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Published: March 14th 2008
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Before I start on my weekend in Durban, I "quiet posted" a write up on my last few weekends (quiet means no emails went out- because I don't want to send out too many emails from the blog). It will be filed before the Grey Area post.
Onward-
This past weekend I had a great excursion to Durban and here is the story:
We headed out to Durban on Friday evening- right after my last class. The 'We' is Guthrie, Lyle, Julian, Kyla, Lauren, Caitlin and I- we caught a Kombi from town (R35, appr 4 USD, for a 45 minute ride) and found our way to the flat of 12 American girls going to school in Durban, who were letting us crash at their place. We took metered taxis to and from the Indian food place nearby for dinner. Then, at Caitlin's suggestion, went out to Cool Runnings, a reggae lounge/club in the city. The club was decorated like a jungle hideaway with nice lighting and, of course, reggae blasting all night. It was probably the first place I have been that had white and black south africans mingling freely, which was a
Trash Music Boxes
Photo courtesy of Fluer definite plus for the evening.
The next morning we woke up early and headed out to Essenwood Market, just up the street- the market had cheap food, clothing, some random crap, and many local artists' stalls. At one stall I met a yound Dutch woman (Fleur de Jeu, a photographer from the Netherlands, her website is
here ) who told me about a great parade/festival later that day. She didn't give me too many details- she mentioned the place and time, a jazz band, large isntallation works, art from garbage, and dutch people. I was hooked and told the others. Afterward we went to the BAT Center, a small cluster of shops and art studios on the post, where Caitlin and Guthrie bought a few prints and I
almost bought a drum- it was more money than I wanted to spend and so I decided to hold out for a better price some other place.
We headed back to the house, where we relaxed for a few hours. Kyla and Lauren went to the beach, where they would spend the rest of the day and go back home afterward. And the rest of us decided to put off the
Crazy!!
Photo courtesy of Fluer beach for a day and check out the parade.
The parade was on Grey St, in an area of town that is not frequented by tourists- it is an area I would not have seen if there had not been an event to draw me there. The parade was organized by an artists collective called Cascoland (www.cascoland.com), a group of artists from Germany, Holland (..and other places? not sure) who came to Durban 5 weeks ago and started social-action related artistically-inspired projects, and the parade was their way to bring their projects into the community and the community into the projects (as well as a host of other sub-objectives, such as breaking the boundaries between groups, i.e. bring people like me into areas like that). The parade was a lot of fun, with drummers, boom-box-garbage-cans, a guy on a unicycle, people in blue coveralls with ladders and whistles, and cameras!
The parade went down Grey St, through a Sangoma Market (A sangoma is a traditional healer and the market was filled with women with paitned faces, animal skins, bones, herbs, and other natural remedies- and it is an area most people never see). The sangomas mostly lauged and
Parade!!
Photo courtesy of Fluer cheered us on- though plenty seem downright confused by it all. Next we went through Warwick Junction, another area known as a 'bad' part of town, into Warwick junction. The whole way people clapped, honked horns, and cheered- the (first) end location of the parade had three installations- a giant floating colorful balloon-thing (no explanation), a portable swimming pool that was filled with kids from the surrounding buildings, and a miniampitheatre filled with things to drum with and drum on. And a jazz band was playing off to the side.
After 30-40 minutes of fun and mayhem, the parade (I learned) was to split into two groups and take Kombis (organized by Cascoland) to one of the two project sites that they had prepared. One of them was a project working with street children (children with no home, usually no family, who live on streets permanently). The project was based on the idea that children had no sense of identity because they had no foundation, no 'home-base', and even if they had posessions, no place to keep them. As far as I heard the group set up a locker area, where the child got a personal locker and number
T-shirt Tire prints
Photo courtesy of Fluer and can use it to keep their posessions.
I went to the other location, which was a squatter camp of 50 familites called Little Cato Manor. The squatter camp is located in the middle of the city and has no electricity (and, I think, no running water). Cascoland is working with them to build up community gardens and created a public space for socializing, for kids, and performances. We watched a really talented guitar player and were treated to an incredible break/dance performance by four young guys from the camp.
The night ended at the Cascoland workspace with mostly the group and a few other stragglers, and a performance by none-other-than Syd Kitchen (the guy who I saw in Howick a few weeks ago). We called a taxi but they didn't know the street name we were saying and Fleur offered to give us rides back- it turned out they were going to eat and we were all starving, so we went with them a nice place called Bean Bag Bohemia, a well known hip cafe in Durban. After a delicious meal, we caught a taxi back home and prompty passed out in exhaustion.
Early the next morning Caitlin and I woke up, grabbed breakfast, and made our way back to Cascoland for a Biking tour of the cities galleries. We arrived 15 minutes late (9:15) and found no one there, the doors locked. We still don't know if we had the day wrong or if we missed it (unlikely) or if something else went wrong somewhere (most likely), so we walked back out to the street and wandered around a bit. Most of the areas that people say are unsafe are only so in the evening. At this hour shops were only still starting to set up and we felt comfortable walking for a bit. We tried, in vain, to find a Kombi to Florida St, where we knew of an art gallery, and instead went on a string of Kombis, hopping all over the city and had a grreat Durban adventure.
We found an area with many women set up selling hand-woven baskets, hats, matts, and other products. I bought a small mat, and Caitlin bought two baskets and a hat. After another Kombi ride (or two) we found a huge flea market in the middle of a parking lot in the center of town (this town has a lot of centers, I think). Tons of clothing for very cheap- lots of really great 'african' womens clothing and, unfortunately, alot of boring western nike-knockoff mens clothing. But we wandered around, Caitlin bought a lot of clothing, and we eventually made out way to The Workshop, which is a well known (more touristy) outdoor market, with lots of clothing, african jewelery, some food, and other various items being sold of tents all around this mall (the Workshop). We wandered for a while, found the prices to be a bit higher than the flee market we had just left, and decided to head off to the beach.
The beach was a short Kombi ride away (each Kombi ride is R3, appr 40 US cents) and we dropped out stuff and went for a swim. The area was not too crowded and the water was warm. We kept an eye on our stuff and enjoyed the water- her lip piercing and both of our dreadlocks getting plenty of unwanted attention. We walked on this huge conrete peir (that went over the water) to dry off and get a view- and found a couple of young kids caught by the police for getting ready to jump off the pier into the water. The kids tried to convince the cops that we were their parents, we tried to deny it but he didnt believe us. By the time we convinced him, one had jumped off already.
We grabbed samosas from the market and found our way back home (eventually), met up with Guthrie, Lyle, and Julian- thanked our hosts and said goodbye. A taxi, Kombi, and another Kombi ride later and we were back home at Pietermaritzburg.
Next blog: Visit to Traditional Zulu Homestead!
~mark
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