Kinship, assimilation and making home in the colonial city with Charlie Alexander and Barry Lewis

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The Liminal Space

theliminalspacepod

15 episodes

1 day ago

Welcome to The Liminal Space Podcast. The word liminal is used to describe being in between two distinct states, experiences or situations. We use it here to describe that point at which imagination and reality become blurry. We want to push towards the boundary of reality so that we can grasp a more positively imagined world. We curate space for story through conversation on each episode featuring a different guest/s speaking on the stories that ground them, and how they navigate the reality of now. The Liminal Space is co-hosted by Tristan Pringle and Rashid Epstein Adams.

Philosophy

Society & Culture

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Philosophy

Society & Culture

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Kinship, assimilation and making home in the colonial city with Charlie Alexander and Barry Lewis

The Liminal Space

1 hour 1 minute 18 seconds

1 year ago

Kinship, assimilation and making home in the colonial city with Charlie Alexander and Barry Lewis

Charlton Alexander is a son of Cape Town. He loves his wife Lauren and his son Reth, and the rest of the world in its beautiful brokenness. He is a Tour Guide/Facilitator looking to move through the (liminal) spaces that tell us the stories of the people and the land. He invites guests to the city to connect with the people and land in experiences that are life altering. ‘Charlie’, as he is fondly known, has a deep desire to see local churches sing more local (contextual) music, rather than importing music from the globe. He encourages this through dialogue, praxis and contextual Bible studies.

Barry Lewis is the director of UBU (Ubuhle Bakha Ubuhle / Beauty Builds Beauty), a company specifically focussed on developing the technology of Sandbag Housing in low income communities in South Africa. Formally an architect from the UK Barry arrived in Cape Town in 2009 and worked for The Warehouse Trust (NGO) before founding UBU in 2012, specifically working in an informal community called Sweet Home Farm in Philippi. UBU played the role of facilitator in the City of Cape Town’s UISP (Upgrade of Informal Settlements Program) project in the community, whilst developing the idea of the Process House, an incremental model of housing utilising Sandbags and EcoBeams all built by members of the community over a 2.5 year period. UBU’s mission is to activate and equip humans to self-build places of belonging, in both formal and informal contexts.

In this episode we speak about home, belonging, assimilation and Barry introduces us to a framework to ask different questions. We consider the idea that the questions we ask profoundly shape the solutions we get. We ask questions about Cape Town and the maintenance of the legacy of Colonisation and Apartheid. We also laugh a lot and learn about a beautiful friendship, or kinship, between two people finding their way in the world.

Charlie and Barry both speak about a Thursday night community dinner. This is hosted by an NPO called New Hope SA. New Hope relies on donations to host its Thursday night dinner, it is a great organisation to support.

Near the end of the episode Charlie names Sesihle Manzini and Jonathan Jansen as people doing work on the ground. Sesihle, through the vehicle of Anno Domini, focuses on storytelling and contextualising the South African situation. She recently released a documentary called A Piece of Ground which focuses on issues of spatial segregation in Cape Town. Jonathan is a community worker based in Manenberg doing important work caring for his community.

The music in Episode 5 is composed and arranged by Arkenstone (Rashid Epstein Adams), Pursuit and Common Hymnal, including a kalimba-centered reimagination of the latter group’s song “The Kingdom Is Yours”.