Mr Booth blog

Back to school, Monday 20th Oct

It was presumably at primary school that I first heard of the Cape of Good Hope. Hearing it now still conjures in my head images of old maps, sailing ships, intrepid explorers and the like. So with all that mythology clinging to the jagged peninsula, the fact that it is also a place of wild beauty made our visit there today quite something.

But before we headed to the bottom of the world we went back to school. Welcome Primary, with its pupils lined up for assembly, stifling giggles and being shushed by their teachers, with its backboards and colouring in and times tables all felt very familiar. But the differences were clear also. Resources are stretched, pupil backgrounds vary enormously, and many of the pupils have little awareness of the wider world or its possibilities. That could also be said of some schools in Scotland, but here in Cape Town it is exacerbated by the local economic and social context. Just putting teachers in front of classes is difficult, let alone giving pupils the skills to cope with the cultures of violence and misogyny some face outside school. Despite this we received such a warm and open welcome  from pupils and staff that it was impossible to be anything other than optimistic. The rich possibilities of the link between our schools suddenly seemed very real.

And then penguins! Our long drive to Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope featured sightings of penguins, baboons, ostriches and, possibly, a common eland (we are pretty sure about the first three, but our collective knowledge about large antelopes turns out to be fairly limited...). The Cape is an utterly glorious place of high winds and churning seas, a rugged and sun-kissed spit of land reaching south towards Antarctica. We love it, and after the entirely essential 'bananarama' and 'claw' photographs we returned to the Cape Town waterfront for tea and home to our beloved   Backpack Hostel. The Capetoniants prepare lessons they will deliver tomorrow at Welcome and retire, exhausted. Another cracking day. 

Finally, a word of warning: any suggestion in other parts of this blog that my parking skills are in any way substandard are entirely fictional and should be disregarded by the reader. 

Mr B