It's not often that a jumbo jet gets to wear a bandanna.
But that's what's happening on Wednesday after hundreds of hands spent many hours tying together 2 600 bandannas for a record-breaking attempt at constructing the world's biggest bandanna.
The young girl in whose honour the event is being held would have been proud.
Lindy Anderson was a pupil at Wynberg Girls High School, where volunteers put the finishing touches to the giant 32m by 32m bandanna on the school's sports field on Tuesday.
Lindy had leukaemia, and this time last year she launched the first Bandanna Day. Sadly, she died in February.
"This event is a tribute to Lindy Anderson and others who have lost the battle," said Tina Botha, executive director of The Sunflower Fund. Botha's son Chris Corlett also died of leukaemia, in September 2000.
Botha set up the Sunflower Fund to recruit potential donors and increase the donor database of the SA Bone Marrow Registry.
The giant bandanna was transported to Cape Town International Airport on Wednesday to be tied around the nose of a jumbo jet.
Two other schools - Carter House in Pietermaritzburg and Concordia Primary in Johannesburg - have been involved, each with a connection to someone who has died of leukaemia.
The schools tied together hundreds of bandannas and sent them to Wynberg Girls High, where they were joined together last week. It took the whole school working for an hour-and-a-half to join the sections, said head of service at the school Jenny Jordan.
Teachers, pupils and volunteers from Pick 'n Pay have been responsible for the final bandanna tying.
September 1 has now become the Sunflower Fund's Bandanna Day, a day on which to wear Sunflower bandannas, the proceeds of which go to the Sunflower Fund to heighten awareness of leukaemia and the role of bone marrow transplants in its treatment.
The logistics of getting the giant bandanna to the airport also required some working out: "It's incredibly heavy, it took about five of our workforce to drag it into my classroom," Jordan said. The services of a truck with cables and cranes were donated for the day.
The 2 600 bandannas used for the giant bandanna will be distributed after the event at schools as part of the educational campaign to raise awareness of the bone marrow registry.
- To find out more go to www.sunflowerfund.org.za