3 stories that define a week...

These last few days have flown by in a whirlwind. We’ve passed our three month mark in country and we will have been in our site for a month Saturday. Time truly flies.

I want to write down a few things that have happened in the last few days that have touched my heart. To stick with my tradition of prefacing everything…I’d like to preface the following by saying I retell these stories with no intention of glorifying myself. Instead I tell them because they happened and they are important to me.

Wednesday was my first ‘busy’ day here at site. I had a full day at the school plus our big meeting where we pitched our ideas to our principals (I’ll detail that later). So, it was imperative that I not be late to my key school that morning! It’s about a three mile walk and for safety’s sake I take the back roads…which adds an extra half mile or so to the trip. Thus as I was striving to be on time I was walking at a brisk pace (typical American).

Ahead of me on one of the back roads there was a very thin mother with three children in tow. Her clothes were worn and sun bleached. Her hair was hidden under a tattered head scarf. Her children were barefoot and snot nosed, dressed in a smiliar fashion. I was a distance behind them so observe dthem casually as I approached. A few seconds later one of the children stepped on something with her bare feet that made the child start screaming at the top of her lungs. She dropped to the dirt clutching her foot. Her mother came back to her but, as she was already carrying another child, could not pick her up. As she tried to hoist the crying child on her hip both children began to slip from her arms. Yet she tried to continue on her walk.

I’d had enough. I ran to catch up to them.

“Inshwarele Mma. A o kopa thue? Excuse me ma’am. Do you need help?”

She looked at me in shock, as most Africans do upon first seeing a ‘lekgoa’ speaking their native language.

I gestured to the child who’d hurt her foot. I tried again, “N’thuse?”

The child had stopped crying and was staring at me through her tears. I saw that her toes were curled up, but there was no blood. She had either stepped on a bee or a scorpion, as a swelling had begun on her foot. Both insects are common around here. I approached the child and whispered “dumela, hello.”

The little one stared at me, unsure. I smiled my biggest smile and stretched out my arms to suggest I wanted to carry her. After a beat she too stretched out her arms and leaned toward me.

I walked with this mother the rest of the way to her mud hut, her children silently trying to figure out this strange white person. When we arrived I set the girl down in the house. I said goodbye and as I was leaving the little one limped over to me and as I shut the gate she gave me the biggest smile I’d seen. My heart melted. I was so grateful for that opportunity!

To detail the meeting: it went fine. I had written up an extensive proposal which proved to be more or less unnecessary. It appears our principals want very specific things from us and it seems that if we do these things first we can pretty much do whatever else we want. That’s nice. But I’m a bit worried about the level of support our other projects will render…we’ll see. We have a LOT of work in front of us. As an aside, I just finished reading the book “Three Cups of Tea” about Greg Mortenson’s schools in the Karakoram region of Pakistan. It is the most inspirational work I’ve ever read. Each page is pertinent to development work. It’s a text that should be recommended reading in any graduate development program. It’s riddled with techniques and tips that we have been taught on Peace Corps. I’m glad for the verification that they work! (For example, Mortenson also agrees one should take things slow and get to know the community first. It seems like a no brainer but it’s difficult when you’re accustomed to America’s fast pace of life.)

Yesterday I had the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. From both I can glean pertinent lessons.

The high: I observed the arts and culture class at one of my secondary schools (the big one with over 1,200 learners). It was grade 6B. They had prepared a performance for me! I sat in the front of the class and watched all the children get up in groups and sing those tight harmonies only found in Africa and dance those rhythmic dances only found here. They were accompanied by a percussion section: two boys banging away on rusted coffee cans that had been fastened together with old wire. It was, perhaps, the most beautiful performance I’d ever seen – this from a former theater major who has seen countless plays on Broadway. It was heartfelt, happy and REAL. Tears streamed down my cheeks! I did my best to hide them but was still really embarrassed. After the performance the teacher asked me to get up and say something about what I saw. I got up and told them I had never seen such talent, no even in America, I told them that the music and dance in South Africa is very, very special and they should be very proud of it and never be afraid to share it! They were beaming at the praise and gave me a round of applause, hahaha!

The low: The next class was a 5B class on…who knows what. The teacher began the lesson by screaming (I don’t say the word screaming to be dramatic…I truly mean SCREAMING) at some kids who were getting some water from the tap outside the classroom. They all scattered, ducking as though she would hit them. She then screamed at the children in 5B for a good 3-4 minutes about how naught they were. She then began to teach the most Bantu-like class I had EVER seen.

“Today we are going to learn about the solar system. What are we going to learn about?”

“The solar system.” (Kids in unison)

“The what?”

“The solar system.”

Today we are going to learn about the…” (all together) “solar system.”

This went on for ten minutes…repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating until I wanted to jump out the window.

She then began screaming at the kids again. I didn’t catch why as her Setswana was too…well, angry. She then pointed out a boy who was sharing his bench with four other boys a few rows from the front.

“This is Neo,” she told me.. “He is very stupid, he is the worst learner in this class. Neo! Neo! Did you hear me Neo? You’re the most naught!”

I sat there, in the front, rigid. I knew better than to undermine her authority in front of the learners but I did not even nod at her imploring eyes.

She continued with the lesson – which I will once again reiterate was the worst lesson I had ever sat in on. It became time for her to assess what the learners had retained from their ‘lesson.’

They were to write the names of the planets in the solar system in order. Only she’d never given the order to them, not even once. Furthermore, the children didn’t have textbooks and could not look up the names of the planets. She didn’t even write them on the board. So the children were to miraculously pick the order out of the air.

Apparently some children had learned this before and they got 100$. They, the “stupid” boy, Neo came up to the front to have his paper corrected.

“Neo! Neo! Neo!” She screamed (again, LITERALLY).

She took his paper, crumpled it up and threw it on the floor.

In front of the class she berated him in biting Setswana. They, for my benefit she switched to English.

“You are so stupid! You don’t even try! You waste my time, you stupid, stupid boy! That’s it! Go, pick up your paper and go show Mma Lerato just how stupid you are!” (I’m Lerato in case that isn’t clear)

I sat there dumbfounded…I prayed silently, “what should I do?! What should I do?!” The boy was standing there his head hung low. He did NOT want to show me his paper. She began screaming again in Setswana, pointing at me.

Before I knew what I was doing I was standing with my arms around the boy.

“STOP.” I said to the teacher. The class fell silent. (Meanwhile I was thinking “crap, crap, crap what am I doing?!”) I turned to the teacher, “At least he tried,” I said.

“You call that trying?” She said, motioning to the paper.

I glanced at the crumpled mass under her feet, “Yes, I do.”

I picked up the paper off the floor, smoothed it out and looked him in the eye. “Let’s go work on this together.”

The children around us started to giggle. I looked up and addressed the class, “We don’t laugh at one another.” I said it as nicely as possible. The children stopped laughing.

Neo refused to meet my eyes, it turned out he did not understand a word of English (a fact that would make even this crappy lesson delivered in English unintelligible to his ears). His friend, who knew he didn’t understand what I was saying to him, came up and helped translate.

I kneeled at a desk in the front of the class as the teacher went on correcting the learner’s books. I grabbed a scratch sheet of paper.

I smiled widely at Neo. “Now, we need to draw a picture of the planets, label their names and then all we have to do is memorize them in order!” I smiled encouragingly at him.

My drawing brought several curious learners…by the middle of my mini ‘lesson’ more than half the class was nearly crawling on top of one another to see what I was doing.

I drew a big smiling sun, “What is that?” I asked.

“Sun?” Neo said.

“Yes! That’s the sun! Good job!”

I then asked each child around the table, in turn, what the names of the rest of the planets were. Each time they were correct I’d confer with Neo, “Are they correct?”

He began to smile as he’d nod, yes, in fact, they were correct!

At the end of my ‘lesson’ I handed the paper to Neo and said, “you’ll be fine.” The kids began to return to their seats. I held onto Neo for a few more seconds. I kneeled down and looked him in the eye, right in front of the teacher.

“You are NOT stupid, “ I said sincerely. I waited until he smiled at me before I let him go.

I fear, truly fear, what will happen to the children who are only told that they are stupid and ‘naughty’. Those are self-fulfilling prophecies. So, while I’m here to work with the teachers… I see now that it’s really for the learners. I’m so glad about that. If I can help these teachers to be better teachers the learners will benefit. Some teachers will never change… but perhaps the children will remember that one strange American who took the time to tell them that they are not stupid. Maybe they’ll believe it.

One last neat experience and I’ll wrap up this entry. Jason and I have taken to running in the evenings when the temperature decreases enough so it’s bearable. We have a favorite route that takes us out onto a dirt path in the middle of the desert. Well, children have figured out that around 6:30pm each day two white people will be running by their houses. So what have they started to do? Wait for us so they can run with us! It started with a few boys who would run a few meters and then turn around. Then more and more children joined our entourage.

Yesterday nine kids started running with us. They ran with us about a mile into the desert and kept up as we turned around to run back into town. Mind you we kept our pace a bit slow so as not to kill their little legs. But it was incredibly heartwarming! The children all ran barefoot over the rocks and sticks and other pokey things. Five girls from one of my schools ran with me the entire time. We took turns speaking in English and Setswana. We were able to talk about several things including what it means to be beautiful (I’m having that conversation a lot it seems).

They followed us all the way back to our house where we gave them two cups so they could drink some water from our tap in the yard. We talked about how important water is and they all agreed. It was cute. We then led them in some stretches so they wouldn’t be sore. We were half joking so it was a lot of fun.

Anyway, it was a really awesome experience. The children here can be great.