Jack

Jack was the name of our kombie. Rhodes University let us use Jack-the-kombie for several years, the same kombie: DTP…something something something EC. Jack was named Jack because we hit the road with Jack.

Jack was always accompanied by his trailer, Knife.

And more often than we would like to admit, we got the two of them Jack-Knifed which meant that all of us had to jump out of Jack, unhitch Knife and drag the fully loaded trailer out of harm’s way.

Despite the hard work we loved Mama Jack, even when he gave us trouble

On the way to Pietermaritzburg, Jack needed a petrol filter replacement which he could've told us about before we left, but at least we got an opportunity to take in the scenery.

We arrived in Pietermaritzburg quite late on Tuesday 14 September. When Thami woke up at 6am the next morning to fetch her bag of shoes she was shocked to discover that Jack was gone. Yes, Jack had been Hi-Jacked. We were all in shock, particularly because we had to perform Hush at 10am at the University of Kwazulu-Natal. Thankfully Knife was intact with all three sets and costumes.

Performing Hush at UKZN in Durban

We managed to get to our performance thanks to the organisers of Drama For Life who collected the cast and set in three cars and the manager of the Bed and Breakfast who delivered our trailer to Hilton College.

We were too busy to think about Jack; we were juggling peroformances of Hush at the Drama for Life Festivals in Pietermaritzburg and Durban and technical rehearsals and performances at the Witness Hilton Arts Festival. Both performances of Breed were sold out and we had a great mix of adults and kids at The Adventures of a Little Nobody.

performing in the Topsy Turvy tent

school kids meet Chumpie after the show

Our tour was slowly drawing to a close

Thami and Nox in our dorm rooms at Hilton College

And everyone was going a bit crazy.

 

Tshego poses in the passage where she is charging her phone.

Nox and Cassie show off their tattoos

Jack was replaced by:

And we were soon on our way home, back to the Eastern Cape

Fish River

approximately 20 minutes away from Grahamstown

Jack of our hearts, we won’t forget you

Dean cleaning Jack

because Jack, you didn’t have a radio; we had to find ways to stay entertained

and we really did care about Jack

Cleaning Jack in Bredasdorp

We hope Jack is still in one piece. We had a good run.

Drama for Life Festival!

We were lucky enough to be part of 3 out of the 4 Drama For Life Festivals happening around the country during the month of September. This is such a great festival focussing on issues around HIV, but more specifically about “SEX ACTUALLY” with an amazing line-up of shows and workshops. However, we found that the festival wasn’t well supported despite the fact that all shows and workshops were FREE!

We started off in Cape Town, performing Hush on the 10&11 September at the Arena Theatre on Hiddingh Campus.

Hush

We had so few audience members (4) on Saturday that we decided to do some guerilla marketing and crossed the road to a food/clothing market that was happening at the Labia Cinema.

enticing potentail audience members with some tunes

Ubom sang their hearts out, inviting people to the show. Some gathered, took pictures, but we only managed to recruit 3 more audience members.

Despite looking as though they're enjoying the singing, these totally rad guys on the left did not come and watch the FREE show.

Still, there were more audience than performers- whew! And everyone thoroughly enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, in the 15 minutes that we were out publicitising, someone snuck into our dressing rooms and stole money from some of the performers.

We made up for it by stopping at the beach on our way back to Grahamstown.

Yes!

In Grahamstown we changed sets, ready to head off for Drama For Life in Pietermaritzburg & Durban AND the Hilton Festival where we performed Breed and The Adventures of a Little Nobody.

packing

And off we went…admittedly more tired than when we started a few weeks before…

Little did we know that our safe kombie bubble would soon be popped!

So where are we?

Our tour came to an end about 3 weeks ago. There is some serious catching up to do… so in brief this is what happened

 

Tues07/09 08:35 performing at Wagenmakers Primary in Wellington

 

 

the grade r's at Groenberg Primary watching the show

 

 

11:45 Groenberg Primary in Wellington

 

 

13:15 the last show of the day at Soetendal Primary in Wellington

 



 

A girl from Soetendal Primary sitting near the back watches Sink or Swim

 

 

Wed08/09 Norma Road Primary in Athlone, Cape Town

 

 

Norma Road Primary learners enjoy the show

 

 

Thurs 10/09 Ubom performing for Swartberg Primary in Caledon

 

 

later that day at Eisleben Primary in Mitchells Plain, Cape Town

 

 

The Grade 3's at Eisleben Primary couldn't concentrate on their work so their teachers let them watch the show from the balcony

 

Actually that was only the first 3 days.

We met so many wonderful learners at these schools and we were so happy to perform for them.

We really loved them and thought they were soooo cute.

 

some learners took us on a tour of their classromms

 

 

they showed me their arts and crafts

 

 

This boy from Eisleben Primary loved the set, he helped us carry everything to the trailer.

 

 

sometimes everyone got a bit too excited.

 

But we had a really good time.

We came to the end of our Sink or Swim tour and we would soon leave the Western Cape.

Catch Up!

We’re so sorry for not keeping you updated with all of our movements. Last week was crazy. Our reliable company manager, Nadia fell terribly sick after her trip to Mafikeng and she was out of action until Thursday. The blog was most neglected, but here’s a not-so-quick recap of what we did last week.

Saturday 28 August

We arrived at the rather comfortable Haus Holzapfel in Beaufort West where we shared two houses next door to each other. We could’ve been the subjects of a perfectly terrible sitcom.

Dean relaxing

We cooked our first meal together. We really missed the rest of our company in Grahamstown because it was such a special and beautiful meal. The tv was switched off for about 15 minutes, it was totally special.

hmmmm

Nadia and Sisonke washing dishes

Midway through the piles of dishes, Sisonke took a break to start a dance floor while Dean prepared the table for some card games.

Our stay felt more like a holiday than anything else.

Sunday 29 August

We made our way to Robertson in the Western Cape. Our tour started in the Boland, which is also wine country (any requests?)

Our landscape changed from this:

To this:

Monday 30 August

De Villiers Primary School in Robertson was our first stop in the Western Cape. We performed in the church hall across the road from the school.

Mrs De Wit, the principal calmed the learners by encouraging them to sing a hymn and we expected that they would chatter throughout the play, but they sat quietly and really seemed to enjoy it.

Mrs De Wit requested that we create work about bullying and peer pressure, as well as work about teen pregnancy and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) because they are big problems in their area and she believes education about these issues should start as early as grade 4.

After our first show we travelled to Bredasdorp to perform for Albert Myburgh High School. This was one of our most challenging shows. Ubom performed outside for an audience of about 700 learners.

Albert Myburgh

We also met a homeless man who is originally from Queenstown and who he left his 5 children in Queenstown in 1952. He hasn’t been back since.

We were cleaning the kombie when we met the men on the right. The man who is waving is originally from Queenstown.

Tuesday 31 August

We left poor Nadia in Victoria hotel on Tuesday and travelled to Napier. Nadia could barely move on Monday afternoon but would be the first person on the trailer trying to unpack set. We thought it would be better if we forced to rest.

We arrived at Napier High School nice and early. Thank you to all the wonderful learners who helped to set up the audience chairs when we arrive at the schools.

After our performance we quickly travelled back to Bredasdorp to get Nadia and went on to Riveiersonderend. We went for a bit of a rom rom (Nadia introduced this term to us and it means a romantic drive or a round-about way to our destination) and ended up at the wrong school in Riviersonderend (there are only two schools in Riviersonderend), but both schools welcomed us and were very happy to see us.

The wrong Riviersonderend school

The right Riviersonderend school

other audience members

On our way to Riviersonderend, a farmer started hooting and waving at us. We responded with enthusiastic waves and shouts until he made us pull over to the side of the road where he pointed out that our plug for our trailer had completely fallen off, which meant that our stay in Riviersonderend had a longer end than we anticipated.

dangerous wires sticking out of our trailer

But the sonderend people soon sorted everything out for us and we were on our way to Paarl.

Wednesday 01 September

our view from our guesthouse in Paarl

We had a lovely,  peaceful stay in Paarl. Nadia went to the doctor and he assured her and us that she would be ok.

We performed for Amstelhof Primary School and Paarlzicht.

Things went really smoothly but Mr De Jager warned us that he strikes would probably hinder our performances on Thursday.

Thursday 02 September

As predicted, we could not perform at Paulus Joubert in Paarl on Thursday. We were very disappointed.

We decided to sing one of our songs as a lament.

singing and dancing in the streets.

our little audience member

We had a tiny but appreciative audience.

Thank you for the coke!

We made our way to Kayamandi in Stellenbosch and performed for the matrics at Kayamandi High School.

Kayamandi

Kayamandi matrics focus on staying really still.

The hall echoes ever breath but all the learners agreed to sit really quietly . Everything was going really well until Nox’s teeth accidently fell out of her mouth.  The learners were a little confused ,“Is she looking for her teeth in the water?”

They asked as Nox started to row the boat, “Doesn’t she know that her teeth fell in the boat?”

Nox has already lost her teeth at this point

We had a brief break in Stellenbosch before driving  to picturesque Grabouw.

Grabouw

Friday 02 September

The audiences on Friday were exemplary. The cast said that they really enjoyed performing for these audiences. “They sat so quietly,” said Thami.

It had been a long week

Nox crushing Dean

I just don't know what's going on here.

We were grateful to be able to escape into the Grabouw landscape.

Baie Dankie

Shoo, where to begin. It has been over a week since our last proper entry. We are in the stunning Western Cape (South Africa).

We’ve had such a good time and we would like to thank a great many people for making this possible.

Thank you if you are reading this right now

learners from Amstelhof

Thank you to our funder, SEEDS: The Systemic Education and Extra-Mural Development and Support programme, who have not only made this tour possible financially but have also supported us in other little ways, like helping us with directions to schools and watching our show (sometimes more than once) with the kids. SEEDS aims to develop and support education in Western Cape from pre-primary to postgraduate education, with a focus on improving maths and science learning. SEEDS comprises of nine organisations (mostly tertiary education institutions and NGO’s) that run the initiative. And out of this great programme a few people really need to be mentioned: Thank you to Mike, Rennie, Worsie, Raffie, Brenda, Rodger, Crystal and Sam (to name a few whose names we know.) We would also like to thank everyone at Scifest Africa for your insight and help in organising things on tour for us.

learners from Paarlzicht

We’ve met some amazing teachers and principals during this extraordinary time of national strikes. Thank you for being there and for being there with devotion and love for education.

Mr De Jager, principal of Amstelhof Primary. Their school is situated between a township and the N2. He tells his children that the N2 goes all around South Africa- it can take you to all the way to Joburg-and the only way to get from the township to the freeway is through his school.

Another big thank you to the wonderful, welcoming guesthouses. Thank you Berghof in Paarl for letting us rehearse on your beautiful roof.

Rehearsing "Hush" on the roof at Berghof in Paarl

The view from Berghof

Thank you Wildekraans Guesthouse in Grabouw for sharing your art works with us and feeding some of our lonely company members.

William Kentridge's work hangs around the guesthouse

Wildekraans makes breakfast taste like a rich dessert

Thank you for the weekend

Thank you Cummings Guesthouse in Wellington where we are now on Sunday 05 Septemeber 2010 for giving the girls the best rooms.

Ilana

Thank you to Ilana and Nadia for driving us everywhere.

Nadia

And the biggest thank you goes to our missing company members who are in Grahamstown working in a glaringly hot office. Thank you, thank you, thank you to Janet, Sarah and Nosi for organising this incredible tour. Whenever we get to a school, the teacher in charge always wants to know with a smile which one of us is Sarah. The guesthouse people are equally disappointed that Sarah is not here so that they can treat her to the best room.

Wish you were here!

You have made things very easy and comfortable. We really wish we could share some of these places with you.

You are in our hearts.

The Original Traffic Cop Experience August 2009

The past week has been interesting and exciting and verrry busy which is why there are no recent updates.

Thanks to Sulochana Dissanayake who was with us and instrumental in making our ticket disappear on last year’s tour. Our trailer’s licence had expired or the driver’s apparently had the wrong sized trailer for what their licence permitted. Sulo (who is Sri-Lankan), was standing outside and she started singing one of the Xhosa songs from one of Ubom’s plays and completely distracted the two traffic twinkle-eyes from fining us.

Sulo (the unsung hero) also filmed everything. this is what happened.

And this is what happened a year later:

http://ubommie.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/day-one/

Weekend

We began our slow trek to the Western Cape on Friday afternoon after the North West School’s Festival.  We were travelled to the Western Cape over 3 days from Friday 27 August to Sunday 29 August. Everyone was sad to see us go.

But we had to get to the Western Cape for the next part of our tour.

We reached Kimberley just in time for the sunset.

sun setting in Kimberley

We were booked in to stay at the luxurious Milner House in Kimberley.

cushy room in Milner House

After a hearty breakfast on Saturday morning,

We bade farewell to lovely Milner House.

And we were back on the road, headed for Beaufort West.

The writings on the truck

Orange River

We saw the Orange River from a different perspective.

Orange River

We were also caught in a sandstorm.

in the sandstorm

peope who lived in town did not run away from the storm, they just carried on doing what they were doing.

The storm lasted for maybe 2 minutes.

tumbleweeds followed the storm

After the storm, the day was once again clear and sunny.

We travelled for approximately 7 hours from Kimberly to Beaufort West.

Sisonke

Tshegho

We started running out of things say to one another.

Ilana

We travelled together wordlessly.

Until we reached our guesthouse in Beaufort West where we’d be spending the night.

we're home!

Wild North West

We were in Mafikeng from Wednesday 25 Aug until Friday 27 Aug, participating in the North West Schools Festival. Derralyn from the Grahamstown Foundation’s Arts Education team said that half the schools cancelled a night before the festival started due to the national strikes.

Those who were fortunate enough to attend seemed happy to be there.

whoopee

Ubom performed Hush at the festival and everyone conducted workshops as usual.

Foxy Noxie

The festival is held at the International School and the learners stay in the boarding houses overnight and everyone eats together in the dining hall.

All the teachers, performers and festival organisers hang out in the staff room during tea time.

Derralyn

Hey! Who is this guy? And how did he get the camera? Oh- it looks like it’s been taken in the staff room so he must be a….

loves long walks on the beach

TEACHER! Yes, he’s a teacher!

It looks like he got bored of the camera.

Mafikeng isn’t the sort of place that you can look and immediately get swept away by the bustling atmosphere. For the most part, we just watched people walking on the wide streets of Mafikeng.

We saw a truck nearly demolish a van.

Then we saw Phat Joe

Was that really him? We turned round and drove back to get a better look.

Phat Joe running

Yep. That’s him.

Mafikeng

We’ve spent the past few days travelling up to Mafikeng for the North West Schools Festival. It is a 16 hour trip. We travelled over two days. The whole of Tuesday and Wednesday morning.

We started hearing  squeaking noises from the kombie and started to imagine all the things that could be going wrong including bad shock plugs, wheel alignments and other car things. I believed the weight of our bags on the front seat was having an effect on the underside of the kombie.

We had it checked out and it turned out to be fine.

so many beautiful places, unfortunately the glare of the bright morning sun creates a reflection on the image

And so we were back on the road for several hours.

windmills were a common feature on this journey

good to know

It’s always a relief when we stop to fill up with petrol and stretch our legs.

the guys in Aliwal North

The Orange River sign in Aliwal North

It was surprising to see a very dried up Orange River

The other side of the Orange river

children walking next to the Orange River

We reached Hopetown at around 4:30pm, a mere 20km away from our rest stop in Bloemhof. Unfortunately the road to Bloemhof was gruesome, containing more potholes than tar. As Dean remarked attempting to assist Nadia with steering the kombie with vocal cues, “Who chose advanced level? We should’ve chose beginner.”

can you spot the potholes?

Finally we reached our stopover in Bloemhof.

la dee daaa

And what a gorgeous stopover it was.

Stunning.

What is this? There were a few all around the garden.

Cueytown

6am

We left for our brief Eastern Cape tour on Wednesday 18^th August and after a beautiful early morning drive we arrived in Queenstown with just enough time to rehearse our new environmentally friendly show, Sink or Swim.

we want more!

It would be the first time that we performed it for an audience and we were wondering how it would be received.

Queens Girls High

Queen’s Girls High enjoyed it- whew!

And everyone felt on top of the world, particularly Ilana who managed to reverse the kombie and trailer out of the most impossibly tight parking spot.

yes Ilana!

Unfortunately we only managed to capture the result and not the struggle. But believe us- it was tight!

The company needed some R and R …

…before resuming rehearsals and repairs.

rehearsing Hush

Nadia repairing a curtain for The Adventures of a Little Nobody

We were supposed to perform Hush at Nkwanca High School, but it was cancelled due to the teacher’s strike that had forced the school to close. Queen’s Girls kindly organised for us to perform at Queen’s Boys High at the last moment.

whoop the day is saved by Queen's Boys High

They seemed pleased about it and could hardly contain themselves during Hush.

Hush deals with all the controversial issues associated with HIV like relationships, sex, identity, class, race, sex, sexuality, religion, isolation and… sugar daddies.

Nadia with a bashful Queens boy

We returned to Queen’s Girls, after enjoying a cup of tea at the boy’s school, where we were set to perform Hush for the girls. Unfortunately the South African Democratic Teacher’s Union (Sadtu) called for a stop in all educational processes and the strikers were headed towards Queens girls and boys. Teachers released pupils immediately and all school activities, including a ball and sporting events are cancelled until Tuesday 24^th August.

We chatted to head teacher Ingrid Taylor about her thoughts on the strike. She said that usually schools like Queen’s girls and boys are usually not affected by teacher’s strikes because they are model C schools that are not completely dependent on funding from the government. So she felt that it may be time for all teachers to stand up for each other, although she did say this with a shrug of her shoulders.

How would the matrics be affected by the strikes?

Mrs Taylor believes that her matrics will probably not write their September exams and she suspects that the strike could continue until the end of the year.

And so we left Queenstown unexpectedly early.

The weather had become icy and we were hoping that we wouldn’t be snowed in.