Thursday, 14 July 2011 14:56

Article by Sian Palmer, Drama Therapist and Zakheni Intern

Two Zakheni Dramatherapists, Lesley Bester and myself, left PE and embarked on a breathtaking drive through the Karoo, our destination being the town of Graaff Reinet. The sun was setting to our left while the seesaw of the sky tilted the great, full moon up to our right.

Long straight stretches of road with rolling hills in the distance, coupled with warning signs of Kudu crossing, paved our way into Graaff Reinet.

The beautiful town of Graaff Reinet is surrounded by the majestic yet harsh landscape of the Camdeboo. It seems that the people of this town need to be quite self-sufficient, as it is a lengthy drive away from the closest city.

We were met once in Graaff Reinet by the great towering church that holds the centre of the town. This old-style Dutch architecture was mirrored in the surrounding buildings, one being the Camdeboo Hospice, where our workshops were to take place the following day.

My first impression of Graaff Reinet was of a peaceful, timeless place that holds stories of old. We seemed to be quite the head-turning sight as we three Dramatherapists, one local and two city dwellers, arrived in town bubbling with the potential of encouraging and revisiting the creativity and imagination that the people of this place hold.

Like many places in South Africa, particularly in the more rural areas such as Graaff Reinet and its surrounding communities, people face difficulties of poverty, HIV and Aids, and multiple emotional and physical traumas. Currently there are many parentless children in our country and it seems like this phenomena is here to stay for some time. Hospice Care workers of the past were involved with assisting older people of the community who were sick and dying. Now they have to face this new phenomenon and are beginning to offer psychosocial support for these orphans and vulnerable children. It seems a vital task that Zakheni has taken on by bringing Firemaker into this area and up-skilling and empowering these care workers to work in a medium that is part of a healthy child’s language, and through which children can grow and heal. I feel that through introducing play, care workers can feel more confident to begin working with this client group and the children can be better supported and nurtured.

We were met by fifteen eager workshop participants, punctual and prepared. The Wellbeing Workshop still fresh in their mind, these participants seemed to bring with them their seeds of creative engagement and readiness to explore the artform further. We embarked on the three-day journey of the Firemaker Project, which challenged their previous ways of working, ignited the spark of creativity within the participants and myself and offered some useful tools for them to begin exploring.

We faced the challenges of bringing something new to a group, of allowing for self-expression and creativity, of out-the-box thinking and of engagement in explorative imaginative play. It seems that we have moved far away from our ancestors ways of storytelling, dancing and enacting and the power of returning to these roots seems vital to our growth and development as human beings.

Over the course of the workshop group members rose to the challenge of engaging creatively and stepped into this unknown territory. Graaff Reinet seems to be thirsty for the skills that the Firemaker Series holds and seems ready to begin to explore it. The hope is that the participants will be able to begin to bring the artform into their lives and work bit by bit as the Firemaker Project moves into the next phase.

Our Firemaker journey ended in Nieu Bethesda, the place of the Owl House and much Arts and Culture. We arrived on an icy evening and went to the local restaurant to enjoy some delicious potjie kos, tap our feet and nod our heads to a soulful duet of the classical guitarist Derek Gripper and table player Udai Mazumdar. I was struck by the magic and creativity that the Camdeboo contains and how coming back to the artform and revisiting stories and play seems very fitting in such a beautiful place.

The FireMaker Introductory Workshop at Camdeboo Hospice, which took place from19 to 21 April, is soon to be followed by the second workshop in the series, the Consolidation Workshop, from the 10 to 12 August 2011. For more information about the FireMaker Project visit the FireMaker Project page on this website or click the following link: http://www.zakheni.org.za/the-firemaker-project.html.