A wonderful article from the New Internationalist--a publication in its brilliance which predicted the financial mess long ago and here's what it says about the trivialization of our materialistic world:
"Maslow gone wrong: human potential took a back seat to economic potential while self- actualization gave way to self- absorption;a society that operates on the principle that triviality is more profitable than substance and which dedicates itself to unceasing material over-kill. Consumer culture has become a fine-tuned instrument for keeping people incomplete, shallow and de-humanised. Fashion statements become a form of literacy; brand names father pride and celebrity drivel becomes compelling.
Can a highly trivialised culture, marooned between fact and fiction, dizzy with distraction and denial, elevate its values and priorities to respond effectively to the multiple planetary emergencies looming?"
Friday, February 3, 2012
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
A Donkey Track to Everywhere
A Donkey-track to Everywhere
Three years ago I went to teach English to the locals of a remote village in the former Transkei. I was 54 and a tad old I thought to be having a mid-life crisis which symptoms included nothing more dramatic than a restlessness, a constant shifting about in the seat of my oh-so-comfortable existence.
I lived 6 months of the year in an idyllic provençal village in France and the other 6 in another idyllic village Kommetjie, 35 minutes from Cape Town. There was no epiphanaic moment, my goals were clear and simple: I wanted to go back to teaching and where better than somewhere in Africa.
I did an online TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course and still on the computer two months later, I answered the phone and it was my brother calling from what he described as a spectacular place in the former Transkei and he knew I would just love it. I googled the place - wonderfully called Bulungula - and read their site - and they needed an English teacher with a TEFL diploma.I was teaching there 6 months later.
Bulungula Lodge
Bulungula is a back-packers lodge set on the Wild Coast and was started by a visionary genius, Dave Martin. I don’t use these words lightly. The Lodge is affiliated to the local village of 800 inhabitants so remote, so poor that they have no electricity, no running water. The village is only accessible via a donkey track.Dave arrived in 2004 and established the Lodge on sound ecological principles-compost toilets, wind-driven power and a trust was founded whereby the local people had a 40% share.Perhaps the rice-paddies in the hills of Northern Viet Nam can compete scenically with the Transkei-but it’s a tough competition: rolling hills of almost neon-green lawn as if it had been mown, dotted by thatched huts- the flowers of the landscape-painted in toothpaste turquoise or ochre and a tidal river ribboning its way through banked by giant euphorbias.My teaching programme was to be for 6 months.The French have an apt Acronym to which I subscribe: BoBo- Bourgeios-Bohème or in South Africa-speak: a quasi-kugel with pseudo-Marxist/hippy leanings. In the beginning I found it tough.
On the comfort level, I wasn’t used to sharing anything-let alone a compost toilet; but I was hugely grateful that I had a special deal with Dave that unlike other volunteers, I had at least a hut to myself. It had a traditional dung floor and every now and then, a little mole would pop its head up from a hole it had dug from under the floor. Cute moles and spiders make me scream. The ‘rocket showers’ were equally terrifying. You had to light a wick at the base of a tin chimney which you had first soaked in paraffin; this combustion would result in explosions and splutterings until the water had heated up. I knew I had to get it right because I was not going to run out naked shouting for help.The decision was easy, I gave up showering and swam in the river. I also would never get used to early morning ablutions standing next to a strange man shaving. Of course in such a close knit community, such a poor community, the notion of privacy was alien. The kids felt they could walk into my hut whenever they felt like it. To try and get round this-without being mean, whenever I wanted to take a nap I pasted on my door a picture of me sleeping–my own Do Not Disturb sign. They simply ignored this and would walk in and watch me pretend to sleep.On the social level, I felt old for the first time in my life. I could have been a grand-mother to most of the back-packing guests.On the teaching level, I had 60 pupils and their names were nothing like Jade Emma or Wayne. I had to memorise their names-and all teachers know that you have got to do it quickly and especially when you don‘t have a common language- names like Kholikile, Makekwenkwe; Zithulele, Nozangile. (And sometimes after an initiation ceremony, the names would change.)What follows is an excerpt from one of my letters home.
A Day-in-the-life from a remote village in the Transkei
I have 31 kids registered and 30 adults. Both groups are split in two. The kids Grades 1 and 2 whose ages range from 2 years (excluding the babies on backs) to 11; Grade 4- ages 11 to 15. The adults are split quite evenly between those who can read and write and those who can’t. As I’ve said before my hut is the classroom. I have 2 beds in it and just roll up my bedding and stick it behind the bed on the floor every morning. (This makes for rigorous spider checking with my torch when I eventually unroll it at bed time.) They all use clipboards to press on. The teaching begins at 2pm in the afternoon and I finish at 6 with 10- minute smoke breaks in-between. Unfortunately my DNA is programmed for a siesta at the exact moment when 31 kids race into the ‘class’.At 6pm I stagger into the main area of the Lodge and pour myself the most wonderful glass of beer. At 6.30 my husband phones on the satellite - this is the only time one can vaguely talk before the music is put on at full volume and before the candles are lit which burn holes in your clothes as you lean over the bar to reach for the ‘phone. At 6.45 the shuttle arrives from Mthatha with new guests who are relatively effortless in comparison to the shopping in the trailer which has to be off-loaded by us volunteers.I first thought that I would pull age-rank here and say that people over 50 didn’t have to do this kind of stuff but by now am so over-sensitive about the age gap that new strategies are called for: in full view of everyone I pick up the heaviest looking parcel and carry it to the store and go and hide in the toilets for the rest of the off-load. At 7 we’re on kitchen duty which means making a salad for 40; heating up the food etc. I don’t mind this because they don’t wash the lettuce* which is really the biggest schlep in making salad.Talking of health - my constitution must be now invulnerable to the most virulent of bacteria: In a day an average of 60 people pass through my hut and of those, half have coughs - especially with the rain and the only malady has been a headache after too much beer. (Upsettingly though is that the locals are prone to coughs and sniffles the minute there is damp weather because of poor nutrition.)
The Teaching
I’m not good at teaching the kids. I’m not qualified either. The only thing the children are interested in learning is Maths. I would have been very depressed if I had found submissive and over-polite children. For the most part, these children are assertive,-too lively for my liking- and totally delightful but this can be a pain in the arse when one is tired. And the older girls, as a prank during some lessons, shout “Babies, Pen” as they push about 6 two-year olds in the door and run away.One lesson I thought we’d done enough Maths and decided to give them a lesson in Pattern and Design. (I feel that Art is always at the bottom of the list and should have equal priority with clean running water.) I explained triangles and squares etc to bring in the Maths bit and then took them off to the toilets which have been beautifully decorated with murals by an artist friend of Dave’s. I had learnt the word for pattern and colour in Xhosa and they chanted these words very loudly as I pointed out the designs. I was interrupted by one who said in perfect English: “ These toilets are smelly, Pen”. I abandoned the excursion because he was quite right.An interesting aside-Dave built them some compost toilets which remain unused. I have been around and in their huts and have never smelt anything stronger than wood smoke. And everyone is amazingly clean. They have no running water. There are no pumps. Women walk miles every morning and carry huge cans of water from the source on their heads. One volunteer is doing her masters in eco-science and how it involves children. She lives with the locals while she’s doing her research and explained the ecological ordered balance of their lives. Very superficially: chickens live in the hut to clean up the crumbs. Babies of course don’t have nappies so the dogs are necessary to eat up the poo. The pigs do the rest of the cleaning up outside.
I would like to kidnap quite a few of these children. One is Pelelane who is the 9th child of Zithulele who is the night-watchman and a major fisherman. Zithulele is a student in the class where they are learning to read and write. I asked him how old Pelelane was and he didn’t know. Pelelane must be about 3-he’s a little bandy and has a slight waddle when he walks.In the morning when I do the prep for the day, I position my ‘desk’ in the doorway to maximize the view of the river. One day a little kid walked past, stopped, looked at me then held up his thumb and said “Sharp”.Pelelane and I now have a morning ritual: when he comes in I give him the rest of the milk from my tea and half a Cal-c-vita. He puts the glass next to his ear to hear the fizz and I’ve taught him to make the vulgar ‘aaaahhh’ noise after each sip. I once picked him up to show him a beautiful full moon and asked him what it was: “ iballooni” was his reply.Another kidnappable lot is a family of 4 children, the oldest is 13, who live alone in their hut because both parents live in Johannesburg. This place gives true meaning to the philosophy that it takes a village to bring up a child. They borrow my torch every evening to walk home. Dave told me I was crazy when he heard me complaining how I have to stumble home in the dark as he remarked that these kids know the way perfectly but they are terrified of frogs. (apparently frogs are witches in disguise) I’m also terrified of frogs so took the torch back.The oldest and her friend came into my hut one evening late and began to fiddle with my things. They asked why I had 2 pairs of sunglasses; why were there 2 beds when I was only one and so many shoes. They found my suitcase and began strutting around the hut dressed à-la-me with sunglasses and hats etc. I was amazed how ‘cool’ they were. Where did they learn all this? No TV, no magazines, no movies. Is ‘cool’ part of the ether? One of the volunteers remarked that Africans invented ‘cool’. I could only agree.
In our often over-scientific, over-cynical world, there must be place for the ‘poetic moments‘. In Bulungula there were many. I did like the music pumped through huge loudspeakers all day-especially Maskandi- but at times I needed to escape the banging on of House and had a small battery-run CD player in my hut. One Saturday afternoon I was just hanging out in my rondavel listening to Mozart. Shoes-yes, his name was Shoes-ambled in. Shoes was the 15 year old son of Nokantile who was quite beautiful and had 9 other children and she had her own business of doing the laundry for the guests and mine. Shoes was too cool to come to my classes. He sat down and asked me what music I was listening to. I told him it was Mozart and asked him if he liked it. (By this time I could communicate in very basic Xhosa) He nodded and he listened while I was pottering about. “Pen”, he interrupted, “please paint my nails”. The poetry was all there- my hut, Mozart, cool Shoes with bright pink nails.
I have a problematic dilemma here and I tread with care as I don’t want to appear to be romanticising poverty:The only time I hear whining I know it comes from one of the guests’ children. The Bulungula kids play together all day with no adult supervision. I’ve seen 4 year olds carrying their young siblings around. They gallop past bare-back on donkeys - and sometimes facing the wrong way; they fish off the rocks; they swim in the river mouth. When they’re not playing they’re carrying fire-wood or they walk 2 hours on a shopping errand. These children have no toys. There is one moth-eaten football. I had a party only for the kids who had attended class. I deliberately over-catered for the expected gate-crashers. Dave advised me that I was not to give anything to those who had not attended class. He was unfortunately absolutely right. I needn’t have worried though, as sharing comes to these children as naturally as our urban children grab. Every bit of food was eaten. (There were no sweets by the way and this wasn’t adult prissiness on my part-they are so under-nourished that they will choose yoghurt or an orange over a chocolate.)
In my opinion there are three things this village needs: vegetables, pumps with clean water and a clinic. (Dave is organizing the vegetables on a perma-culture farming basis.) Do they really need me to teach them English and Maths etc so they can leave this place, go to the city, face unemployment and live in a cardboard shack? Or, if they do get lucky and find a job and get rich and then spend the rest of their lives accumulating more wealth so that they can sustain their addiction to consumption and the culture of instant gratification which pervades us all?
The only valid teaching to my mind should be a warning about our society which I feel, like a pack of cigs, should carry a health warning. Why do we arrogantly presume that our ‘culture’ is the one to be taught? Dave says it’s all about choice. But one is only free when the choice is an informed one. Our ‘culture’ is dangerous because it is so seductive and the health warning should be “ The culture of the West makes you greedy for more and ‘instant grat’ is unsustainable-both physically and psychologically.” Our spirituality is mostly embedded in either fundamentalistic beliefs and/or Celebrity ‘Culture‘. Enough and onto my real job description:
Teaching adults
There is a new method to teach literacy developed in Cape Town called Brand Knew. One teaches through brand names which most people are familiar with. I do agree with Naomi Klein’s ‘ No Logo’ and I hesitate to endorse brand names further but I believe this method works. Briefly the process is as follows: One puts up on the board a number of brand names with their logos. E.g. Toyota, Rama, Joko. The students recognize the logo. Bit by bit the logo is deconstructed in that the word is next presented without the logo; then you show the word without the colour; eventually they should be able to recognize the word in normal black and white script. Words after all are just a collection of shapes and marks on a page. After a couple of lessons I told the unbelieving students that they had begun to read.
Writing is taught at the same time through the conventional method how we all learnt it: painstakingly going through the alphabet teaching the different writing patterns. We started with how to hold a pencil which most of them had never done before. When I saw the difficulty this simple process entailed for these adults who had such remarkable life skills, a magical traditional culture that far outweighed anything I knew and had experienced, I was ashamed that I was in this arrogant position of teaching them and having to correct scrawls that were all over the page. I was also again very angry with everything to do with my history: colonialism, apartheid and its gutter education. Most of them are beginning to write their names.
* Dave corrected me here, saying I was the only one who didn’t wash the lettuce.
Visit the Bulungula Incubator website to see the amazing new developments that have taken place in the past three years.
Pics from the top: 1. Pelelane. 2. The cool girls. 3. Classroom/hut. 4. Graduation day for the Adult students.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Teaching English at Bulungula", url: "http://toursandtales.com/teaching-english-at-bulungula" });
Three years ago I went to teach English to the locals of a remote village in the former Transkei. I was 54 and a tad old I thought to be having a mid-life crisis which symptoms included nothing more dramatic than a restlessness, a constant shifting about in the seat of my oh-so-comfortable existence.
I lived 6 months of the year in an idyllic provençal village in France and the other 6 in another idyllic village Kommetjie, 35 minutes from Cape Town. There was no epiphanaic moment, my goals were clear and simple: I wanted to go back to teaching and where better than somewhere in Africa.
I did an online TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course and still on the computer two months later, I answered the phone and it was my brother calling from what he described as a spectacular place in the former Transkei and he knew I would just love it. I googled the place - wonderfully called Bulungula - and read their site - and they needed an English teacher with a TEFL diploma.I was teaching there 6 months later.
Bulungula Lodge
Bulungula is a back-packers lodge set on the Wild Coast and was started by a visionary genius, Dave Martin. I don’t use these words lightly. The Lodge is affiliated to the local village of 800 inhabitants so remote, so poor that they have no electricity, no running water. The village is only accessible via a donkey track.Dave arrived in 2004 and established the Lodge on sound ecological principles-compost toilets, wind-driven power and a trust was founded whereby the local people had a 40% share.Perhaps the rice-paddies in the hills of Northern Viet Nam can compete scenically with the Transkei-but it’s a tough competition: rolling hills of almost neon-green lawn as if it had been mown, dotted by thatched huts- the flowers of the landscape-painted in toothpaste turquoise or ochre and a tidal river ribboning its way through banked by giant euphorbias.My teaching programme was to be for 6 months.The French have an apt Acronym to which I subscribe: BoBo- Bourgeios-Bohème or in South Africa-speak: a quasi-kugel with pseudo-Marxist/hippy leanings. In the beginning I found it tough.
On the comfort level, I wasn’t used to sharing anything-let alone a compost toilet; but I was hugely grateful that I had a special deal with Dave that unlike other volunteers, I had at least a hut to myself. It had a traditional dung floor and every now and then, a little mole would pop its head up from a hole it had dug from under the floor. Cute moles and spiders make me scream. The ‘rocket showers’ were equally terrifying. You had to light a wick at the base of a tin chimney which you had first soaked in paraffin; this combustion would result in explosions and splutterings until the water had heated up. I knew I had to get it right because I was not going to run out naked shouting for help.The decision was easy, I gave up showering and swam in the river. I also would never get used to early morning ablutions standing next to a strange man shaving. Of course in such a close knit community, such a poor community, the notion of privacy was alien. The kids felt they could walk into my hut whenever they felt like it. To try and get round this-without being mean, whenever I wanted to take a nap I pasted on my door a picture of me sleeping–my own Do Not Disturb sign. They simply ignored this and would walk in and watch me pretend to sleep.On the social level, I felt old for the first time in my life. I could have been a grand-mother to most of the back-packing guests.On the teaching level, I had 60 pupils and their names were nothing like Jade Emma or Wayne. I had to memorise their names-and all teachers know that you have got to do it quickly and especially when you don‘t have a common language- names like Kholikile, Makekwenkwe; Zithulele, Nozangile. (And sometimes after an initiation ceremony, the names would change.)What follows is an excerpt from one of my letters home.
A Day-in-the-life from a remote village in the Transkei
I have 31 kids registered and 30 adults. Both groups are split in two. The kids Grades 1 and 2 whose ages range from 2 years (excluding the babies on backs) to 11; Grade 4- ages 11 to 15. The adults are split quite evenly between those who can read and write and those who can’t. As I’ve said before my hut is the classroom. I have 2 beds in it and just roll up my bedding and stick it behind the bed on the floor every morning. (This makes for rigorous spider checking with my torch when I eventually unroll it at bed time.) They all use clipboards to press on. The teaching begins at 2pm in the afternoon and I finish at 6 with 10- minute smoke breaks in-between. Unfortunately my DNA is programmed for a siesta at the exact moment when 31 kids race into the ‘class’.At 6pm I stagger into the main area of the Lodge and pour myself the most wonderful glass of beer. At 6.30 my husband phones on the satellite - this is the only time one can vaguely talk before the music is put on at full volume and before the candles are lit which burn holes in your clothes as you lean over the bar to reach for the ‘phone. At 6.45 the shuttle arrives from Mthatha with new guests who are relatively effortless in comparison to the shopping in the trailer which has to be off-loaded by us volunteers.I first thought that I would pull age-rank here and say that people over 50 didn’t have to do this kind of stuff but by now am so over-sensitive about the age gap that new strategies are called for: in full view of everyone I pick up the heaviest looking parcel and carry it to the store and go and hide in the toilets for the rest of the off-load. At 7 we’re on kitchen duty which means making a salad for 40; heating up the food etc. I don’t mind this because they don’t wash the lettuce* which is really the biggest schlep in making salad.Talking of health - my constitution must be now invulnerable to the most virulent of bacteria: In a day an average of 60 people pass through my hut and of those, half have coughs - especially with the rain and the only malady has been a headache after too much beer. (Upsettingly though is that the locals are prone to coughs and sniffles the minute there is damp weather because of poor nutrition.)
The Teaching
I’m not good at teaching the kids. I’m not qualified either. The only thing the children are interested in learning is Maths. I would have been very depressed if I had found submissive and over-polite children. For the most part, these children are assertive,-too lively for my liking- and totally delightful but this can be a pain in the arse when one is tired. And the older girls, as a prank during some lessons, shout “Babies, Pen” as they push about 6 two-year olds in the door and run away.One lesson I thought we’d done enough Maths and decided to give them a lesson in Pattern and Design. (I feel that Art is always at the bottom of the list and should have equal priority with clean running water.) I explained triangles and squares etc to bring in the Maths bit and then took them off to the toilets which have been beautifully decorated with murals by an artist friend of Dave’s. I had learnt the word for pattern and colour in Xhosa and they chanted these words very loudly as I pointed out the designs. I was interrupted by one who said in perfect English: “ These toilets are smelly, Pen”. I abandoned the excursion because he was quite right.An interesting aside-Dave built them some compost toilets which remain unused. I have been around and in their huts and have never smelt anything stronger than wood smoke. And everyone is amazingly clean. They have no running water. There are no pumps. Women walk miles every morning and carry huge cans of water from the source on their heads. One volunteer is doing her masters in eco-science and how it involves children. She lives with the locals while she’s doing her research and explained the ecological ordered balance of their lives. Very superficially: chickens live in the hut to clean up the crumbs. Babies of course don’t have nappies so the dogs are necessary to eat up the poo. The pigs do the rest of the cleaning up outside.
I would like to kidnap quite a few of these children. One is Pelelane who is the 9th child of Zithulele who is the night-watchman and a major fisherman. Zithulele is a student in the class where they are learning to read and write. I asked him how old Pelelane was and he didn’t know. Pelelane must be about 3-he’s a little bandy and has a slight waddle when he walks.In the morning when I do the prep for the day, I position my ‘desk’ in the doorway to maximize the view of the river. One day a little kid walked past, stopped, looked at me then held up his thumb and said “Sharp”.Pelelane and I now have a morning ritual: when he comes in I give him the rest of the milk from my tea and half a Cal-c-vita. He puts the glass next to his ear to hear the fizz and I’ve taught him to make the vulgar ‘aaaahhh’ noise after each sip. I once picked him up to show him a beautiful full moon and asked him what it was: “ iballooni” was his reply.Another kidnappable lot is a family of 4 children, the oldest is 13, who live alone in their hut because both parents live in Johannesburg. This place gives true meaning to the philosophy that it takes a village to bring up a child. They borrow my torch every evening to walk home. Dave told me I was crazy when he heard me complaining how I have to stumble home in the dark as he remarked that these kids know the way perfectly but they are terrified of frogs. (apparently frogs are witches in disguise) I’m also terrified of frogs so took the torch back.The oldest and her friend came into my hut one evening late and began to fiddle with my things. They asked why I had 2 pairs of sunglasses; why were there 2 beds when I was only one and so many shoes. They found my suitcase and began strutting around the hut dressed à-la-me with sunglasses and hats etc. I was amazed how ‘cool’ they were. Where did they learn all this? No TV, no magazines, no movies. Is ‘cool’ part of the ether? One of the volunteers remarked that Africans invented ‘cool’. I could only agree.
In our often over-scientific, over-cynical world, there must be place for the ‘poetic moments‘. In Bulungula there were many. I did like the music pumped through huge loudspeakers all day-especially Maskandi- but at times I needed to escape the banging on of House and had a small battery-run CD player in my hut. One Saturday afternoon I was just hanging out in my rondavel listening to Mozart. Shoes-yes, his name was Shoes-ambled in. Shoes was the 15 year old son of Nokantile who was quite beautiful and had 9 other children and she had her own business of doing the laundry for the guests and mine. Shoes was too cool to come to my classes. He sat down and asked me what music I was listening to. I told him it was Mozart and asked him if he liked it. (By this time I could communicate in very basic Xhosa) He nodded and he listened while I was pottering about. “Pen”, he interrupted, “please paint my nails”. The poetry was all there- my hut, Mozart, cool Shoes with bright pink nails.
I have a problematic dilemma here and I tread with care as I don’t want to appear to be romanticising poverty:The only time I hear whining I know it comes from one of the guests’ children. The Bulungula kids play together all day with no adult supervision. I’ve seen 4 year olds carrying their young siblings around. They gallop past bare-back on donkeys - and sometimes facing the wrong way; they fish off the rocks; they swim in the river mouth. When they’re not playing they’re carrying fire-wood or they walk 2 hours on a shopping errand. These children have no toys. There is one moth-eaten football. I had a party only for the kids who had attended class. I deliberately over-catered for the expected gate-crashers. Dave advised me that I was not to give anything to those who had not attended class. He was unfortunately absolutely right. I needn’t have worried though, as sharing comes to these children as naturally as our urban children grab. Every bit of food was eaten. (There were no sweets by the way and this wasn’t adult prissiness on my part-they are so under-nourished that they will choose yoghurt or an orange over a chocolate.)
In my opinion there are three things this village needs: vegetables, pumps with clean water and a clinic. (Dave is organizing the vegetables on a perma-culture farming basis.) Do they really need me to teach them English and Maths etc so they can leave this place, go to the city, face unemployment and live in a cardboard shack? Or, if they do get lucky and find a job and get rich and then spend the rest of their lives accumulating more wealth so that they can sustain their addiction to consumption and the culture of instant gratification which pervades us all?
The only valid teaching to my mind should be a warning about our society which I feel, like a pack of cigs, should carry a health warning. Why do we arrogantly presume that our ‘culture’ is the one to be taught? Dave says it’s all about choice. But one is only free when the choice is an informed one. Our ‘culture’ is dangerous because it is so seductive and the health warning should be “ The culture of the West makes you greedy for more and ‘instant grat’ is unsustainable-both physically and psychologically.” Our spirituality is mostly embedded in either fundamentalistic beliefs and/or Celebrity ‘Culture‘. Enough and onto my real job description:
Teaching adults
There is a new method to teach literacy developed in Cape Town called Brand Knew. One teaches through brand names which most people are familiar with. I do agree with Naomi Klein’s ‘ No Logo’ and I hesitate to endorse brand names further but I believe this method works. Briefly the process is as follows: One puts up on the board a number of brand names with their logos. E.g. Toyota, Rama, Joko. The students recognize the logo. Bit by bit the logo is deconstructed in that the word is next presented without the logo; then you show the word without the colour; eventually they should be able to recognize the word in normal black and white script. Words after all are just a collection of shapes and marks on a page. After a couple of lessons I told the unbelieving students that they had begun to read.
Writing is taught at the same time through the conventional method how we all learnt it: painstakingly going through the alphabet teaching the different writing patterns. We started with how to hold a pencil which most of them had never done before. When I saw the difficulty this simple process entailed for these adults who had such remarkable life skills, a magical traditional culture that far outweighed anything I knew and had experienced, I was ashamed that I was in this arrogant position of teaching them and having to correct scrawls that were all over the page. I was also again very angry with everything to do with my history: colonialism, apartheid and its gutter education. Most of them are beginning to write their names.
* Dave corrected me here, saying I was the only one who didn’t wash the lettuce.
Visit the Bulungula Incubator website to see the amazing new developments that have taken place in the past three years.
Pics from the top: 1. Pelelane. 2. The cool girls. 3. Classroom/hut. 4. Graduation day for the Adult students.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Teaching English at Bulungula", url: "http://toursandtales.com/teaching-english-at-bulungula" });
Sunday, December 6, 2009
A Smoker's Lament in a Zero-tolerant World
A Smoker’s lament in a Zero-tolerant world
I have just come back from my first visit to New York. My equally addictive traveling companion took a photograph of me standing and smoking next to a big fat chimney which belched creamy steam into Lexington Avenue to give our kind of zap sign to their ever so clean mayor, Mr Bloomberg.
Our hotel room was of course non-smoking so we dangled our arms out of a thin slit in the window to pollute the high sky and not our room for the sole reason that we were told that the hotel would fine us 250 dollars to de-tox it.
We walked and smoked and walked and when we weren’t looking up at the fabulous buildings in the sky, we were scanning the streets for an outdoor café--of course to smoke but also to sit down and absorb the street behaviour of this iconic city. This wasn’t easy. We were astonished to find that there were so few pavement cafés.
Perhaps we’ve been living in France too long: are the New Yorkers not voyeuristic like the French? Are they just too busy to sit down and watch? Are they not interested in one another? We found four pavement cafés. And we knew their suitability only by the cigarette butts on the floor.
Part of the comfort of traveling is to experience the iconic representations of a place. The great icons of New York: the Chrysler Building, MoMa, awful hot dog stands, the yellow cabs..I loved the sounds of the streets: the high-pitched sirens, the fire-engines, the huge trucks with hooters like trumpeting elephants and their big fat cabs in front outlined with disco lighting, the sudden roar of the sub-way under your feet. These sounds--and this is why I like to sit on the streets, Mayor Bloomberg, showed the underbelly of NY in direct contrast to the elegantly clad, softly-spoken humans who passed us by. But I missed the edginess. Where were the deviants who were causing the traffic cacophony? And to use Groucho Marx a bit sloppily, I wouldn’t want to belong in a city where I was the most oddly dressed.
Having written all this about this marvellous city, -and forgive me if I am making far too sweeping a generalization after only 8 days-I still wonder to myself if two mayors with their fascist clean-up campaign, together with the extravagance of the age in which we live, haven’t made New York a bit too clean and fresh? Harlem I found just bleak.
I started smoking when I was about 7. We lived in the country in a small village called Henley- on- Klip in the formerly called Transvaal. In true SA fashion we had “servants’” quarters at the bottom of the 3 acres of land and would spend our best times with the staff children smoking. My brothers and I sat around a brazier smoking grass-the generic kind- and donkey dung rolled up in newspaper. We had no matches-Bic lighters hadn’t been invented-so had to lean close and wedge the “puffie’’ as we called it, into one of the holes of the brazier and inhale deeply. My mother was always writing her play and because of this and 4 other children she never noticed that I always had singed eyelashes.
For the following 50 years I have never missed a day without many many cigarettes. And I shall be the last person on earth still smoking.
When the World started it’s clean- up campaign I wondered at the fairness of my being relegated to a table next to the toilets in a restaurant and the odious man talking loudly on his cell phone had a very nice table in the middle of the room.
Last summer I was meeting my niece in Florence and decided to take the train route along the coast from Nice. In 5 days I calculated that I had taken 12 trains in all. I could have made it much shorter of course if I had gone via Milan but I don’t measure life in terms of Time. A friend of mine who lived in Italy warned me that catching a train in Italy, neurosis is simply prudent behaviour. He hates the chaos of Italy and on my return, I told him with glee that in about 20 hours of train travel, Trenitalia was just 3 minutes late. The only problems were on the French side. The thing is that if you’re taking so many trains, you have as many connections and if one train is late the domino effect kicks in with its concomitant neurosis.
On my return, just at the Italian/French border in Ventimiglia, as I was catching train number 11, I should have become a tad suspicious as the only French train on the board had “supressioso” next to it.
My panic set in the moment I got off my penultimate train in Nice. It was 7.30pm, I had been traveling for almost 12 hours-without a cigarette- and the station should have been nearly deserted. Hundreds of people in chaos-mode were rushing around. When I looked at the board I understood the reason: my last train home didn’t exist and in it’s place was succinctly written: “Greve National. National Strike. For more information consult www.sncf.com.” I thought this was a bit useless and because I didn’t see anyone with a wi-fi lap top, I stood in the queue at Information and was told that the only train traveling in the whole of France was one to Paris and it did stop at my small station in the middle of Provence. I didn’t believe him. But what I really needed was a cigarette and a glass of rosé. I dragged my luggage to the grumpy buffet and ordered a glass of rosé. She said she was closing and that the glass would be a problem. Such was my need for what she had on offer that I wasn’t going to go into the lack of logic here-especially seeing that there were still 15 minutes to closing time. I produced my own glass from my heavy hold- all and she filled it up to the top. This is why I shall always smoke and drink (and carry a glass): the satisfaction out of 2 very simple actions makes life immeasurably pleasurable. I sat on the platform on one piece of luggage, balanced the glass on the other and smoked and smoked and sipped and wondered if I were going to spend the night there. Suddenly the station master rushed past me. He stopped and turned around. I thought he was going to crap on me for smoking on the platform which is now prohibited. With a big beam he said “Bravo Madame!”. This Frenchman truly recognised the perfect anti-dote to a crisis.
On the same trip to Florence I was having a lovely lunch on a beautiful piazza. The restaurant was outside and the terrace was not covered. After lunch, I lit up. Behind me I heard in a broad Australian accent: “Well, I’m just going to fahhrt on her food”. We could split hairs here as to what is the most offensive act-his threatened fart on my food or the exhaled smoke from my top orifice? We smokers don’t bullshit ourselves-we know that smoking is irrefutably bad for us and for others. And we don’t need pictures of atrophying lungs on our packets of cigs to drive it home.
Yet……oh yes, hypocrisies abound. Besides Mr Bloomberg’s chimneys, I have seen Mothers on bicycles in Munich with their babies in flimsy little trailers behind them in full city traffic, squeaky clean Canada with one of the world’s most rigid anti-smoking laws is about to make the world’s dirtiest fuel. But these double standards aside, I fear that the Western world has become too sanitised.Too sanctimoniously clean.
I am sure I would have preferred New York 20 years ago—smoky, seedy and a little bit dangerous.
My immense thanks to:
Edmund for letting me smoke in his Porsche.
Paris restaurants for supplying heaters and blankets on the terraces outside.
Frankfurt airport for its glass booths.
My husband who has never once whinged about the millions of cigarettes he has passively smoked.
I have just come back from my first visit to New York. My equally addictive traveling companion took a photograph of me standing and smoking next to a big fat chimney which belched creamy steam into Lexington Avenue to give our kind of zap sign to their ever so clean mayor, Mr Bloomberg.
Our hotel room was of course non-smoking so we dangled our arms out of a thin slit in the window to pollute the high sky and not our room for the sole reason that we were told that the hotel would fine us 250 dollars to de-tox it.
We walked and smoked and walked and when we weren’t looking up at the fabulous buildings in the sky, we were scanning the streets for an outdoor café--of course to smoke but also to sit down and absorb the street behaviour of this iconic city. This wasn’t easy. We were astonished to find that there were so few pavement cafés.
Perhaps we’ve been living in France too long: are the New Yorkers not voyeuristic like the French? Are they just too busy to sit down and watch? Are they not interested in one another? We found four pavement cafés. And we knew their suitability only by the cigarette butts on the floor.
Part of the comfort of traveling is to experience the iconic representations of a place. The great icons of New York: the Chrysler Building, MoMa, awful hot dog stands, the yellow cabs..I loved the sounds of the streets: the high-pitched sirens, the fire-engines, the huge trucks with hooters like trumpeting elephants and their big fat cabs in front outlined with disco lighting, the sudden roar of the sub-way under your feet. These sounds--and this is why I like to sit on the streets, Mayor Bloomberg, showed the underbelly of NY in direct contrast to the elegantly clad, softly-spoken humans who passed us by. But I missed the edginess. Where were the deviants who were causing the traffic cacophony? And to use Groucho Marx a bit sloppily, I wouldn’t want to belong in a city where I was the most oddly dressed.
Having written all this about this marvellous city, -and forgive me if I am making far too sweeping a generalization after only 8 days-I still wonder to myself if two mayors with their fascist clean-up campaign, together with the extravagance of the age in which we live, haven’t made New York a bit too clean and fresh? Harlem I found just bleak.
I started smoking when I was about 7. We lived in the country in a small village called Henley- on- Klip in the formerly called Transvaal. In true SA fashion we had “servants’” quarters at the bottom of the 3 acres of land and would spend our best times with the staff children smoking. My brothers and I sat around a brazier smoking grass-the generic kind- and donkey dung rolled up in newspaper. We had no matches-Bic lighters hadn’t been invented-so had to lean close and wedge the “puffie’’ as we called it, into one of the holes of the brazier and inhale deeply. My mother was always writing her play and because of this and 4 other children she never noticed that I always had singed eyelashes.
For the following 50 years I have never missed a day without many many cigarettes. And I shall be the last person on earth still smoking.
When the World started it’s clean- up campaign I wondered at the fairness of my being relegated to a table next to the toilets in a restaurant and the odious man talking loudly on his cell phone had a very nice table in the middle of the room.
Last summer I was meeting my niece in Florence and decided to take the train route along the coast from Nice. In 5 days I calculated that I had taken 12 trains in all. I could have made it much shorter of course if I had gone via Milan but I don’t measure life in terms of Time. A friend of mine who lived in Italy warned me that catching a train in Italy, neurosis is simply prudent behaviour. He hates the chaos of Italy and on my return, I told him with glee that in about 20 hours of train travel, Trenitalia was just 3 minutes late. The only problems were on the French side. The thing is that if you’re taking so many trains, you have as many connections and if one train is late the domino effect kicks in with its concomitant neurosis.
On my return, just at the Italian/French border in Ventimiglia, as I was catching train number 11, I should have become a tad suspicious as the only French train on the board had “supressioso” next to it.
My panic set in the moment I got off my penultimate train in Nice. It was 7.30pm, I had been traveling for almost 12 hours-without a cigarette- and the station should have been nearly deserted. Hundreds of people in chaos-mode were rushing around. When I looked at the board I understood the reason: my last train home didn’t exist and in it’s place was succinctly written: “Greve National. National Strike. For more information consult www.sncf.com.” I thought this was a bit useless and because I didn’t see anyone with a wi-fi lap top, I stood in the queue at Information and was told that the only train traveling in the whole of France was one to Paris and it did stop at my small station in the middle of Provence. I didn’t believe him. But what I really needed was a cigarette and a glass of rosé. I dragged my luggage to the grumpy buffet and ordered a glass of rosé. She said she was closing and that the glass would be a problem. Such was my need for what she had on offer that I wasn’t going to go into the lack of logic here-especially seeing that there were still 15 minutes to closing time. I produced my own glass from my heavy hold- all and she filled it up to the top. This is why I shall always smoke and drink (and carry a glass): the satisfaction out of 2 very simple actions makes life immeasurably pleasurable. I sat on the platform on one piece of luggage, balanced the glass on the other and smoked and smoked and sipped and wondered if I were going to spend the night there. Suddenly the station master rushed past me. He stopped and turned around. I thought he was going to crap on me for smoking on the platform which is now prohibited. With a big beam he said “Bravo Madame!”. This Frenchman truly recognised the perfect anti-dote to a crisis.
On the same trip to Florence I was having a lovely lunch on a beautiful piazza. The restaurant was outside and the terrace was not covered. After lunch, I lit up. Behind me I heard in a broad Australian accent: “Well, I’m just going to fahhrt on her food”. We could split hairs here as to what is the most offensive act-his threatened fart on my food or the exhaled smoke from my top orifice? We smokers don’t bullshit ourselves-we know that smoking is irrefutably bad for us and for others. And we don’t need pictures of atrophying lungs on our packets of cigs to drive it home.
Yet……oh yes, hypocrisies abound. Besides Mr Bloomberg’s chimneys, I have seen Mothers on bicycles in Munich with their babies in flimsy little trailers behind them in full city traffic, squeaky clean Canada with one of the world’s most rigid anti-smoking laws is about to make the world’s dirtiest fuel. But these double standards aside, I fear that the Western world has become too sanitised.Too sanctimoniously clean.
I am sure I would have preferred New York 20 years ago—smoky, seedy and a little bit dangerous.
My immense thanks to:
Edmund for letting me smoke in his Porsche.
Paris restaurants for supplying heaters and blankets on the terraces outside.
Frankfurt airport for its glass booths.
My husband who has never once whinged about the millions of cigarettes he has passively smoked.
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