Selling ideas.

I am happy to report that my material for the exhibition is finally coming together. I have had the least expected people come up to me and offer to help. Some of these are the very people who were not so nice to me before. I had one fellow who refused to help me before call me and apologise for his bad behaviour. Apparently he was having a bad time then. Anyway, he was offering to help with whatever he could because as he put it, I had asked nicely in a very convincing manner. This made me feel better about myself; at least now I know it was not anything I said that annoyed him. from all the suffering I have had to go through trying to get material, I have learnt one or two things. People are not unwilling to help; they just need to be convinced that they should help. They need to be convinced in the right way using carefully selected and applied language as well as tone. I suppose peoples' responses are determined by how they are communicated things to. Since the photographer apologised, he has been very helpful; sending me stuff that he thinks could be of help. He is very well connected to people in high places, people who have the capacity to make things happen in no time. If we treat him well, I am sure he will prove to be quite helpful in the future as well. I think I will keep him as one of my networks.

Education is key.

Last week we held a seminar on migrants and human rights in South Africa. The aim of the seminar was to discuss and attempt to come up with solutions to the xenophobic violence in the country. The seminar was well attended; I suspect this was because we had a panel of well known figures doing the presentations. The media people attended as well. I did not attend the seminar I had a lot of behind- the-scenes work to do. When the seminar came to an end, we ushered guests out to the refreshments area were they were served some light meals. One of the women who had come in late walked up to me and asked why I was not eating seeing as there was plenty of food. Before I could answer, she started talking about how angry she was at the seminar organisers. She felt that she had learnt a lot of things about the law and that this knowledge should be shared with the rest of the country rather than shared with the already enlightened. She said she was not aware that the constitution protected non South Africans as well. She admitted that she has supported the attacks because she thought the law itself was anti- outsider. At that point I realised the importance of education in solving social issues. Education empowers people with the necessary information to make decisions.I was happy that at least someone benefited from the seminar.

The monster is my good friend.

The greatest lesson I have learnt so far is to make friends of colleages. Some of them are not the nicest of people but at one point or another you will have to work with them. I spend nine hours at work so I would not want to spend those with people I can not stand. There is one lady I did not particularly like at the beginning. She was rather rude and inconsiderate and she spoke ill of everyone. she was unpopular with everyone. I had an opportunity to chat to her during lunch one day and I was suprised. She was very nice and she suggested a good solution to a problem I was having. Today she is the one person I absolutely love; I can approach her with any problem and she will leave whatever she is doing to help. I am happy to help her as well so we just pick up the phone if we need each other's help. As such, some of the nicest people I have come to know are those who are considered to be monsters by others. I have come to realise that people do not take the time to understand each other which leads at the end of the day to the belief that some people are naturally nasty.

The horror of admin work.

I wish there was a permanent way of getting rid of administrative work. So far, it has proved to be the least interesting and most persistant thing I have had to deal with. Firstly, there are the machines. They are smart, efficient things that develop faults only when one has a deadline to meet. They never seem to work when you want them to. I am starting to suspect that they are conspiring against me. Then there are the non cooperative clients. They will not hand in the required paperwork when you ask them to and will not honour their promises to get back to you. They expect to be paid without submiting the necessary paperwork. When they realise that they have not been paid and are broke and want their money, they go from not phoning to calling a hundred times a day. Thirdly, there are the service providers who think they are providing the customer a free service. They come in, drink coffee, pretend to be busy and leave without doing anything. Some do not bother showing up for meetings or appointments and their phones are always on voice mail. When they do decide to come and work, they show up a few minutes before knock off time. Lastly, there is that device called a phone that will not stop ringing and on whose other end is the customer who thinks they know your company better than the person who started it. In light of the above challenges which are but the tip of the iceberg, one can surely understand why I think admin work is not the most pleasant.

So far so good.

My search for photographic material has been fruitful so far. Last week I went and got a quotation from a newspaper. I was so sure I would have the whole exhibition wrapped up in no time at all until I saw the price list. They are not cheap at all and I do not think I can afford to do bussiness with them at the moment. I did however get permission from a very kind publisher to use material from his text. As of today, I will be focusing on getting hold of one or two more photographers who have very interesting work that I would like to get my hands on. I am worried though because I called one photographer last week who left a bitter taste in my mouth. He made it clear, using the least possible words and in the shortest possible time, that he was not going to help me. At least he had the decency to keep the conversation short. I just hope his meanness is not some photographers' thing because I am not in the mood for divas and drama queens.

Baby in the making.

I am so excited about the exhibition I am working on. I consider it my baby except it is yet to be born. I can not wait to finish the research paper first so I can get it out of the way. I will slave away over the weekend and finish it. I have been writing reserch papers all my life but I have never worked on an exhibition before. Last week, on this very day, I felt like I had a crisis of epidemic proportions. I had to start working on the exhibition and I had no idea were or how to start looking for material. Thanks to my knowledgeable office mates, I gathered up a few phone numbers and ideas and set to work. The crisis is over for now; I have managed to get hold of a few potential sources who sound keen on providing works. The good thing is they do not want to be paid so I might just have more than enough for refreshments on the opening night. I have everything well thought out now; I just have to work on getting all the pieces together. For now, I am confident that things will eventually work out and my baby will soon be born.

Narratives of pain.

This weekend I decided to go visit a few friends whom I had not seen since the xenophobic attacks started in Johannesburg. I was hoping to get a few contacts who would be willing to share their experiences of the xenophobic violence. I intended to use the stories as part of an exhibition on xenophobia that I am working on at work. Idecided to visit a friend who had said she said she was going to be having a birthday party for her daughter. I showed up later on in the day expecting to be met by merry faces only to find a house filled with distraught faces. Everyone was speaking in hushed tones. They were discussing a neighbour who had gone missing when the violence started. He had been found dead.

The rest of the evening was dominated by discussions of xenophobia. What stood out above the facts and speculations of the discussion was the uncertainty,fear and pain in peoples' voices. This was one aspect of the project I had taken for granted; the emotions and feelings of the victims. As I sat there, I wondered how I was going to deal with the pain associated with the whole violent episode. Some of my key concerns at that point included the following:
-how do I begin to ask someone to share what is probably a raw wound at the moment?
-how will the stories that I hear affect me?
-will I relate to what others have experienced so far?
-how will my own feelings influence my handling of the whole exhibition?

The major challenge for me concerning the exhibition will be telling the story as I hear it. For me, the victims are humans, they are family and friends and I want their stories to sound like the experiences of living people. How then will I translate what I hear into narratives that capture the pain in the voices of the affected?