It’s all fitting together... :)

So my time has nearly come to an end. I have only 16 days left here at Thembelihle and I really can’t decide whether this year has gone quickly or not! I have a huge bucket list of things to get through before I leave, but don’t know if I will be able to finish them all in time for my flight!

I’m hoping to have one non-busy day before I leave where I can really enjoy the children’s company and reflect on the ups and downs of the year! I’m snapping up my last lot of photos over the next two weeks and sorting through all my stuff to decide what to leave to the kids and what I need to take home with me…hopefully not too much!

An update from Thembelihle Home School!

It’s so easy for me to talk about the big things that happen out here, but I forget to update you all on the everyday life out here!

Teaching has been going really well recently with the preschool now able to read short story books! It’s great to see their enthusiasm of their new found talent as they run up to me at break times with a colourful book in their hand. They can now correctly say English words using the alphabet I taught them, without saying words like ‘cabbage’ with a click at the start represented by a ‘c’!!! The two pre-schoolers with the lower ability are really coming on with their handwriting and can now spell their name! Dum-Dum’s words are less rarely spelt upside down (I still don’t know how she does it!). It’s amazing to hear them helping each other translate what they are trying to say to me in English.
Loli’s English is still poor, but we are getting there slowly. With his basic English and my basic isiXhosa, we make a great team trying to communicate…the smiles that spread across each of our faces when we both finally understand what each other mean is really satisfying, even if it’s taken 5 minutes, and a high-five to add to that smile reassure him I know what he’s trying to say! Amazing J

Group 1…the group who couldn’t add simple numbers at the beginning of my year out here, are now learning more complex maths and I have been teaching them how to add fractions! It’s crazy to think that calling a circle drawn on the board with lines segmenting it a ‘pizza’ makes so much more sense to the children than just the visual drawing itself! I have also been teaching them all about recycling, although I don’t think their knowledge on ‘re-using’ can be stretched any further…their use of old bread bags to make balls to throw around in the field or tie together to make skipping ropes never ceases to amaze me!

Group 2 are learning all about Biomes in Natural Sciences and are applying their new knowledge of reading bar graphs to determine the temperature and amount of rainfall in each main biome of the world! In Economic and Management Sciences (EMS) they are learning about how the economic environment is connected to natural, social, political and technological environments. They are currently looking into a case study about how the economic decisions of a company called Richards Bay Minerals is affecting the natural environment of Lake St Lucia!

67minutes…

So the 18^th July saw Nelson Mandela turning 94!!! Madiba says that on his birthday instead of gifts, he wishes for everyone to do something nice for someone else for 67minutes - what a legend! Why 67 minutes? To represent the years that President Mandela contributed towards bringing about a just society in South Africa.

So, on Friday we squished around 100 students from a local school onto the tiny Thembelihle lawn for their 67minutes. They read poems, sang and danced for us, before handing over a donation of clothes and food for our kids…this is now a partnership which we hope to continue with the school for the future and one which will help Thembelihle greatly!

Happy Birthday Madiba!!! xXx

South Africa…an island from the rest of Africa

I was once told by a lady I met on my travels that in terms of development, South Africa is an island from the rest of Africa…

My winter holidays (summer for you lot up there on the northern hemisphere) saw myself and a small group of fellow PT volunteers take a well-earned holiday which took us from Kruger through Swaziland and up to Mozambique!

Kruger saw us staying in a camp out in the bush with animals clawing around our tents all night! We were lucky enough to see the BIG 5 in one day on a safari trip - our best sighting being the leopard which our guide spotted lazing high up in a tree about 30metres away. I have no idea how he managed to spot it, especially whilst driving, but the vehicle behind us nearly drove into the back of us when our driver slammed on the brakes!

We also visited Blyde River Canyon, and spent 5 hours walking down and back up again. The waterfalls at the bottom were well worth it though!

Swaziland saw us visiting a small homestead in a very rural countryside where we were greeted by a family who showed us around their rondavels and home-made contraptions used to cure a cold. This involved sitting under a canopy made of bent twigs with rugs thrown over the top. The device acted in the same way as a bowl of hot water with a towel over your head would in order to unblock your nose, but instead chunks of metal heated in the sun were used to create steam when water was splashed on them! Ingenious! We also had a go at curing our sore backs from picking up little rascals at work and sitting on long combi rides whilst travelling with the horn of a mammal which was prodded around in the painful region…not sure if it worked or just made it worse!!!

We then headed across to the border of Mozambique where all our troubles started and every traveller’s worry of money, passport’s, visa’s etc kicked in! We eventually managed to cross the border after I run across no-man’s-land and into Mozambique without my visa in order to borrow money from our combi-taxi driver to purchase our visa’s – it seems our plan to travel the width of Swaziland to get one cheaper at the other side didn’t work and we ended up running out of money!
Once in Mozambique, we managed to reach our backpackers and pay our driver back…we accidentally gave him a huge tip as we weren’t familiar with the new currency! Mozambique is a fantastic country and one which I hope to visit again one day! The fish market in Maputo, the people, the trees, the beach in Tofo, and the general vibe of everyday life!

I think after spending days travelling on dangerous buses with crazy drivers and scary combi’s through 3 countries on the continent, working with exchange rates and different currencies, seeing varying landscapes and meeting people from diverse cultures, I can now see what the lady meant with the ‘island’ theory…just!

PAINTING!

In my afternoons and spare time I have been painting the children’s wardrobes and re-painting a wall surrounding the home. In the process I have managed to brighten up the children’s rooms and brought some smiles to a few of their faces, whilst also establishing that gloss paint is a bit annoying and impossible to clean off brushes and rollers!!! I’m hoping to finish it all in time for me going home!

Youth Day

The association of Afrikaans with apartheid caused huge problems when around 20,000 high school students begun to protest in the streets of Soweto on 16^th June 1976 in response to the introduction of Afrikaans as the standard language of instruction in schools. Police responded with tear gas and live bullets and the occasion is commemorated today by a South African national holiday, Youth day, which honors all the hundreds of young people who lost their lives in the struggle against Apartheid. Back in August last year when I first arrived in South Africa, I visited the Apartheid museum in Johannesburg and it gave me a much better sense of the scale of the issues associated with apartheid and a greater understanding of the country’s past. Here at Thembelihle we joined the rest of the country and celebrated Youth Day with readings of the event to educate the kids and a celebration of young people just like them with music, singing and dancing followed by treats in the classroom. To the amusement of the children, all the staff agreed to dress in school uniform for the whole day…a commitment which ended up rather embarrassing as we were invited to a prayer session for a funeral in a rural village in the afternoon…BUT, I managed to fit into one of my students’ uniform and got the good ol’ piggy tails out!
A few days later, we were invited to another Youth Day celebration in Mthatha which saw children for various children’s homes come together to celebrate the day. Being the only adult representative of Thembelihle, I was invited to sit up on stage in front of hundreds of people for the 6 hour duration of the event. I gave a speech on Thembelihle to raise awareness of the home, but unfortunately the translator didn’t really understand what I was saying, so I’m not sure how much the audience understood! Being the only white person there I drew in a lot of attention and was prompted by both the organisers and the crowd to dance (on my own!!!) in front of everyone, to which I insisted I couldn’t dance! Ahh!

Busy busy busy!

So I’ve now entered my last few months out here in South Africa, and I'm as busy as ever…! Teaching is still my main role here, but I've also taken on other commitments alongside it!

Karate lessons in the evenings with Sindiswa are still going really well…she can now perform her first kata, do the basic kicks, punches and blocks and often comes out of lessons dripping with sweat…always shows it’s been a good lesson, along with my sore kidneys and red stomach from where I have acted as her punchbag/target!!! I'm hoping to get some of the other children involved too to make the class bigger and to share my skills with more of them and that way they will hopefully still be able to train together once I leave in August.

Many of my evenings are filled with homework help sessions for the older girls who go to mainstream schools…they are all in much higher grades (8-12), so I often find myself having to re-teach myself the stuff they are learning before I can help them! They are up to sort of GCSE and even A-level standard! Maths…ouch!

I have also found myself acting as a bit of an art factory, being asked to make cards, advent calendar style birthday gifts for nuns, making homework folders for the older girls, design and print off leaflets to hand out to visitors, update and monitor the website...so on!

I am still teaching the Sunday School and have got some designs ready to paint on the small sheds…although the winter weather has started to kick in and it has begun to rain heavily recently…need to get the paint brushes out soon! As well as the Sunday School, I’m also planning on painting the insides and outsides of ALL the cupboards/wardrobes in the children’s rooms…apparently white, but I'm hoping to get permission to paint them lots of funky colours to brighten up their rooms a bit! AND…all the walls surrounding Thembelihle and some of the doors…ahhh!

The staff here (mamas and social workers) have also asked me to teach them ICT as some of them have never even touched a computer before, so although I’ve already done a couple of sessions, I’m struggling to find extra time to fit in more! I’ve had to bring it right back to basics, from how to turn the computer on, to whether it’s the right or left button to click on the mouse. I’ve also been doing this in the evenings with one of the older girls who also requested lessons.

Think that’s about all just now…busy busy BUSY - AHHH! Mid year exams started yesterday so I have been busy getting the final touches done to all the papers and am now onto invigilating the exams!!!

A bit more of the South African experience

Around my busy working life, I have had the chance to travel a bit more of South Africa during my one weekend off a month. At the end of March, I went to the very contrasting city of Durban, famous for it’s curry and tried out a ‘bunny’ (basically half a loaf of bread hollowed out and filled with curry)! Between us, myself and Sarah managed to down a whole 2 pints of milk during the process of eating it – it was really that hot!

I’ve also been to Port Edward and went to the cinema for the first time 9 months and managed to not run down any banana plants whilst quadbiking through a banana plantation – score!

I’ve also been to see some very good friends at Lady Grey who are also Project Trust volunteers, teaching in the arts academy…unfortunately it was their school holidays at the time so I didn’t get to meet their students. This may have explained why the VERY small town felt a bit ghostly and empty. Surrounded by stunning views up in the Drakensburg Mountains, it was easy to see the consrast a couple of hours drive can make on the landscape. The following week the girls came to visit Mthatha…and one of them managed to have a panic attack (literally), hahaha!!! Won’t mention any names R****! ;)

A home visit!

I was given the opportunity to attend two home visits to ex-Thembelihle children…both of whom I had never worked with, but it was still a privilege to attend. Both children lived in the same village and we came with food and clothes donations - I managed to carry a huge sack of Pap on my head through the village, only having to catch it twice as it slid off my head! Everyone found it very amusing seeing a white girl using the traditional African luggage transport method – doh!

The first stop was to a teenage boy who was actually at school when we visited. We arrived at his rondavel which he shares with his Grandfather and dropped off the goods. Unfortunately his Grandfather is extremely frail and bed bound. Although he was only speaking isiXhosa, I could tell that he was either in pain or struggling a lot. The rondavel was very simple and had only one old bed raised on bricks. There was one small table against the wall with only a couple of pots and pans for cooking/washing, and an old rug on the floor. It was such an eye-opener to see what these rondavels are like on the inside and to meet the people who live in them, as I have only seen one before on a village tour organised by a backpackers hostel… It was such a privilege to meet his grandfather, and I only wish I could have met the boy too. He is apparently doing extremely well at school and has won a trophy and numerous certificates for his improvement, effort and achievements! We all here at Thembelihle are extremely proud of him and are hoping to continue to be able to support him and his grandfather in the future!

The second visit was to a teenage girl about a 10 minute walk through the village. She had been back to Thembelihle during the week to visit us, and we were able to provide her and her father who she lives with, with food donations, and also her new born baby with powdered food and other goods.

It’s so nice to meet children outside of the Thembelihle environment and see how South African’s really live and how much Thembelihle has helped them. I am extremely proud of both children and the way they are much more grown up and mature than many people their age back home in the UK…a real eye-opener!

Some sad news...

It’s always hard saying goodbye to children when they are discharged from Thembelihle. When I look back to the beginning of December when a large number of children left, I realise how far I have come and how many children I have worked with over the last 9 months. So many faces have come and gone and the Thembelihle family continues to change. I remember all of their smiling faces and all of the little quirky things each of them did that made them individual and special. It’s always strange and I often wonder how the children get on when they leave. In March one girl returned on a week visit during her school holidays. It was great to see how her English has improved and how her dreams and goals are keeping her strong and motivated and how grown up she now is…she gave us a helping hand at the home and was much more mature than she was before Christmas!!! I had a catch up with her and found out that she was doing really well at school and was really enjoying it, despite the 3 hour walk there and 3 hour walk back each day! Sometimes though, I guess it is just inevitable that things don’t always go right. Thembelihle was saddened this week with the news of the death of one of our children who was discharged back in December. A horrific death that no one would ever deserve and a story which highlights many of the dangers across South Africa…

Please keep your thoughts and prayers with her family.

Exams - round 2!

The beginning of April saw more exams which were meant to have been written in March, but with a busy month, they were sort of accidentally postponed until April! Oops! So more exam writing, invigilating, marking, and report writing has been done and the children’s hard work has paid off with another set of great exam results…a few were slightly disappointing, but there is still time for improvement as the mid-year exams are coming up in June!

Beach

So as Mum mentioned, March saw another trip out of Thembelihle for the kids. They hadn’t had one since the funfair back in September/October time so it was great to see all their smiling faces as they ran and splashed in the water, running and jumping over the waves, and stuffing their trunks/cozzies with disguisting amounts of sand…eurgh! We had a Braii, drew pictures in the sand and generally enjoyed a day out of the classroom and Mthatha (although I think I may have come down with mild sunstroke from the long day)! I’m hoping that when I return home to the UK I will be able to fundraise not only for the general running of the home, but also for days out like these as it really does mean a lot to the kids!

A visit from home

At the end of March my Mum and friend Sam came out to visit me and the children here in South Africa. Here’s what mum had to say for her visit:

“Arriving at Thembelihle Home on a short visit I was greeted by a group of shy faced children curious to see the mother and friend of their Volunteer teacher/carer.  Thembelihle is a home of safety with an ever changing family of children who spend almost their whole time within a compound consisting of a small classroom, living accommodation and limited play area, supported by several Mamas, Social Workers and a Director.  We were given a tour of the children’s shared bedrooms and living accommodation before seeing the classroom where they spend most of their day.

The children were wonderful to meet, and seem to adapt and on the surface accept their surroundings and situation. It’s great to see how they support and look after each other on a daily basis. Children, whose backgrounds have been hard and testing in a culture where local village women are still subservient to men.

Before their bedtime at 7.30pm, we joined all the children to listen to their songs and prayers.  A delight to hear as they harmonised with each other and the sound was very uplifting - something they do every night!

We experienced a VERY rare day out at the beach which all the children loved with a Braai, (BBQ), cooked by the bus driver and a day at the school helping the children with their lessons.
The trip gave me a real insight into Maya’s life over the past 7 months.  Being woken at the crack of dawn by children singing, chatting and playing games outside her bedroom door every morning to facing a full day of work planning, teaching and entertaining a group of little people with big demands. A very challenging experience for a young person not much older than some of the children she helps. She is also living in a very uninspiring town that has a long way to go to overcome struggles of crime, poverty, unemployment, AIDS and many other issues.  I can only say I am very proud of her.

Nawwhhhh, thanks Mum! Hope you and Sam both enjoyed your visit! Thank you for coming! :D <3 xxx

Responsibility

With the half way mark now passed, it was time for Project Trust to come out and visit us in South Africa. This was a good chance to reflect on the past 6 months and discuss how things have gone. For reasons that we won’t go into, my project partner has been repatriated, leaving me with even more responsibility than I already had! Not only am I now in the classroom looking after and teaching all 3 classes at the same time on several of the days the week when the teaching assistant is absent, but I’m also the most constant person in these children’s lives…quite a daunting position to be in but I’m actually really enjoying it and like the freedom which being alone has given me. I have also realised now how much the past 6 months have changed me, although I don’t think I will fully understand until I arrive back in the UK in August...

Anyone who is thinking of taking a gap year with Project Trust but are not sure of it….seriously just go for it - it really does change who you are for the better :)

Secondary Project!

Project Trust encourage volunteers to take up secondary projects whilst overseas, however the working hours and nature of Thembelihle means that I sadly don’t have the opportunity to get involved in the wider community as much as I would like to. However… a week or so after returning from the New Year travels I was asked by one of the members of the church who heads up the Sunday School whether or not I would be interested in becoming one of the two Sunday School teachers. Those who know me well will know that I’m not particularly religious and when I was offered the job, was a bit wary of the fact I would have NO idea what I was teaching the children, but I agreed and have once again thrown myself in the deep end and out of my comfort zone (a new challenge is definitely needed)! So far it's going pretty well although i'm currently getting the kids ready for Scripture Exams?!?!?

The Sunday school at Norwood Baptist Church is held in two small sheds in the garden of the main church. They are pretty run down on the inside with stacks of broken old benches covered in a layer of dust and crawling with spiders – not a great learning environment. So as well as teaching, i’ve also offered to do them up a bit; mend the furniture, clean it all down and paint the outsides. Actually really excited!

Travels…

So I have finally had a chance to see more of South Africa. I must say there is a massive contrast between the Eastern Cape where I am living and the rest of the coastline I visited on the way back from Cape Town, where it felt more like being in Europe than Africa! It was great to see all of the other volunteers and hear about their stories from the various projects across the country. It seems everyone is having a great year and really making a difference at their placements J Thank you Project Trust!

I had a jam packed and much appreciated break from the project, climbing Table Mountain on New Year’s eve, sandboarding the longest ride in the country at 350m, quad-biking, mountain biking (with pushbikes?…painful), and finally jumping, or should I say pushed off the world’s highest bungee at Bloukrans Bridge – the highlight of the holiday! – type it into Youtube!!!

Arriving back in Mthatha and Thembelihle was a bit of a shock, but it definitely felt like home and I was glad to be back. I am now well settled back into teaching and am loving it more than ever. I am looking forward to meeting the new admissions this year. My favourite lesson back so far has been Group 1 Lifeskills – “the 5 senses”. I have never had so much fun with peanut butter, a ‘smelly’ sock and a hairbrush which I promised ‘wouldn’t bite’ when they put their hand in the bag with their eyes closed! YAY!