JOURNEYS & REFLECTIONS
On The Road - May 19-22
Landed safely in Jo’burg on Monday afternoon and went off with our host families after a fifteen hour plane ride. Up before dawn and off to Edendale to a high school assembly in the middle of the veldt, where we were greeted by amazing morning songs. Then on to the primary school where we had an introductory meeting with the staff at Edendale. It was wonderful to see old friends and to meet new ones.
For the past two days Skidmore students have been getting to know the Edendale children and teachers in their assigned classrooms. Susan and Karen are conducting two studies in the primary school on reader response to children’s literature and oral histories of Edendale faculty and staff. The Schuylerville teachers are gathering cultural studies information and material in order to develop social studies curricula for their sixth grade students. They also plan on creating a cultural museum to be displayed at Schuylerville in the fall.
Skidmore students are working on all three projects in concert with Skidmore faculty, Schuylerville teachers, and their assigned classroom teachers. Camcorders are rolling, interviews are being conducted, children are drawing artistic responses to literature and Skidmore students are facilitating and gathering data.
Tuesday it was off to Pretoria to see the Union Buildings, tour the Voortrekker Monument and shop at our first street side flea market. A lot of Rand passed hands!
On Wednesday afternoon we took a bus to Soweto-South West Township- led by Liz, an instructor at Vista University. Skidmore students met Vista students and got a spontaneous tour of the science building. Soweto is huge, about 120 square kilometers; we spent hours driving through a variety of neighborhoods, past Winnie Mandela’s home, the home of Bishop Tutu, and a house where Nelson Mandela lived before being imprisoned on Robben Island. The Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum was a powerful experience because it chronicles the events leading up to the 1976 Student Uprising in Soweto.
We ended the evening eating at Wandies, one of the oldest shabeens in Soweto. We had an amazing day. The bus was still delivering us back to our host families at 11:00 at night. We are learning so much and we’ve only been here two full days.
