Back to school

At first I was reeeeeeeeeeeeally let down that the school where I am mentoring is far from the shanty that I imagined (and was really excited to help out in). One of the girls has a cell phone and an ipod that are each much more expensive than my own. And because Kensington, the neighborhood/township (part of it is really dumpy) where I work, is so economically divided, the better off kids love to show off their gadgets to make the poorer kids feel bad. They all wear uniforms, so without the showing off, the only way anyone would know how rich anybody else is would be through guessing based on skin color (sad but often true). And they are all in 8th and 9th grade, probably the two meanest years in most early teenage lives.

But this is beside the major point: I was disappointed that the township wasn’t poor enough, the circumstances weren't bad enough, and that I would be spending the semester helping out children better off than many who live in Oakland. One interesting thing about working with South African students is that many of them are not originally from South Africa, and English is a second language for most of them. Every kid in the class knows at least 3 languages, and some know 6 or 7. I asked one what he likes to read today, and he responded, “I don’t really like just reading books, I’d rather study language.” Seriously. Because they all know so many languages, however, their accents are kind of a weird conglomeration of different tones, making it really hard to understand. Also, because they are always speaking with other students who have really intense, confusing accents, the students don’t know the proper way to pronounce many words. That means, they aren’t able to sound out words phonetically, and they are especially prone to using e’s instead of i’s. Their spelling is awful. Again, these are 8th and 9th graders. They wrote words like cuzzen, woreld, phisecs, etc. None of the African mentors correct these mistakes, so to avoid standing out, I haven’t either. After I get to know the group better, I think I’ll start.

Today, each student was given a questionnaire to fill out about themselves, which asked questions like “Who inspires you? What are your talents? If you could meet anyone in history, who would you meet and why?” Some of the boys just listed off how much they like to hit on girls and smoke weed and drink; I have no sense of whether they were being honest or acting cool for the American girl (today, they all started telling me I had pretty eyes and asking if I had a boyfriend). Most of the answers were expected: “I am inspired by God because he is so amazing” blah blah blah. The one shocking answer of the day, however, belonged to the boy sitting next to me: “I’d like to meet Adolf Hitler.” I told him that was an interesting answer, and asked him to write why he’d choose Hitler. “…because he was the most powerful man in the world during WW2, and I bet he could tell me what really happened during the war.” I asked if he thought Hitler would give an accurate description, and he said yes. I asked if he knew anything about Hitler, and he said no. My answer: “You know how during Apartheid a lot of people were moved into townships? Well, during WW2, Hitler moved a lot of people into these camps, where he would kill them for no reason and also starve them to death. Millions of people. He tried to destroy an entire race…Are you sure he could give an accurate depiction?” The kid was scared shitless.