Graffiti and other odds and ends

The week ends on an up note.
Yesterday, I took the train down to Newlands to the Projects Abroad office and had a Skype meeting with a Canadian guy who wants to organize a micro-financing project. And thus, I am going to be filming and editing a short video in the coming weeks about the Vrygrond community and some small business owners.

I love trains. I so very much loved riding the train alone in Chicago, the city all around me, speeding south. And here, I speed toward the city, passing stations in varying stages of repair, signs, people in and out. It's the jostle of the city, contained in a single train car. Tired faces line the cars, children on their way home from school, people trying to make a living playing music as they walk up and down the cars, holding out tin cups - the coins clank and clatter as they land. People are so giving, so willing to listen and give.

You can tell a lot about a city by the graffiti. Here, the graffiti is everywhere, an underlying reminder of artistic culture. It clouds the trains, it covers walls. I love it. It's representative of the feelings here - so much of it speaks to hope and about South Africa. It betrays the pride here felt by the people who live here. I sat on a train car covered in graffiti once - every single surface. It had obviously been done by someone who was desperate to find a voice - some it was as simple as "love" and "tea" but some of it was quite rude. I loved it though. Once, I got up from a seat only to find that I'd been sitting on my initials the entire time. KB was scrawled behind me in thick, black marker.

As I got off the train to head back home, I heard someone calling me. I looked around to see a man I'd met the week before. It turns out he sells fruit at my train station to pay for his electrician schooling. We had a cup of tea while we chatted by the side of the road and then I turned and went home, feeling quite at home.

So hopefully this weekend will bring a happy sort of contentment to settle back around me. We're doing work in one of the small schools around here tomorrow - painting and such. It's something Projects Abroad does called a dirty weekend. Someone has to apply for money to help fix a place up or do something and then it will be granted and then put into action with the help of the volunteers. Someone here at my place got a chicken coop put in.