My first week in South Africa. Firstly, landing in Johannesburg, travelling to the University of Venda and starting teaching at my school.
Week 1
I started the week arriving at Johannesburg Airport in South Africa, where I visited Mandella Square. Afterwards, after spending a night in Joburg, I travelled to the University of Venda (UniVen) in Limpopo where I started to get settled.
The flight
I got to the airport terminal at 5pm for my flight which was scheduled at 9.40pm. This over-eagerness made me have to wait half an hour before I could even check in. Lesson learnt – procrastinate more! Luckily, although it was a long wait to get through bag check-in, the security was very fast, and I had zero problems where usually I have a pat down or bag checked.
At the duty-free shops, we met up with the Johannesburg group where we had a lovely chat about our plans and respective areas. We all shared our excitement in both getting to teach and share our love, knowledge and enthusiasm for Maths whilst also exploring South Africa. Although Birmingham’s duty-free could be said to be cheap or well-priced, we knew that we’d regret it once we looked at South African prices- so we waited for boarding.
The first leg of the flight filled me with awe. After only flying using “cheap” airlines such as RyanAir or EasyJet, Emirates was luxury. When I first walked onboard the 757, I walked through business class thinking to myself- “This is luxury”. I hope that one day I’ll be able to travel for work with that much style. After, I walked through to my seat in Economy, where one of the people in my group gave me a middle seat. I can now share the pain of sitting in a middle seat for 7-hour flight.
After a quick layover in Dubai in the UAE (first time in Asia!), we got onto the 2nd plane- An Airbus 380. This plane had the same level of luxury but this one was much larger and more impressive. The second flight was luckily only 6 hours long. But Maks, how did you keep yourself entertained? Well dear reader, I must say that the first hour was quite boring, however, after figuring out how to use the Inflight entertainment I set my mind to rising the leaderboard on the Seat’s remake of the beloved game of Tetris. This is now my goal on every Emirates flight I go on!
Enjoy some photos taken during the flight!
Sunday: Arriving in South Africa
On Sunday (30th July) we arrived at Johannesburg airport around 4:30pm. We then took a taxi hired by UoW to our hotel for the night. Our hotel in Johannesburg was very nice- but, unluckily for my group we were leaving the next day while the Johannesburg group got to stay for the next 6 weeks. As we were only going to be in Johannesburg for just an evening, we decided to explore Sandton- known as ‘Africa’s richest square mile’.
Although I knew I was in Africa, it felt like being in New York. Due to the shortage of time, we decided to visit Nelson Mandela square – A large plaza situated at the heart of Sandton. There, we struggled to find a place where we could all agree to eat as there were too many options. We settled for RocoMamas where the prices were equivalent to English Maccies. After eating we settled down for the night and prepared for travelling to Thohoyandou.
Monday: Travelling from Johannesburg to Thohoyandou
We set out from Johannesburg at 9am for a 6-hour car journey to the University of Venda in Thohoyandou. The landscape went from city to desert to mountains to forest. Apart from this, the journey was quite boring however there are some photos:
Tuesday: Getting situated at our new home
Tuesday was a slow day, we went to the Student Centre and got identification cards and sorted out our travel arrangements for the rest of the week with UniVen’s International relations team. We also went to Thavhani mall, the largest (and only) mall in Venda which provided restaurants, shops and the remains of UK Retail: Woolworths. Unsurprisingly, the Woolworths in South Africa was much more expensive than the Woolworths that used to be in the UK. After eating (and celebrating my birthday) at Spur, a South African steakhouse, we went shopping and returned home.
In the evening, we ended up going to the Sports hall and played some Badminton with the UniVen Badminton team. I think I need to improve!
Wednesday: Introductory talk at UniVen
In the morning, the University of Venda’s International Relationships team organised a welcome event for the Warwick students combined with welcoming four exchange students from Botswana University. In the event they went over safety, transport, and other topics of interest. Nearing the end of the event, there was a dancer who showed some Vendan dancing for entertainment. [photos]
Afterwards we joined the tennis club’s practice session and enjoyed playing some tennis with the other students.
Thursday: First day at school
We set out from UniVen at 6am after waking up after 5am. Now, I don’t usually wake up this early, neither do I enjoy the mornings, but today I was excited for the true start to my journey. We arrived at the Kolokoshani Secondary School – the school I am teaching at - around 6:40am and met my lead teacher whom I was going to shadow over the next two days. Between this time and 8:30am we got situated and decided on which lessons I will attend and teach over the next six (now five) weeks. After this, I attended my first ever lesson inside South Africa.
My first shadowed lesson
Once I walked inside the classroom, A room I would estimate to be 8m by 8m, there were 126 students sat down and waiting to learn- a population density sixteen times larger than the highest population density city in the world- Manila in the Philippines. You could count 8 rows of students with 16 in each column, with no gaps in between tables to walk through and observe students’ work. Their learning depended purely on your trust for them to ask for help. This was the only class in Grade 10 (The equivalent age of Yr11 in the UK) studying Mathematics, this is why the class was so large. The other two Grade 10 classes were teaching Mathematical Literacy, a curriculum designed to be less broad and focus on mathematics used in the workforce. [photo]
Lunchtime
After the lesson was the school’s lunchtime where every student, in a school consisting of over a thousand of them, had half an hour to get their food (state funded), eat it and then wash up utensils. Everything here would be done outside-the food was given out in the central plaza in the school, the classrooms were usually too crammed to be eaten in and there were four working taps outside connected to a borehole. They would often end up being late walking into their next lesson where they would usually be punished. Sadly, on this day the lead teacher thought we had brought food and hence did not get us any food so there are no photos to offer on Thursday.
My second and third shadowed lesson
My second lesson was a Grade 8 class- the incoming grade for secondary school in South Africa. It contained 80 students each. It was grade 8A. In my school, each grade from 8-10 had “A”, “B”, and “C”. The class with A was the brightest, followed by B and then C. Similarly, you could see the motivation students had between the classes- the students who understood the topics most would often enjoy and participate in classes more. This is something not unfamiliar to British schools and made me think more about the differences between schools in England and over here in South Africa. [photo]
After School
School ended at 2:10pm, meaning that school lasted for six hours and forty minutes, roughly the same as the school I attended in Britain but one more hour of studying in South Africa. Once we reached the university, we joined badminton again and attempted to cook which took a very long time.
Friday: More teaching
Pre-lunch shadowing
Luckily, after the previous day’s early morning, we decided that we could leave at 6:30am instead. Half an hour more of beauty sleep! The next day, I attended a Grade 12 lesson – the final year which was preparing for end-of-school exams and a Grade 11 lesson in the morning. Looking at their content, it looked as if they were rushing to complete much more content than in the UK, trying to cram Yr10-13 content to be able to compete with students from different countries. This was a good thing for the students who could follow and understand quickly, but very few could keep up.
Lunchtime
This lunchtime, I went to the cook’s hut and took a plate of food- the same as the student’s but on a ceramic plate instead of plastic and more of it than given to the students.
We had tripe with pap. One of my teacher’s favourite foods, sheep’s intestines boiled with maize porridge with the porridge being one of the main staple foods of South Africa. [photo]
Post-lunch shadowing
After lunch, I helped teach all grade 8 classes, 8B, 8A then 8C. Each were taught the same lesson, but you could see how the content had to be tailored to the lower levels and different attitudes to learning. Each were being taught how to expand and simplify brackets. With the highest ability class, most students could do the classwork without mistakes however in the lowest ability class, simplifying algebra was a problem.
E.g. 2x+2=4x or 2x+2=4
Whilst observing I did the best to help, walking around the classroom clearing up misconceptions, but I have little faith that the students understood. Another problem with the lower classes is that their level of English was much worse than the top class, many would struggle to understand or follow certain words or phrases and I had to repeat things many times slowly for them to understand.
The Weekend
In the weekend we visited a dam, waterfalls, a large lake, potholes and other. Stay tuned to read!
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