For once I am awake in the early hours without not having slept. Yesterday evening I went to sleep at 19:30 and for once my body demanded its quota of rest. I haven’t slept for longer than 8 hours for a long time. It is now…6:00 and I am awake. I don’t feel particularly refreshed, but I don’t feel too bad either. I think that I could happily live with this pattern. One part of the equation is that I worked particularly hard yesterday. Fridays require a lot of talking: in fact, I think most of the day talking to people.

One of the first “talks” was during our Friday tea time. One topic we discussed is the performance of students who enter our first year. For various reasons it seems that matriculants are not very literate or numerate. There was some debate about the accuracy of the numbers, but it is clear that the standard has fallen during the last 20 years.  The reasons are clear: during the 80′s and early 90′s our input came primarily from “white” schools to which the government devoted the largest part of its education budget. After 1994 matters improved in terms of equality and parity, but it will take years before the chronic underinvestment in “black” schools are addressed. This is a depressing situation. The issues seem so simple from a distance, but the problems are real. Teachers themselves are, like everywhere else, underpaid and not always trained properly. They lack basic equipment (blackboards, books) and truancy among pupils and teachers alike is a big problem. The fact that the department of education is involved is another stumbling block: think corruption and incompetence. It would be one thing if the civil servants stayed out of the schools, but they insist of new curricula, new approaches, more paper work.

Sigh. Oh well, we can only try to do our best. I don’t believe I’m at the level where I can consider a radical solution. And I’m glad I’m not at the dictator-level: I wouldn’t know where to start. The right attitude in Africa is so do the best you can.