October already...

An email from a friend of mine in Switzerland reminded me that I have not updated my blog in some time, and all of a sudden it is already October, and Helen and I have already been married for five months. Time seems to fly when you’re having fun!

In early July Helen and I finally gave ourselves a real opportunity for a honeymoon, as we went to Singapore and Malaysia for ten days. We were royally treated by my old friend Jin from Oxford University, who showed us many great dining spots in Singapore, and also explained much of the history of the country to us as he showed us round. In Kuala Lumpur we were lucky enough to stay with Jin’s parents, who also spoiled us completely. To add a bit of honeymoon flavour, we also spent several days at a resort hotel in Langkawi, further north in Malaysia, where we ate a wide variety of foods, and had a relaxing time reading and generally chilling out. Our one bit of amusement was that on the second last day of our stay the water supply to that part of the island stopped working properly (after monsoon-like rains on our first night there which had woken me up in the middle of the night when water started pouring through a hole in the roof straight onto me in my bed!) The water shortage however meant that at the end of a hot sweaty day (in which we’d gone to use the lobby toilets where there were buckets to refill the cistern tanks) we had to sneakily rub soap all over ourselves and then go and jump into the officially closed hotel pool to wash ourselves off before going to bed. We were very glad to return to spend one more day with Jin in Singapore before departing late that night for South Africa – not least because he had working showers! We ate and drank so many interesting and different things – from jelly juice (a sort of juice with little bits of jelly in it – Helen liked that much more than I did, I thought it seemed a bit like frog-spawn in a glass) to a wide variety of Chinese dishes, excellent dim-sum, home-made Indian food, and even Singaporean rice porridge. My personal favourite though was Singaporean breakfast: toast with kaya (a sort of jam made from a local plant which gives it a greenish colour, mixed with coconut and sugar) and soft eggs. Now Helen is a big fan of breakfast eggs, and has converted me to liking them as well, but she wasn’t so keen on the Singaporean style: which is boiled at 65 degrees so that the egg is just a bit cooked and then you crack it open, mix with soy sauce and pepper and whip together into a sort of runny egg-soup that is slurped from the bowl or into which you dip your kaya toast. 

We returned from Asia to packed schedules. Helen got stuck into her new job, in which she manages the relationship between her agency and one of South Africa’s biggest banks, who are well known for their innovative marketing, but can also be an incredibly demanding client who (not atypically for their industry) at times seem not to be entirely reasonable in their demands. Somehow she keeps them happy with a smile on her face and a courtesy that I surely could not hope to match (lucky thing too, I’d have been fired from Helen’s job long ago and she’s the sole breadwinner this year!) At the same time, I started six weeks of teaching at a government school for boys called King Edward, which used once to be an all-white school and therefore is blessed with a strong old boys club, and outstandingly good sports facilities. These days KES, as it is known, is home to boys from a wide variety of socio-economic and racial backgrounds and also has teachers from many different cultures. It is a large school, with nearly 1200 boys in 5 grades of high school, and has a strong reputation as one of the best sporting schools in Johannesburg. I taught five classes: two grade 9 Social Science (combined history and geography) and two grade 9 Economic and Management Sciences (basically accounting, business management and a little bit of economics), and a grade 11 history class. Of these, my favourite was the Grade 11 history, who were a smallish class with a range of levels of aptitude, but I found ways to engage with many of them and enjoyed some of the discussions and debates we had in class, as well as the learning I had to do myself, in order to be able to teach them about South Africa’s apartheid history (given that my own history studies have only ever very briefly touched on South Africa’s history). 

Mid-way through my teaching practical period of 6 weeks, Helen and I again jetted off overseas. This time for two weeks in the UK and Sweden. It was my first return to Sweden since 2010 when I moved to South Africa, and I very much enjoyed showing Helen some small glimpses of a country I love, and introducing her to many people there who have been great friends to me over the years (including meeting up with one friend who I had not seen in over 16 years since we left Sweden, but who I had re-connected with on facebook). 

 It was also the occasion of my mother’s 60^th birthday, and we feel lucky to have been there to share in that celebration as well. Back in London we also showed each other some of our favourite restaurants, I showed Helen my flat at Barons Court, and she showed me where she once lived in Brixton (including an amusing few drinks at a Jamaican-style pub called Hootananny with a lot of Rastafarian types). We also had a UK celebration of our wedding, for which my parents very kindly hosted almost 90 people made up of various friends, and members of extended family from both sides. It was great to meet many more of Helen’s family, and also to see a great number of our friends in the UK who made the effort to be there and share in the celebration with us. I also enjoyed meeting up with two high school friends now based in the USA who both somehow got their holidays to the UK to coincide with our wedding celebration, one of whom I have been in touch with over the years but actually hadn’t seen face to face since 1999 when I graduated from high school in London. Two weeks actually felt like far too little, and there is still lots Helen and I want to show each other in the UK and I would love to have more time to spend with many of the friends we only briefly managed to catch up with during our visit. 

My teaching experience at KES finished up in the first week of September, and my stint at what is quite a rough and tumble school taught me a lot about how very different the cultures of different schools can be. I saw how enjoyable teaching can be, but also how many teachers are eventually worn out by years of telling kids to shut up and sit down; with many of older teachers fantasising that when they were young, scholars were polite and diligent - my father’s own recollections of his schooling suggest that there always will be children (boys in particular, I dare suggest) for whom school is simply not the right environment to bring out the best in them. I had some very interesting chats with various teachers and the headmaster of the school, and it was intriguing to consider that contemporary discussions around school management are increasingly having to focus on the damaging effects being felt in many schools, of the breakdown of family structures and lack of discipline in family lives, which makes it much harder for scholars to adjust to the discipline and work ethic required to succeed in most typical school environments, where resources are often scarce, and the kind of one-on-one counselling and mentorship that many children would benefit from, simply isn’t always readily available. Teaching is also a job, and not everyone who does it is motivated by the same things. I very much enjoyed getting involved in coaching the under 14 basketball team while at KES, but my first priority was my academic subjects, whereas some teachers were primarily sports coaches who also taught academic subjects. I have to admit that I was also reminded again of how many young people seem to have quite poor reading and writing skills – and it reinforced my own personal belief that if I had to choose as a parent, I would try to give my child the best possible primary school education, and a decent secondary school education – in the belief that a child who can read and write really well will be much more likely to excel later even if their teaching isn’t always of the highest standard. That said: I prefer to teach secondary school because there is critical thinking beginning to take place, and some increasing recognition of the odd nuances and contradictions in the real world. 

 Shortly after resuming lectures at Wits in September, we had a most enjoyable weekend away in Limpopo province, going north toward South Africa’s border with Zimbabwe to a farm owned by the family of some friends of ours. It was a relaxing time of trying (badly) to fly-fish, playing farm tennis and cricket on their cracked old tennis court, and enjoying good company and the odd glass of wine or beer. We have been enjoying the gradual emergence of Spring, and now it seems as though Summer is almost upon us – as the days get hotter and the nights lack the biting cold we often have in winter. Rugby refereeing has been pretty much over since the end of August, a disappointingly brief season this year it seemed, and now I shall have to turn to tennis and squash to keep me amused until next year March probably. Two weeks ago, we did however join our friend Nicola’s team of 5 of us for something called the Impi challenge – which involved a 12km run combined with about 20 different obstacles – including climbing over walls, vaulting over 6 foot high poles, crawling on our bellies under barbed wired, through a muddy tunnel half submerged in water, and traversing lots of muddy terrain, as well as jumping off a bridge about 6 or 7 meters high into a dam. It was tiring, but good fun, and I was proud of how well Helen did. 

This past weekend has left me a little bit the worse for wear, as I organised a group of 16 of us who went to Ellis Park Stadium here in Johannesburg on Saturday to watch the New Zealand All Blacks play against the Springboks, the number 1 ranked rugby team in the world against the number 2. It was a game with much hype and anticipation, as South Africa started the day with the possibility of winning the annual Southern Hemisphere international rugby tournament, if they could beat New Zealand, and also prevent them from scoring 4 tries. Despite me not having much voice left after yelling myself hoarse in support of the Boks, unfortunately the All Blacks were simply too good on the day, and ran out deserved winners as they capitalised on some poor defensive mistakes by the Boks. For neutral observers it was an action-packed and high-quality encounter. For passionate Springbok fans like me, it was a reminder that our team still has some way to go before they will match the consistency and quality of execution of the All Blacks. But it is a young Springbok team with a lot to look forward to. 

I myself have some good things to look forward to. This coming weekend we will be travelling down to the Natal midlands for my brother-in-law Bryan’s wedding to Elaine. It will be a great opportunity to see many of Helen’s family again. My studies at Wits should be complete by the end of the first week of November, which is also good news. In terms of my own peace of mind, the most important development in the last few weeks is that I have secured a job for next year. I will be teaching history to grades 7 to 11 at the Waterfall Estate campus of a group of schools called Reddam House, which is already well established in Cape Town, on Johannesburg’s East Rand in Bedfordview, and on two campuses in Australia. It is a private, non-religious, co-educational (boys and girls) school with selective intake. The high school is still relatively small, but the primary school is growing quickly, and the pre-school has over 500 children, who in time are expected to filter through to the main school. I expect that my first year will be a daunting work-load, particularly as I will be the only history teacher at the school and expectations are high given that I have been offered this job despite having much less experience than other interviewees. But I am fortunate in that I should be able to gather some teaching materials from those who have taught history to grades 7-10 over the past few years, and to mould this to my own liking, rather than having to start from scratch (as I will have to with the Grade 11 who are the first class to enter this year group – South African law does not allow a school to admit learners for their Grade 12 final year of schooling until the school has existed for at least three years). The school is not particularly strong in sports, as it is still a very small high school, though the drama and music facilities are outstanding and the physical infrastructure that is present means that in time they should be able to develop much more strength in sports as well. For now, although I will be expected to offer two afternoons a week of extra-curricular assistance and will likely do so by contributing to rugby and basketball coaching, given that I also am required to offer additional tutoring if required on two afternoons per week, I think I will be quite glad to have at least some time for academic preparation rather than there being a completely full sporting calendar as well. I do plan to devote most of November and early December to planning lessons and gathering materials for next year.

It has been a great year so far, and I hope that this last quarter will continue in much the same vein (albeit with a few more Springbok victories, thank-you very much). If you’re reading this, I hope you are well and my thoughts are with you. If you haven’t dropped me a line in a while, please do let me know how you are – several times this year I have been reminded of how rewarding it is to still have friends whom time and distance have not parted from me.