The past month has been yet another busy one, full of ups and downs! My work has been centred around exams. I had to write exam papers for all of the subjects that I teach, for all 3 ability groups. This was a time consuming task that swallowed up most evenings, but it is really nice to be in the examiners position for a change! It is challenging to phrase the questions in a way that the children will understand with limited English, and I resorted to a lot of “match the words to the pictures” questions. Then I had the task of preparing them for the exams. In lessons we revised all of the topics that we had covered, which is when you discover how many children were actually here for those lessons! Outside of lessons it gave me the chance to spend some one-on-one time with them to assist in their revision, which was actually very enjoyable and rewarding. They are much more focussed, receptive and eager to learn when there are not the distractions of the Thembelihle classroom! Some of the older girls have high aspirations to become midwives, teachers and accountants and have used this as motivation to stay focussed during exam time. It is brilliant that despite all of the setbacks they have had in their lives, they still can aspire to have careers such as this. And I hope that their time at Thembelihle home school will help them to realise their dreams. The past 2 weeks the children have been writing the exams, and we are getting busy with marking them and writing the all important reports. Many of the children will be leaving after exams are over to go back to their families either just for a ‘holiday’ or permanently. They need a report to be accepted into any normal school, so this is vital.
But it hasn’t been all hard work! We threw the children a Halloween party at the end of October which was a great success. They don’t celebrate the holiday in South Africa so for most of the children this was a completely new and exciting experience. In Art and Culture lessons we made Halloween decorations and pumpkin masks for the children to wear at the party, even preschool got involved with some Halloween colouring! It was also a great excuse for baking cupcakes! Me and Maya decorated the classroom with the things that the children had created along with some spooky candles. We also prepared some Halloween games – apple bobbing, pin the bone on the skeleton, ghost hunting and trick or treating on our door! We also made each child a little invitation to the party to make it a little bit special. We even dressed up as witches! It was such a great night, with everyone enjoying themselves – especially Maya and I!
We had our weekend off at Coffee Bay – again! Addicted to that place. I tried my hand at surfing again, though I don’t think I have improved much! It is a relief to be able to spend some time away from the project and be able to socialise. I think that is one of the biggest down sides to living at Thembelihle, it is very hard to meet anyone that you can become friends with, or find any spare time to socialise. So our one weekend off a month is precious! I’m looking forward to our 2 weeks off in January – we are travelling to Cape Town and then backpacking along to coast back to Mthatha.
With school coming to a close we are all very excited about Christmas! We will have a lot of new arrivals around this time, and it will be nice to have a new start next term with other children. Although it will be very hard to say goodbye. You can’t help but form attachments with them.
In terms of everything else that is going on here, we STILL don’t have a light in our kitchen, but I have finally got the TV working after 3 months of living here! Really getting into all of the South African soaps like ‘Isidingo’ and ‘Rhythm City’ - so bad it’s good? I’ve played about a trillion games of ‘Happy Families’ and ‘Uno’. I think the children are beginning to trust us a lot more, as they have started to open up to us about their feelings and about what has happened to them in the past. But sometimes it is really hard to hear.
Day to day rewards are slim, so it is about storing up all of the good little moments that make this job worthwhile. Yesterday two of the younger girls set up the classroom for us, picked us flowers and wrote a lovely message for us on the board. It’s these little gestures that remind me that being here is the most incredible opportunity, one that I am lucky to have.
