Tekawa on education

Last Friday a group of us went to talk to learners in a highschool in Guguletu (Guguletu is a township for those classified “black” under apartheid). We went to discuss the importance of education and how to make an education past high school a possibility. I went prepared to say all these wonderful things about education and how to make it happen and honestly didn’t end up saying most of them. The reality is that we as students don’t have any answers or any plan to make things work- we’re all just figuring it out as we go along. The obstacles that these learners are facing are also very different to the obstacles I’ve faced. We talked a lot about there being VERY limited access to resources (even at the library) and the only library with adequate resources is in town which is difficult to get to because a lot of the learners cant afford the transportation costs. The only advice I felt equipped to give was:

1. Be determined (know what opportunities education gives you and understand what that means for you long term and never let go of that goal, never stop trying)
2. Be creative (even if you have to sing in the street to get enough money to make it into town it’s worth it)
3. Education is often about sacrifice (making sure that your actions align with your goals is not easy and often means you have to forgo things that will are appealing in the short term. For example when I’m on campus I work 2 jobs while taking a full course load which often means that I can’t do other things that seem more appealing at the time but I sacrifice because I’m committed to my education.)

After our talk I walked away feeling so embraced by their class and feeling very blessed for the way things have happened to work out for me. So much of my good fortune is luck. Luck that I was born in the right place at the right time to the right people.  Yes, I have also had to work hard and take advantage of opportunities but so much of my life has been luck and I just feel incredibly blessed to be in the position that I am in.

Andrea on how the schism in technology surprises

I could make a list of a thousand things that have surprised me in one way or another here, but I just want to point out one right now – technology. The pace of evolution of technology in the computer era today is crazy to think about – at least the pace in the United States. When I was around six, I got a massive off-white desktop in my room– I used to play Put-Put Saves the Zoo and Freddie Fish – and as I grew older I used it to learn how to type on Microsoft Word, I played Harry Potter PC games, I used the internet to check my AOL email address and I instant-messaged with my friends (from TaPdAnCeR67) on aim. Over time my family transitioned through many computers; our monitors grew smaller, we got Wi-Fi and there was no more need for Ethernet cables, the computer machine eventually melded into laptops for all of us, and now we can walk around with our smartphones connected to our home network too. I’ve taken the evolution for granted and the costs of high-speed internet, the machines themselves, the anti-virus software, programs for school like Microsoft Office – I considered everything to be a fixed cost in my life because I can’t imagine not being connected. I worked at a library in high school, but I can’t imagine having to look in a book every time I have a question to find the answer – or a dictionary to find out how to spell a word. I wouldn’t be able to hand-write half the assignments I had in high school without getting severe tendonitis or carpal tunnel. I’ve been trying to think about what life would be like without computers and it’s incredibly difficult to even imagine, but one word that keeps coming to mind is slower.

I’ve heard plenty of people critique my generation for our need for instant gratification. “How late is Bertucci’s open?” “Do I take this exit or the next one?” “What other movies was he in? He looks so familiar” I’m not denying it – anyone that listens to us Millennial’s talk to one another for five minutes will know: it is true. And we don’t just ask questions constantly – we ask them on the go.  The way we live our lives, we need our email to come with us because “what if my advisor emails me during class and I don’t get back to her until I got back to my dorm?” – We fear being disconnected. FOMO (fear of missing out) doesn’t just apply to experiences like climbing Lion’s Head during the full moon – we fear not hearing about the big news at the same time as everyone else. I didn’t know that Oscar Pistorious ‘murdered’ his girlfriend until at least 24 hours after the fact – my friends in Connecticut knew before me – and it was unnerving. Not because there was a major murder case in the same country I’m studying abroad in (there’s plenty of murders each week) – but because I felt almost entitled to hear that news first. Shouldn’t I be the one telling them?

It makes me feel like I’m studying more than 7,000 miles away. I feel like I’m five or ten years behind my friends – certainly not seven hours ahead. Perspective is everything though – because to native South Africans around us, the Internet is as fast as it’s ever been, computers are huge desktops where I work in Khayelitsha, and a select few people have laptops, but the two machines (which to me feel like they should be separated by at least a decade) coexist peacefully and the sight of one next to another is perfectly normal.

I still haven’t gotten over the fact that the Internet ‘goes out’ sometimes (like power during a severe storm in the US), or fully grasped the fact that everything I do online involves a certain amount of data – which is measured and charged for at most internet cafes. My iPhone is grandfathered into my unlimited data plan, and I’ve never had to think about how much data I use when I surf the web. I’ve always been able to satisfy my curiosity relatively instantly by Google-ing anything that crosses my mind. So are my fellow twenty-something’s addicted to instant-gratification? Maybe.

After six weeks here, I can say that it’s definitely hard to function without it. Not just for my own reasons, like uploading photos to Facebook or trying to Skype home – those are frustrating – but trying to design brochures, pamphlets and posters at work within the township (at a very nice office considering its surroundings) feels impossible. First of all, I didn’t even know clip art still existed – but beyond that, who knew the library of images was so small? There hasn’t been anything useful for me that I’ve found in it yet and using the Internet to find images has been painful it takes so long. Copying and pasting each image (because it takes way too long to save it) and then formatting each one is a seriously tedious process. I’ve only been using Word to design the marketing materials because it’s the fastest of the programs on the computers at work because something like Publisher or Photoshop even dealing with medium-sized image files just seems out of the question… That’s all been my experience here – and most of that is just commentary on the past two days – but the thing that baffles me the most is the fact that this is how the entirety of the country functions.

The computers in public schools (IF they have computers) are few-and-far-between, computers in homes are almost entirely non-existent for the millions living in townships – even computers at workplaces aren’t guaranteed. I want to be clear that I’m not mourning the schism in need for instant gratification between youth in the states and youth here in South Africa - I’m baffled by how the way students and teachers – and the population at large – learns here at all. The country’s technology may be only five or ten years behind the states (this is my opinion – a very subjective average of all the technology I’ve witnessed) but the education system here seems like it’s ten or twenty years behind the US – and that’s on top of all the other problems South African school systems face too.

It’s hard for me to function here because I know what the Internet can be like. I know how what powers the Internet gives you as a student – or even just as a citizen – the ability to answer questions that cross your mind and satisfy curiosity. Multiple times a day here I find myself making a mental note to Google things when I get home because I’ll think of a question that no one around me can answer (and 9 times out of 10 I’ll forget to look it up later), but although it tends to get labeled as “need for instant gratification”, my generation’s thirst for information isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s seems obvious to me that the power to communicate with anyone anywhere anytime has helped human kind progress faster over the past twenty-five years than anything else over just a quarter century. We may do less internal processing as we type somewhat obvious questions into Google so we can just have them answered quickly – but my generation (and all those with access to high speed internet) is probably the most educated and aware demographic on the planet.

At this point, I don’t think it’s melodramatic to say that access to high-speed Internet is absolutely crucial to human, community and global development.  I’ve witnessed and experienced the lack of access, and though I know spreading access to high-speed Internet probably would help the country and people progress – it’s not a priority here – and it can’t be. The vast majority of people living in Khayelitsha (where I work) don’t have running water in their “homes” (jerry-rigged shacks) – that means no toilet and no sink. So while increasing access to Internet seems like a great idea, the fact of the matter is that people are still living in quasi-medieval conditions and though it would be exciting to have a laptop in a one-room informal settlement – it really doesn’t make sense to prioritize over access to water and sanitation.  

The schism in technology surprises me because I’ve witnessed a lot of the evolution of computers in my own home, but the schism it creates in education and opportunity is more profound. This past weekend as we learned about human rights and the right to education and opportunity, I found myself wondering if a country could justify itself as one that upholds those rights when not all its citizens (especially children in school) have Internet access. The Internet seems like such a superficial luxury when compared to water and basic sanitation, but when I consider how to actually solve the problem of poverty (and break the cycle), giving people Internet devices and access doesn’t seem like that outrageous of an idea, because if education really is the answer – I’d be inclined to say that you can’t get a quality education without the Internet – at least in today’s world.

Elise on growing understanding

On Friday a group of us visited Sithembele Matiso High School in the township of Gugulethu. We were invited by a young man, and friend of Marita’s, named Joseph to come speak to his 11^th grade class about the importance of education. Admittedly that day there were a lot of other things I considered doing instead, but after that experience I know that I felt grateful for having gone there. When we first arrived, we were welcomed with open arms and given a tour of the school. As nice as this hospitality felt, a part of me is never comfortable walking with a large group of other white people in this situation: being an ‘observer’ is a reminder of our privilege and of our separation from the people we came to see.

We soon entered the classroom and sat down in front of the students. They began by telling us some of their stories and struggles. They made it very clear that the issue is far deeper than a lack of motivation in school, which originally seemed like what we were invited to address. The question quickly became not how to care about education, but how to succeed without any access to books, information, study spaces, or resources of any kind. This is not something I—or anyone else—had the answers to. We could give suggestions, like scraping up the money for transport to the nearest public library and spending the whole day there, or reading every bit of material that comes their way, but ultimately these students will never have the things they need to fulfill their potential to the fullest. I am consciously apprehensive everyday of acting like the patronizing white savior, and yet we were invited for the purpose of advising the ‘disadvantaged’. I—and no one else—claimed to have answers, or to even know how we personally will move forward in our own lives. The only thing I could say was that learning isn’t always something that comes from books, or that ends when we leave school. If motivation is derived from a personal passion, chances are we can find a way to overcome some of our obstacles in order to become the people we want to be. Education is the best first step, and taking advantage of everything that has to offer—no matter how much or how little—is vital to change.

I felt very satisfied to have spent my time that day in Gugulethu. My goal wasn’t necessarily making a big difference in the lives of these students because, frankly, I think that’s unrealistic to do in 45 minutes. I wanted to walk away from that experience understanding each other a little better, which I feel we achieved.