full o' shuga

So it’s 10:46 on a Tuesday night and I’m still up. Perhaps high on the sugar of the colorful chuckles chocolate candy or because I am officially in love. Gasp! Not with just one person, however, multiples of small children in the most heart-fully pure ways.

I have never taught anyone to full-on read before, minus my sister with the occasional late night bedtime story a couple decades ago. It is grueling, it requires tapping into any entirely new level of patience I never knew I held within. And honestly, I haven’t been doing it quite long enough to see the results but it is soooo exciting!

In my most recent blog lapses of slight negativity and frustration, I forgot to update you on my teaching experiences. It is going well at the school. The organization that put me there is M.I.A. but I’m glad because they were more of a hindrance than a help. The faculty and staff at the school totally make up for the shortcomings of the organization that brought us together. Very supportive and very appreciative and their energy and encouragement make all the difference for what I’m doing.

I had started out teaching full English classes to all classes in grades 4 & 5 and found it to be a disciplinary nightmare. After a few weeks of feeling discouraged with my reach in class sizes of 45 and realizing more than half the students were “below average”, I spoke to the principal about taking on smaller groups instead. So now I work with Grades 3 - 5 and teach groups of 8 learners at a time, seven times a day. I‘m dealing mostly with those who are below average and/or who are recent immigrants. I am also working with a couple of groups of accelerated students to provide them with a challenge.

I was amazed to find that some of the students who were quoted “below average” actually can barely read at all, at ages 9 and up. I’d be pressed to say about half of a class of 45 is below average. Incredible. Incredibly difficult and profoundly heart breaking. But what is mending in the whole situation is that I am here for a whole year and have enough time to give a little TLC to these few students and maybe, just maybe, push them up a notch or two on the scale.

So another awesome factor of success at St. Pauls Primary is that my students like me! Part of which contributes to this so-called love affair for I feel we’re building a connection with one another. I’m not entirely swooney, I promise! But they all seem to find their time special, coming to a small group and getting stickers as rewards (have any cool stickers? Send them my way!) and more-than-likely getting the one-on-one attention they’ve been needing for years. I went against school regs and sent a student home with a book because he doesn’t have any at home - you should have seen the high-five he gave me!

It’s patchy for me, how to do all this. No one has taught me how to teach. Especially English. Especially South African English where I’m constantly adapting my accent to better teach the students the language they must learn to know. It’s very different to teaching art, as well. When teaching art you know it is necessary - but unfortunately, even I cannot say it is the milk and bread of education. Without literacy, how can one be prepared to take on the future of adulthood? So teaching art, fleetingly, as a workshop suffices. You might be disheartened that your students don’t know their primary colors, but at the end of the day, so what - all that matters is that they have this very moment to be creative. With reading, it’s ongoing, it’s endless and if someone else doesn’t reinforce it at home it’s close to a loss.

At the very least I am finding ways to pull my creative side into the classroom - singing goofy songs and holding my tongue while talking to demonstrate the importance of vowels. For now, I’m still going by the books a bit, however, try to refine my students’ basic understanding of phonetics before going any further. Teachers out there, if you have any tips, I’m all ears! And in the meantime, I’ve also dipped into another side project to re-organize the library. It’s quite full of Afrikaans books but I have found very few books in English and most of them are way out of date - say 1950s to 70s. Even found an American book talking about “Negro Segregation.” Yikes - so it’s quite a project to tackle (lots of mold), but once I can assess what we have we can begin asking churches and wealthier schools for donations.

Friends, family - please do note this picture of valentine’s cards and notes! I have never displayed my cards before, but my goodness it seemed in order! Thank you for your lovely heart messages and sweet tokens, they have found me well and are filling this already cluttered space with a hint of home for me.
PHOTOS: So to start with there are 2 pictures of views of Cape Town from the school property.
Then 4 images of students and teachers from Monday, a day where school sport was celebrated at a local competition amongst other Primary Schools. St. Paul's came in 2nd - I was just amazed by their running abilities - in bare feet too! Then a couple images of home-life to see as well.

Bumping Along

I began this blog to keep record of my experience with different people and places that I encountered on this journey. However, the ways in which I change and move and shift will alternately continue to influence the way I experience my time here. So, bear with me - a little view of Shannon looking at herself! And typically, it’s a bit of a long side-track - just warning!

I fear as I’ve been settling into my new life in Cape Town my writing has taken a slide. I keep finding myself running into me, over and over and over again, which is not so interesting in written form. When you’re by yourself it’s easy to keep bumping into distracting mirror images and it’s difficult to jump those hurdles as well. Perhaps that’s why it feels so crucial to give myself this time to see who I am without a million reminders of myself - there’s rarely anyone but myself to commend or blame in any situation.

You see this image of the butterfly clinging to its former self? I find it quite poetic and comparable to what I just said, though I’m not going to begin digging into that one! I’ve been watching this pupa grow itself. The chrysalis has been carefully webbed to the outside of my porch window for weeks now and I’ve been careful not to open the window fully, so as not to crush it. I saw the wings start to form but have lost track as I’ve been so busy. Just today the butterfly appeared, fully grown, fully formed, hanging onto it’s old shell.

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The cocoon not being so obvious, nor the winged development, how have I grown or been challenged whilst here?

I have had to grapple with the reality of my ambitions; I have had to work quickly to adapt to teaching environments where planning hasn’t been possible. I have had to think on my feet and go with my gut.

I’ve learned to drink sparkling water, enjoy hot English mustard on my sandwiches, and to stomach a fried egg on toast.

Slow down - I have also learned to relax, slowly but surely. I am only teaching 3 days a week right now, with 4 days off and I am enjoying every one of them. I am busy, but not so busy. I don’t have a shower so I have to take baths at night and even there I have at last learned to shut off my brain and to enjoy the bubbles!

I’ve found that becoming vegetarian and giving up beef eons ago has made my stomach roll at the smell of beef - what a shame in a place where most cows grain-fed on lolling hills.

Big one - I’ve learned to drive a manual car! What a mission, as South Africans so often say! What is it about learning and re-learning that becomes so much more difficult with age? I know in this case it was mostly out of fear - fear of rolling backwards, fear of not being able to pull myself up, fear of not being able to simultaneously manage a clutch and an accelerator, fear of not being able to have control. Could this be a metaphor of self-change? Learning how to shift more easily, with more grace? It has felt anything but graceful, it is a bumpy ride, it is a car lurching and stalling, it is the power of being able to start on a steep hill, it is the empowerment of being able to succeed on my own.

I am finding how hard it is to be more flexible and to let go of what it is I think I want - sometimes we don’t get to choose and it’s more important to go with the flow. This is by far my biggest struggle. But flexibility, that’s a laid back Cape Town mentality for you, so I guess this is the place to learn!

Doris, who comes by to clean Margie’s flat every week, and I have been talking about Xhosa, her mother tongue. She keeps reminding me that to learn it is about embracing the mistakes - and not to be afraid of making the wrong sound or to not enunciate my “clicks” clearly enough! Good lesson for the English schoolteacher. You don’t learn if you’re afraid.

And I am still learning how to take the opportunities that present themselves to me and turn them into something from which I can learn. Presently I’m trying to determine how I can provide art to the students at my school, how to build a program that will last, how to fund it, etc.

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Other notable sensations and lessons being learned in Cape Town:

• The smell of bush fire permeating the air - learning to discern the clear, unadulterated smoke of a bush fire from that of dirty, tar infested house fire.
• An internet signal so sensitive it’s affectedly weakened by the wind.
• Wind so strong, 40+ miles an hour, that I have to pause and hold on to poles for support when walking some days.
• Cape Town at night along the N2 hwy, a bubble of glittery dots, a fantastical looking harbor nest.
• An old blue car being towed backwards by 2 horses, flanking the car on either side outside of Khayelitsha.
• Gecko with 2 tails - perhaps from shedding one when I scooped it from my living room back to the garden (they shed their tails as a defense mechanism)? Bizarre sight to behold!
• The taxi drivers are all on strike - no one really understands why and yet it means children don’t go to school and people cannot go to work…
• The bottled water at a nice restaurant usually costs more than the cheapest glass of wine.

…..

howzit

People who first meet me here usually ask one of two questions - “How is it [aka howzit] in America?” and “How do you find South Africa?” Obviously there are a million different tangents dangling from these wide-open questions.

The people asking me about America are usually the ones who have never left the country, i.e. mostly black people. And on the flip side, the ones who ask me about Africa are the white people who have traveled.

I find the America question easier and easier to answer, though at first it seemed way too broad. I don’t tell people what they want to hear, which is that it’s just like in the movies or that I regularly see movie stars on the streets. I say that things are generally a bit easier in America because it is a much more resourced country - but that there are still huge gaps between the haves and the have-nots. And if we get really deep, I will tell them that race relations are not readily spoken about or dealt with - as they so obviously have to be here. People freely use the words black, coloured, white, Indian, and not a soul whispers them because they’re not taboo here.

On the South Africa question, I find it increasingly more difficult. Perhaps this is all a function of the further away I get from America, the easier it is to simplify it. And the deeper into South Africa I get, the harder it is to extricate myself from the situation and verbalize how it is I feel.

I look at my good friend Britt and read about her experiences in Mexico, her integration into the culture and towns there and envy the connections she is able to build. Certain aspects such as her knowledge of Spanish have certainly encouraged her ability to connect with the people. That is what I feel I miss. My experiences from community organizing put me in touch with the importance of understanding the context & the lives of the communities I served. Here I am on the perimeter.

In the Free State I taught students that lived on the same farm as me. Yet I lived in the farmhouse and they in the laborer’s cottages - I never met any of their parents. In Cape Town I am teaching students that travel from here, there, and yonder and I have no idea where they’re coming from, what they’re coming from, whether they come for a safe place to play in or for a safe place to learn.

For those of you that know me well, you know I tend to come down a bit hard on myself. But all that aside, I find Africa is a very tough place to be. For a conscionable person, there really is nothing comfortable about being here. Every which way you look, there are issues of safety (I have 7 keys for my flat), issues of government & police corruption, a society that doesn’t always value education (how else do you explain that half of my 4th/5th grade classes don’t know their 5 vowels), a place where you’re always tipping just to provide a little more income. It’s no wonder so many people want to leave. But I suppose this is always the status quo for countries where flocks are leaving - who will be left & what will be left at the end of the day. The people that remain say, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” and “Isn’t it better to be constantly challenged than to be falsely comfortable?” Because it’s true, leaving doesn’t make any of these problems go away.

I am learning that over the years of traveling to South Africa, I wrapped up my travels in velvet and silk and decorated it with beads, romanticized its being and put it in my memory for safe keeping. Now I have to unwrap it and reconfigure the jumbled pieces of this cracked nation. It sounds dramatic. But honestly, we people do this; romanticize things until they don’t reflect reality, especially those things of our childhood. Learn, distort, unlearn and relearn, distort, again and again! I suppose I didn’t come to South Africa with a clean slate, ready to expect anything and be dazzled. Whatever expectations I came with are being unfurled. I’m trying to “stop” wrapping my head around this and instead let it go, be a bit more fluid and absolutely more flexible.