Teaching the most amazing young people in Cape Town

Two lovely Grade 10 girls

I honestly do believe that our learners at the School of Hope have been especially hand picked (by God).  They really are the most amazing bunch of young people.  We have about 60 students at the school that range in age from 14 to 22.  On the surface they are your average bunch of kids from the Cape Flats.  Get to know them better and you realise that they are super special.  They are talented, FUNNY, full of life, and have been through some of the toughest situations you could possibly imagine!  They are at our school because they are youth at risk.  They have been unable to complete their studies elsewhere for various reasons; family situations making it impossible to pass, living in dysfunctional communities where the draw to drop out is stronger than the draw to finish school, pregnancy, gangsterism, drugs, homelessness.....the list goes on.  (see ACT - Active Compassion Transforms Facebook page http://www.causes.com/causes/188805 to see some of the situations our learners have faced)  www.activecompassiontransforms.org

The other day I was teaching the matrics (final year students) a concept in my subject that most of the learners cannot get their heads around....International time differences.  I was trying to explain about the International date line, the line of longitude that runs down between Alaska and Russia, that if you pass over it on a plane you lose a day or gain a day.  I noticed that one of my students didn't seem to be concentrating.  This young man is a Zimbabwean who doesn't always need things spelling out to him.  He's exceptionally gifted and bright so I don't stress too much if he's not giving 100%.  (It IS frustrating when those that NEED to be listening aren't listening, which is often the case).  Anyway I decided to confront him as despite the fact that he's bright, it is a little rude when someone is clearly doing something other than your work.  I thought he was perhaps writing a letter, or writing notes for another class.....  I was quite amused to find out that he was writing a poem, inspired by the whole concept of the International Date Line.  He gave me his permission to put it on here..

Let me Survive
 

In of my treasure

I wander night and day

In search for a unique border

Where night and day meet

And part their separate ways

Where the dreams of the skies meet

With the nightmares of the seas

There the waves grow sweet

And day is born

New and fresh each day

Again and again

 

There I shall find my youth

Day after day

Like the sun I shall bring some light

To my people

Our four beautiful Matric Girls

Once again I ask you to pray for these 13 young people who are currently writing their final exams.  For young people in England, finishing school is the law.  There are no school fees, transport is (or used to be) paid for, paper and exercise books are provided.  Here, for a young person growing up on the Cape Flats, finishing school is a massive feat.  Children are chased out of school for not paying fees.  On top of fees they must pay for their own transport and stationary.  These are people who are the poorest of the poor, whose families earn less than the minimum wage.  To add to all that, finishing school may be so unusual for someone in a particular community that they may be ostracised, or criticised for doing so....and some of these young people have noone in their immediate family who can help them with their school work.  To finish school in Africa can often mean a young person has climbed over the biggest hurdles to get there.  That is the situation with most of our learners.  THIS is why I ask you to pray for them at this time!!! 

ramblings on a Sunday evening whilst trying to drown out the sound of the party across the road......

Wow, life for me in Cape Town is certainly full of twists and turns and my emotions lately have been shot!  I know that its time for a visit home to the UK and am excited that at exactly this time next month Lee-Anne and I should have just taken off from Cape Town airport, and be looking at what the in flight menu looks like and choosing which movies we're going to watch.  It will be a lovely time in the UK having Lee-Anne with me, but also hard as I'll only be home for 3 weeks and need to spread my time thinly amongst close family and friends.

So, my last blog was a little heart felt plea to people to consider fostering, and I still stand by that plea!  This month even more young people have come across my path who desperately need a lovely family, but sadly they are all late teens and the most difficult age to place!  Its sad because for any child who is in a place where they need to be placed in a new family, they have obviously experienced some kind of trauma or upset in their lives, so therefore will be somewhat needy...which in turn puts people off fostering.  How this plays out will differ from child to child and I am very fortunate that the girls who have lived with me have not been any trouble at all, but that is not usual.  So, to ask a family to foster a teenage boy (for example) who has probably had to fend for himself on the streets, or who has fled through the border of Zimbabwe being chased by soldiers with guns, and has probably experienced or been the victim of crime just for virtue of the fact that they are more vulnerable, or have even gone to the extremes of hiding on a ship for a few days and being found, beaten and thrown off.....(not literally thrown off).  Imagine having been through such things, and these are all things that have been experienced by some of the boys I know. 

Please please pray for decent families in Cape Town to come forward to take in some of these boys, and model family life as God intended it to be. 

Otherwise...life is good, I am blessed.  Lindo is doing well and Ode is having the time of her life over in America.  Lindo's two sisters (Thandiswa and Thandeka) now live with us during the week and are two wonderful young ladies (aged 18 and 19).  They come from a home which is a one room shack, with no electricity or running water.  They share this with their mother in one of the farthest away townships in Cape Town.  Despite these hardships they are sweet, helpful and happy girls who are so eager to learn.  They attend the school that I teach at.   It is great to see them develop in their english skills and computer skills because of living with us.  I remember the first time Thandeka could actually operate facebook on her own, she was so proud of herself!  Thandiswa, the older one has started an online typing course and is flying through the lessons with great enthusiasm. 

I am still loving teaching at the School of Hope.  Tourism is not an easy subject for the kids to master, and on Saturday I was sitting with a grade 10 girl, having to explain what the Waterfront is.  The Waterfront in Cape Town is one of the biggest tourism attractions in the city, with shops, restaurants and entertainment all situated around the harbour.  I was shocked that she had never been, and this is a girl who has lived in Cape Town all her life!  How can these kids even be expected to grasp the concept of tourism when they have never been on holiday in their lives?  I have almost completed a year of teaching and the poor learners of 2010 have really been my guinea pigs.  Many of them will pass my subject, but sadly some will fail, and I have learnt that with these kids, a little one-on-one time makes all the difference.  I hope to have a higher pass rate next year.  The hardest thing is when you do give one-on-one time to them, you become very attached and then you are opening yourself up to that pain that comes with caring for these amazing yet troubled young people.  Phew....not at all possible without God that's for sure!  

Ok, now I'm rambling again.  Well, its Sunday night and time for an early night I think!  God bless you all. 

God's unloved children

Just watched ‘Precious’

Wow.  I cannot stop crying.  I am surprised at my reaction.  I hear tragic stories (stories of abuse, rape, abandonment and poverty) day in day out, and have actually been wondering lately where my heart is.  I often wonder how I can be so heartless for not being moved to tears.   

It’s like they become just stories.  They are a million miles from any life I have ever lived.  And yet I have the gall to suffer from depression (occasionally).  I have lived my life crying about meaningless trivial things.  And this is happening to innocent young people EVERY single day!  It happened to my baby (my foster daughter).

Why?

Why is it that those who have a good loved upbringing are not grateful for this – is it because they know no different?  Is that healthy, that we shield our children from the realities of life outside the perimeter of our homes? 

Why is it that children who are abused have to put up with it?

THIS is why we need to be fostering the lost unloved children out there!!  THIS is why the church needs to stop forward to give these children a loving home.  Not only so that the unloved feel loved, but also that the loved see and understand that there are those that aren’t! 

Of course it’s not easy, but are our biological children ever easy?  Surely the fulfilment and lessons gained from giving our love to an unloved child is worth it? 

For every child that enters a new year unloved... it’s another child that eventually enters adulthood damaged.  Another child who reproduces more children who are unloved, as the unloved struggle to show love.   Another child that may find love in the wrong places.  Another child that may find belonging and ‘love’ in the cells of Pollsmoor or on the streets of the Cape Flats, or under the freeway bridges in Cape Town.  Another child that will find any way to numb the pain.   

Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.  Red and yellow black and white, they’re all precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.

Are we (the church) not the bride of Christ?  So should we not love the little children of the world too?   When we gave our lives to Christ were we willing to really have our hearts broken for what breaks His?  Are our lives ours?  What is this society that tells us to pamper to ourselves and hold the needy at arm’s length?   We can learn from our African neighbours who put others before themselves, who value the community over the individual?  I thank God for a childhood exposed to the real world.  I thank God for parents who welcomed the unloved into their home.  I remember having poor families living in our caravan, an ex-juvenile convict living in our tree-house,  depressed people on our doorsteps, children whose parents didn’t care where they were hanging out at our house, women from cults, abused, divorced, homeless women, disabled and ostracised, the outcasts of society were always at our house.  Although as adolescents (and adults) we have been quick to point out my parent’s faults, one thing we couldn’t argue with was that they displayed the heart of God.  Did this damage us as children?  I don’t believe it did.  The only damage done was that we were loved to complacency.  We were loved so much that we didn’t know how it feels to be unloved.

By the way.....no one said that by fostering we have to be perfect parents.  Ask my girls...they will verify that I certainly am far from that! 

Lazy days....

I feel so lazy right now.  The weather is gorgeous and here I am lying on my bed about to snooze off to sleep!  (Piwi is snuggled under my arm) Its the middle of the afternoon!  I used to give Lee-Anne such a hard time about sleeping during the day, but these days I'm almost as bad!

We have been fortunate as Lindo had two weeks school holiday instead of one, like most other schools.  That all finished yesterday morning as term started again and my alarm was set for the early hours!  (hence the lazy/sleepy attitude today).

In my defense I did spend the whole morning at the Adonis Musati Project office, sorting and tidying the forever-chaotic store room.  We give clothes to refugees that need them, but it is a mission to organise the clothes in such a way that they are easy to find without messing everything up each time!  We have some very generous donors.

I do have to say that with help from one of our volunteers, Patricia, the store room is looking better than it has ever done after this morning!  Some of the refugees that we saw today were women from Rwanda who had fled here during the genocide.  Their stories are sobering and depressing, but what made it much worse is the way they have been treated here in South Africa.  One of their 11 year old daughters was raped a few months ago and the police dropped the case because 'there wasn't enough evidence'.  We were able to set up an appointment with the local trauma centre and hopefully she will receive some much needed counselling!!  My heart breaks.   Could we ever imagine what it must be like to experience a masacre, often of loved ones, and then flea to a country where you are treated like dirt!  Please keep these precious people in your prayers...

On a lighter note we are loving our new house. Lindo has a whole big room and bathroom to herself in the loft, its like a little pink dolls house up there.  Very quirky.  Her two older sisters, Thandeka and Thandiswa (18 and 19) come and stay on a Wednesday evening which is lovely. 

Lindo in Pink, Thandiswa on the right and Thandeka at the bottom

Tomorrow I step foot back into the School of Hope, where I teach tourism to the grade 10,11 and 12's.  These kids (late teenagers actually) are enough to make a person pull out their hair, but for some strange reason I can't help really loving them.  Last term was a rocky one for my subject, lots of the learners decided not to hand in their projects on time.  What can you do?  Besides resorting to bribes and blackmail?  I do kinda feel sorry for them all though, its my first time teaching, and they are all my guinea pigs.  I feel like next year I'll have the secret weapon known as experience!! hahah!  For now I just have to stay patient (mmm) and give as much support as I can.  They are wonderful young people who have had various challenges to face, challenges that I couldn't even begin to understand, and I do believe they are all capable of making it to the end!  Please pray for them, especially our matrics who start writing their finals in a few weeks!  Lindo's sisters also are in Grade 10 at this school which is awesome as I get to see them a lot and help to keep up that relationship between them and Lindo. 

Grade 10's

Grade 11's

Well .... I'd better take that nap....later today I'm hosting 10 wonderful teachers from New Zealand at my house for pizza, they are here giving their school holidays to train up the teachers at the Ark, the shelter where Lindo lived. (see http://www.rata.org.nz/)  They are wonderful, and I am expecting it to be a fun evening!

Sweet dreams on lazy days............  

Things!!!

Well, I found my beautiful new home, a gorgeous cottage in Mowbray with lots of character!  Its within walking distance of Observatory and Lindo's bus stop, (I have a perhaps unrealistic but feel-good notion that I'll walk to work....mmm we'll see), its close to public transport and the main highways!  Its also dog friendly!!  For a while there I though we may have to find another home for our beloved Piwi!

Now I have to wait a month to move in, which is fine as a lovely friend of mine is putting up Lindo, Piwi and I for August.  Fine I should mention in theory, but in practise this has meant finding storage for my furniture and bags and bags of stuff!!  How on earth can a person accumulate like this?? Its just wrong!  I foolishly thought I could pack the house up in a couple of days.  How wrong can I be?  It seems that every room I walk into has piles of things that don't fall into any neat category or 'box'.  I could just chuck them out but that grieves me too.  If its not recyclable, it could be give-awayable, or even sell-able, so I end up with piles in different corners of the room that don't help the emptying of the house situation!  All my furniture seems to be scattered between several friends garages around the peninsula (ok I exaggerate, the suburb!). 

Its been a challenge this week, but I'm wondering if it is not just the amount of stuff I have, but the serious lack of time I've had to do it.  Its also very strange that all the people I know have bad backs and therefore seem to be out of action for lifting furniture assistance!

Anyway I am looking forward to finding a place in the new house for all my belongings, and am excitedly anxious for this month to pass quickly, while at the same time wanting to enjoy every minute of living with my friend!  Fun times!

With all the above in mind, not to mention planning school lessons, lots of babysitting and lifting, and finding precious time to meet with the wonderful women who help run Adonis Musati Project, the refugee organisation I also volunteer with, its been easy not to miss my Ode too much.  Also knowing she's having a fabulous time and is in safe hands in America helps.  I also took Lee-Anne home to her family in the week with all her belongings, a big move for her and a big loss for Lindo and I!  She knows that she always has a bed with us!

As always we have much to be grateful for.
God bless! xxx

Post World Cup, Post Ode.....

Wow, its been two months to the day since I created this blog!! Typical for me I haven't written anything new since then!

In the past two months some major events have happened in our lives... We were burgled, Ode got her citizenship, passport and ID, and plane ticket to America (thanks to wonderful friends in the USA), Lee-Anne has finally got a job as a classroom assistant, and of course we (those of us in South Africa) have helped to host the FIFA World Cup! I have also handed in my notice for the house I live in and am hoping to find a lovely little cottage in Observatory, the suburb where we attend church, and also where the Adonis Musati Offices are situated. This should be fun, it hopefully will be a time of clearing out a lot of junk accumulated in the past two years. It will be a new phase in our lives. It'll be just Lindo and I (and perhaps Lee-Anne upon occasion), and I am really looking forward to starting all over again someplace new! I will miss Ode like mad, but hopefully a new place of abode should help ease that.

The World Cup has been awesome. I hadn't been too sure about whether I was going to enjoy the hype or not. I had visions of traffic galore, annoying tourists and just general chaos! As it happens, the vibe has been wonderful! It has truely felt like we have been part of the whole euphoria, being able to walk down the fanwalk on a match night, watch matches at the Fan Park in the Grand Parade, and generally enjoy it for what it is! Of course there have been some downsides, Englands poor performance for one! However I found it fascinating that my heart was more hurt at Ghana's loss than Englands!

The Final is on Sunday, in two days time. In some ways the World cup feels like its been going on forever, on the other hand I can't believe its almost over! For us who work closely with refugees we have the very real concern of the post-world cup violence towards refugees that has been threatening to raise its ugly head recently. Even as I type I am saddened to think of all the refugees who are lined up along our National Roads desperately wanting lifts to Jo'burg and on to Zimbabwe, for fear of being attacked next week! The fear is real even if the rumours aren't! And surely if the rumours fly around fast enough, they can result in action, even if they just started as vicious rumours! Please pray for these people whose biggest crime is coming here in the first place and wanting to work hard! Those South African's who have quickly forgotton how it feels to be terrorised are now the terrorisors. What to do??

Changes in 2010

So far 2010 has been full of changes in our (my family and I)'s lives! I think Piwi the dog is the only family member for whom life is pretty much the same as always!

I left Ambassadors in Sport in December after almost 7 years with them. It wasn't as difficult as I thought as my departure was gradual from the middle of 2009. So much has changed within the organisation as a whole, especially in the Cape Town office that leaving wasn't such a 'train smash' as they say here! I am now working part time for Adonis Musati Project (www.adonismusatiproject.org.za) working alongside vulnerable refugees in Cape Town, helping to find shelter, food, jobs and education for those in need. I will write a post specifically on the plight of the refugees we meet on a daily basis. The rest of my time is spent at the School of Hope. This is an amazing, small, Christian school in Athlone (a gang-ridden area) for teenagers who have previously dropped out of school and want a second chance. Again I will fill you in another time on this matter. My foster daughter Lee-Anne was such a girl, she didn't think she'd ever finish school, and quite frankly her chances were 0. 1% of people living on her street had a matric certificate (school leavers certificate) and so it was accepted that she would probably fall into the 99% of those who didn't. Lee-Anne grew up in a children's home, and was Ode's best friend. This is how I met Lee-Anne, and this is how she ended up in the School of Hope. This is also how she achieved her matric! Anyway.......School of Hope were looking for a tourism teacher, and those of you who know me from my youth may be aware that I studied tourism, and also worked for a good few years in the tourism industry! This information was leaked to the principal (who happens to be a good friend), and I was offered the position. I had always said I would NEVER teach at the School of Hope! They have something called the 'baptism' which is the occasion when a teacher first cries! Sadly, it seems, every teacher there cries at some time or other. Lee-Anne would come home telling me stories of how they treated the teachers there and I used to shudder and think 'thank you God for calling me into soccer ministry!'. Haha! So, I prayed about the offer, and felt quite strongly that I should say yes! It would be one day a week, (that's what they said, but actually with the planning its much more). I'm half way through the second term, and for the most part I'm loving it. Needless to say I was baptised earlier than most, but that's just a Holland thing! :-)

So, moving on to Lee-Anne, the next oldest in the family! How has her life changed? Well for starters, like I have mentioned already, Lee-Anne passed matric!! This was no easy feat, and we are all sooooo proud of her hard work and perseverence! She almost gave up many times, but believed in herself, and pushed through. She had the opportunity of a lifetime in January when she was given an all expenses paid trip to New York, along with the other matriculants from School of Hope. This was an amazing opportunity for them as they are the type of children that can only dream of travelling on an aeroplane! (many have never even been to the airport - so I have discovered in class) This was a through a project called Active Compassion Transforms, a mentorship programme that enabled the matrics to be mentored by young people from New York, and then visit there for 10 days to hang out with their mentors, experience the City and visit schools there. For Lee-Anne, it was an extra special experienced as she was invited to stay on for two whole months to be an 'ambassador' for the programme and also for School of Hope. I do believe she grew immensely during this time overseas. Lee-Anne has decided that she would like to volunteer for a year in some capacity working with children. She is already spending a few hours a week at her old children's home, and has some other options ahead including possible classroom assistance at our nearest primary school. Hopefully this volunteering will give her confidence, but also give her an idea of what she would really like to do in the future.

Moving on to Ode! Ode also passed matric with a B!! This enables her to do a 'batchelor' degree. This is exactly what she needed as she had already been offered a full scholarship to study and play football at a wonderful university in Tennessee, USA. (Lee University) Because she had a few months to spare between now and then, she enquired at a shop in Cape Town that sells soccer gear, boots, memorabilia, and kit. Nothing could be better suited to Ode, the girl who knows every stitch of every boot on the market, and who wears what! She has proved to be a good saleswoman, earning decent commission each month, and is looking forward to the hype the World Cup will bring to the shop, which is right in the centre of the city! She does however work hard and only has Sundays and Saturday afternoons off which I personally think is a little harsh!
We are now just waiting for the email to arrive to say Ode has received her citizenship, which should be any day now, and then we'll be on overdrive to get her passport and visa! Please pray for this!

So finally we come to little gorgeous Lindo! Lindo has been living with us for just over a year and comes from the Ark Homeless Shelter, where I have known her for about 4 years. Lindo is 10 years old, which is debatable as her birth certificate says something different, but she is a typical little girl who loves dolls, Hannah Montana and animals. In January this year, about a week before she was due to go back to the Primary school around the corner, a great bridging school for Lindo, coming from the Ark, but not the best by any means, when we got in touch with a german lady who used to sponsor Lindo at the Ark. This lovely lady opened a facebook page so that she could catch up on how Lindo was doing and touch base with me. It was this lady who suggested trying to get Lindo a place at the German School in Cape Town. It was all very sudden, but in a nutshell Lindo received a full bursory at the school and started in 5c (the only english streamed class in the school). It hasn't been plain sailing for Lindo. Her start in education wasn't wonderful, the Ark do their best but their teachers aren't all fully qualified and therefore the children are at a much lower level than their contemporaries at other schools. The German school especially expects the children to be organised and independant, which has been a struggle for Lindo (and I'm not really a good role model in the organisation realm). We are hoping and praying that she gets through the year and picks up academically as she goes on. She is adorable and I love having her around the house.

So there you go, a summary of our little happy family! In between all these snippets of news we have also had two wonderful American students, Brenna and Mourette living with us for a few months and are looking forward to a lovely young lad, Connor moving in this week, and further visits from friends in the next few months - not to mention the all exciting World Cup that is landing on our doorsteps in what, 34 days??