An Interview with Mhlavasi, a South African student on scholarship with us, and a bit about our goals as a New Hampshire school program in the African Bush!
The following blog post is created by a Hopkinton/Bow High School student from New Hampshire, who is on program with Original Wisdom, partnering with Nature Guide Training, on a 3-week South African Ecology & Culture program at Djuma Game reserve in the Sabi Sands region of the Greater Kruger Area (July 2015). In addition to exposure to ecology and culture, we have sponsored a local South African student on scholarship for the entire program (see Blog 3# Interview with Mhlavasi) and will attend 2 days at Mhlavasi’s school, Acorns to Oaks, where our students interact with the local students and help to teach them some basic skills in spatial thinking and use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to create online maps and stories with a spatial component. Our overall goals include facilitating connections with self, others, and the natural world.
By Zach Drotos
Our experience in the bush so far is one to remember for the ages… finding ourselves hot on the trail of the big five (lion, leopard, rhino, elephant, and cape buffalo) once again. My heart pumps copious amounts of adrenaline through my veins when we finally catch up to them, or any of the numerous other fascinating African game species. A series of fences and gates separates the reserve from the rest of society. We are at a camp called Djuma Research Camp, in the reserve of Djuma, which is part of a larger collection of reserves called the Sabi Sands, and the Sabi Sands are part of the Greater Kruger Area – meaning it has no fences between it and Kruger National Park, so large animals like elephants can come and go over vast land areas, displaying their normal migratory habits from areas where they deplete the browse to areas where it hasn’t been chomped yet. Most of the local, human inhabitants of South Africa have never set foot beyond this barrier, yet it is in their backyard. This causes a lack of understanding between the needs of communities, and the needs of the environment and the tourism industries that operate (and create jobs) on the reserves. With a generous donation of $3000 from Nature Guide Training/Original Wisdom, Scott and Helen Tam-Semmens, Fred Finch and Calla Crafts, the Bow Rotary Club, our field instructors, Lee Gutteridge and Kersey Lawrence, were able to interview several students from Acorns to Oaks school in Acornhoek, South Africa, and select one lucky, young person to participate in the entire 3 week program with us.
Additional donated funds are going toward supplying cold drinks and snacks to a group of 15-30 students who will join us for two days, at school during their winter break, in a Spatial Thinking and mapping with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) workshop led by our Hopkinton teacher, Mr. Semmens, and our Bow teacher, Mr. Duhaime. ESRI – Earth Systems Research Institute, South Africa, has donated 50 copies of their full ArcGIS software, plus a subscription account to their online programming to Acorns to Oaks for this workshop and towards their continuing education, at a value of perhaps over a million dollars if they had to buy it at full cost for retail value! Our hope is that we can introduce these students to a skill that will make them marketably employable, as well as get a few interested in being part of the solution in solving environmental issues.
Although all of the students interviewed by Lee and Kersey were worthy of the scholarship and they had a difficult time deciding who the final candidate would be, they chose Ntsako (“Happiness”) Mhlavasi Shikhati, a sixteen year old girl in 11th grade at Acorns to Oaks, to participate on the program with us. She prefers to be called Mhlavasi, or Mhlav for short, pronounced Mmm-kla-vasi, or Mmm-klav, in her native Shangaan language. In their interview, Mhlavasi particularly impressed Lee and Kersey when she replid to the question: “Why do you want to participate in this program?” with, “Opportunities like this don’t come along very often, so when they do you have to take advantage of them, and I look forward to learning new things and meeting new people.” When you stop and think about it, Mhlavasi is very brave to jump at this opportunity, because three weeks in the African bush with a bunch of people who you don’t know from a foreign country must seem intimidating to anyone, regardless of the opportunity! After allowing Mhlavasi time to adjust to our strange behaviors, we sat down with her for a mutual interview; her to us, and all-of-us (11 high-school students and 6 adults from the USA) to her. From the series of questions we asked her, we were able to better understand her lifestyle and her personal and cultural beliefs.
Situated in the Tintswalo Village, Mhlavasi lives with her mother and three brothers. Her younger brother is just two years old, and the youger of her two older brothers is in school, and the oldest is working in Pretoria. Her mother, a school-teacher, has immense pressure to pay for family expenses and for schooling. Acorns to Oaks is a new school (just a year old) specializing in science and math instruction for advanced learners, and Mhlavasi had to apply to compete for one of a limited number of seats. Her favorite subjects are physics and math! Money talks to most people; Mhlavasi is no exception. The allure of the comforts that money can buy are steering her towards a career in the medical field. She expressed specific interest in becoming a Neurologist in the future.
Mhlavasi’s core values include kindness and generosity, among others, and she understands that in order to truly appreciate the things and people around you, you must first come to appreciate yourself and what you already have. We asked her, “What is one aspect of your home/community/society that you would change?” And she responded, “The way they think; People usually take things for granted”. Mhlavasi has a positive, comfortable and confident vibe that attracts and inspires everyone around her. She showed maturity and insightfulness well beyond her age when answering our countless questions. Her answers often reflected her sense of curiosity and her dedication to hard work. A funny difference she noted between us and herself was that we take pictures of animals. She says she doesn’t do that… yet we caught her taking pictures of her favorite animal, the lion!
Another trait that makes Mhlavasi shine is her desire for knowledge. She is invested in making a future for herself, and it shows. “I want to get to learn [something] that will take me somewhere” (Mhlavasi). If I take one thing back from this experience it is that you need to get your hands dirty in order to make your dreams come true. You will not make a name for yourself by sitting on the sidelines and taking things for granted. If you want something done, you must do it yourself.
Edited by Kersey Lawrence
