Open Warrior

Wow, what a productive day!
We got off to a rather late start since we were all rather tired from yesterday, but in the end we got an amazingly large amount of work done.

We started off by heading to Waheeb’s house. Waheeb’s parents are busy renovating their house so there’s load of wood and metal lying around, which they said we were free to take.

We spent some time separating the useful wood and metal from the messy stuff. It didn’t take us too long, but since we were working in the sun, we were all pretty tired once we were done.

Once we had everything we thought we were going to use stacked up, we made our way back to our main place of work – Colin’s driveway.

Our plan for the day was to complete ‘The Four Pillars’ – these pillars are going to be the four corners of our main structure and thus need to be really strong, and sturdy. So, after spending some time planning exactly what we were going to do, we got to work.

Once again, Bradley outshone everyone, with his ability to use the tools we had available, and coming up with solutions to the general problems we were having. I don’t know how we’d be able to get anything done without him.

Waheeb had a try at putting some paper mache together for the sculptures which are planned to litter our campsite. It was still drying by the time we were finished so I don’t know how well it’s worked out yet, but I guess we’ll see tomorrow.

We finished building the four pillars at about 9pm, and sat down for a bit to relax and celebrate. All in all, it was a great day. We got lots done and had loads of fun doing it! Tomorrow we’re going to start working on the decorations for our camp site. Hopefully it will be less intense than today…I’m exhausted!

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!