Welcome to blog number 4!
With only 1 week to go until the Climate Change Festival begins things are getting busy here! Our workshops at the centres have finished, and the children’s costumes are nearly ready for the fashion show and carnival next week!
NATURE SECTION: The girls at Home of Joy have nearly finished their huge nature costume. They have made lots of flowers from plastic bottles and cardboard, and look lovely decorated head to toe in them. They have also made butterflies and leaves on sticks to carry. We just need to attach the giant sun they have made to the backpack which is covered in leaves and flowers.
WATER SECTION: At Mapode Boys they have finished making a canoe in water, fish hats and fish’s on sticks. They look fantastic together!
AIR SECTION: At Chisomo Centre they have finished making a huge bus and bus hats to represent air pollution. They look great with 6 of them inside the blue bus!
RUBBISH SECTION: The children at Zambia Shanty Community Centre have finished their costumes on the theme of rubbish, and made a brilliant huge costume using water bottles, cans and fire (as people often burn rubbish here)! It really captures the mood of carnival, and reminded us of costumes Notting Hill carnival.
ANIMAFWAFWA SECTION: The children at Lazarus Centre have finished making their Animafwafwa with the head of a fish eagle (the national symbol on the Zambian flag) and the body of a caterpillar for 12 people to wear! The boys came up with a brilliant idea when we needed to paint a piece of fabric 10 metres long. Instead of using paint brushes, they decided to dye it and dipped the entire piece of fabric in the pot of paint – it was done in no time! We also relived some of our youth and couldn't stop laughing when the boys wheeled us round the centre in a wheelbarrow!
We spent a whole day with the children at Ngombe Open Community School last week. They have now finished their Animafwafwa costumes, which look brilliant! They also enjoyed playing some parachute games at the end of the day, and it was a good start to their month of holiday! We’ll be arranging for a bus to collect them so they can join in with all the children from centres at carnival.
Each of the 5 centres has also painted a banner to represent their theme (Nature, Water, Air, Rubbish or Animafwafwa). At the end of the final workshop at each centre the children wore all their costumes and practiced parading for carnival. They really brought the costumes to life, marching, singing, drumming and dancing! It was great to see weeks worth of work come together, and brought a smile to everyone’s face!
The giant cockroach sitting in our front garden is almost complete! It’s now got skin made from wet strength tissue paper, paint and legs……….and looks pretty creepy, especially when animated by the Barefeet facilitators!
Barefeet Camp & Festival T.V Advert
Over the last few days it’s been lovely to be able to make use of the space in the house we are staying in to film a T.V advert for the festival, and have a Barefeet rehearsal camp.
The advert will be running on T.V over the coming week, encouraging people in Lusaka to join in with the carnival and other festival activities. Despite a bit of the ‘Z factor’ ('Zambian factor' - when things don’t always go quite to plan!), i.e no camera crew on the first day, filming finally got underway on the second day of attempting. It was great to see the Barefeet facilitators bring the children’s costumes to life in a mini carnival procession, and the children who live across the road joined in which was lovely! The kids had a great day dressing up in the Barefeet costumes, having their faces painted, dancing to the drums, watching African Dance Factory do some amazing acrobatics and finally a water fight where Sian and Michael got soaked!
The camp was great as it meant Barefeet could rehearse for their performance of ‘Tujuka Must Die’ to be performed at the festival, and we could all get on with planning and making together over two days. It also meant the giant cockroach had it’s first walk……..around our garden!
Over the next week and a bit we’ll be concentrating on making sure all the large structures are finished, making Eco-World and co-ordinating the exhibition and fashion show. The festival begins Tuesday 27th April, so the countdown is on!
