I actually hadn’t really planned on joining the tour until I got an enthusiastic email from my RA, Buchule, who lives in Khayelitsha, the night before the tour encouraging us all to come when I decided I may as well give it a go. I’ve come to believe down here that its better to try something and be in an informed position from which to criticize it then just avoid it all together. As it turns out, I was only marginally uncomfortable when Saturday came around, the tour was less of a tour then I’d built it up to be and only a small group turned out so we weren’t the monstrosity of a tourist group I had envisioned.
The highlight of the day was a visit to Chumisa Primary School, one of the forty or so schools that serves the population of more than a million and a half who live in Khayelitsha. Mr Bongo, who had been the principal and foundation of the school for the last twenty odd years spoke to us for more than an hour about the nature of life in the township, the problems the school faces, and more broadly, his experience with education in South Africa and his thoughts on where the country is going. He didn’t sugarcoat anything. He explained that the vast majority of his teachers are seriously under-qualified and don’t care very much about really educating the students. He explained that the township schools are seriously under-resourced and most provide no outlets to keep children away from drugs and violence after school hours. Detailing the legacy of apartheid he explained that before 1994, his students were funded at R1 a year by the government (that amounts to about 15 American cents per student per year). I could tell that this man has poured every ounce of his being into this school, he even sacrificed having a family in order to devote all his energy to the school. And yet, in the year before he retires, he is still really pessimistic about the future. He explained that modern South Africa is a powder keg of uneducated, unemployed people just waiting to explode. “The people living in the city don’t realize that the day will come when the people from the townships will march violently to the city and nothing will be able to be done to stop them.” I was pretty dumbstruck by what Mr. Bongo had to say. It was the first time I’d really gotten the scoop from someone so deeply entrenched in township education, and I left feeling pretty disheartened. As we left the guide who had arranged the tour presented Mr. Bongo with a charitable contribution from our group to be used for the school. I couldn’t help but think whatever small amount of money was in the envelope was futile.
Sunday brought a new day and a brighter outlook on the future of the black education in this city. My friend Brett, who I volunteer with at Leap, and I decided that we wanted to take our boys to Robin Island, an island off the coast of Cape Town that was used among other things as a prison from the early years of the Dutch colony until the early 1990s. Many of the political figures who battled apartheid were imprisoned on the island, including Nelson Mandela, who spent 18 years there. Three of the four kids had never been before and frankly would never be able to afford to go on their own. Brett and I hadn’t made our way there yet either and thought that going with them would be a good opportunity to be with the kids out of the school setting, see how they reacted to the tour, and give them an opportunity to learn about and take ownership of their own history. I bought the tickets the night before and we met the four boys (Kyna, Mcebisi, Seviwe, and Seobungo) at the waterfront, where the tour leaves, on Sunday morning.
The tour took us on a ferry to the island where we boarded a bus and were driven around and given a tour of the island. The tour ended at the prison where we were escorted around by a former political prisoner who had served time on the island and got to see the cell that housed the most famous man in the country. The tour was pretty informative and hearing first hand about life on the island from someone who’d lived there for seven years was particularly neat. The kids kept exclaiming about how much they enjoyed the trip, and told me that they hadn’t learned about many of the details of the history before. The funniest part of the day had to have been the ferry rides to and from the island. None of the boys had ever been on a big boat before and all got really dizzy and nauseous from the ride. I couldn’t help but burst out in laughter as Seviwe sunk to the floor of the deck and gripped the metal bars of the seat because it was windy on the deck and he was worried he was going to fall off. His face was priceless.
When we got back to the waterfront Brett and I bought the boys a late lunch, and they were really excited for the big bucket of KFC I plopped on the table (which for them is quite a treat). As Brett and I drove back to Mowbray we both agreed that we were really glad we’d taken the boys and that we couldn’t have seen Robin Island for the first time under better circumstances.
(Mandela's Prison Cell)
(Seviwe Holding on for Dear Life)
On Monday, I was back at Leap with the boys again and went with them to a public pool (which turned out was only a few blocks from my apartment) along with the rest of the tenth graders. It was a hot day and I swam in my shorts, laughing as the boys tried to one up each other as they dove into the pool. A few of them were pretty good swimmers considering they don’t have regular access of any kind to a pool and I even tried to teach a few of them the breaststroke and butterfly. They tried…and failed about as miserably as I do when I try to imitate their Xhosa. It was hysterical.
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