21 today

Walked the halls and stairs of school during Faculty Development Day, then the aisles of Whole Foods, where I shop very guiltily once a month due to the huge expense.  The other day my friend Mohamed and I were walking into Whole Foods to have lunch.  A huge poster greeted us at the door inviting us, "Come Join Us For ...(something, I didn't notice what).  Mohamed quipped, "You see that sign, it says, "Come Join Us for The Most Expensive Food in the World!"  It was his 50th birthday today, which made him thoughtful, but with only a few regrets.  It is amazing how reaching that half-century mark always seems a day of reckoning. 

I was the first one home, just before the snow began, and hauled my old sled filled with wood until all the storage spaces available near the woodstove were filled with dry, albeit slightly snowy firewood.

We have firewood delivered every year by a lovely woodsman who has his own woodlot and also cuts down trees for people when they are dangerous or dying.  He is also a conservationist so tries to use only trees which are going to be cut down anyway.  We go through 3 or 4 cord of wood each winter, to heat our house,  making fire from wood, as human beings have done since our ancestors the Neanderthals.   The way we do it is (hopefully) the least polluting, as wood stoves are constructed to minimise particulate emissions, and our stove only emits less than 4.1grams an hour.

Quest for Fire

There is an astonishing 1981 movie called Quest for Fire by Jean-Jacques Annaud, which takes place about 80 000 years ago and concerns the encounters of several tribes at different levels of development.  The main characters are part of a tribe which loses their little scrap of protected flame which they keep alive and use to restart larger fires each day, as they don't know how to make fire.  They set off on a quest to find another flame, coming into contact with other people along the way, and the movie shows how they grow and develop from these connections.

Tim and I thought it would be a great movie to show the boys when they were about nine or ten years old, one wintry snow-day, although we were soon rudely reminded that there are quite a few pretty shameless sex scenes not really suitable for young boys!  Tim had to sit with his finger on the remote, fast-forwarding at the inappropriate moments! 

After hauling firewood I made a fire and supper and worried about Matthew and Tim driving home separately in the now crazily blowing snow.

The IB is the International Baccalaureate, a system of schooling in 11th and 12th grades which is recognised by the universities and colleges of most countries of the world.  The IB aims to promote global citizenship and this year in 9th and 10th grade we are having a two-week period of global awareness classes, all subjects, science, art, French, history, all based on the theme of Water.  I suggested that our school connect with a school in an arid country, and then thought how South Africa would be perfect, and that we may be able to communicate with my old beloved Nombulelo in Grahamstown. 

Nombulelo Secondary School,  somewhat resembling a prison.

Nombulelo (We thank you) Secondary School was the school where I taught for ten years.  Ten turbulent years in South Africa's history, 1984 - 1993. A decade of terrible repression by the state during the state of Emergency, rioting, murders, detentions, and the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990.  It is the decade which made me who I am.  During apartheid each race had its own schools, and the least money was spent on black schools and students.  For some reason Nombulelo was built as a new model school, opening its doors one year before I joined the staff.  Each morning began with assembly, the combined voices of more than a thousand students singing the Lord's Prayer in Xhosa, Bawo wethu osezulwini, very beautiful.  Nombulelo is the school where I taught, but where I learned more.