Music & Art Collide in the "Art of Healing project" to make South Africa a better place for their children. Departing Volunteers is bittersweet

First I just want to apologize that I was not able to put up this blog sooner. Apparently I decided to follow the rest of the volunteers at my homebase by getting sick. I'm doing better now, but I swear I thought was going to have to come to our house and put up a quarantine sign.

Anyways, this past week was filled with many activities starting Monday, August 17th when all of the volunteers in CCS were invited to come see SIYAYA, the music/drama group I've been working with. After our placements our drivers picked us up and we went straight to a township restaurant called Mzoli's for lunch. The restaurant was located in Guguletu, which was definitely a great experience. All of our experiences in going out to eat have been in the heart of Cape Town among the middle class and upper class, and now we were going to eat at a restaurant that was surrounded by the tin shotgun shacks of the township. Mzoli's was a barbecue restaurant that was covered by a large white tent where we gathered to eat varieties of chicken, lamb, and beef. At the tables were a variety of sodas, but if you wanted a beer you had to walk across the street with an escort to a neighbor's house who sold the beer directly out of their refrigerator....I'm not joking! The atmosphere at Mzoli's was very lively as a local Marimba band called "Marimba Vibrations" played for the customers. A couple of the volunteers and our program director Luann got caught up in the music and started dancing in front of the group in the middle of the restaurant. It was a blast!

After lunch we loaded up the vans and headed over to JL Zwane Community Center to see SIYAYA perform. I was really excited for everyone to see the group that I've been working with for the past 2 weeks. I knew they were amazing and I wanted to see everyone's reactions. The performance included a combination of small dramas intermixed with operatic solos, afro pop tunes, and complex dance choreography. They started the performance with "I've Got you Under My Skin", the choral number that taught them in 4 days, which went really well. The diversity of repertoire and the energy of the group left everyone of the volunteers with looks of disbelief. The show was a major success and many of the volunteers in my group came up to me and congratulated me and some even said they were jealous that I got to spend my volunteer time working with such talented people. It was very gratifying.

The next day I woke up and my neck was still very sore from the weekend. I couldn't even move my head side to side. I knew I needed to do something as I didn't want to deal with back problems for the rest of my time in Cape Town. I set up an appointment with a Chiropractor, which was a very interesting experience. I've never been to one so it was kind of scary at first. I laid on the table as the doctor cracked my spine a couple times and in my mind I was like "What the hell is going on!? Is that supposed to happen!?" She did it a couple more times and I got up and I could actually move my neck and back a lot better. For those of you who have never been to chiropractor or who don't believe in them, let me just say I'm very much a believer now.

Later that afternoon we went to the District Six museum. District six is a very historic area of Cape Town. Before Apartheid it was a black area that was homed to thousands and then during Apartheid the government forced the population out into the townships and declared District six a white area. Eventually the Apartheid government decided to level many of the houses to create new buildings. They leveled the houses, but never actually did anything to build, so district six was left as almost a barren waste land. Since Apartheid the government and many organizations devoted to the advocacy of the area have spent the last 15 years building houses and giving the opportunity for the people who were originally forced out to move back into district six. One of the Cross-Cultural Solution drivers, Kimmie is from district six and after talking to him about the area, you can tell that the people of the area have a passion for where they live. One of the exhibits in the district six museum was a huge blanket covered with notes on it from people who were able to move back after Apartheid. These notes conveyed the people were able to retrieve a big part of their life that was missing for over 30 years.

The next day you could see that the volunteers were getting tired from the full agenda of activities that CCS planned for the week. It was tough for some of people who were leaving after this week. Not to say that the programs weren't interesting or fun, but everyone needs their freedom. That night we had yet another program, which some of us shrugged at. I was one of them, but I also thought that it might be interesting. It was a music/drama performance from a man named Themba. The volunteers walked into the room while Themba was playing a hypnotic melody on small instrument that looked like a small metal finger piano, but sounded like a small marimba. It was called a Mbira and it had a shell enclosing it to create acoustical depth and help project the music. Once everyone sat down he stopped playing and introduced himself and gave us the opportunity to have each one us introduce our selves to him. Themba told us about how he worked for an organization called "Healing of Memories", which contributes to the healing process of communities that suffered through governmental oppression such as Apartheid. They work to build and open the lines of communication between different races and have healthy discussions about the wounds of the past and establish cultural understanding. Themba then presented a musical poem using the Mbira. The poem was an intense look into the ideas of racial oppression and how we need to go about the future in terms of races finding a common goal to fix the problems of South Africa. I have to say this program had probably the largest impact on me out of all the other programming since I've been in South Africa. It really opened my mind in terms of realizing how long it's going to take for things to change in South Africa. We all came to the agreement that the many years of Apartheid manipulated so many people to believing that many blacks were terroists or communists setting out to destroy the whites. Since the end of Apartheid there are still many people out there that are residuals of that mindset. In my mind I believe that the youth will have the largest impact on the future of South Africa. They need to grow up in place where there is an established mutual understanding of what happened in the past with Apartheid and be able to put those hardships past them to create a better world where whites, blacks, coloreds, etc. can work together. It's going to take a long time, but like the civil rights movement, even America has made big strides, but still has a long way to go.

Going into Thursday, August 20th there was a lot of expectation. It was the day that a major community project sponsored by CCS and the Nomzamo Center for Abused Children, called "The Art of Healing Project", was taking place. The project was the volunteer focus for the 18 New York University students. They all studied "Art Therapy" and there job in this project was to design a giant mural on the back wall of the Nomzamo center. This was all to be completed in one day. So of course the rest of the volunteer crew from CCS took part in various rolls. Children and students from different schools in townships all over came together with CCS volunteers to paint a beautiful mural on a once white cement wall. The process was a blast as we had a dj play music as we all painted. Then we also had a wonderful musical intermission with the SIYAYA group. I helped them set up their instruments and they gave a magical performance full of percussion, marimbas, and energetic dances. The students loved every moment of it. We then finished the mural, which included wonderful images of oceans, ships, fairy tale figures, trees, flowers, and of course the flag of South Africa. Evan Spiegel gets a big shot out for helping design the flag! All of the volunteers and I walked with a great sense of pride accomplishment as we saw a sea of children from underprivileged areas come together and create something beautiful. Our director Luann stood in front of everyone and gave a heartwarming speech thanking everyone for being apart of such a influential project. The director of Nomzamo also extended her gratitude to everyone for their hardwork. It was a wonderful day and very much another day we all felt that we made an impact.

As much as the week was filled with joy and accomplishments it also had its' bitter-sweet ending. Much of the group was about to disappear as a lot of volunteers were doing a three week program. This included volunteers that I grew extremely close with. Matthew from Vienna, Austria was one of my roommates and very much a music lover. We related on many different levels in terms of our passion for music and explored a lot South Africa in the same group. He was also a great friend and easy to get along with. Laura from Toronto, Canada was also in our homebase and her optimism was extremely contagious to our group. When someone was having a tough time in the group she was very much always there to cheer that person up. Emma and Cody from Las Vegas were also in our homebase and were always there to come out where ever we went and just became the life of the party. All of the NYU people were wonderful as well, unfortunately I didn't get to hang out with them as much as I would like due to our housing separation. It was hard to say goodbye, but we all knew that we would stay in touch and plans are already in the works to make some hometown visits!

That's about it for now. Again, I apologize for the wait. This week was crazy with illness and friends heading out. Thanks for following week 3 of "Kevin Tackles South Africa".

Week 2 - Taxi Cab Strike, Sore Neck, and Soccer mosh pits, but yet there is Hope... the Cape of Good Hope that is.

Another week in Cape Town has passed and even though it's only been a short while, I already feel like my Cross-Cultural Solutions house in Rondabosch is my second home.

After returning from the Garden Route I was very gratified to sleep in my bed and excited to talk with the other volunteers about their weekend experiences. All of us agreed that returning to the homebase felt like coming home. The meals that were being prepared for us at the homebase were already feeling like the comfort food that we all desired...well maybe with an exception to the squash soup...haha..

This short week began with an interesting twist at my volunteer placement. I came into the JL Zwane Center on Tuesday with the expectation that maybe I would finish cleaning up the choral piece that I worked on with the SIYAYA group last week, but instead the director, Bongani wanted me to teach everyone an individual voice lessons. So I was going from the first time teaching a whole group of kids to sing to teaching individual voice lessons for the first time.

Even though there were some benefits to teaching individuals, like the comfort of dealing with one person at time rather than a whole group there were also some obstacles. When you are a voice major in college and you really only know how to sing a bass/baritone part it's really difficult to try and teach female students who sing alto or soprano parts. Although it took some time to get used to the changes overall I think the individual lessons worked out. I worked on a lot of breathing and vocal exercises with each student to establish some basic technique that they might not already know. These exercises were all part of my memory of what my college voice teacher Benjamin Smolder taught me. Towards the end of each voice lesson I worked on teaching each student an Italian aria from a book that I brought with me. The aria was called "Caro Mio Ben" a very well known aria that many voice majors from America might know. It was a song that I sang back in school and it was something that I felt at least somewhat comfortable with teaching. The kids seemed very enthused because a lot of them didn't know anything about the realm of classical music. They all put a lot of effort into learning the words, rhythms, and notes. Some learned the tune faster than others, but overall I was really proud of them for each of their individual vocal prowess.

In cultural news there was a lot of tension coming around regarding the taxi and bus systems and a worker's strike was imminent. A warning was sent to all of the volunteers around my placement saying that our placements might be delayed or cancelled due the possible safety concerns with the strike. According to resources sometimes people that protest in these strikes will throw rocks at other bus or taxis that are still in service. The next day our volunteer placements were cancelled due to the fact that our driver couldn't even make it to our house to pick us up, because of the immense traffic caused by the strike.

We were warned that strikes could last up to 3 or 4 days, but for some reason the strike didn't even last 24 hours. Just like that things were resolved and we were at our placements again Thursday morning. Although I made it to my placement I found that only 3 students in the SIYAYA group made it to rehearsal due to unknown circumstances, but I'm guessing that a good deal of them thought the strike was still on. The day was still productive as I took the 3 students on individually to work on vocal training and the Italian aria.

After that we went on a tour of the Cape Malay area, which is an Islamic area of Cape Town with many mosques and interesting pastel colored apartments. It was almost like something out of "Edward Scissor Hands", except they were apartments instead of houses. After touring the town and eating at a very cozy middle eastern restaurant that had a incredible view of the city, we headed over to a museum that focused on slavery in South Africa called the Slave Lodge. The museum was very interesting and presented a lot of information on not only the history of racial oppression, but also had exhibits that dealt with more recent Apartheid issues and celebrated the lives of movement leaders like Nelson Mandela, Desmund Tutu, and Steven Biko. Steven Biko had one of the more memorable exhibits. He was a leader of what was the BCM (Black Conscious Movement), which focused on racial oppression in it's psychological aspects rather than the politics. It worked to encourage black Africans to be self sufficient and not rely on the help of white powers. Being a music fan I immediately turned to a featured music video in the exhibit that was a Peter Gabriel song called "Biko". I'm still not sure why of all people that Peter Gabriel would write a song about him, but I guess I need to look into it more.

The weekend was a mix of a lot of fun, exciting adventures, and a really sore neck. I started with some friends by going to Long Street on Friday and hitting up the African markets, which if you have ever experienced going to a car dealership or any other store where the employees hassle you until you buy something, this is about 10 times worse. I got pretty used to it quickly telling every market I passed by either no thank you or that I would come back later. I repeated that until I found exactly what I was looking for and then worked on my haggling skills, which seemed to go well.

Saturday we went to probably the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen in my life. The landscapes of the Cape Point and The Cape of Good Hope hike are something out of a fantasy world. This area is the most southwest point of South Africa and encompasses cliffs that overlook endless waters. There is a beach that lies between a canyon that you can sit on and watch some of the most beautiful blue and green waves come in crashing. It is very secluded, but a gorgeous memory. The only problem with the whole trip was that I developed a terribly sore neck that I've been trying to work out every since. Thankfully one of the volunteers, Cody is a massage therapist and has been life saver and also just a good sport. Thanks man!!!

That night we decided to go to a soccer game with the Cape Town Ajax and the Johannesburg Kaiser Chiefs. It was a bit of craziness as I thought I was apart of a mass protest as the people trying to get into the game were literally bowling over the guards to get into the stadium. It was a massive mosh pit and even more crazy than a lot of concerts that I've been to, but I'm happy to say I'm alive and the game was a lot of fun.

That's all for now, but I should have a good deal more next week and will post up pictures as soon as possible. Just to warn everyone if you want the true experience of seeing the Cape of Good Hope and Cape point you really just need to pick yourself up and get down to Cape Town, South Africa. But I guess if you can't do that then I'll just have to make it my duty to keep you informed with Kevin Tackles South Africa. Thanks everyone!!!

For questions or comments feel free to e-mail at kevin.gschwend@gmail.com

The Beginning

It's been a week since I've been in South Africa and I've already done so many things. To begin I started my journey by staying up until 5:30am putting the finishing touches on my packing at my home in Potomac, Maryland. Most of the time was spent putting together intricate paylists on my ipod nano, which is for my enjoyment and then a separate educational playlist on my really old ipod for my supposed music education volunteer placement.

The 24 hours of travel included a stop in Atlanta, then off to Dakar, Senegal and then finally Cape Town, South Africa. Along my flight I met up with 3 other Cross-Cultural Solution volunteers and chatted with many other international travelers. Everyone on the flight was very kind and the excitement about traveling to SA seemed to radiate within everyone on that flight. The combination of that, a very enthusiastic conversation with my seat neighbor and having the exit row seat made the flight very comfortable and it didn't seem much worse than taking a flight from Washington, DC to Los Angeles. I reaffirmed this idea after hearing that a couple of the volunteers had 9 hour lay overs in Dubai and London.

My flight landed in Cape Town at 5:30pm on Saturday, August 1st. I congregated with the other 3 CCS volunteers and 2 more that we met at the airport. We all seemed very disoriented from our sporadic naps and lack of movement on the plane. Our driver, Kimmie was their to greet us and escorted us to the car. Everyone seemed very nice as we chatted on the way to the homebase. That's when we witnessed our first glimpse into the overwhelming world of South African poverty. It was a field close to the airport full of miles and miles or tiny, tin metal shotgun shacks. Some of the people I talked to before I left for SA told me stories about this area, but to see it was another experience all together. These structures resembled more of rusty tool sheds that were clustered among piles trash, but were actually the homes of about 3 million blacks and colored South Africans in the Cape Town area. "Colored" meaning a mixture of black and other racial orientation (i.e. Indian, white,etc.).

After a 25 minute drive I was dropped off at 1 of the 2 CCS homebases, which was located in an area outside of downtown Cape Town called Rondebosch. A pretty nice middle class area that is located minutes away from the University of Cape Town. The house was very nice and reminded me of the neighborhoods outside of LA like Silverlake and Echo Park. I met my roommates, Matthew Prokop from Vienna, Austria and Tyler Eversaul aka "Ty" from Vancouver, Washington. Both of them were very nice and eager to be in South Africa.

After I met my roommates and checked out the house I realized my body was so exhausted from the great length of travel that I was able to write a small 3 sentence e-mail to my family, letting them know I was ok and then I went straight to bed.

The next day we started our 2 day orientation where we met the rest of the volunteers at homebase 1 located 2 minutes away from our homebase. The first day of orientation went through a lot of logistics and a bunch of exercises to evaluate our expectations and to get to know each other. Afterwards we had a festive lunch with lots of lamb, chicken, potatoes, vegetables, and a wonderful salad with melt in your mouth avocado slices. From there we did a driving tour of Cape Town in which we drove up one of the many picturesque mountains called Signal Hill. From there we could see beautiful views of the cascading ocean crashing up on the rocks and shoreline of downtown Cape Town. There were also gorgeous views of Table mountain, Devil's peak, and lion's head. After the tour we went back to have dinner and my roommate Matthew and I decided that beer would be the perfect remedy to subdue the intensity of our first full day in SA. We went to a bar we saw earlier that day called the Fat Cactus, which was a perfect evening treat.

The next day we had a 9am meeting to continue our orientation, which focused on our individual placements. We started by talking about the history of South Africa, which lead to a somewhat heated discussion about Apartheid and the current politics of SA. We then took a township tour, which none of us knew what to expect.

For those of you who don't know what a township is, it's basically the American equivalent to a ghetto. During the time of Apartheid, legislation required the 75-80% black and colored population majority to move in these South African ghettos that took up 13% of the land in South Africa. This is while the white minority population took up the rest and the majority of land in South Africa. This forced blacks and colored population into these isolated, dangerously under kept neighborhoods known as "Townships". The field by the airport that I mentioned earlier is what an ordinary Township consists of. Since the removal of the Apartheid system in 1989, the black and colored population are now able to live anywhere in South Africa. Unfortunately many of the families are too poor to live anywhere else in Cape Town.

There are +/- 10 different townships that encompass the majority of the around 4 million total population. We toured three of those townships including Khayelitsha, Guguletu, and Langa. Khayelitsha is largest of all the townships, followed by Guguletu. The structures in the townships varied from tin, metal, wood, and cement buildings that were all mashed together along dirt fields and under kept roads that went for as far as I could see. It was very much like Cape Town disappeared and was engulfed in a sea of this housing, which in reality is only 25-30 minutes away from the center of downtown Cape Town, which is a complete 180 in terms of wealth.

We had a tour guide who was from one of the townships that took us around and introduced us to the people, the houses, and the culture of township life. The images were very emotionally intense, as I have never witnessed poverty on that extreme of a level. The first thing I remember that was both heartwarming and sad was the flood of children that saw us and came running up to us to be held and played with. It was really adorable. I remember a little girl around 3 years old came up to me and kept grabbing my hand so I would pick her up and hold her for a little while. Or grab my hand and another volunteer's hand and have us swing her by the arms. That little girl had so much spirit and was having so much fun with us that she never wanted to leave our side. We had to go at some point, which was the sad part. I wanted to know what that girl was going to do with the rest of her day and what was going to become the rest of her life. The other memory was going into one the houses that was a daycare center that housed 70 kids everyday with only 6 people looking after them in a extremely tiny 1 or 2 person sized building. The women care takers were very nice and had some of kids sing for us. They sang songs about the days of the week and other things they were learning in daycare. It was another instance where my heart was very warm with love and compassion for these kids, but also saddened by the conditions in which everyone was brought about. I guess though in the end all they are making the best of what they have, which is wonderful, but I also feel that they deserve so much more. At the end of the tour we were all pretty exhausted and went back to our homebases to have dinner and relax to prepare for our first day of volunteer placement.

Volunteer placement the next morning for me was located in the township of Guguletu where I was to work at a community center called JL Zwane. There the center works to help promote programs for education, healthcare, and the arts. I was to work with the music & performing arts group there called SIYAYA. I met the head of SIYAYA named Bogani and the director of the center, Edwin. Bogani took me out to see SIYAYA do one of their weekly performances at a local clinic that served hundreds of HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis patients everyday. The patients at these clinics start coming around 5am to stand in line and wait to see a doctor most of the time if they are late they are asked to come the next day and wait once again to see a doctor. SIYAYA performs at these clinics usually 3 times a week to provide entertainment and promote HIV/AIDS education to the patients in the waiting room while they wait to see a doctor. This was an amazing experience as the members of SIYAYA put a drama performance on that had everyone in the clinic laughing hysterically. At first when you entered the room you saw a sea of somber faces eagerly waiting for a doctor's attention, but when the guys from SIYAYA came they whole demeanor of the room changed completely. It was a really amazing experience for me to watch and gave me a great idea of how talented these guys really are.

SIYAYA is made up of 15 young adults both females and males from the ages of 18-26 who are all extremely talented in music and live in Guguletu among the rest of the township people. They sing, dance, act, and perform on all sorts of instruments. I've had the pleasure to work with them on vocal training and introduce them to choral works that they will include in their performance repertoire. I've also worked with them on an individual basis to teach them new music from old moetown pop tunes to mainstream pop to jazz. In another week SIYAYA will do a performance for the volunteers of CCS in which I will conduct a choral arrangement of the Frank Sinatra tune "I've Got You Under My Skin". I sang it in high school and so far I've been able to teach them to sing the tune in 3 days. For some one who has never taught choral music that's pretty impressive, but more of the credit is deserved on their side. They are already amazing and talented musicians and after the first day when I introduced the tune they did a full showcase performance for me personally, which they did all of their musical numbers and I have to say if I would of saw that before I started teaching them, I would have been extremely scared to teach at all! haha.

Other then the placement, my life in Cape Town has been coming together. In our CCS programming we've started our language lessons in Xhosa, which is a click language of South Africa. I've gotten to know and get along with all of the volunteers which has been amazing and I just came back from an amazing weekend trip on the Garden Route, which was organized by one of the CCS drivers. It's a tourist destination about 5 1/2 hours southeast of Cape Town where the drive was surrounded by beautiful landscapes of mountains, oceans, and canyons. We stayed for 3 nights at a really cool backpackers lodge and went around to all the attractions including Zip lining and the world's largest bungy jump (Sorry Mom, I had to do it...but I'm still alive!). We also went to animal sanctuaries where we got to pet elephants and baby cheetahs. Finally we went to the Cango caves and many other scenic areas where we took in all of the beautiful surroundings.

As the journey continues I hope to immerse myself more in the culture and life of South Africa and I hope to share as much as I can with all of you following Kevin Tackles South Africa. Once again I'm thinking of all of you who supported me in this journey and I want to say thank you so much for all of your support. In the next day I will put up pictures on here and my facebook so you guys can get a glimpse of what's going on. Take care and feel free to e-mail me!

-Kevin