A couple days later, I was able to see the other half the town. This half was dirt road after dirt road lined with shack after shack. "The ghetto [township] covers hundreds of acres of land, even though each individual family only occupies a small shack roughly the size of a North American bathroom"(Pictures). These shacks are made of metal or wood or whatever people can find to build their homes. Looking around the township of Tokyo Sexwale, I could clearly see that this was where the Black locals live.  There was not one White person in sight. 

After living in town for several weeks, I came to learn more about Jbay. The number of people living in the townships of Pellsrus, Tokyo Sewale, and Ocean View is equal to the rest of the town.  And the townships together are not even half the size of the town.  Visiting shops in town and going to local restaurants, I noticed a trend. Only White people are visible to the customers. At first look there seemed to be no Blacks (true African descendents) or Coloreds (a mix race) working in Jbay. After more time and getting to know shop owners and restaurants, I learned that the Black and Colored workers are behind the scenes where no one can see. They work in the kitchens or do the janitorial jobs after hours.

When I went into a shack for the first time, I was shocked.  It was a reality check.  I walked into this room that was about 8 feet wide and 12 feet long. It was wallpapered with newspaper and magazines on top of the mismatching pieces of plywood and anything else the single mother with Aids could find to put walls around her and her young baby. The roof was a blue tarp and the floor was dirt.  The trap kept the sun out but not rain. The only hope was a small amount of privacy. After seeing more shacks and spending more time in the townships, I realized that problems of partiality and habit handicap those who live in the townships.  The cycle will continue if not stopped. 

Many kids and families in the townships in Jbay and the rest of South Africa have stories that seem unfair.  And they are unfair. No kids should have to grow up living in a 8' x 12' shack that they share with five or more family members, wearing the same cloths all week, and not learning how to spell their name till around age 12. To the 40,000 or so that live in the townships on the outskirt of Jbay, (Pictures) all of this is normal everyday life. No one expects kids to know how to do math or read or write, let alone teach them.

What got me was in 2006, a good ten plus years after the Apartheid ended, the town still runs like they did under Apartheid. Yes, Blacks and Coloreds have more opportunities than they did. But why aren't Blacks and Coloreds able to wait tables or run a cash register? I mean they have 10 fingers, two legs just like White people; we are all humans.  So what keeps Blacks and Coloreds living in Pellsrus, Tokyo Sexwale and Ocean View? 

Part of my job at an after school program in the township of Tokyo Sexwale was to teach the Black kids English, Xhosa, and Afrikaans, the three languages used in Jbay.  I found out quick that many of the kids I was teaching unable to write letters, or even name them.  Kids as old as 12 were writing letters backwards or just copying what I had written on the whiteboard, they had no knowledge of the letters.  Letters are the basic foundation of any language. These Black kids only know how to speak their language (Xhosa) barely able to read or write in it.  Living in a country with 11 official languages and only knowledge of one is a big disadvantage.  In a town based on English and Afrikaans, these Black kids will struggle interacting with others.

Education is such an important thing.  It is such a simple thing too; it opens doors and provides opportunities.  In America everyone can go to school whether rich or poor. But in South Africa school fees and uniforms are necessary for even the public schools.  Most Families in the townships struggle to cover mandatory school fees. Kids end up not going to school or families go without food just so their kids can go to school. Even at school learning rarely happens.  Sometimes teachers never show up and so the kids leave and hang out on the streets and get into trouble.  The trouble that these kids get into at young ages stays with them and develops into bad habits as teens.  Then these teens grow into adults thinking that things like drinking, drugs, and sexual abuse are okay.  And the cycle continues.

These kids have no one in their lives telling them what is right or wrong. No one is showing them how to grow up to be smart and healthy. School should be a place where you go and learn about numbers and how to read but also about respect and how to relate to others, how to communicate and live. Kids in the townships have no one telling them that stealing is wrong or that getting into fights is bad.  Parents are almost nonexistent.  And most of the time if parents are present they revert to abuse both physical and verbal to get their points across and teach the lesson. Really good families and kids both do live in the townships around Jbay and other South African families.  Not every family is abusive or nonexistent. But lots of them are.  

The crime, spread of Aids, oppression, lack of education and despair that go on in Jbay's townships do not have to happen.  Habit plays a big factor in what goes on.  Ever since the start of the Apartheid, Blacks and Coloreds are use to being low on the status ladder.  Blacks and Coloreds are use to having the bad jobs, to being told what to do, living from day to day with no idea what the next day brings. This can be prevented.  The Apartheid ended over a decade ago, with the end of it the Blacks and Coloreds were no longer at the bottom by law.  Technically, they have the same opportunities as white South Africans. Yet all races in Jbay and the rest of South Africa are still living like they lived under Apartheid. Everyone's use to what they grew up in. Whites are use to being above and the blacks are use to being on the bottom.

Education needs to be brought to all ages of people living in the townships.  There needs to be many forms of education covering all areas of life for these citizens.  The Adults, those who grew up only knowing the Apartheid way of life need to be taught how to do things that they are now able to do.  Many families suffer because they do not know how to manage money.  Paid on Friday and by Monday they are broke. Men go straight to the tavern after work and practically spend the whole weekend there.  Some families will go out and buy the big screen TV or a car then have no more money for gas so the car sits there. Education provides hope for a better life.  It is the catalyst for breaking the cycle.

Just recently, schools in South Africa have started integrating other races. A few Blacks and Coloreds go to White schools but rarely if at all will you find a White student in a Colored or Black school.  Ladders refers to White Schools as being "hardly open wide" to the Black race. Schools should be worried about the quality of education and not the color of the students or teachers. If it takes White teachers (because they are educated) in Black and Colored schools to bring up the level of education and help improve the schools then they should teach there.

The White school in Jbay is fully equipped with large classrooms, rugby fields with grass, teachers who care about each student and know how and what to teach.  Black and Colored Schools have classrooms with broken desks and chairs, gravel and glass to play on, and teachers who do not know what to do half the time.  For the black and colored students of Jbay and the rest of the country to rise above Apartheid and to be successful in life their schools need to change.  They need to be given a chance. Chances that they have yet to receive.

Nearly all South African children attend primary school, which for a developing nation is doing good.  The quality for the education is another matter.  South Africa compares badly even with other African countries. In an international study in 2003 of young teenagers' proficiency in maths [sic] and science, South Africa came last of 50 countries (ladders).

What that chance looks like for each school maybe different, but one thing that is common is a quality teacher. Teachers are what a school runs on. Every school has to have them. Mass chaos and no lessons would exist with no teachers.  Who would teach students if there were no teachers?  Schools need teachers who care about the students, who are educated and qualified to teach. Teachers who are uneducated and unqualified are only hurting the situation and keeping the cycle going. This generation of students is at a risk of being a "lost generation" (Dugger). These students have no education or ability to get out of where they are.

Teachers in the townships of Jbay make hardly anything. Like everyone else in the townships, teachers make just enough to survive.  The teachers that teach at Pellsrus and Tokyo Sexwale schools are hired to fill empty spots. So few qualified teachers are available to teach that standards have been lowered. Teachers who would never be hired to teach are teaching because those who should be teaching are nonexistent or available.

Black and Colored schools just like the white schools, receive aid from the government. No matter how many books, nice desks or chalk a school has, if only uneducated unqualified teachers are hired kids will not learn.  Linda Chisholm, an education expert at the Human Sciences Research Council states, "The learning outcomes will only be as good as the qualifications of the teachers" (ladder).  Schools need educated and qualified teachers for the job.

Lack of teachers and money in the nonwhite schools has forced schools to hire unqualified people to teach.  When incompetent teachers are hired to teach they have no knowledge of what to teach and as a result learning is nonexistent. According to Ladders the number of unqualified teachers in South Africa is higher today that it was in 1975.  According to Dugger, even President Zuma has noticed that it is "worse in the poor and working class communities".

The Apartheid lasted from 1948 to 1990.  The current Black and Colored teachers grew up during the apartheid where they were unable to learn.  Blacks and Coloreds were refused higher education. Dugger explains that because of "inferior education" during the Apartheid, today teachers have no ability to teach. When tested they scored low on tests that sixth graders should be passing.  So now we have teachers who know nothing teaching kids. How can someone who knows nothing teach something?

I understand that it does take awhile of things to change.  Change does not happen overnight and sometimes change cannot happen overnight.  But for change to happen, steps forward need to be taken. If small steps are taken, small changes made, little by little things will change.  The problem with the townships is those steps forward are rarely being taken.  There are some great after school programs that ministries have started but the locals need to take steps toward change themselves.

In the townships absentness with teachers is higher than that of the students. In some schools the students are rioting about this problem. Students understand that they need schooling to get somewhere in life.  They have hopes and dreams of becoming teachers, doctors, and lawyers. But they are not given a chance to reach these dreams. "Half of [the] students never make it to 12^th grade" (Dugger).  

All of the students that do not make it to 12^th grade are left wandering the streets getting into trouble. Kids need to be stimulated, if they is no stimulation at school kids go out and find something to stimulate them and in the townships, whether that is sex, drugs, and all kinds of terrible things. Kids want to learn but in the townships learning rarely happens. Qualified and educated teachers are needed for the kids to have a chance.