As spring comes to North America, autumn is on its way in South Africa. Vegetation in Venda is abundant and still quite green, the sun still blazes most of the time, but lately there have been a few cloudy, chilly days reminiscent of October in Ohio. When the temperature drops, I yearn for pumpkin pie and hot cider. Because the pumpkin season is not quite here, I have had to settle for the leaves of pumpkin vines my family boils with tomatoes to make a spinach-tasting “miroho,” along with my homemade hot cocoa.
The past month has been eventful and busy, offering very little time to write. It started with my first earthquake experience as I was reading just after midnight Feb. 23. When the bed began shaking, I thought maybe it was from a truck idling outside. But after I got up to investigate, I felt a gentle vibration in the hallway and could hear the family’s dishes tinkle in the cupboard for a good 2 minutes. Nothing fell and the rest of the household slept on. The next day I learned the quake, centered in nearby Mozambique along the Zimbabwe border, registered 7.5, but because it was a “shallow” one, damage and injuries were minor. “Did you feel the earthquake” was the big question asked in shops and on taxis the following day, as earthquakes are not normal occurrences here. Some folks attributed the event as the activity of witches.
In early March I attended a week-long training session conducted by Peace Corps in the town of Polokwane (formerly known as Pietersburg), the capital city of Limpopo Province (in which Venda is located). I got a chance to see a few movies at the only theater in the entire province (“Walk the Line” and “Casanova”) and also to visit my first host family in the nearby village of Garamphele,
It was great to see the Mochakis, and they were happy to see me. Eleven-year-old Phumi, who usually tries to act cool, ran down the dirt road when I arrived and threw himself into my arms. His mom, Damaris greeted me with a huge hug and then a big plate of pap (the thick white paste made of cornmeal which South Africans refer to as their “staple food”) with a chicken drumstick for dinner.
Baby Letabo, just over a year old, has learned how to walk and run since I have been away, but is still as charming as ever. Her Uncle Phumi has learned more English at school and used it to ask me to take him to America the next time I go home. (I told him he must finish school before he can travel anywhere).
The family still lives in their cozy rural house with cattle kraal in the yard, but they now have a DVD player.
Phumi’s sister Sylvia; brother Ronnie, Damaris and I watched two DVDs they had recently purchased: The Gods Must Be Crazy I and II. The movies, a comedy/spoof about the San people (previously called the “Bushmen”) coping with the encroachment of modern society, was filmed in the nearby Kalahari desert. I saw the films in the states many years ago, but they took on a new meaning this time. Sylvia translated some of the characters´ comments that weren’t subtitled. And it was a treat to hear the sounds of birds that have now become so familiar to me and recognize the marula fruits the children gathered in the second movie as the ones growing on trees near Venda.
Speaking of marula, my Venda family’s home has become the site for nightly gatherings of friends and neighbors drinking “mukumbi” – a beer made from the nut-sized, pale green bitter fruit. This is the season for it – so in the Tsonga-speaking villages across the Levubu River where marula trees are plentiful, you will see women sitting along the roadside every few kilometers or so, selling buckets or empty soda containers filled with the homemade brew.
At my house, men mostly, sit on white plastic lawn chairs arranged in a circle with a bucket of mukumbi in front of them. They take turns drinking from the bucket with a dipper made from a hollowed out gourd. A handful of older women, dressed in their traditional striped Venda attire, sit demurely on the ground at the side of the circle of men, but don’t turn away the gourd when it is passed to them. I was offered the gourd once, and tried the beer. It is slightly bitter, but quite potent. One sip gave me nearly the buzz of a full bottle of Heineken.
In addition to fascinating beverages created from native plants, I have witnessed many interesting creatures. Yesterday, a three-inch spider crawled into my friend Emily’s rondavel and cozied up next to the sleeping bag she was sitting in. Unsure if it was poisonous and how fast it could crawl, I crushed it before we could photograph it. I could also describe the tar-like substance that spurted out when my foot came down, but I will spare you such gruesomeness.
Emily, as well as other volunteers (but so far, not me) have also had the experience of being home to the larvae of a certain fly common around rotting mangoes. They lay an egg in human skin and within days the white larva emerges as a big pimple. It’s not a pimple, of course, but you must use the same pimple-popping technique to remove the worm. Bet you are glad I shared that.The first term of the school year is winding down. It ends March 30 and is followed by a two-week vacation (referred to as a holiday here). Three of the four terms is followed by two weeks off. The last term, ending in November, is followed by a month-long holiday.
I have spent the first term giving workshops to teachers in 6 primary schools on South Africa’s national education curriculum (officially the Revised National Curriculum Statement or RNCS). It is a cumbersome series of documents, apparently based on British educational ideals, obtusely written by college professors with an excellent understanding of English.
RNCS offers guidelines on how to create a whole-school learning programme, grade level work schedule and complicated lesson plans to teachers who had not even had to write lesson plans before. Many of the rural teachers speak English quite well, but it is not their native language. They are tripped up not only by the complexity of the recommendations in the curriculum guidelines, but by the terminology. And, admittedly, so am I. A series of “learning outcomes” is used instead of “lesson objectives,” a series of “assessment standards,” must be followed to determine if prescribed “critical outcomes” are met during each lesson – not to be confused with “assessment strategies,” which is how the students (referred to as “learners”) are tested.
Here’s an example from one of the curriculum books:
“In the Foundation Phase, there are three Learning Programmes: Literacy, Numeracy and Life Skills. In the Intermediate Phase, Languages and Mathematics are distinct Learning Programmes. Learning Programmes must ensure that the prescribed outcomes for each learning area are covered effectively and comprehensively. Schools may decide on the number and nature of other Learning Programmes based on the organizational imperatives of the school, provided that the national priorities and developmental needs of the learners in a phase are taken into account.”
It makes me sigh just to write that. While the department of education is laudably trying to establish a strong and equitable education foundation for all of South Africa, they have reached too high and gone too fast without taking into account the limited resources of rural schools. The teachers, most of whom were trained in two-year technical colleges, just want to know how to teach better and how to write a good lesson plan. They are overseeing as many as 5 subjects each and multiple grade levels because of overcrowding (the average classroom size is 45 students) in buildings that are sometimes just tin shacks. They get so overwhelmed by the details sought in the curriculum’s forms, that many choose not to do any planning at all.
Happily, I completed my last curriculum training session today and am off to Cape Town next week with several other Venda-area volunteers for two weeks. We will be taking a second class train from Pretoria, down to the Cape. No Blue Train for us – we are volunteers. After the three-day journey, we plan to visit the Indian and Atlantic coasts, see Nelson Mandela’s former prison home on Robben Island, enjoy fresh seafood, visit the country’s famed wineries and do other touristy things.
When I return, I will begin working individually with teachers, assisting them in creating new, exciting and realistic lessons.