Susie's Post

When I arrived in extraordinary South Africa 5 months ago, I had no idea of the learning curve awaiting me.  Alex (Wallace) had thought it would be useful if I could come for a period and help teachers in the Umlazi schools to work more effectively and psychologically with the distressed kids there.  Parental deaths from AIDS has cut a swathe through the lives of many current high school kids and the tasks facing the teachers are increasingly challenging.  Also, the levels of HIV infection and pregnancy are rising dramatically in that age group.

As well as the Umlazi schoold, Alex had put me in contact with two other people who were to become very importatnt to me; Nombulelo Yeni, Adviser to Special Schools in the Durban Education Authority and Rejoice Ngongo an ex-academic working for an NGO developing selected young people in leadership skills. 

My first project with Nombulelo was to set up a 'Case Discussion Group' with Senior Education Staff from the Special Needs Advisory Service over the period I'm here.  This has been going well with members interested in exploring the complex dynamics between school principals (heads) staff, parents, the children themselves and the advisory staff...lots of room for misunderstanding especially in the multilingual situations which arise.  She then offered me a baptism of fire on the learning curve by offering me as a group advisor to the SMT (Senior Management Team) of a large special school not that far from Umlazi.  There had been racial tensions in the group as well as traumatic experiences within the school and a very challenging system of assessing 'learner suitability' for the kids going to that school.  I was glad of my training in group processes and was  able to open up some of the painful issues which 'could not be talked about'.  However, opening up these areas did seem to lead to some kind of healing within the team and my session on 'Counselling skills with difficult cases' for the whole staff seems to have been useful.  I've also been  working with other Special schools.

In the Umlazi mainstream schools I have set up teachers' groups who meet on a weekly basis to present cases of kids with problematic behaviour and to think together about the underlying psychological factors behind the troublesome behaviour and ways of responding more appropriately.  They seem to find these groups useful as they feel supported in their work and seem to find the psychological concepts useful and effective.

The work I do is called 'experiential' because the learning draws not just on cognitive concepts from various psychological sources, but also on people drawing on their own experiences, either in their own lives or from situations set up in the learning environment.  I then try to draw on people's knowledge AND experience to enable them to develop relational skills for their particular contexts. 

In December I was lucky enough to meet Crispin Hemson, Director of ICON (International Centre of Nonviolence), part of DUT (Durban University of technology) who works in a similar way and who invited me to join him in running an experiential course for young Africans on Leadership and Nonviolence...also part of the learning curve for me!

At about the same time, a group of teachers in Dloko High School, responding to the high number of pregnancies in 12^th Grade as well as to incidences of rape and increasing HIV infection in Durban schools, approached me and asked if I would run a workshop to help 12^th grade girls deal with rape and learn to prevent pregnancy.  I didn't want to run it for just girls and I didn't want to run it for just grade 12s, but I said I would think and get back to them.  My thinking went as follows;  the 'symptoms' of Pistorius/Reeve Steenkamp, Anene Booysen etc. suggest an underlying gender violence in South Africa much wider than the incidents picked up by the press. Although the constitution  recognises men and women as equal before the law, the day to day reality suggests huge inequalities which in turn imply poor communication between the sexes.  My experience of the leadership course helped me think about ways of working experientially with boys and girls, both separately and together, to enable them to listen to one another and, indeed, to talk about important things like feelings, intimacy, sexual feelings as well as sexual behaviour, personal awareness, violence and responsibility and to recognise how experiences in the past can influence behaviour in the present.  Talking and listening will be a necessary part of trying to create a culture of nonviolence and gender respect within the schools.

I put these ideas to Crispin and he agreed to join me in this venture.   Then when Alex returned in January he also agreed to join us in offering a three tiered project for Nonviolence and Gender Listening for 24 Learners in Dloko High School in February and March.  We are still in the middle of this exciting and moving project which is described more fully in the separate page; 'The Gender Listening Project'.

In working in the schools here I realise that there is not much knowledge of experiential work or psychological concepts but there is a huge willingness to learn and in this school the head and deputy are very much on board in their passion to help the 'learners'.  On a practical front, however, the working conditions for staff and learners is primitive in the extreme;  the staff toilet has no seat, no loo paper, only occasional water, no lock or handle and the door sticks (that one led to a frightening few minutes till I was able to climb up and knock it open from the other side!) The pupil toilet arrangements flood into the playground. The 'Board room' where we meet is a tiny, airless, windowless room with an ancient (even by my standards) computer humming away and locked to the floor.  My admiration for the committed teachers knows no bounds.   The private schools are clean, fresh, full of flowers and with perfect facilities...you can probably hear my blood boiling from this distance, but I make no comment. 

Part of my 'learning curve' has been to learn about the history of the education divide in South Africa, to learn to stay with what is in the 'now now' and to engage with the enormous commitment to education even when clashing commitments, overflowing drains, heat and tiredness can seem to get in the way.  The Africans I have met have such an extraordinary capacity to laugh, to get the most out of life even in such difficult circumstances, to see the funny side to every problem...and even when I nearly do 'Scottish-ballistic' when things are one and half hours late, I am learning to do my yoga-deep-breathing and to wonder about the warm and loving human values which may have caused the lateness or whatever may be frustrating me.  I hope I will never take life so seriously again, even when there are really serious problems to be tackled.