Well another week has come and gone in South Africa, and I am now over half way through my teaching experience. Last week didn’t offer anything new in terms of my daily routine, teaching and planning was still dominating my time (as it will when I return home!) though I was able to have a couple of outings to break-away from the norm.
Tuesday was a public holiday, officially called “Ladies Day”, and as a consequence there was no school. Though before all you men get excited and quickly move to South Africa, “Ladies Day” offers no benefits to the men. Indeed it is a day where ladies are expected to do nothing, whilst the men do everything! It is not unlike Mother’s Day in England I suppose. Anyway, we ended up going to Gold Reef Theme Park. That was fun. Much more fun than I was expecting. It had it’s ‘Nemesis’ equivalent, it had it’s ‘Rip-Saw’, and probably the wettest rapids ride I’ve ever been on. It was a good day out, finished off with an all-you can eat buffet. Seriously, I’m getting fat.
Nothing too exciting happened at school last week, other than me writing a test to give all my year 11 classes to see what (if any) progress had been made. I’m nearly finished marking them, so will be able to evaluate my effectiveness as a teacher and see if there has been any point in me even being here! Fingers crossed for some positive results.
After school in Wednesday I went to another football match... this time it was to see the national side take on Burkina Faso (yes it is a real country). They are from West Africa, and they really weren’t very good. South Africa ran out 3-0 winners, but they never really had to try that hard. It took Burkina about 20 minutes to even touch the ball.
The biggest highlight (or lowlight) of the evening was going to the bar at half-time, it was the most outrageous trip to the bar I have ever had the displeasure of undertaking. I didn’t even get a drink. It was complete chaos. There was pushing fighting, drink spilling, and never have I seen so many pick-pockets in such a small space. I’ve had more hands in my pockets than a snooker table at the Crucibal
Luckily, I had prepared for such an eventuality, and had nothing in my pockets, and carried the exact change in my hand for the drinks. Some of my friends were not so lucky. One lost a phone and the other got no change from a tenner for a £1.50 drink. It was quite unpleasant, and honestly was enough to put me off going to a game again. People constantly walk into you, shake your hand to apologise and pick your pocket with the other. They are not even discreet! I’ve shook hands with one man, looked him right in the eye, looked down at his hand in my pocket, looked back up at him, he knows I know what he is trying to do, but he still smiles and tries to do it anyway. Ridiculous.
The weekend was much more pleasant. Saturday was spent with a living legend of the Apartheid struggle. One of the locals who works with Warwick in Africa took a group of us to his home-township where he grew up, and took us to several of his friends houses who were all teenagers during the fight for freedom from Apartheid, and dazzled us with their stories of fighting the regime. It was inspirational stuff, and truly brought the struggle to life. They never dared to dream of freedom in their lifetime, but thanks to Mandela and the collective spirit of the South African people, they now live the life they dared not to dream. It really puts the UK rioters to shame, it really does. What cause were they fighting for? I struggle to think. At risk of sounding like an old man, but some people just don’t know they are born.
I guess one thing teaching in Africa has reminded me, no matter how hard my life may get, there are millions in this world who will never be as lucky as I am.
Jx
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