Cost of education

Today I worked at the wonderland pre-school with kids between the ages of 4 and 6 trying to teach them English words and helping them to learn left from right. Education is not free in South Africa and parents must pay to send their children to school right through from pre-school to university. The fees vary depending on the school with some of the better schools being very expensive. This makes it incredibly difficult for kids living in the township to get a proper education.

Unemployment here is very high at roughly 25%, and those kids whose parents don’t work or don’t earn enough to pay their school fees can’t get a proper education…which makes it even more unlikely that these children will be able to get a proper job to support themselves and their own family when they get older. School fees could be anything from £40 to £150 per month and someone with a reasonably good office job in the town centre might earn £400 a month so school fees could be a big chunk of your income, especially if you have more than one child. A lot of families in the township just can’t afford the fees. I think that providing a free education would make a massive difference to reducing poverty in South Africa.

Some of the teachers at the pre-schools in the township have come to an agreement with parents who are on a low income that they can pay in another way – either through carrying out maintenance work at the school or donations of food, sometimes even donations of animals like chickens, cows or pigs. This small gesture helps the poorest to get a good start to their education.

Work with pre schools

There are over 40 pre-schools in the townships around Knysna. Each one looks after between 40 and 60 kids aged between 2 and 6 years old. The schools are generally run by stay at home mums and women without any formal employment who have decided that they want to provide this service to the local community. This morning I went to a pre-school which was started by a lady called Magdeleena in her father’s garage with just a handful of children. Magdeleena has campaigned hard to raise money for the school, and each time she raises more money, she expands the school. Now there are 2 class rooms full of children who are taught basic reading, writing and arithmetic to prepare them for life in primary school.

Most of the women that run these schools have no formal training as teachers so they are working with the Knysna AIDS Council and the Knysna Education Trust to become accredited and trained in pre-school teaching. They are really working hard to build their own skills, build their schools and build the knowledge of the kids they work with to give them the best chance of doing well when they go to primary school. There are currently 10 accredited pre-schools in the township and Edge of Africa provide volunteers who help to teach the children to read and write, play educational games with the children and help improve their English language skills.

It’s hard for the kids because they all have to learn three languages: Afrikaans, Xhosa and English. In most cases their parents and relatives speak either Afrikaans or Xhosa so they don’t get exposed to much English at home. Last week I helped out at the Wonderland pre-school twice and was trying to teach the kids the names of fruits in English and help improve their numeracy. I can’t believe how difficult this turned out to be and definitely have a new found respect for teachers! The process was made particularly hard because most of the kids don’t really understand a lot of English so it was difficult to communicate to them what I wanted them to do. Flash cards showing pictures of fruits worked very well but I had much more trouble with numbers. The teacher asked me to try to get them to count backwards from 10 but trying to explain the concept of ‘backwards’ when I can only speak English and they could only speak Xhosa was virtually impossible. Next time we’re going to try using a hopscotch type game outside.

Despite the difficulties the kids were all so happy and energetic and seemed to really enjoy being at school. They sang songs to welcome me and the other volunteers to the class and another song to say good bye. They loved to run around in the playground and make sure that all the volunteers join in the games at all times! Tomorrow I need to help to teach them left from right – any bright ideas from any of you primary school teachers out there would be very welcome!

A typical township meal

Today the ladies from the Hand in Hand group prepared lunch for the volunteers at the Edge of Africa house. It was a typical township meal – tripe with potatoes and something that was a bit like rice but the grains were bigger. And all washed down with pineapple flavoured home brew. I can’t say I enjoyed the tripe that much – the texture was a bit weird for me, but the sauce that went with it was delicious and it was interesting to experience real township cooking.

The ladies are all single mothers, the youngest was 19, the oldest was 28. As we ate together and talked about our families and background some of the cultural differences between us became apparent. The ladies were all very surprised that none of the volunteers had children even though we were all in the same age range. They were also surprised that some of the younger volunteers didn’t have boyfriends or husbands. They talked very matter-of-factly about how their boyfriends are lazy and expect the women to do all the work in the house while the men sit around drinking and smoking and cheating on them. Some of the talked about previous partners who had been violent towards them or verbally abusive or just plain lazy and inconsiderate. It seems as though this is a common thing in the township (although I’m only basing this on the few people I’ve spoken to) but what bothered me was that these women spoke about it as though it was normal to be treated that way – as if that is just how things are here and they just had to accept it. It is certainly a very much male dominated society here but it’s hard to understand how or why they are allowed to get away with such a lack of respect for women.

I came to the conclusion that the difference between us is that I grew up in a society that taught me to respect myself as well as other people and this gives me the confidence to stand up for myself and not let anyone, male or female, treat me unfairly. But if you grow up in an environment where all your female role models just accept that men treat women badly, how would you know that it doesn’t have to be that way?

Township Houses

Today I went along to a meeting for single mothers in the community called the Hand in Hand group. The meeting took place in one of the ladies’ homes in the township so I was able to see how people really live for the first time.

The house was very basic – essentially a single storey wooden shack with two rooms. The wooden frame was clad with wooden slats and on the inside, plastic sheeting covered the walls to help keep the rain out. The roof also had a wooden frame, which had cardboard laid over the top of it and more plastic sheeting laid over the top of that. The plastic sheeting was held down with stones and nailed to the frame in places. Each room was about 4 metres long by 3 metres wide. The house had electricity but no running water. The first room was a bedroom and just had in it a bed, a cupboard, a TV and DVD player. The second room was a kitchen which had a just a hot plate for cooking on, a table, and another bed. There are no taps in the house and the toilet is an outdoor pit latrine. The people who live there walk to the dam to get their water every day and although this isn’t far, it’s still hard work.

It was a very humbling experience. Such a hard way of life when compared to my cosy little existence back home, and such a contrast to the air conditioned malls and plush bars and restaurants which can be found just a 10 minute drive away in Knysna town centre.

Recycling Swap Shop



The Swop Shop



Edge of Africa runs a Recycling swap shop for children under the age of 18 in the township. The idea is that kids collect plastic, glass, metal and paper food containers that they find in the local area during the week and bring it to the swap shop on Wednesday afternoons. The recycling is weighed by Edge of Africa volunteers and exchanged for tokens depending on the weight of materials collected. Once armed with their tokens, the kids can then exchange tokens for goods from the Edge of Africa Swop Shop. Popular items include toiletries like shower gels and shampoos, crayons and colouring books, toys and clothes – a few little luxuries for children who have nothing.





Kids happy with their purchases!



Everything in the shop is priced as realistically as possible so that the children learn about the value of goods, the concept of working to earn rewards whilst also cleaning up the local environment. All the materials collected by the swap shop are taken to the local recycling centre but the plan in the future is to make things out of the materials that are collected that can then be sold in the Swap Shop. Ingenious ideas so far include brooms made of plastic bottles and candle holders made from tin cans.

Showing off new clothes

Today, only about 15 children came to the Swap Shop but last week, because it was the Easter holidays there were about 50. That’s a fantastic achievement but now the shop needs to be restocked as kids will only keep on coming if there is good stuff for them to buy. Edge of Africa relies on donations to keep the shelves stocked, and these usually come from volunteers that have seen the shop in action. Needless to say I’ll be making some donations of my own but if any of you who are reading this have stuff you can send over or would like to pledge some items that I can buy on your behalf while I’m here then let me know – you would be making some very poor children incredibly happy!

Items we desperately need include:

• Good quality children’s clothes
• Colouring books, pencils, crayons, stationery etc
• Toiletries – shampoo, shower gel, deodorant, hand wash, face wash
• Simple kids toys

MAD about Art

Today I worked with some of the kids at the MAD about Art project. This is an afterschool club aimed at helping children aged 10 and over to talk through any issues or problems they may have through art, music and drama. When they first enrol in the project at the age of 10 all the kids are asked to write a ‘Hero book’. In the Hero book the kids write stories and draw pictures about their lives – it’s a private record where they can record their most secret thoughts and feelings. They record things like who is their hero and why, what is their ‘monster’, what is their ‘shining moment’, who’s in their family and what they like and dislike about their community. Once it’s finished the kids can choose whether they want to lock the book away so that no one else can read their story or whether they are happy for the books to be displayed for others to see. The facilitators can then help the kids to work though their issues and intervene with further help if necessary.

One of the facilitators at MAD about Art told me a very sad story about one of the girls who attended the group. This girl, (I don’t know her name but let’s call her Ella), was raped by her father whilst her mother was at the hospital giving birth to her sister. Ella told her mother, but her mother didn’t believe her, so Ella ran away from home. She wrote down her story in her Hero book at MAD about Art and one of the facilitators was able to intervene. The facilitator spoke to Ella’s mother and it turns out that her mother was afraid to allow Ella to speak about the abuse at home because her husband was abusing the whole family. By making Ella stay away from home she was actually trying to protect her. Ella’s mother was afraid to go to the police but with the help of one of the MAD about Art facilitators, she was able to report her husband to child welfare services. When they tried to speak to him, he ran away and hasn’t come back so Ella is now back at home with her mother and living happily.

I’ve been told that this sort of story is not uncommon in the townships…

Orientation

Today our hosts took us new volunteers on a tour of the projects that we would be working on. It was quite an emotional rollercoaster of a day – I heard some harrowing stories but I also had a lot of fun.

Our first stop was the Sinethymba project which is a centre for street kids. These children don’t go to school for various reasons: some of them have been expelled for bad behaviour, some can’t go to school because their parents can’t afford the school fees, some have run away from home because of abuse, and some have been excluded simply because their parents can’t afford to buy them a school uniform. The Sinethymba project gives them a place to go during the day where they can get help to improve their numeracy and literacy skills, they get access to computers, they learn life skills like sewing, cooking and general taking care of themselves. They also get two proper meals per day, without which they would go hungry. This is a fantastic project and has done a lot of excellent work in the community, but the sad thing is that when the centre closes for the day the kids go back to the streets and have to sleep rough.

Next we went to the MAD about Art project which helps children that are around 10 years old to talk about their problems in an open and caring environment. The children are encouraged to express themselves through art and write a ‘Hero book’ to express the things about their lives that they like as well as the things that frighten them or make them angry or sad. One of the children had written the following in their book:

 “And the bad things about my community are when people stab each other and they kill each other”

I can’t imagine having to deal with that at the age of 10 years old.

We visited several other pre-schools for children up to the age of 5. Here the children all seemed to be very happy and they sang songs for us and got so excited when they saw us. At the Judas Square preschool, the children ran over to us and literally jumped on us as soon as they saw us wanting to be picked up. My camera and my sunglasses were a big hit. They all wanted to try on my glasses and have their picture taken. These kids were so happy – laughing and smiling and playing the whole time even though they really have very little.

Tomorrow I’ll be going back to one of the preschools in the morning to help with an English lesson and then in the afternoon I’m going back to MAD about Art, so more about them soon.

Day One

So, today after months of planning and waiting, I joined the Edge of Africa volunteer team. Edge of Africa is an NGO based in Knysna, South Africa, which runs conservation and community outreach projects in the local area. I’ll be working in the township on various projects including helping out in the pre-school, working with vulnerable women in the community, raising awareness of HIV, running the recycling swap shop and helping to maintain the vegetable garden. More on those projects later in the week…