Day 2 and 3: cabin fever

Day 2

We started blogging on our Jukskei project and the four groups were tasked with critiquing various websites.

Looking at the different sites was interesting, we got a lot of ideas on what would work for our Jukskei site and whatshould be avoided.

The Andaman Rising website was hands-down the favourite. Everyone was impressed.

The site was focused on a community in Andaman, southern Thailand that was hit by the Asian Tsunami of 2004.

The home page was stunning- a collage of beautiful pictures greeted visitors. Hovering your mouse cursor over a picture opened a little video/sound clip on the story. Clicking on the picture would reveal more on that particular story.

Scott, from the Christian Science Monitor chatted to us about multimedia sites.

The 4 groups later touched base.

My group includes Diana, Zaheer, Xola and Thabo. Our topic is the people that live off the river.

The other topics include; the people that live by the river, the history and future of the river and the enviromental issues concerning the river.

Day 3

"The Jukskei is not a river...it's more like a ditch or a donga". (Clive Chipkin)

We all arrived, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, excited about finally discovering where the Jukskei began and ended, it's origins, geographical stats and any other facts that could aid our projects.

Clive Chipkin (historian/geographer) kicked off our marathon of lectures, with his talk on the history of Johannesburg.

Although he was armed with colourful hand-drawn khoki maps and some cool anecdotes, Mr Chipkin admitted that the Jukskei didn't really excite him. He proceeded to give us the low-down on the history and geography of Jo'burg , just minus that of the Jukskei...

Dr Deanne Drake, from APES (Animal, Plant and Enviromental Studies) discussed the quality of water in South Africa.

The good news for us, is that Jo'burg's drinking water is of a pretty high quality. Drake said that it was unecessary for us to constantly buy bottled water, when a class of our own council juice would easily suffice.

People in Pretoria shouldn't give up on their Valpre or Bonaqua just yet, their water is not quite on par with ours. Their water source is the Hartbeespoort Dam, our beloved Jukskei river flows into the dam.

Seeing the graphs on the bacteria found at various points of the Jukskei was frightening. The Zoo Lake, linked to the Jukskei is e.coli- infested. The fountain in the centre of the lake is gushing out e.coli germs- not a pretty picture for the couples taking a romantic boat ride on the lake, through the fountain spray.

The group that is tackling enviromental affairs received a wealth of information and some interesting story ideas.

The wetlands project at the Zoo piqued my interest...it would have been a great topic to do, if I was in the enviromental group.

Paula Frey from the International Press Service (IPS) was last on the bill. She advised us on how best to tackle our stories, not to get too bogged down in the scientific facts, to give the story a "human face" and to write in english (no jargon!).

After back-to-back lectures, the groups met to brainstorm ideas for stories.

I am still keen on doing a contrast between a family in Alex and another in Dainfern/Sandton, my second story will be on the Waterfall development on Mia's farm.