Moving to Plan C

I figured out last week that it wasn’t going to work.  In writing workshops I have often used an exercise with three groups writing dialog to tell the story of Jack and Jill going up the hill to fetch a pail of water.  In one group Jack and Jill are pre-schoolers. In another group Jack and Jill are an old couple who have been married for 50 years.  In the last group Jack and Jill are a brother and sister who fight all the time. 

Chaos Again

 This time the chaos was at Tembisa Baptist Church, the second location I visit.  

I tried the dramas.  Without a translator it never would have worked. It was hard enough to make the children understand that I didn’t want a speech but a drama, and that I didn't care what language they used. No one got the idea of showing the plans needed to reach the goal of becoming a nurse or teacher or police. I had to talk about that after the presentations. 

Old Haunts

 

“Where have you been so long?” 

“I live in the States now.  Wisconsin.”

“Is it cold there?” my questioner asked warily.

It only he knew! I took advantage of being back in Johannesburg to visit my old writers club, Writers 2000. The group meets the last Saturday of the month in the elegant clubhouse of a retirement center surrounded by manicured gardens. 

Dreams for a Hope and a Future

 Today for Tomorrow lesson one was about journeys—to places like Mpumulunga or Johannesburg or the one each of us makes through life. Lesson two is about dreams of where we would like to go on our life journal.

I took a stack of library books about places one might visit—Namibia, Swaziland, the Drakensburg Mountains of South Africa—and another stack about jobs and professions. It does this librarian’s heart good to see the children sitting on the steps devouring books. One girl held an armload, not wanting to give any to one of the younger boys.  “He can’t read yet.”

Playstation and Soccer stars

I got there early.  Very early.  I was afraid of rush hour traffic, but of course, it was Saturday and traffic was light.  Even though I was early, children streamed ahead of me through the gates of Central Johannesburg College, Alexandra Campus.  They were neatly dressed, many in T-shirts that said Rose-Act Saturday School. The program out of Rosebank Union Church in the wealthy suburb of Four Ways rents the college facility for an extra-tuition school for children from the crowded Alexandra township across the road. (For my American readers, “tuition” here means “instruction”, not the money paid for a private school, although these students do pay a modest fee to demonstrate their commitment to be in class.)

Today for Tomorrow

“Has anyone here been on a journey? I asked. For most of the children in the after-school programs for orphans and vulnerable children in Tembisa a trip into the city of Johannesburg would be an adventure. One boy tentatively raised his hand. 

“Where did you go?” I asked him.

The Author of Your Story

Six hundred girls in blue cotton pinafore dresses with crisp white blouses looked up at me from the auditorium floor at Kingsridge Senior Primary School in King Williamstown, South Africa.  They sat in neat rows from grade four to grade seven, while we talked about the stories they tell and the stories told to them.