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Karnagie
Sharp's diary
Day
3
It’s
the start to the Easter holidays here, like everywhere in the world
I suppose…except children at this school in South Africa will only
have a break away from classes.
There
will be no holiday resorts to visit, no flights out of their local
airport, no money to spend lavishly on a family holiday, instead
they’ll do what they always do - these children will stay at home
and get on with the mundane but familiar tasks of looking after
younger brothers and sisters or cleaning up the house whilst their
parents are at work.
Many
of them try and earn money to contribute towards their parents'
monthly wage, this is a bonus to any underprivileged household here.
On
the day the children were due to break for their Easter vacation
I went back to Nonhlevu Secondary to look at what they do during
their assembly…they had someone from the community present.
My
zulu has been rusty now for a very long time, so I struggled to
try and make sense of what was being said to the children. After
trying hard to try and listen to the community worker my attention
was drawn to the faces of the future generation of South Africa.
There
was a look of deliberate concentration, these children weren’t bored
but were enthusiastic to be a part of the religious message being
passed on, there was a sense of demand in the spokesperson’s voice,
almost telling the children to do the right thing….after all, a
religious text informs you to put into practice everything that
is right.
The
instructions were clear, the children had the look of humane guilt
combined with the look of promise….they take religious messages
fairly seriously here this is, after all, messages of hope.
After
the delivery of the determined sermon, the children were instructed
to sing hymns and unlike my experience as a teacher in the UK, where
trying to get children to sing loudly or enthusiastically is a very
difficult thing, the pupils at Nonhlevu Secondary needed only just
a little prompting….they burst into song with the energy of any
church choir....and the rhythm of Africa came alive once again.
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