By grassroots reporter Thandile Ntlebi - One of the COSAT (Center of Science and Technology) learners, 17 years old, living in Township Khayelitsha, South Africa. Visit more of Thandile’s stories on Students for Humanity
Young boys are starting to realize their dreams and do what ever they can to make sure that those dreams come true even if they must get themselves dirty.
It’s Saturday around 11am, the community is very peaceful and the quietness makes parents wonder what their kids are up to. Within hours you hear whistles and names being called. Your boy is watching TV until his name is being called; he jumps up and runs as fast as a cheetah.
Around 1pm the field is full of people, as if there will be a fight or a community meeting. When you check it’s just young boys sorting themselves into two teams. After the argument of who should play and in which position, they settle down. The teams go to their side of the field to plan how they are going to win the match. The minimum of players is four; the maximum is eleven players for each team.
The referee blows his whistle and the game begins. Fans give courage to their players by cheering. They make them feel proud and confident. What is amazing is the ball and the field they are playing on. These boys do not have a coach or someone telling them what to do. They don’t have money to buy a soccer ball….. they make it on their own.
This how the ball is made:
Firstly you look for old clothes or blankets. Then you put a few condoms around, which you blow up with your mouth, but not with too much air. Just so it’s the same size as a soccer ball. After this you put either a plastic bag or a piece of old clothing over the condom. Then to make it strong, you tear up the old clothing or blanket into long strips and tie the strips all around the condom to strengthen the shape of the ball and make it heavier. Once you can feel it bounces well, you take a strong plastic bag and wrap it around the ball. Lastly you reinforce it by wrapping strong rope or tire wire around it.
Maybe you are surprised but let me tell you about the field. It is not a play ground or a park but it is a field that is full of drains and the half of it has a long grass and some kind of a wetland and a dumping place. And as we all know that when you are playing soccer you need scoring nets. These boys don’t have scoring nets, but take wood or cardboard that is in the carpet and make poles.
In the end some go home smiling and singing winners songs and others go home in a way sad but still planning how to beat them tomorrow.
These boys are young and know nothing about suffering or what the world is going to bring them in the future. But all they know they want to be famous soccer players and being admired by the world. They come from a poor back ground and they didn’t choose to be there but they can try by all means to change it and make their future as bright as it can be.
Maybe you think I’m crazy but hey, they are the ones who are building things from scratch and are creative if they don’t have money to buy what they need. They are the ones who get their selves dirty just to be seen as a soccer player. These are geniuses don’t you think so?
The credits of the soccer ball photo go to our friend Michiel Van Balen
I have a talk that I give when people ask me to speak on AfriGadget at conferences that is called, “What do you see?”. It’s a visual and interactive quiz where I take the audience through different images of AfriGadget and ask them what they’re looking at. It’s a lot of fun, and it proves to everyone why it’s so hard for people in the West to come up with contextually relevant life hacks in Africa.
Below are some images from an old family friend who has spent his life working in rural Southern Sudan and Kenya. Under each image you’ll see why it’s interesting. By the way, I too missed the relevance of the flip flops at first glance…
Making use of available resources for a hinge. I really like the way that Ben has used these old slippers and shoe for the hinge of his small kiosk/shop at Butere.
This old chair at Mahanga in Western Province shows the ingenuity of the local carpenters in making use of available resources, with the carton and stuffing from sisal and wood shavings.
Using available containers in a nursery for medicinal plants in Asembo area of Western Kenya.
Making use of a Fanta bottle to channel water from the rainwater downpipe to a storage container in Nairobi.
A special thanks to Roger Sharland of REAP East Africa for sending in the pictures.
While visiting a rural community in the dry bushlands of Elementata I met some Turkana women who were absolutely captivating
Turkana mama
Turkana woman
Turkana girl
Dancing Turkana woman
Did you notice the creative head dresses? Zippers may have been invented in USA but nobody would have imagined they’d be used for head dresses. I was so awed by the outfits that I forgot to ask where they got all those zippers from - I can’t get rid of the image of all the village men wondering about with gaping flies.
Community members accuse him of being involved with witchcraft, the local government forbids him to showcase his work …the Zimbabwean artist, Dexter Nyamainashe has been collecting scrap to create art for six years now. Dexter collects all his created art objects together in his one masterpiece: The “global village of peace”.
This inspiring artist-activist goes against all odds to follow his passion. Dexter sees beauty in what most of us would just call ordinary ‘scrap’. Dexter, an inspiring man we can all learn something from…
Please find the original story and more information about Dexter and his work here on the Tashanda blog
More pictures from TMS Ruge of Project Diaspora, this time of a crude hammer used to crush stones in a quarry outside Kampala, Uganda. It’s made out of an old engine gear.
Aviwe (10 years) and Fuzile (8years) started their own band! They call them selves “Thandabantu”….this Xhosa word means: “the one who loves people”. Their father died in a car accident a few years ago. Their mother, Cordelia, is injured from the accident and unable to walk properly. She can’t really work. She didn’t finish school. She tries to sell as many home baked cookies as possible to her community in township Khayelitsha to make an income for herself and her 2 sons.
Cordelia and her kids constructed their own instrument! It takes: 2 buckets, 4 sticks, a piece of leather, some wire and lots of bottle tops!
The boys started making some noise on the streets of Cape Town, got some money and soon were able to buy a real instrument! The keyboard (600 Rand), together with the drums and the boys’ voices are the current ingredients for the Thandabantu-band.
They now play their music to collect money to go to school. During this summer holiday they made 100-200 Rand a day. School is free, but lunch (3rand/child) and travel (5 rand/child) has to be paid every day.
I sincerely hope not to see those boys the coming weeks in town. This would mean they have been able to save enough money to attend school every day this year. During the weekends and in School Holidays you can come and listen to Aviwe and Fuzile at the corner of St. Georges Mall and Strand Street in the Cape Town City Center.
Their repertoire consists of some imaginative songs. They can’t read a note… hmmm…who knows there is some musician reading this? I bet ya the boys would love to know more about music. They seem to enjoy it a lot.
(note: my apologies for the video quality, but it was taken with my phone…)
Anyone who has been to Kitengela Glass near Nairobi will instantly recognize the works of art made from recycled glass, metal and other materials. Stunning works by local artists support a huge community of people and beautify gardens, offices, institutions and homes. I bet you aren’t expecting me to talk about crap right? Wrong!
Kigengela art glass
Creating art from recycled glass takes a huge amount of energy. The glass recycling factory produces tiles, windows and other items, fueling it with used oil, butane gas and electricity. But now they are exploring the use of human gas, yes that’s right - it sounds disgusting, smells disgusting, but what a wonderful source of energy!
Pig for poo
Apart from the excrement from pigs, chickens, horses, donkeys, ostriches, ducks, and geese
human wastes are collected … in these loos designed to keep you intrigued…
Loo seat
and seated for long enough to be ‘productive’.
poo bus
The wastes (no, not the human ones) are transported to the biogas production site in a specially designedloooong-armed wheelbarrow
Shit stirrer
where it is poured into this big pot, where it is stirred (not shaken) by a professional shit stirrer.
Fermentation
Then it flows to the fermentation pit to digest….
Fermentation system
Notice how the toilets are being constructed at the top end of the system. This allows the poo to flow directly into the first tank .. it flows by gravity to the fermentation tank and then a settling tank before the sludge flows out and down a drain into another holding tank out of the picture.
The gas is piped to the household kitchen and the glass art workshops,
while the waste sludge is extracted and used on the gardens, i.e. total recycling!
In addition the Kitengela Glass factory creates an odd assortment of jobs from artists to poop stirrers, farmers and biogas producers… for more information read about Kitengela here.
Amazing isn’t it - The first example of Art from Fart
(The following series of images were sent in by Teddy (aka TMS Ruge) a professional photographer and an all around amazing individual who runs Project Diaspora.)
The SUV was made from an old Cooking Oil container, I can’t remember the brand. The “top” is cut-out and they put other little belongs in there pulled it for hours. The wheels are made from old slippers, or sandles. Spokes from an old bicycle served as the axles. Banana stalk was used to pull the “vehicle”.
“That’s my niece, Chris and her friend, Geofrey are in the picture. They spent hours in their own world pulling it across the yard.”
Madmoet Abrahams has been living and working on the street for more then 20 years now. He found a great way to make a living. Everyday you’ll find him in the streets of Cape Town, South Africa collecting White paper. 1 KG of White paper will pay him 23 South African Rand (approximately $2.35) at the paper scrap yard.
Per day he makes more or less 50 Rand. He is a hard worker. I met him in the pouring rain, which didn’t stop him from spitting through the bins in search for more paper. He saved money and bought a bicycle for 300 Rand last year. The bicycle, in combination with his creative re-use of a wheeled carriage for babies connected to it, allows Madmoet to make twice as much money per day! His big dream is to have a paid job and a house.
This friendly, clever and hard working man can be reached under the Sunlam bridge in Cape Town or somewhere on the street…
Franco Mithika works in Gikomba, an industrial area in greater Nairobi. His job is to take scrap metal tin cans and a soldering iron to fabricate paraffin lamps. Paraffin lamps are used by millions of Kenyans, especially those who cannot afford or get electricity into their home for lighting.
It costs about 110/= Kenyan shillings to make, and it sells for around 150/= ($1.90). You can buy them wholesale for 1550/= ($20) for 24 pieces. It takes about a minute to make one (less for the truly gifted fabricators).
Here is a video of him making one:
Thinking about the unofficial recycling industry
What’s particularly interesting here, is that this scrapes the surface of a rather larger recycling industry that hums beneath the surface of the city. How it works is this. The youngest and poorest go around the city and collect scrap metal of all types. These are then taken to a buyer who sorts them into their different types. This is who people like Franco then buy from and create their wares.
The scrap metal picked up gets sold for just a few shillings per kilo. When sorted, the tin cans that Franco buys, are sold for 300/= ($4) per kilo.
So, there’s a rather efficient system at work. It’s run by entrepreneurs who figure out a way to make things work. A byproduct is that everything (metal) is used, and much less waste than there would be otherwise.
