The beautiful Busi and her baby...
Did I tell you that I decided to go and teach at the
Christian school at the top of the hill in any case, despite the little or lack
of payment that is to be expected?
Well, I did and right now it feels like about the best
decision I’ve made in a quite a while.
I’m officially only starting on Tuesday, I’ve arranged that I’ll have
Mondays free, since I’m already busy with teaching on Saturdays and some
afternoons in the week. So at
least I’ll have 2 days free in a row, my weekend. And I do actually have a lot
of my own stuff to do as well…
So, this morning I went, just with the idea of finding
out where exactly the kids are regarding their work, and what resources they
have available and what exactly I have to do with them. I got there at 9, normally I’ll have to
be there at 7:30 which is quite early for me. But it’s already light at 6:30 and earlier these days, so
that’ll be a great reason for me to get up early!
Anyways, so instead of being shown all that stuff, I
got right shoved into a class of grade 6-9s rehearsing Macbeth. Now, to my shame, although I’ve studied
Drama and all that, for some reason I’ve never actually gotten to know the
story of Macbeth… So that was
interesting, but really cool, cause I played the dumb teacher and I got them to
tell me exactly what was going on.
They went through the first 2 acts, just reading basically. Then, after that, I got them all
together to tell me which character each played and tried to get just a brief
idea of what the characters are like.
I imagine they spend a lot more time doing that in real theatre, but I’m
not sure that we have all that many hours.
In any case, we did another run trough, during which I
had some ideas and made lots of suggestions and tried to remember what I
learned in Drama school. (I never
actually had the opportunity to do any of this sort of directing thing, even
though I did the technical bit…but it quite came to me). And I seriously enjoyed it. There were a couple of scenes where I
had them practicing it over and over again to get the timing right and the joy
was explosive when they eventually did.
It was great. I wouldn’t
mind doing that every day!
Afterwards I spoke to the other teachers and
apparently they got another new person as well, who wants to teach Afrikaans,
so looks like I won’t be doing that for now (Initially I was going to do
Afrikaans and English, so now they put me on only English). But I spotted another subject with my
little eye that I couldn’t resist… Arts and culture!!! How about that! So now, we’re going to see if I can have
that as well and then have a combined class of kids sometime (all grade 6-9
together) so we can see if we can do the whole of Macbeth and put on a real
play!!! How super awesome would
that be?! I really hop this is
going to work out.
I was so excited today and just marveled at how
awesome God really is… Some days
we just don’t get the full extent of it do we…? But now look.
Art was my favorite subject at school and I studied Drama after school
and then photography and then became an English teacher! And I’ve always loved working with kids
… And now look how He’s bringing
it all together!! Coincidence? I
think not…
So, when I finished there, early enough, school closes
at one on a Friday, I was all energized and decided to go find Michael and go
in the hunt of clay from the forest as I’ve been nagging him about for
ages. When I got to my caravan to
change, there was another boy outside the gate, looking for small jobs. As I don’t really have any, or any
money to pay, I said he could come with to find clay. Turns out Buyani (Probably the wrong
spelling) is a hard worker and even much more than that, well talented.
Him and Michael dug out the clay for me when we
finally found it (a lot has dried up because of no rain for a while and we
didn’t really know where to look – I’ve got only a slight idea of where I saw
that clay in the forest last).
Snooks came along as well and we had a small adventure
with a tiny little kitty that wanted to follow us from one of the huts. I took it back and ran quickly to where
we were digging the clay, but hey, the cat returns! So, on our way back, after persuading Snooks that we couldn’t
adopt the kitty, we took it to some neighbor’s house to ask them to hold it
until we get away. (The owners of the hut the kitty supposedly lives at were
nowhere to be seen).
That was a
funny experience in it’s own, cause I wanted Snooks to explain to them our
situation in Xhosa, cause I don’t really have the vocab for that, but she went shy
all of a sudden and left me to do the explaining in my wonderful Xhosa.
Ha ha, don’t remember what I said, but got more
distracted by the beautiful people in front of me and wanted to take their
picture. The mama in any case
recognized me as the one who takes the pictures and give the “ikadi” (printed
photographs) to the people, so she was quite keen.
(By the way, I was slightly later than anticipated at
school this morning, apart from another miraculous intervention – an unexpected
lift from some good friends, because I stopped to photograph some people along
the road who wanted pictures for themselves. The light was kind of nice, so I had to grab that
opportunity.) The point is, that
more and more people recognize me and know that I bring their pictures for them
and more and more want me to photograph them, even go to their houses and allow
them to dress up for the occasion.
So, that’ll grow in good time.
Right, so we got the clay and came back to my tent,
Michael, Buyani, Snooks and me. I
must admit that I hardly touched the clay, it’s really difficult to take
pictures when your hands are full of clay… And I must say also, that I’ve learnt that I've loved many things in my life,
like Art, Pottery and Theatre, but Photography I just can’t resist. Specially when the light falls nice and
there are some beautiful people in front of me. So, I probably slightly embarrassed Buyani with his beautiful eyes, in front of me,
but I don’t think he is really aware of what a beautiful person he is, so I had
to just take some beautiful pictures of him… Snooks is also beautiful as always and apparently she’s
getting braids tomorrow, so today was possibly the last of Snooks as we know
her today. And Michael, yes with
his funky haircut and sunglasses, I had some good subjects to play around with
my camera today… Happy day!
The boys made beautiful oxen and Snooks made some sort
of cake. I really hope this can
become a weekly thing for these guys to come around and play with the clay,
because I do think I’ll have a thing or two to teach them about it… Compliments
to my wonderful pottery teacher I had in my Paarl school days from 1992 - 1994,
Debbie de Beer. I wish she could
know how far that impact has come.
I didn’t know until today.
Super awesome day! Thank You Lord!
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