Start of South Africa Trip

Day 1 (Sunday)
Flying on Northwest from Detroit to Paris I saw a new feature, they had a camera on the plane that showed the outside.  You could see the forklifts driving by and then the runway and terrain as you took off and flew. That was something new for me. I spent the time writing out my lesson plan for the classes I will be teaching in South Africa. This comes to an abrupt end when I lose my pen in the second flight. My host later explains to me that a partial lesson plan is more than most the teachers will have when they enter the class.  

Day 2 (Saturday)
Arriving in JoBerg I was picked by my host and fed Lebanese bread and sauce on the car ride back to Parys, Free State. My host had warned me how hot it was in SA and to bring clothing to block the sun. In SA they do not have heat in most of the homes. I was provided a thin blanket and sent off to bed to brave the night. Do not let anyone fool you it gets quite cold in SA! 

Day 3 (Monday)  
Arriving at my host’s high school I received a lot of looks from the learners. I think the looks were from the curiosity not hostility. The learners were looking at a novelty of someone different since everyone in the school was black except my host and myself. I was introduced to the staff as I we encountered them. The greeting was a three-part handshake almost as if it were a secret society:
1) A western style grip (like Americans are used to)
2) The grip changes to arm wrestling type of grip (which is more rare but also used with a few of my less formal friends in States)
3) Then the grip changes again to a hold that reminds me of playing thumb war.

As we travel through the country I notice that only the black community uses this three-part greeting, the whites uses the traditional western handshake.  

The school day starts with the learners in an outdoor courtyard and educators/admins surrounding the courtyard. The speaker at the front is forced to stare straight into the sun as he projects (no microphone) into the crowd of ~1000 learners. Between the distance of my vantage point, language and the accent I do not understand much of what the speaker is saying.  

Eventually I tune it out because I do not even know which of the 11 official languages they are speaking, my attention shifts more to what the learners are doing. The students are much smaller than in an American school. In the US, I would expect a large portion of the population to be bigger than me and in better shape than someone 15 years older. As I look around, most are my height or smaller and pretty much all of them have less girth than me. I doubt many would be able to do any damage to me if they tried. My host explained to me than many of these students are so poor that they may get one meal a day.

Singing is part of the morning ceremonies; again I do not understand what they are singing about. As expected the learners in front tend to participate more than the more passive groups in the back. There are learners arriving late and as punishment they are required to pick a piece of trash off the ground and put it in the trash can before entering the courtyard. None of them wash their hands after this task. My host claims that he is responsible for this punishment, prior to his arrival there was no punishment for a tardy arrival.  

My host and I enter a classroom of 10th grade high school kids and I am introduced to the learners. My host asks the students to bring forward the homework. The learners have nothing to present; they did not do the assignment. This is repeated throughout the day, none of the classes do the homework assignment. I start the class by instructing them about ice cream, the ingredient functions, manufacturing and mathematics behind it. Because of the warning from my host about how weak the students are (by American standards) I stick to addition, subtraction, multiplication and percentages. Some of the students can handle the adding and subtracting. A few of them can handle multiplication. Percentages are a real struggle for the learners, even as I show them shortcuts and tricks to doing percentages they have trouble with the calculations.  

I open up the floor to any questions and certain questions appear in all of the classes.  
1) Are you married? 
2) Do you have children? 
3) Will you adopt me?
4) Who is older you or the host teacher?  

In two classes I am asked for a dollar bill, and I dispel the myth that in the US we only use paper money. When asked to give as for the dollar as a gift I had enough foresight to see the precarious situation that could happen and offered to exchange for the local currency 8 Rands (8.7 Rands = 1USD). The learner came up short but I gave it to him for 7 Rands. I could not afford to give 1000 students each a dollar.

I receive a request to sing a song. I can only recall one of the 4 or so songs I know the words to. I sing the lullaby to the class. This actually appeared to be about as quite and respectful as the class was the whole time. They were actually quite and stayed passed the bell to let me finish the song.

The classes were all deafening, I felt like I need ear plugs to teach the classes. I used quieting techniques to bring the decibel levels down multiple times each class.