Ndlelibanzi. January 2023
Ndlelibanzi, January 2023
We are pleased to announce that our fifth preschool was successfully delivered and stocked with supplies on January 11, 2023 in time for the opening of the new school year.
The Ndlelibanzi (Wide road) community in Amajingqi lies about five kilometers inland from the coast and from our first school at Elalini, delivered in 2019. Parents, children and neighbors came running from all directions, welcoming their new school with traditional singing and dancing. Their natural rhythm and harmonizing are something to behold! After operating out of a leaking tin shack with dirt floor for several years, they were thrilled at the sight of the new container, freshly designed and painted by Sean Williams (Sean-Evergreen) with help from our volunteers Marlene Heyduck, Jen Cassidy, Sophia Cunliffe and our daughter Enya in a mural inspired by drawings of animals by A Child Becomes… students. While the crew maneuvered the container into place, we began unpacking the supplies and toys, and handing out t-shirts and donated shoes to all the local children.
Once the container was set and secure, Shelley and the volunteers, with the teacher, and our translator and ITEC correspondent Mndindi, began setting up the classroom to the delight of the children crowding around every instructor at their respective centers, eager to learn to use the tools and manipulatives they’d never seen before. The light in their eyes at the opportunity to learn something new, is the reason we do this.
Outside, while some of the older children played soccer with the new balls and rode the tricycles, Ralph met with Chief Dumalisele who drove out to be a part of the event and to address the community on the value of early education. A visionary who has developed a thirty-year rural development plan for his community, Chief has always promoted education as the cornerstone of progress. He works tirelessly under difficult circumstances to improve the lives of his people, and Shelley and I are determined to find ways to support him and his plans.
We were fortunate enough (and very grateful) to receive support from Health Goes Global, a non-profit run by Geneva Stolze and Hannah Akre that promote preventative health care in under-served communities around the world. (www.healthgoesglobal.org) They are already making a difference in Nepal and South America distributing toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, water purifiers (chlorine makers) and financial aid. They financed the cost of the water collection system on this school (a corrugated metal roof, the supporting structure, the gutter, downspout and Jojo tank that arrived separately and later), as well as a water purification system that I introduced to Chief and instructed on how it works to provide clean drinking water particularly during the drier months.
Inside the container, Shelley instructed the teachers and the students on the correct and most effective was to use the new learning tools, tactiles, manipulatives that we’d brought. One of the main objectives of our project is to promote a higher quality curriculum in order to give these children the best possible chance of acquiring more than just the early fundamentals, but a love for learning that will inspire them to not just stay in school, but to thrive.
Invited back Chief’s home for the customary welcome and thank you, we said goodbye to the community of Ndlelibanzi and drove the half-hour back to enjoy food and drink and an official thank you from Chief.
Unfortunately, due to time constraints and flights that needed to be caught, we didn’t have time to visit the other schools, however we are planning a visit in the future purely for this purpose, to meet with the teachers and students, to perform maintenance, painting, and upgrades now becoming necessary since it’s been five years since the first school went in.
Before we flew out, Shelley and I met with Caroll and Barbara from ITEC where we discussed current conditions, the state of the government (ironically there was load-shedding during our visit, a scheduled shut-down of the national electricity grid to ease the burden on a struggling, un-maintained system, sometimes for two to three hours three times a day!), plans, proposals, needs, and feedback on everything we are doing. REACH! together with A Child Becomes… committed to supporting ITEC in monthly visits to the schools to support teachers, assist in assessments, provide supplies, advance the quality of instruction. Here too, we want to assist ITEC in any way we possibly can to help improve the lives of the community.
As we prepare for the next school in 2024, we continue to depend on your generosity and support to provide schools and quality curriculum to the community of Amajingqi, and for that we thank you. We couldn’t do it without you. We would also like to expand our sphere of influence, to do more, to do better, and in the next few weeks I will be sending out a prospectus of the ways we hope to do this.
Again, to all of you, thank you for making this possible. It is hard to do justice with words alone for what it’s like to witness that light in a child’s eye when they hang a toy stethoscope around their neck, correctly assemble and memorize all the body parts in the puzzle, and acknowledge for the first time that maybe, just maybe, they can dare to dream.
