Hi my dear friends,

Long time since I wrote, it was just tooo busy, with 2 shows to prepare.

First of all we did go to the Rittelfees to perform with 12 of ‘our’ kids on Wednesday. It was a great show and everybody loved it.

When I am back home I will load up a vid of it on youtube!!!

Wow how nervous they were, all had stomach pains and kept on going to the toilet, actually me to. I was nervous for them, didn’t sleep. But it truly was a wonderful day. After the performance our friends of the cultural department of the region talked about getting a tour in April!!!! That would be so amazing, because once a year is just not enough. It is really hard for some of the kids to stay positive in this hard world. Will write about Basie later on, for you to understand their life a bit better (also will post some photo’s of Basie).

So in the same time we prepared this show with 12 of the most talented kids, we also were preparing for an evening filling program with 30 kids the Friday after in the community hall of Klawer north, GRAZY!!!! This was because we didn’t go to the first Rittel road show happening and we wanted to give the very disappointed kids their stage time.

Boukje and I were totally beat on Friday morning; we don’t sleep a lot because of the mosquitoes (rrrrraghhhhh), who wake us up every night. Some days (and nights) it is also really hot, like 40 or yesterday 45 degrees (ooops, let’s fry an egg on the pavement).

Okay so we were tired, but had a nice rehearsal on Friday during the day. At 6.15 pm we were face painting and helping our crew into their costumes (they had made with trash bags).

At 8pm we started after getting all the kids (because almost all our audience were kids) to sit. The schoolmaster of Niewoudt Primer welcomed the audience and introduced us.

Okay of we went, but it was really hard to get the audience of kids to keep quiet and listen. No parents or other grown-ups to keep them in order. At one point the headmaster addressed them again, and then something happened (something I missed, I was too busy keeping ‘my’ kids focussed) but the head master dragged a big kid out of the hall and there was supposedly a fight were the big kid drew a knife. It was a big big chaos, all the kids were yelling and screaming and running after the two. We still had a small part of the show to do and it was almost impossible to get them quiet. Until our saviour Benny Bock (a friend that works for the department of Culture and Sports) got up and made all the kids stand up, made them do what he said but not what he did! This trick got them focussed!!!! Poooey, so we finally could perform our grand final. Performance wise our kids worked beautifully together and it was a great evening. It was an evening to remember…

One of our kids, Symon Cloete, did a Michael Jackson dance act and he became the school hero. All the kids on and off stage had the best time, but Boukje and I worked like crazy.

Okay don’t think we’ll do this again.

Now is Wednesday and Boukje and Jeremy left us on Monday (Sunday night actually). They are safely home in Holland.

It’s just Ellen, Johnny and me running the workshops now. We got them to draw for an hour, then I teach them some body percussion (a bit of Mouth bow and Didgeridoo sometimes) and at the end some percussion. Klawer want to celebrate heritage day (which was actually more then a month ago) the 21^st of November and our 12 kids were asked to perform. So I am practising a new rhythm with them so they can play a couple of songs. Hope it will work before Saturday cause it will be my last workday here:-(.

On Saturday we want to invite Basie and Symon (the leader of the 12 kids) for lunch, I’ll make my famous banana soy pancakes, Basie asked for. We want them to keep practising every week with the famous 12 (lets call them ‘Klawer Dromkapper’); hopefully they really want to do this.

Now it’s time to tell Basies story. Bravin Buffel is his real name, but his nickname is Basie a boy of 15 years old.

Last year he was very helpful and happy, maybe a little shy towards us. He was friends with Koesie our peer educator, he and Koesie were helping us lots. Koesie is probably lost, she’s probably a crystal meth junky, we saw her twice looking high; it breaks my hart because she helped us the last two years.

When we came back this year we heard Basie was neglecting his schoolwork, hanging with a bad crowd and smoking grass. We were upset about this of course. But he came to our after school activities and the second day he smiled again (which he didn’t do the first, he looked pretty bad). One of the schoolteachers said he changed from night to day and worked hard at school from that moment. At Ateljee 10 he became our peer educator and was helping enormously. One day he was so tired he ended up sleeping on our couch, but at both of the shows he was excellent.

Ok Basies life is living with his whole family in a tiny house, a big brother who is in a gang and parents that don’t feed him. He has two ‘girlfriends’, just to give him some money so he can survive. This is an intelligent boy, sweet and talented, but his world is rotten and it is hard to survive and keep positive.

Everyday I am trying to be a positive change in their world, because they deserve it. They never have been treated with respect and love. I never saw children so loving and eager to learn. I never had so many hugs and kisses in my life, they are just eager for some love and positive attention.

So I wish in all my hart we can come back year after year (and hopefully twice a year), just to keep giving them some hope for a different future.

Just today the first news I got was that a little girl from the school had drowned in a dam.

Her story, her mother molested her, she was taken to a foster family were she ran off. She was raped a lot and had aids. She couldn’t swim, some one pushed her in the dam were she drowned, this is their reality.

I wrote in one of my first blogs about the two boys that beat a smaller kid to death, so this is their reality.

But it is amazing how positive and wonderful they can be if you share music and art with them!!! A language they love and understand.

Okay a lot of words; hope you read it all ;-)

Sending some Klawer kids love into your worlds!!!!

And mine to,

Lies

South-Africa 2009-2

Check South-Africa 2009!

So today is Wednesday, all went different in South-African style!

We didn’t perform on Monday with the kids, it was held in a different place the show was to dancy and not good enough for what it supposed to be. The kids were great (don’t get me wrong), but we just didn’t have enough time to make it super great, all the bigger kids are just toooo busy with schoolwork.

So this was a huge disappointment for Boukje and I and more so 4 the kidz. But what happened, we went to talk to the organisers, they wanted us (Boukje and I) to perform and so we did. People loved it and now we have to perform at the “Rittelfees” the biggest festival at the region. Our idea is to get 8 kids to perform with us a percussion part and Boukje and I will take over with didgeridoo and poi’s. Sooooo this hopefully will happen next Wednesday, we will have to work hard to get it super tight. Also we have organised an evening filling program on Friday next week. All the other kids will make their shows in their community hall!!! Tickets will be sold for the parents and friends, very exciting all. Today we worked hard in the morning to get all the instruments ready; we also made some poi’s with tennis ball. We are hoping we will find some kids with talents in the juggling department. In the afternoon we made some more auditions and selected another 11 kids, hopefully they will all come everyday! It is also getting really hot weather wise and they have to walk about 20 minutes from where they stay to our little church building, okay we’ll see…

On Sunday we went to the mountain by the way, it was amazingly beautiful again, the ‘Gifberg’ (poison Mountain) is part of the ....Ceder.. ..Mountains.... and stunning. Hopefully this time it will work to upload the pictures so you can see. Most of the kids have never been up the mountain they see all the time, most of them never been out of Klawer. Maybe one day we can take them and show them the mountain or the beach, which is also just about an hour away from here. We saw the ocean from the top of the Gifberg.

Well have to go to get some sleep; it is already ..10pm.. ;-)

My close friends know I don’t go to bed before ..2am.. normally in ....Holland...., but here I got a different rhythm!

Sending lots of from Klawer South-Africa,

Lies

So we left ....Holland.... on a cold Saturday morning from ....Amsterdam.....

This year our crew consists of ..Johnny.. and Ellen of course, Jeremy is with us again like 2 years ago and our new face this year is Boukje. Sadly Mireille couldn’t make it this year.

We checked in pretty late so we had no seats together, but for me the flight was perfect, sat next to mother and daughter from ....Finland...., beautiful people! After some conversations, some movies and some meals we arrived about 10 hours later in ....Cape Town...., where we stayed the night.

The next day we drove the 3 hours to Klawer, went to Klawer North straight away to see if we could find some familiar faces, and so we did. Our peer educator, Koesie (Leandra is her real name) we saw and she saw us, it was amazing to see her face. Later we found out nobody really knew we were coming. The head of school didn’t tell anybody, really strange. So Koesie couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw us, you should have been there, never saw a jaw drop so fast!!!

 After making our beds, mattresses on the floor we went to eat out at Vredendal (the small town next to Klawer). We went to the local steak house, poor Boukje the vegetarian, we also made up that she had her birthday, because the waiter and waitresses always sing for you a special birthday song and you get a special desert (which was delicious, so not so poor Boukje any more).

The next day we went to the school to see the kids and let them know we would expect them to come at ..2.30pm... This year we won’t be doing work with them during school hours like before, which suits me fine, it was a bit much the last 2 years. So now we only work with the kids in the afternoons.

One friend of ..Johnny.., Lana is a school teacher and last year she worked at a different school but she’s back at ‘our’ school. So a great surprise for us and for her to see us!!!

She’s really good and productive at the school and has many idea’s for us, performing in a restaurant and at the community building, so let’s see.

On Monday afternoon we had over 60 kids in the little church building, wow pretty crazy, but loads of fun.

This year we are expected to make another show with these talented kids this coming Monday. We needed to make a selection, because with 2people (Boukje and I) and Jeremy helping, over 60 kids is toooooo much to make a proper show.

So on Tuesday we made auditions and we selected 30 kids, who are talented, keen and willing to listen and learn! So the next day we hung a list with the selected names at school, we also saw the price winning acts of Niewoudt primar from 2 months ago Dance, Poetry and Drama. Wow these kids can perform!

On Wednesday afternoon we had a problem, not only the selected kids showed up (actually a lot of the selected children didn’t show, because the older ones have exams and loads of homework) but also the kids that thought they should have been selected and were very disappointed, the price winning acts and kids that were not there the previous day. So we had about 17 happy kids inside and 50 or more unhappy outside. The unhappy ones made some troubles and had to be send home, the happy ones inside made great performances and worked very hard. Today is Friday and we almost got a show, we made costumes or I should say, the kids made them with the help and guidance of Boukje (well her she seems to be called Boukie). The costumes are made of black plastic bags with some orange paint (will show you some photo’s when they are made), and it looks goodJ.

Every day we start with some children’s Yoga (Boukie’s input) and some body percussion, then we work on the performances (made by the children themselves) and at the end we do some ‘dromkap’ drumming with them (okay we mis Mireille in this department, but I’m sure with these talented kids it will be wonderful).

Tomorrow we will do a couple of run-throughs and I am expecting the older kids to. There are 2 older kids (Romaine and Nicol) that can sing nicely and I hope they will sing and perform in between our little kids performances. It will be a long day!!!

Every day after the kids have left, Boukje and I are totally exhausted and we eat and then go to sleep, it is now ..8.45pm.. and Boukje is already asleep and I will go to bed right after writing this. The children here are wonderful, full of energy and willing to learn which gives a lot of energy, but Boukje and I we give all because we believe these kids deserve it. I hope we give them some happiness and hope for a nicer future, it’s a hard life they have here.

I heard some sad stories about some of the kids we have worked with. One girl was (probably) raped and now pregnant, so no longer at school. A couple of boys dropped out and are smoking pot, or are beggars and a very intelligent boy is not doing well at school because he’s also smoking pot too much. Sad sad sad, but let’s keep positive and hoping some people here can take over a little when we are gone. A lot of people say we should stay, well Ellen and ..Johnny.. wanted to stay for half a year to get started on the rebuilding of the church building to a theatre, but we didn’t raise enough money for it. Maybe next year we can start....

Well I send you all a lot of South-African sun and warmth and some beautiful children’s smiles!!!!!

Love,

Lies

Hi there you beautiful people,

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So an other week has past and it is still very cold most days, such a difference from last year's weather. Mimi got a sinus infection and had to take antibiotics and purple pills. She was out for 3 days but was working untill she really was knocked out by the fever and all.

On Tuesday our morning kids all of a sudden didn't show up and ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Johnny went to the school and found out that some teachers really minded that these kids did their exams with us. They now have to do the regular exams at school (which all of them will flunk for sure), what a shame! So we've had our mornings to complete our oil drums drums, our shakers, my world map and all the other things that needed to be done.

This week I mostly ran the afternoon workshops (even tried to give drum and singing classes, because the kids wanted to practise :0)) and had to find out the most talented kids for next week. Because next week we will work together with 3 people of the Koi Konnexion from Cape-town and work towards a show on Saturday in Lutzville, it will be a big happening on Heritage day. Okay, we elected 15 kids from Nieuwoudt Primêr, we hope they will show up on Monday for the workshops (maybe they understood my Afrikaans, which is not very very good, on Monday we will find out how good it is).

Tomorrow we will perform for the flower tourists at the train station with our beautiful children, hope we will have desent weather and these tourists will enjoy what we will show them, also we printed out some drawings made by the kids as postcards!!!

And on Monday the minister of culture and sports will come and check out our little church building , our doings  and in the evening Mimi and I are asked to perform for him (uhm... Mimi and I forgot our performing dresses;o)) and all the other v.i.p.'s. Oh well it is about the music!!!

Okay my friends this is it till now and in a bit more than a week we'll all be home again. The childrens kitchen though looks like it will be a succes, a lady from Klawer North (the coloured suburb, it is all still quite unmixed here) who is good with kids and has a good head for business and most importantly here, is reliable, wants to take over the kinderkombuis (childrens kitchen). Johnny and Ellen, not so much me or Mimi found some buyers for the fresh pasta they are making and we are also making Alfalfa and Tauge. So this project seems to be working!!!!!!!

Well hope you enjoy the photo's and the stories...

Loads of Love,

Lies

Ps. Okay it's Sunday now, we'll go to Van Rhynsdorp, a nice looking town close by!

The weather's nice and we had nice weather yesterday to, so the performance for the flower tourists went really well, they loved the kids (ofcourse). The children wrote them a song about flowers and we came walking down singing and playing drums. When we were there in front of their train, we explained about Ateljee 10 and a boy named Nicol started singing his friend playing the guitar. He has a beautiful singing voice. We sold loads of postcards and we received lots of donations, WHAT A SUCCES!

Hello again from South Africa,

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So now we (Mimi & I) are here more than a week. Lots has happened and lots has been done.

First of all the kitchen had to be finished before this monday and should have been finished b4 we came, but all was delayed like normal in building projects. So we worked all through the weekend, painting cupboards, sawing worktables, putting in windows cleaning etc and got it finished enough b4 the kids came on monday. We have 6 children that are the cooks helpers and 2 pear (hope this is the right word, these are the older helpers) educators. We got 20 kids to deal with every day from 8.30 am to 1.30 pm. They are great but .... 4 hands really full. Most of the kids are the same as last year, a couple of beautiful new faces. Still the difference is some are really retarded, some are very slow, some are normally intellegent with a learning difficulty. We start the day with a warming up excersise and a dance or some body percussion. Than we sit and talk about the day b4 or the coming day and we start with a workshop didgeridoo or drum, or hopefully in the future we will split the group up and do half didgeridoo and half drums. Now it has been very very cold (it just turned into spring, normally it is warmer), so we been in the little church building (lots of natural delay and so lots of noise) and too big of groups.  Around 10am they get food from the kitchen  made by the other kids. And around 12.30 am again some kos (food in Afrikaans). We also do a drawing workshop, so we hope we can sell some postcards to flower tourists made by these kids, I've seen one girl Maryna who is half retarded but she really can draw beautifully, hopefully we can get her stimulated to keep making drawing and hopefully she will be able to support herself later on. We also are trying to get the kids to really think about what they are learning, but it seems really hard for them.

 In the afternoon the kids from the town come at 3.30pm till 6pm, we do similair workshops and this year they have to enter the workshop seriously. At the moment I am listening to Mimi's drum workshop down stairs. We have two little rooms upstairs in the church building, with matrasses on the floor and loads of blankets and a table and a chair, but we made it nice and comfortable. The only thing is the mosquitos, because it rained so much there are lots to keep us awake all night.

So it has been wonderfull but very excausting!!!

I am sorry I can't write my blog more often, but the internet acces situation has become worse this year, so only on sunday we can upload some things, we have to travel to the next town to the sweet sister of Johnny, Ammie, she has a satelite, so fast when it is working (not always the case).

Love,

Lies

Hi my dear friends,

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So I'm back in South Africa,

We, Mireille and I arrived this tuesday at Cape town, after a perfect very long trip and no sleep but lots of movies. ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Johnny and Ellen where there to pick us up and took us to a nice breakfast at Spur's. Last year we had a couple of diners there and Spur is sort of a good fast food beaf restaurant, lots of meat to eat here in SA. Then Mimi and I had a really long Siesta (very nessesary).

As you can tell I haven't got much interesting to report yet at the moment...

But we arrived at Klawer yesterday after a nice trip in Johnny's fathers car, which he was so kind to lend to us again. On this 3 hour trip we saw an enormous Baboon crossing the road and later on his whole family at a little lake. Then when we arrived at the little church building (Ateljee 10) we started working straight away because we had arranged to have the school kids the next day.

Today got up early (well early for me, 7.30 am) and was ready to have a nice day with the kids from Nieuwoudt Primêr, the school we work with. But NO SHOW! So calls to the principal and an hour later he showed up explaining why the kids were not there (something about not enough time, but Ellen and Johnny arranged it 2 week ago) oh well, now they will come on monday. For me it is much better actually, because now we have some time to organise everything a bit better, put new mouthpieces on the pvc didgeridoos, help Mireille to make some oildrums, will get the metal rings today (hopefully they have been made) and just get my mind sorted. I just had a really busy time this month.

Basically 31st of July I went to the Black Forrest in Germany for a long weekend  for workshops and concert, came to holland to practise with new percussionists for my band 3ple-D on 4 and 5th of August, home 2 days and we left for Berlin (concert) for a weekend. One day home left for Boom festival in Portugal (concert), got really sick from the water there (if you ever go there, TIP don't drink anything except bottled water). So came home, missed a concert (too sick) 1 day sleeping and next 2 days workshop + concert, one day to be sick again and then recording for leader tv program, next day photo shoot and private lesson. The day after I missed my plane, still too sick to get everything organised, so that night took a plane to Portugal again for workshop and concert. There I took 3 extra days to see some of beautiful Portugal,WHAT AWONDERFUL COUNTRY WITH BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE! Then I had 3 days to get organised for South Africa, so all a bit grazy....

So now I have some days to really arrive here!!!

Mireille had a little drum workshop with the boys that help with the building (see photo). The little garage here will become the "kombuis"  kitchen. So this year will get some of the children to help with cooking food for the others. We're going to try to make fresh pasta with them, good food! Also they will learn to be cooks about nutrician and vitamines etc. Also the kids that help building they will learn to be builders, which is great because these are the kids that have troubles at the normal school system.

Also the fresh pasta we will sell at the local super market to generate some money so hopefully it will keep on going when we're back in Holland. Like I said last year, these kids are hungry (for food but also for some positive attention).

The little drum we use are made here in south africa and are made of pvc. Mireille will try to teach some talented kids to play a song or two, so will I. In 3 weeks we will go to this heritage festival where we will perform, exciting!!!

Well this is it for now, I'll get back to you's later!!!

Lots of Love,

Lies