Day 5: School and Sparrow Village

I'm going into tonight's blog post dreading it. I'm not sure that I'm going to have the words to really describe how I'm feeling at the moment and I'm positive that I won't be able to describe the range of emotions that your children felt today. The entire afternoon, I have been working to fight back tears and now I can't even type without having them stream down my face. Sparrow Village was a life-changing experience. While I think of exactly what I want to say about it to try to give you an accurate picture, I'll start with our day at school.

Friday is an assembly day, so the classes are only about 35 minutes long. We went to periods 1-3, had a short 15 minute break, then we went to periods 4-6. After that, the college meets for an hour assembly period. This morning, I went to a double session (back-to-back classes) of Grade 11 Life Sciences, acted as a teacher assistant for two Grade 12 Life Sciences classes, and I observed a Grade 10 Life Sciences class. During my last period of the day, I prepped for the lesson I will be teaching on Monday! I will teach Mrs. Hagen's Grade 11 classes for their lesson on kidney structure and function. I brought a textbook and their workbook pages home this weekend- teachers do their homework too!!! I am VERY excited for school on Monday :)

To give you a little more insight into the school, when the students meet for registration, or homeroom, they have a uniform check. Oh how I WISH Chagrin had uniforms! This takes away the dress code issues AND the students don't have to agonize over what to wear in the morning! Student representatives walk around the room to check that shirts are tucked in, ties are tied straight, and skirts are the proper length. Boys must have a short haircut and they need to be clean shaven. Girls must have their hair pulled up, they cannot wear make-up, and their fingernails should be short and without nail polish. If a student has a violation, he is given a demerit. 5 demerits lead to a detention or a detention is received for 2 demerits in one week. The students are also asked to bring "charity" on Friday to earn the right to wear their "civvies" to school one day. It is an interesting, student-policed system.

I have a little more insight on the school calendar as well. The school year is different from ours and runs January through November. There are 3 terms at CHC- the public/government schools have 4 terms. Students have 1 week long mid-term breaks right before exams. CHC's next break will be July 2-11- and the students are EXTREMELY excited. Their long breaks are split up- not like our summer break. They have April off (roughly the entire month), August 5-September 6 off, and they do not meet for school in December. For the day to day schedule, Monday has the longest day with 40 minute periods and no assemblies during the day. On Wednesdays, the students are dismissed at 1:00 for sports/athletics. I asked several CHC Grade 11s and 12s what they thought of the 8 day rotation- all agreed that it is very confusing (these are the upperclassmen who have been on this schedule for a while now). I found that teachers are even caught off guard and confused too, as I saw students correct them throughout the day.

The assembly was interesting and our students were a hit! They did SO WELL in front of such a large group of people! The college met inside the hall- girls on one side, boys on the other- seated in grade order. All students sit on the floor except for the Grade 11s, who get chairs in the back, and the Grade 12s, who get to sit in the balcony. All the staff members wear black robes. Assembly begins by singing a few hymns, then the headmaster, Mr. Simpson addresses everyone. Awards and honors for the students are recognized. Then, it was our turn to take the stage. The assembly went from being a very serious, quiet occasion to a fun event filled with giggles and cheers! Our students introduced themselves to the crowd one-by-one, saying their grade and identifying their hosts. Then, they had a powerpoint with pictures with maps, pictures of Chagrin, and pictures from different events at the high school. Each student had a slide to present and the crowd ROARED with laughter at our accents! They found a lot of the facts rather funny: "These are our falls. Sometimes people jump off of them. One guy lights himself on fire every year and jumps off. Yes, I'm serious." Then, to make the assembly EVEN BETTER, our students challenged the CHC students to read statements in their best American accents. Volunteers were picked from the crowd and they had to read facts comparing the two countries like: "In South Africa, you have to be 18 to drive. In America, we get our license at 16." All participants were given American candy, so it was easy to get volunteers! It was so entertaining to watch- I was very proud of their creativity :) We were cut short because we ran WAY over on time, but it was definitely worth it. A BIG thank you to Ted for putting together all the pictures and bringing the candy! The assembly still wrapped up on time and we went to the boarding house for lunch.

A little after 1:00 we left for Roodepoort. It's about an hour drive from Irene. They came up with the BEST game for the ride there (and back)- you'll have to ask Lauren what it was :) When we arrived at Sparrow Village, the first thing that we noted was the unique building structure. At first, we speculated that it was for warmth, but in the office building, they told us it was to help with ventilation- to get any allergens or microorganisms that could make anyone sick out of the buildings. In the office building, there is a tree stump in the middle with several brass sparrows on it. Upon closer inspection, each sparrow has a name, birth date, and death date. Each sparrow represents someone in the Village who has passed away from AIDS. Seeing all of those birds on that stump gave us an idea of what we were going to see that afternoon. At the office building we dropped off our socks and clothing to be donated. Then, we were introduced to Patricia, who works at Sparrow Village full time as an administrator, and she led our tour through the facility. It was requested that we only take pictures of buildings, but later they let us take a few. Maddie has some great pictures that she took- and also a few that the children took with her camera!

We only had 2 hours, so we needed to move quickly. This was difficult to do because we started in the hospice building. It has two wings, one for children and one for adults. There are two rooms just for babies. As soon as we walked in, I think each of our students picked one up. Some of the babies had severe developmental handicaps. It was touching to watch the interaction between these high school students and these young children; parents, you have raised wonderful kids. We played with the babies for a little while, then we were told we needed to move on. I don't think that we were aware that as we moved on, it would only get harder and harder to say goodbye. The next room had children who were a little older- they could walk around a little (I'm not sure of the ages because of some of the disabilities that delay development). Emily was holding one who LOVED the board book she brought with a finger puppet lion in it; the child kept kissing the lion :) The Tommys played a little catch with two of the kids. There were even more hugs and smiles here. Again, our time was too short and we moved on.

We stopped by the orphanage section featured in the documentary, but all of the children were in one of the houses for nap time. They were all snuggled together on mats on the floor, huddled under blankets and looked so peaceful sleeping. We were told to stop back later, so we went to the school building. The children leave Sparrow Village to attend school, but they don't all go to the same place. Students who have the ability to attend government school get split up between the few in the area; there are some deaf and blind students that attend the appropriate schools; some of the children attend vocational schools or culinary school. In the school building, there is a library with a wide range of books, from picture books to Algebra 2 textbooks. They have several desks and 6 computers. There were a few children in there playing computer games.
The students come here after school for tutoring and to complete homework. There are 3 staff members who help with this. Nick and Tommy Cardaman went outside for an impromptu game of soccer with some of the kids and eventually we all went outside to watch. No offense to Nick and Tommy, but the children playing barefoot or with socks with holes in them were FAR better with their foot skills :)

We had half an hour left, so we made our way back to the orphanage. The children were just waking up from their naps. They sang us two songs and we sang a couple to them. I would guess that the kids were between the ages of 3 and 6. One little girl spoke English very well, but the others we could not understand- and that didn't matter at all. After the songs, they rushed over with open arms and smiles. They sat on our laps, they climbed on our backs, they held our hands. We read to them, played games, and gave them books and silly bands. When I looked around the room, all I saw was smiles and hugs from both the children and the students. All I could hear was singing and laughter. But truthfully, I didn't want to look around or listen to anyone around me because I was SO absorbed in the 3 adorable little faces in front of me. I didn't have anything to read to them or anything to give them- they just wanted to be LOVED. I have never received hugs as tight as the ones that I got today. I'm sitting here at the computer now, an absolute mess, just praying no one walks into the rec room. I can't express how good it felt to spend time with those kids- it was 30 minutes that I just wanted to last forever. It was heart wrenching to leave and I tried to say "see you later" instead of "goodbye." What made things even more difficult was seeing the tears on our students' faces. It's not that we felt guilty- it was just HARD. This visit had a major impact on everyone, myself included.

Tonight the students are out bowling with their hosts. It's nice to know that they hang out as an entire group. Tomorrow morning, we will meet at Roxanne Booysen's house (Maddie's host) to watch the Super 15 semi-final. The Super 15 includes the best rugby teams from South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. The game is at 9:30 AM because it is being played in New Zealand. We will be rooting for the Natal Sharks tomorrow- we were told to wear black! The area team, the Bulls, are out of the competition.

Two apologies to make this evening. First, I apologize for posting about an hour later than usual and if the post is a little choppy. One of the boarding students, Paul, sat down to talk with me about American universities. This is the fourth student I've talked to about colleges in the States just today. I was about halfway done with the post when Paul and I started working (thankfully, before I was in tears!) We went through the Common Application website and researched some schools online because he is interested in studying law. He is a Grade 12, or Matric as they call them here, and has already been accepted to the 3 universities he applied to in South Africa. Paul is incredibly bright AND focused. It has been WONDERFUL getting to know him and to the other students here.

My second apology goes out to Tommy Collins' host, Darryl. To Darryl and our other South African friends reading the blog (which I was not aware of!)- I apologize for any errors. Darryl very kindly pointed out an error in yesterday's post. CHC does NOT have an IB program. The tests taken are the IEB, which I do not know much about, but IEB is printed on all of the content standards. There have been other mistakes as well, which he was too humble to point out :) So Darryl- please feel free to post any corrections/clarifications for our parents in the comments section. This way, they can learn AND I can learn- I can only post so much from memory! Thank you for your insight!

I hope that your weekend is off to a great start!