UW in Cape Town — PART FOUR 9/3-9/8, 2017

Molweni –

OK… so to get you up to the current —

On Tuesday students went to their assigned sites at NGOs and the school. We started the day with everyone going to one of the local Philippi high schools (the one where three students are assigned and whose principal had conducted the tour of Philippi for the students the day before). Sinethemba HS is a large township school with 1,400 Black students. The two-story building (no ADA) is designed with a set of “courtyards” with each of the physical structures parallel to the other (frankly quite prison-like). The very long buildings have outside corridors for students to move between classes (and to hang out on when they don’t go to the assigned classes).  The “courtyards” are all paved. There is a garden alongside the building that some parents are using to grow foods for the school, but it’s not overly attended and unsure how much of a yield they get.   

The original idea was to get to Sinethemba at 8 am when school begins and for all of our students to see the all-school assembly which we are told has a lot of singing and dancing and foot stomping.. We got there in time, but then were escorted to a faculty meeting where we were told that the assembly wouldn’t take place because the school was now in mourning as one of the 8^th graders (high school is 8-12) was murdered the night before. She was brutally stabbed by her “boyfriend” who apparently broke into her family’s shack because he was angry (he wanted to go somewhere with her but she told him she wanted to study – or at least that’s the story we were told). It’s not very difficult to break into the shacks. Anyway, no assembly and teachers were busy preparing for a memorial and raising money to help her family. Not too upbeat for our starting point. There also had been an attempted suicide that weekend. Life is not pretty here.

We left the three students who are assigned to the high school, but not until we did a tour of the school and stopped in several classes (average class size – 50 students), including a math class where they asked one of the students to show how she’d solve the problem given to the students. Fortunately, she’s a math major and she whizzed right through it and walked students through it. Whew!!! Then we headed to the other programs with Chris taking one team to Nali’bali and me taking two different groups to their sites.

Nali’bali works with child development centers – assessing and supporting teachers to encourage reading and also runs several “reading circles” for a wide range of people. The woman we are working with, Thabisa, is a doll. She is devoted, grew up in Philippi with her grandmother, and still lives in Philippi (I’m assuming in one of the more permanent structures which are also part of the township – not everything is shacks.) In the mornings she goes to child development centers all over Philippi for about 2 hours and in the afternoons she does the reading clubs. Students go wherever she goes. There are about 35 four- and five-year-olds in one class with just one teacher. There aren’t any lights in the classrooms (they have the fixtures for fluorescent lights on the ceiling, but no bulbs – probably stolen or just no access).

The room where the 35 students sit is about 12’ x 12’ at most. The kids are the most well-behaved four year olds I’ve ever seen. When I visited this morning, the students stood in unison to say “Welcome Teacher”… They then sat perfectly still and silent as I talked with the real teacher. And then when I said I’d stay for a short time the kids started an unbelievable repertoire of songs… some in English and some in IsiXhosa. They went on, song after song.. The teacher never told them what to sing. I think the way it worked was that one child stood up and selected a song and they all sang it.. and as soon as that was done, another student stood up and shouted out a title and so on… It was riveting.. all in this little tiny room in a small building (2 rooms) without any landscaping, with outhouses in the rear and a “play area” that we would quickly deem as unsafe.  I left two of our students there (today was their second visit).

CESVI is directly across from the Philippi Village. It’s a multi service NGO that deals with domestic violence (which is prevalent), HIV (still a big problem), after-school teen programs (including having a sound studio – except that they don’t know how to use it – installed by French students who were able to make it work, but apparently didn’t leave any guidebooks or train anyone), and they team up with the clinic next door to do AIDs testing. They also have a place on the premises called “House of Smiles” which is an abused women’s shelter (with about 20 rooms, kitchen , bath, small outdoor yard and vegetable garden, bathrooms. And they manage a recycling center which the women in the shelter work at (to gain skills?)

SAEP is a fairly large, multi-service NGO founded by an American attorney who is now retired and lives in Cape Town. They have four or five programs, but all focus on education. Programs range from early childhood education through to college support. All of their programs are focused in Philippi.

So, it’s an interesting array complete with the usual range of challenges. Some appear more ready to absorb our students than others, but everyone is hanging in.

There’s so much to explain and so difficult to do that in this email… so I think I’ll just get you caught up on my activities through today, including food… and then I should be able to find time to do the more usual daily reports.

I think I forgot to mention that on Saturday night, Chris and I met up with friends of his from when he lived here and ones I had met last year. After visiting their new digs, we went to a restaurant called Stack (in the Gardens district) which was quite upscale – located in a totally renovated house/hotel (that had burned down some time ago and just recently re-opened after a big renovation of the renovation). It’s a brasserie with a private club upstairs. Sunday was the Greek restaurant (in Sea Point neighborhood), Monday an amazing 8-course Indian meal at Thali ( in the Kloof neighborhood)  – we sort of rolled out given the amount of food but each and every course was fantastic. Tuesday we took the one doctoral student to a Portuguese grill.

In case you’re wondering… we drop the students off at the hostel around 5:30 and they are on their own for dinner, except for about 6 all-group meals that we have pre-scheduled.

On Wednesday, we took the entire group to Robben Island to see where Mandela was imprisoned for 18 of his 25 years of incarceration. It’s a sobering experience to see how isolated the island was and how prisoners who were not allowed to communicate and not allowed to speak their own language managed to work together an lead a movement. The ferry ride was choppy as it was cold and windy. Some students had more trouble with this than with walking in townships! The ferry departs and arrives at the waterfront (Victoria and Albert – or V&A). There is an exhibit about Robben Island as you wind your way through the line onto the ferry. After returning to the waterfront from the Robben Island tour (which by the way is led by former prisoners at the Island), the students wandered through the very upscale and very touristy waterfront — to get their “mall-fix.” There is one part that has an ethnic food court, of sorts.. fantastic food and could have been ripped out of Rockridge (Oakland for those not in the Bay Area). There is also one building devoted to local crafts so the students had a good time considering presents and other purchases..

After the students returned to 91 Loop, we did a “touch base” to see how students felt they were doing. Some of it was heavy; students really want to make an impact and the issues here are very complex and also very large. They also talked a lot about feeling very privileged, about sensing that when they are at the high school South African students see them (the Americans) as movie stars! It was good to have a chance to discuss things with the full group. Wednesday night, Chris and I went to a great Turkish restaurant a few blocks from our place called Anatoly’s. Really good Turkish/Middle Eastern food; the owner opened the restaurant about a dozen years ago; he’s from Ankara. Planning to do a cookbook by end of the year.

On Thursday, Chris drove the students who are working at the high school (since they have to be at their location much earlier than the others). I went on the van with those headed to Nalibali and CESVI. We put the ones going to SAEP in a taxi to the SAEP offices and from there they would be driven by one of their staff. Complicated all around… and gets more complicated with each day. No one here gives much in the way of directions and many of the sites in the townships are difficult to find – streets not labeled, numbers obscured. So getting to the early childhood center (ECD) was hard. She said it was right near a particular high school, which we could find on GPS. (Our driver is not very familiar with the townships and frankly I think he doesn’t get why we are not just going to nice tourist locations.) So then we spotted what looked like a child care center (?) and I jumped out to investigate. It was a center, but not the right one. The woman gave instructions as it was just around the corner. We got the students there and I went in to check that Thabisa (the teacher who is running the reading program) was there. She was not in yet, so I waited with the students…

Thursday, yesterday, it rained all day. It’s been grey and miserable for several days. Cape Town is in the midst of a serious drought so people are fairly happy about rain. But then it really poured… and poured. We met two of the groups at the Philippi library at 4:00 and then waited as the Nalibali people (who had relocated to the library for Thabisa’s afternoon activities: having 5^th graders record their stories on tape, which the UW students assisted with. Once they were done (and the rain was now serious) we headed to meet the other group who had been driven to SAEP’s office (confused?).. We then set out for the hostel.. and then Chris and I walked in the pouring rain to our place before heading to dinner. We thought we could brave the rain (even though our jackets were soaked) to walk to dinner close by… but after getting even more soaked we decided to get the car and drive somewhere – we ended up at an Italian restaurant on the water… where we ate and dried off.

Today, Friday, the whole group went to a conference sponsored by an academic organization called something like the English Academy. The theme of the conference had to do with language and colonization. It had been going on for the past two days. This was the final set of sessions. Students split up… I went to the session about theater as a means to decolonize language. The young woman (University of Cape Town alum from about two years ago) who spoke was amazing as she talked about the play she had written which had to do with the “Fees Must Fall” movement going on across the country —- students demanding free tuition for universities. Turns out the play is opening on Tuesday night so we are getting tickets for everyone and headed there on Tuesday… yet another change to the schedule. After the conference most of us walked back to the waterfront (some gift shopping) and then walked to the hostel (about 2.5 miles).

Tonight we took all of the students to a Muslim restaurant at the very very top of the BoKaap hill. The views were spectacular and food was good…It’s a very low key place with a simple buffet. Students gorged on the meal and seemed quite content. .We drove them back and heard rumor they were then headed to some special milk shake place they had discovered. While the university sort of expects the program to keep the students together as a group at all times and to be eating with them, we think this level of independence has already proven to be a strong model. They are on their own at their sites, and except for the group meals we’ve organized and the field trips they are on their own (actually in little mini groups) for the remainder of the time each day. It’s best here because moving about in a group of 12 or 14 would be totally embarrassing and difficult.

OK… that’s it for me I’m sort of caught up (at least chronologically).. and now I can start anew tomorrow with my escapades each day. This is a “free” weekend for students and they are all doing different things. Two flew to Johannesburg; some will climb Table Mountain; some will do more shopping; some are planning a hike; some are going to museums – etc. etc. I will be holed up trying to get my presentation together for my lecture at University of Cape Town… I’m really not prepared — yet. It’s on Thursday.. so I have a few days, but they are so packed. I also have to catch up on projects at FTA, so I will be pretty busy. Chris is going to see a friend who is a Congolese minister and he will attend church services. I would have liked to go, but I can’t keep pushing off all the other work.

More tomorrow.. without doing this report daily, I’m already forgetting so many details.

All my best –

Fern