Breezes of Confirmation

Usually when you think of Africa the first images that come into your mind are of people living in shacks, starving children who don't have access to education or health care, communities riddled with HIV and other diseases, poverty, distress, hopelessness... etc Well I'm here to tell you that those images are not entirely untrue or exaggerated. There are parts of South Africa that look very similar to this. They are the townships, kind of like housing commission but worse. Townships are the governments answer to those who fall below the line. They are entire suburbs of small tin shed houses crammed beside each other. Recently these shacks are being replaced with cement houses but even those houses are still the size of a shoebox and in some cases there are over 5 people living inside. There are so many reports on the news of people dying in fires who are living in these tin shacks and the pictures of what's left show how dangerous these houses really are.

Now the people living in these communities aren't starving or without the essentials. They dress well, some of them work, their children go to school and so on but I'll put it this way you couldn't tempt me to live where they are. No Way!!

So we have these townships all over South Africa and they are quite normal. As far as I've experienced no one looks down on you for living in a township but I have yet to see a white person living in a township. So there are some quite obvious extremes here in South Africa, the difference between the middle class and the poor is quite large let alone the difference between the wealthy and the poor. Google an image of Sandton, it's like Sydney; full of designer clothing stores, fancy pants apartments, flashy cars. Then look next door to Hillbrow with its abandoned buildings, it's intense crime rate and the condition of the housing and see the difference.

Today I saw this injustice first hand, I saw the way that respect is conducive to money, that worth is parallel to wealth and this I saw in a field which should show no bias and should strive for equality for all.. the field of education.

Kyga (pronounced kaykhah) is a township about 10min away from where I am now living in Port Elizabeth. It is a huge township so big that there are suburbs within it. The Baha'is have been doing a lot of work in this area offering children's classes and junior youth groups and today Desmond(a local guy living in the area) and I went to the one school in Kyga to talk to the principal about starting a junior youth group in the school. The Junior Youth group programme is a socio economic programme designed to assist kids in this turbulent age group (11-15) try to overcome the trials and difficulties that come with growing up and becoming an adult. The world looks at this age group as destructive, rebellious and out of control. The JY programme instead sees this age group as full of potential and simply in need of avenues to direct their energy. The media has been mostly unable to provide positive and wholesome role models for these kids so we try and offer them something better to look up to and something more fulfilling to inspire them rather than fame, sex and money which is what some have tried to convince us is what is best. That is pretty much the speech that I gave the principal and then the entire teaching staff, the principal was so impressed by this concept that she called all the teachers together to have me speak to them. And now we have been given 255 students to take 3 times a week for the junior youth program. OMG!!! How am I going to manage so many kids, there are only 2 of us at the moment able to run the classes. So I have to find new people willing to help and train them so that they are ready to assist us. I think this project is going to be all I work on for the next 6 months and I'm so excited.

The irony is that the first book in the Junior Youth series is called Breezes of Confirmation and as I explained to the teachers the central premise is that if you want something and you take active steps towards it God will confirm you in your actions and doors will open for you. I saw that today, I saw those doors open and all it took was a small amount of initiative. All it took was one meeting. Imagine what we all can achieve with a little effort.

Our meeting with the principal was all the more easy to arrange because of a strike currently going on at this specific school and here is where you will see the great injustice that is politics, money and discrimination. It's not only the teachers of this school that have called a strike, it's the entire community. The parents are refusing to send their children to school and you know what the funny thing is, even if they did send their children there is no school as such for them to attend.

Jacob Zuma, the South African president stands and announces 1 GOAL! EDUCATION FOR ALL! The advertising campaigns are still playing repeatedly on t.v and yet we have a school in a poor farming township with nice brick buildings but no desks, no chairs, no books, no computers, no supplies. The school which is the only school in the entire area has been waiting for years for an upgrade. Finally that upgrade came, construction began on the re-building of the school. Construction was supposed to end in October last year.. it hasn't. The classrooms currently available are cramped with students. There are too many kids for the number of classrooms and with already a lack of resources the teachers are struggling to do their jobs. The pass rates at the school have been dropping and yet there has been no extra assistance to resolve the problem. The teachers and the parents decided enough was enough, parents refused to send their kids to a school where they would have to sit on concrete floors especially in winter. They demanded that the government give them access to the remaining classrooms where construction had been completed and to give them furniture. 3 days into the strike and we are sitting in the office of the principal as she tells us they are yet to hear if they are getting their furniture. She asks us how many other schools we know of that don't have a single phone, how many other schools we know of that don't have electricity, how many other schools we know of that don't have a single computer not even one for admin work. She tells us that she wants to offer these kids more but there's no money, then she tells us to await the news of pay increases in the government departments. There's no money for education but there's always money for politician pay increases. She asks us to think why? Why has this school been so neglected, why was this school re-built without any budget for furniture? It's a school in a poor, farming township. That is her response and it's so frustrating because we know how hard it is to convince these parents that their kids are better off in school getting educated than working early to bring income for the family.

The best moment of the whole meeting was when after my presentation to the teachers one of the teachers said that during the holidays she and some others had been talking about how wonderful it would be if this sort of program could be run for the kids and then we came, she thanked us so much and said she was so grateful that we were there to offer this for the children.. that's confirmation.