves seem to have the power to make my heart expand.  

I googled from many angles, read about the first arches in Mesopotamia and Persia in the 2nd millennium BC, perused pictures of the solid Roman arches of military triumph and the soaring Gothic arches of European churches. I came to understand the variety of arches and the structural significance of their efficient weight bearing capacity but it was a brief illusion to the Greco-Roman sky gods, Zeus and Jupiter, that caught my attention. Of course, arches were the turf of the sky; the daily path of the sun the moon, and the planets.This seemed a big clue for me.  

When Regina, the chairperson of the weaving cooperative, saw the first brick curve under construction, she said, with a wide smile, “It is like a church.” This felt like another clue. 

Then, on Friday afternoon, just as I was about to leave the site, Regina and Gertrude came over to the building site to see the weeks progress. As I watched them walk through the front door and marvel at the arches it all fell into place for me.They were looking up at the arches and the sky. I flashed on Gertrude one day long ago when I told her I’d found a job for her daughter. She spontaneously raised both arms, looked up and thanked God for this miracle. That was it! When the women of Mapusha look up they are in communication with their God. Their solace and  support comes from above and the arches inspire them to look up. The simple action of raising our head, our eyes up, moves all of us from the earth to the skies, from the dense physical to the numinous realms.

Someday soon these arches will have a roof over them and their majesty will be diminished without the backdrop of a bright African sky. Two of them will be fitted with frame looms for large rugs and the weavers will be weaving within the curved spaces. But, I must thank Kevin Mitchell, the architect, for having the prescience to grace this building with three arches. The very fact of a new studio is proof of miracles and limitless possibility for the women of Mapusha. And, since the bedrock of their strong faith is their connection and communion with above I am happy that the arches will be there to remind them to look up, often! I only hope I remember as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G3qC3nYqiY

Ubuntu in Rooiboklaagte

"One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu – the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can't exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness.”  Tutu 

The front door being bricked in place and (below) the Mapusha women admiring their new studio.

Ubuntu is a an ethical concept of South Africa that was spoken of often in the early days of Mandela and now is the name of a new Linux-based computer operating system and a new soft drink. The concept is one that appeals greatly to my idealistic nature. The notion that when one is humiliated, all are humiliated, when one is oppressed all are oppressed sounds like both a deep spiritual principal and a gentle humanist philosophy. 

In the last few weeks I have had the opportunity to understand the essence of this practice in a visceral way. What I now see is that this is practiced daily in the studio of Mapusha. When little Zanile falls down, all of the women within sight will shake their heads with a worried frown and say, “Sorry, sorry, Zanile!” They are expressing their pain at her pain. It used to make me laugh when I would clumsily trip and Gertrude would say, “Sorry, sorry, Judy,” but I have come to appreciate the sense of connection this practice holds within it. 

Over the last month, as I came to the studio with my swollen arm either bandaged or in a sling I could feel all the women looking first at my arm when I entered the door. It was a collective “sorry, sorry” that hit me like a wave of warmth each day. 

Then, yesterday I had the unpleasant experience of an angry American expressing his low opinion of my project management skills loudly, publicly at the building site. The workers went on working, wheeling their full barrels of bricks to the base of the scaffolding, mixing cement and placing bricks up near the top of the walls but, again, I could feel the collective caring surrounding me. When I left the confrontation and walked over to stand with Desmond at the cement mixing pile, sure enough, he looked up at me with great concern in his eyes, shook his head slightly and said, Sorry, sorry Judy.” I glanced up at the women with the bricks and they, too with a slight shake of their heads communicated their support to me. 

I feel graced to understand more deeply the experience of Ubuntu here in Rooiboklaagte. It would seem to me that the gun slinging individualism so prized in the states would benefit from the teaching of this rural South African community. They know how to live together with a great sense of interconnectedness and a great deal of heart. 

At the building project it was time for a birthday celebration with Mapusha and the building crew! Gertrude’s 71st birthday and my 62nd were honored with cake, apple slices, cool drinks and, of course, a double dose of all singing “heppy berthdey to you.”

I

On Being a Disabled Project Manager

It didn’t seem like much, the little insect bite on my left arm, nothing out of the ordinary for summertime in Limpopo province. I continued my project managing and marveled as the walls of the new studio rose higher, higher but, then, a fever hit, my arm swelled and before I knew it I was in the Tzaneen hospital on IV antibiotics.Two weeks later, I have completed my mega-antibiotics courses but i’m still wrapping my arm in cool cloths and typing clumsily. I was felled by that one little bite but the work in Roiboklaagte went forward: the weavers wove, the builders built and the borehole drill arrived on site.

Lizbeth is pictured here finishing a beautiful commissioned rug. She and Angy have woven it in the last three weeks and it will be ready on schedule.

At the building site the walls are rising and the window frames are going in, thanks to Desmond, the foreman, and his super crew. I called in orders for cement and building sand, brick force and bricks.

And then thrill of thrills, gift of gifts -  A Spring of Hope ( a USA non-profit dedicated to bringing wells and water to rural schools in South Africa) brought in the Van Eck drilling rig and parked it just by our tree.

Koibus explained each soil sample retrieved from the earth and there was great excitement as we hit water at 15m and then again at 70m and finally at 100m when we hit the mother lode. The final water pressure indicates 2000 liters an hour. Everyone - creche children, school kids, the builders, the weavers and me with my wrapped, still swollen arm -  watched as the drill went down, down, down.  The excitement was palpable and when the water spurted out there was a spontaneous cheer.

Regina and Gertrude’s  eyes glow when we speak of the New Dawn borehole. It is truly abundance, abundance of a precious commodity in a world where abundance on any front is rare. We will create a community garden and a dye plants garden and a strictly beautiful garden at our New Dawn center. 

The borehole digging happening helps me to envision the community that will grow at the center.Being disabled didn’t stop me from imagining what will be by the time I head homewards in early June - a new fence to define and protect the center, a bright play structure for the children of the creche,  Mapusha moved into their shiny new studio, the central lapa covered and gardens, gardens, well watered gardens galore!

Great thanks to A Spring of Hope for their vision, tenacity and generosity!

www.aspringofhope.org

Walls rising, next.

The walls of the new studio are miraculously rising and I can envision one day walking in the front door to see the weavers and their looms by their south facing windows. I tingle with the new studio becoming a three dimensional reality  but I also feel a new horizon looming. I have done lots of designing in my life. I have designed tapestries, rugs, yoga classes, workshops and South African tours  but lying awake in the middle of the night, I begin to try to envision the design of this community complex. Once the studio is complete Mapusha will relocate but what more is needed to nourish the whole, to create a vital community hub?  Granted, my role is to simply find a vision and hold it. I can’t make it happen, only the community members can do that but still the vision of the whole design feels important at this formative moment in Roiboklaagte. 

It was the grannies of rural South Africa who captured my heart ten years ago and it is Gertrude, Regina, Lindy and the three Anna's who have modeled for me both a new level of faith and how to put one foot in front of the other no matter what the circumstances. They have shown me over and over their great ability to sing, pray, dance or laugh on a dime but, sitting on the steps with Emerencia, Regina's very successful and delightful thirty-four year old daughter, when I asked her opinion of what we needed at the New Dawn Center, she shocked me.  She said bluntly, "The Mapusha women are too old. They grew up under Apartheid and it is the younger generation who must make a difference now."  

Her comment made everything stand still for a moment but, as I mulled it over I felt my vision broaden.  Now my puzzle is how to bring in that next generation. We have the creche with the small children and the art class for the medium children and the Mapusha grannies to ground it all but how to bring on that middle range, the twenty and thirty somethings who haven't moved from the village but have a passion to make something of their lives.
It helps to understand what note, what flavor is needed for the whole design to really sing but once again I am faced with a new realm, new words and tasks. Vision as I may, try as I might it will only succeed if many from the community join us and share the vision. The motto of the New Dawn Center is "Working together we have power" but how to move that forward is my current question.
 

The drilling rig will lumber up next week to dig our borehole and I will be adding 'building renovation and refurbishment' to my portfolio as we finally begin to spiff up the Peanut Building/Community Development Center. The pieces of the physical design are coming into place but creating a vital community hub means finding a way to mix, match and merge many energies. The goal is  to form a smoothly functioning whole and we aren’t there yet. I am  holding thumbs and asking for help, ideas, inspiration from all quarters!

Concrete?

I was driving home from my first full week of managing the building of Mapusha’s new studio with the list of supplies needed for next week by my side. The trenches were complete and on Monday the crew would ‘throw the footing.”  Feeling pretty smug about how well week #1 had gone, I started going over the list in my head. "Bags of cement, got that. Truckload of sand, makes sense to me," but,  the next item on the list threw me into instant brain freeze. 

Concrete, how can I order concrete? What is concrete? Isn’t that what we are making?  If that is what we are making, what am I ordering? I tried to call up an image of concrete that wasn’t a finished product; a bench, a set of steps, a swimming pool. Nothing else floated into my blank mind.  I pulled to the side of the road and texted my visiting American builder friend, “What is concrete?” I learned that when they say concrete here, they are actually referring to what I would tend to call gravel. 

Back on the road as I passed through the high grasses of the summer bush, I found myself remembering other times when, being beyond the edge of my own known boundaries, I hit the same kind of skid-to-a-stop moment. There have been lots of these in my take a leap life but I had never before understood it so clearly. Brain freeze is truly a necessary condition when you are in new world.  The new vocabulary necessitates tilt moments, you simply don’t have a reference from the past for what is in front of you. 

Most of us know the feeling of being in a foreign country not knowing what the signs or the people are saying but this is slightly different, a bit more subtle and confusing. My first vivid memory of it was long ago on a yoga mat at a weekend intensive as a raw neophyte  student. It took all my courage to sign up for this intensive with an internationally known teacher and on the first day I sat on my mat scared, awkward, ready to do my best.  The beautiful, ethereally, leggy teacher drifted to the front of the room and began the class but to my horror she used sanskrit names for the yoga asanas. I didn’t know these words, she might as well have been speaking greek. I remember my frozen self sitting there with wide eyes, a pounding heart and an empty mind. 

Week #3 on the building site was about brick building and again, I hit a  conundrum moment. If they “threw the footing” last week what does one call this brick building phase of the base? Once again a builder type friend explained that the concrete “laid” last week and the brick walls of this week together create the footing. I now accept the fact that it will take me at least through the roofing to learn the vocabulary, but by then it won’t be a new world anymore.

Next the slab is laid. The thought of this, with all that I know it involves and all that I don't know, brings a heightened sense of tension to my bones!

This week's first picture is my wonderful foreman, Demond. He is now officially Anna Mduli’s ‘son’ as she cooks pap and moroho for him daily. Probably everybody else in the world knows that the next two pictures are of the ‘footing.” And the final picture is of Elena with her father, Philip, our top bricklayer. I have known Elena since she was 3 weeks old (the women at the coop call her “my baby”) but In her seven years I had never met her father until this project began.  It was a treat for me to walk over with her on Thursday and see how she adores him and how sweet he is with her.

Water? Water! Water @#$%^&*()@#$%^&*()

Yes, week two was the week of water; the need for it and all the convoluted tangles involved with obtaining it.  Water was the ball that this juggling project manager had to keep in the air each day as I concentrated on maintaining a steady supply to feed the voracious cement mixer. The goal was to complete the studio’s footing within three days and return the mixer friday afternoon. And, though Regina and Gertrude had politely asked for permission to use the two neighboring boreholes (both within sight of our building site) one at the mission and one at the high school, they were refused by the mission and received no answer at all from the high school. 

I could go into a tangent and describe my complete hissy fit, see red tantrum on Wednesday  when I returned to the studio, triumphant from getting the cement mixer in place on schedule, to find it completely empty. I called Wonder, “Where are you all?”  She reported that the Father’s had said ’no’ to our water request and so they were getting water themselves.

I went out into the village and found the women by the side of the road scooping muddy water from a leaking pipe into containers. I protested loudly, 

“We paid the mission for water rights, we pay each month for water. It is not fair. I want to speak to the Fathers”

“No Judy, you must say nothing.” Gertrude mimed zipping my lips closed.  

“But it is so unfair!” I stormed again, to which she replied, ”It is alright for God knows the truth. We will get the water, we will carry it on heads. The women of Mapusha have power.” Finding it Impossible to argue with her reasoning, I simply sighed.
Regina kindly added,”You may  speak of it in America, but here, no. It will cause problems.” 

So my pictures are all about water - the hungry mixer, our new Jojo tank that must be painstakingly filled with containers of water, the women of Mapusha filling their containers from the leaking pipe, Veronica performing the endless transfer of water.  I have to say, after just one week of doing this intense water jig it gives me pause to consider all the people world wide who dance the need-water-dance day in, day out. It seems an arena fraught with both the potential for great conflict and the possibility of inspirational cooperation.  

The week ended on a positive note when Desmond (foreman) and his 6 member crew really stepped it up to complete the footing before the mixer had to be returned. They stayed late and skipped breakfast. I was truly impressed as I stood on a mound of red soil with my camera in hand watching them work together like a well greased machine. The buckets were filled with sand or gravel or water and fed to the machine with perfect timing and the gritty, grey, liquid cement poured into the waiting wheelbarrow which was immediately rolled down into the trench and dumped. They finished an hour early and received their first pay envelopes from Desmond and a liter of their preferred ‘cool drink”  and a hand shake from me. 

It is the way it seems to go  here.  Sometimes I am pulling my hair out at the petty jealousies that rip through the fabric of the community and other times I stand in awe of the remarkable capacity within this rural South African village to cooperate and get the job done.

 I drove home that day sunburned, tired, proud of our trenches, our footing and our crew but guiltily ready to jump into the beautiful swimming pool at the house where I stay.

Stay tuned for more water wrangling and my next learning trajectory as we move into brick laying on Monday.

Two picks, four shovels, twenty-five droppers and here we go!

Elena and her little sister Zanile

Dear All,

I am deep in the land of lush greenery, too much rain and many mangos, enjoying temperatures that never make me clench and waking each morning before dawn to bird songs.  The new studio will be sited and pegged today and despite my mild misgivings about being the “project manager,”  things seem to be gracefully falling into place. 

The Mapusha women told me in great seriousness that they must head up the building project for if people think it is me, we will be cheated. They have chosen the crew of six local unskilled laborers to work beneath a foreman and his two skilled workers (chosen by the architect.) The crew is three men, three women; Regina’s son, Lindy’s sister, Benny’s uncle, Ambrocia’s husband and two ‘good’ women from the village who have lost their husbands and need work. The aim is to get the studio up in the three months my visa allows. 

I have 2 picks, 4 shovels, 25 droppers (pegs) and a ball of string in the back of my car and will pick up Stephen Williams to head out with me today. The first challenge will be to get up the water logged, perhaps sinking, dirt road to the site. 

Last week, after getting my head around the 10 hour time change and the 60 degree temperature differential (it was 104F on my first day) I decided to surprise the women by appearing at their Sunday church service. I slipped in the door and into a back pew late and there was Gertrude sitting right next to me. She silently clapped and yululululululued and then gently put her head on my shoulder. At the meet-and- greet portion of the service, I had the fun of shocking Regina, Lindy, Anna Mbetsi and Anna Ndudzukulo. Hugs and laughter galore made it a home coming and after the service, sitting in the Mapusha studio with Regina and Gertrude it was as if I had never left, didn’t have a whole life 11,000 miles away. 
The pictures on the right are from our grand celebration of Eulender Mbetsi, who has just passed her matric! (center, black and white striped shirt) 

I will be posting weekly on the Mapusha and Me  blog  (www.mapushandme.blogspot.com) so become a follower if you want to watch the Rooiboklagte happenings.  The new studio for Mapusha will be the central action but  I’m looking forward to the building of the play structure for the nursery school children and the spiffing up of the Community Development Center, the sinking of the borehole! Those are the key tasks for this visit so please hold that vision with me - children playing on the structure,  an english class in the community building, water flowing from the garden irrigation system and the women weaving in a beuatiful, light filled new studio.

Thanks so much for your support,

with love, 

Judy