Teaching myself to teach

I am struggling coming up with new blog posts.  I’m not sure if that means that I am getting lazy, or accustomed to my new life.  Let’s go with the latter.

Simply, things are really great.  Two years ago, I would have NEVER guessed that I would graduate, and land a job working with youth (especially hormonal teenagers).. Lets be real.  I've never really been supportive, or a shoulder to cry on.  I usually don’t say the right thing, and I get highly uncomfortable with most things dealing with any type of emotions… But I really do love this!  It’s a challenge, and I’m muttering my way through, but I have really made some connections with both the Masinyusane kids, and the Life Teen Kids. Sigh of relief. 

Since I had not even the slightest clue how to teach, I have been frantically googleing ideas.  Here is my favorite one that we have completed so far.

So here was the example.  I made copies of the students thumbprints, and enlarged them.  We spent three days preparing "about me" narrative to fill in the ridges.  They traced the print onto a blank page, and then published their narrative.

The result was far less artistic that I anticipated, but no less heartfelt.  I know this is hard to read, but I even made an appearance in this learners! :)  The bottom is very touching as well.

This is the good life.

Who knew college all-nighters would come in handy?

This weekend we had a bonding social for my teens.  We had a “stay awake” where they came at 7 and stayed through the night, and then served in the soup kitchen in the morning.  I was so jazzed!  This is something that I’m good at!  As many of you know, I pulled hella all-nighters to cram papers in last minute, and many of these successes were due to copious amounts of RedBull.

Well, I heard through the grapevine that the RedBull marketing team will sponsor different events with lots of free product.  Obviously I jumped on that!  Why wouldn’t  extremely over-caffeinated, over-tired teenagers be a good idea?  Well I soon found out.  We had 50 cans of RedBull, and they were gone in the first 90 minutes.  This made for great participation in hundreds of games of four-square.  And then midnight rolled around.  And then things got weird… The thing about energy drinks is you either have to keep drinking them, or drink them slowly.  We all crashed, hard!  With 8 odd hours left, I thought eating would soak up some of the liquid and give a new boost of energy.  Wrong again.  TEENAGERS DIDN’T WANT TO EAT MY COOKING…….  I am going to blame the fact that I chose to buy 4 pounds of vegetables, rather than the fact that I am completely lacking the domestic trait.  Thanks mom…

 

I'm probably missing the ball here.. My talents do not lie in tennis four square.

 

Life teens finest

My attempt to be healthy

Midnight braai masters

hit them pretty hard..

 

Anyway, we made it!  The trumpet player only had to hoot twice to wake people up, so I am deeming that a success.  Of all the games that I had planned, and juicy version of Apples to Apples was the favorite.  A lot of bonding was accomplished, and I have decided that I have a pretty remarkable group of teens, and while my body disagrees with another stay awake for a LONG while, I am excited to spend more time with these scoundrels

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African Superfanning

Rugby for example.  The world stops turning when there is a rugby match.  We are coming to the end of the Super Rugby season, which is  (I think) the good teams from the Southern Hemisphere (South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand).  PE is the Kings, but it is our first season in this league, so we are pretty green.  I went to a Kings and Stormers (Cape Town) match last week, and nearly all of the stadium was cheering for the Stormers because the Kings just haven’t developed themselves yet.  The cool thing is that there are several different leagues, domestic and international.  So for instance, the Springbok team is the South African team for the international league.  So all of these teams that are pitted against each other in the Super Rugby are actually team mates in several other leagues.  Sort of like the All Stars series I suppose, but the happen all year long.

 

No idea what's happening here, but apparently its some rugby tactic... Too good not to add :)

 

 

So, in an effort to counter act both the after effects of TAMSAK and my frequent visits to McDonalds, I have joined an ultimate Frisbee team!  I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into, and I still have now idea what’s going on.  About the only thing that I DO know is that it doesn’t involve a dog playing fetch.  Blake, the Masinyusane volunteer from Canada is pretty expert, so the team is quite receptive to him.  I do a whole lot of running and shuffling and shagging my Frisbees that don’t go in the direction that I intended them to go.  There is some scoring too, but I haven’t quite figured out which direction to run yet.  The team has a big tournament in October in JoBerg.  They all seem quite keen, but weird enough, the conversations come to a quick hush when I bring it up?  Maybe I will be running in the right direction by that time..

New Brighton Facelift!

As promised, here are some before and after pictures of the stuff that I, and the rest of the Masinyusane team, has been working on.

Years of neglect, and the cycle of poverty has taken a toll not only on the people, but on the buildings.  Jim (the founder of Masinyusane, and my boss) is adamant that a student feels better about herself if her environment is kept in a tidy condition. 

Jim hired old students who have made it to university to come home and help do some of this manual labor.  In a sense, I really like the efforts that we are making to be sustainable, and provide this support network to the kids who need it.  But my uptight, inner perfectionist was on fire.  Painting is meticulous, and a person doesn’t notice the 95% job well done, he notices the 5% of the job that is sloppy.  The trim, the cut in work, and the paint splatter on the ground.  A proper paint job needs to be taped off.  Well, #TIA, I suppose.  

I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to show these guys that slowing down, and proper planning can result in a far better end result.  Meaahhhhh, It mostly just resulted in me doing a whole lot of touch up.

Here is the gym that I spoke of last week.  It was dirty and dingy, with one flickering light in the corner.  The floor is crumbling, but that doesn't stop the 20 or so men in there at any given time working on their fitness!

 

Pulled everything out, and swept for hours.  This is Azola, a former youth leader that is now studying isiXhosa at university.  She was back for the winter holiday, so Jim obviously put her straight to work.

 So this pounding of the carpet happened for a few hours before we eventually gave it up and bought a new rug..

 

We had some helpers with the fresh coat of paint. (while blake sits..)

 

The boys were adamant that we needed to slap some inspirational quotes on the wall........ Im not very artistic..

 

This is a Tamsanqa High, just down the road from Lawandlkazi.  We spend a few afternoons here giving the building some TLC.

 

This picture sums up how I have spent the last month..

Finished product!

 

All in all, I am really proud of the work that we accomplished, but with that said, I think I needed this to remind myself that I sometimes need to chill.  Not everything is perfect, and there is always room for improvement, but I need to appreciate the work and the relationships that I am building.

This really is Africa

So Monday was supposed to be the first day back to classes for students at Lawandlkazi.  But oh ya, this is Africa.  I am trying to make #TIA a thing, but its not going well…. Anyway, the teachers didn’t show up for the first day, so some students stood around, and some ditched.   I had this big plan to play icebreaker games, but it obviously didn’t happen. #TIA..

A special note to Granny and pops, who I know are reading this: a hash tag (#) followed by some words (TIA) is called trending.  On social media like twitter, I can trend #TIA and a person could click on it and see all of the trends that have ever been typed.  So if in the course of this blog, I ever write #TIA, it is a reminder that This Is Africa, and all things are quite different!

When it rains, people don’t go to work or school. #TIA

When it’s the first day, the last day, or any arbitrary day that people feel like not being productive, school shuts down. #TIA

When the government doesn’t allocate the funds to the school, the kids don’t eat. #TIA

Anyway, yesterday was Tuesday, and half of the teachers came!  (glass half full).  I got there early to round up my kids, and 13 of us were there!  We played get-to-know-you games, partly because they are not back in the academic swing of things, and partly so they want to come!  I wanted to keep it short, but we were having such a good time, we played for nearly 3 hours!

The most #TIA game was absolutely the fact/fiction game.  I split us up into two teams; girls vs boys.  Each player wrote 5 “facts” about themselves on a slip of paper, put them into their team hats.  The boys drew into the girls hat, and tried to guess whose fact they drew.  I was a titch surprised that we had to spend some time defining truth statements, but once we got the ball rolling, everyone was very interested.  Most of the boys “facts” were really helpful!

“Both of my parents are unemployed.”  “My favorite sport is soccer, and I play goal tender.”  “I have 7 sisters, and 4 brothers.”

The girls were a bit more tricky.

“I am a beautiful black woman.”  “I am happy.”  “I am kind and beautiful.” And my personal favorite, which there were 7 of the same: “I am a born again virgin.”

Well, at least I know that we can spend some time working on objective statements!

 

#TIA..

Perspective

Where to even start with this week?

 

First of all, shout out to all of the brilliant friends of mine who read and responded to my plee for ideas!  Too kind you are J

This week was full of exciting experiences!  Last weekend there was an arts festival in a town down the road, so a few girls trekked over.  It was brilliant! There were tons of theater performers and other mediums of artists.  My inner hipster was on fire.  SOooo this whole living simply plan of mine sort of folded at the market..  I was so gun hoe to really stick to not buying myself anything, and trying to be as frugal as possible.  BUT R20 SCARVES!! (That’s a bit less that $2) And sunny g’s for R15! I am now a well accessorized, and broke volunteer.

 On Monday, it was one of my kids from the township birthday, and I had promised him an ice cream from my favorite restaurant, McDonalds!  I roll up in my new scarf and ray bans, and I am feeling extra nice, so I splurge on a McMixa (a McDonald’s combo meal that I am all too familiar with.  It is R15, or $1.50 for a burger, fries, and ice cream).  I am regretting it the whole time I’m ordering it, thinking to myself that now I’m going to be eating a whole lot of McMixa’s for a whole lot of birthdays….  So we sit and chat, and I obviously gobble down my burger.  My student doesn’t touch his..  I’ve got places to be now, so I’m dropping hints that he should hurry up.  I go to the bathroom, and when I came out, he had his food tucked down his shirt, all sly-like.  I didn’t even think, but I asked him why he was smushing his burger.  He said that he was just going to take it home and share it later….. I drove him home, feeling like a slob.  True story, bro.  Here I am, proud of my new wardrobe, mad at myself that I bought this kid a birthday burger, and here he is… hungry and ashamed, but has the self-control so save his McMixa for whoever at home needed a bite to eat…. Perspective.

Other bits of the week were spent giving different Masinyusane projects a facelift.  At two of the schools, we did some painting and landscaping.  Ok, that’s a lie.  I did painting, and I watched everyone else do the landscaping.  I always thought I was a pretty capable handywoman.  That is not the case when it comes to any shoveling/pick axing/lifting.  The end result looks tenfold better though!  We now just need to come up with a way to prevent the goats from stealing all of the freshly planted greenery! J.

One of my favorite projects so far has been fixing up the gym.  In the heart of the location, Masinyusane has worked to build a community of men to sustain a gym.   It’s a really nifty program because at any given time, there are 20 or so guys in there beefin up, working on something productive, rather than some of the other township lures. Holy masculinity, though.  The square block around smells of straight boy!  For the last few days, we have been working on sprucing up the place.  It took two hours alone two beat the dirt out of the rug.  A fresh coat (or six) of paint, and a good bleaching has really helped cheer up the place!  Maybe now some women will be drawn it?

Obviously, I have been taking artistic before and after pictures.  I will get them up soon!

 

Oh, and I came across the following link this afternoon.  Feels good to be validated once in a while!

 

http://www.fastcoexist.com/1682348/millennials-genuinely-think-they-can-change-the-world-and-their-communities