Sugar and braai

Last weekend went very fast by exploring Cape Town and playing soccer. I found out that just behind our corner there is an informal soccer field with breathtaking landscape (as always in Cape Town). We girls were mainly watching when the boys from the house were running after ball. But the plan is to attend to the game next weekend. This field is always open and free, which makes it accessible for many people in the neighbourhood.

I had a nice visit in Khayelitsha, every weekend there is a huge party in a local club, Rands. If you want to enjoy life, it is definitely known as the coolest place to be in Cape Town. The flow of people starts around midday and around 8pm it is so full that you can't much move, just dance to the amazing african house beat. People looked gorgeous with their outfits and makeups and a drone is flying constantly in the sky filming the best moments. I also ate the best braai so far. Definitely not the image of Khayelitsha that media mainly maintains!

Also, I have to talk about the image of women here in South Africa, it is amazing! In TV, advertisements, local artists and in general, the coolest girls and women here are just naturally shaped and variant, more often large than skinny, without any stigmatization. Im so happy to see that, it is clearly more the matter of personality and rhythm behind the attraction. Also women (and everyone) here are in a positive way very open, warm and loud. This is something for a woman coming from clod Finland very pleasant to experience. Of course, I don't deny that every culture has its own problems with the equality.

Today I started the painting workshops in Khayelitsha, altogether 20 kids, age between 5 to 13 attended. It was nice to see so many kids, often during these days parents don't send their children to the after school programs if there is shootings happening. These kids speak Xhosa as their main language, but luckily it wasn't a problem to run the course in English. It is interesting to see already some similarities in the paintings and maps between the kids from Lotus River and Khayelitsha: the church, park and beach are all liked places to spend time and often safe.

Safe places: home, church, school, beach, park (boy 8 years, Khayelitsha)

Almost every family has a dog, to secure the house and its nice to have puppies

I ended my day by visiting in local kinder garden in Khayelitsha. I had a nice cup of coffee (in local way three spoons of sugar), made a promise to find beautiful European husbands for the two women working there and had nonverbal conversations with the babies. Have a sunny week!