What a day! I survived my first day of work in the ‘real world’ and couldn’t be more excited and exhausted all at the same time. The day started early as it takes me about an hour to commute with the public transportation schedules. I arrived at the office 10 minutes early and began meeting many people, most of who’s names I can’t pronounce, but I’ll get it with time. As the morning progressed, I began to get a feel for what they want me to do in the office---everything. I think I had about 5 different job titles ranging from social media coordinator to training follow-up liaison to implementing a quality control assessment on the programs. Crazy! I’m excited about every one of them so it will be interesting to see which one(s) I actually end up carrying out.
We then took a tour of some of the sustainable garden programs at various schools in the townships. It was so incredible to actually be back in the townships again and seeing how people live, smelling the local smilies (whole sheep heads on a grill), and listening to the bustling noises of a life so different from my own. It’s just like I remember, but the stark reality that this is life for over 1.2 million people in Cape Town never gets old. It never becomes “okay.” But this is why I came—to work here, to rebuild here, and to love those around me. All these thoughts were racing through my head as we drove from site to site….as I was off in thought, we received a phone call….
The teacher for the computer programme was out sick for the day and they were going to cancel the class---that is, unless I wanted to step in and teach it. Now, I wasn’t supposed to start my class until next week and although I’ve thought a bit about my class, I had nothing prepared even for that first day. Being flexible is an invaluable skill anywhere in life, but especially in the every-changing non-profit world. So I agreed! If kids needed to be taught, then I’d somehow fumble my way through a 2 hour (yikes!) class about computers.
Secretly nervous beyond belief I stepped foot into my class of grade 7 kids. Not all of them spoke good English so there was much commotion as kids tried to help one another understand what I was saying. The Foundation brings 9 lap tops into the schools every day so in my class of 17, they had to learn to share. I took a deep breath, pushed all my nervousness to the back of my mind and began to learn the kids names—we spent a good deal of time here because the majority of them had names such as Nxongible and Ntbekine and they loved to laugh at my pronunciations.
Thankfully, another teacher in the school had some worksheets from her gardening class so I was able to borrow those and have the kids work on their typing skills. None of them knew the home keys and they were amazed to see how fast I could type. I told them that if they used the home keys and practiced hard, they would be able to do the same thing. So, we played typing games using these worksheets for about an hour and a half before it was time to go.
I headed home after the class, but first had to stop by my old house and say hello to 2 very important people from my previous program. What a great reunion that was! It’s so wonderful to already have a community half way around the world who are just as excited as I am that I’m back. So great!!
I guess you could say day one was a success. I’m really excited to see where this job takes me and what even tomorrow has in store for me!
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