Palesa

(written yesterday am):

I am currently sitting in the Bloemfontein airport, waiting for the plane to take me to Johannesburg for a quick overnight before I fly to Hoedspruit tomorrow and start my six month stay at Daktari. I'm trying to formulate the words for a wrap-up to my time in Mangaung, which is proving harder than I anticipated. When I was planning my trip, I thought a lot more about Daktari, because I will be there for so much longer. I had thought of Mangaung as a little stop-over on my way. It turned out to be so much more, and I am leaving with new friends, and a lot of new understanding.

All in all I visited eleven creches, with easily over 200 kids. Our guides through the whole experience were Mojalefa and Doreen, who invited us into their lives and spent three weeks making sure we had access to everything we needed, and that we were safe and comfortable. Our goodbye with them was very nearly tearful, and it is only my hope that I will go back in October for a planned training that kept it from being so. The day before we left I asked Doreen and Moja for a nickname, as everyone has a Sotho or Tswana nickname in their culture. Our last morning Doreen said my name had come to her in the night, and that my name would be Palesa (pah-lee-suh), which means rose. This was without her knowing that in fact my English name is Laura Rose. Pretty amazing, huh? So from now on they will call me Palesa, or “Pali” for short.

By the end of my time in the creches I could communicate on a basic level with the children, having learned some of the more important words in the language by hearing them over and over. These include: sit down, good, stop (or no), eat, and food. It's kind of amazing the amount you can communicate with kids with just these words. I wish I were spending more time where they speak this language so I could continue to learn more, I was finally beginning to pick it up when it was time to leave. South Africa has 11 official languages, and in Limpopo, where I am going next, they speak Venda and Zulu instead.

On one of our last nights in Mangaung we took the whole gang out for dinner at a Braai place in the township. The way it works there is that you first visit the butcher shop on one side and buy the meat that you want. We bought enough pork, lamb, beef, and sausage to feed 8 hungry adults for the equivalent of about 30 US dollars. They season up the meat for you and you bring it around to the other side, where the Braai-master braais it up for you. When your meat is cooked they bring it back to the kitchen, plate it with a ton of pap, and put it on the table in the middle. There is no need for individual plates or utensils, and everyone dives in with their hands. It was delicious. I really think there may be a market for this type of thing in NY or SF... If this whole education thing doesn't work out I may have a new business venture on my hands. Here's a photo of the crew, minus Emily who is taking the picture. Mojalefa is on the far left and Doreen is seated next to me on the right, with the braai behind us:

Our last week was very busy, with more creche visits as well as a presentation on Tuesday for the Kellogg foundation, who recently pulled their funding from MUCPP after nearly twenty years. We presented on the “ECD” project (early childhood development) which included the child health work that Chelsea and Sameen are working on, as well as the education work that Emily and I were doing. It was interesting to see the presentations from all the different departments of MUCPP, as they do a number of different services in the community including economic development for individuals in the township.

Of course the main focus of our whole time there was the children. We saw so many kids, some in really excellent care environments, and many more who were not. As we filled out the tool again and again it became apparent a number of things that could be implemented in the creches to help these young kids have better group care. In October, this information will be folded into an existing training manual based on previous trips, and a huge training will be held at MUCPP for the matrons, teachers, and parents of children in the creches. It is my hope that I will be able to fly over from Hoedspruit to attend this training; now that I have seen what goes on in the creches it would be very satisfying to be able to work towards improving them.

I will leave you with more photos from the creches (of which I have literally hundreds). The next time I write I will be at Daktari, undertaking a completely different scope of work. Thank you for reading!

One thing that comes with fewer teachers and more children is that the kids really take care of each other. Here a five year old is pushing an under- two year old on a swing, just for the fun of it:

Here I am in one room with over 70 children, 35 of whom were under three. I sat in this chair and observed all morning:

At this same creche I was called upon to help feed kids, here I am feeding two at once while a third looks on:

Here are Emily and I with a group of kids:

And finally, a video for all the teachers out there. If you ever wondered what would happen if you told a group of forty 3-4 year olds to sit still, and then left the room... this is the answer. I discovered the time-lapse mode on my camera: