Aspiring painters add colour to Saldanha

Ray Smuts A SPLASH of colour totally unrelated to the annual wild flower explosion hit Saldanha last week as school pupils commemorated National Water Week in a rather different fashion - with brushes and paint. The canvas was a 240-metre long small craft harbour wall and the National Ports Authority’s mandate to 80 aspiring young painters was to use their imagination to make the wall come alive in glorious hue of six-colour PVA paint. “We are not out to dictate what they paint but the theme is water, a precious commodity,” the NPA’s Miriam Tenyane, who co-ordinated the community-related affair, told FTW. The grade 6 and 7 pupils were drawn from eight schools between Saldanha, Vredenburg, Velddrif and Langebaan and each team (of ten) was assigned to decorate a certain stretch of the wall in a time span of four hours. There was much at stake. The three prizes for the most creative wall panels - a computer and fax machine from NPA and a camera and cheque for R500 from FTW - going to the top achieving schools rather than to individual painter teams. Some 300 T-shirts were distributed as well as one-litre plastic water bottles emblazoned with the logo: ‘Water is our Future’. Participating schools and painters also received certificates marking the event. Prior to the prize-giving port manager Eugene Kearns addressed the gathering on the NPA’s commitment to curbing water pollution.