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PRIESTHORPE'S VISIT TO KWAZULU NATAL, MARCH 2007
As part of the British Council's 'Dreams and Teams' project, Priesthorpe has been recently twinned with a school in South Africa called Mqedandaba High. As a reciprocal visit, both myself (Miss Metcalfe) and Assistant Head Mr Goldthorp and two Sixth Form sporting ambassadors from Grangefield (within our sports college partnership) were invited to visit and assist the school in as many ways as possible, mainly through the development of sport and health education.
As you can hopefully see from some of the pictures in the gallery, the school is in a major state of disrepair. Ceilings are caving in, windows are broken, and prior to our visit the school had recently been without electricity for a number of weeks as they could not afford to pay the bill. Despite this, the welcome we received was completely overwhelming and is something we will never forget. Amongst complete poverty and almost dereliction, the word beauty immediately springs to mind. The sound of 800 voices singing as one, both Zulu and gospel songs, and the look of complete joy and amazement on the childrens' faces, at our arrival, cannot be accurately portrayed here. Our help had been requested, and after discussions with their management team on the Sunday evening, we got to work straight away. Our brief was simple but seemingly unachievable in two days.
Mr Goldthorp and myself spent the first day split between the teachers who had been given responsibility for the different sports, and the pupils who were the designated sports captains and managers. A PE curriculum does not exist in South Africa and so each of these teachers are not trained in Physical Education and were not paid for this responsibility. They are expected to run teams/clubs as an extra to their specialism and the pressures placed upon them for the pupils to pass their academic exams are the same as here in the UK. We led both sets of these 'key players' through a whistle-stop fun, and hopefully very useful, sports leadership course. We found talent and enthusiasm especially from the captains and managers. We showed them basic adapted games and they made up their own practices and ideas. On a very bumpy, dusty and frankly quite unsafe area - their football pitch - we laughed and bonded and taught and learned from each other. Sports leaders were created, given badges of honour, polo shirts and responsibilities to push their sports forward. Day one was complete. Day two was all about mass participation for the pupils and generating a renewed interest. From 9.00 am (after an extremely moving assembly from their head master, based around Mens Sana in Carpore Sano) we got moving. Mr Goldthorp had over 60 boys who had never played
cricket before eagerly awaiting to learn the skills. All got to
enjoy the thrill of the game, despite at one point having no ball,
only one bat and no wickets. What can only be described as a dog
ball was produced after half an hour; a couple of bins did adequately
as targets. I had 40 - 50 of some of the most talented girls I have ever seen participating in netball. We had a clay court with the lines dug out, one netball and loads of enthusiasm. Such pure natural athleticism I have rarely seen. Matthew (one of our young ambassadors) had over 40 boys learning rugby for the very first time. Finally, Joe our other Sixth Former, trained about 35 girls in football practices and games. It was amazing, but what made it even more amazing was that our activities had caused such interest that the whole school had to stop academic activities and the non-participants became spectators - WONDERFUL! I have so much more to tell of the plans we made for the future and the gifts we presented to Mqedandaba on behalf of Priesthorpe School. Numerous fundraising events will also be organised in the future with a real practical purpose of helping the school develop. For further information, please do not hesitate to ring the school to speak to myself or Mr Goldthorp; for contact details, click here. I hope you enjoy the pictures.
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