Festivals Day 1

Today was the day! We were all very excited as we gathered our gear and prepared to go off into the four locations for festivals – Alexandra Creche, Alexandra Stadium Carpark, Brixton, and Chaneng. The Chaneng team left early at 9am as they had to travel 2 ½ hours to get to their festival, while the rest of us waited for the taxis to take us later on. However, 2 hours later one taxi finally turned up so the Alexandra crew (all 23 of us) had to squeeze into a 15 seater mini-van and a very small hatchback for the hour journey to Alex – quite an adventure!

At the Alexandra crèche we were greeted by a swarm of excited kids between the ages of one and six and it didn’t take long to get the festival into full swing. Despite not having a PA system everyone had a great time. The Alexandra Stadium Carpark festival had an estimated 150 people come and enjoy the festival activities in the large car park area behind the stadium there.

The Brixton team had to wait even longer for taxis so by the time they arrived at their festival location they only had an hour to go. Fortunately, Ann Simmons and a team of volunteers from Brixton had a festival already running and our team just had start up some centre games. There were lots of little kids and even a golden statue!

After 2 ½ hours, the Chaneng team were greeted by six volunteers from Rustenburg who were really helpful, picking things up quickly when the festival started. The festival even featured a jumping castle, which in the first hour wasn’t used at all until one youngster jumped on and in an instant nearly everyone was on the jumping castle. It was so full of kids that the team had to turn it off!

When everyone finally returned back to the campground, we were very exhausted, so after a quick dinner and debrief it was straight to bed, ready for another day of festivals.