Once again, it has been far too long since I updated my blog. In the past month a lot has happened on my end; I went to Zanzibar for two weeks with my lovely friend Jen Smith, I hired myself a regular translator, the lodge in the village got broken into (and our guards got kidnapped! But they were returned safe and sound), and much, much more. Rather than start at the beginning and update you all on the whole month, I’m going to post a bunch of shorter blog posts over the next few days.

So, beginning with yesterday: I am still running my after-school program for

grade 4, 5, and 6 at our local school, and although there are some ups and downs (mostly due to poor attendance by the teachers, meaning that as often as not there are no students at school either), the program is going well. Yesterday we tried building things with ‘Zoob,’ a lego-esque building toy which was donated –to the amazement of everyone in the village- by the South African government through the Community Work Program (this job-creation scheme. I won’t go into detail here). The kids were surprisingly enthusiastic. Here’s one picture of many:

Less inspiring is this page from a grade 6 student’s “Life Skills” workbook. In case you can’t read it properly, here’s an excerpt, with the spelling corrected: “a knight’s weapon was a double-edged sword that was very heavy it was his most prized possession knights would march into

danger and then using two hands hold the heavy sword fight against the enemy usually the enemy also had a sword so the two swords would hit against each other the knights jumped out of each others way so that as not to be hurt by the sword.” These kids’ language abilities in English are minimal, and they’re literacy is poor. No fault of their own; the school is just complete shit. This text –which is confusing even for me- has clearly been copied off a blackboard. Aside from the fact that knights and swords don’t really feature in these children’s lives…

After the “Life Skills” workbook, imagine my surprise when I found an interview with Justin Bieber in their isiXhosa reading-comprehension textbook:

More to follow in the next day or two…