Hey Everyone,
It was a full week between posts and a full week of life in South Africa. On Monday we had volunteering in the morning as usual. Ryan Fuchs and I have become the IT staff for the school. The two computers that the office uses were freezing about 30 seconds after they were turned on. They had just put on new anti-virus which was competing with the old anti-virus. We just had to remove the old anti-virus. The teachers can use computers just fine, but they don’t understand some of the little things. I am planning on setting up a seminar to teach them some more about keeping the computers safe and working. Later on our music class visited St. Dominic Priory High School for a presentation from their marimba group. The school itself was very nice, and was much more diverse than I expected while driving up. The group gave us a great show, and it was fun to go on a field trip for the first time in a while.
After that it was on to the rugby game at NMMU. The Varsity Cup is the league that the team plays in, and it is a similar atmosphere to a football game. Some of the student section was chanting longer than I have ever seen before. The energy was awesome. The Madibaz are apparently not very good, but they won on a last second field goal that bounced off the cross-bar in. There is no clock on the score board, so the reason we knew it was last second was from the team rushing out to celebrate. No storming of the field for the fans though because the field is surrounded by barbed-wire fencing. We will surely go tomorrow for the last home game of the season since they are not going to be playing there in the playoffs. One thing that is different is the fact that the players get paid after games. That would certainly be a nice bonus.
On Wednesday morning we had a class dealing with our volunteer sites. We meet in this class every couple of weeks or so, and do it to help us organize our projects and gauge how the volunteering is going. Pendla Primary School is in my opinion the most frustrating site of the three that our group is split between. The reason I say this is because the other two sites of Missionvale Care Center and House of Resurrection are run by people with similar goals as we have. The teachers are assigned to Pendla; and although they want the best for the students, it is treated as an obligation more than as a passion. Maybe I was just lucky to have many great teachers growing up that went above and beyond what was in their contract, but that is just my opinion. Our major plan is to get a library check-out system that the students can use.
On Thursday we had a guest speaker lecture to us about the transition years from 1990-1994. The main focus was on the many meetings between the last president of the National Party during Apartheid President F.W. deKlerk and future president Nelson Mandela. The two received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 because of how they handled the situation. The professor certainly had a different view from what we have seen thus far here. He, of Afrikaner ethnicity, was very critical of Mandela. He discussed the differences between the Zulu led En Carta and Mandela led African National Congress (ANC) which was predominately Xhosa. The National Party knew it was going to lose the election of 1994, and it wanted En Carta to gain the upper hand after the talks, but that didn’t happen. He regarded Mandela as a communist and the entire ANC as radicals which can be true to a point. George Washington and the colonists were a bit radical as well. Just from listening to him he focused more on the various tribes and differences more than any other speaker we have seen.
The current president of the country is Jacob Zuma. His political party is the ANC. The ANC has won every election since 1994, and are doing a great job at riding the coattails of liberating the country. The political system is corrupt at the moment though. There is no Mandela amongst the current leaders and it is based much more on who you know rather than the most deserving. This has lead to a large gap in the country. There is a belief from many people that the government will come and build them a house or give them a handout. I have met a few students at the university from some of the bordering countries, and they have all seen that in South Africa. Zimbabwe, for example, is not as rich as South Africa, but a poor person in Zimbabwe is better off than a poor person in SA. Part of the problem is that of South Africa’s population of 50 million, only 5 million make enough money to pay taxes. About 25-30 million are unemployed. This leads to lots of beggars in the streets of which I see every day.
The next election or two, and just the future in general should be exciting for SA. The young generation that was born after Apartheid, and therefore not immediately effected, is growing of age to make their mark. The ANC did not win in a landslide in the last election as in previous ones, and much of the country is not as patient as they were in the 90’s. I think that this will lead to some really progressive steps made in the next decade.
This past weekend was really great. A group of 12 of us went to Jeffery’s Bay to go surfing. My flat mates and I took lessons on Friday afternoon while the girls went horseback riding. We paid about $30 dollars for a two hour session, but we were out riding the waves for about 3 hours. The instructor was a 26 year old guy that has been surfing for his entire life, and is really just living a simple life. I was able to get it fairly quickly, and by the end of the session was regularly getting up and shredding. We had a great braai (barbecue) that night and had a great chance to bond with the 12 of us at the hostile we stayed at. In the morning the girls took lessons while we rented a couple boards to surf with them. Overall, a great experience with some great friends.
Cooking the braai
Thanks for reading. Cheers!
Bobby
Surfing
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