Abecedarian

abecedarian (n): a person who is learning the alphabet or a beginner in any field of learning (and much to my enjoyment, you pronounce it: ay-bee-cee-dahr-ee-uhn)

One of the most powerful, educational, and meaningful experiences I had while in Mzansti was the privilege and responsibility of volunteering at Pendla Primary School in New Brighton. In Port Elizabeth you can always feel the presence of poverty, of people left behind in the glorious wave of peaceful revolution that was to reform and uplift South Africans. That presence is easy enough to ignore. One can dismiss the occasional beggar or disheveled person lying in the street. That was not so in New Brighton, one of P.E.’s townships. It was painfully evident that every member of the community was straining just to get by. The people are all black, predominantly Xhosa, and largely impoverished. 

Lunchtime at Pendla. A simple meal of beans, pap, and some meat, served in plastic containers from tupperware to pencil boxes.

My job was to step in to this foreign community, just for a few months, and endeavor to throw a cog in the cycle of poverty: education. Because of England and the United States’ global presence, business, politics, and education are conducted in English. Unfortunately, by speaking only their native tongues, the Xhosa youth are disadvantaged from the start. We were simply to improve the English skills of these abecedarians by practicing reading from story books and primers (government written and distributed, of course). 

The school’s education wasn’t making much of a difference, evidently to me. Even with a passionate, devoted teacher, a class ratio of 40 third-years to one teacher is impossible. And passionate or devoted are not words I would have used to describe any of Pendla’s teachers. I saw these women tell their students to go outside to play while they sat inside, toying with their cell phones (iifowuni). I saw a first-year teacher leave her class unattended while they were supposed to be learning to come take silly pictures with us on one of our breaks (What? What are you thinking?). The teachers don’t call their classes in from the breaks when the bells don’t ring (Why don’t the bells ring consistently?). The school didn’t have the money to pay a salary swollen enough to persuade competent, skilled teachers to work in New Brighton. No worth teachers were willing to work in a dangerous, challenging environment for little pay, at least not for the long term. Money. Tsk tsk. These children who had so little of their own and were deserving of so much, were dealt a cruel hand that worked to keep them from succeeding. 

The spare classroom

So, for three hours a week, several of the international students would take a taxi out to New Brighton (about a twenty minute ride), pull half of the 40 third-years out of class, divide them into groups of 4-6, and try to find somewhere quiet to read with them. We could sit outside if it was not raining or too windy. We could sit inside an empty cinder block classroom with broken chairs and a threadbare rug if the weather was poor. We used the same primers full of simple stories every week. I can still quote them from memory even now: “Vuyo loves to read...,” “My sister Aisha is perfect…,” “We are going to build a treehouse…” I began to wonder if, like me, the student simply memorized the banal stories. I would supervise their behavior, correct them when they read words incorrectly, try to talk through the themes of the story, and get to know them as best as I could. 

A huge challenge was that all the students were at different reading levels. Some were fluent in English because they had an English-speaking parent at home. To these few, our weekly reading corner was a tedious task that was just slightly more enjoyable than being reprimanded (or ignored) by their teacher. For others, English was an ocean to their desert island. The words “the” and “an” were road blocks. We also had no idea whether English itself was the problem or simply reading. Because I had a smattering of Xhosa, I was popular with some of the less English-inclined students. They could not believe that a white woman, an American nonetheless, was able to speak their language. They would ask me question after question in Xhosa with a high-pitched note of incredulity, with amazed smiles when I would provide the answers.

In just a few hours a week over the course of a semester, I learned so much from the children of Pendla Primary that I became the abecedarian. I’ll share the most memorable and meaningful lessons.

-No matter the resources available, nothing educates better than a good teacher.

-Children can’t focus on learning when their bellies are empty, their teeth ache from unattended decay, and their feet are poking out of their too-tight, worn-out shoes.

-Children also can’t focus on learning when they fear judgment by their peers for their scholastic shortcomings. These children could be so harsh to one another. Nothing could fix that look on Mihlali’s face when another student said, “This one, teacha, she doesn’t read English.”

-Don’t assign your background to a member of a foreign culture. I incorrectly assumed, at first, that these children had the same upbringing as I had: books to read at home, parents at home to take care of them, and people who encouraged them to read. Heck, some of these children did not even have permanent shelters to call home. I simply could not relate but I was never more grateful for my own childhood then after visiting Pendla each week.

-Lastly, don’t assume that the pattern of the past must be the way of the future. One boy, Washu, I think, had significant trouble reading even simple English words. He was laughed at by his peers and sheepishly shrugged off their taunting. When break time came and the children were sent outside, Washu stayed in the library with the tin roof and bare dirt floor and asked if he could stay to read with us. He read the same four-page story over and over again until he was confident he was pronouncing the new words correctly.

Isithembiso (left) and Asiphe (right)

I have a multitude of meaningful, silly, and heart-wrenching stories from my time with these children but I’ll sign off with this message: the reading corner at Pendla was an awakening, sobering, trying, hope-granting experience that changed the way I see the world permanently.