12th March 2011
31 years old Jonas Gerberding aka liesoa bends down, holding an
"Africa"-stencil. A 12 years old girl looks serious, while she's
spraying into the stencil. Carefully Jonas takes the plastic away, both
looking to the red Africa, leaving on the wall. The girl studies Jonas
face, he nods towards the stencil, the girl stands up, looking proud.
The
Hamburg Artist is visiting the "Soweto Kliptown Youth", shorten to SKY.
In this part of Soweto rises one shack next to the other one, clean
water is only flowing out of the communal tab and a dirt road leads its
way through Kliptown along the railway. This is the situation you grow
up in Kliptown.
Some of the kids coming to SKY are orphanages,
others are coming to the SKY-kitchen, in hope for food at lunch time.
People struggling hard in this part of the township and SKY try to help
the youngest of their citizens with different kind of programs. That's
why Indra Wussow introduced Jonas to SKY.
Jonas decided to share
time with a couple of youngsters, doing what he loves most: painting
with spraycans. "With the workshop I wanted to give them the opportunity
to learn how to use spraypaints and stencils", he said. "I had a plan,
what to do in this workshop. But in the minute they got a hand on the
spraycans and the stencils – you couldn't stop them." So they're
painting the wall at the entrance at the SKY-complex. "As they were
obviously having fun, I cancelled my plans and sticked on helping them
and giving advices, while we were spraying the wall."
Rayka Kobiella
