We've also made a few friends with very different backgrounds. I thought it might be interesting for you readers to hear the bits and pieces we've learned about what life is like for people living in South Africa without the resources (rich country, education, good job, etc.) we have.
I don't mean to tell heart-wrenching human interest stories or make any big political point (beyond promoting education) with this blog post, rather just wanted to record some of the things I've observed this year that haven't made it here on the blog yet. We've met some truly wonderful people, and I'm sure another year in this strange place will lead to even deeper understanding. I encourage you to read up on both the Shine Center and Grassroot Soccer, which I describe below - both do good work here, and if you're interested in donating any money, every non-profit can always use some.
Bernadette
Bernadette is a young woman who works as the daytime security guard at Jim's school. One teacher jokingly calls her "the cold-blooded killer." She is a tiny woman, barely five feet tall, with short black hair. None of the security guard uniform clothes fit her. She is one of the friendliest people we've ever met, with a big smile and a warm, open, curious manner. We got to know her just by stopping to chat at the gate each day on our way in and out of school. She is from Cape Town; she grew up in Mitchell's Plain, a township where coloured people (a term commonly used in South Africa to mean people of mixed race) live. Her native language is Afrikaans, but she also speaks English. Bernadette has worked in a variety of jobs and has also been to Canada - super unique for someone from Mitchell's Plain. She enjoyed talking with us about how cold it was where we were from, and has asked us if we'd write her a letter of support some day so she could come to visit the United States. (Tourist visas to travel to the US can be hard to get for South Africans and involve an in-person interview and proof that you have a job to return to in South Africa). Last weekend the school had an end-of-year cocktail party, and someone thought to invite Bernadette. She was thrilled. She asked Jim and I if we'd drive her home at the end of the party (otherwise, she walks or takes a taxi - mini-bus, but it would be dark and dangerous to walk home that late). We of course agreed.
As we arrived at the party, I told Jim that I was nervous for Bernadette - a party with these parents, all of whom are international and wealthy, and some of whom can be a little snobby, was a situation full of potentially awkward social interactions! When we arrived, she was overdressed and anxious, but as I spoke with her and watched her through the night, I was so impressed with her ability to be warm and friendly even in an unfamiliar place. She truly enjoyed herself, even if she wasn't always included in every conversation (although many people went out of their way to include her, something I was happy to see). As we were leaving, she said, "You see these kinds of things on TV. I wanted to come and see what it was all about."
As we drove her home, Bernadette explained that she was still living in a "windy house." I had never heard this term before. It is a nice way of saying that she lives in a shack. "I am working on it," she said. She lives there alone. Her mother sometimes comes to stay with her. She wakes up around 5 every morning, walks thirty minutes to the school, works for 12 hours, and walks thirty minutes home.
Earlier this year, she applied for a job at the school working as a teacher's assistant in the pre-school. Jim did a mock interview with her to help her prepare. She had worked with kids before, as a counselor of sorts for children at a homeless shelter run by her church. She would have been fabulous, and it would have changed her whole life. She could have moved out of the windy house. Qualified teachers applied, too, however, and they got the job. The day she found out, the first thing she said to us was, "It is OK. I am fine! I still have a job, and I understand why I didn't get it." She knew we wanted her to get the job.
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| Lizzie Mphande, age 26 |
Lizzie
Lizzie is the housekeeper at the house we live in, hired by the school. She is from Mzuzu, Malawi, a town outside of Nkhata Bay. She has two young sons who still live there with her mother. She moved to South Africa three years ago to try and find work, and has so far worked three different jobs as a "domestic" (domestic worker is actually the politically correct term for a maid or housekeeper). This week, after weeks of searching for a new job (her contract with the school ends at the end of June), Lizzie was offered a position to stay on as housekeeper here with the next family moving in to our house. She is so thrilled. I am relieved, too - if she didn't get this job, she would have suffered. That means, she wouldn't have had enough food to eat, and she wouldn't have been able to send any money home to her family, so they likely would have gone hungry some days too. Lizzie lives in another windy house in a township called Capricorn. This is one of the poorest places in Cape Town. Malawian immigrants are harassed and sometimes even beaten there. Lizzie's phone, grocery money, and who knows what else have been stolen off of her a few times this year.
But, Lizzie has told me, it is still better than in Malawi. There, they do not have money for tin roofs, and they just go out in the bush and cut down some brush to use as a roof. When that goes rotten, "Ooo, tsk tsk." (she shakes her head). We had been discussing rats (there have been a few here at 33 Pagasvlei); she started listing off the other pests in Malawi: rats, millipedes, snakes, spiders, scorpions, mosquitos... it was a long and scary list. Three of Lizzie's family members have been in the hospital for malaria at some point this year. And, surprisingly, that is the norm for Central African countries. On average 10% of the total human population catch malaria each year.
Lizzie started learning to type on Jim's computer this year. I didn't do the best job of teaching her - just set her up with an online typing program - but for months, she would work for eight or ten hours cleaning the house and doing laundry, then come in and sit at the computer on the typing program. She is also slowly learning to drive, being taught by an uncle who has a car. Learning these new things really makes her feel empowered - it is easy to see her excitement and joy in making progress. She has a boyfriend, a man from Malawi, who she met here in South Africa. They are making plans - they would like to get married, and then bring Lizzie's youngest son Moses, who is four years old, to live with them here. Lizzie would like to build her mother a new house in Malawi. Her father died a few months ago. Lizzie of course couldn't afford to go back for the funeral. Her family living here - an aunt, an uncle, a brother - all got together and sent the oldest uncle to the funeral to represent them (his employer gave him money for a plane ticket).
Libhongo
Libhongo is a little boy I tutor one day a week in reading and writing in English through an organization called the Shine Center. He is 9 years old, speaks Xhosa at home and most of the day at school, and loves to play soccer and throw dice. He is full of energy (would probably be on medication in the States) and talks a mile a minute. He calls me "Ma'am" and can't sit on his stool for more than four minutes or so. He lives in a township outside Somerset West, another wealthy suburb of Cape Town. His dad owns a car - a white van - and this makes Libhongo incredibly proud. Libhongo likes to draw pictures of cars on a dry-erase board and point out to me the various parts of the car. "See, Ma'am, this is the wheel for steering. And this, Ma'am, this is the back of the car. And here, Ma'am, see, ma'am, this is where the gas comes out of the back..."
Libhongo gets these tutoring lessons because the Shine Center works in schools in Cape Town. Libhongo's parents understand something about the value of education, because they drive him about 45 minutes to school each morning in the city so that he can have slightly smaller classes, a larger playground, access to this reading help, and better teachers.
Government schools across South Africa do such a poor job of educating their students that roughly half of them drop out before getting to the final year of school and only a small percentage of those that stay pass the exit exams and graduate ("matric exams"). (This article from the Economist did a nice job of summarizing the poor state of education.) "Matric" is a prerequisite for most entry-level jobs. A second prerequisite is to pass a basic numeracy and literacy test - things like understanding what 20% of R100 is. Many, many, many kids can't do this. My hope, and I presume Libhongo's parents' hope, is that Libhongo and his friends will be able to do this and more - maybe get a degree beyond matric.
Stephan
Stephan is a white, male Afrikaaner raising his family in Cape Town. He is from a small town outside Johannesburg, and grew up speaking Afrikaans. His father was a professional rugby player, but he preferred skateboarding. He's an interesting counterpoint to the people I've mentioned so far. Stephan works for Grassroot Soccer (GRS) a non-profit that works in townships across South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia to teach kids about HIV and how to prevent it. GRS does their teaching through soccer. I just finished up an 8-week pro bono project working with Stephan at GRS.
Stephan runs Coach Development at GRS. GRS hires "coaches" - young people from the townships they work in - to run its educational soccer camps. While a coach, these young people get training through the 2-year Coach Development program to make them more job-ready. I worked with Stephan on a few ideas to improve their program - ways to use American interns more effectively, making a pitch for more dedicated coach development resources at Grassroot Soccer sites, coming up with a strategy for connecting with local companies to mentor coaches, focusing effort on a list of specific desired outcomes that included passing that basic numeracy and literacy test.
One of the things I found interesting about Stephan was how hyper-aware he was of being a white, male, Afrikaaner South African. We had a few conversations about training that coaches receive from site staff, and the language this training is conducted in. Because site staff and coaches generally all grow up in the same township, everyone's native language is generally not English. So these sessions usually happen in that native language (here in Cape Town, at the Khayelitsha site, it is Xhosa). There are a couple problems with this approach, one being that Stephan and the HQ staff (who design the courses and want to oversee them) don't speak Xhosa, and therefore can't really do any quality control on these courses. And one of the major weaknesses we identified with the current program is the inconsistent quality of these courses.
I wandered into the issue as an American without much background knowledge, and said, "Stephan, why don't these sessions get conducted in English? All these coaches will need to speak English in their job at some point, and speaking good English is a pre-requisite to getting a job. They need the practice." Makes sense, right?
Stephan, however, knows that until 1994, the National Party required that all schooling be conducted in Afrikaans. "It makes sense, but I am not the guy to go and tell these people what language they must speak!" Stephan believes, and perhaps it is true, that he carries some of the legacy of the past around with him every day - that the way he looks (cropped blond hair, blue eyes, fair skin) and speaks (Afrikaans accent) reminds people of the terrible past under Afrikaaner rule, and that every decision he makes is still weighted with the privilege he once had and still has to some extent.
But Stephan lives in Fishhoek - a middle-class suburb of Cape Town - and rides the train (something only black people do). The tires were stolen off his wife's car earlier this year when it was parked inside their gate. And he is dedicating his career to improving life for the poorest, most vulnerable South African children.
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