Apparently, I AM Justin Bieber.

Today was my first official teaching day, and it began with the children of the informal housing settlement that Lucinda’s friend Aysha headed up. I read more about the children in an old newspaper article I found: apparently the majority of them were expelled or dropped out of school, but are seeking to get themselves back on the right track. When the children approached the school to re-enroll, administrators refused to let them in. So they approached Aysha with their willingness to get educated. She has been working to give them the best opportunities she can afford, but has largely run into roadblocks. She reached out to Lucinda at Philisa Abafazi; Lucinda agreed to lend out some of her computers to her for occupational training for the kids. With the arrival of ProjectsAbroad volunteers such as myself, we’re now able to give these kids another chance by teaching them skills that are applicable and desirable in the workplace. That’s where I come in.

My first class was from 10 AM to 12 PM with six children from the community (including Lauren from yesterday). I focused the day on typing skills (it’s remarkably hard to keep them from only using one finger of one hand to type each letter), Microsoft Word skills, and even some basic skills in Excel. It was a painstaking task, working with two children to a computer (so they had to alternate who was on the keyboard) and having them get distracted by each other or goings on in the community. However, I was definitely making some progress. One of the three groups worked super fast (surprisingly, not Lauren’s group!) and actually finished my entire lesson plan for that day. I’m going to actually have to sit down and figure out what else I’m going to teach for the rest of the time I’m here; a specific curriculum will be much more helpful than planning things the night before. Overall, the class went well and I was happy with the progress I had made, though.

At that point, I came back to Philisa Abafazi for a staff meeting with Lucinda about everything that was going on this week. She told Petra and I that we would be in charge of giving weekly status reports, making a newsletter, and a few other tasks. She also said that we may have to cancel the children’s holiday program due to lack of funds for a decent venue; keep in mind that Philisa Abafazi receives no external funding from the government (South Africa’s social rights/welfare program is apparently rubbish) – it runs solely on donations and Lucinda’s husband’s wages. Meanwhile, I have several applications for computers that I am working on getting filled out that will hopefully get us some better equipment for the classes. If you’re reading this and want to help out, check out their website’s contact page for details on an account that you can wire funds to: http://www.philisaabafazi.org/index.php?option=com_contact&view=contact&id=1&Itemid=53

As I was setting up for my afternoon class (in the much less-cramped meeting space at Lucinda’s place), several children came by and said, “Why, hello Justin Bieber!” (Note: these are not related in any way to the woman I sang Bieber with yesterday). We then talked for a good while about their obsession with him, and how apparently I looked like the 16-year-old pop idol. I don’t know if I actually look like this kid, or whether the kids just thought, “White kid, Brown hair.. close enough.” Eh, whatever. I told her she could call me that. I can live with being a 16-year old pop star.

You decide.

My second class had three kids show up out of a possible six. One of them worked very quickly and again exhausted my entire lesson plan, while the other two struggled with typing, highlighting, and using the mouse. I’m not worried about the learning differences, though. I think once we’ve had a few classes, I’ll separate the classes by skill level; that way, we can have a beginner class, intermediate class, and advanced class.

Dinner was awesome; my host mom Philly made some amazing beef rice thing (I have no idea what it was called) that was really really good. I also watched a really depressing movie called LineWatch that Sebastian rented.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a social with the other volunteers after work at a Mexican restaurant called Cubana’s. Should be fun!