School Safety

The picture above looks much worse than it really is, we promise.   But it brings up a large issue that we have witnessed over the time we have spent here:  School safety.  Yesterday while we were overseeing the painting of the Madakeni Junior Secondary School we met a man introduced to us as the "Councilor".  He has some kind of jurisdiction over the school properties in the area. He was very friendly and glad to speak with us.   However, we were not the reason he was there.  As many schools of the Eastern Cape wish to do, the Madakeni wants to organize a school garden to plant fresh vegetables to prepare better lunches for it's students.  The Councilor had brought his tractor and was there to clear some ground for the garden.  This seemed normal enough.  But what we did not know was that this included burning the brush and debris away first, as is traditionally done on South African farms.  

So what you see above is an actual fire started on school grounds, on purpose, during lunch break where all the students sit in the school yard.  Many children didn't pay it a second thought, but many thought it was fun to surround the fire and see how close they could get or run up and smack the burning ground with sticks.  Now, nobody was hurt today in the fire, but his is certainly not an exercise that many schools in the Unites States would either try or get away with.  Which has lead us to ask some questions about school safety.

How much concern about safety can you have in a place where children must sit outside in cow fields to learn?  How much concern is there about general hygiene where dogs, sheep and geese drink from the same water spigot as students leaving sheddings, waste and feces in all the wrong places? How safe are schools where the concrete stairs are crumbling into piles of sand; where broken windows leave jagged glass within arms reach of anyone older than 7 years; where children already have fallen into creek beds and ravines just trying to get to the bathroom; where just walking to school could mean crossing dangerous terrain?

We don't know.  Each culture lives with its own risks and dangers and they judge for themselves what is acceptable or not.  It seems that in South Africa, starting a brush fire is not a school safety issue.  However, there are things that can be attended to. Fences, for example.  All these schools need fences.  Fences to keep the livestock away from school grounds, and fences keeping thieves away from valuable school property.  Teachers also tell us that they need fences to keep the children from wondering into dangerous situations during school hours.  Unfortunately, there have been too many cases of students being harassed, attacked, or even abducted within feet of school grounds.  It is difficult to keep track of where students are if your school is vastly understaffed and your buildings cannot even house all your students indoors.  

While new buildings and structural improvements could help some of those other schoolyard dangers, the schoolyard will become a much safer place around here with fences (and maybe they could find a less fiery way to clear the brush, too).