Show and Tell

1/2/13

Warren found a snake skin today. Arriving at school before the rest of the pupils, he generally plays outside while I check my email. At one point he came rushing in, breathless, grinning. "Teacher Paul!"

"What's up, Warren?" Mildly annoyed at the disturbance.

"Look!" He holds up a good-size snake skin.

"Oh wow!" I coo, inwardly alarmed. It's about 9 hours since I last heard a story of a near brush with slithery death, and my nerves are keyed. Especially with a school yard full of five-year-olds. "Show me."

He leads me outside to our Jeep-sized water container in the playground. He points underneath. I kneel and peer at the narrow space, potentially a great hiding place for a small snake. The skin he showed me is at least a meter long, and thick enough to be a puff adder. Or it could be a fat rat snake. Can't really tell from the pale, dry skin. Either way, the snake probably just stopped nearby to shed its skin and lap up some leak water before moving on.

"Okay, Warren," I tell him, palming his tow head. "Just be really careful around here, and tell me if you see it." He nods excitedly. I explain to him the idea of show-and-tell. "When the rest of the kids get here, you can show them all what you found."

Over the next twenty minutes, I'm summoned to the area at least a half-dozen times, as each pupil arrives for Warren's animated recounting of his discovery. Each kid thinks he or she is the one to see the snake. I warn each student in turn, and they all give a wide-ish berth to the spot, all eagerly hoping to spot the slithery bugger.

By the time Warren stands in front of the class for his show-and-tell, the story is old news, and I can barely keep their attention for ten minutes with descriptions of molting and scales and snake bites. As I move on to the next lesson, the snake is long forgotten, and I heave a silent sigh of relief.

Tracking

1/31/13
They're tracking Happy and Fluffy, two male cheetahs on the property who hang out together as a coalition. High and hot in the wide blue sky, the sun shimmers in the grasses alongside the Land Rover. Every so often they stop, kill the engine, and climb up on the hood with a telemetry device. Each radio collar emits a unique frequency. Over the course of several hours they triangulate the signals until they narrow the animals' location to a block between roads. They hop out eagerly and proceed single file through the bush, on the lookout for born experts in camouflage, the fastest animals on land. Picture your housecat taking down an impala.

At the end of the wet season, the grasses are flush, flowering, hip-high. Even more so than other animals, cheetahs blend in perfectly, motley coats like grass and shadow. Hunters. Silent. Still. You're lucky to see an ear twitch.

Antenna in hand, Elisa leads the queue, listening close, walkie-talkie receiver near her ear. Volume way low, static faint. Eyes peeled, head on a swivel. The last time they were out, they came upon the cats suddenly. Suddenly—like one of them growled, and everyone froze.

Elisa leans down to scratch at a bit of thistle in her sock. The blips are constant now, from every direction. The cheetahs are within 10 meters. That's...about 30 feet. Brooke walks behind her, field-guide studies forgotten; in the practical, in the bush, in the thick of it. Step by step. The hush of grass. Even the volunteers in her wake are quiet.

No one says a word. Scanning the area. Looking for tiny movements. Bugs hum; the grass sways in the breeze. Shadows stick close.

Elisa feels it first. A mass under her boot, soft and giving, but not squishy like mud or dung. It moves—she jumps. The snake rises above the grass. It locks eyes with Brooke. Darts toward her. Dark body, light green belly. She sees its beauty. Recognizes it from her guidebooks. Its eyes—

Black mamba. Or snouted cobra.

Either way...

Its hood spreads. She leaps away.

It follows.

The volunteers scatter. The sun beats down. The grass undulates. Brooke leaps away. The snake swerves. Fixes her with its eyes. She leaps away. It follows. A breeze rustles the bush. The others look on, helpless. She leaps away. The snake pauses. Disappears.

After a long moment the group breathes again. The telemetry receiver blips, indicating the cheetahs are still at hand. Brooke smiles. She shrugs. "Catlike reflexes," she says. The sun beats down. After a bit, they see the cheetahs.

Building a School in the Bush

1/31/13
My classroom is small. Just enough room to make my sweaty rounds behind the square of desks, checking on who's writing numbers correctly, saving massive glitter-glue spills, preventing small-but-significant violence. A motley collection of educational posters speckle the walls, sticky-tacky sometimes coming loose in the midday heat. The stained concrete floor is hard beneath my heels, but at least it cleans up easily. Teaching primary school is a nonstop, on-your-feet kind of job; exhausting, exhilarating, and more worthy of mad respect than I ever knew.

The kids span the spectrum. Three speak only Tsutu. Some can subtract. Some don't know numbers yet. Some are capable of telling complex stories. Some can barely point at pictures of letters. All day long I shift gears wildly between babysitter, preschool, kindergarten, and first grade. Four-in-the-floor, and someone else is pumping the clutch. I struggle to find balance in the classroom, to challenge the advanced and develop the slow.

And yet they all play with equal impressive vigor, parading around the playground with a zeal that spans color and language, age and gender. Recess remains my favorite, a time when I can breathe and stand (mostly) still and reflect. Heidi pushes the others around and around on a plastic wheelie, making sure everyone takes turns. Dimpho bounces higher on the trampoline than anyone else, giggling and screaming like an imp. Warren has learned how to climb the tree, utterly unconcerned about dirt on his white t-shirt. Mashau swings as if she were born on the wooden seat.

My experience and training with this age group are utterly lacking at best. At times through the day I find myself on the verge of violent collapse, sanity stretched thin between English, Afrikaans, and Tsutu. At times I want to scream and curse the fates that have brought me to these rocky shores. I am without compass, map, or navigator. I'm awaiting a curriculum. I have no printer. My books and puzzles are untidily stacked on a low dented table. My whiteboard perches haphazardly on a chair. The minutes can't move fast enough.

But when I look at these kids, a mix of black and white like no other school in the area, playing together with almost no notion of the still-rampant segregation in their country, I remember to take a deep breath and sigh happily. I'm on a frontier here, as all the parents keep telling me. We're breaking boundaries. It's never smooth, and it's never easy. Fogey-old ghosts are rolling in their musty graves. A sapling has been planted in Alldays, and even if my hose is weak and full of holes, the water is still finding its place.

First Day of School

1/25/13 

It's a long red road from camp to school. The sun climbs slowly over the horizon, still nice and cool with the breeze from open windows. You can only drive about 20 mph on this pocked dirt road—not because of the mud or the accidental knee-high speedbumps or the periodic broken-down electric gates. Here I stop and idle the engine, waiting for a group of giraffes standing in my path. They bob their way into the pale green brush, checking back at me and plucking choice leaves from the squat trees only they can reach. I continue on after staring at them in quiet amazement.

A few minutes later I stop for a pack of wildebeest, burly animals springing over the road, sun dull on thick black horns. They pass, and I throw the truck in gear, checking the bush again before easing on the accelerator. Another big male bursts through within a tail flick of my grill. I stifle a gasp and drive on down the dusty road. I'm going to be late, but that's okay. TIA.

I bump down the rest of my 45-minute commute, passing the usual packs of baboons loping, impala leaping, and innumerable birds flapping across my view. Guinea fowl bob along like stupid chickens, frantically bobbing and weaving in the tire tracks until they finally remember they can fly away. I'm already used to it. I've been here one day.

The school is near the Alldays post office, a low group of buildings surrounded by a chainlink fence. It's the fences and walls around every building, from here in the boonies all the way through the choicest city streets, that remind you this is a developing country if nothing else—I'm pretty sure there's a Whole Foods in Joburg. But up here in this tiny town, things are a lot more informal. 

Despite the delays, I still make it before the kids arrive. First I meet the mother who's been holding down the fort awaiting my arrival. She explains to me how grateful the parents all are, how excited for the concept. She tells me about up-front racism.

"Isn't that illegal?" I ask. Yes, I've brushed up on my apartheid.

"Yea, technically." She sucks her teeth. "But since it's a church school, they can screen their pupils."

We shake our heads, scratching toes in the dust. Many in the community are still very wary of a multiracial school. They wonder if the black kids will be dirty, smelly, stupid. They wonder why these white parents would expose their kids to that.

"But what about when they grow up and have black bosses?" Roxi shrugs. "And how can we tell our kids something, and tell them to respect their teachers but their teachers are saying the opposite?"

I look around at the kids happily playing with hoola hoops and mud, bouncing on the trampoline, hopping from numbered square to numbered square in the playground. Situ, English, and Afrikaans mixing with the dust and high-pitched laughter.

"Anyway, we're just so happy to have you here. It's amazing to see this happening. Like just two years ago, you could've said this and no one would've believed you. So thank you."

I shrug bashfully and shake hands with other parents, equally enthusiastic if rather more brief. My first few days will be pure play, getting to know the kids and figuring out who's who and who fits where. I have them color pictures and count blocks and point out pictures as I read them stories. I struggle to maintain order when I go from kid to kid, giving one-on-one time. I quickly run out of printouts and worksheets, and head home in a daze, hazy with dust and fatigue. It's 3 pm and I'm beat. Tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow we move into our shack. Tomorrow I'll begin to build my curriculum. For now I must rest.

TIA Delays

1/24/13 

In a coffeeshop in Johannesburg, Brooke's ZA phone chirps. It's Anthony, our link in South Africa. The farm manager in charge of all the volunteer projects. She reads the text message aloud, voice and shoulders slumping deeper with each word.

Too much flooding. Roads closed. We not coming to Joburg.

Oh shit. No. We flop back in our cafe seats, where we've been browsing the internet, killing time in Johannesburg with nothing to do but spend money and laze about. We've been here for days, visiting the malls to pick up what we need and what we've forgotten. We've hit half a dozen great restaurants that almost remind us of home.

We've been waiting on salvation, waiting for Anthony to sweep us up off our asses and into the bush. Ready for adventure. Delayed yet further.

Not sure how long. Roads all mud.

Doesn't he have a helicopter? Can't we get up to Polokwane and he can pick us up there? Polokwane is about four hours from Joburg and another two from Polokwane to Alldays. Plus 45 minutes from Alldays to the farm, given dry roads and no obstacles.

Helicopter hangar unreachable. Will let you know...

We slump, chins on fists. Dejection. Now what? Can we just fly up to Polokwane and wait there? There must be somewhere we can stay. But why bother? We buy a day pass at a gym in Joburg and burn off some energy. Then we settle ourselves into a few bottles of wine at an Italian joint with a ZA twist. Brooke's phone chirps.

Roads ok. Can get to Pkn now.

We leap out of our seats. We dig out the iPad and rummage up some wifi.

Flights to Polokwane fall within our budget. A 45-minute hop. We check on luggage policies for our huge suitcases full of donated school supplies. We buy the tickets. The wine becomes a celebration. We toast and dance and laugh and cheer. Our waiter joins in. Fellow patrons look at us under raised brows. We pay our bill. We skip back to the hostel.

The next day Ant and Emma pick us up at the Polokwane airport a few hours behind schedule, where we pass the time in the Millionaire's Lounge, a silly lavish cafe of tacky velvet couches and unused fondue sets. We order fondue. It doesn't come. We drag our luggage and wedge it into the truck between jerry cans of helicopter fuel. Finally we make it into camp as the sun goes down bringing our eyelids with it.

Into Africa

1/19/13 

We land in the rain. Sheets of water on the tarmac riffle under the jets, and we stoop awkwardly over our seats wiggling swollen ankles and trying to breathe shallowly through 9 hours and 400 people worth of stale breath. Somehow customs is a breeze, our agent mostly chattering in Zulu to his colleague across the way. He stamps us, says gud luck, and we're on our way to wrestle with backpacks and two suitcases full of construction paper, puzzles, paint and brushes, markers, stuffed animals, and two desperate-seeming but hopeful binders of borrowed Montessori material. 

What lies before us is an indefinite stretch of conservation and education. For at least three weeks I'll be headmaster and teacher of a small private primary school, kindergarteners and first graders from farms and homesteads around Alldays, Limpopo, the northernmost province of South Africa. Our fundraising efforts have focused on gathering tuition for underprivileged kids in the community, hoping to pull some of them out of overcrowded and underserviced community schools. Welcome to Briershof Primary, the only multiracial school in the area.

Brooke will be project leader in charge of cheetah conservation. If they find an Afrikaans-speaking replacement for me (probably not—TIA), I'll join her on a nearby rhino-conservation project, tranq-ing rhinos from a helicopter and affixing radio collars for tracking. Poachers can pocket up to 30 grand for a good-size horn, mostly destined for China where it will do nothing to increase...pinky size. 

After hitting the airport ATM, I now have four kinds of currency in my wallet, and we ride a train from the airport toward our guest haus in Johannesburg proper where we're welcomed profusely by Bonga, who remembers "Crazy Bruke" from when she was here last winter. He pulls us flamboyantly toward our room and bids us rest up before lunch. Gratefully we collapse onto the bed, propping our legs up the wall. As soon as I'm asleep, Bonga calls "loonch!" and we straggle into the kitchen with the Awesome Travel Guest House staff who trickle home throughout the afternoon, leaving behind Rubin, Gihan, and Bonga. We drink whiskey and beer with them, trading stories and music, learning local laws and parlance and getting better with the accent as our two cultures slur toward a common understanding.

For the rest of the weekend (what day is it?) we'll stay here acclimating and picking up a few forgotten sundries before our 7-hour ride up to Alldays, to our tin shack and open sky.