The Fire Desire Poi and Staff Community ventures into Diepsloot informal settlement for the start of their Peace Poi Project 

After a few months of planning and looking for a suitable location, things finally came together. We found a project in Diepsloot called Wings of Life

After meeting with Glen van Halter the project manager she was excited about us wanting to take poi to Diepsloot. The poor children in this area live in some of the worst conditions imaginable with little hope of breaking the cycle of poverty.

To teach these kids poi and create a performance group to empower the children of Diepsloot, this is our vision.

We want to provide these children with an opportunity to concentrate their efforts into something constructive. Besides the mental and physical benefits, POI is providing them the chance to earn some additional income for their families who so desperately need it. Doing poi will also keep them busy and so reducing the chances these kids will turn to crime and drugs

We arrived at Wings of Life in Diepsloot one sunny Friday morning. We were on our way to meet a representative of the South African Department of Arts and Culture about our proposal to bring poi to Diepsloot. When we first entered the room there was a very quiet and reserved man. We handed him our proposal and gave him a run through on our ideas. 

He browsed the pages with little interest and said what is POI?

We then took him outside to do a demonstration. Our demonstration happened to fall at the same time as the kids break time at the project. We gathered everyone around and asked them to form a circle around us. Merryn and I started performing and the cheers ran through the crowd. Children where clapping creating us a beat and whistling with joy.

When we were done it was a struggle to get back to the office all the kids were surrounding us wanting to meet us and talk to us about this new POI thing.

Back in the department’s office the quiet and reserved man was now excited. They had never seen anything like this before. He was intrigued and wanted to see a fire demonstration. We tried to explain fire is best viewed at night but he couldn’t wait he wanted to see it now.

Going back outside and trying to make space to perform a safe fire performance was near impossible, the kids were creating such a small circle around us. No matter how hard we tried to get them to make a bigger circle we could not. The kids in the back were pushing everyone forward trying to get a view of their own.

Eventually the principal had to send the younger grades back to class.

Our fire performance was filled with oos and ahhs as we spun our fire in the blazing mid day heat. The girls got scared as I weaved my staff behind my back and walked closer to them. Again there was clapping and cheering. All in all the demonstration was a huge success.

The representative was so blown away he wanted to know when we could start teaching. “Next Friday” we told him and off we went leaving him with the proposal, a set of poi and the idea of how empowering POI could be to the children.

More coming soon on our ventures into Diepsloot.