A
question that I have been asked frequently during my time here has been “So
what do you think of South Africa?” My first reaction is always to say how much
I have enjoyed my time here, but that is never what they are asking. The question that they are asking is, “what do
I think of South Africa and the current political/socio-economic situation we
are in as a country?” and I can only ever reply, “South Africa seems to be full
of some of the most horrible problems, and the most wonderful people.” In talking
with the learners and marking the many of their papers, I have been able to
hear and read their stories and get to know where they come from. Just earlier
this week I was reading a learner’s paper, and this is what she had to say
about her life in Khayelitshia: “As I said living in Khayelitshia is not
good. Life is not perfect everything
that is bad is there. Every human
trafficking is there, every drugs is there, every abusing people are there,
criminals are there, gang groups are there. I find that life is too hard for me
there…The life we live there is bad in such a way that the teenagers are become
the destroyers of their freedom and future.”
This is one excerpt from one paper, and sadly these kinds of stories are
the norm, not the exception.
Almost
all of the teachers at Thandokhulu are also Amaxhosa and live in the
townships. As they have told me “Yes it
is sad, but these are simply the lives we live.
Everyone has nothing. We can only do what little we can to help those
around us who have even less.” A
teacher’s salary in South Africa is fairly small. However, one of the teachers, Cana, was
telling me about how, when she was teaching in a primary school, the teachers
and administrators would identify learners that were in the most need of assistance,
and the teachers would essentially adopt them.
They would pay for their school fees, transportation to and from school,
and help provide lunch and books. Teachers
would even collect used clothes from their family and bring them in for the learners.
They would pour their own small amount
of resources back into their learners, because they knew that the learners
needed it more than they did.
Another
story Cana was telling me was of a brother and sister. The boy was grade five
and the girl grade four, and she learned that their father, the only person
that they had living with them, had passed away. Every day the brother and sister went home to
a two room corrugated iron shack in the townships with no one there to look after
them. They would sit there, decide to go
to sleep, and then wake up and walk to school the next morning. That was all they had. When Cana learned of this she told the
administration and the social workers on staff.
Unfortunately, because the school year was coming to a close, the
administration felt it wouldn’t have enough time to adequately address the
situation, so the social workers asked Cana to take the two learners in for the
summer break until they could find other family members or figure out what to
do for the next year. And she did so,
unhesitantly.
“All
of us have nothing. We can’t change the
facts of our existence; it is too large, but we do what little we can.” South
Africa is full of some of the most horrible problems. It has extreme, concentrated poverty that
feeds into problems of drug addiction, violence, sexual exploitation, and
gangsterism, all on a scale that we could not possibly imagine in the United
States, but it is also full of the most amazing people, people who are always
willing to give all they have and more to help someone else. It’s not charity; it’s a part of the
culture. It’s Ubuntu, and it’s alive and
well in South Africa.
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