Math, math, and more math...

We arrived at Bloekombos exactly on time (we finally learned to tell the learners to show up at 9am rather than 8:30). We were delayed because I needed to buy bread for the peanut butter & syrup sandwiches. This is the downside to being the only school in session this week, I think some of our logistical needs fall through the cracks. <-- Understatement of the day.

Sadly for the learners who did not care for math we spent pretty much the whole day doing math of various sorts (or maths, even as they call it here –this reminds me more of the UK every day!). But overall we had a very good session with the learners today – we reviewed the main components of a business (what you are selling, how you are going to make the product or perform the service, who you are selling to, how they know about it, strategy (less for less, more for more, the same for less), where to sell from, etc.). Then we moved onto the math, which I did my best to keep interesting. Someone threw out the idea of a hair salon so we listed up all the costs and divided them into startup and operating costs, and into fixed and variable costs. Then we practiced calculating the cost of one unit (in this case a hairstyle), calculated the labor cost, and figured out total revenues and costs for the month assuming 100 customers and 144 working hours. This whole process took about an hour which I think was good because this was the part of the program that really gave the learners the most trouble at the two schools I was at last week.

Lunch eventually showed up around 12:50pm, when we were in the middle of doing an income statement exercise on t-shirt sales. We let the learners go around 1:30pm, but did not get picked up until 2:45; apparently there were some delays in dropping the learners at Stellenbosch off at their schools. After getting back to Stellenbosch, Matilde and I went out to buy materials for the learners for the trading game for tomorrow.

When I got back to the apartments, most people had already left on a bike tour. I went for a run before it got dark, and ran into the bicycle crew on the way. It was gorgeous – winery on the right, open field with some beautiful white horses on the left. I ran up a bit further and turned around, and was smacked in the face by seeing a township (I think Kayamandi) on the hill up ahead. It is just such an incredible contrast to see this rural view that can rival anything I’ve seen in the world in the foreground with a township in the background. The contrast in such a close area is really something to behold, and what really got me thinking was that I had completely forgotten that the township existed. It is so easy when you are in Stellenbosch or Cape Town to forget the dire poverty some people live in, and then you look at it in a situation like this and it is actually beautiful, from a distance. Speaking of beautiful – at one point I turned around on the run home and the mountains were this amazing shade of pink that I had never seen before, like something out of National Geographic. Stunning – just stunning.

For dinner our group went to a restaurant called Cubana where I had a much-needed salad. Too much tasty and exotic meat in this country so I don’t eat enough vegetables. Some of the Stellenbosch volunteers came out with us for another drink after, but this whole process took so long that by the time we were ready to move on it was time to go back to the apartments.

Bloekombos, Day 1 and Finally, Wineries!!!

The internet conked out in the middle of the USA-Brazil soccer game last night, and is still out. I’ll get to post this at some point, I’m sure. Not like the game was too much fun – the U.S. folded in the second half like the Flyers in the 1996 Stanley Cup Finals. Or maybe, the teams just switched jerseys in the second half – who knows?

Anyway on Friday I had volunteered to teach at a new school. The decision took me about 10 seconds because although I love my learners, I had a sense that this week’s activities at Stellenbosch would probably not require as many volunteers as there were and I would be better utilized teaching in a new school. I was a little surprised that none of the other Babson students volunteered to join me, even when pressed – they all have very good relationships with their kids, which is great. But for me, I know my kids will do just fine without me when I leave in a few more days and I wanted to meet some new ones. But I was more than a little apprehensive about who might join me teaching, and how that would go.

First thing in the morning no one joined me. Warric drove me out to the school which is called Bloekombos and is currently in a cluster of temporary buildings while the permanent school is under construction next door. We had a bet going as to how many of the 29 registered learners would show up – I guessed 11 and he guessed 15. When we arrived there were exactly 11, but two more showed up later so we need to find a new bet. I was excited though – this is a good sized group, and we have six boys and seven girls. This is very unusual – most of the groups are lucky to have 30% boys (obviously last week we had zero!).

We covered similar material this week to last Monday but I found this day much better, partly because we had some more talkative students (mostly boys) and partly because I had done this before and had a much better idea of what I was doing. If only I had known I would be doing this again I would have taken better notes last week on the points to cover, but c’est la vie. I will say though that I am much more comfortable working in small groups than lecturing to a class, so I’m glad I had last week’s experience to rely on. I would have been pretty terrified if I were in this same situation last week, alone with thirteen learners.

After an hour or so another volunteer named Sne showed up. He’s from Kwa-Zulu Natal on the east coast, and he was telling the class about his educational experience. In his school they had to share textbooks like three to a student and when he was growing up he encountered all this negativity – people telling him he couldn’t do this or that, or wouldn’t succeed and shouldn’t even try. As I told him at lunch I find it amazing that despite all that he persevered and has made it as far as he has (he graduated high school at 15, which makes him a kindred spirit!) and he’s in his third year at Stellenbosch which is an achievement in and of itself since I don’t believe he speaks Afrikaans. I should probably mention at this point that given the racial makeup of the volunteer I had originally assumed that Stellenbosch was pretty racially diverse … but not so much. Apparently the non-whites are so rare that they refer to themselves as “raisins in a sea of snow” and only 3% of the black students who start at Stellenbosch wind up graduating from Stellenbosch. Many drop out and many transfer to other universities where it is easier to get by without knowing Afrikaans. 3% - that’s a depressing statistic.

I’ll know these learners better in a couple of days but we had them go through and list their goals and some were quite amazing. We did have some who wanted to be entrepreneurs, and a girl who wanted to be a police officer, quite a few who wanted to do social work, a fashion designer, and most exciting to me two girls who in addition to their other goals said they wanted to be “independent women” which is to say have their own life without a husband (or perhaps just not subservient to a husband, I’ll try to explore this more later in the week). There is also this one boy who wants to be an economist and he’s quite the intellectual – his first question after we covered the entrepreneur vs. employee difference was how the economic recession affected entrepreneurs. Officially the hardest question I’d been asked in six days, after all of about 20 minutes. If he keeps it up this one may find himself the owner of my stack of outdated Economists that I brought with me!

After returning to Stellenbosch a group of seven of us (three Babson, four Stellenbosch) went out wine tasting at a couple of wineries. It was so much fun! I found most of the reds pretty undistinguished but some of the whites were good, and I did pick up a bottle of olive oil. The views from the latter two wineries up in the hills were amazing – one had vines on a very steep hillside as the foreground to a view of the valley and mountains behind, and the other is in the picture I uploaded. Replace the hills and you have a view straight out of Sonoma, but those hills, my goodness … I could have stayed there all day looking at that view. This would be a great place to come for a week, scout around, and buy a lot of cheap wine to ship home and age.

After a quick stop by the grocery store so I could buy some PB&J with which to gross out the South Africans (apparently jam with peanut butter they find about as disgusting as I find the concept of peanut butter and syrup), we headed back to the apartments and talked for a bit before heading out to a lovely dinner courtesy of Babson College, to talk about the plan for the rest of the week for the students volunteering at Stellenbosch.

Anyway I’m looking forward to tomorrow because the students will, I’m sure, be more open than today and also because tomorrow is the day when I think we convey the most learning. Today was so funny – I asked how many of them liked math. Not a single hand went up, but I told them they are going to need to do math to be able to run their businesses but it’s fun math because you are keeping track of how much money you are bringing in which is really why we’re all here. Now, to bed, and try and kick this headache I’ve had (too much wine, not enough water I’m afraid).