Leaving our Middelburg hosts behind we pile into the 16 passenger Toyota van belonging to the Middelburg Primary School for the 2 hour drive to Centurion, a suburb of Pretoria , which will be our stop for the next two days. Our driver just happens to be the principal of the school who has taken a day off to make this drive. He is not a Rotarian but a “ friend of Rotary “ and works with the Middelburg Rotary club on projects around the community.
I sat up front with Reiner and had a great discussion about his school. He has 1500 students, preschool to Gr 7 spread over 3 campuses. Even though it is a public school only about 5% of the school’s budget is provided by the government education department. The vast majority he raises through school fees, daycare programs and fund raisers. Very interesting chap. One of the most interesting aspects is his hiring and training of teachers. He says he doesn’t rely on teachers trained in university. They have no practical experience. He hires privately through job fairs, employment ads and referrals and trains them himself. While working as classroom aids over four years, they take correspondence education courses and at the end of 4 years he gives them jobs as fully trained teachers. He currently has 12 student teachers doing this and will hire 3 of them for next term and add 3 additional to replace them as trainees.
We arrive in Centurion just before noon , the meeting place being Irene Farm, a working farm in the heart of the city. Beautiful fields and barns. Lots of livestock. We enjoy an outdoor lunch then we meet up will our host for the next two nights Kim and Glen Geyser. Kim has her own business importing and distributing arts and crafts supplies. Vicki was in 7th heaven exploring her office and showroom. Glen is a retired South African Airlines pilot who now works for a private VIP charter company out of Britain. Some of their clients include The Rolling Stones, Guns and Roses and the Chelsea Football club. Soon he is off on a lengthy trip where 7 people have chartered the aircraft to to run 7 marathons on 7 continents. Some people just have too much money.
After getting settled in and changed we head out to a Rotary Club of Centurion dinner meeting at which we do our club presentations, exchange club banners and then eat and drink the night away.
The following day we are up and at it early and are off to a school project in an area of squatter camps. The students at this school are from families where the parents are undocumented illegal refugees from Zimbabwe, Malawi, Losoto and other poorer countries around South Africa. Even though the unemployment rate is high at around 25%, South Africa is still the economic powerhouse of Africa. In this area most of the employment is associated with the landfill site nearby where people toil as garbage pickers, sifting through the trash is search of cans, glass, paper and cardboard. As they are undocumented, their children cannot go to the government school so they come to Ditshego school ( means “laughter” in the local dialect) until their parents can get registered and documented.
They have about 50 Students full time plus an after school program and six orphans. They feed them daily with produce from their own garden. They have been gifted 2 “tunnels” which we would call greenhouses. They have ample water from a bore hole/ well so the tunnels are all irrigated. One of the Rotarians, a young lady who has a passion for viticulture, has plans to set up a “black soldier fly larva” farm to provide well composted soli for the gardens as well as insect feed for their chickens. This will enhance not only the soil of the garden thereby increasing the productivity of the garden but also the egg producing efficiency of the chickens. A great project to support. We passed the hat right then and there, raised 1200 Rand, ( about $ 100.00 CDN ) and presented the money to the young Rotarian who went out and immediately purchased the fly larva. Rotarians are people of action right.

Our next stop was the Freedom Park, a wonderful interpretive center showcasing the eight armed struggles of South Africa from the Anglo Boer War of 1902 ending with the struggle to end apartheid which occurred in 1994. The Park has a large outdoor space and a memorial wall with the names of South Africans and foreign combatants on the South African side during these conflicts. The other part of the Park is an indoor museum/interpretive center which uses”magic realism” to tell the story of South African history from the migration of Homo Sapiens out of Africa to today. Fascinating place. The center’s mandate is to “Liberate the African Voice” Not enough time to do it justice.
Today we spent the morning at a South African Curio show where we purchased incredible examples of South African souvenirs. For about 1.5 hours before we headed for th3 airport, our host Glen to us to a nearby South African Air Force museum. Very interesting aviation artifacts.

Soon it was time for our group to split up and go our own ways. Vicki and I are going to explore Johannesburg for a few days then fly down to Cape Town on Monday. Til then, thank you for allowing me to share our experiences. Tonight my muse is particularly insistent that I get everything out. I appreciate your patience as I have rambled on quite long enough. Dankie.
ps. Pretoria is known for it’s jacaranda trees and the city is awash in purple.

pss. We had an incredibly articulate guide for our trip through the Park. He made it a truly memorable experience.