A Taste of Township Life: Volunteering with SHAWCO

I’ll interrupt my string of brain-cell-killing stories to describe my experiences and impressions of volunteering in Masizame, a township community where I tutor sixth grade students in Math and English. Going in, we were told to expect the learning levels of the students to be shockingly low, and that it may be somewhat difficult to communicate as the native language is Xhosa (pronounced Kosa, with a mild click on the K-sound). Yes, Xhosa is an African language with clicks, but they are not continuous, instead varying click-sounds added on to some words. There are maybe 1-2 clicks per sentence. English is taught as a second language, and courses are taught fully in English only when the students reach high school. Our group has around twenty student volunteers for about sixty 6^th grade students, so each volunteer pairs up with two or three students. On Tuesdays (Math) and Thursdays (English), I work with Erica and Unathi (silent h), and Vuyolwethu (“Vuvu”) joins the group for Thursdays. Erica is a bit shy in front of me, and a little self-conscious when I check over her work, but I can tell she feels a little more comfortable each time we meet. Unathi is much more social and extremely dedicated to learning, going back to redo her mistakes even after we’ve gone through them together. Vuvu is the ultimate bro of Masizame. We’ve played and talked about soccer, can agree that Messi is God’s gift to the game, and hatched out a secret handshake.

Arriving for the first day of volunteering was a very awkward feeling. Aside from the twenty some-odd volunteers, the environment was totally alien – kids from highly disadvantaged backgrounds staring at you and all talking in an unfamiliar tongue, thinking all the while they are talking about you. You adapt your world to theirs and imagine a poorly performing public school in New York City: lack of discipline, no desire to learn, general enmity from students, etc. The first day we play games in the schoolyard to break the ice and hopefully meet some of the kids. With no teacher supervision, it was incredibly reassuring to see how relatively disciplined the kids were while playing games that were fairly chaotic by nature – i.e. reverse leapfrog: forming a line and spreading your legs so the last person in line could crawl through everyone’s legs in a race. Almost immediately, I felt comfortable with the kids and the realization sets in that they are no different than kids anywhere else in the world – tell jokes with each other, find overwhelming joy with simple competition, and try to impress the volunteers because, by virtue of our age, we are automatically “cool” in their eyes.

Unfortunately, the school is separate from the township community so we don’t exactly know what the students’ daily life is like or the living conditions where they come from. Most students do not have an abundance of clothes – Vuvu has worn the same Pokemon shirt multiple days – but the kids are fed properly. I get the impression that Masizame is a more affluent township as compared to one like Khayelitsha, which is the largest in South Africa, based on the student’s behaviors, manners, and attitudes. However, as often is the case, impressions can be far from realities. Here in SA, I’ve found perceptions and impressions can be far from the truth, and many times appearances can be incredibly deceiving. I think back to the family of four I met on the Metrorail and how I thought about them, and how my impressions were way off.

The students tend to be stronger in Math, but they are a bit behind the standard sixth grade level, as simple multiplication, such as 9 x 3, is not committed to memory. Due to their use of English as a second language, they struggle with writing to a greater extent than Math. Communicating with the kids is actually quite easy and they have a firm grasp of conversational English. The problem arises when they have to translate their thoughts to writing. Grammar, punctuation, spelling, sentence structure, and so on, are severely lacking and these things are much harder to correct with the hour-long time period we spend with them each Thursday. SHAWCO (Students’ Health and Welfare Centers Organization) is completely student run so the curriculum and organization is often times improvisational. The group’s leadership is shuffled as students graduate, curricula changes, and the volunteers can very often be thrown in with little training. Even when volunteers feel a bit discouraged by all these logistical issues, you have to remember that your time is very valuable to these kids – one-on-one tutoring is very motivating, even speaking English with them is helpful, and this is a rare opportunity for them to come in contact with someone outside their communities.

The last time I volunteered with my group, Unathi asked me how many children I had, and I told her five. Awestruck, her eyes widened and jaw dropped, until I told her I really had none. Then they asked if I was married…Nope. Fielding these questions for the first time, I started to feel old and unaccomplished(?), but also confused as to how old they thought I was. They guessed 23, then 21, which made me feel better. Then Vuvu suggested I marry Chelsea, another volunteer he works with on Tuesdays, and I told him I’d try my luck (Chelsea thought I was from the South based on my accent, strangely enough). All these impressions remind me of a time I was tutoring small groups at a Buffalo public school, and the 9^th grade students I was with thought I looked like I could be on the Jersey Shore. No idea what they saw in me, because I don’t blow-out my hair like Pauly-D (or where gel at all), don’t have any tattoos or piercings, have pale skin (especially in winter), and don’t have the guns to match up to Ronnie. Or maybe I am just ignorant of my own personality, appearance, and fist-pumping abilities. Regardless, the disparity between perception/impressions and reality can often be shocking.