Leaps and Bounds

We woke up to an alarm Thursday morning to catch a taxi downtown to a train to Pinelands. Mona, the principal of the Leap School in Cape Town, called late Wednesday night as I was hatching up plans to climb Table Mountain early the next morning with one of the last sunny days the weathermen promised to us while in Cape Town. Disappointed, I took down the details and agreed that Annette and I would meet her at the school by 9 a.m.. I had hoped to be climbing up a rocky gorge on the slopes of Table Mountain by then. But this is the last week of school and Thursday is the day for their social responsibility project, which sounded interesting. Mona told us we could take a train but recommended we take a taxi ride that is too expensive for our travel budget. So, we woke up early to catch the train.

We had directions from Old Mutual Station in Pinelands. I just told the woman at the ticket counter Pinelands. One stop from Pinelands, I discovered we needed the other train to go to Old Mutual. We were on the wrong train. So, we got off and appreciated the opportunity to walk leisurely in the cool morning. We had a half hour to spare. The walk took that plus another twenty minutes. Time and the weather quickly changed it from leisurely to brisk, but no less enjoyable. When we finally entered the school we found the buses pulling up and Mona briefing Patricia, a life science teacher, on our visit.

We were paired up with two science and math teachers to join their classes as they visited a home for the elderly. The Leap School is a high school. It is similar to a charter school in the United States. It is designed for black children living in the nearby townships whose families cannot afford to pay for a good basic education. It is funded in part through state funding and then supplemented significantly through private fundraising. (The total budget averages about $5,000 per student). Everything is taught in English (except, I imagine, for Xhosa). Xhosa is the native language for most students. English is usually a second, third, or fourth language. I quickly befriend a young man from the Congo, who taught himself English and finished a masters degree in Molecular Biology at the University of Cape Town. Today is the second to last day of his first year of teaching.

The five teachers on our trip are all very laid back. Three of them are white; all of them under 40. The social responsibility program is the responsibility of the students. They plan their activities and organize themselves. The teachers just follow. Nobody seems to count the number of children on the bus. When we stop, the students pour off the bus. We follow with the teachers carrying a tupperware of muffins. One has a small electronic massage device. I am told that the students plan to offer the elders foot rubs and massages. And they have a small program planned with a few songs.

We gather in an auditorium. The students set chairs in a circle of close to eighty. Everybody sits. The majority are students. And the elders aren't as old as I expect. They look to be in their sixties or seventies. I suppose that is old in a country where the average life span is much less, thanks largely to the AIDS epidemic.

Once everybody is seated, one female student comes to the middle of the circle and speaks in Xhosa. She speaks very quietly, accented by an occasional click that seems to come from the sky. Only after a few of them do I realize that the clicks are coming from the student speaking. It flows effortlessly between and among her words. It is part of her words, after all.

The students all rise to sing. Their voices fill the auditorium. A small group of boys cluster in the back toward the middle. They provide the vocal bass line a capella. It sounds like a church song, but I don't know the words. And the voices that fill the rafters come from something far deeper than a church. It is like each voice lets out a thousand doves that flutter to fill the rafters of this dusty auditorium. It is beautiful. It is spiritual. It is moving.

The elders clap. One by one, people stand up to speak to the group. One elder. One student. A second elder. Another elder. A second student. One more student. I don't understand what they say. I ask the Congolese teacher near me, but he doesn't understand. None of the teachers speak the language. Today, they are chaperones more than teachers. Not like chaperones at a school dance, because they aren't enforcing any rules. And they aren't as active as coaches. They are more like security hanging in the background, which speaks to who's boss – the students. That's very much the philosophy of the school. Empower students. Teach them science and math, character and values, through practice and experience, not rote repetition or discipline from on high.

Soon an elder speaks passionately about something. Two students cry. One elder joins the tears. A student sits on the other side of Annette and offers to translate for us. They are speaking of their own grandparents and grandchildren, the struggles and the joys. Some are estranged. One young woman lives with two grandmothers. She loves one and hates the other, she says in Xhosa, to a room full of laughter. Several students bring around trays of juice and sandwiches. They serve the elders first, then teachers, then each other. After nearly two hours, nearly every student and elder has spoken, each from his or her heart vowing to change their own relationship with their grandparents or grandchildren because of today.

It doesn't matter much that we don't understand Xhosa. Clearly, the students are humble, reflective and eloquent. And deeply respectful of their elders. They are an impressive bunch. I learn on the bus ride home that they are the best of the best. They are recruited by Leap tutors and teachers who work in schools across the community. I am told there are one thousand applicants for fifty slots each year. There are two Leap schools in the same building. The first serves the Langa township. The second accepts students from several townships across Cape Town. The school has since expanded to Johannesburg and Limpopo. There are now maybe five or six of them across South Africa. The education is tied to community development efforts that include tutors and a significant portion of the $100 or so in school fees paid by parents going back to the community in one form or another. Private dollars that are raised, I am told, follow the students, even for the one or two students a year who leave the school.

By the time we return to the school I am anxious to track down Mona to talk about job openings. To the degree that the students are a product of the school, it seems like a place where I would enjoy working. Mona explains they have done their hiring for January already. I ask to meet the founder, “just pop our heads in and say hi.” She calls two offices to track him down and walks us to a small building across a courtyard and up the stairs. His name is John. To my surprise, he is a middle-age white man. I heap praise on him about the school and explain who we are.

“I came to this after trying to be an education reformer in the early nineties. I realized I was part of the problem. We are not just about education. We are about social transformation. I have to deal with my role as an oppressor. I have to deal with my whiteness every day to be here. And we ask our teachers and staff to do that too.”

We are glad to hear somebody speaking the same language for our first time in South Africa, much less a white South African. It reminds me of Al Alcazar's informal lessons on liberation theology when I would visit him in the offices of the Loyola University Community Action Program (LUCAP) back in New Orleans. And the poster I used to have. It had a white hand and a black hand, fingers interlocking behind the words, “If you have come to liberate me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us struggle together.” It is refreshing to hear somebody speaking of struggling together in post-Mandela South Africa.

John introduces us to two students to tour us around the school as students prepare for their awards ceremony. The students select and present the awards themselves, John explains. There are no adults on the program. This is a concept I know well in New Orleans. And it seems to be executed brilliantly here, based on my six hours at Leap so far. In the cafeteria, a choir fills the school with doves of song. In a nearby classroom, a group of young men practice a step routine, slapping big rubber boots in unison. No teacher is in sight. The two young women take us to a meeting of the Open Society club. They discuss social issues in South Africa. But at this meeting, our young tour guide (who happens to be the president) makes three clear and concise demands about what the club needs next semester. These include the principal meeting with them once a week and “their own space.” The student teacher takes notes and tells them he will report back to them.

Then they bring us to meet Bonesile. They call him Bones for short. This is the man we have heard about. I e-mailed with him a few times over the last two weeks. He has spent the last six months in San Francisco on an educational leadership fellowship. He just got home yesterday. We find him in the second floor reception area at the top of the stairs. He is a thick young black man with big dreadlocks. He wears jeans and a collared shirt under a velvet black sport coat. He is in his early thirties, and youthful. We enter his office for a chat amidst a steady stream of young male students and teachers coming by to greet him with a handshake, a fist pound, a snap and some words in Xhosa.

Bones is quiet and thoughtful. He has a laptop open on his desk. Occasionally his phone rings, but he doesn't answer. He has a blue metal water bottle in front of him with the letters KIPP in white climbing toward the mouth. It looks brand new. A souvenir from his time visiting the KIPP charter schools in the states, I presume. He gently and precisely grabs the thin metaphorical string to our floating balloon of impressions of the Leap school and ties it to the desk.

“I'm struggling,” he says. “I know I have only been back for a few days. It is hard to be back. It feels we say all the right things but that we are just as oppressive as schools like KIPP. I don't know what to do with myself. Everybody wants me to step right back into being principal. But it is the last week of school. I don't know what has been going on. A lot of teachers have left. And I am not sure I still fit here.”

These last six months for him have been one of those rare times in a job like his when he has the chance to be the academic, not just the actor. We connect over the culture-shock of South Africa and how it compares to the states. We talk about race and social justice in South Africa and the U.S. We spend a half hour in his space. But his space stays with us for much longer.

By 4:41 p.m., I step onto the Plateville Gorge trail up Table Mountain. The guidebook says it takes two and a half hours. And that is about how much day light I have. Annette and I agree to meet at the restaurant at the cable car station at the top. From there, we will ride back down together. I climb quickly amidst blooming flowers and trickling waterfalls. The path is clearly marked. It goes up steadily, maybe 2,000 feet up in total. Soon I can feel my quadriceps burning with each step. As I breathe heavier, I cough up mucus as it loosens in my throat. There is a metallic taste in my mouth. My lungs start to burn with air touching parts that haven't been used in a while.

The views behind me improve with each step. Cape Towns stretches out to the water. Robben Island is the dot on the i in the series of cursive vowels that form the shore line along the bays of the Western Cape. I look to follow the trail up to find it receding behind and among rocky cliffs. The wind and shadows welcome me to the gorge with a steady blow. I greet the wind with a shiver and lean forward slightly with my hands to steady myself. I pass one couple going up at the bottom of the gorge. Everybody else I see is going down, satisfaction, completion and exhaustion mingling on their faces.

By 5:30 p.m., I encounter a couple that tells me the last cable car is leaving soon. They heard the bell ring from on top. The wind is too high, so the cable car is closing. Moments later my cell phone rings. It's Annette. It is hard to hear her through the wind. The cable car is closing, she explains, and I will probably have to hike back down. She will meet me at the bottom. I hike on to discover that for once in my life the top is closer than I thought. And, much like a table, it is flat and broad. A sign points me to the cable way station. It says it is a thirty minute walk away. A few steps in Annette calls again. It is 5:44 p.m.. The last car leaves at six, she says. “Ok. I will call you if I don't make it.” Then the pay phone cuts off.

I hurry to the cable car station, pausing to snap a few photos, mostly to examine and enjoy the view at a later date. I make it there at two minutes to six to find a few staff members and no cable car. The ticket window is closed for the evening. A young woman in a green Table Mountain National Park fleece jacket has a stack of receipts in her hand. They tell me to wait by the gate where the wind whips and howls. A cable car arrives in five minutes. The doors open and I follow the woman with the receipts on board. I confess to her that I am more scared of man made heights than mountains. I am thankful nobody asks me for money or a ticket. The doors close to block the chill of the wind. We wait for ten minutes. Slowly a dozen more staff members meander aboard. The ride down is uneventful. I find Annette at the bottom bundled in a wool hat. She is happy to see me.

A view from the gorge on Table Mountain

Leap students sing for elders

We take a bus that is somewhere between 25 and 35 hours tomorrow. Our ticket is good to Blantyre, Malawi. Presumably, the bus goes through parts of Zimbabwe and Mozambique en route. We leave South Africa wanting to find our way back to Cape Town soon. It has all of the key ingredients we have been looking for in a new place to live: mountains, ocean, beauty, and meaningful social justice work opportunities.