This morning I just received *official* confirmation that Create Africa South and the South African Parliamentary Millennium Project will be conducting a five-day workshop in Nelspruit, Mpumalanga from 15-20 March. My flight has been booked for next Saturday morning and I will be working during the workshop as a coordinator for Create Africa South (along with M and Mrs. Gambushe), primarily assisting in embroidery instruction. I am so happy to know the workshop has been confirmed because the last couple weeks it has become increasingly clear to me that bureaucracy and the particular situation here (especially working with Parliament and communities of informal working women) prevents making long term plans easily.
It has been humorous to me that these seemingly last-minute arrangements made here come at the same time as the higher education "funding season" in the United States for the following academic year. During this time of year my department and other campus programs require a fellowship application where I must project my work and dissertation progress for the next year. On the one hand, the research I want to do with these craft "democracy" workshops seems to fall through one day and then be confirmed the next. On the other hand, I have to perform (through writing) my expectations of findings for these workshops and what I will be thinking about in a year's time. I feel generally that I operate somewhere in between these two time parameters, so both tend to frustrate me - especially since my research forces the two together.
The second workshop (25-30 March) remains unsettled: CAS will either remain in Nelspruit to conduct our own workshop without the support of the Parliament to collect cloths for our archive since we will be in an area that CAS could not afford otherwise to travel to. However, the Parliament Project is pushing to conduct a workshop in the Limpopo province that following week, as they would like to complete all provinces soon and they have only completed three. They have even suggested conducting workshops in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces next month, possibly while I am still here.
Being in the Mpumulanga province has an added benefit for me as a tourist - Kruger National Park - as Nelspruit is close to the Southern area of the park. The park is the largest game reserve in Southern Africa and its biodiversity is amazing. Over the Easter weekend, I am going to stay in a backpacker's dorm in Hazyview, a small banana plantation town located outside of the park. Since the bed only costs R80 a night (about $10 US), I can afford to take one or more guided wildlife tours into the park in hopes of seeing duikers (my favorite!), giraffe, rhinoceros, the elusive honey badger, and tons of other animals.
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