Keeping Busy (Not with School)

As usual, the last week has been filled with interesting and varied experiences, most of which have been outside of the classroom. I am now getting ready for a week-long trip down the coast to Cape Town (about 1800km) with seven other international students. We will drive there in about four days and spend four days around Cape Town before flying back. Should be a fun trip. Anyway, this will probably be my last post before I get back and I won’t have much internet access from April 6 to April 15, just so you know.

This weekend I finally had a chance to go to the Trustfeed School outside PMB with Sibambisene, the student group recently founded by international students here. Due to a lack of existing reliable non-profits that do community work, we decided to form our own student group for doing community work (I really can't take credit for it because I have been unable to commit to the administrative functions thus far). This was the third visit that the group has made to the rural community center, about 45 minutes from PMB. How it works is a bunch of kids of all ages come to the community center every Saturday, so we bring volunteers and supplies to facilitate activities with them. For the younger kids (ages 3-10) we made paper masks, read books, and made paper airplanes. The community center has a few computers, so the older kids were learning basic word processing tools. The goal of the organization is to encourage kids to stay in school and motivate them to go to college. Like in most rural communities in South Africa, these kids are very poor. Most of them do not have shoes, many have tattered clothes, and it is statistically likely that some of them don't have parents. At the school and community center they get one meal a day, but for some that is all the food they have. The kids start learning English at school around age 7 or 8, so most of the younger kids only speak Zulu. This was my first experience around non-American, non-Israeli kids of this age, and I was incredibly impressed with how well-behaved and enthusiastic they were. As soon as we got there, they pulled up chairs and waited patiently as we set up the activities. When we started the mask making they were, for the most part, very good about sharing glue, paper, and markers. Some of the international students borrowed some English and Zulu books from the library to read to them. Even when we butchered their language by trying to read the Zulu books to them, they still gathered up chairs around us and listened attentively. I was pretty surprised by this since I'm sure the older kids could have read the story better, but I have a feeling that they don't get stories read to them by adults very often, so even when the reader is an American destroying the Zulu language, it is still special. I was also impressed at how helpful some of the kids were without us even asking. For instance, the ones who knew English would help translate for us and even tried to teach us some Zulu. The kids are incredibly cute and love having their picture taken. After taking a picture of Mani with about 10 kids, they all swarmed around my camera to get a glimpse of the picture--it was adorable. Many of us are in agreement that we wish we could steal a kid or two and take them home with us. Overall it was a great day.

Monday evening was the first night of Passover, so Emily from Rutgers, Jacob, and I went to a seder at the only Chabad in KwaZulu-Natal in Umhlanga Rocks which is just up the coast from Durban about 100km away from PMB. Emily arranged a ride there with a woman who lives in PMB, but we hadn't figured out a way to get back until Sunday night because hiring a cab would be very expensive and possibly unreliable. Jessi, in her awesomeness, offered to rent a car and drive to Umhlanga to pick us up at 11:30pm, when the seder was supposed to be over. So Monday morning we were able to get her directions and a map. We got to the Chabad by 4pm which was plenty early, so we just hung out around the place for a couple hours. This Chabad must have one of the nicest locations in the world. The Chabad house has a view of the ocean which is just a few blocks away, it also has a swimming pool and a flat screen tv--I'm not sure why. All homes in South Africa that are middle class or nicer have fences and security systems with signs that say something like "Chubb Armed Response," so on the Chabad's fence they had a sign that said "Protected by Mezuzah Security" (a mezuzah is a torah scroll that you place on doorways). It was also nice to see that the Chabad didn't see it necessary to have electric fences unlike their neighbors. Only in South Africa do Jewish community centers have less security than ordinary homes. Surprisingly, we were not the only Americans at the seder. There was a girl from Portland and a handful of American yeshiva bacherim studying in Jo'burg of all places, but that's Chabad for you. The girl from Portland is actually still in high school and doing a year-long exchange in Chatsworth, an Indian suburb of Durban. Her experience has been so different from ours and I think is a good example of why high school students should not go abroad for a year. Apparently she applied to be an exchange student, but not necessarily to go to South Africa, and this is where her school sent her without any orientation. She is the only American at her school and since Chatsworth isn't very safe she can never leave her host family's home alone--day or night. So she only goes back and forth to school where she feels she can't trust her fellow students and they don't trust her, and where she was mugged on Thursday. She hasn't done any travelling besides going to Umhlanga, and she doesn't have internet access at school or where she lives so she has very limited communication with family and friends back home. To me that sounds like a horrible experience and I would be begging my parents to let me come back home. I have a feeling she is going to be very jaded about South Africa and living abroad after this experience. After everyone davened, the seder finally started around 7pm. Since there were almost 100 people there, everything took long, such as hand-washing, passing around food, etc. I lost track due to hunger, but I think the meal started some time around 9pm. I nearly finished my portion of shmurrah matzo before we had a chance to say the blessing over the maror (horseradish, or bitter herbs). Once the food started coming out I was disappointed not to see any matzo ball soup. I have a feeling that matzo balls are not considered kosher for Pesach amongst the more observant Jews because they were very particular about eating the shmurrah matzo away from the table so as not to expose any crumbs to moisture (i.e. wine). There was also no kugel or Pesadik pastries, which may also have something to do with the limited availability of matzo meal type products. The only special kosher for Pesach product I have seen in Checkers is matzo. Anyway, when Jessi and Lauren got there at 11:30pm we were just finishing the meal (two glasses of wine still to go), so like most of the other seder guests, we left early. At the rate it was going, the seder probably continued until 1 or 2am. Leaving when we did, we didn't get back to PMB until 1am.

Class is becoming less and less of a priority for me here. I think that the name "Education Abroad Program" is more accurate than the term "studying abroad." I am definitely getting an education while abroad, but I'm not doing much studying and most of what I learn is outside the classroom. Lately Mani, Lauren, Jessi, and I have been good at motivating each other to do anything but study or go to class. For instance, last Tuesday we were hanging around my flat after dinner, and someone (probably me) made a comment about craving ice cream. Someone then made a comment about wishing that the restaurants could deliver ice cream since it was kind of rainy. Then someone said that they'd be willing to take a taxi into town to get waffles and ice cream, which we all readily agreed upon (I love these people). So my little comment about wanting some ice cream turned into a three-hour outing. On Wednesday, I showed up five minutes late to my Zulu practical, which was fine because the tutor showed up 10 minutes late (as always) with sheets of paper, tabloids, glue, and scissors. I mean honestly, I haven't had to do that sort of crafty busy work junk since I was a sophomore in high school, and even then it was pushing it. Even after arriving late, the tutor didn't have enough scissors and went back upstairs to find more. Pushed to our wits end with this class, Lauren, Jessi, and I got up and boldly walked out. I should note that back home the three of us are the type of students that NEVER miss class, even in classes that don't take attendance. That sort of activity was nothing out of the order for Zulu class. To give you an idea, in previous practicals and tutorials (what we call labs and sections in the US) we have played bingo and memory games. In lecture earlier in the week, the tutor came in 10 minutes late, and put on a tape of a poorly recorded dialogue. Most of us couldn't understand a word (except for the ones who already know some Zulu) and we told her this, but she ignored us because a small handful of students knew what was going on. That class is one big frustration and insult to my intelligence and abilities. Fortunately, my other classes (Labour Economics, Politics of SA, and Ceramics) are much less frustrating, but I still have trouble motivating myself to do work and go to class. This probably won't change while I'm here, but frankly I'm not here to do work. If I were allocating my time like I do back in Berkeley (work, work, eat, and work some more), I would be learning so much less than I am, and because of that I am not going to make a big effort to make school work a bigger priority.