Rousing Readers

In addition to Lwandlekazi high school, I also have spent quite a bit of time at Ben Sinuka primary, an elementary school just down the street.  I really had some reservations about this because of last year’s fiasco at Pendla.  There was a whole lot of playing with my mlungu hair, and playing hopscotch at recess, but not a whole lot deeper connection.  Lwandlekazi has been the opposite of that this year.  I have 15 or so students who are like my brothers and sisters.  They call me at night to make sure that I’m coming the next day.  I’ve taken them to the doctor when they need to go.  We go to the beach, we go hiking, I visit their families.  I know them, like I really know them.  Their interest in me isn’t because I have blonde hair that they like to play with, it’s because they know me.  Anyway- I was nervous because I just wasn’t sure that I would be able to have that fruitful (and frustrating) relationship at the primary school level.

To some degree I was right, but on another level, the shift is what I needed.  When I started at Lwandlekazi, I was so amped to make this difference, and inspire kids, and change lives!  Whatever that means…..  Ya, so that isn’t realistic.  But at Ben Sinuka, I really am able to see academic improvement.  YESSSSSSS!

Basically, Blake and I have launched this reading program with a grade 3 class to provide intensive, one on one, extra help for each learner.  It’s this well researched program out of the University of Utah that has won all kinds of fancy awards for its success, so we were like, well shoot, let’s try it!  We each have a handful of kids who we meet with every other day for 30 minutes at a time.  We work on the alphabet, then read a few short stories, play some memory games, and work on pronunciation.  The first few times were mediocre at best.  The kids would just stare at me, and hold my hand, and call me mlungu (white person).  They would repeat what I would read, without looking at the page.

We are now in our second month, and I must say, my girls are getting better.  They are less fascinated with me, probably because they are more comfortable with me now.  We can focus on the lesson, which is going swimmingly.  The grade 3 teacher has commented to me that their comprehension is getting better and better. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS tangible success! And it feels good.

Then we open up the library to the other kids, who FLOOD in with excitement.  Literally 50 kids in a small room, all looking to color, or play puzzles, or read with us.  It’s quite entertaining.

 

 

Testing my exam week patience

Ok- two things on my mind this morning.  Well, three.  I want coffee.  My heart is palpitating just thinking about a nice Americano- like I’m not talking anything fru fru; I just would really like some proper caffeine.  Seven years in a coffee shop has given me some sort of notion that the African continent would have some decadent coffee for me, but wrong again.  The best substitute I can find is CAFFEEEEE (yes there really are 5 “E’s”)  It takes 3 scoops, scalding hot water, and a plugged noes to put me in my happy place. 

Ok, back to another pessimistic post.  Here in SA, academic life revolves around standardized tests.  Lots of teachers back stateside have a lot to say on this subject, but I never really understood why this was such a big fuss.  Well I do now, but (I think) in a different way than my fellow Americans. 

So in my hood, teachers haven’t shown up to classes for 3 weeks.  Yes, you read that right!  THREE WEEKS; the students are expected to come to school and sit there for 8 hours a day.  It would be one thing if there was some studying going on, or at least pretend that is the purpose of this laziness.  So, the kids who do come to school listen to a whole lot of Lil Wayne, some games of crazy 8’s are played, and a whole lot of napping.  My hour a day with them is now the ONLY prep work that they get.  And shoot, that’s stressful.

So I asked some of the teachers why there isn’t any lessons going on, and quite bluntly they responded with the kids don’t want to learn.  I have heard the phrase “you can’t teach a kid to want to learn” way too many times.  And yes, I suppose there is some truth to that, but come on, how many high school kids get up in the morning and say HECK YES, PHYSICS EXAM TODAY.  So why has the ENTIRE staff of Lwandlekazi (and lots of other location schools) adapted this attitude that it’s too little, too late.  Clearly, this cycle of poverty is not only draining on the kids, but these teachers, who were pretty great at one point, have lost their passion.

Ok- the third chunk of this morning’s frustration:  I have this student.  His name is Sine(Sn-ahhh).  “My student” is a relative term, because he rarely shows up for classes, and when he does, he sits quietly in the corner.  Anyway, on paper, he is one of the stronger grade 10 learners, and I decided to set my scopes on him. Last week I started to really hassle him about why he is so scarce, and what can we do to prepare for exam week.  We bantered a bit, and it eventually came out. 

*What is the point spending endless time working on trying to teach himself lessons that the teachers don’t understand.*  Ok, fair point.

*There is no way that he can go to university anyway, so what is the point coming to this useless school*  Why can’t you go to university, Sine?

*So maybe I find a bursary (cross between a scholarship and a loan), but the chances that I find a job aren’t good.  Lots of people go to university, get some degree and there is no work for them, then they have to worry about payments.  I can’t do that*  Ok Sine, so what are you going to do instead?  Don’t you see that you have all the capability to make a change to this system?  What are you going to end up doing without an education, be a taxi driver? (quite sarcastically…..)

*Granny Danny, I want to be a taxi driver.  I’ll make good money, and maybe if I’m good, someday I’ll own the taxi.  I can’t take chances and waste my time with this shit.*  HOW DO I FIGHT THIS LOGIC……

 

Education was the given path for me.  It was expected, and I never really questioned it.  Sure, I thought for 15 minutes that maybe I would go to a community college rather than Saint Ben’s, but the question of the value of education in my society never came up for me.  It really is an issue here.  How can I preach that an education is the only way, and its invaluable, and it will open doors, when they know very well that that might not be the case.  Easy money may be the answer for them?  Is there a tangible change in the foreseeable future?  I don’t know?  Does this mean that I change my approach?  I don’t know?  I do know that Sine has put a whole lot more thought about what makes sense for his future than I did in grade 10.  Flip, its confusing.

Showers of support

Well this weekend has been crazy.  And as depressing as my last blog was, I have a few truly remarkable things to report.

The day after I had my vent session last, a few things happened which have reinforced for me how incredible of a community I am blessed to be a part of.

First of all, I work in a parish office, and this particular morning a bride came in and expressed her desire to donate her wedding gifts.  Now this is a young girl, just starting out.  It isn’t as if she has all the mixers and toasters that she needs; it was she wanted to shower people who aren’t as fortunate as she. So what she did was ask her guests to donate nonperishable food items, rather than a more traditional gift.  And wow, did her guest rise to the challenge.  She delivered several boots-full (trunk loads) of food for Masinyusane.  I was able to help deliver the food to the students whose families really did need it.  Now how selfless is this chick!  She was probably my age, choosing to put others before herself on a day that should be all about her.  Makes me renege some of the things I said last week :/

Here is Fiks and Jim showing off the wedding donations.

The other event that I have been busy with this week is twofold, and quite devastating.  A pair of twin girls from Lwandlekazi, my school, suffered a huge loss this weekend as their shack burned down.  Shack fires happen relatively often, as they are often made out of wood, and they are so close to each other.  One goes up, several go up.  Anyway, these girls were already orphaned and living BY THEMSELVES, trying to make it through school, and now absolutely everything is lost.  I mean everything they had, ablaze. Devastating.

We made a plea for support at church on Sunday, and literally I am blown away by the support.  Generosity beyond what I could have imagined.  Clothes, shoes, mattresses, building supplies, wood, blankets, food, other household goods that one needs, and money; showered with support.  My phone has literally been blowing up with people asking what they can do! 

I have included a link to our fundraising site.  Any and all donations go straight to Zizo and Zizipho.  If anybody is able to help, these girls need it!

http://www.razoo.com/story/A-New-Home

So yaahh, the APARTheid lingers, but I’m not the only one who notices.  And I am surly not the only person who wants to help.  Despite the terrible fire that these girls had to go through, it really has been a reassuring week for me.

APART(heid).

I know that I am trying to saddle a dead horse here, but I really just find it so fascinating, so Im going to hash it out again.

So we all know that there is a lot of interracial tension- but I guess I always simplified that in my head by assuming it was blacks vs whites, and somewhere in there, the coloreds have a dynamic of their own. And yes, certainly there is counterculture existing beside each other, but it’s even deeper.

Let’s start with this term colored.  Now absolutely everyone has something different to say about the origins of the colored race, but its unanimously agreed that this is distinctively South African.  Essentially, colored means mixed race, so the closest thing that we would associate is mulatto peoples.  So sometime in the very distant history, there was some intermingling, and this new generation emerged, and became a separate community.  Different traditions, different histories, different language. APART(heid)

Fast-forward, under the old Apartheid regime, the Group Areas Act said that only “like” people could live with each other, so as intended, this perpetuated the separateness.  The goal? Because colored people had slightly better rights than black people, a lot of fairer skinned Xhosa people took up to being reclassified as colored.  They would go in, have their noes with measured, have a pencil put in their hair to check the nappyness, and their complexion tested.  They would give up the Xhosa language, and speak Afrikkans, and claim there has been some mistake.  Families were torn apart (APARTheid).  Heritage was abandoned.  Lots of feelings of non-belonging. So now- 30, 40, 50 ,60 years down the line, these communities as still APART(heid),

Let’s complicate this scene a bit more.  There are people from Indian decent, Malayan decent, and a hundred other nationalities. (And cultures—I’m really not sure what word to use, as each everything is intertwined).    And religion. And language. And employment opportunities.  And education opportunities.  APART(heid).

I think I have adequately complained that this was/is a complicated society.  And the apartheid worked brilliantly!  The goal was to keep people APART, and so it did. Well, South Africa is often called a Rainbow nation.  It is!  But the burning question is how intertwined are these bands of color?  The short answer is not.  So the Apartheid has been over for 20+ years, but funny how APART we still are.

Ok, one more twist to this story.  Xenophobia.  We have become home to lots immigrants from within Africa.  Many are coming from nations where strife is far worse than our issues.  Zim, DRC, Somalia, Nigerian, ect.  And hate crimes! Whoooooohft, the jargon that is used to dehumanize these people is criminal.  Unemployment is absolutely an issue, and lots of these African nationals are working, maybe for less than the local peoples.  So naturally there is battles about employment, and rights.

Well a few weeks ago, in my New Brighton hood, a teenage boy went to a Somalian owned shop to buy airtime for his phone.  There was a scuffle about the product sold, and the boy was shot.  New Brighton was a war zone!  Every shot was looted, and every Somalian was chased out of the area.  Their homes burned, their businesses gone, their lives destroyed.  And this didn’t stop in New Brighton; the xenophobic hatred creped into neighboring areas.  My students even boasted about taking part in the “Toy Toy” to avenge their own fallen.

I’m told that this is by no means the first time that this has happened, and with time, the Somalian businessmen will come back, and the cycle will repeat itself.  So even as the official Apartheid is no longer, we are quite apart. 

So I usually end my blog posts with some sort of uplifting feeling that I am having- or some sort of hope- but Im struggling today.  The only thing that I can think of is comparing this whole mess to the civil rights struggle at home.  It took 100 years after “freedom” for the right to vote to come.  And 50 years later, we battle with disproportionate education levels, and we absolutely are not free from the racial tension.  It will come.  I keep telling myself, it will come.