Rants from the Hollow

I got off to a rocky start on the 2nd day. In what turned into my start-of-the-workday pattern, it seemed to always take 45 minutes before I was able to make clean prints. After powering up my computer and Lee Anne’s printer, I started on the 60 small head shots that would be cut out and put into wooden frames that are cutout to look like a body. The kids decorated them yesterday. My first attempt came out with a couple of horrible-looking green prints that would be perfect for a Halloween party, but maybe not so good for a Christian children’s craft. I ran the diagnostic and it indicated that one cartridge was empty, and the other nearly so. Did it drain out overnight? I replaced both cartridges, and after a reboot and a paper jam, was back to printing out a stack of photos.

By the end of the first day, I’d managed to get a stack of 5×7″ pages printed with a total of 43 head shots that were later cut out in circles to insert in the stick people frames. On the second day, I started to print off what would eventually amount to almost 100 4×6″ prints. I wouldn’t have been able to mass produce so many prints in such a short time if I hadn’t brought along a laptop and a copy of Adobe’s Lightroom software.

The printer turned out to be a high-maintenance item. Besides my daily problems with feeding it cartridges (I eventually used up 6 of the 11 cartridges that I’d brought with me), the printer also needed a lot of feeding. Several times I walked away from the printer for 30 minutes to photograph and video some of the other projects, and came back to find that it had run out of paper or had jammed.

Pictures to fit the decorated frames were printed by the end of the day, so I started a second run of the pictures used for the head shots. This time, instead of printing off just their heads, I printed off the entire picture. Some of the kids had put a lot of heart into the posing process, and I figured they’d be disappointed without seeing the entire photo (also, I figured some of the older kids might not be as excited to see their head on top of a popsicle stick).

By the end of our stay, I’d made over 175 prints.

We decided that it’d be fun to stick all the pictures onto a couple of the dividers in the centre so that everybody could see everybody else’s portrait. The younger kids seemed to get a real kick out of seeing their older brothers and sisters hanging up on the wall.

The crews working on the physical plant made a lot of progress on the first day, but started running into roadblocks. None of the battery packs for the rechargeable power tools were keeping a charge, slowing work on the toilet doors. They finally managed to finish hanging new doors on the stalls by the end of the day after borrowing a power cord from one of the other crews.

They also put new sinks in both the boys and girls sides, and added some new drainage to relieve some trouble spots.

They also replaced several of the window panes along the back of the toilets.

The building used for the centre is actually a former bar–one of the many repurposed buildings in Bulembu. Like many of the buildings in town, it and the building next door have metal multipane windows that apparently date to the 1930s. Lots of glass needed replacement. Our glaziers got off to a bit of a slow start learning how to trim glass panes without breaking them, but they figured out the tricks and used up all the panes that were purchased before we arrived.

They painfully scraped and chiseled out the old putty, replaced the panes, and then used huge bags of old-fashioned window putty to hold and seal the panes into the metal windows. Trimming window glass to size was relatively easy–stretching undersized glass to fit into larger panes turned out to be the biggest challenge of the week.

Trash is stored outdoors behind the building next door. It was unsafe to leave bins of trash in an area full of children, so our crew built a sturdy lockable wooden enclosure around the garbage storage area.

The ICC volunteers completely repainted both the building used for the centre, and the building with the toilets.

Our 2nd day in Bulembu was noticeably warmer than the first, but it was still a beautiful spring day in Swaziland.

When I arrived in the center, the women were busy cutting up tissue paper, and the girls were splitting cotton balls in half, preparing for a rush of pre-schoolers for some morning crafts that resulted in sheeps’ ears, paper crowns and bunches of artificial flowers.

The kids really got into the crafts, and most of them wore their ears and crowns home.

Our first day started with a morning devotional at 0730, followed by a large and hearty breakfast. Served at a buffet, the kids immediately sucked up all the pancakes. Elizabeth brought me a large bowl of granola, dried fruit, and yogurt–more than I wanted to eat–but I didn’t want to be rude and send back uneaten food. Then some more pancakes appeared, and so I had a couple of them on top of the bowl of straw. Most of our ICC folks had already left the room when the Lodge staff began bringing out large dishes with a pair of poached eggs, a large sausage, and a small slice of cooked tomato. It seemed rude not to at least attempt to eat the surprise main course, so Elizabeth and I were pretty well fed before starting work.

We walked down a steep road, past some of the larger houses in Bulembu (left over from the mining company), and past the terminus of a non-functioning cable car. Built by the Germans in 1939, it is the longest cable car system in existence, stretching all the way to Piggs Peak. It was used to haul bulk material to the mine. Bulembu is filled with the remnants of its mining heritage, some of which have been repurposed, but much of which is mouldering away.

The Enduduzweni Community Care Centre is located in a valley in the center of Bulembu. It provides a safe and nurturing environment for dozens of pre-schoolers whose parents (most only have one) work in Bulembu. The children vary widely in their circumstances. Without this service, many of the 2-4 year olds would end up staying at home by themselves, usually with very little to eat.  In the afternoon, a number of elementary school kids come to the centre, and some teenagers are learning to use computers and are gaining typing skills.

Remembering what a treat it was for the Gypsy children in Romania to get their pictures taken, I’d volunteered to take photos of the kids at Bulembu, and Michelle Loubser had worked out a couple of picture frame decorating projects that the children could do. I wanted to make sure that everything was working fine, so as soon as I arrived at the EnduduZweni Care Centre, I fired up Lee Anne’s multi-function printer (after some struggle with extension cords and electrical adaptors), plugged my laptop into a South African power adaptor, turned it on, and plugged the printer into a USB port. The drivers I’d loaded before I left home worked perfectly, and I was soon able to print onto an A4 sheet of paper. 35 minutes and a reboot later, I was finally able to print onto 13×18cm photo paper, and I announced that I was ready to print, and ready to take portraits of the kids.

I scouted around for a location, and found a bright but shady spot on the back wall of the center, which was a long veranda looking out onto a soccer pitch and a huge mountain of mine tailings. It took me about 5 minutes to figure out the right settings for my DSLR and the on-camera flash with a Demb Diffuser. then the staff brought the kids out one at a time to stand in front of my dark red wall.. Over the next half hour, I took 90 pictures in my improvised studio. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon trying to print them back out, eventually ending up with 77 9×13cm prints to fit into the frames that the kids had decorated.

I also created a second studio for a group of older kids who come to the centre in the afternoons to spend time working on the PCs and learning to type. Elizabeth suggested that green might make for a better color, so we carried out a green board to another long porch. The older kids had a little more attitude than the younger ones, and I spent a wild 25 minutes taking 65 more portraits.

The rest of the ICC crew was even busier than I was, replacing a sink and a set of doors in the toilets, replacing and puttying dozens of windows, and painting the outside of the children’s center. Our folks also worked on the crafts with the Bulembu kids, and played games with them. More on that to follow.

The GoogleEarth map below shows the Lodge at the west and the steep walk down the town’s main street to The Enduduzweni Community Care Centre.  Use the mouse to scroll down to the huge pile of mine tailings  (try using the buttons in upper left to zoom in).