children – Herman van Bon Photography

A rest after the delivery

In my youth in The Netherlands parents told their children story that babies are delivered by storks. In South Africa I haven’t seen storks so it must be a relative; the heron.

Nearby our house is the pre-primary school Buzzy Bees next to the primary school Okkie Smuts and there is a nice flow from one to the other despite that Okkie Smuts is original an Afrikaner School which pre-Mandela was not allowed admit children with another skin colour than ‘white’. But times have changed for the better in a way although both schools are not state schools (parents have to pay for it). People from The Scheme (the area where most ‘coloured’ and ‘black’ people are living -designated by the past) who financially can afford to let their children have a more appropriate education send their ‘kiddies’ to this school. The Buzzy Bees, as I understood, started up as a kind of community project.

Pictured (opalotype processed) are children on their way home with and without shoes…. And they love to pose (natural gifted photo models)

Portraits of a different kind 4

‘Life in Ruins’.

Towards the Christmas celebration it’s not only good to think about them but actually it’s better to do something for all those street children around the globe. Locally in our village there is the initiative of ‘Bags of Love’. This is organised by the rotary and every year many villagers donate generously. But the majority of privileged part of the village does more such as stimulating proper education and paying school fees and even university fees for the ‘less privileged’ (hate those cliches BTW). As for myself I’m also engaged in helping ‘informal businesses’ with ideas, plans, etc. and I’m always surprised about the ingenuity of people living on the edge; even learn from it myself.

Air Craft 3

The children thing

The Last Resort

An imaginary based on an impression of a day outing of one of the local pre-primary schools in our village. They went, by boat, to The Last Resort at the outskirts of Stanford. The Last Resort is a place where children are engaged in ‘play with nature’. It’s entertaining and educational; certainly better than a day outing with computer games … 😉

And the airplane: just a bunch of high profile tourists who want to see the whales and shark from a high altitude… 🙂 🙂 🙂

Mandela Day in the village

Today we celebrated Mandela Day at the pre-primary school Funimfundo in informal settlement Die Kop near our village. For 67 (+) minutes around 20 volunteers from all walks of life worked in the garden or were engaged with improving the plumbing. And the children? They had their afternoon nap (more or less, see pics) and dreamt of a better world. One of the volunteers bought special boots for the occasion: “Food for all” is her motto.

The children became grown ups

A village awakes

Early morning I start the day with a doggy walk, followed by the obvious coffee, and most of the time I have my camera with me just in case of. There was a bit of mist in ‘Die Vlei’ (little lake) but not enough to make a faerie-like picture; still than I shot a few. Can you see the ducks? People going to work on their feet or by car and school children on their way to get educated by dedicated teachers (here in the village they are!); some in a hurry and others in slow rural pace. The sun is rising and lightning the moon. This is Good Morning in Stanford, somewhere in nowhere in South Africa!

At the cheese farm

Yvonne and I are not fond of mass-produced supermarket cheese with a rubber taste. Luckily there is a farm just outside the village where we can buy cheese with a real character. We buy in bulk, a few kilo every visit, and that makes it price-wise competitive with the known supermarket brands. But there is more to our local Klein Rivier Cheese Farm. Visitors are welcome to take the family with them and it is fun, especially for the ones from the city who think that cheese comes from the supermarket….

There is a beautiful picnic area, a play ground and some paddocks with domestic ‘wild’ such as goose, sheep, duck, turkey, Shetland ponies, goats and bokkies. On the gravel road to the farm you can also watch their free range milk producers. It’s educational in a way and above all fun. The cheese is a bonus!.

The Swing

Shot some time ago at the pre-primary school in the informal settlement Die Kop near our village. I’ve cropped he original image and did some HDR-toning; just in an attempt to add some sphere that (as I experienced recently) especially appeals to children.