Life In Technicolor

It feels like such a long time since I last wrote and yet it was only a week ago. This week’s activities were slightly less exciting and dangerous than the previous week’s but I hope it’s still exciting enough for you to read. I also realised that last week I wrote a ridiculous amount of words which effectively amounted to a Stranmillis assignment, so for all our sakes I try and be more concise this week.

I’ll begin with a funny incident which occurred last Wednesday and which I forgot to mention in last weeks blog. After our first class of the day I thought that we had a break before our next class. So, I decided to go out and lie on what I like to call ‘Madibaz Mound’ (Madibaz being the family name for Mandela, I think) and read. Me being me though it wasn’t long before I was sleeping on the grass until I was awoken by Marco, a German friend of mine. I quickly realised that it was time for me to go to class but as I arrived I noticed that everyone else was leaving. Turns out I had been looking at the wrong week on my timetable and so had slept through an entire class. Of course back home this might not have been a surprising event but I promise that this was an honest mistake and that I did actually intend to attend the class!

Now that that randomness is out of the way I’ll try and think of some of the things that I’ve been up to this week. I lost my rugby ball. I use lost in probably the loosest sense of the word. I was down at the beach on Friday with a few friends and I kicked the ball to a local guy in the water who it turns out can neither catch nor swim, so the ball started to float out from the shore. I chased after it but given my previous experience of open water I decided it was probably better to just let it go. It should be arriving with the penguins in Antarctica any day soon! My grief was short lived though as I went to Twenty20 cricket on Friday night. St. Georges Park is one of the oldest cricket grounds in the world and it certainly has a character of its own. The stadium was packed out with over 11,000 lively and enthusiastic cricket fans. I challenge anyone who thinks that cricket is boring to come and watch a 20/20 game here. We were sat beside the local supporters band comprising of drummers, trumpeters and maybe even a fiddler and so we were singing and dancing the whole way through the game in the stand. There were sixes, fours and wickets galore as the Warriors marched to victory of the Cobras much to the delight of the home supporters. I’m realising that words don’t really do this justice but I do have some video footage which I will try to upload to facebook sometime soon, the internet here doesn’t exactly lend itself to uploading!

 

Had a pretty chilled weekend in the city. Went to a nearby swimming complex on Saturday which is seriously sweet! You walk out to the pool and you see this massive blue pool and then just behind it the waves are crashing against the shoreline. This is the place to work on the tan that everyone at home keeps asking me about. There are also some water slides at the pool, which I think are designed for kids, but well we all know that I’m just a big kid anyway. I made my trademark chicken stir-fry on Saturday night, it’s not difficult I just through everything into a pan and hope for the best! Cooking here has been interesting as I’m so used at home to having everything provided for me. We all tend to cook for each other and with each other though which is nice. I’ve been able to broaden my culinary horizons and can now add tacos and pancakes to the list of things which I can now cook. I’m going to come home as the brand new Jamie Oliver!

Sunday was equally relaxed and I spent the morning at St. James Community Church and got a tour of the Jewish synagogue which they are buying and moving into in a couple of months time. I’d never been in a synagogue before and I have to say it was rather interesting. From having to cover my head when I entered to the curtain at the front, to the books of Moses and the arrangement of seats and things, I guess it made real some of the things which Jesus referred to when speaking about the temple and the Jewish leaders. In particular the reference to the curtain tearing in two when Jesus was crucified, there was a curtain similar to that in Jerusalem right before my eyes. I also hung out with some of the street guys who come along to the church that afternoon because they actually hang out right across the street from where I’m staying. It’s really cool to get an insight into how they live their lives and to gain an understanding of what it must be like to be truly poor. Sitting with them on the street and talking to them brings home that we are all brothers and the injustice that we should leave many of our brothers behind as we prosper.

Classes this week have been interesting, particularly our class on educational thought which this week turned to the subject of stereotyping, racism and xenophobia. This is something which is obviously a major topic for debate in South Africa and which has historically been linked with this country. I heard in class countless examples of stereotypes and incidences of xenophobia but also suggestions for how these could be reconciled. The more I thought about it the more I realised that these weren’t just problems faced by South Africans but these were global issues and issues which are also still incredibly prevalent in Northern Ireland. What I was hearing was the same story of home, only within a different context. Where some South Africans have conflict with Zimbabweans entering their country, many at home have conflict with Eastern Europeans entering our country. Where some South Africans stereotype each other by race, many at home stereotype each other according to religion. Like homophobia, arachnophobia and countless other phobias, xenophobia is an irrational fear, a fear of the unknown. Everyone wishes to overcome their fears, no-one likes to be afraid of something, so people should be open to getting to know something which is foreign to them and gain an insight and understanding of other people so as to rid themselves of their fears. Big dream, but if one doesn’t dream then one can never achieve.

The more I spend time at Khwezi Lomso the more I feel a great sense of injustice for the kids that go there. They have to learn in English, whilst their first language is actually Xhosa. This creates an immediate barrier to learning as there is actually no knowing if the children actually fully understand what is being taught. As I’ve said before the resources are not available for the children to learn. This week I observed a PE lesson where they only equipment used a text book provided by each child. This was with a Year 12 class, which is the equivalent to an A Level class. The kids just had to jump back, forward and to the side of their book, an exercise which I’m sure would have the PE lecturers at Stran astounded! However, this is all that the PE teacher can do with them. I hope to be able to bring some of my own teaching ideas and philosophies to my teaching in this school but it is going to be very difficult with the class numbers, lack of resources amongst other barriers, but I’m sure going to give it my best shot!

This week I had a very international skype call which incorporated so many people in South Africa, Malta, Isle of Mann and Northern Ireland. It’s great to hear how everyone is getting on in different places. It seems like Malta is very much like here, go to class and go to the beach, it’s easy Ashlene, right? I’ve also been in touch with Holland, Uganda, Poland and Zambia! The internet is like a cat-flap to the rest of the world, all you have to do is log on and you can instantly be immersed in a different country and someone else’s experiences, it’s fantastic! Now I just need a plane, complete with phalanges, to take me to these places and to bring my friends to me so we could fully experience what each other is experiencing. I want to take this opportunity to encourage anyone back home who is considering applying for Erasmus or International study next year to do it…it’s an incredible experience!

Turns out I didn’t make it any shorter, for which I greatly apologise for making you read all my thoughts and ramblings. This blog is as much for my benefit I think as it is for yours because it truly allows me to reflect on everything that I’ve been doing and seeing. So until next time folks,

Peace

God Bless

“Give all your worries and cares to God for he cares about you” 1 Peter 5:7