August 4 2016 – Sawubona

Greetings and Sawubona (Good evening in Zulu) – It’s about midnight here in Cape Town; I’m totally exhausted, but will attempt to tell you a bit about what is going on.. and then head to bed. Some chance that I will only give you a brief summary and then finish tomorrow night –

Began pretty early this morning with a stroll down to Long Street to find a camera store. I didn’t take my large Nikons to South Africa, and decided instead to opt for a small digital camera. But somehow the cord that transfers the images from the camera to the computer or the charger, is totally broken. And it turns out that no camera store has this charger cord. So, I’m relying on the iPhone..  Will be interesting. And I hope that I can get the cord situation fixed since it’s difficult to have just one photo source.

After my stroll I met up with Chris and Alexis and we headed to Philippi for our first meeting of the day with the executive director of the NGO – but first made a quick stop to visit with, and make a purchase from, “the samosa lady” who has a stand  on a little side street near where we are staying. Chris has been buying samosas from her for 6 years… She remembered him immediately. But there wasn’t any parking close by (Chris has been driving since he knows his way around, and remember it is British driving). So Chris double parked (on a somewhat busy street, but many other cars were also double parked) and I said I’d jump into the driver’s seat and drive around a few blocks if anyone forced us to move. Chris “ran” to get the samosas and Alexis and I chatted. Then a loud siren went off, and we realized the police were forcing us to move. I quickly jumped into the driver’s seat, but just as I started to move Chris came running to the car. He had seen the police and decided to run back. That then added about 15 minutes because we kept circling to find parking as we were now determined to get the samosas and bring them to the meeting. We wound up parking about 6 blocks away – and I got to meet the samosa lady… delicious and well worth being 30 minutes late to the meeting! But meetings don’t ever seem to start on time here in Capetown… so no big deal.

Went to Philippi and had a good meeting discussing the program options for next summer; lots of good ideas and possibilities. From there we headed to visit a school in the township – 8^th grade through 12^th grade with about 1,600 students. It’s a free school in the township so it is 100% Black. Despite “democracy” (as everyone refers to the change after the end of apartheid), schools are very very segregated as are neighborhood, most especially the townships with “coloreds” in better townships than Blacks, and Whites not living in townships. The schools are also complicated as there are free public schools, public schools that charge a range of fees, and private schools Obviously the poorest children – predominantly Black – attend the free public schools. Having visited schools in many developing nations, I found this school in quite good shape – brick, two stories, no graffiti, designed around a courtyard (that was concrete – no green at all. But it was structurally sound. Met with the principal who was great – very funny and knowledgeable about the township area. Had a nice attitude about education and schools as safe places for the kids in the area. Also met a sort of lead teacher – really like a vice principal, but I think the school doesn’t have the funds to pay for a vice principal, so she teaches four classes and also has the role of administrator – not an easy job. Kids are all in uniform and very polite and welcoming.

All teachers in the Black schools are black and paid far lower than teachers in the white public schools and vastly less than teachers in the private schools.

The “vice principal” took us around and we visited about four or five classes and then sat in on her English class for about a half hour, before debriefing. The classrooms are pretty depressing… desks and benches in rigid formation, screwed to the floor – 1950s style, blackboard and chalk at the front of the room; no AV, no computers, no books. In the English class they were discussing a “book” but the students only had Xerox copies of parts of the book.. and there were only five copies of the Xerox – to be shared by groups of about six students who huddled together to read the passages. The class was, unfortunately, very uninspiring.

Then we debriefed; administrators and teachers were quite forthcoming about their challenges and also their concerns about national education policy. A little more about the school:

• They have a library that was recently painted, but they have no books for the library
• They have 20 computers for either the teachers or the 1,600 students, but no workable software as all of the software they were given is out of date and cannot be downloaded; also very few teachers know how to use computers and there aren’t any teachers to guide students to use computers
• There is no space for any sports whatsoever (although students go to a soccer field at another school about 15 minutes away)
• It is considered an English speaking school, but most classes are taught in a native language spoken by people in the township; only the English class is taught in English; many of the teachers are not fluent in English.
• They have a science lab (sort of) but no equipment to do science
• About 1 student each year is accepted into the university system and there is no career training in any high schools (all of these courses were eliminated after democracy, in the hopes of leveling the education field and providing academic training for college in all high schools…

As mentioned in a prior note, unemployment overall in the country is about 40%; unemployment in the Black townships is about 65%… and the schools cannot really do much to address this issue.

Tomorrow we head to an elementary school in the same area… More about education tomorrow.

After getting back to BoKaap and doing some work, I headed to “first Thursday” art walk… and to meet some folks for wine… Eventually wound up at Marco’s for dinner – an African -owned restaurant with great food. We were treated royally since Chris seemed to know the whole staff, including Marco himself. Mike and I actually ate here a decade ago, so I was in comfortable surroundings too. We feasted on starters (roasted calamari and stuffed peppers) a platter of crocodile carpaccio, ostrich carpaccio, and springbok carpaccio, followed by main courses including an amazing lamb, a mixed grill, butternut squash, spinach, and pap. Great African band that played nonstop – clearly no union.

It’s really late, so I’ll fill in more tomorrow and have more on the election. Final vote tallies not done yet.. I think it’s all done by hand. I think that there will be coalitions formed including with the EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters). There’s some questionable ethics since votes in Johannesburg are not yet counted… ??

Take care…

Fern