Memorial No.2

Vuyani Nyawo. Victim of one of the common car accidents pervading the area. A bright student in my largest class of 60, a face I can easily conjure up in my mind's eye from the usual blur of students. I cannot begin to suggest how sore and heavy it made me feel to have such a young life taken from my class.

After school all the educators collectively visited his home. At the back of the main house was a traditional round hut where we gathered, once again, women with shoes off and men with shoes on, on the floor. The floor was dark and cool in the heat, covered by a tapestry of mats, some grass woven, some made from recycled chip packs in the most elegant way. We formed a semi circle along the wall; the haunting singing began, while the mother and female relatives perched on mattresses opposite us. In the dense heat of the day the mother was wrapped in heavy blankets, a large woman forming a soft mass of fabric that heaved with the sobs of her great loss. My eyelids were wet with tears as I watched her body completely lose form and meld into the patterns of cloth.

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Sibusiso Ntshangase. Twenty-three years old. The man I give daily rides to and from school. He lives in the nearest town, Magudu, and walks at least 5 km just to meet me on the pavement where he hops in. Sibusiso is in my Grade 10 English class, the same as Vuyani was. Except, he's failing with a mere 19% average. I asked him the other day how many times he'd been in Grade 10. He said he didn't remember. I asked, "Two times?" He shook his head, "No." "Three or four times?" Still, "No." "Five times or six times?" He said, "Mistress, I don't remember," but somehow it seemed to suggest he'd repeated this level probably 5 or 6 times.

Sibusiso is quite tall, with a simple look on his face. The other students all call him Mazino and tease him for riding with me, but he always laughs good-naturedly. If I ride into town to go grocery shopping, he comes with and waits by the door to help me carry in my groceries. If I shop at the market, he helps me barter for mangoes, tomatoes, avocadoes and naartjies. I wonder often about Sibusiso's future. Where he will end up and how he will cope. His English is severely limited and I poke at it daily, teaching him the simple differences between when, where, who and what so that I can find out more about him and his life. We haven't gotten too far. I suppose he'll just keep going to school until he finds something better to do with his time. I know, it sounds shameful of me to say.

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The 5-Muskateers. They have no names. They walk in lines across the road, sometimes in groups of 3 and 2, sometimes configurations of 4 and 1. These students study at the school just below our farm. They wear sky blue uniform shirts, always unbuttoned on their commute. One student tends to wear either a bright red or blue shirt. If it’s warm, they go bare-chested, their chests hitting the air in such a proud, determined way. The shortest, who must be age 12, always has a stern, constricted look mounted on his face. They always walk the opposite direction to which I’m driving, so I encounter their 5 faces when walking some portion of their 10+ km journey. Waving to them with a flick of my wrist is a part of my daily routine and it cracks something marvelous in their faces. Strangely, it is just important a part of my day as my morning cup of coffee.

Sebenzakanzima Secondary School

I certainly thought I'd be writing Farm, Part II well before I had fodder for any other writings. Instead, I have news to share: today was my first day at my first paid job in almost 19 months! In what must be my shortest job search to date (1 week), I got an SMS on Monday from one of the local principals I was introduced to last week. I drove to the school, Sebenzakanzima, just outside of the limits of Pongola expecting to fill out the paperwork for an official job application. Instead, I was handed papers titled "Assumption of Duty." I was perplexed, not quite expecting what I was being offered, only to find out another position had opened at the school due to the death of a teacher.

And so, after filling out more paperwork yesterday and obtaining all the available English books possible, I assumed the available English teaching post for Grades 8, 9 and 10. I encountered a few of the other educators yesterday and they, too, were perplexed about me. Not being announced as a foreign volunteer come to save the day, they all assumed I was a white South African. A few made comments about how white South Africans have been fleeing overcrowding at the schools - with raised eyebrows and a glare made for cowering. However, I'm not really the white South African they think they're refering to and I'm also not fleeing.

With almost 250 names on my roster for 6 classes, it's going to be a crazy while ahead for me! I have no government curriculum to work from in a no-child-left-behind based system, so it should be interesting. I inquired today as to the discipline code at the school and, well, beating is an unofficial part of the game. So I made a strong point with my students today that I will never hit them, but that they shouldn't opt for pulling one over on me just because they think they can. In the end, my biggest threat is to send them to the principal, who will mostly likely give them a hiding or 3. It's the best I can do apart from alienating myself from the get-go and losing my new job. So, it's a bit harum scarum.

The classrooms are bare, bare, bare. The students stay with the same classroom all day long and the teachers float. Meaning the teachers all share 2 common spaces as their staff rooms. I'm sharing a desk with 2 other educators, one who kindly befriended me today. She even gave me a hamburger for lunch - it feels like school all over again! The teachers slowly started to talk to me today, but conceptually they don't seem to grasp that I'm foreign....and that I'm not living with my father on his farm nearby (a very strange rumor circulating). Everyone speaks Zulu as it is a Zulu-medium school. I don't understand a word excepting hello (sawubona) and work (sebenza), although I'm surely in the right place to start picking it up.

My work with the students went seemingly well, though there's not too much to report yet. I was so anxious yesterday, sleeping fitfully and eliciting words of comfort from Johannes. I don't know if I've ever been quite so nervous about teaching before. I think I realize that these students have never had a white educator before and was nervous that they wouldn't want to take me seriously. Luckily, they all seem to love learning English which will work fabulously to my advantage in the future!

One encouraging moment today came as the day was closing and I was invited to go to the visitation for the teacher who's place I'm filling. I gave about 8 teachers lifts in the back of the bakkie and we set out for Ncotshane (very difficult to pronounce with a click at the front of the word), the local township from where most of the students hail. The former teacher passed away Saturday, presumably from AIDS as many teachers here are dying from it. The visitations take place during the week, before the funeral which always takes place on a weekend. There is a huge ceremony involving a cow slaughter, so the weekend timing is a must.

When we arrived at the house of this teacher, all the women took off their shoes. As the women were filing in, the first teacher down on the ground, Disa, immediately started singing. The others joined in as they positioned themselves crosslegged on the straw mats. The men slowly entered as well (their shoes still on) and they joined the singing. It was incredibly beautiful and the moment's hesistation where I had not wanted to go (due to a long first day) melted instantly. Different teachers led the singing and the same ones led the group in Zulu prayers and passages from the Bible. It was a quiet house, where the sounds of the contracting tin roof made distinct clickings, along with the chorus of the roosters crowing outside. The old, old black women family members sat back, against the wall, letting the words wash over them, their eyes solemn and distant, but deeply open and watchful, their faces puckered with wrinkles from too much death and too much life.

At the end, I saddled off home after dropping the other teachers in town and carried on my long ride home. Home: where I shocked myself on a game fence yesterday and today where the warthogs greeted me through the long grasses and monkeys cried out from the trees. Not to mention the nice little poop our resident frog, Gregory, left for me right inside the doorstep. This feels like an impossibly unusual life I'm living right now. Truly African, in some ways endlessly authentic -- something I've been after with the culture for a long time. It felt good to be invited in today.