Body Maps
 
One reason that August was such a difficult trip for me was that we are losing the group of 9th graders who were our first students as 5th graders when our work at Sivuyiseni began in 2003.
 
 
 
I knew I wanted to have a special class with these students.  There are about 20 in all.  They are very talented artists and for almost a year I had been thinking of a final project that I could do with them.  Something big.
 
I bought a book about AIDS in South Africa in the airport on the way back home from our trip in March 2007.  On the book’s cover were two beautiful paintings, which I later found out were body maps.  They were created by a group of women, The Bamanani Women’s Group, based in Cape Town.  They are life-size images on which women traced the contours of their bodies.   They show the emotional and physical struggle of these women.
 
I adapted the Bamanani Group’s project that it would be appropriate for our students.  Students first worked in pairs to trace one another’s body on this great, thick craft paper I found in South Africa.  They each chose two poses that showed something about themselves (Lunga, above left, said, “It is like I am sometimes fighting with myself.”)  All that was done on the first day were the outlines.  Students were then assigned to include the highs and lows of their lives on a timeline.  We used the timelines to complete the body maps.
 
I asked them to focus on their physical beings by including any scars they have or the ways they feel about parts of their bodies.  I asked them to consider a part of their body they valued most.  Sibusisu chose his feet, explaining that they carry him everywhere he goes.  When I pressed him to find a way to illustrate the reason he so valued his feet, Sibusisu painted wheels on his feet, stating, “They are likes cars to my body.”
 
 
 
 
Mandiluve Matshaya wrote about a car striking and killing his friend as the two walked home from school one day when they were both 10 years old.  Mandiluve also included a story about finding his father after six years of not having seen him, mostly from memory and from interviewing members of his family.  He wrote of the difficulty of not being well-received by his father, “... he did nothing to make me feel good about having found him.”
 
 
 
Skelly included his entire timeline, which lists many births and deaths of family members.
In addition to adding his hobbies and favorite food, Skura Omelo included drawings of his mother, who died of AIDS in 2001, and his father, who died of cancer in 1998.
 
Unathi’s body map tells a story of a time that she and her family were, “...much more poor than we are now. Things are hard now, but they were much harder back then and there are things to be grateful for.”
Lelethu’s map is a celebration of her passions, including music, reading and her family.
It was great to work with just twenty students on this project after having worked with them for five years now.  Kathy and I also brought them to the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum.  It was the first visit to a museum for many of them.  The museum had just opened up after a year-long renovation.  Afterward, we brought them all back to the Hippo, where our group has been staying during the last trips.  We treated them to dinner.  It is incredible how we were able to feed twenty-five people for less than $100!
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