Wednesday 8 September 2010

A lick of paint...

Wednesday began the 6 day long redecorating expedition and (unfortunately) the indefinite water shortage in St Matthews. We began by visiting the hostels to assess what we could manage before the strike came to an end. We were overwhelmed by the work that needed to be done, and quickly realised that to do a decent job we’d have to concentrate our efforts on a fairly small area. With the help of Emily and Jarvis we chose the halls and bathrooms in the senior hostel (for grades 11 and 12), basing our decision on the facts that it was fairest to improve communal areas, and that all years would eventually benefit (also we couldn’t find keys to the junior hostel, as Eric the man in charge of catering who had the keys had disappeared). Tim, Tom and I then travelled to King in convoy with Emily and Jarvis to buy materials (generously funded by the Calibar Foundation) in a shop called ‘Builders Depot’ (think B&Q, South Africa style). We collectively decided that a calming light blue would be the best colour to go for, as the walls were currently a dull grey, and so the blue would brighten it up without having to change the colour too much. We purchased the first of many pots, along with paint for the ceilings, many brushes and rollers, and much to Tom’s excitement, an electric sander!

Before heading back to Keiskam we stopped in at Avis (cleverly parking round the corner so the King branch didn’t spot ‘the beast’ we were now driving), to discuss apparent scratches they had found on the Corolla we had left back the previous Saturday. After promising Tom from the outset that I ‘wouldn’t sign anything’, Tom engaged in a half hour of heated debate with ‘Bernie’, which ended in me signing a statement saying that we were ‘in no way responsible’ for the scratches on the car, and ‘knew of no incident that could have caused them, other than reasonable wear and tear’. Fingers crossed we don’t have to pay.

Redecoration began in earnest on the Thursday morning by sanding down the walls, which took almost the entire day. Tom commented, (not for the last time), that due to the height of the ceilings ladder availability was going to be ‘the limiting factor’, so on Friday morning Tom and I headed back to King to buy another one. Friday was mostly consumed by ‘edging’, which involved painting round the many doors, skirting boards, and corners; pretty dull work but definitely worth it in the end.

Venetia had been feeling unwell since our return from Durham, and unfortunately had been unable to join in with painting. Keen for another worker, we arranged for her to see a friend of Eman’s who ran a private surgery in King. He gave her a quick examination on Friday evening, and recommended we visit him in his surgery the next day. Venetia and I therefore took another trip to King the next morning, and got some antibiotics, throat lozengers, and some vitamin C tablets. We also replenished our supply of white paint for the ceiling, and got some more rollers.
By Friday evening, having not showered since the Tuesday morning, I was beginning to feel (and smell) the effects of the water shortage. Venetia and I decided to decamp the next evening to ‘Lavender Leisure’, a guest house/restaurant where we had previously gone for lunch. I have to say that it was hands down the best shower I’ve ever had, and Venetia and I both enjoyed a relaxing evening away from St Matthews and the boys. Tim, Tom, and Hadrian meanwhile had a very cliché ‘steak night’, and watched a boy film with lots of fast cars and explosions. Refreshed the next day, and now with the help of Venetia, we began rolling the walls. It finally felt like all our hard work was paying off, and the project really started to come together.

Monday saw the projects first real disaster, as I stupidly bought 20l of the wrong colour paint, mistaking a B for a D in the mixing code. Fortunately Tom sped back to King and bought the correct colour, and so we weren’t too badly delayed. I spent an afternoon reminiscent of Candlemas, on my hands and knees with a kettle and a scrubbing pad trying to remove paint flecks from the hostel floor. The others got on with the finishing touches, and as the sunny weather broke, and the rain poured down we were finally finished! After a lot of hard work the end result was very satisfying. On Tuesday morning we hung a few framed photo collages, made up of photographs Tom had taken, and with the strike now finally at an end (well postponed at least) we eagerly awaited the learners reactions.



(Posted by Tom on behalf of Rachel Acheson)

Durban

That Friday (27th) we were invited over to Eman’s (the (Ghanaian) deputy principle’s for tea in the evening. I think it is fair to say that we all had an entertaining time, eating the traditional Ghanaian dishes of jolloff rice and waicehee amongst other things that he had cooked for us! Tony also came round which ensured that we were in for an evening of animated debating with both Eman and Tony trying to persuade us round to their different viewpoints on all sorts of topics. Of particular interest from this evening was whether South Africa should re-install the death penalty on a short term basis to try to bring the murder rate down and also whether Zuma is likely to be re-elected whatever the outcome of these strikes. Whilst talking to Eman and Tony it became clear that there was no way that school would be re-starting until the Wednesday of the following week at the earliest and with very little to do in a dead Kaiskamahawk this left us with the perfect opportunity for a trip to Durban.

So Saturday saw a mission up to Durban…. When I say this was a long trip I mean it – leaving home about 9am and finally arriving at our hostel in Durban about 8.30pm. Granted we had to switch cars on route in King William’s Town since Avis had decided the one we had needed a service. Still it was a long journey… when they say N2 motorway and you leave East London on a duel carriageway with a central reservation you still think it will take a long time, but it is perfectly doable. Then when you reach about 45 minutes outside East London you suddenly hit a slow, windy, steep single carriage road, filled with lorries and trucks moving about 25km/h and after an hour you think about turning back! Still we trundled on in faith (there are no signs to Durban at all until you get to 150km outside the city). Around 6pm as it was getting dark we had to make the decision as to whether to carry on as it was getting dark. The biggest problem was the amount of traffic without any form of lighting! Still about this time we hit another bit of what we would all call motorway… albeit for about 10 minutes….. Still from here on in at least the single carriageway road had a central reservation so we carried on eventually reaching Durban eleven and a half hours later but pleased to have made it!

We had a bit of a lie in on Sunday before getting up and heading into town to get a feel for the city. It was a very interesting place, with a huge contrast between rich and poor. In particular there was one road of wealthy houses, each with at least 2 or 3 squatter houses in / right on the edge of their front garden within less than 20m of the house. How people can live like this I don’t know – the squatter houses had no water or electricity yet the wealthy houses would not have looked out of place in most of Britain! After getting a grip of the city we made a quick visit to the Apartheid museum. This was an interesting little museum, although it was a bit odd as more thank half of it covered segregation in the USA! Following this short trip we went to get some lunch and some food for the braai we were planning for the evening. Next it was a trip to the uShaka aquarium, the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere. Certainly a worthwhile trip, with the Dolphin show being the highlight. Sadly on our way back to the hostel we had a puncture… a real pain meaning I had to fit the spare wheel (still it would prove to be a good thing in time…)

Monday morning saw us actually make it out whale watching (after about 3 previously failed attempts). On arrival at the slipway we all had a bit of a laugh at the 3cm fish we could see below – wait until what we were going to see. So out of the harbour we sped into a rough Indian Ocean to see the biggest mammals on the planet. They are so big and it is whale watching season, surely we could not miss them? After about 20 minutes we had a near miss – we went over the trail of either a whale or a whale shark – sadly this was as close as we got to seeing anything, except for the bird that followed our boat. Still with a depth of 25m even only a few miles out from the shore you realise the vastness of the open ocean and how lucky you would be to see anything. Not downbeat after our whale watching trip we grabbed a bite to eat before heading to the beach. The beach was really good fun – the only disappointing thing was we were not allowed to swim in the sea because of the number of sharks about! They had a quad bike going along the beach to keep everyone out. I asked the guy riding it why they did not have shark nets out at the moment – the reason being is that the sardine runs are currently happening and if the nets were out the sharks would swim into them killing the sharks! It seems a bit odd to me not to bother putting the nets out in ‘shark season’ but I guess that in fairness this is their winter.

Before departing from Durban it was necessary to get the tyre on the car sorted – after a phone call to Avis it became apparent we would have to change the car over… again. This required a trip to Durban airport – so off Rachel and I headed. We eventually arrived at Durban international airport to find it oddly dilapidated and looking very closed up. Maybe this explained the sketchy signing to the place. A policeman explained to us that “the airport has been closed for ages, since the 30th May!” – next time we will be bringing an up to date guide book! So we turned round and headed 60km to the other side of the city to the shiny new King Shaka airport. So you may be wondering why I am talking you through this dull sounding event – well to cut a long story short I managed to barter us a huge upgrade in car, something that “not even a manager could authorize….” Well supposedly. An hour later, Rachel and I drove out of King Shaka airport in our category B, shiny new Nissan X-Trail – definitely a worthwhile trip! Arriving back at the hostel we parked up and persuaded the others we needed to drive to get some food. There were some amusing moments as they looked for the car –especially Hadrian’s reaction when I said I might have left the keys in the ignition by accident. He full on believed the car had been nicked for about 5 minutes, much to everyone’s amusement!

Tuesday saw the mission back home... a very eventful trip involving incidents such as following a 6 vehicle long (plus helicopter) in an armoured convoy, getting stopped and bribed by a corrupt police woman and having to make use of our new toy (the X-Trail) when driving off road around a closed bit of road due to a crash. Still we arrived home 9.5 hours after leaving safe and sound. On the way home we heard that school would be closed for the rest of the week – cue painting beginning on the girls hostels….

Addo Elephant Park and Port Elizabeth

We awoke early on the 19th, curious as to the form in which the strike would manifest itself in St. Matthews and prepared to temporarily adopt a disciplinary role in the absence of teachers. Drawing back the curtains revealed a damp and miserable scene, as rain poured from the heavy, grey sky - a sure reflection of the mood of both the country and us volunteers. Having run across to St. Matthews and sought the shelter of the school buildings, we found the learners loitering outside of the classrooms, evidently confused and exchanging gossip and hearsay about the strike. We talked to them for a while, trying to discover some information ourselves as the usually bustling staff room was deserted. After some time, a message, issued by some unseen high-command, an administrative apparition, was passed up the line of learners to gather in the assembly hall. We stood watch, trying to keep the students in order amid the contagious confusion, until the principal emerged from a meeting with the governing body half an hour later. For some time he addressed the assembly, explaining the predicament and possible solutions, although in Xhosa, so it fell on our deaf, frustrated ears. We learned afterwards that it was agreed that the learners would pack up their things in the hostels and seek transport home, for the hostels could not operate without the striking matrons and cooking staff to provide for them and the buildings would be targeted by violent unionists if it was discovered they were still full. We decided to make the most of the day and visit the recently developed Hemingway Mall in East London – a relatively luxurious shopping paradise, in comparison to the sad and dilapidated row of convenience stores lining the road through Keiskamahoek. After some time spent shopping, we decided to sample “East London’s largest cinema screen” in order to watch ‘Knight and Day’ with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. As this is a travel blog, and not a film review, I will shelve my critical response to the film, despite strong objections to certain laws of physics that the makers decided to unwittingly overlook in order to fill gaping plot holes. The screen was tiny and the sound awful, but it was a pleasant way to spend a rainy Thursday afternoon.

On Friday, with no sign of a resolution to the strike in sight, we packed up the car and headed out for a long weekend away from St Matthews, which by now resembled a ghost town in the absence of chatty, laughing kids – an eerily quiet spot in the rural hills of the Eastern Cape that would make a perfect setting for a horror film. Our first destination was Addo Elephant National Park – a huge expanse of grassy plains that formed the only “Big 5” (elephants, buffalo, lions, cheetahs and rhinos) park in the southern part of South Africa. After a long and largely uneventful trip, marked only by an unintentional detour and routine police check, we arrived at the park by mid-afternoon. We immediately booked onto a late-afternoon game drive for a not-insignificant amount. Despite the tarmaced roads that wove through the enormous reserve, it was good to be whisked around in a large safari jeep, the guide zipping between known hangouts of each animal and the elevated position allowing for an enhanced view of the surroundings in comparison to a DIY drive with our car. Near the beginning, we stopped to admire the solitary, and highly endangered, flightless dung beetle going about its crappy business with some back-end donations left on the road. As we pulled off again, after saying goodbye to nature’s noble bottom feeder, we turned for one last look in time to see the car behind us drive straight over the beetle, stretching it into a long, black smear along the road. That’s the circle of life, I suppose Elton John would say - from mess it was born and to mess it returned. In the remaining two hours we saw the placid Kudu and Eland (both deer-like grazers), some black-backed jackals scouting for carrion, warthogs, moody buffalos (apparently disease free, and accordingly, worth £30,000 each), elephants enjoying the waterhole, and even an elusive lion (a small speck from a distance, but very real looking through the binoculars of the Italian couple with which we were sharing the jeep. The more affluent nature-fanatic may pay a small fortune to get a lot closer in the neighbouring, private nature reserve). The large orange disk dropping slowly behind the mountains as we drove back cast a deep yellow light over the plains, the very personification of an African sunset.

By the time we had left the park it was past six and we had not yet located, identified or booked anywhere to stay, relying on the gaggle of guesthouses (common collective term) around the perimeter. Plucking for the “Orange Elephant Backpacker Guesthouse” as somewhere likely to be offering cheap beds to wearisome travellers getting by on a fraying shoe-string (judging from the omitted ‘B’ on it’s advertisement B&B sign, signalling simply a ‘Bed’), we parked up and entered. Having approached the formidably built manager behind the bar-come-reception-desk and enquired about dorm prices, Tom entered into a bout of bargaining, attempting to haggle a considerable 25% off of the price. The manager, with a wearisome sigh, leant forward, placed his hands on the desk and looked Tom squarely in the eye. “This is South Africa, mate, not India. We don’t bloody barter. It’s that price or nothing.” Having accepted ‘that price’, as ‘nothing’ would have meant sleeping in the car, we unpacked, ate and slept soundly.

Tom and I got out of bed with the sun in order to explore Addo reserve in the early morning, hoping to encounter a different cross section of South African wildlife. This turned out to be primarily the smaller and ‘less significant’ animals, mainly birds and a mongoose, until we stumbled across a family of elephants (almost quite literally – they aren’t referred to as natures ghosts for nothing) and came within a metre or two of a grazing mother and calf (all the while conscious of the dangers posed by infringing on personal space where maternal instincts are involved). After returning to the guest house in time for check-out, we drove on to Port Elizabeth (or P.E. as the learners refer to it) – a coastal city that we’d heard much about. We checked into a friendly, hippy-styled backpacker hostel a stones catapult from the beach, a stark and pleasing contrast to the open hostility we’d received in The Orange Elephant. We drove into the city centre, but couldn’t really find much of a hub or heart of P.E., just a stunted ‘heritage walk’ consisting of a statue devoted to the horses that lost their lives in the great war and a single-roomed museum devoted to beads. Having fulfilled our culture quota for the day, we headed to the beach to take advantage of the remainder of the sun. This seemed to be all there was to P.E. – a long stretch of sand, cement and hotels, up and down which the tourists may walk to savour the warm sea breeze and spend their loose change on trinkets (or loose savings in the large casino). Despite the seemingly shallow nature of the city, we all appreciated the relative levels of safety to be found on the boardwalk at night, in comparison to the highly dangerous nature of almost everywhere else in South Africa after dark (an opinion shared by the locals). We made the most of it by wondering along to a sea-front restaurant in the evening, heading afterwards to the club opposite, which was packed with teenage athletes (the culmination of the tri-varsity games held that day in P.E. – despite having just graduated, I found myself misty-eyed with nostalgia, already reminiscing about our heady days at University, too soon left behind), for some dancing until late.

The next day, having used the grey skies outside as an excuse to roll out of bed considerably later than our usual time (as we most certainly did not over-imbibe the night before), we strolled the promenade, browsing the ‘cultural’ and ‘traditional’ souvenirs of the Sunday craft market. The remainder of the day, for the majority, was a wash-out, but we resolved to stay in P.E. in order to go on a whale watching expedition the following day, the African Winter being the prime time to observe them. Our luck, having been expended in Addo, ran dry the following day, in contrast to the weather, which ran wet, dashing our chances of having a Moby Dick adventure. Deflated, we packed up and headed home. En route, we stopped off at Graham’s Town, an historic student town home to Rhodes University (which many of St Matthew’s learners aspire to attend post-graduation. We wandered the grounds, ending up in the English Department, where we were amazed to find a newspaper clipping detailing the new Harry Potter module being offered in Durham University, of all places!) and St Andrews High School (the spoilt, older sister school of St Matthew’s was allocated for the white children of the Eastern Cape in the 50’s under the apartheid regime, and as such, was generously funded by the government and by its extortionate tutoring fees (£13,000 in 2009) and has developed and prospered to become the cream of Eastern Cape educational facilities, boasting in its 244 page prospectus the highest pass rates and, within its overflowing sporting portfolio, no less than 16 rugby and 9 water-polo teams (among others). St Matthews, on the other hand, was assigned to the ‘blacks and coloureds’ and has suffered from several decades of fiscal negligence, with poor pass rates, 2 rugby teams and perhaps a third of students who can even swim. This kind of contrast could perhaps be found within the British educational system, separating the rich, in expansive public schools, and poor, in cramped inner-city colleges – the striking difference in South Africa is the clear divide in race, a bad hangover from the troubled middle decades of the 20th century).

Tuesday and Wednesday passed by in an uneventful blur of killed time as we caught up with some personal and house-based chores, all the time checking the news in some hope of finding tidings of joy in the form of a resolution to the strike. Pondering for the hundredth time “what good are we, who have come to help at St Matthews for this short time, able to do without students?” we struck upon the idea that we could pour our helpful energy into the buildings. Having visited the hostels often in the evening for tutoring, we couldn’t fail to notice the truly disgusting state of the bathrooms and corridors (all grey, chipping paint, cobwebs and years of thick, accumulated dirt). Having taken the prospect of renovation to Emily and Jarvis to confirm financial backing from the Calibar Foundation, we began to plan our volunteering comeback. The only difficulty was gauging the answer to the infernal question – how long do we have before this confounded strike is over?