All Eyes On Me

I got up super early Monday because I was afraid I’d oversleep this really important first step in actually doing something here with the people living here other than the ones who take my dishes away at meals. So after grabbing some quick breakfast, my group of six left for the school in Cwebe (the C is pronounced like the noise you make when you say tsk-tsk and shake your head, the rest sounds like “way-bay”) while the other group stayed back since their ride is only ten easy minutes compared to our 1+ hour ride on the craptastic roads of Cwebe. The day before we learned that we’d probably just be going and observing these four days only, so we wanted to go learn a lot about how they do things there.

So we get there and walk into the teacher’s lounge equivalent to talk to the teachers before going into the classrooms. There we split into three groups of two; I was with the 4^th grade with another guy and, thankfully, Neil, who gave us both at least a little sense of safety and familiarity, moreso the latter than the former. We then made our way across the concrete courtyard and into the class. Boom, all eyes on the white people (and the Jamaican). I realized my biggest anxiety about being in there (being a distraction to them) was pretty much going to happen whether I liked it or not. My idea was that we’d sit together in the back (for the aforementioned reason), but we split up and found three empty seat/bench things. My bench actually became empty after the kid I was going to sit with bailed in about a millisecond after he saw me coming, but it was begrudgingly filled by a kid who was late; I bet he’ll never be late again. We sat through a math/“maths” class that lasted twice as long as it was supposed to because the social science teacher, who was supposed to teach after math, just didn’t show up. Through our research for our group paper, we learned that teacher absenteeism is actually a pretty big problem here for whatever reason or another. So after about two hours of fractions and decimals (which makes no sense because they use commas instead of decimal points, what do they call decimal points?), we got a short fifteen minute break to reconvene with the other three, talk quickly about what happened so far, and watch some little kids pretend a plastic bottle was a soccer ball (rather well, to their credit) before heading back in. The next class was English, which I was excited for because they’d be speaking in a language I understood for once. We then spent another two hours (the English teacher’s also the natural science teacher, but she just forgot to switch topics) on the difference between singular and plural, which, by the end, only a slight majority of the 45-ish students I’d say really understood.

After that they had their “long break” (lunch and recess), so we left for the day to get back to The Haven in time for lunch. Cheese-filled hot dogs, while sounding like an American delicacy, wasn’t exactly the lunch I had in mind, but I ate one anyways because I was so hungry; when you’re used to gorging yourself every breakfast then try doing just some toast and fruit, you get hungry pretty quickly. Before dinner we had a relatively easy two-hour session just talking about everything we observed the first day. After dinner I skedaddled pretty quickly because I got my hands on a new book (“Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs,” good so far) I wanted to start. Books here are like drugs that we’re all on. The first of the Hunger Games books went around to everyone pretty quickly, and thankfully someone just downloaded the next two for our iPods, so should have our fix for the next couple weeks.

The next day started exactly the same as the previous one. During the “assembly” (something I failed to mention before; they all stand in lines and sing and pray together, it’s awesome to hear, especially how harmonized they are) I was glad I was able to make some eye contact with some familiar faces from the day before. I don’t remember any of their names, so in my head I give them celebrity names according to who they kind of look like. So far I have Sam Cassell (because of skin color only; he’s my interpreter kind of because his English is pretty good), Ryan Howard (actual nose size varies), blacker Cuba Gooding Jr., sad Diggy Simmons, blacker female Ice Cube, Jrue Holliday, Mos Def, Demarcus Beasley, the kid from Role Models, and Wayne Simmonds (does this give you an idea of the b:g ratio?), along with a few non-celebrity nicknames I’ll save for some other time. The first class of the day was supposed to be Xhosa, but the teacher decided to make up for the missed Social Science class from yesterday and just not have Xhosa. They’re really really flexible with both classes and timing of said classes, even though there’s an organized schedule of each class and the time period it’s supposed to be in. The SS class was a blast because we basically just learned about the nine provinces of South Africa, which consisted of coloring in a map of South Africa and pretty much nothing else. I’ll admit I had almost too much fun coloring, so much that I felt like a student again, asking around for certain colors and what color went where because I was too in the zone to hear the teacher. After the coloring we had a little break because the Math teacher wasn’t there. I asked some kid around me if he wanted to draw in my notebook, and as soon as I said “draw” a mob formed around my desk. These kids really like drawing, especially one kid (I call him Smiles McGee (not to his face) because he’s always smiling), who eventually was given the pencil by the other students. Even though Smiles McGee is across the room from me, I can tell he’s always drawing; I jokingly called him out on it and everyone laughed, so it must not be a secret to anyone else. He ended up drawing me, and other than the fact that my head looks like the crypt keeper, it’s pretty darn good for a fourth grader. Pretty much right as he finished we had the short break, when we were finally able to bring the soccer ball out. I assumed the sight of it would bring mass chaos and anarchy to the courtyard, but they kept their excitement in check and formed a circle with a couple of us and just passed and juggled it around. English just flew by for the next two hours, and before I knew it we were on our way out.

The third day was pretty uneventful. It was cloudy and kind of drizzling in the morning so a lot of students were late (since they basically use the sun to wake them up). We sat through a Xhosa test that was pretty much just a reading comprehension test, were missing two teachers, then waited twenty minutes for the Math teacher (who was at the school the whole time) to show up, don’t know what her deal was. The only interesting thing all day was when I learned that Sam Cassell is actually a girl, which blew my mind. While it sounds really stupid to not know the difference between a boy and girl, a lot of them really do look similar, trust me. The last day was bittersweet: on one hand we were all sad to know we probably wouldn’t ever be back there with all/a few of the kids we started making friendly relationships with; but on the other hand, it started getting obvious how much of a distraction we were becoming, so most of us felt it was time to stop observing and get out. Unlike the first three days we were there, we decided to bring out the technology today, so I was able to take a lot of pictures and take a bunch of cool videos of the kids in my class. Towards the end of the day, we had an entire hour off for reasons unknown (then), so we were able to mess around with all the kids and take pictures and videos of them; it was legitimately fun. Before we left, though, all unknown hundreds of the kids in the school gathered around the courtyard and had a little singing/dancing concert. I don’t even know how else to describe it, but it was just fucking insanely cool to watch; it was another one of those unexpectedly memorable moments that was just really special to see. After screaming our final goodbyes, we piled back into the truck and rested our hands from all the clapping (to keep the beat for the dances), shared photos and stories, and actually got to meet with the chief of the village, who was dressed casually in a track suit (unlike the feathered-headdress idea some of us (not me) imagined), which just goes to show how relatively lax a lot of the stuff here is. Back at The Haven, we Skyped with a sustainability class from Penn State and talked about climate change. It was a nice idea, and I’m not saying it was totally useless, I’m sure the people on the other end got something out of it, but we basically just sat there and answered their relatively-basic program questions. The whole thing was kind of built up to be really cool, whereas in real life it was pretty eh.

A little later we debriefed on the last day of our time in the schools and if we should/want to go back or not, which was never really decided upon so I guess when the time comes you can go back if you want. Even though it’ll be awkward going back after all of the goodbye festivities we got, I definitely want to go back; I mean, why not? Most of the people who don’t want to go back seem to be hiding their uncomfortablility in the schools with some unnecessarily esoteric or philosophical reasoning; if you haven’t noticed, people not saying how they really feel about things is an annoying motif among the group members here, despite overly-preaching the opposite. Anyways, we then split before dinner to pack for our weekend camping scant back to Dwesa. Yahfreakinghoo.