When we made it through the line at passport control, bunching up at the desks in groups and sailing through, and then when we passed through the empty room where people usually made a show of going through someone's luggage, we then pushed our bags and our ten bins filled with pens and backpacks for Isilimela and 600 bags of goldfish crackers and granola bars for our students, we encountered 120 students and their teachers, from Bellville and from Isilimela schools, there on the other side, breaking into song. Our students ran and hugged them across a short metal gate for a few minutes before going the ten meters around the barrier and joining them in earnest.
They massed together, and SoSo from Isilimela led all the students in song after song and dance, as not only other travelers but the workers on the floor and several more from the floor above, lingered to look on: they laughed and smiled, but none more brightly than the Hands for a Bridge students themselves, from Seattle, from Langa, from Bellville.
I had warned students that we would spend most of our time of arrival at the airport in front of the walkway before the car rental place, but no one's prepared for that full hour anyway, including all the adults who've been through it before. By the time our vans are legally ready, Isilimela has led the two other schools through many other songs and games and a few of our students are already burnt in the sun overhead.
At Bellville High School, a welcome lunch was prepared. We drove through the gates to a beautiful gated campus opening up to a lush field on the left and the school itself on the right. A couple students expressed surprise when I said this was a public school; but in South Africa, public schools also mean something different; and in Bellville, the school is considered a 5 school, meaning its families are generally in to the top quintile of earners, and so are charged tuition and then again for books and supplies, whereas Isilimela is a 1 or 2 school and families are not charged. The fees at Bellville amount to less than $200 a month per child, but the principal noted when I talked to him that families of 200-300 out of the 1300 waived the fee for hardship, enough to stress the school budget.
The learners made a large circle and one by one introduced themselves--name, school, grade, and age--and when the adults afterwards introduced themselves as well, a few students protested when we didn't provide our ages too, especially the new Afrikaans teacher who looked only a little older than they. Students ate and stayed outside during the couple hours that teachers gathered in the teacher room for their own lunch and pudding (which is not pudding but cake) and planned for the next two weeks. In the courtyard outside the teacher's dining room, under a leafy trellis, one of the school workers got married.
We loaded up the vans for a final trip to the houses in Langa with the mamas, then sat for a long while in Mama Violeta's living room. Mama Violeta made Reese serve the girls a sweet orange drink, and then the girls made him go all the way when he tried to just pour the drinks and line them on the coffee table and wave his hands finished. Reese is the one our students told me would be least likely to cry on this trip. But now the Roosevelt students are on a campaign, and on their group chat, have made it a trip goal to make Reese cry. Sarah was identified as biggest crier, and true to the word, Sarah had cried for joy several times before we left her, Zanzi and Whitney with mama Nosimo, who four years back hosted by own daughter and who every year since has told me she must come back and stay with her.
We waited for the sorting as Maddie played rock paper scissors with Lia Bonga, Siyabonga's young daughter, and Tessa took turns doing handstands with children in the little neighborhood park outside.
Tomorrow, we go to church.
I had warned students that we would spend most of our time of arrival at the airport in front of the walkway before the car rental place, but no one's prepared for that full hour anyway, including all the adults who've been through it before. By the time our vans are legally ready, Isilimela has led the two other schools through many other songs and games and a few of our students are already burnt in the sun overhead.
At Bellville High School, a welcome lunch was prepared. We drove through the gates to a beautiful gated campus opening up to a lush field on the left and the school itself on the right. A couple students expressed surprise when I said this was a public school; but in South Africa, public schools also mean something different; and in Bellville, the school is considered a 5 school, meaning its families are generally in to the top quintile of earners, and so are charged tuition and then again for books and supplies, whereas Isilimela is a 1 or 2 school and families are not charged. The fees at Bellville amount to less than $200 a month per child, but the principal noted when I talked to him that families of 200-300 out of the 1300 waived the fee for hardship, enough to stress the school budget.The learners made a large circle and one by one introduced themselves--name, school, grade, and age--and when the adults afterwards introduced themselves as well, a few students protested when we didn't provide our ages too, especially the new Afrikaans teacher who looked only a little older than they. Students ate and stayed outside during the couple hours that teachers gathered in the teacher room for their own lunch and pudding (which is not pudding but cake) and planned for the next two weeks. In the courtyard outside the teacher's dining room, under a leafy trellis, one of the school workers got married.
We loaded up the vans for a final trip to the houses in Langa with the mamas, then sat for a long while in Mama Violeta's living room. Mama Violeta made Reese serve the girls a sweet orange drink, and then the girls made him go all the way when he tried to just pour the drinks and line them on the coffee table and wave his hands finished. Reese is the one our students told me would be least likely to cry on this trip. But now the Roosevelt students are on a campaign, and on their group chat, have made it a trip goal to make Reese cry. Sarah was identified as biggest crier, and true to the word, Sarah had cried for joy several times before we left her, Zanzi and Whitney with mama Nosimo, who four years back hosted by own daughter and who every year since has told me she must come back and stay with her.
We waited for the sorting as Maddie played rock paper scissors with Lia Bonga, Siyabonga's young daughter, and Tessa took turns doing handstands with children in the little neighborhood park outside.
Tomorrow, we go to church.
