Broadway in South Africa 2010: Day 3: Blue Roof Clinic, Durban

Blog series chronicling the experiences of 'Broadway in South Africa' during their 2010 trip to South Africa.

Day 3 - Blue Roof Clinic, Durban

After leaving London/Paris last night, we arrived in Johannesburg at 7am. Having more or less pulled our second all-nighter, we got breakfast at the food court, rented cell phones, and slept on the airport benches at the gate. We took two planes to Durban, which got in at 1pm and 2:15pm. Our Durban liaison, Faye Freedman, met us at the airport and we got into the van we've rented from Eagle Africa. We drove directly to the Blue Roof Clinic, where our two-day workshop was beginning at 3pm. The Blue Roof Clinic was built by Keep A Child Alive (www.keepachildalive.org) and it is a beautiful clinic providing a safe haven for those with AIDS and other communicable diseases.

Kids starting arriving around 3:15pm and by 3:30pm we had all 75 kids ready to go. We had about 15 more kids and their older Brothers and Sisters show up, too, but sadly we had to tell them we couldn't take more students than 75.

We started camp by giving each camper a green Broadway in South Africa t-shirt and name tag, then introducing ourselves and which classes we would be teaching: acting with Courtney and Adam, dance with Lisa and Frankie, music with Jared and Lilli, and playwriting with Tracy and Chris. Jon-Erik and I served as all-purpose administrators and Paris was our videographer and cameraman. We broke the kids up into groups of about 18 each and named them Red, Blue, Yellow, and Green. Each group has a 40 minute class, then switches to another class, i.e.--

3:30-4:10pm - Red group to playwriting
4:15-5:00pm - Red group to acting
5:00-5:30pm - All students gather together for Nando's boxed lunch
5:30-6:10pm - Red group to dance
6:15-7:00pm - Red group to music
7:00-7:30pm - All gather in the big room to for group activities with the teachers and other campers
7:30pm - End of day

It's 7:45pm now and we are having our daily end of camp meeting before heading to HeRon House in Musgrave to eat dinner, shower, and sleep. It will be the first time we've slept in a bed since Sunday night.

So to recap:

We left New York on Monday at 6pm, arrived in London/Paris at 6am, had a 12-hour layover, left London/Paris at 6pm, arrived in Johannesburg at 7am, flew to Durban, arrived at 2pm and went straight to camp where we taught for four hours. It's our first day in South Africa and we are already exhausted. But these kids energize us. Some have AIDS, some are beaten, some have no living parents and yet they sing and dance and smile. We must remember that our worst day is better than most of these kids' best days. So we do all we can to make this day one of their best.

-Jen

Photos and video coming soon. We have very limited internet access so we will add those to the previous entries as soon as we can.

Broadway in South Africa is a cooperative nonprofit venture created by professional working actors, dancers, signers, directors, musicians and producers from New York City - all brought together by the desire to affect change in the world through art, and learn from the potential of bridging two different cultures artistically.

For more information on Broadway in South Africa, please click here.

 

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