bauwagen goes south

April – June 2004 in Aachen

   
Fotogallery

At the 1st of April the two German volunteers Helene Hüttinger, Sven Daniels and the German project manager Norbert Kuntz were patiently waiting for the two Southafrican volunteers - Nosisa Merile from Abalimi Bezekhaya und Mbuso Shandu from SEED - at Düsseldorf airport. The journey of the two Southafricans from Cape Town was good, there were no problems, everything was fine. But the two volunteers had the common question in their minds which was: “Well now we have arrived - what next?”

But that question was answered quickly by the German Bauwagenteam with a very warm welcome in a flat, which was rented by STADTOASEN for the whole duration of the stay of the Southafrican volunteers. The flat is located in the heart of the city of Aachen, just 100 m away from the historic town hall - a wonderful place to stay and to feel comfortable.

On the following day Nosisa and Mbuso directly joined the Bauwagenteam while team had to work on a school in a nearby town called Eschweiler. It was a pity that the two Southafricans had to realize, that there is not much difference between a school in Khayelitsha and in Germany, as Nosisa wrote in their final report:

“Our second day in Germany at Eschweiler gave us a mixed bag of feeling when I noticed that my handbag was searched by school kids. In that incident I lost my cell phone and my wallet with my driver’s licence. Unfortunately nothing could be done because the school was closed for Easter holidays. That was a shock for us, but we never made a big story of it, we constantly focus on what we came for.”

During the Easter-holidays which started at the 3rd of April no work could be done at the schoolyards, so the the two volunteers came to know some other projects of STADTOASEN:

One part of the STADTOASEN-work takes place at the the community Aachen East. At Barbarastreet, the community and the housing organisation called GEWOGE started a vegetable garden for social purpose. It is the joint effort of kids, parents and STADTOASEN. Most of the families have migrated to Germany (from Turkey, former Russian countries or different African countries). Nobody of the inhabitants knew each other before, so the idea was to bring them together through working in the gardens.

The volunteers also came to know the political aspects of the work of STADTOASEN. At an easter.celebration  they saw the "Fight for the conservation of the Park Altes Klinikum" a 100 year old community park, which was recently sold to an insurance company by the city government, to build a huge IT-centre on the property.

Another celebration took place at Benediktiner Square, where the community, STADTOASEN and the city council had worked together to renew and green the square. The volunteers played the drums, while one member of STADTOASEN played the didgeridoo and the volunteers learned how to play Boule with the community people …

“The Bauwagenproject in Eschweiler is one of the projects that was already started when we joined it. In this case our participation has been entirely physical, because planning and designing was done already by the time of our arrival. STADTOASEN did already a great job at Willi-Fährmann-School in Eschweiler. Although we joined later, the Stadtoasenteam showed us the plan and designs around the school grounds. When we joined the team we did a lot of planting, especially designing a children`s tunnel using willow-cuttings. We planted seed grass, helped in finishing the creation of the barefoot-path leading to a sandy playground. Lastly we constructed a wooden foot-path that was a symbol of working together connecting the animal-farm of the school and the schools playgrounds. That was a great challenge because time was running short. We nearly forgot to mention that the Bauwagenproject has been running simultaneously with an animal-farm-project. So we were rushing for date of the opening of the animal-farm with the invited guests including the Mayor of Eschweiler and other dignities. Their task was to witness and applaud good partnership between school and NGO projects.

The process of the work at Eschweiler had been reported in all weekly meetings .There has been good work relation at all time between the co-ordinator Norbert Kuntz and the co-workers at Stadtoasen. We will personally applaud the high level of good working relationship between the principal and the Stadtoasenteam, and that influenced school teachers to encourage learners to participate in the transformation of their school grounds at all levels. If one read the above point with understanding, one will notice that there is a proper link starting from top to the bottom (principal, Stadtoasen. down to the learners). We would also like to mention that the work at Eschweiler school reach the ending of a high note.”

“Working with primary children is the most exciting part in post experience, so even here it was the same. If we could perhaps speak the language well, this could have been more enjoyable. Financial support is also not a big problem. I think there are more people willing to support financially the environmental projects. There was no time fixed for working hours, sometimes we worked in the morning, at other time in the afternoon to evenings and also over the weekend and that was very interesting. I will agree that work has to be finished at some point, but we always worked in a very relaxed mood. That was very good . Each and every time after work every ones contribution was appreciated and to hear that its healing spiritually and also gives you more power on the next day. We had a very good experience.”

The German Stadtoasenteam also invited the Southafrican volunteers to join them when they were doing a workshop with learners at Karl-Kuck-Primary-School as the first step in a Bauwagenproject, to see how they did their planning with the school learners as the whole.

Because the first Bauwagen goes South-Project was financed by InWent as part of the ASA-program, the volunteers had to attend two ASA seminars.

The first one (13th to 16th May) was held in an old castle called Burg Lohra. This was a weekend seminar which was attended by participants from all over that include Africa, Europe, Asia and South America. It was interesting for the volunteers to see how ASA can strength their wings and actively function worldwide. The main topics of the seminar were:

(1) Historical background of ASA

(2) Global stereotypes and diversities

(3) Sustainable development

(4) Cultural exchange and global food

(5) Evaluation and desparture.

The second seminar was between the 24th May and the 29th of May 2004, in a small town near Darmstadt. This seminar was bigger then the first one. It included also the German participants. All ASA participants who will be going to different parts of the world had to meet and share their countries social, political and economical status.

After Nosisa und Mbuso came to know the work with the STADTOASEN-BAUWAGEN in Germany during all phases, they started to work on the transfer of the Bauwagenidea to the Southafrican circumstances together with the German volunteers in June.

They made a time plan and fixed the goals for the project in Cape Town. Between July and August 2004 Nosisa and Mbuso started checking possible schools that will be appropreate to start the project with.

During this planning-period the volunteers found some essential differences between Bauwagen in Germany and South Africa:

• Companies sometimes won’t be able to fund money but they may give us practical aid which will be more than welcome
  • As long as „working in the field“ is a punichment at Southafrican schools, it will be difficult to  … the learners for the Bauwagen-project
  • In South Africa parents are mostly not interested at subjects at their children´s schools
  • Informing local community and government about the project is also one of the essential aspects, because the cooperation of the governmental organisations and the NGOs is often very difficult in South Africa

• A financial and funding plan for the project in South Africa is necessary

• Buying a trailer with wheels like the Bauwagen in Aachen will be a big disaster, because of many reasons a container will be a good substitute for the trailer.

Besides their work in the Bauwagenproject Nosisa and Mbuso could work in another project of the NGOs NABU and Weltladen, which is called UTROPIA. The people of UTROPIA also work with schools and they have also groups of kids that they work with in the NABU-garden). During the UTROPIA-project the kids learn how to grow historic European species of vegetables and fruit and the way of growing veggies in so called third world countries.

Nosisa and Mbuso went to the two schools where the UTROPIA-team works and held workshop sessions about the work at ABALIMI and SEED in South Africa.

Nosisa and Mbuso especially liked the way, how the different NGOs work together in Aachen:

“What we have learnt about these two organisations (NABU and STADTOASEN) which are both environmental organisations working on similar issues is, that they are not competing as one may think – instead they are complementing each other at all times. That shows good spirit and it is something most of we have to learn. “

One highlight of the stay of Nosisa and Mbuso was the signing of the “Memorandum of Understanding” of the LA21-Partnership between Aachen and Cape Town. They could tell all delegates about their work with STADTOASEN and in Cape Town. The mayor of Aachen -  Dr. Jürgen Linden – loved Nosisas traditional cloths and told the photographer of the newspaper: "Aren´t  the two of us a lovely couple?!

Last words of Nosisa and Mbuso before leaving Aachen:

“It would be good to point out that beside the work that we were busy with in Aachen, we also enjoyed our stay. It is also our wish to see the same opportunity extended to more southern participants. It is also noticable that soon we will be coming back home we are looking forward to bring new ideas.

In the spirit of mankind and humanity we will never forget to mention the kindness that the Stadtoasen team has shown to us starting from the moment we met at the airport to our first meeting with the whole group of an excellent team. We have been introduced to their work, to their families and friends, really words cannot explain this`` SITHI NANGOMSO`’ Days has been moving very fast to learn more. Coming to Germany we can say was a blessing in disguise. It was a worthwhile experience.”