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South Africa Diary 2003
This is the 2003 continuation of an account by me, Vérène Nicolas, of an advanced Training for Transformation trainers' course for women which I am attending at the Grail Centre, in the small town of Kleinmond (100kms from Cape Town on the Indian Ocean side). These diary entries are personal, but for open sharing. Please feel free to feedback. They are my way of sharing a unique experience and staying in touch with friends, colleagues and family while I am away.
The course is taking place over 15 months. Last year's diary covers the first residential phase, 10 October - 10 December 2002 - click here to see it including pictures added in July 2003. What follows will be a regularly updated (I hope!) account of this year's residential training - 5th July to 30th August 2003.
Index of Entries - Click the link or scroll down
This is a poor picture, but here's the team at Kleinmond.
Departure - Friday 4th July 2003:
It has been a mad rush to get ready. So much to do at the Centre for Human Ecology now that we have the Community Empowerment Programme that I co-manage up and running, developing Training for Transformation (TfT) in Scotland - especially with black and minority ethnic groups, and women's groups. More on this as I reflect in this diary over the next couple of months. For now, on with the packing - especially as I've just discovered that South African Airlines, which was cheaper and, arguably, safer in this dangerous world, only permits 20kg of baggage allowance.
Sunday 20th July 2003: Familiarity leading to Challenges
I am finally finding my marks after two weeks here.
After months of really hard, challenging but rewarding work, I was coming back to Kleinmond full of hope I would quickly renew my energy, intellect and spirit. Being back here seems incredibly familiar. It is as if we never left 6 or 7 months ago. It has been such a joy to meet people again and feel a deep sense of connection with everyone. The stories are rich, disturbing and at times full of tears and sorrow. But transformation in everyone's life and work has happened in all kinds of beautiful ways.
Climbing the Three Sisters mountains and walking through beautiful grounds is fulfilling my soul and strengthening my body. Although it's winter here, the 'fynbos' (local ecosystem) is full of the most beautiful flowers. We are promised wonders by the end of August when the rain will have plentifully watered the soil.
It's also been hard
work every day, sharing, listening, reflecting, reading, writinghh… The next few weeks
are definitely not going to be a holiday. Engaging with
transformative work at a meaningful level through the EMPOWER partnership in
Scotland or here through daily interactions, has greatly raised my awareness on
the difficulties that this kind of work presents. The image that came to me is
that of a tight rope walker, this circus character who has to remain in constant
balance and intense concentration to carry on walking ‘on the edge’ and
avoid to fall or say, to burnout. This image has for
me become very powerful. If I look at who I am, where I live and how my
commitment for transformation is expressed, here what comes up: I live in
Scotland and am a foreigner there. The issues of support, friendship, belonging
and building community represent are on-going 'generative themes' (to use
Freirian language). I am from a middle-class, ‘deracinated’ background and
yet, I have chosen to work with mainly marginalised, working-class communities.
I've now started to work with people from black and ethnic minority communities.
I am white European... These life choices
have made me dive into incredibly deep waters and I haven't always had the
skills, knowledge and experience to deal with the challenges along the way. In
many ways the tight ropewalking has been draining. The vicious circle of
tiredness and burnout took over these past few months. I stopped meditating and
practicing yoga. I went through nights of sleeplessness. Yet, this experience has
also been immensely enriching, rewarding and stimulating. This time in Kleinmond
is therefore a wonderful opportunity to stop and reflect. This brings me new
energy. And I am deeply grateful to have been gifted with courage and commitment
to walk on this journey of transformation. Meditation and yoga are now back on
my daily 'work plan'! One issue I am particularly wrestling with is my difficulty to listen deeply and respectfully. I have several times been challenged on my somewhat forceful way of expressing ideas and opinions, including while I am facilitating groups. More recently, someone suggested I have the tendency to disrespect people’s experience. While recognising that this pattern may find its source in family and cultural patterns, I take this issue very seriously. And it's a painful one, guaranteed! The root of true transformation is found in profound and ‘full-on’ listening. If committed to empowerment, I have no choice: I am going to work on it! But it's actually real fun to explore new avenues of being... great, once again, to have a good reason to laugh at my ego... By the way, a book I recently found particularly helpful on the practice of listening is Nancy Kline’s ‘Time to Think’ (Ward Lock, 1999). Thank you, Sarah, for this good advise. The course has also opened up several lines of inquiry on the job I am doing at the Centre for Human Ecology. In particular, the work we did on gender this week with a focus on patriarchy and mainstreaming has renewed my commitment to work with women.
And to finish for now, let me share this Native American saying that I discovered this week:
When I feel my way of being or reacting becoming too intense, I hope it will come back to me...
Sunday 27 July: The Heavy Burden of History
End of a particularly heavy week. The focus was on the history of development and the present global economic situation.
In the space of 4 days, we traveled through centuries of oppression of peoples and the earth , helped with a great big map of the world laid on the floor.
It all unfolded like an incredible man-made malefic force: the triangular slave trade, what was happening in Europe at the time (the 'enlightenment' time), the process of colonisation and its impact on Africa (for example the present civil war in Liberia). Then followed 20th century events such as the Bretton Woods conference, the rise of international institutions (U.N., WTO, World Bank, IMF, G8 etc.), the oil crisis, the Cold War, decolonisation, the third world debt, the fall of the Berlin wall, September 11th, Afghanistan, Iraq... The descent into violence, destruction and oppression seems endless.
The nightmare carried on when we looked in detail at the neo-liberal global system and its impact on the earth, on the poor and on communities all over the world.
Here is what I wrote in my weekly 'Integration Paper' (part of the assignment for the course):
As I am sitting at my computer, my eyes catch the sight of the Three Sisters mountains swept over by grey and humid clouds. My heart fills up with awe in front of so much beauty and majesty. Mother Nature, you have given us plentiful food, water and shelter. You have nourished our soul, unfolded our spirit and allowed the development of our human potential. My heart sinks. My pulse accelerates with anger. Mother Nature, what have we done of you and your peoples? Destruction has taken place for far too long now. On the scale of the whole planet, looking at the giant map, the European corner made of France, England, Germany, Belgium, Portugal and Spain (the main colonising nations) is ridiculously small. Yet, that is where the rationalistic and dualistic mind was born and used as the controlling, mighty power to dominate and oppress the rest of world and Creation. According to feminist scholars like Marija Gimbutas and Riane Eisler, this tiny continent saw the rise of patriarchy at the expense of relatively peaceful matriarchal societies thousands of years ago. The Mediterranean area witnessed Plato and other Greek thinkers’ disconnection of reason from body and matter, bringing God and mankind above women, ‘barbarians’ and the earth. And it’s primarily French and English thinkers, heads of state, scientists, philosophers and theologians who created the modern rational monster we have to wrestle with. The beast is called patriarchy. It embodies values of violence, greed, destruction, competition, numbness, selfishness and egocentrism. It is at the heart of the historical process of colonisation and lies right at the centre of the present global economic and political system. We stumble upon it every minute of our existence. I hate it. This week has been for me one of the most powerful weeks so far on this training. It has re-awakened in me this incredibly clear and depressing picture of oppression and destruction. And the irony is that I find myself in the belly of the monster, as Sally rightly pointed out this week. I am French, from a middle-class, rational, intellectual family. Several generations of my ancestors were part of the French Empire system in Northern Africa, not in obvious, violent, destructive ways; but just by being present there at that time. I know I am carrying this heritage with me. When I sit in the facilitator’s chair surrounded by black and ethnic minority people, deep down, beyond my commitment for justice and equality, this is also what I bring with me. When I think about it, I am filled with humility in front of the enormity of the job that lays in front of me; that lays in front of us all. But thanks to the excellent inputs of participants and facilitators alike, this week has re-enlivened in very real ways my sense of hope. Also, South African New Economist Margaret Ledgum came to give us an input on alternative economics. It was brilliant. Today the beast is wounded. In the past few
decades, activists from all over the world have relentlessly attacked the global
economic consensus. Hope comes from these millions of people, many of them
women, who have grown in awareness, who have formed and joined social movements,
who have put globalisation at the forefront of their struggle. The world has
deepened in spirituality. It has also grown in mobilisation and intelligence. Moreover, many radical thinkers have not failed to notice that even old economists are starting to doubt the goodness of the system they have developed and supported for decades. Hazel Henderson, in an excellent column published in the South African newspaper Mail&Guardian (June 2003) states: “economists are learning some humility, admitting that they have no theories on the process of economic development.” Democracy is even starting to emerge in big international institutions; “The World Bank, for instance, is now more green, gender-conscious, transparent and open to community participation in the wake of a decade of intensive anti-Bank activism.” The beast is wounded. Patriarchy is hurting deeply. Women and countless men have stood up against it. But it is at this stage that it is most dangerous: it’s full of anger, violence and desire to fight back. It wants revenge against all those who have dared to challenge its mighty power; hence the incredible violence that we witness every day and the accelerated destruction of the earth’s resources and irreplaceable species. It has become crucial that our decision-makers hear the radical voice of thinkers like Korten, MaxNeef, Khor, Shiva, McIntosh (!) or Ledgum. We also need to put values of co-operation, trust, empathy, engagement, kindness, solidarity and sacredness at the heart of our lives and organisations. To follow Gramsci’s dynamic model that we use in Training for Transformation, we, individuals committed to a transformed world, need to become the new 'persuaders' of Civil Society so that it “holds the value systems of humanity and may at last be finding its rightful place as the arbiter of political action and the economic systems it creates.” (Margaret Ledgum, It doesn't need to be LIKE THIS!, Ampersand Press, Kenilworth, South Africa, 2002) Friends, my commitment is alive! This was a brilliant week, although heavy at times and I am delighted to be on this course.
Sunday 3 August - Economy-Ecology-Spirituality
End of week 4. We are already half way through the course. These past 4 weeks have gone so quickly! Must be because we are very busy.
This week we again covered huge areas of concern for the Earth and its people. In particular we tried to establish the missing links (in the present order) between economy, ecology and spirituality. I actually had the privilege to join the facilitators team for the ecology module and introduced the participants to Pocahontas (yes, the Disney classic which they all loved) as well as a few exercises from John Seed's and Joanna Macy's Deep Ecology work. The Cosmic Walk about the history of evolution was particularly successful. If you don't know it, I recommend you follow this link. It's really worth it.
This will be a short entry. I'll just finish with a poem from Ursula K. Le Guin that I found in Life Prayers From Around The World, edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon. (HarperSanFrancisco)
Please bring strange things. Please come bringing new things. Let very old things come into your hands. Let what you do not know come into your eyes. Let desert sand harden your feet. Let the arch of your feet be the mountains. Let the paths of your fingerprints be your maps and the ways you go be the lines on your palms. Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing and your outbreath be the shining of ice. May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words. May you smell food cooking you have not eaten. May the spring of a foreign river be your navel. May your soul be at home where there are no houses. Walk carefully, well loved one, walk mindfully, well loved one, was fearlessly, well loved one. Return with us, return to us, be always coming home.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Sunday 10 August: Amazing coincidence
The most extraordinary coincidence happened to me this weekend. With the view to make us experience a different reality of South African life, our facilitators organised 'home visits' whereby each of us would stay with a host family in Cape Town for a couple of days.
When Alastair and I went to Scoraig (a peninsula on the West coast of Scotland) last New Year, we visited our friend Topher. I told him about my course in South Africa. He said, "next time you go to Cape Town, try to get in touch with this couple that I know well. They are good friends of ours. She is from South Africa. He is from England. They've often come here because his brother, Tom, has got a house on Scoraig. Tom is a musician and plays in a famous band."
Topher's words were long forgotten when 2 minutes after I got into my hostess' car on Friday evening, after arriving in Cape Town, it became clear that she knew Scotland pretty well. She told me that her in-laws live there. Her brother-in-law, Tom Salter, plays with the Peat Bog Fairies and has this lovely place on the West coast. I cliqued instantly: I was on my way to Lindiwe Mtemba's and Gregory Salter's home, the very people Topher had suggested me to meet. Of all the people I could have ended up spending the weekend with, there they were. Sally had contacted them just the day before as the person she had thought of originally couldn't welcome me after all. The coincidence was incredible. Lindiwe is a counselor and works for the AIDS programme that Sally and others at the Grail started a few years ago. That's how she came to be a hostess for the weekend. Gregory is a journalist and works for some British news network. He writes regular reports about Zambia, Burundi, Rwanda and Congo (ex-Zaire). We had interesting discussions. It was great to get more insights on the history and present state of these African countries.
I had a lovely weekend at their house. They live in this beautiful spot called Scarborough, 20mns from Cape Point, overlooking the Atlantic. I went walking on the beach on Saturday morning. It was a great experience. A beautiful heron was closely walking in front of me at some stage, observing my movements before finally flying away.
Lindiwe and Gregory have three young boys. It was a bit hectic at times. It also felt excellent being away from Kleinmond and I was obviously meant to meet them all...
Sunday 17 August - Great Insight
Of all the weeks
spent here, this past one has offered me the most profound and powerful insight
to understand deep and meaningful patterns in my life. It 'all' happened last Tuesday when Donal Dorr was giving his input on the richness of different spiritual traditions. Donal is a priest and Training for Transformation facilitator. He met Anne and Sally in 1976 in Kenya and has worked with them since then in different contexts. He is also an excellent theologian and prolific writer. He was brought in on the course as a 'resource person' for the spirituality week. Amongst many other things, he is passionately interested in and respectful of other religions and traditions. This day he gave us a wonderful overview titled "Learning to live a fuller human life together".
The day before we
had been asked to reflect on the 'Journey of our Life' and in particular to look
at the decisive moments and decisions that had shaped our spiritual awakening. I
have done this exercise many times over the years and as I was sharing my
'journey' with two other people that Tuesday morning I was feeling particularly
bored to look at it again. I could certainly recognise how interesting my life
has been in many ways, as well as the courage of my decisions. Once again,
however, I found myself hurting over my rootlessness and my lack of belonging to
a strong community. I was thinking I really needed to heal this wound to be able
to move forward. In the past few years and especially these last months,
the pain of being 'deracinated' has drained a lot of my energy, has often left
me with a deep feeling of emptiness and despite being accutely aware of its
impact, I didn’t know how to heal it.
What came to my mind during Donal's input was therefore simply a revelation. I suddenly realised that all the events that happened in my life – and in particular the most challenging ones, those that have been most painful, and also most rewarding – have actually been following a deep, meaningful path. I have often wondered why I constantly find myself in situations that make me feel like being miles away from any roots, family, culture or community. What became clear on Tuesday is that all my life I have actually been yearning deeply for mindfulness, wisdom and serenity. And that coming out of the rational and intellectual protestant tradition, my search (or aspiration) has been for the mystical, divine and mysterious dimensions of Life. For this to happen I had to go through these events and experiences: being born in this particular family, living in Africa as a child, studying agriculture in a Jesuit college, leaving France to explore other horizons, working in Ballymun, a marginalised area of Dublin, and finally following Alastair to Scotland and getting involved with the CHE. Of course, this 'revelation'
didn’t appear out of the blue and cannot be detached from what has happened to
me since I engaged in this course. It is also intimately linked to my years of
searching and the countless questions and experiences that have led me to be
there, in this room and amongst these people at that particular moment. This sudden insight brings a whole new light into my life and although I haven’t had much time to ‘process’ it, this already feels like quite a profound healing experience. I can go back to the journey of my life and now see coherent and meaningful patterns in it. In his book, Divine Energy (Gill & MacMillan, 1996), Donal Dorr describes "a variety of situations in which people often have a sense of being touched by a mysterious power". Here are examples of how I read my experience: I can certainly see
the "God of Nature and The Cosmos": My sense of the
spiritual is always strongest in nature, when I walk, swim, climb, and look at
beauty around me. When I was in Ireland, looking after a herd of cows on a farm
in County Mayo, the most powerful moments were those of deep connection with
nature: getting up at 5am and being struck with joy and awe at the loudness of
bird songs, standing in the snow, feeling the wind whirling around me and
laughing at how much I could enjoy and connect with the landscape or sitting
still and delighting in the young cows approaching me and licking my jeans.
Nature gives me energy and renews my capacity to wonder. In my journey I have also discovered the "God of Ecology": Moving to Scotland and working at the Centre for Human Ecology has been in many ways a tough decision because of the lack of resources and landmarks that I have experienced there, simply because we are a small organisation. At the same time, it has provided me with a unique intellectual framework and a lot of freedom to explore the things that I most care about: ecology, justice, participation and spirituality. Understanding the deep mechanisms of our world has been wonderful. Mobilisation alongside human communities and on behalf of the natural environment is no doubt powerful. Another powerful
one has been finding God in the "Gift of Love": If I
hadn’t decided to leave France and gone to Ireland, I wouldn’t have met
Alastair. We never stop laughing at the 'unlikeliness' of our meeting and coming
together. Our relationship has been the most profound spiritual experience I
could ever have imagined. Looking at the spread-out loneliness that our
capitalist societies engender, we both feel immensely blessed to love one
another. "God in the Breath": On my journey I can still clearly remember when I discovered Sadhana and Awareness from Anthony de Mello. I was in the middle of an 8-day silent retreat in Dublin as I was taking part in a programme of volunteering and living in community with the Jesuits. When I read about presence, mindfulness and meditation in De Mello’s writings, I felt hugely energised. It completely resonated with me. It was as if I had long known about the depth and power of these things. It was as if I had come home. Since then, the practice of mindfulness (through meditation and yoga) has been the main focus of my spiritual journey; and although it's hard work, I really feel that’s where I most strongly encounter the presence of the Divine. The "God of the Liberation Struggle": This again makes total sense to me. It is the journey for justice that led me to leave France for Ireland and work with urban poor communities. Many things unfolded from there. I don’t have space here to explore in depth how much my work is part of finding the divine but one particularly powerful spiritual experience happened to me when I co-facilitated my first Training for Transformation workshop in Pollok, Glasgow with a group from REgenerate. Not having done much facilitation before, I was fascinated by the power of creativity of our team and how deeply able we were to ‘feel’ the group, devise powerful experiential learning events and allow profound insights to emerge amongst the participants. With hindsight, the honesty and openness within the team was also exceptional. It was a beautiful experience and at the time it actually felt that the team was much ‘bigger’ than the sum of its four members. There was definitely a spiritual presence at work there. Finally, Donal also talks of the Gift of Healing. This is what I have experienced this week and the presence of God was everywhere! On Friday, we had a Eucharist to celebrate Mary, the courageous and feminine Wisdom. I talked of my new insights and felt profoundly supported by our community of women. What is going to unfold from now, I obviously don’t know. I can only hope that this 'revelation' will give me a strength, a solidity and a sense of clarity that I didn’t have before. Strangely enough, I feel as if I have just emerged from a kind of dualistic trap that was making me feel disconnected and isolated because I didn’t have strong roots. And maybe I can now outgrow this dualism and feel like a more ‘integrated’ part of the divine co-creativity (to borrow an expression from Quantum Theology). From this stronger sense of meaning in my life, I can maybe take a full and aware part in what Joanna Macy calls the Great Turning, this non-dualistic and deep ecological consciousness that is taking place in the world just now. Here what she and Molly Young Brown say in their book, Coming back to Life, Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World. (New Society Publishers, 1998) This shift in our sense of identity will be life-saving in the socio-political and ecological traumas that lie before us…. when we know and revere the wholeness of life, we can stay alert and steady. We know there is no private salvation. We join hands to find the ways the world self-heals – and see the chaos as seedbed for the future (p23).
This has been another wonderful week. In two weeks I'll have to say goodbye to all these amazing women. My heart feels sad already but I am immensely grateful for having lived this fantastic experience of sharing and growing together. Despite the amount of work, I will try to enjoy every minute of our remaining time together.
Sunday 24 August: dealing with difficult dynamics
One more week to go. People are getting exhausted and homesick. This past week has therefore been intense as regards to group dynamics. Conflicts have been erupting. Deep feelings are being expressed. We are getting to the end of the course. We probably feel we can open up and give feedback to one another without taking too much risk of aggravating tensions.
On Friday morning, a heated discussion on racism emerged during one of the sessions. We ended up reflecting on and sharing our feelings about white supremacy. It was painful for us Northerners to reflect on the heritage left by our European ancestors. We also reflected on the ways we still tend to dominate within a group like this (because of our habits, ways of talking, leading etc.). However, for the Africans and Asians what they shared about racism was of course 10,000 times more painful and angering. I personally felt I needed to hear it again to become more grounded in the reality of millions of people on earth.
This discussion generated a lot of sharing afterwards. I found it fascinating to hear from the South Africans for example that the social and economic situation hasn't really changed in the last 10 years. They are actually afraid that this may degenerate into another Zimbabwe as millions of black people are still living in abject poverty while the whites have got most of the wealth and resources (including land and property).
Also, interestingly, I have been getting more feedback in 3 days than in 16 weeks of training put together. Because of the issue of racism being raised, people don't hesitate to talk about the power dynamics in the group and a good few of them have challenged me on some of the remarks I made, referring to my own prejudices, or on some of my behaviours in the group etc. It is painful of course but I really see it as part of the journey, black and white people learning to live together and build community. All of this is such a humbling and powerful learning experience.
I am too tired now to carry on reflecting on the week or the overall training. However, I'd like to share about a wonderful project, the African Community Publishing and Development Trust in Zimbabwe. I came across it here, as one of the participants, Lucia Chikuhuhu is one the founders of this organisation. The quotes below come from an unpublished article that Lucy and her colleagues Kathy Bond Stewart and Talent Nyathi wrote in 2001.
Community
Publishing was started in the early 1990s’ by three women activists who wanted
to create new forms of organisation and innovative processes which would enable
citizens to practise democracy. The organisation focuses on two activities:
community development and publishing. Community
Publishing recognises that the starting point of transformation is helping those
with the lowest incomes and least power, overcome mental oppression and
dependency, discover and develop their own capacities, enter into new more equal
and enabling relationships and build strong organisations. As
all human power agreements are expressed and recorded in the form of
publications, one crucial aspect of deepening democracy is to give communities
who were previously marginalised, mastery over publishing (one of the most elite
of all human activities. So,
Community Publishing is not just about media, rather it is a whole approach to
thinking, acting, relating, organising and communicating, in a way which
restores power to people who have previously been oppressed. It deals with the
psychological roots of violence and the spiritual damage caused by poverty, it
connects people who have previously been isolated. To
sum up, Community Publishing through a community based, participatory process of
publishing, organising and development, aims to enable marginalised groups to
use their creative energies to build dynamic leadership, tackle poverty, take
charge of their lives and make the decisions that shape their future. Community
publishing is a fascinating organisation that involves village people in
workshops where they dialogue on issues such as poverty, community building,
local governance, democracy, employment, power, development, leadership,
women’s issues or youth issues. People then plan the making of a book on a
particular issue. They also contribute either orally or through written
material. Some local activists gained knowledge in writing, editing and
research, and help the villagers in the different steps of publishing. They also
make use of poetry and traditional stories, particularly to involve children. In
our book on children’s rights, We are also human beings produced with 500
children aged 3 to 17, we found that children are both the most oppressed and
most creative, and potentially radical, of all citizens. Their language is
truthful, vibrant and poetic. Children are the majority in most African
countries, yet they are extremely marginalised. Part of our role as women
community publishers is to give children a voice in public life. Community
publishing is also concerned with building the capacity of marginalised
communities by building leadership capacity among village youth, particularly
women. The process starts with selecting around 10 people per village and
inviting them to write their life stories and draw image of how they see
themselves. The facilitators then help the people to analyse the strength,
within them that helped them survive huge difficulties and what their talents
are as individuals. The people are then trained in writing and research skills
as well as organisational skills and development studies. Each village is also
provided with a library. People form study circle on chosen topics. As
illiteracy is high in rural areas of Zimbabwe, some activists are also given the
skills to design their own literacy materials. “The combination of these
activities makes communities strong, vibrant and unstoppable.” The impact of the
work of Community Publishing can be seen all over the country. People organise
at grassroots level to tackle local problems. The use of their own
well-researched documents enables them to negotiate with local authorities and
service providers. People have also started to challenge the government by
taking part in political debates. By bringing people from different political
sides, CP is also rebuilding peace between communities. The significance of
the community publishing process is expressed in this beautiful poem: The
meaning of Chiyubunuzyo: Chiyubunuzyo
is: the
Tonga word for Revelation; the
process of revealing what was previously secret; the
reality of our poverty as well as our creativity; through
research, the root of everything. Chiyubunuzyo
is: a
clear structure for uprooting poverty; developing
our area through developing our minds; creative
effort, power
in development, beauty. Chiyubunuzyo
is: sharing
leadership, helping
people with their problems, meeting
for a purpose, without
gossip or quarrels, building
strong groups, loving
each other, having
friendship with others in justice. Chiyubunuzyo
is: our
process of becoming leaders, writers, artists, teachers,
producers and decision-makers; feeling; happy,
proud, hopeful, independent
in mind and heart; feeling
freedom. What I find fascinating and inspiring in this project is that the act of collectively researching, writing and editing books, amongst poor and largely illiterate rural communities, has engendered such energy for change. It is the most amazing example of ‘participatory action research’ I have come across so far.
I don't think I'll have time to write at the end of this week. But a few weeks after being back home, it will be interesting to reflect on an experience that will no doubt have a big impact on my life and work.
Click here for South Africa Diary 2002 and pictures
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