The time is flying too fast this week and I haven’t
had a moment to reflect, except perhaps in my sleep. This getting up at 6:00 thing is something that needs
adjusting to. Perhaps it would
help if I could go to sleep earlier, but that hasn’t worked out yet. Oh well, I guess this too shall
pass. At least I’m quite enjoying
everything.
My new little classes are good. I’ve mostly spent time with the grade
8-9 s, their class is also the smallest.
Only 7 people, so I can get to know them relatively fast. The grade 6-7s are 14 in the
class and I can already foresee that they are most probably going to need the
crowd control.
I have the English classes to teach and also Arts and
Culture, which I must somehow use to rehearse Macbeth with all 4 grades
together. It’s been a slight
problem so far, cause of course their classes are seperate. And whoever is in control of the
schedule, just randomly decides that all of a sudden we must rehearse in the
afternoon, while I’ve already got other private students for that time… Well, I hope we can sort it all out
peacefully.
The rehearsals itself don’t go too badly, apart from
the main characters that don’t really take their roles seriously at this
stage… I have to remind myself
that these ain’t professional actors I’m dealing with…
Had a couple of good days with Buyana my new keen
student. Whenever I open my eyes
he’s at my door. He’s 15 years old
and in grade 3, his brother is 11 and in grade 3 as well. I can’t make out the story. Our communication is very basic at this
stage. Probably he only started
going to school a couple of years ago.
The 2 brothers also go to different schools for some reason. I don’t know how good these schools can
be, since they seem like really bright boys and eager to learn but they really
don’t know much. And their English
is super limited.
Today I spent about an hour with Buyana, looking at a
world map, that my good friend Danica gave me when I left Cape Town…. (Dankie
Danica! Awesome stuff) Anyway, I just wanted him to understand
the difference between continent, country and city. He had no idea about any other countries in the world except
South Africa, or any other cities except Umtata. I showed him how I flew with an aeroplane to Holland and UK
and took a ferry to Ireland and Crete and explained how long all these journeys
took.
At one point he realized that all the blue was ocean
and he was totally surprised. And
seemed quite interested in the concept of how long it would take by ship
instead of by plane. I think he
got a faint glimpsefor the first time today of how big the world really is and
was rather astonished.
He still speaks of himself as ‘you’, but I think he’s
getting the ‘I’ and ‘ I’m’ thing slowly.
Also he did very well yesterday with our little ‘this, that, these,
those’ session. He now consciously
reminds himself to say “this IS’, when I ask him what something is. He’s learning!
Today his brother came over after a while and I told
Buyana to show him the map and tell him something he learnt about it. So he was asking his brother questions
and when I tried to help, he said, no, shhh. So, he was actually eliciting the information from his
brother! Good stuff my
student!
Oh yes, and I drew him 2 lorries, a red and yellow one
and told him to practise red lorrie, yellow lorrie! (With good memories of my
friend André Weideman who taught this to my dad’s parrot! Amongst other things, he also taught
the parrot “I believe I can fly!”) Anyway, R is really a challenging letter to
pronounce for Xhosa people! So, he
also got his brother to practice that!
Yesterday afternoon we took a break from our studies
and I showed the boys my pois (Those balls on ropes that you swing around in
rhythmic patterns…) They loved it and Buyana insisted on taking my ipod along
to the beach so he could listen to music while he’s playing with the pois. (He loves the ipod and constantly wants
to operate it and carry it around)
When we later returned it had started to rain a
little, so I took them home in my car, they don’t live too far, I can actually
see their house on the hill from my caravan. Anyway, I dropped them off and Buyana must’ve forgotten
about my ipod in his pocket, I did.
Until I got home and realized it’s gone.
I thought, okay, that’s not cool, cause I love to
listen to music in the evenings when I’m by myself and even in the morning. And
the thought did cross my mind that he’d done it sneakily and on purpose
although I wasn’t convinced. (He
does seem to love music and I can’t blame him for that). And I thought, I’ll have to be a bit
stricter from now on and not let him borrow it again and lay down some other
rules as well regarding how much time we can spend together, cause if it
depended on him he would probably just never leave.
So I was in my caravan, missing my music and slightly
irritated cause I couldn’t listen to anything, when I heard someone calling
from some distance: Lavonnie!
Lavonnie! I went out and
surely it was him standing on the other side of the fence, walked back all the
way to me in the dark to return my ipod.
I was so happy and instantly forgave him for his troubles and the way he
said sorry just melted my heart.
I wanted to tell him to only come on certain days of
the week, but he appears to have me wrapped around his finger, so I only told
him he can come from 3-6 every day, perhaps earlier on Fridays. And his little brother is also
welcome. I just find it refreshing
to see kids so eager to learn. My
other boys have been MIA for too long now, still building their house and I’m
tired of sitting around and waiting for them. I think from now on, if they want to learn, they can come to
me. We get a lot more done this
way, and learn in many different ways.
I can always give Buyana a little cleaning job or something to do which
he does without complaining. And
it’s nice to now and then make something special to eat for the boys.
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