Lessons
were much the same. Beyond the fact that when the register was taken we had to
say “Present please” and curtsy when our teacher first came into the room,
there wasn’t much difference at all. We learnt how to read, write, do maths
etc. The only difference was that we started learning a language in our second
year at school. When we left I had started learning a second language. Had I
stayed in South Africa I would probably be fluent in two languages. I find it
very, very strange that primary school children don’t learn a language soon
after they start to learn to read and write. Other countries are so much better
at this than the UK is, and I honestly wish the UK was better. I’d like to have
a second language. It’s so much easier to learn when you’re younger than it is
when you’re older.
School
started at 8:20 and ended at just past 3. I would be picked up from school in
my first two years of school, but once I was deemed old enough to walk to my
mother’s work I did. I very quickly learnt how to read while walking. I loved
reading. It was quite possibly the best thing I was taught how to do. Reading
opened up new worlds, magical worlds that just didn’t exist on the TV or in
films. I read anything I could get my hands on. We would be given chapters of
books to read for school the next day and I’d then read the whole book that
evening. It was through books that I got a love of history. We were asked to
read a story from a book of short stories. While reading the whole book I read
about Anne Boleyn and her execution. The story didn’t go into the history much,
but talked about how her ghost is said to haunt the Tower to this day, rushing
towards the place where Henry spent the night praying, then sobbing outside his
door for a reprieve. It was my first taste of history and I wanted to know
more. I was so excited to be moving to a place of castles and so many old
houses to visit.
Reading
also lead to me reading things I perhaps I shouldn’t have read. In one of my
classrooms there was a set of bookshelves arranged in such a way that it felt
like we had a miniature library in our class. We were allowed to pick out books
from the shelves and read what we liked during reading time. I discovered a
book that was all about how babies were made. I was 7 years old at the time and
very curious about everything. In fact, I still am very curious. I read the
book and asked my teacher what it meant. She told me she would explain it to me
at the end of the year. I then went home and told my parents.
“I
know how babies are made.”
“Oh
yes”, they said, expecting me to tell them a typical playground story of how
the stork comes or something like that.
“Yes.
The man puts his penis (pronounced pen iss) into a woman’s vagina (hard g, the
i pronounced as it is in in) and the sperm meets the egg and it becomes a baby”
My
parent’s jaws had dropped. I don’t remember asking them what it meant. I think
I’d decided that I was already going to be told about it, so there was no point
asking my parents as well. I didn’t really know what a penis or vagina was but
I knew that babies didn’t come from the stork. They came from some strange act
that my teacher would explain later in the year. My parents then told me that I
really shouldn’t talk to the other children in my class about this as their
parents wouldn’t like it. So I shelved the knowledge into the back of my head
and carried on. Parts of the book I still remember. Thanks to that book I know
that the egg is about the size of a pencil dot on a page and that you can’t see
sperm without a microscope. At the end of that school year my mother walked me
out of class. I turned to her and said “She never did explain the book to me”.
My parents won’t let me forget my mispronunciations of the male and female
genitalia.
What
was very different were the school trips I went on. I didn’t realise how lucky
I was until I tell people about them. One of my first school trips was to a
nature reserve that’s situated in Cape Town. I’ve always loved nature reserves
and I think my love stems from this trip. Rondevlei Nature Reserve was home to
an array of birds and animals, including hippos. We spent the morning learning
about the animals and the various birds and plants in the education centre
before walking off around the reserve. We learnt about the danger of the
hippos, that even though they look heavy and slow moving, when they charge they
can be deadly. It wasn’t said in a way to frighten us, but to inform us and to
make sure we knew what to do on the very rare chance that there was a hippo out
of the water. We watched them in the lake, bobbing along, occasionally they
were just shapes bobbing along with just the top of their heads and their
nostrils peeking out. At other times it was most of their bodies. For the most
part, though, they were just placidly floating in the cool water. It seemed
strange that one of these creatures could run faster than we could. We
whispered together, wondering whether there were crocodiles in the water too.
There weren’t and we were a little disappointed at that.
Another
trip was to a farm. We got to see a cow being milked, although we weren’t
allowed to have a go ourselves. It had something to do with the risk of being
kicked by a cow, but we were hoping they would change their minds, anyway, and
let us have a go. We were able to be very hands on during the rest of the day
that we couldn’t believe we weren’t allowed to be hands on with this. The farm
had a pen of giant turtles. They were absolutely huge. Due to their size we
were told that we could sit on them, if we wanted, and have a bit of a ride.
The ones that it was ok to do this to were pointed out to us. Their shells felt
so hard and smooth under my fingers, their skin was wrinkly and tough. Sitting
on the largest one, feeling myself rock from side to side, I felt like I was
going to fall off. The ground was so close, though, that it would have been a
lot of fun if I had fallen off. In the guinea pig enclosure we were able to pet
the soft, furry, friendly creatures. I put one in my straw hat (as demanded by
the school uniform) and it fell asleep. I really, really hoped that no one
would notice and I’d be able to take it home. They did and I had to put my new
friend down. The best thing about that day, though was discovering the most
incredibly sour sweets. We were allowed to go to the tuck shop just before we
got back on the coach and they had these green sour sweets that a friend and I
dared each other to buy. They were amazingly sour and we spent the journey back
sucking on them, making the funniest wincing facial expressions.
The
biggest difference between the schools I went to in England and the school I
went to in South Africa was the second class trip we had to a farm. It was a
class mate’s farm. They just had a batch of chicks hatch and she was telling
the class and the teacher about it. The teacher decided that it would be a good
educational trip for us to go and see the chicks. She very quickly got
permission from the headmistress and our parents. Off we went by bus to my
friend’s very big farm, swimming costumes in hand because we were promised a
dip in the dam if we behaved. The chicks were tiny, but we weren’t allowed to
hold them. Partially because they didn’t want us to hurt them, but also because
we were told the hen would know they had been touched and they would be killed
by her. We wandered around some of her beautiful land before heading to swim in
their dam. It looked like a big paddling pool, but we all knew that it wasn’t
and was extremely deep. Our teacher knew that we were strong enough swimmers,
but made sure we kept to the edge, just in case we got tired. It was a lovely
impromptu outing. Had I been older it would have highlighted just how different
my life was to some of the other girls I went to school with. My house and the
gardens around it would have been dwarfed by her farm. Luckily I was oblivious
to it all and just enjoyed the experience.
My
favourite trip was to Groot Constantia, a wine estate in the suburb of
Constantia in Cape Town. It’s the oldest wine estate in South Africa. At the
time we were learning about the Dutch Colonial era and the colonisation of the
country. As the manor house on the wine estate is a beautiful example of Dutch
colonial architecture, we went to go and look at it. I think we must have been
around 8 years old at the time. It’s strange to think now that a group of 8
year olds went on a tour of a wine estate, but it was absolutely fascinating.
We learnt about the history of the house and grounds, and then we got taken
around the cellars. We were taught how the wine was made, and shown where it
was stored. The smell of the cork barrels was so strong, as was the smell of
fermenting grapes. After that we went on a walk around the vineyard. The grapes
looked luscious and ripe. A parent that was with us picked a bunch and
encouraged myself and another classmate to do the same, to taste the grapes,
and so I did. As soon as I did that I heard our teacher telling off another
child for doing the same thing, saying that it effectively amounted to
stealing. I looked at the bunch of grapes in my hands and at the now severed
stalk it came from. Knowing I’d get into trouble if my teacher saw me with it I
quickly hid it in my lunchbox and carried on with the day.
As
part of our history lessons we went on a walk around the area of Cape Town
around our school. Springfield was over 100 years old, and so parts of it were
historical in its own right. We walked around it and were taught about how and
why it was founded by the Dominican nuns back in the 1800’s. We then walked
around the area just down the hill from where the school was. One of the first
things we were shown was the plaque that is put on any building over a certain
number of years old to show that it was an historical building. We were taken
around one of these buildings. It was a private residence, so the furniture and
fixtures around the place weren’t from that time. However, it was interesting
to see the layout of the rooms and imagine what it must have been like.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to leave a comment!