Instruct.

Today was a real Monday! I got to lead workshops at both LEAP 3 and LEAP 4.

At LEAP 3, I am doing a bit of a poetry workshop, and having the students work with the "Where I'm From" poem by George Ella Lyons. I've done this poem with my students at HTHCV before, but doing it with the students here is also inspirational. I was explaining to Nomkhitha that I am endlessly excited about the different stories and details that each person can bring into the poem, the things that separate us and make us truly ourselves. I could tell she thought I was a little nuts. Her poem is the one at the end of this post.

Later with LEAP 4, I had the students begin with self-portraits. I enjoyed encouraging them to be kind to themselves and to appreciate what they could create (no comparisons, we all make art differently, and everyone is an artist). I love each of their sketches, and look forward to doing the poem with them later this week.

Long day, full of instructions, but also full of discovering new people.

Where I'm From
by Nomkhitha

I am from the womb
of an African woman
Born and bred in
the red soil of
endwana village.

I am from the
African forest
chased by wild
animals, yet
go back home
with meat.

Yes I am from
the Orange river,
I am from the
Kilimanjaro mountains
I climb with the
passion and the
memory of freedom.
I stand in the greenstone
watching the river flowing
I am from the heart
of the motherland.

I am from a respective
village, where my neighbour
is u-Aunty, where my
Aunty is uMama.
I am raised by my
Aunty, but to me
she is a mother.

Yes I am from a family
where u-Aunty is a mother,
where she is the father.
I am from the wings of
an African woman who
raised six African youth
without any help.
Yes I am from the
centre of strength,
from the hills of wisdom.

Attend.

Today I visited London Roach Church, an evangelical church about 1.5km from LEAP 3 (where I'm staying). It was more charismatic that churches I usually attend, and people happily jumped up and down and danced during the opening worship.

As we were singing, "Trading my sorrows" I realized that I hadn't been to church since Sean died. It's just circumstantial. The Sunday after he died, it was my first full day in South Africa, and the Sunday after, we traveled to Joburg, and the Sunday after that was today. I realized this because singing "Yes Lord, yes Lord, yes yes Lord," meant something different in the wake of his death. I struggled to be in a place of surrender, because I am still in such disagreement about all of this.

Some nights, especially after watching True Blood, I can't get the image of his death out of my mind. I think that saying "Yes Lord" doesn't necessarily mean that I agree with injustices or foolish mistakes (I don't know how to think about what Tom did, actually), but it means that no matter what the situation, I trust that the universe will unfold the way it needs to, the way God wants it to. That doesn't mean he wanted Sean to die the way he did, but that he can use Sean's life and death to impact the world in a positive way despite the tragedy.

This is still hard.

Church felt right. I was tempted to not go, because it was cold and I was tired, but I'm glad that I ventured out. It is a positive ritual for my existence, whatever the topic of the sermon (something, actually, I wasn't quite sure of, if you peruse my notes).

Eat.

After a failed attempt to find a faster Internet service, we drove out to Boo and Scott's house and had a braai (like, a barbecue). We visited in her lovely backyard with her chickens and kittens and dog, and then feasted on all sorts of delicacies, like some sort of special South African sausage (boerewor?), chicken kabobs, braai brikkie (sp?), lamb shoulder, fresh garden salad, mash, and varieties of vegetable dishes.

The dessert was interactive banana pastries, which you got to design yourself and then accessorize with caramel, fresh whipped cream, and frozen yogurt.

It felt good to feel welcome, and full.

Interact.

I feel like this is my favorite day of our journey so far, because today, we actually got to work with students!! I forgot how delightful it is to teach, how lovely it is to laugh, and encourage, and instruct.

This afternoon, we ventured once again to Diepsloot to meet with the Grade 9 students at LEAP 4. The students had organized a talent show, and so the first two hours or so we spent just watching each of them perform. They sang, danced, performed, rapped, and even showcased art. Every single person from LEAP 4 in attendance today had to contribute something, and after each performance, a panel of four judges said "It's a yes," or "No, sorry."

I was impressed with the judges' honesty, and especially, with performers' bravery.

Afterwards, we were promised an hour to do activities. I led them in two quick activities: team juggling and birthday line-up. They worked hard to get them right, and we processed together what went well, and what could've gone better. When they got it wrong, we laughed at the mistakes. We all tried again, and then celebrated when they got it right.

I was so encouraged by their openness, and by how welcomed we felt to just jump in and be family. It was a good day.

Tour.

Today we visited our third township in less than two weeks. Jeanette, one of the teachers at LEAP 3, said, "Now you've been to South Africa."

Our wonderful foundation tour guides led us on three separate walking tours (we were broken into three groups) and I got to tour extension 1 and 2. The students explained that the zones are very different. Zone 1 is mostly shacks, and it has no electricity. Zone 2 has a fire station, library, community center, many paved roads and sidewalks, and far more established shops (even ones that sell televisions).

We passed by a couple shebeens, with loud music and people milling about or playing pool.

We stepped over many drains, and puddles of running water. A student asked me if I thought Diepsloot was disgusting, and I told her that I didn't. The students asked me if we had shacks in America, and I told her that we didn't.

Not all of Diepsloot is shacks. There are suburbs, too, and government housing that takes ages to acquire, and you have to live in a shack first. The students explained that it is difficult, mainly, because of how many people have to use only one toilet. And that toilet doesn't have running water, either. It's just a hole in the ground. "So it stinks," a student concluded.

The students at LEAP 4 come from all over Diepsloot.

We concluded our tour just as the sun was setting over a park in extension 2. The students made sandwiches for themselves, and gave us delicious chicken pies and soda. We ate quickly, to get home before dark. They reminded me of Team Alpha, my first class of 9th graders, because for now, these forty students are the entire school. These were the first students we got to really interact with, and it reminded all of us of how much we like young people and how excited we are to work with them.

Tour.

A lot of the Teach With Africa program revolves around the deepening of our understandings of South Africa's complex history, and so they place a lot of real value on getting us out into the communities where the LEAP students live (Langa, Gugulethu, Alexandra, and Diepsloot) and also getting us into museums and other culturally important landmarks that contribute to our understanding. Today when we visited the Apartheid Museum in Joburg, and Wendy said, "We've got it. This is a part of your orientation," I think I understood even better what they want to be about.

The Apartheid Museum's brochure reads: "Apartheid is exactly where it belongs -- in a museum." I could not agree more.

The tour was long, and silent. I lost my crew after a short while, and did most of the touring on my own. There was a lot to read. A lot to take in. Reading about apartheid doesn't begin to tell you anything about the brutality of the separateness. The forced removals from townships, the Casspirs that became a daily occurrence in the townships, the dogs that they used to attack, the rallying of anger and energy and passion. You cannot just read about that.

I was most struck by the photography of Ernest Cole (1940-1990). He spent much of his life trying to document the horrors of the system of apartheid, and everywhere there was violence: in home brews, in tsotsis, in the schoolrooms (700 students with only 3 teachers?!). It was sobering, but I think it is important to remember. These are stories that must be retold.

Experience.

Our first full day in Joburg was full and exciting. This afternoon, we met up with a few LEAP students and student alumni, as well as Rebecca and Mapuleng, and took a walking tour all over the Alexandra township. We laughed and chatted, talked about poverty across our countries, and exchanged bits of cultural information here and there. We visited many of the heritage sites in Alex, like churches that held ANC meetings long ago and Nelson Mandela's one room home that he lived in while working in law offices when he first arrived here.

We also went to one of their social responsibility sites, which is a home for the elderly, and actually went inside and sang a song and danced. I think social responsibility is such a wonderful thing that they do here, and I hope that we can do something like it when I come back. It makes so much more sense to craft relationships with organizations, and have students elect for which ones they want. The way we do community service at my school is such a token gesture.

Alex felt very different from Langa. There were parts that were well-off, and parts that weren't. Many brick houses, some dirt roads, lots of fences with barbed wire or broken glass to deter people with poor intentions.

At the end of our tour, we went to Joe's Butcher and that's where the real experience began! It was outdoor grilled meat, and pap (mealies). We grilled one another on cultural differences, and explained that the United States is not a whole lot like it is in the movies (as Piladi would say, "sensualism"!).