The Best View in all of Stellenbosch

The Best View in all of Stellenbosch
Stellenbosch: the city and the mountains as seen from Kayamandi township

Saturday, April 20, 2013

XV. A Day on the Job


Thursday was the first day on the job at Prochorus, and although it was an earlier morning than I’ve had all week, I could feel the energy due to excitement keeping me very alert and awake. I also sensed a little bit of anticipation and nervousness as I headed over to Kayamandi, for the first time not just as a tourist or guest, but as a volunteer (still however, being mindful that I would be a guest in the office and the community). The driver dropped me and my fellow Prochorus volunteer off at the gate, which was open, but the building seemed pretty barred shut. Nearly alone in Kayamandi for the first time, I was surprised that I didn't feel anxious or vulnerable.            
            The Prochorus staff and volunteers welcomed us quite warmly at their morning staff meeting. It was actually really great to get a chance to talk to some of them before the meeting started and hear some of their experiences. There were two Dutch volunteers and two Irish volunteers who are all here for 6 months doing a practical component of their degree. Although a total newcomer, I felt already a little bit a part of the organization, especially when their regular meeting started with us, "the Americans," - as I think we will be always known there - sitting right there with rest of the staff. One thing I noticed was that prayer came up a lot, something that for some reason took me by surprise. I've mostly done service work through catholic organizations, though, and prayer is always a component of that, so I'm not sure why it took me off guard.
 Something quite noticeable and likeable about the staff meeting was the spirit of camaraderie among the staff and total integration into the community they seem to genuinely feel. They were talking about a lunch they had had the day before in a Kayamandi home and Pam (the director) and Denise (the only other non-Kayamandian staff member besides Pam) spoke about their conversations with different community members – and they spoke of them purely as friends and acquaintances, not as dependents, clients, or people they are helping. That was inspiring and wonderful to see. A good reminder of what community development is all about. 

   We have to write a research project about our work with Prochorus, so a lot of Thursday was spent with us deciphering and thinking what we could research in addition to just getting used to our new environment, so different from anyplace else I've ever been in my life. We asked Pam and Denise if they had anything in particular they wanted or needed us to accomplish, and they seemed to think they just needed extra hands in the crèches to help out. So that pretty much settled that our project would revolve somehow around the crèches. 

          After the staff meeting, we were sent to work at a crèche run by a community mother and involved with Prochorus. We walked over there, fording streams of this week’s rushing rainwater and leaping over giant muddy areas. I know that is a simple problem and rain and mud happen everywhere, but seeing the effects of the rain even the day after the storm passed made me comprehend a little better why the residents of Kayamandi might choose to stay inside on rainy days. They joke about themselves that "the people of Kayamandi aren't waterproof." Having trudged through the downpour the day before, I don't think anyone is waterproof to Cape Town area rain. My backpack and shoes are still wet from Wednesday...it's Saturday.  

Monica is the woman who runs the crèche we were sent to and where we will be working for the following Thursdays. It's about a 7 minute walk from the Prochorus center, so really close. Her crèche includes two classes, one for toddlers, and one for about 4-6 year olds. I was in the classroom for older kids, and the student-to-teacher ratio if Hailey (my co-volunteer) and I had not been there would have been 16:1, a lot higher than I'm pretty sure would exist in any American day care center. But then again this creche resembled nothing like an American day care center. I'm sure almost any mother in the States would have died had she seen a picture of this crèche and imagined sending her baby there. 

            We spent the morning playing with the kids and assisting in the "classroom." I put classroom in quotes because I never would have pegged the place for a classroom. It was just a side shack attached to her home. Corrugated tin and wood scraps making the roof and walls respectively. The floor was bare exposed dirt in a lot of areas, and the rest of it was rotting wood or what probably was once upon a time in some other world considered linoleum. There were plastic tables and chairs stacked in one corner. The other corner had a stroller piled high with tiny little second hand (probably formerly belonging to American kids) backpacks. The side wall had a sort of bookshelf with some old faded yellow notebooks, two or three books,  three jars of crayons - each with about 4 or 5 crayon bits, two or three pens, and a stack of scrap paper. The front of the classroom had a few posters on it, an alphabet (English) with picture posters that seems to be universal to every classroom where English is spoken...or in this case not spoken. It had a list of classroom rules, also in English (maybe that's why the kids didn't use their indoor voices or walking feet or refrain from punching each other?). There was also a South African Police Department inspection certificate. A list of the names of the kids in the classroom and what table they were supposed to sit at during snack time. A colored in picture of Jesus and the woman at the well. And a piece of lined paper with a circle, triangle and square drawn and colored on it. There was one little window, but it was just a cut out in the wall...I really wondered how it kept the rain out the day before. Have you ever complained about fluorescent lighting in a classroom? Well I've heard lots of people complain about it...but imagine if the entire electricity in the classroom consisted of a bare exposed wire running up the wall and across the ceiling to an uncovered old lightbulb. That was it. Of course the next shack over was about a foot and a half away (if that) and so almost no natural light got into the tiny room. And so it was nearly dark. It was crazy! 

The kids were a little rowdy and unruly, but that’s obviously a universal trait of kids. A lot of them were coughing and had snot on their faces, but again I'm pretty sure that's kids all over. They were nice and sweet for the most part, but spoke or understood no English, so it was slightly difficult to cross that barrier and communicate. However, it never ceases to amaze me how smart little kids can be, and soon figured out that me pointing to something and saying “isiXhosa?” meant I wanted them to tell me the isiXhosa word for the object and then I would tell them the English word for it. It was a fun game, and fortunately kids do not bore at repetition. They taught me all the words for head, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hair, table, chair, etc... Also, the kids thought it was SO HILARIOUS to teach me the clicks and watch me practice and do them horribly. I don't know how these tiny kids are able to make such loud clicking noises that just hurt my tongue and are so difficult to pronounce! But hey, it was another way to communicate to the kids so YAY for that. Some of their names have clicks in them, so it made it difficult to call to them by name. 

            The teacher was really sweet and quite welcoming to Hailey and me. She put us to work, which was great because I think not having something to do would have made us feel like we were burdens and distractions rather than positive influences in the classroom. At the beginning of the morning, the kids said some rhymes and one of them I eventually realized was Twinkle Twinkle, little star. They didn't sing it, and after the first four words, it quickly derailed into a non-word mess of sounds (poor kiddos really have no idea what they are saying; I don't understand why they insist on making them say things in English). They sang the South African national anthem - music is really important in Kayamandi. These kids are tiny and have beautiful and LOUD singing voices. And I felt like the teacher could be the next Beyonce if she wanted to. It was truly impressive! After that, it was prayer time and they said a bunch of prayers (I'm assuming - they were mostly in Xhosa but every once in a while  I heard "God" "bless" etc. Then the teacher turned to me and asked me to say a prayer. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to say a particular prayer or the Our Father or something but I decided to wing it and go freestyle. It was really nice to be welcomed in such a way. It was also funny to me that the teacher assumed I was Christian. I mean, I am, but I'm just not used to that worldview. It was cool. I just thanked God for bringing us all together and for making the rain go away and asked him for a nice morning and then asked him to bless the teacher and students for welcoming me and Hailey into their classroom and lives that day. I think only Hailey and the teacher understood what I was saying, but it was still great. After prayer, they sang more songs and then asked Hailey and me to teach the kids an English song. For some reason the ONLY song I could think of besides Twinkle which they had just sung was Baa Baa Black Sheep. Really? Anyway, so I taught the kids that. It was tough, and the teacher was insistent that we sing each line about thirty times. Even though the poor kids didn't know what I was talking about. "S" happened to be for "sheep" though on the alphabet picture poster in the classroom, so that was a lifesaver! I could point! Also, if you ever noticed, that nursery rhyme is a loop, and I didn't know how to explain that to the teacher, so she got stuck in this loop of singing it. And every time I wanted to end the song, she'd keep singing because she thought I had just started a new round, rather than ended it. Language barriers! Finally, I decided to just go for it and end mid-song. 

Some things in the classroom were just kind of surprising, and part of me wishes I did not instinctively compare everything to the US, but it’s what I am familiar with, so it is a natural instinct. The bathroom facilities were well, a bucket out on the front step. The hand-washing process that occurred only once took place in a bucket of water shared by all the kids. The supplies were minimal consisting of a stack of old invoices from South African Shell. We drew the famous circle-triangle-square pattern on the backs of these invoices and had the kids color them in (that's the third time I've seen that pattern; it seems to be the thing to do in school here). There was only one crayon per child; I remember the fight, whether passive aggressive or open, over crayons in Kindergarten and elementary school. Crayons were big deal and you didn't want gray or black or brown. You wanted a bright color, and preferably all the bright colors. Despite the near-shortage of crayons, the kids were quite content, and didn't really fight over them at all. I was shocked. Such a pleasant surprise! 

 The kids knew some rhymes in English, but clearly did not understand meaning of the words and numbers they were saying. I really don't understand the use of English in the classroom. The teacher knew fairly decent English, but the kids didn't know any. It's clearly not spoken in their homes, and the teacher used isiXhosa to communicate to the kids almost exclusively, so they're not actually learning it.  At the end of the morning, she even asked me to read a book to the kids - she handed me the Little Golden Book edition of Frosty the Snowman...obviously in English. I was like oh great, I get to read a storybook to kids in a language they don't understand and about snow...something they've definitely never seen. But hands, gestures, facial expressions, mimes, objects and pictures make the best props. There was a little kid with a hat on in my classroom, praise the Lord! Thank God they had taught me the words for eyes and nose in isiXhosa. It was tough to keep their attention at some parts, but I think they were so intrigued by this stupid American girl who didn't know any isiXhosa but was persistently reading a book in English to them anyway and practically dancing around the classroom while doing so.

 Also, for those of you who don't know this about me, I hate Frosty the Snowman. There are very few things in this world that I really really intensely dislike. And Frosty for some reason is one of them. I will do anything to change the song if Frosty comes on around Christmas time. All versions of Frosty are permanently banned from my Pandora Radio. I really don't have any good reasons for disliking a harmless little snowman so much, but you know how some people are deathly afraid of clowns? That's how I feel about Frosty. I think he's creepy and obnoxious doesn't even begin to describe the song. So you can imagine how I felt when in what "should" be spring (that's my Americentric view or Northern Hemisphere-centric view for you - I don't really mean it), 8 months safely away from having to avoid Frosty I was handed a book of the story of Frosty. It also seemed really weird to me, but either they only have three books and it is one of them or winter is coming (because it is) so they're trying to get the kids in the spirit of winter...which also makes no sense because Stellenbosch doesn't get any snow. I spent a good while trying to describe snow to them...It was exactly 4 months ago that I was explaining snow - and teaching my made up translation of White Christmas - to my kiddos in Nicaragua. But I survived the telling of the story of Frosty and now at least have one positive association with it. Oh the unexpected challenges... 

 The kids for the most part seemed happy and loved. And they were so loving, almost overwhelmingly so. They all wanted to hold my hands, hug me, kiss me, and show me their coloring work. Their one English word was "teacher" which they probably said in total, oh I don't know, maybe a thousand times that morning. 
  The teacher made tea for Hailey and me which was really nice of her. It was kind of funny though to be treated that way. And then it was time for us to leave, but the teacher asked us when we were coming back again, and told us with a huge smile that we had made her day. Yay!

We spent the afternoon working with kids in the Kayamandi library - yes they have a "library." It was tiny but it had some books and a computer lab. We were in the computer lab helping the kids on an English literacy computer program called Reading Eggs. Some of them were really good at it, some of them clicked the answer in the right hand corner of the screen EVERY SINGLE TIME, and some of them couldn't really even use a mouse. Most of them did not speak English at all, but a few of them did and it was fun to have conversations with them and ask them about life and school and Kayamandi. And as is universally true for primary school kids, their favorite subjects were recess, lunch, and soccer. They get out of school really early - the first ones showed up around 1:15. The national law says they have to stay in school until 2:30, but in really poor areas, such as Kayamandi, the teachers don't even stay until that time, so the kids just leave whenever the teachers give up for the day. Reading Eggs is an Australian program, so once again, I really don't understand how it can possible be effective in this context. Australian kids generally have English as their first language, so this program was designed for English-speaking primary school kids to learn to spell, etc. And these poor kids were so lost! Oh well, the program was donated to Kayamandi, so hopefully they will get something out of it... 

We decided to write our research paper on childhood development in the creches and its assessment. A lot of the kids who were even four or five couldn't count and didn't really even speak Xhosa very much. Most of these kids spent their babyhood strapped to their mother's back, not really learning, speaking, playing, or being spoken to. A lot of them couldn't grip a crayon and seem to have really underdeveloped fine motor skills. One of them couldn't catch a ball to save his life - it seemed to be beyond a normal uncoordinated problem. A lot of them really couldn't color. So we're going to study basic childhood development markers and see where the kids fall on the spectrum. And then see if we can come up with an easy contextualized and realistic assessment method for the creche teachers. One on one attention is pretty much non-existent in the classrooms so it might be a way for quieter kids or differently abled kids to not fall through the system and show up at primary school years behind and consequently disadvantaged for life. We'll see how it goes... 




             
         

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