So, where are you now? Six and seven month update

I have received  a few distressed messages such as the one above! I’m sorry I have been off the radar for a while, but all will be made clear in this blog post.

Let me start in February. The new reward system I introduced in January is still working wonders with the children’s behaviour and their performance in class has been fantastic. Huge progress has been made! I have started teaching human geography to Group 2 and they seem to really be enjoying it. They have been learning about informal settlements, and they made some model’s of a shanty town to discover some of the issues (and benefits!) of living in these settlements. 

We also had a great time painting canvas’s with the children! These will be sold in Cape Town and overseas to raise money for Thembelihle Home. They loved it! But it was very messy! 

 

Valentines Day was a great excuse to celebrate! The children all dressed in “Valentines colours” of red, white or pink and we made lovely Valentines cards for one another. We also did some baking of heart-shaped cupcakes with yummy icing! 

 

We also did a spot of gardening – planting marigolds!

 

Overall February was a very enjoyable 6^th month at Thembelihle Home. Unfortunately it was my last. I am no longer a volunteer with Project Trust after many issues with the organisation and with the other volunteers of the organisation. It was very difficult to leave the children and the project, but I know that I now have the opportunity to make a difference to other people’s lives in South Africa. I can also see the progress that the children and the project has made throughout the last six months. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done, but also ultimately very rewarding to see the amazing effect you had on these wonderful children.  I will miss them every day, but I know that their unbelievable strength will guide them in whatever they do, and will hopefully lead them to achieve great things in their young lives. 

I have no intention of going back to the UK, or of stopping my voluntary work. I am completely committed to voluntary work, and more than ever can see the value in the work I have been doing. I left Thembelihle at the start of March and within one week of leaving I had found a new project at a rural crèche near St Lucia in the Kwazulu-Natal province. It was scary to leave the Eastern Cape and the Xhosa people that I know so well, but it was a great opportunity to learn more about the Zulu culture. Zwelisha crèche is in a rural village and has from 70-80 children aged 0-5 that use it’s services. Childcare is an extremely vital resource for families here. It allows parents to go to work or to try to find employment and to get treatment for HIV/Aids, which is a huge issue in this area. It gives children a safe environment in which to learn and play with other children. The crèche also provides meals for the children from donations from volunteers and local farms, and for some children this will be their only meal of the day. The crèche is very understaffed for the number of children that come, with only one teacher and two other staff members. I have been helping with the teaching and have been emphasising learning through play. I have also been working hard to improve their English, as learning English is vital to be successful when they go to school and to finding employment in the future. Young children are exhausting! But they are lovely children who are eager to learn. I have also been helping with things like cooking, cleaning and washing for the crèche, and looking after the younger babies after lessons are over with the older ones.  I work from 7am-2pm Monday to Friday. 

After I finish work at the crèche at 2pm, I have been working at the Empangeni orphanage from 3pm-6pm. At the moment there are 7 children, 3 girls and 4 boys. Apart from one smaller boy, the rest of the children are teenagers. I am there for much needed company! They are left to their own devices most of the time, with only one house mother who only works during the day, usually when they are attending school. I have been tutoring them in English, helping with homework and teaching them some computer skills on my laptop. I am also acting as a peer mentor, as these children are at a high risk age, it is important they know they have many options in the future. It is not uncommon for a girl of 16 in this area to be married and already have children. Also, the prevalence of HIV/Aids is huge, so encouraging them to make the right choices surrounding safe sex, and avoiding drinking and drugs.

Now that the crèche is closed for school holidays, we have decided to use my project contribution to buy painting materials and paint the children’s rooms in the orphanage, which were in disrepair. The girls typically want a pink room, and the boy’s want a blue one! It’s hard work, but it will be worth it to see the rooms when they are finished! They children really deserve a nice room and a home that they can feel proud of. 

I leave Kwazulu-Natal on Friday – bound for Port Elizabeth and the arrival of my parents! After over 7 months we will be reunited and I can’t wait! After that I will be going to a new volunteer project in Umdumbi, details to come soon! 

Oh, and I forgot to mention I saw my first giraffe! (and a whole lot of other animals! at the local game reserve)

5 Months!

December was a very special month at Thembelihle, and not just because of the arrival of Christmas! Exams came and went, with plenty of long nights marking papers and writing reports. I am so proud of the children, in all that they have achieved during exam time. I share in their happiness too, it means I can’t be that terrible at my job! Although some children haven’t done as well as I had hoped, I have to remind myself that exam results are not always a true reflection of a person’s hard work, effort or the teaching they have received. Hopefully it will spur them on to try even harder in the new year! 

Anyway with all of that seriousness over, it was time to get Christmassy! I must say that Christmas decorating in 35 degree heat was a strange experience! The children are so excited by Christmas, and you can’t help but get in the spirit as well. We have done a lot of Christmas crafts, making decorations, stockings and cards. The children really enjoy craft activities, maybe just because it means they can make a lot of mess! We also did some baking of Christmas cookies which of course, was loved by all! Especially when it came round to the tasting part! The reality of summer in South Africa is a lot of unbearable heat, a lot of storms, a lot of cockroaches and a lot of mosquitoes! But we had fun with the kids in a spontaneous water fight to cool off! 

Thembelihle attended a party for street children at the town hall, where the children performed some traditional dancing to entertain the guests. The party was a success and raised awareness of the problem of children living on the streets. I found it quite inspiring how so many people came to show their support, and even children’s homes found something to contribute to the event. 

Sadly, this time of year means we had to say goodbye to over half of our children. Thembelihle is a temporary home of safety, so at the end of the year many children are sent back home to their families, other carers, or moved into permanent children’s homes. It is impossibly hard to say goodbye, after living and working with these children for 4 months. But you have to be strong for them and trust that the social workers have made the right decision. Also many children went on ‘holiday’ over the Christmas period, which is where they go home to their families for a couple of weeks before coming back to Thembelihle. This is an amazing opportunity, and it’s all down to the hard work of the social workers that make it happen for them. However, it is hard for those children who are left behind. For Christmas day we only had six of the original children! We also had three new arrivals. 

So with teaching on pause, and a lot less children to look after, we had a lot more time on our hands to make some changes to the classroom. The books in the classroom were an absolute mess, there are a lot of them but they were never used because they are not accessible in the room and they were not organised. This meant that most of the books had gone into disrepair. So we spent around three days clearing shelves, and creating a whole new library of books that children, staff and volunteers can use – hopefully for years to come! Now one copy of every textbook is on a shelf, sorted by subject and grade. All of the extra textbooks are also now stored in order too, so that if we need to use them in a lesson we know exactly where every textbook is kept. We also created a library of reading books sorted by ability, so that the children will be encouraged to read more often. 

We were kept busy organising everything ready for Christmas. It was our responsibility to organise something special for the children. We decided to buy things for a braii and also rent a bouncy castle! We also organised their gifts. Every child is given a new set of clothes and shoes to wear to the church service on Christmas Day. It was quite exciting, and it was all a secret! Christmas day itself was a success! I can’t remember ever being this excited about Christmas! We woke up early and I dressed up as Santa and brought them presents, which were also a success! (apart from the odd clothes trauma!) They all looked very smart for church. After the service we all came back to Thembelihle and played on the bouncy castle and made a braii (with some help from our next door neighbour!) I enjoyed every moment, and know it might have been the most unique Christmas I will ever have!

On the 27^th December we left Thembelihle embarking on our travels for a couple of weeks. It was a fantastic opportunity to see all that South Africa has to offer, and also to meet up with other Project Trust volunteers in South Africa, Swaziland and Botswana. We spent New Year in Cape Town, then travelled to Mossel Bay, Plettenburg Bay, Storms River and Jeffrey’s Bay. We had a great holiday, but I did miss the children and Mthatha, so I am glad to be home and settling back into teaching.  

A new year has definitely turned over a new leaf in the classroom. We have introduced a new reward system and new school rules. Also thanks to our organisation at the end of 2011 we now have a very organised, clean and tidy classroom – at least for a little while! The children’s behaviour in class has improved an extraordinary amount and my confidence as a teacher has grown. I am so happy! I can tell that 2012 is going to be a good year! 

3 Month Update

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. 

2 months down

I can’t believe that it has been over a month since my last post, time does seem to fly when you are so busy! Over the past month teaching has become a more natural, I am beginning to settle into life at Thembelihle and it definitely feels like home. Mthatha has become familiar and things that once shocked me about the city I no longer notice (whether this is a good thing or a bad thing I don’t know!). We’ve explored Norwood a bit more and have visited Sabalani Home which is a home for boys just next door to Thembelihle and also a preschool and study centre next to the field.

With teaching I have discovered that usually the more hours that go into thinking of ideas and planning lessons, the more receptive the children can be. Spending an hour drawing a picture of “John’s messy room” to explain prepositions to my English class for example actually paid off, with most of the children being able to tell me the exact location of John’s smelly sock by the end of the lesson! Teaching the children right and left has proved harder than anticipated, and I have resorted to writing it on their hands at the start of the lesson until they learn it. Although, I can hardly blame them as I don’t think I learnt until I was about 12! I have started to teach group 2 geography, which I love! Going back to my lessons on river processes has been fun and it’s great to see them hitting rocks together and shouting ATTRITION at me!

We also had the chance to take the children to a funfair in Mthatha. The Rotary Club let the children in for free along some snacks and juice. The night before we spent hours making dozens of scones for the day, only to discover that ‘scones’ in South Africa are what we call ‘cupcakes’ in England. But the children seemed to like them anyway! In the morning we prepared a feast of sandwiches, scones, crisps, sweets and juice and waited for the taxi (obviously running on African time, like everything here!) for two and a half hours to take us to the fair. The children were so excited, maybe even just as the prospect of going somewhere new for once. They all went on the swings and the waltzer before tucking into the feast we had lovingly prepared. All in all it was a lovely day, I wish we could take the children to more of these kinds of things!

We have started to take the children to a local church in Norwood every Sunday, the children love the singing and dancing, and just the different environment they get out of going to church. Although, services are strangely half in English and half in Xhosa, so they can only understand half of it. They have been invited to join the Sunday school and take part in the Christmas service which is run by the children. It is good for them to be around other children from the community, and be involved in a community event, and also to learn some new Christmas carols! Some of the children are very religious, and religion plays a huge part in all of their lives. I’m starting to get used to prayers every morning and evening, and I haven’t been caught out at lunch for a while for forgetting to say “God bless our food” before starting!

At the start of October we had a week of school holidays to fill with various activities for the children. I tried to teach them how to knit after finding lots of knitting needles and yarn in the classroom. Some of them are quite good! They probably would have been even better if 101 Dalmatians hadn’t there to distract them! We also played lots of games, set up an assault course in the field, made bracelets and baked shortbread.

My 19th birthday was on the 4th October and although it was weird to be away from home on this day the children did make a fuss of me and sang the birthday song for almost the entire day. At the weekend I visited a Café Lang in the suburbs of Mthatha for some amazingly good cake.
Recently a woman has been coming into Thembelihle in the afternoons to teach the children beadwork. It will be a good skill for the children to have and they seem to enjoy the challenge. Most have now managed to make a South African flag out of the beads and some have even moved onto making earrings. Although, this means that our afternoon lessons have been shortened to only one hour, stretching us on the lead up to exams in three weeks’ time. We have to write the exams ourselves and prepare the children with revision. We are supposed to be examining them on everything they have learnt since January, but this work has mysteriously gone missing and we don’t know what they learnt before August. Also many of the children are new, and therefore have not been in all of the lessons and so are not equipped with the necessary knowledge for the examinations. Hopefully everything will somehow fall into place! Usually, it does!

Our weekend off was spent at Port St. Johns which is a small town on the coast just 1 ½ hours from Mthatha. I must say that it was brilliant to spend some time away from the hustle and bustle of the Mthatha streets, and into a slower pace of life. A lot of lying in hammocks, eating of chocolate brownies, sitting around bonfires, stroking of the resident St. Bernard and sundowners on top of a mountain. We even had the chance to go out on a boat to see dolphins and whales, which literally surrounded the boat at one point. I know that this is a memory that will stay with me for the rest of my life. We are so lucky to be living is such a beautiful country, it is just so easy to forget when living in Mthatha.

Apart from that our month has consisted of storms, heat waves, marriage proposals, worms medicine (for the children, not us, thankfully), rush hour traffic, the arrival of a KETTLE (this, I have decided, is my favourite invention),cooking lasagne with real life cheese,  shaving the children’s heads (which is possibly the most strangely satisfying experience ever), learning karate,  finally getting round to cleaning the fridge, discovered my love of samp and beans, mending two dozen shoes with superglue and spending hours trying to explain that South Africa is a country – not a continent.

Teaching river processes!

Sundowners at Port St. Johns

 

Me and my partner Maya at Port St. Johns

 

 Hard at work in English class!

 The funfair!

 Making bracelets

 Learning how to knit!

Shaving Vuyiseka a mohawk

One month has passed

So, a lot has happened since my first blog entry. I have been in South Africa a whole month now and have experienced a whole host of things, some good and some bad. Where do I start?

Teaching. Teaching is a challenge, mainly because the children’s first language is Xhosa and few understand basic English. Another challenge is that there are three lessons being taught simultaneously in the same small classroom, creating obvious distractions. For example, my English lesson involved the class repeating animal noises, much to the amusement of everyone in the classroom. The class sizes can also be quite large especially with new children coming in. The biggest number of children that we’ve had so far was 34, with the capacity for Thembelihle usually being 20-25.  But now it is back to a smaller number, a lot more manageable! I have begun to really enjoy teaching certain subjects. I am really enjoying teaching maths! It sounds crazy but I have missed maths after not choosing it as a subject to carry onto A-level. I also find that the children are more understanding of mathematical concepts, perhaps because it requires less English. I  have been teaching group 2 (the oldest group of children) about 2D and 3D shapes, including making some very good 3D models of prisms out of strips of cardboard from an old cornflakes box!

Our afternoons are spent with the children doing activities. When it is hot we take them to the field and play netball, rounders, football... sometimes a mixture of all three. We also found an old parachute behind some boxes in the classroom that we dug out and the children had hours of fun playing games with it (despite the fact that there are huge holes in it, obviously the work of the classroom rats). When it is cold, the children watch movies in the classroom, unfortunately for us the most requested film is High School Musical – I may have to invest in some ear plugs. Although, today was Heritage Day so we had a traditional meal of dumplings and Xhosa bread made outside on the stove and we painted our faces and the children danced to Xhosa music. It was a great day, the children come alive when they dance, I’ve never seen them so happy.

We had a lovely weekend off... we travelled to Coffee Bay with some other volunteers working at Bethany Home on the other side of Mthatha. Coffee Bay is astonishingly beautiful, just white sand and blue ocean.  We came home relaxed and rested after a well needed weekend off from the daily wake-up call at 6am, and with our first surf lesson under our belts! Plus, no pap for a whole three days! Yes! We’re already planning our next trip.

Mthatha is as crazy as ever. Unfortunately experienced the negative side of living here when we were attacked by some men trying to steal from us, but thankfully another man stopped his car and scared them off – there are many good people here. Now we know what the locals are talking about when they say Norwood (the area we are living in) is dangerous! I’m sure it was just a one off occurrence though. But we are more confident going into town now that we’ve explored and know where we are going/not going. Also I am getting more and more used to the staring, pointing, picture taking and constant hellos. I’ve even mastered driving in Mthatha! It’s really quite fun, the potholes make it like off-roading!

Overall, the work is exhausting but never boring! The children always keep us on our toes and seem to enjoy our company. I also know that teaching will become more natural with time, and the children will learn to respect us more as their teachers as well as their sisters. Mostly, I’m just enjoying them as much as I can, I know how lucky I am to be here and be a part of their lives... I just hope I can be a useful one!

Coffee Bay

Jumping off a cliff at Coffee Bay

Heritage Day at Thembelihle

Heritage Day at Thembelihle

Heritage Day at Thembelihle

 

Heritage Day at Thembelihle

Heritage Day at Thembelihle

 

Heritage Day at Thembelihle