The New Teacher

In my position, living in a village, I tend to focus on the discrimination encountered in this country. Often I see the “good schools” being attended by a primary population of white children with primarily white educators. These are the schools with computers, with extracurricular activities, with resources in general. When I see these schools it demonstrates the gross inequity the majority of my schools face in comparison: not enough classrooms, lack of well trained teachers, not enough desks, books, paper, pencils, toilets, etc. It is seeing these differences that effectively creates a sort of bitterness for me. I see the children being educated in town schools continuously gaining ground while my students slip farther and farther behind on the continuum.

Seeing this, combined with the reactions I receive regarding the work I do, tend to give me a negative opinion regarding race issues in this country. My experience in diversity can be summed up in the following statement I received from a white man: “Well, if you ever feel the need to get away from the village and be with white people give me a call.” I often categorize “the whites” as still having an ultimate aim of oppressing “the blacks.” It seems that many of them long for their so called glory days of apartheid. Perhaps the majority of the older white community, growing up with the ability to “be above” blacks, now assumes themselves superior and knows no other way to act. Likewise, I was in a used bookstore in Pretoria while on vacation talking to the owner who happened to be an elderly Caucasian man:

“I often find it hard to find books in this country. There are few bookstores anywhere I go. In Tzaneen the only place I can buy books is CNA the stationary shop that has a very limited selection with nothing that I would call quality literature. Plus it’s all very expensive.”
“That’s why a used bookstore is so great. Most of the time you only read a book once so why would you pay 150 rand for it (a little more than 20 dollars)? Here you can buy a book for 20-40 rand (3-7 dollars) and then sell it back to us for 50% of that after.”
“It’s a shame there aren’t more used bookstores around.”
“Well, I hate to say this, but it’s true, there used to be bookstores everywhere before apartheid ended but after they all disappeared.”
“Why is that?”
“As soon as black people move into the neighborhood the bookshop is the first thing to go.”
“Do you think it’s like that everywhere in the country?”
“No, it’s different in Cape Town. Cape Town is a very unique place for all of culture and learning.

This man seemingly made the statement that the majority of black people don’t read which is why there is no real market for book selling in South Africa. From living in the village, I see it as one more anecdote of apartheid. It’s not that people aren’t interested in books. On the contrary, children often stop by my house to ask to borrow the children books I have in my room. Most of the younger ones can’t read English but they still enjoy looking at the pictures and spending time with the books. Yet, the problem remains that I am the only supplier of books to them. Their schools don’t have libraries. Their families don’t have books. Their nearest town has no bookstore and even if it did they wouldn’t be able to afford the books being sold. After all, I can’t afford the books being sold and I live on a greater income than most families in my village. Consequently, children grow up without books and without learning how to use them and enjoy them. Thus as adults they don’t patronize bookstores. It’s not that black people don’t like to read as the elderly gentleman was insisting, it’s simply that they live in a culture and predicament that doesn’t encourage them or give rise to the availability of books such as in America or European countries.

Hearing this man’s argument for why bookstores fail is one more notch on my totem pole discerning why there is so much discrepancies between the black and white community. Often there are misconceptions on both sides: whites are all rich, blacks are uneducated, whites care more about the education of their children, blacks just aren’t as intellectually inclined. The vicious cycle continues and the students in the village are the ones that suffer as teachers complain that they can’t teach adequately for lack of materials and whites complain that blacks are lazy towards improvement.

In turn, I have become increasing bitter against the white population. Often blaming many of my frustrations on them and I increasingly wonder bitterly why they don’t try to improve their own country, clean up their own mess. I never see Caucasians from the city coming out to help improve rural communities; they wouldn’t be caught dead. As a result, after a lot of initial suspect, I found the following news from the principal of Matshwi shocking:

“We are hiring a new deputy principal (vice principal). I am hoping that the white woman we interviewed will accept.”
(Here is my turn to pause and adjust my hearing.)
“You had a white woman apply for the post?”
“Yes she’s very good too. She currently teaches at a school on the way to Giyani.”
“Is it a former Model C school? (Former Model C schools are schools for white children under apartheid. They tend to be the best schools with the most infrastructure and resources. Most teachers dream of working at one of these schools)
“Yes. It’s a school that 80% of the students are white and there is only one black teacher.”
(My suspicion is beginning to boil over. Why would this woman leave her cushy job to become a village teacher?)
“Why does she want to work here?”
“She thinks that we should be promoting the new democracy. She wants to help stop the inequality of the schools and work to improve village schools so they are on the same level and give the children an equal chance.”
“Really…” (Now, this is a major reason for being here as well as most of the other Peace Corp Volunteers but I have practically never heard of a South African determined to progress on this same continuum. It’s nothing short of shocking. I have never heard of a white teach in a village school and between all of the volunteers, we work at a lot of village schools. It seems everyone is as shocked as I am. This is a huge novelty. It would be comparable to a child going to an acclaimed private school suddenly switching into an inner city school. Very few people here will understand the decision and thinking behind it.)

As a result to this very shocking news on some level I’m inspired. Perhaps some people in this country do in fact care about the progression of their country in all realms. Perhaps not everyone is tinged with racist views and attitudes and there are people who genuinely desire students to progress. For one person to step out of their comfort zone and to make a commitment to improvement is something I rarely witness in South Africa.

My only concern is that if this woman does turn out to be a power house for the school it may perpetuate the cycle of “we can’t do this on our own. We need outsiders to step in and help us. The white people will fix it for us.” Likewise, this is a concern I have about my participation in schools. When I leave will progress become stagnant because the white girl is gone and we can’t accomplish anything without the white girl?

I will continue to struggle with this idea of racial lines and expectations for the remainder of my service.