And the winners are...

Sunday March 21st

What an amazing day (sorry, have a feeling I have said that a few times but every day brings more precious moments.) This morning the kids continued to discuss their situations, looking specifically at the issues of violence – in the home, on the street, from the police…watching and listening to these children is sometimes so hard, they are so brave and bright and matter of fact. And Marcia, 15 year old Marcia, wow you should listen to her, that girl should go into politics, she sees the problem, works out a solution and is so articulate, she’d get my vote anyday.

This afternoon saw the football tournament come to a close, complete with yet more drums, vuvuzelas (stadium horns), zulu dancers, singing and stilt walkers. If the Street Child World Cup is anything to go by the FIFA world cup is going to be one very big, very noisy event. Anyway, on to the winners….I am delighted to announce that the winners were, drum roll plesse…India (yes, that’s right the team that lots of you helped to get there in the first place) , the whole team were delighted and really deserved to win. So a quick thank you to all you lovely people who helped make it happen. If you go to: the link below you can see them play. Yes, they are indeed now famous.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8579974.stm

Anyway, football is all very well but I can’t say I’ll be sorry not to watch anymore for a while, but it’s not over quite yet…

This evening was inspiring and for me a real highlight of the week. An evening that made me laugh, made me cry and filled me with pride for every single one of the kids and lovely Kieran. Tonight was the unveiling of the art exhibition, an art exhibition made up of all the kids work (including one of Kieran’s pieces) over the last week alongside local artists and photographers and it was located in the city museum alongside all sorts of amazing exhibitions and here was the work of children who generally come for pretty humble backgrounds, have had, at best, a less than adequate education and have lived on the streets other exhibitions were opening tonight but ours was definitely the one to be at. The kids ran around looking at their work then Precious (who has lived on the streets of Durban for years) sang so sweetly until there was not a dry eye in the house - well not amongst the adults anyway, then we all sang an African song the kids had been teaching us and there was banging of feet, shouting, singing and dancing – not quite what the museum is used to but one of the most moving and beautiful sights I have ever seen. To be honest the whole thing broke me, and I was not the only one, suddenly all the amazing moments, heart breaking stories and pure magic of this week came together and quite frankly it was clear that we were going to need to go out for a drink…

In the meantime, the exhibition will remain until after the FIFA world cup, a testimony to the potential and talents of each and every child taking part, and every night on the building opposite the museum the articles from the UN convention for the rights of the child will be projected onto it’s walls. Amen.