By Anasuya Isaacs

The Arts and Leadership Academy is off to a rousing start! We have just completed our third session with the COSAT 11th and 12th graders. Yesterday, we were blown away by the remarkable progress they made from week 2 to 3.

In Week 2, We took them deeper into the distinctions of leadership.
What a Leader is NOT
Leader = Boss: someone who “makes people do things”.
Leader = Center of attention; who it’s all about
Leader = “Them”: anyone else responsible

A Leader IS someone who knows
To Lead is to Serve
To Lead is To Follow
To Lead is to Listen
To Lead is To Risk

A Leader is someone who is always arrives first and leaves last. They learned this the hard way by incurring my wrath. Our first Class starts when everyone is present so that no one is left behind. Most were late, but the last three to arrive came 25 minutes late. Not a great way to start the day. I had to make sure that this behavior ended right then and there. So in my calmest, tone I let it be known that a real leader would not be so selfish and self-centered enough to have people waiting for them (since the majority of them who were late had arrived early to the school and were just hanging in the hallway talking to friends). We reminded them that there was a waiting list so that they were all replaceable and that this was the last time we would have this conversation. It was crystal clear what was at stake for them.

The students explored the impact of wanting to be leader so that they can be everything a leader is not. When they thought about those who embodied what a leader is not, they saw for themselves how things don’t improve; there’s more corruption and abuse of power. They were coached on making a presentation, on what the inner and outer state should be to get their message across clearly. They then began to share the essays they wrote addressing a need they saw in their community and how they would solve it using their role model, the thing they loved the most and a cultural tradition. They received feedback on the thought that went into solving the problem and originality as well as on their use of the proper inner and outer qualities. Most were very good and a few put little time in and it showed! All were taught how to give feedback based on the work, and not on the person, so that they could develop their critical minds. The standouts all came from the 12th graders: Zukile (watch his video!), Nobenathi, Zimkhita, and Ntuthuzelo. Bravo!

The focus of yesterday’s class was team: if one fails, they all fail. They are just one group, one being and they were all going to win or nobody was. They created a buddy system so that no one is late or absent unless in an emergency. They don’t know each other well as they come from all of the surrounding townships to this special school devoted to Math and Science, so to get them to take on buddies to support one another is a big thing.

The students left last week determined to go deeper, give it more team and to expand what they think they could do. They came back yesterday, to our session that were held 1) for three and a half hours sessions vs. the regular two hours and 2) on a day school is closed due to the Easter/ Spring Break holiday. These kids were early, ready, and absolutely brilliant! Their work had improved tremendously and there was pride! Yes, PRIDE in the work they had done. The 11th graders were great but the student who raised the bar was Wanele, the older of the twins, who clearly was speaking the United Nations in his address. Please take the time to watch the video of his presentation. This young 16 year old is the next Nelson Mandela!

The twelfth graders were stellar, raising the bar and encouraging one another to do well. They are really starting to be there for one another as if the other were them. There’s a quote that they are beginning to embody: “You are ‘me’ cleverly disguised as ‘you’”. A true leader is one with the team/community/country.

To lead is to serve! Next we will be putting this quote of wisdom into action very soon! All of the students are starting to get very clear that there is no one coming. There isn’t someone else to come fix their community, their city, their country. They are the ones we are waiting for and these bright lights are going to deliver!

Blessings from Khayalitsha!
Anasuya

By Anasuya Isaacs

Today is a golden day! We just launched our first “Love To The World” EVENT: a production of “Sometimes, I Cry”!!! This one woman show is written and performed by star of stage, film and television, and long-time AIDS activist, Sheryl Lee Ralph. Invitations went out and the buzz has already started! It is not everyday that some Hollywood glamour comes to Cape Town!

The most extraordinary thing about this event is that this is all for charity! Ms. Ralph is performing for two shows only to raise money for two organizations that are doing extraordinary work to make the lives of those infected with the HIV virus livable, healthy and prosperous! Our two pet projects, Monkey Biz and JL Zwane, will receive TWO gifts:

1) All proceeds from the sale of the tickets will be split evenly between the two groups and
2) Each purchased ticket is actually a 2-for-1 deal! So one ticket purchased buys a second ticket for a disadvantaged HIV+ woman who would not be able to attend without this help!

How great is that? The women in the support groups will be able to come to the show and our two chosen organizations will receive much-needed funds to continue to offer their life-saving programs.

There will be a live auction of fabulous art by Carrol Boyes, Barbara Jackson and others to increase the pot. And with a bit of good fortune, Love To The World will present our first mini-book of empowering letters of hope from HIV+ women to their sisters across the globe!

This event is a vision made manifest for me. When Let Love Lead was created, we always saw the exchange of stories, pictures, and lives as a vehicle of spreading hope and love to all those infected with or impacted by HIV/AIDS.  We envisioned art exhibits that had letters, poems, stories, paintings and photos exhibited. We saw a documentary about this journey and even, one day, an exchange of people learning how others live with this virus up close. Our date for fulfillment was 2010.

Well… it’s happening now! This benefit performance by Ms. Ralph will be the culmination of a week long tour and three-day Sistah Circle Summit bringing African-American HIV+ women together with their South African Positive sisters to heal, inspire and empower each other! This is the first time that this connection has ever been made, and we know already by the overwhelmingly positive response that this will be an annual event!

This is a dream come true for both Ms. Ralph and us! We are thrilled by how fast the tickets are selling (buy yours NOW!) and how hungry the women are to meet each other. It is an honor to create a safe space for women to come together, cry together, laugh together, and just be together.

The booklet that Love To The World is producing to go on sale during the Conference and Performance is the next step in forging this bridge across continents and cultures. This is the first of several wonderful products that we will use as an educational to let people know that wherever they are, however they are feeling, there is someone somewhere who knows what they are going through and cares!

Don’t we ALL want to know that?

See you at the performance of “Sometimes, I Cry” April 5th, 2008 at 8pm in Artscape’s Arena Theatre, Cape Town, South Africa, Africa, Earth.

For all of those unable to attend, we will make the booklets available online to buy. This will help us immensely in raising money for the full-length book! Thanks in advance!

Much love and many blessings!
Anasuya

By Frerieke van Bree 

Saturday the 8th of March: Anasuya and I were both sleepy and in need
for coffee early in the morning on our way to Khayelitsha, trying to find
energy to start our 12 week leadership program with the students of
COSAT (Centre of Science and Technology, a High school for science, IT
and Maths).

Our expectation of sleepy and quit students disappeared the moment we
saw those young enthusiast learners smiling while seeing a American and
Dutch person coming to train them. Those students are so willing to learn!

COSAT, located in township Khayelitsha, selects the best learners of the
regular High schools in the township and prepares them to go to
University.

Khayelitsha (meaning: New Home) is the biggest township (800.000
people) here around Cape Town. Lots of people are living in shacks, some
without running water, electricity or ablutions.

Co-founder of COSAT, Peter Oxenham told us that even those bright
COSAT students, who get an amazing education often drop out of
University. Why? Nobody ever taught them the skills to survive in the big
world outside the township. They often do not have the self-esteem to
speak English, are not used to be in a mixed (white/black/colored)
environment, they do not believe that they are great and are often very
insecure.

When Anasuya and I heard this, we knew it was in our power to help build
self confidence, self love, to help those wonderful individuals to achieve
their dreams, finish University and know who they are.

We arranged with COSAT that we’ll be leading a 12 week Arts and
Leadership Academy for 34 of their students (grade 11 and 12).
Our program involves workshops in creative writing, acting, directing, and
the visual arts as well as in website development, HIV prevention, and
self-esteem building. The students will develop and lead community
projects that they have determined will make their communities great.

Have a look at this video we made. The COSAT students explain why this
12 week program is worth waking up for on their free Saturday morning
and tell us what they’ve learned this first week. Worth watching! These
students are incredibly bright, socially intelligent and worth investing in!

We help them achieve their goals, by working with them here in Africa,
you can help by donating to Love to The World!
We need your help! please make a small donation (5 dollar? 10 dollar?
each dollar helps!)

Thanks!
Frerieke

By Frerieke van Bree 

Cape Town attracts lots of tourists with its beautiful nature, welcoming climate and its famous Table Mountain overlooking the ocean. Tourists love to hang out in the fancy restaurants, luxury shopping malls, along the Garden or Wine route or simply on the beach. 

Money makes the world a very small place: people fly and enjoy the sun for a few weeks on a beach at the other end of the planet. But in the same time does money create separated worlds right next to each other. How can you travel miles and miles from Europe or America and not taking the time to get to know the country you are enjoying that luxury holiday in? How can you lie down on a beach for days, while you know that there are hundreds of people trying to find a safe place to stay, just 15 minutes away?

We LOVE people who do take the time to discover all the separated worlds a place embraces. We DO NOT like tourists who go to the township to take a picture of a cute black child waving at your fancy rented car.
We want to see more people who come, explore and act! We want to see more changemakers in the world!

This is what we told our Dutch friends Matthijs and Naomi when they told us they wanted to join us to visit a township: Great, but only if the people in the township get something out of it!

Naomi and Matthijs were brave enough to take the challenge…

The 9 students that we selected from high school COSAT (center of science and technology) in township Khayelitsha were very excited when we told them they could join us on their free Saturday to make new friends, to explain about their home, their culture, and their dreams.

The first introduction to their Xhosa culture was during the lunch at school. A name introduction resulted in a funny  –kliks- and -klaks- , trying to get this wonderful Xhosa pronunciation right.

We let the students choose which museum they want to go to. You should have seen their faces when we told them they could also choose the aquarium! Wow! Only 1 of the 9 students had ever been there.

After we told the students that it was allowed to ask all the questions they wanted, they didn’t stop! Those children have a huge hunger to learn. They know that education will be their path out of poverty.

The stories in the car were impressive. Lwazi who lives in so-called ‘murder capital’ Nyanga explained his fear to go out on the street. It was great to see driver Matthijs’ face in the mirror, looking around because he didn’t want to miss a word.

The aquarium was a great gift to the students. Exploring everything, reading all the information they could gather. And meanwhile: mouth wide open, smiles on their face. During our milkshakes afterwards we analyzed the experiences together. Sharks, penguins and Sea horses were definitely the favorite ‘fishes’ of the day! Lots of appreciations and a big thank you towards Matthijs and Naomi who sponsored the whole day!

A walk through the Waterfront and some traditional dance moves on music of the Xhosa Street musicians made this day complete. Before we realized it, the sun was setting and we had to go back to the car to return the children all home safe before dark.
This might have been the most interesting part of the day: dropping the children of at their homes. The realization that although these kids are very intellectual, well dressed, full of questions and joy in life….they live in the poorest places, the loudest environments, the biggest dirt, surrounded by violence, drugs and lots of people who do not have the learning skills to create this path of hope out of the circle of poverty.

Matthijs and Naomi got such a great inside idea of life in a township, thanks to the communication with the students, seeing the places they live. For the students it was very enlightening to be out of the township, to interact with people outside their everyday township world.
Wandile told me that it was such an honor to walk around at the Waterfront and to go to the Aquarium. He told me that lots of people in his neighbor hood never leave the township. Public transport is expensive. So unless your job forces you to go and take that 15 min bus ride, you don’t get to town.
We received a message from Peter (founder of Cosat) who had received a message from Qiqa, saying: “Yesterdays trip was nice and fun. Those people were very kind to us, I really appreciate it”

For Anasuya and me it was lovely to realize that the activity we organized had a great impact on the children here in this underprivileged community in Africa, as well as on our friends from the Netherlands. A great success! Check out this video and you’ll see…

See also our gallery for some more Photos of this day..

Frerieke

By Anasuya Isaacs

On my way to South Africa, I searched for organizations that focused on women, the arts, and HIV/AIDS. The list was long but one jumped out: MotherTongue. I LOVED the name and all the possible meanings of it for me and my continuing exploration of Self: What is my mother tongue? What is my connection to the indigenous languages of Africa? How do I use my tongue for liberation and justice? How do I connect with others through my mother and my tongue? How could the theater work they do in transforming trauma into triumph be used by Let Love Lead in our work with people confronting HIV/AIDS?

So just hearing the name, MotherTongue existing in Africa, connecting women “performing artists, who explore keys to the empowerment of women and practical processes of healing and transformation through the arts,” I knew I had to swim in the oceans of their transform/rebirth/gifting process.  I had to partner with them in offering women (and men) safe space to create a way to LIVE with their assigned death sentence: death by pleasure-begotten dis-ease.

I have always explored in my writings the power of language and words to express my sense of be/not/longing, free/not/knowing, while birthing universes in verses. In writing about the umbilical cord pulling me to Africa long before I landed, breathed, and returned all seven generations lost/disconnected/wandering in America back to her, Mother/land/soul, I have always known, “I am hers and she is mine, forever…” So here I have come to not only bring back those stolen but to give to those here being stolen by this particularly vicious virus that does not AID anyone.

Despite all of this knowingness, I forgot about it! I arrived in South Africa and other groups, people, places filled notebooks of possibility. Three months later, one encounter had someone recommend I speak with Sara Matchett: “You’ll love her! You guys are up to the same thing, and MotherTongue is phenomenal!” Excited, I took down the name and number, thinking, I love this name, MotherTongue, not realizing it was the same group I had discovered on-line in America.

When I called Sara, we connected immediately! As fate would have it, she had moved to Johannesburg but was coming back to Cape Town to lead a theater workshop on Ritual Narratives for the Spier Invades the City Festival. The morning of the workshop we met Sara for breakfast and were awed, moved and inspired. I was thrilled by our parallel journeys to healing, upliftment and empowerment through theater and discovering one’s voice. It was like discovering what “I” had been doing in Asia and Africa while the other I was in Europe and America. Clearly we were having a homecoming in each other’s terra firma of the soul and would not be separated again.

Fre and I went home to change into clothes that we could get dirty in, and picked up Chesray, a South African friend I met in the States. The point of the workshop was to create ritual theater with a few people that would engage the audience completely and lead to some sort of transformation. I explore the use/need for rituals a lot in my writing, especially my poetry, and though rituals have been used in my plays, none had invited the audience’s full participation on stage (beyond singing along and “Amen-ing” in the right places). This was a brand new world!

Sara was challenged by the limited time allotted to the workshop which normally takes place over 4-5 days. We had three hours! Yet the excavation process, the objects and images, the partnering and poeting, lead us quickly and deeply to the place where we were open to joining our “story/gift” with others to birth something mine/ours/everyone’s.

The two plays we created at the end were thoughtful, healing, and provocative invitations that took us on an inner and outer journey through candle-lit, water-splashed, earth-grounding inner landscapes. Whoever came in that door at 7 was not walking out at 10pm. This taught Fre and me how much we can accomplish with our workshops when all we have with the groups is a few hours.

HALLELUJAH!

My soul revealed a message buried in her rough rocks, a diamond:

Set  yourself free
                                                                  tell our stories
                                                                  tell our pain
                                    stolen
                                    damaged I am
                                    me
Set your Self free
Lying
I am alive
                                                                   tell our stories
                                                                   tell our pain

now is the time now is the time now is the time now is the time

This is the message I will share with all who take our workshops. This is the gift that art therapy, movement and creativity offers to all who are willing to engage in going beyond definitions given us by society, culture, language and gender to discover and express our true voice, our true Selves.

This is the path we all can take to “Let Love Lead” and offer our gifts of Love to the World.

Amazed and grateful!
Anasuya

Check out the sublime Sara and the phenomenal work of MotherTongue on their website: www.mothertongue.co.za