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IMPACT
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meeting yourself |
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Lincoln Plaatjie
Mark Hawthorne of the Cape Peninsula National Park with workcamp volunteers |
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You meet many people on a workcamp, including yourself," claims Lincoln Plaatjie. For the second year he has taken part in a QPC workcamp. This time, he co-facilitated with Nina Hartwig from Germany. There were six South African volunteers and nine from across the world, including Japan, the USA, Germany, France, Switzerland and the UK. For two weeks the volunteers stayed in the Cape Peninsula National Park at the Sunbird Environmental Centre at Silvermine, helping to clear 15ha of invasive alien vegetation. They worked all over the mountains—Red Hill, Newlands Forest, Constantia Nek and Silvermine. "By helping to protect the fynbos, which is unique to the Cape, we look after our natural heritage." Besides doing useful work, the experience of working and living with people from different cultures is very interesting. "Evenings around the campfire are the times for socialising. We learn each others' songs and dancing. The common language is English, but we also learn to say things in strange languages. I learnt some Japanese words and everybody was singing Shosholoza" explains Lincoln. "This is the time to share stories, and discuss politics … the world." The housekeeping is done on a rotational basis. Two people from the team will stay at the camp and prepare the food and clean our quarters. "We try and partner South Africans with a foreign partner, so we learn to cook new dishes, and the foreigners learn to eat and say uMngqushu." (Lincoln laughs as I have to check over and over how to spell it). The visitors also have an opportunity to meet people from local communities. The volunteers helped school children from Ukhanyo Primary in Masiphumelele, an informal settlement near Noordhoek to identify and destroy alien vegetation — pine, rock wattle (with thorns) and rooikrans. "We pack them in heaps to dry in the sun. Then they are burnt, and the ashes provide nutrients for the fynbos. After a morning's hack, back at the school we all played games and sang songs from all over the world." Another outing was to meet fellow workcampers of the previous year's workcamp at the disaster area in Manenberg where a tornado destroyed many houses in 1999. Some of the challenges were how to get shopping for the volunteers when there was no transport from their remote camp. Lincoln is also relieved that they did not need a First Aid box. "It was also sad that we had no camera to take photo's," he laments while listing the things he would like to improve for the next camp. Lincoln's great ambition is to finish his uncompleted schooling and then go to study nature conservation. Even as he describes some of the adventures they had, such as crossing paths with a puffadder, Lincoln's love of the land surfaces in the telling of his experiences. |
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