UW in Cape Town – Sept 11, 2017

Greetings –

Wow – where to start.

Began the day by dropping students off (with the van) at three separate locations; Chris always leaves early in the car to get the three students who are placed at the high school (Sinethemba) there on time (by 8 am). The other groups need to be at their sites by 10 and I go with them. Usually we head right to Philippi and the sites are in close proximity. But today, some had to go to different locations for their organizations because of meetings and other factors. One of the organizations is going through some severe cutbacks and organizational changes, so the experiences are pretty real.

The day seemed to be good for most students with some exciting activities. One group dealt with fundraising challenges as well as learning from an after-school music and dance group how to do some pretty fancy steps in African dance and playing marimbas made of tin cans. The kids were awesome and our university students made a valiant effort to keep up! Another group set up shop in the library (where they could get Internet) to help one of the organizations develop some materials about their programs; and another group helped set lesson plans for some reading assignments.    

The school group taught math classes and a dance group. Chris was at the school for a few hours while I was shuttling the others to the various sites. He got to tour the school again – alone with the principal – and got some more scoop on what works and mostly what doesn’t work. So in the science lab (which is only used about once a semester because they don’t have supplies, and I think they lack a bonafide science teacher), people broke into the school through the roof and stole the overhead projector. The Department of Education eventually sent someone to the school to do repairs, but they put bars on the windows and seem to have ignored the roof access. They also didn’t replace the overhead projector so now there’s a holder on the ceiling for the projector but no projector. It’s like this everywhere. I noticed that in the early childhood center, there are holders in the ceilings for fluorescent lights but there aren’t any bulbs. The rooms are really dark. And it goes on and on and on.

But teachers, program folks, and the kids are unbelievably resilient. They persevere. The school administrators in this particular school are amazingly strong leaders, upbeat, powerful, and sensitive – amid all the issues they face daily. We learned today that every week there is at least one death of a student at each of the high schools in Philippi. Life is complicated, stressful, and unfair.

We are meeting one-on-one with students this week and that’s complicated in its own way. But we are getting a sense of what each student is or is not getting out of the program. Some of the conversations are challenging. To make things more complicated, several students have come down with some kind of bug – caught no doubt from being around kids all the time… and made worse by the fact that they are probably not sleeping as much as they should.

We ended late, and it’s an early morning tomorrow — back in the townships.. and tomorrow night to the play about the “Fees mush Fall” movement.

More tomorrow.

Fern