Children of Langrug

Things are moving along for our project.  When we were in Langrug on Tuesday we started working with a woman named Nobathembu.  She is really awesome.  She is fairly young, probably only in her thirties or early forties, and has lot of working experience in a variety of fields.  Within the last few years, she got a calling from God to work at crèche (or preschool) in Langrug.  She has been there ever since.  We are working with her for two reasons.  One of the other project groups was supposed to be working in a crèche in a decent section of the city of Cape Town.  However, their sponsor wanted them to look at crèches in informal settlements, so they came with us to Langrug with their sponsor last week and are trying to work more on improving conditions there.  The reason our WaSH team is working with her is because she is a community leader in the neighborhood of Zwelitsha, and will be actively helping us to get community input on our project there (which, if you haven’t read my blog in a while, is planning a dry sanitation facility in a neighborhood where there are no toilets for 500 families).

On our way into Langrug on Thursday, our van was in a minor fender bender.  We were sitting at a traffic light behind a large truck, and for some reason (probably to make a turn) the truck backed up into us.  Damage was minimal and everyone was fine.

My writing style is going to change slightly for this next section.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, as part of our project we have to write “scenes” for important days or moments in our project.  Our posted scenes can be found here http://wp.wpi.edu/capetown-2013/homepage/projects/2013-2/wash/acts-scenes/act-1/

I was responsible for writing a scene for Thursday, which needs to get approved by our advisor before we can post it online.  I should note that Sizwe is one of our sponsors at CORC.  He is Xhosa by origin, but speaks excellent English and is focused on the social aspects of community upgrading. Here is what I wrote:

As the van turned into the WaSH facility ‘parking lot’, we found the centre mobbed with children.  Nobathembu had brought the children from her crèche to use the bathrooms.  We stepped out of the van to chants of "amabhulu", Xhosa for “white people.”  Children raced toward us grabbing our hands in theirs’, some of them still damp from washing their hands.  They danced and climbed on the men in the two groups. [Note: We speculate that these children are drawn to male visitors since many of them lack a male figure in their lives]

After several enjoyable minutes of this, Nobethembu called for the children and led them back to the crèche.  We followed, and once she had the children settled with some other women, she left with us to go to Zwelitsha. We waited with Sizwe at one of the potential sites for the facility while she gathered community members of Zwelitsha to meet with us.  Sizwe facilitated the meeting, explaining in Xhosa what we were hoping to accomplish and translating their feedback for us.  However sometimes he would lapse into long conversations and not translate some parts for us.  We gathered that they had had a meeting the day prior and had decided that they would prefer to build the facility in the more central of the two locations.  They also identified several components that they would like to see in the facility, such as a play area for children and proper lighting at night. The play area would keep the children closer to their homes in Zwelitsha for supervision, and the lighting to make the community safer at night.

Sizwe with the child

As we were talking, two small children were playing among us.  One of them wandered to the edge of the platform on which we were standing. Sizwe ran over and scooped up the child before he could fall.

We finished our meeting, and established that the Zwelitsha community members would be putting together a team of co-researchers to work closely with us in our planning.  Additionally, they expressed their interest in taking a field trip to Signal Hill so that some more members of the community can see the Enviro Loo toilets.

It wasn’t until Friday night when we were having dinner with Sizwe and our advisors that we realised exactly what had happened during the exchange.  Sizwe told us that originally, the community members were asking what we would be bringing them.  Sizwe had emphasised that we would only be helping in the design process, and that the community had to decide what they wanted to bring to the new facility and how they would implement it.

Reflection:

This was most we had interacted with the children of Langrug.  The presence of the crèche children at the WaSH facility and those at the future facility site illustrated the importance of child safety in the facilities we plan.   Children are an integral part of the community, and whether we are improving the current facility or designing a new one in Zwelithsa, we need to make them safe spaces for children.

We also found the attitude of the community to be interesting.  It would be easy to arrive in the community to design and build something for them and leave feeling satisfied with work being done.  However, our project is more than that.  Projects like this will be more meaningful and successful if we can work with the community so that they are a part of the process and can replicate the work in the future.