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.
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