More About My Community & School

School started finally, about a week late.  The schools have not received all the money they are due from the government, and so there are still more protests planned.  If the money is not received soon, the schools may close again, but at least for now I have a place to go and start to work.  The school day starts at 7:50am with a morning assembly, where the kids line up in classes and sing the national anthem (I think), recite the Lord’s Prayer and then hear announcements from a teacher.  Then I go to the library, where there is a desk that is mine, and is where my first major project is (two picture of it below).  They have a lot of books in the library, but they are scattered around in boxes, on the floor, etc.  There is not enough shelving, so my job will entail organizing the books they have, probably getting more, and getting some shelves to make it into a real library.  They have been using the library as a classroom, but just had a new building finished, so they have enough classrooms without using the library.  There will still be a few classes in there because they are storing a bunch of bags of cement in one of the classrooms, which I hope they put to use soon.  I had spread out books all over the room to start organizing them when a class came in on the first day of school, and so I wasted a good morning of work since I had to just pile all the books to get them out of the way.  At least now I know that it’s still being used as a classroom and can work around the few classes that need the space.  Now that school is up and running, I hope to shadow some teachers and observe their classes.  I’m still in the integration phase, so my job is more to get to know the community and school than to really get to work on projects.  Working in the library at least gives me something to do when I’m not observing or doing something else.  I hope to start some sort of reading club in the new school year in January, when the library is more organized and I know what books are there.  The first step is to get the library in order; the second is to make sure it gets used, because it’s pointless to have a library if none of the students use it.  

Swazi schools are very different from American schools in a similar way to how Swazi homes are very different from American homes.  In America (at least all the areas I’ve lived), homes and schools have an outer wall, and everything is within those walls.  The yard or playground/sports fields are the only thing outside.  In Swaziland, many rooms are in separate buildings.  In the home, there is typically one building that is the kitchen, one building that is the main house and has common rooms, and some bedrooms, and then other buildings that are solely bedrooms.  People spend most of the time during the day outside, it’s like the yard is more of a living room, and even the kitchen has an outdoor area where more time is spent than in the inside kitchen.  In schools, the classrooms open to the outside and a building will have several classrooms, but they are not connected to the other buildings.  The offices and staffroom are in a separate building (pictured below).  And in both settings, the bathrooms or latrines are off to the side and somewhat removed, but obviously outside.  So there are always people outside at the school, in the central courtyards.  There are kids at school before any teachers, although many come in late as well.  Teachers arrive right at the time of morning assembly.  Classes start after the assembly, and while there are specific class times, there may or may not be a bell, and classes cannot leave until dismissed by the teacher, so classes tend to run over quite often.  At the end of the day, most teachers leave immediately, while students hang around to clean up the school.  It's an interesting experience, and I'm still getting accumstomed to it.