Open Warrior

Yesterday, after weeks of exams and much discussion on what we were going to do, we started our work on building our themed campsite for Afrika Burns – The Location.

Afrika Burns is an art festival which according to the website is,

Participant created…
An experiment in temporary community building…
Radical self-expression, self reliance and non-commercialism…
Encouraging a culture of environmental mindfulness

This is the first time that Afrika Burns is taking place, so exactly what it will be, no one really knows.

Because of it’s nature however, we really felt like we should get involved. So, Batandwa came up the idea of ‘The Location.’

The location is an insight into the disadvantaged communities in South Africa, with the goal of encouraging awareness about the large divides which still exist in South Africa

We spend the day yesterday gathering resources. It started off in the morning with me and Bradley rummaging around my house looking for anything and everything we thought might contribute to building the location.

From there we headed off to Colin’s house where, headed by Bradley, we started to remove the old beams from Colin’s roof. This took a large level of planning and care as these beams are going to be used as the foundation for the main structure at our campsite. See the pictures of everyone hard at work below!

After taking down the roof beams, removing any protruding nails, and stacking them we were pretty tired. So we called it a day for the hard labour and went into discussion over exactly how ‘The Location’ will function. All in all, it was a great start to the work we’re doing.

Today, we’re off to Waheeb’s house to see the resources which he has available, and to get started on building the main parts of our structure and doing some paper mache! It should be a great one!