I was supposed to get up at 7:30 AM, but my new little cell phone lost the time. I have to pull the battery out to get the SIM card when using my modem, and I guess that does it. So I got a call from Alan at 8:00 saying they were pulling up outside. No time for a shower or breakfast, I jumped up and ran out the door. Well, I did get dressed first. I may have to buy another SIM card so I don’t run into this again.
The car is packed full with little machines. Alan and Donna are in the front, and I hop in the back with Zenzo and the equipment. It is very cozy. I hope Zenzo doesn’t notice that I didn’t shower.
We cruise way out to a far away school. The morning haze gives great depth to the plains. The scenery is dramatic and we’re all fairly quiet as we roll along. Africa is beautiful land.
The school we arrive at has just built a counter to Alan & Donna’s specs. When we arrive we see that it is in fact a very high quality Formica-type material. It will make a great surface for mousing. The only problem is that it’s a pretty shallow counter; shallower than they had specified. It will work fine for the little Mac SE’s, but won’t be sufficient when they move to full desktop sized machines and monitors. Alan is a bit dissappointed by that.
While there we set up seven computers for them (all that would fit in the little car with the rest of us). Everything works, and we plan to bring a larger load of computers and do some instructing next week. The deputy principal is there watching us the whole time. I learn later from Alan and Donna that they think he’s just taking any excuse to avoid teaching class. The quality of the teachers and administrators is very uneven.
This is a grade school, and though I don’t think I encounter any children I do see some out the window at one point. They are all piling up in a line to get some food from the cook. She has set up a table outside with large pots and is serving the kids something which I can’t make out. The kids are not in uniforms, so this must be a poorer area. They play and struggle for a good place in line, but once the food starts coming they get orderly.
Alan and Donna also brought this school a VCR, TV, and some educational tapes several years ago, when they only had electricity via petrol powered generator. Alan sets the stuff up and we watch an interesting little clip that shows the population growth from 0AD to 2020AD. A map of the earth gets a small white dot for every million people. It is striking to watch the nearly stand-still progress for the first 1800 years or so, and then a literal explosion of people, like the earth was catching on fire in just the last 200 years. The habitable parts of the world are nearly obliterated by white dots by 2020. Every one of those dots represents a million mouths to feed, a million minds to fill.
We head to another country school that’s a tiny bit closer to town. It is still morning, but it is starting to warm up. This school is also for youngsters and is kept in very good shape. One surprise: they have managed to hire a technology teacher. They did this by having the principal take a leave for three months and used the saved money to hire this young lady. It is unclear what they plan to do at the end of the three months, or if she even knows that is how they are paying her.
She seems pretty young, i would guess mid twenties. She wears modern clothes and has her hair slicked back and to the sides. She tells us that there is a class of first graders coming in just 15 minutes, and it will be their first time using the computers. We do a quick run through to make sure the machines to make sure all the mice are working. The teacher has just started and isn’t really sure how to approach things. She is familiar with PC’s, but doesn’t know the Mac. Donna suggests she start them all with a program called “KidPix”, a basic drawing program that will get them used to the mouse, clicking, dragging, and selecting. The young lady agrees.
Zenzo takes the lead on fixing the more troublesome machines; those that start with a “?” instead of booting properly. He hasn’t worked on fixing a computer like this since he was in seventh grade, when he first met Alan in 2001 or so. We give him a quick walk through of replacing the hard drive on the first one, and he picks it right back up. He fixes the second machine himself. Then he teaches me how to lock the keypad on my phone which I am unable to figure out after bumping it in my pocket several times.
The class comes in and it is nice to see how things work when you’ve got a dedicated instructor in the room. She has the kids in order quickly, sitting at each machine. They are adorable five year olds. She greets them and they respond in unison. Then she explains, in Zulu, about the mouse and the screen and instructs them to do various tasks. I don’t actually understand, but it seems like that’s what she’s telling them.
Once the little boys and girls are experimenting, Alan and I take a walk around the room and help the kids a bit; showing them different drawing tools. This is a totally new thing to them, and each child is so different. Some just sit there and have to be encouraged to even touch the mouse, by physcially taking and placing their hand on it. Others move it timidly without much direction. Some are obviously in the joy of discovery and take great pains to cover the whole screen in scribbles and then erase it all carefully. Some look confused, some are concentrating, but most have a gleam of joy in their eye. It is a fun exercise for them.
One kid is ambitious enough to write his name out, which is pretty good for a five year old using a computer drawing program for the first time. I point this out to the teacher and she sighs in wonder at the little fellow’s efforts.
There are actually three classes like this, one after the other. All first graders, all first timers. The teacher expands her instructions each class as she gets her footing. By the third class, in addition to telling the kids it is a “mouse” (a word that has no meaning for them), she also explains it with the Zulu word for “mouse”. This makes the children giggle, and it’s contagious… we giggle too.
I ask Zenzo for a couple words so I can communicate with the kids a bit. He teaches me “Now you try” and “good”. With just these two bits I am able to help them a surprising amount through demonstration and encouragement.
As each class leaves, Alan and Donna ask the teacher if they can sing a song to the children. They sing a popular traditional Zulu song, the same one they sang the first night in the restaurant to our waitress. The kids’ faces light up when they hear it. They probably don’t have much contact with us funny looking white people, and I think the Zulu song makes us seem more approachable. One of the classes, with a little encouragement, joins in the singing.
I note that it really is sort of odd for a child to have these aliens come in and try to teach them things. They are very friendly and curious about us, but I imagine they can’t help but see us as outsiders to some degree. I think the classes today felt extra good because having the Zulu teacher and Zenzo run things made it all a part of their world as opposed to something foreign.
Donna spends an hour or so with the new young lady teacher going through the various educational programs that we have installed. It is a good orientation but has got to be brain overload. With just a couple visits per year, it’s nearly impossible to communicate all the needed information. But at least this teacher is dedicated to the computer class, so she doesn’t have to juggle another hundred things. I hope they find a way to keep her on board.
Just before we leave, we pause to watch the children sing their end of the day songs and be dismissed. They form a dense little square in the hot midday sun and squint up at the teacher leading them. They sing a Zulu song and then a Christian song about Jesus. I don’t think they know enough English yet to understand the words, but they pronounce things pretty well.
When the teacher dismisses them, like water from a floodgate they break apart and immediately fall into a run across the field and onto the dusty path home. A hundred tiny little bodies sprinting and cheering.
Several of the boys have a toy that is common here: a wire truck. Made from twisted strands of used metal wire, they are little truck frames, just a bit bigger than a loaf of bread, with tin cans for wheels. Rising up out of the back of the truck is a guide wire that enables them to push the truck forward as they run. In fact it is more clever than that, the guide wire is attached to a minature steering armature in the front of the truck that actually turns the front wheels when you twist it, just like a steering wheel. So as they run along they angle their wrists so the truck keeps going the right way.
Next we drive off and go to one of the favorite schools, Enyuneni. This is the school were the staff has really made the effort to get the most out of things. When we arrive, all the teachers have stayed after the children to work on grades and cirriculum. There are several Quadras in the staff room and they are just about all in use.
The schools we’ve seen today are very poor, but have a sense of pride about them. They are clean and cared for.
This school has had the macs for a while, but they had to move them to make room for the PC’s they just got. As usual, without support the PC’s are not running that well, so the Macs are preferred. But they are now in a room without sufficient power, so only half are plugged in. Alan, Zenzo, and I plan how to bring another wire down here without involving an expensive electrician. We come up with a plan that takes advantage of the soft mortar between the bricks and the window sill, which we are able to punch through and thread some wire. We’ll simply make it into an extention cord and plug the far end into another room on another circuit.
We head back to Dundee then. On the way we learn that tomorrow is a holiday, Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre. think. There is no school, though Alan and Donna have some tasks they’d like to do anyways. Zenzo tells us that tomorrow morning he is going with his mother to pick out a cow. On May 12th, they are having a traditional celebration for his older sister, and part of the tradition is to buy, kill, and cook a cow. Tomorrow, they are just going to look at the cows and maybe choose one. Alan suggests that I tag along, and Zenzo says it would be fine.
We drop off Donna who begins dinner. Then we take Zenzo home. His mom is there when we arrive, so we go in to talk to her. Zenzo lives in a pretty nice house by Sibongile standards. They have a garage, and more than a few rooms. The construction is more modern as well. There is a rooster and several chickens running around in the yard, though he says they do not belong to his family.
His mother reminds me a lot of Dr. Bailey on Grey’s Anatomy. A shorter, plump woman, she has a presence of great strength and a sharp eye. She hesitates at first, but then agrees I can come along to pick the cow tomorrow.
She works nights, 7 per week, at the local hospital as a midwife. She’s had eight kids of her own, and she has ten grandchildren too, and when I ask if she’s happy about number eleven which she says is on the way she flatly replies “No. It costs too much money.” She says she’s been present at well over 1000 births. They would do 10 or 15 a night sometimes; natural and c-section.
She and Zenzo’s father have been separated for a long time. She bought this house herself and has 16 years left on the mortgage; at about 2500 rand per month. She says “I knew I had to get a house, so that even if I died, I knew my family would have a roof over their heads.”. Her next dream is to have a car.
We plan for me to pick up Zenzo at 6:30 AM, meet her at the hospital and then go to the farm. She points at me “don’t be late”.
I drop Alan back at the trailer and I head to the Pick & Pay to get some foodstuffs. I’m out of breakfast things and I figure I shouldn’t be eating with Alan and Donna _every_ night, especially since it’s always their food. I remind myself that I’ll have to cook something sometime. If they’ll trust me to.
I get into a conversation with a local named George. He asks about my work in the schools and then seems frustrated that most of the schools don’t even have libraries. I mention to him that I had just recently seen the library at Thalani. His eyes light up, “You know who got that library in there? Me!”. Apparently he was key in the fundraising effort for a library at Thalani.
Like all the whites I’ve met here, within a few moments he’s got a concerned expression as he talks about the problems in the black community. His take is that there’s not enough people with good work ethics. He has a black employee himself who he’s kept on for over ten years now because she’s super, but he sees that as rare.
Here’s some context because I worry how this stuff sounds in America. I’m as sensitive on these topics as anyone can be, but I don’t want to water the story down. This is the reality over here, it’s visible every day and you can’t hide from it.
Let’s be enlightened and completely drop the race and culture issues. Fact: there are a large number of people here that don’t really want to work most of the time. I know that can be said of everyone, but in this case it is taken literally. Every society has a percentage of people like this; people who don’t have the ambition to succeed. But here in Dundee the percentage seems higher than elsewhere. I don’t know how much higher, maybe only a few percentage points. But it seems to have crossed a threshold that inhibits a flourishing economy.
There simply aren’t enough jobs. So there are many ambitous people who don’t have the opportunities they deserve. People like Zenzo have applied for many jobs but there’s too much competition. But there are also a lot of people who don’t want a job in the traditional sense. Stories abound of desperate people, who are ecstatic to become employed, who proceed to not take work seriously and get fired, or who leave after they get their first paycheck, only to become desperate again when the money runs out. And what I’m saying is that there are enough of those people that the job market gets touchy and the economy gets sort of trashed, and it’s ruined for everyone.
I’m not talking about anything racial in the above paragraphs, but unfortunately there is a correlation, and thus people here tend to draw conclusions. Problems are often discussed, with weariness, in racial terms. It saddens me, but again, this is their reality. These are complex issues which I have not even scratched the surface of.
I think the best hope is this: with what seems to be a functioning democracy, and with people who despite differences really seeem to want to work together, things will over time come into their own. Excitement, hope, and more than a little trepidation run through me when I think about the road ahead for the people of all kinds here. The future of South Africa will be interesting, no doubt.
Also, I’d like to give a shout out to Oprah. You go girl.
I retire to my room and chat with Sophie for a bit. It comforts me to keep in touch with her. Then I head over to the trailer for dinner, eggplant curry and grenadines for desert. Is that the same as passion fruit? I don’t know. They’re tart and tasty and full of crunchy little seeds that I like.
One topic that comes up at dinner is how Alan and Donna have quite a bit of influence, even though they aren’t part of any official group and have no real say in anything. It reminds me how one can have great power simply by taking initiative. Maybe that’s the only way to get real power.
They tell me a story about a teacher who got in a bit of trouble because of them. She was the lady from the school we visited the first day; Glencoe Primary. The one who said we should kill a chicken together. She was a powerful force in that school’s success with computers.
At some point after they’d already set up a lot of stuff without being invited, Alan called one of the heads of the school board and introduced himself. He said they should probably get together and talk. The man agreed and brought a whole group of high level administrators out to Dundee. They asked a lot of tough questions and then went to tour a couple of the schools.
When they got to Glencoe Primary, they were introduced to the lady who was taking the lead and making it happen. Only she was not a liscenced teacher. Sadly, even though she was probably one of the most practically qualified and competent people in the system, she was forced to step down.
As a high school dropout who believes he has proven his practical worth, it bothers me extra when a certification is more important than quality work. I’ve yet to encouter it myself, and it’s a shame that such an ambitious lady did here, in such a understaffed system.
But in the end it hardly mattered; they found a way to rehire her as an assistant of some kind, and now she’s back to teaching computers for the most part. A shame that the structures of school boards here (surely in the US too) don’t recognize practical value and benefit from it as much as they could.
On a similar topic, there was a teaching phenomenon a few years back in the area. A man who taught science, and whose students had amazingly high scores in their standardized graduate tests. He was being lauded as a great Zulu role model until it was discovered he had no official credentials. Immediately he was forced to resign, and even more unfortunately it was demanded that he pay back his salary.
But the school board isn’t always fouling things up. On the aforementioned visit, they asked Alan and Donna which schools in the district could most benefit from electricity. About half the schools in the district are without. Alan gave them a list of five schools, assuming nothing would come of it. When they returned the next year, all five of those schools had electricity.
I head back to my place, and turn in by 10PM. I have to be up early for the trip to the farm tomorrow.