The next day came and I was up early, dressing myself in my new super smart attire. I meandered over to the house for breakfast as usual and was met with much laughter and mockery by Harriet and Bill who claimed they could barely recognize me. Harriet insisted I duck into Masifundisane before I head to Northlands so that Crystal, Agnes and Zinelly could join in the fun which of course they did. Anyway, I made the 5 minute walk down to my new school and waited for a short while for Bazza Wallace to arrive. When he did, he directed me straight away to Mrs De Wet’s classroom and left me there. She had a lesson in full swing but stopped everything so that I could stand in front of the class and tell them a little about myself. When I unwittingly revealed I was a songwriter who played piano and guitar I was asked to play to the class on each instrument in turn-I literally hadn’t been in school more than 15 minutes. I received a rapturous applause for both efforts and seemed to gain a friend in Mrs de Wet who went on to rigorously probe my musical history further after class.
Next up was a maths lesson with Mr. Sheppard-a tall spindly character with an extremely feminine voice and mannerism combination on the go. Wallace introduced me to each new teacher I met as a different name and I got tired of correcting him so gave in to whatever he came up with. I went from Mr. Addison to Mr Accrington and lastly to Mr. Anderson (the irony!)
The last lesson was a double with a Geography teacher whose name escapes me. As Mr. Wallace introduced me to this man he told him that Mr. Accrington here would be happy to take one half of the period and give a 30 minute lesson on the UK which was total news to Mr. Accrington I can tell you. I panicked as I tried to hastily summate everything I knew about my home country and estimated I only had about 5 minutes worth of ammunition in the arsenal. Still, it was sink or swim time, and I had every desire to keep my head above water. I composed myself and then started by drawing a picture of the UK on the black board (sorry, chalk board was told in advance that it’s racist to call it a black board-obviously), then marked on England, Scotland Wales and Ireland (was able to do this with no snags). I told them a bit about London, parliament and landmarks and stuff and then tossed in some interesting FYI facts i.e. population size and number of Rand to the Pound. I then decided to field some questions as I realized I was winding up. Thankfully a sea of hands shot up and I was answering all sorts of questions from, ‘How much is the price of a chocolate bar in England’, to ‘What do English people think of the Beckhams’. A lot of kids also wanted to know where places were, and asked me to mark on my makeshift UK diagram with an x, the places they put forth. Unfortunately, due to the fact that premiership football has such extensive coverage out here, they were able to name all 20 of the premier league teams and thus 20 English place names. One little git put his hand up and asked ‘Where is Wigan’. Now, much to what I’m sure will be to the disapproval of my father’s geographical omniscience, I had and have absolutely no idea where Wigan is. Luckily it was very much a case of the blind leading the blind so I confidently marked an x roughly in the middle of the map and proudly declared... ‘Here lies Wigan’.
I was complimented on my lesson by the geography teacher who acknowledged that I’d been seriously thrown in the deep end. He then went on to give his lesson and I was surprised by how informal everything about it was. I had been told to make sure I didn’t use any slang in school but this chap certainly was. Still the kids didn’t seem to take advantage of the relaxed atmosphere at all which was also surprising.
It was a good first day and an excellent experience but I left feeling that I had preferred things at Masifundisane. Perhaps that’s just because I’m much more settled there, having been there a while now. I’m back at Northlands for two days next week and every week till I leave so will keep ya posted on that.
On Friday I went to a party with my Africaans chums. It was awesome-took along a deck of cards and played an absolutely savage round of the mother of all drinking games the infamous Ring of Fire, which went down a storm. The group consists of Kev, Mikey, Mike, his sister Tacha and a bird called Roxanne who is now getting really tired of me singing to her that she should ‘put on her red light’-she loves the bant really. We’re all planning a road trip at some point so I can check out some of the other places along the coast which I’m told are not to be missed.
Next day I felt near suicidal but couldn’t spend the day feeling sorry for myself in bed as I’d organised to help out on a pitch and put STALL at a school fete. This was something I’d organised weeks back in the comfort that it was a just some date miles in the future. It rained the whole time but that didn’t seem to put people off and I had a queue that went back well far as I stood there drenched trying to smile at people I was just wishing would bugger off home. Hit the sack as soon as I got in and spent the rest of the weekend recovering-think my drinking capacity has been adversely affected by the first few week’s abstinence.
Have put a few more pictures up guys-theyre not the best, but will do for now..enjoy!
South Africa
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