The Big Storm

Last month I was shopping in Thohoyandou when it began raining really hard.  I didn't bring an umbrella and ran to the bus area, found my bus and got on.  I was soaked and there were no seats.  I was standing in the middle of the bus when 3 young boys called to me.  They were sitting in 3 seats and squashed together so I could sit with them.  They called me by name so I figured out they were from Lukalo.  It was so very nice of them to make room for me and I am sure it was not all that comfortable for them.  I really appreciated their kindness as I did not want to have to stand for 54 KM after walking around town all day.  And the trip home can take a long time because of the number of stops the buses around here have to make.  The other morning it took 1 3/4 hours to get to Thohoyandou by bus.

As we got closer to the village we could see roofs blown off of houses and when we reached the village their was a great deal of mud that had come down the slope across the road.  in the dusk I could see the sign for the primary school was blown over and a huge branch had fallen from a big tree near the bus stop.  As I walked towards my house I could hear hammering.  People were trying to fix their homes and protect their interiors from the rain.  My room was fine but the main house had great deal of water in it as did the house of the grandmother of my host family's children and many other homes in the area.  There were at least 10 houses which had the roofs blown off and one, in which people were gathered to drink the local home brew, had a tree limb fall on it.  Some of those people were hurt but all survived.

The roof blew off the Lukalo Primary School kitchen

A roof lying in a field far from any house

Many large tree limbs had fallen down and men hatcheted away at them for days following the storm.  Few, if any, chainsaws here.

I was told that a tornado came through town and that it had hailed.  They had to struggle to figure out how to tell me in English about the hail.  I asked if anyone saw a tornado and no one said they did but they said they heard a loud noise and made a sound like I would expect from one.  Tornadoes are very uncommon in this area as I discovered from watching the news that night.  I had to ask the children to turn the news back on as they switched channels to see some soap opera or something or other.  Soap operas are very popular here in South Africa and many people of all ages watch them.  Some of the soap operas have characters that speak in different languages which is one educationally redeeming quality of this past-time.

Lukalo, Venda and Shangaan-Tsonga

Lukalo is a very nice village.  I am blessed because the village tap at the top of the hill gets it's water from a pipe by the tar road that comes from a dam.  We have a plentiful supply unlike some rural areas of South Africa.  We have only had one day that we had to go without water because they were fixing the pipe.

Fetching water at the tap

Many of the houses here are built in a traditional round shape.  They are made of homemade brick covered with cement. There are multiple buildings like this with each one serving a special purpose - a kitchen, bedroom, sitting room. Although the more square western type of homes with multiple rooms under one roof are now being built. Thatch was used on the roofs of these round buildings and I have been told that the houses with thatched roofs are much cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. But these roofs have to be replaced or new thatch has to be added which makes upkeep an constant task. Also things can live in these roofs. One PCV lives in a large round house and said things would fall from the roof onto his belongings. His father suggested he put cardboard in the rafters which has helped.

Round houses - separate rooms

Lukalo has a beautiful hill with patches of green stone.

Lukalo Hill

There are mango trees everywhere.  According to a random fact found at http://www.golimpopo.com/events_details.php?event_id=120 "Limpopo has the largest areas inhabited by rural communities who are still living as they used to for centuries".  The following picture was taken under the bridge separating Venda from the Shangaan-Tsonga area of Limpopo.

Washing clothes and hanging them out to dry

The Venda and Shangaan-Tsonga people are very nice.  I saw these women and asked if I could take a picture of them in their traditional clothes.  They said yes and began doing their traditional dance for me.  First one woman, then another joined her and then more joined them.  Notice how white their shoes are.  Amazing as mine are always covered in dust.  They are holding up a cloth that goes over their clothes so I can see their skirts.  They are very proud of their clothes and their dancing.

Shangaan-Tsonga dancers in traditional clothes

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsonga_people the Tsonga people have gained attention for their low-tech, lo-fi dance music called Tsonga electro which has been pioneered by South African producer "Dog".

Barack Obama Nelukalo

One day I had to go to the bathroom while at school and there was no toilet paper.   Thankfully I was at the school that is just up the hill from my home so I went there. 

On my way back to school, I saw a woman coming from behind some trees next to a path leading to the river.  She was carrying a toddler (between 1 and 2 years old) on her back and a stack of long pieces of wood on her head.  It looked like she could not have gotten another piece of wood on the pile on her head without dropping it all.

As I watched amazed and wondering how she got the wood on her head and the baby on her back without any help, she came towards me and I recognized her and her child from the neighborhood.

She said her child was saying "Joni, Joni".  The child is one that spends a lot of time with the older children on the road and he must have learned my name from them as each one of them says "Hello Joni.  How are you Joni?" multiple times as I go by and as they follow me up and down the road leading to my house.  The mother had not seen me at first and was wondering why her baby was saying "Joni" then she laughed and kept telling me about her child saying "Joni, Joni, Joni".

It reminded me of something that happened when Rachel was between 1 and 2 years old.

We had moved from an all white neighborhood/town/area to Toledo and were employed as teaching-parents in a group home for chemically dependent adolescent girls.  We had hired a black woman to work at the home whose name was Kim.  One day I was in a Toledo grocery store with Rachel when she started yelling "Kim, Kim" and was reaching out her hand.  I realized that she was calling to a nearby black woman who was not Kim.  Since Kim was the first and only black person Rachel had met up until that time, I surmised that she must have thought all black people, or black women, were named Kim.

I have been told that I am the first white person many of the children here in the village have seen and they are amazed.  I was thinking about this and wondering if this child will be in the shopping town and see another white woman, very unusual here.  And if this happens, will the child call to her with my name as Rachel had done?  And will her mother realize why and laugh?

This week I found out this child's name is Barack Obama Nelukalo, named after our president of course.  Nelukalo is the sir name of the village's headman and thus the royal family of the village.  Although royalty, they have the same living conditions as everyone else in the village.

Lukalo and Mushiru Primary Schools

My job here is to help teachers with teaching, subject matter and technology and to help the teachers and community to implement sustainable programs they can carry on after I leave.

Lukalo Primary School

Mushiru Primary School

I have been assigned to two rural primary schools in the villages of Lukalo and nearby Murshiru. The school attendees are called “learners” as the term “students” is reserved for those attending institutes of higher education. Lukalo Primary School is up the hill by the water tap and Mushiru Primary School is about 2 KM down the road. They are both primary schools with grades R - 7. The rooms empty to the outside so the schools are what we would term campuses. The kids may have a book for a class but usually the books are kept in the classroom and they have to share.   New curriculum is being implemented in some grades and new books have been ordered.  I have suggested that several old books be put in a library and the rest given to learners so they can have a book at home.

Usually everything is written on the chalkboard and they have to copy it. I spent 2 days this past week trying to clean the chalkboards at one of my schools because they were so full of chalk that it was hard to see the writing for me so I thought it must also be for the kids. Needless to say the boards are getting full of chalk again. Their chalkboard erasers leave much to be desired. They are pieces of wood with a thin piece of foam or felt on the bottom. I shredded 2 washcloths trying to get the grime build up off the chalkboards and found out after school that one of the cloths I shredded one of the learner’s brought to school from home to wash the classroom floors.  The girls wash the classroom floors once a week and sweep the other days.

This week I saw a boy with a stub of a pencil and no eraser trying to sharpen the pencil so he could write. Sometimes they share pens and pencils and the rulers they use to create lines in their notebooks to separate one day’s work from another or for content purposes. I have seen children come to the classroom of a sibling or friend to borrow a ruler.

All the schools in our district have received 2 small Acer laptop computers, 2 projectors and 2 tripod screens recently. The laptop is preloaded with a program called “HeyMath!” to be used for math education purposes in all grades. It also has Microsoft Office Suite preloaded but the product key for this software has not been entered and without the product key the programs can only be used a maximum of 22 times. No USB drives are allowed to be put in these laptops per the Circuit Manager because computer viruses are rampant here and they want to protect the “HeyMath!” program which costs some sum of money - don't know how much. The laptops have big hard drives with lots of extra space for learning software but it can’t be installed because of the no USB policy and the fact that the laptops do not have a floppy, CD or DVD drive – they only have a USB interface. The result is that the laptops can only be used for Math classes. I have been working with some of the teachers to use this resource in class but usually it sits in the storeroom unused and underutilized. One of my goals while here is to help the teachers learn to use the available technological resources.

The schools I am in are small. The number of teachers allocated to a school depends on the number of students enrolled. There are eight grades (R – 7) but each school has only been allocated 7 teachers, including the principal and heads of department, due to enrollment. So the principal and department heads teach all day and someone either teaches two grades together or one class does not have a teacher. Teaching two classes at once is difficult because the curriculum is different for the classes so sometimes a teacher moves between two classrooms giving one an assignment while teaching the other. But this requires a very dedicated, organized and motivated teacher. Many times there is more than one class without a teacher as principals and teachers go to meetings, higher education classes, workshops or are absent for other reasons. This week several teachers met with other teachers in the district to write circuit-wide exams while, at the same time, other teachers were at workshops for the new curriculum. There are no substitute teachers for occasions such as this. One good thing I have seen is learner-lead study/learning sessions when a teacher is not present in the classroom.