School Play

The first time we set about on this project it was with a innercity kids at a school called Supreme College in Braamfontein. grade one to matric all learn (or not) in green jerseys and yellow shirts in a three story grey block of cement on the corner of Jorrisen street. At about 1 o'clock tonnes of primary school kids stream out of its office-type doors and make the streets and in particular the bus stop across the road their play ground. 7 to 18 (many probably older) all get themselves to and from school so there's no rush and not much to look forward to. The class we played with all live in apartments in Braamfontein, Hillbrow and Berea and when they get home its just four walls and homework to contend with.

They didn't know township games so we had to teach them the rules. It took a little while and though the tricks and nuances where never quite grasped, all hell breaks loose when kids get off class early to play games instead of reading and writing. Most couldn't catch and few could throw. We played on their playground: a paved grey car park with a cockeyed and torn car shade on the one side and the makeshift tuckshop on the other. 6 by 8 meters at max. This concrete playground is shaded by the high walls that surround it keeping it dark, except where the sun ekes its way through the cracks and slits and there it makes up for its losses and glares bright, bouncing of the concrete walls.

These kids are wild. Not just kid wild, but off the wall wild.
They scream and yell, not just at each other but even at inanimate objects. Not for a response but just for the sound.
They climb and run, not anywhere in particular but just so they move.
The sense is of the air confined, released as a storm. A storm of grey, bright light and green and yellow uniforms.

They fight and sulk and cry and yell and demand every ounce of attention they can get from whomever will give it to them. They are brave and bold little children. Big in character, small in insecurity. They smile beautiful smiles and laugh beautiful laughs. They are a group of individuals, no doubt. And they know it.