Like I mentioned in my earlier post, I spent this past week assisting an Adult Education and Training class. I worked with Wilma, an absolutely wonderful woman who works to teach the AET students enough math and English in only 65 days with the hopes that they will pass their skill placement assessments.
Let me assure you, this is no simple feat. Wilma works tirelessly – grading papers, reading essays, creating assignments, and much more; she does it all with the hope that some of it sticks and that these students will finally have a chance at a better future.
The majority of my time working with her was spent reading, correcting, and grading papers, and there are some things that I read that I have chosen not to forget.
I’ve edited the following responses only for the sake of clarity.
Would you like to live until you are 100 years old?
“Yes, because I want to see the success of my children and also my grandchildren.”
Use the word “excruciating” in a sentence:
“The most excruciating thing in life is to lose both your parents like I did.”
Do you want to study further? Explain your answer.
“Yes, I want to study further so that I can survive about my life and be the person that I want to be. I want to be the achiever.”
“Yes, because I want to see myself one day as a good person with lot of integrity and dignity.”
The potential students are asked to write an essay about their family and friends on their assessments:
“And I am honoured to be here cause my family were nagging me to come here to PopUp so that I can at least have a better future.”
“My mother once told me, ‘My child, don’t ever in your life trust a person. It doesn’t matter how bad your problems are or how excited you are. Don’t trust a person.’”
“People must learn to trust no one because you may trust a person who could kill you.”
“My mother is a very kind person who just wants her kids to succeed in the future. I just want to make her proud, in the name of Jesus. I just want to make her proud.”
“My family and friends are very important to me. They stand for me. They show me love…they show me that my future is bright and I should not give up in life.”
“I needed my father to love me, support me, and care. When I saw a father and a child in the street or anywhere, I felt really bad.”
“His wife was praying to God day and night for him to be safe and also for him to find a job so he could look after his children. The truth is that he found a job, but he was forgetting about his children.”
“My mom used to beat me up in the morning before I went to school. I thought it was just her being a mom to me.”
“Although I was trying to show them the goodness in me, it didn’t work. They called the police on me. I went to jail and came back after six months.”
“It was in November of 2009. My uncle, brother, and grandmother died. It’s not easy to accept losing someone you loved.”
In an essay about the “worst day of your life,” students wrote:
“In my life, I never felt the pain that I felt after the abortion. After a month my sugar daddy left me because he says I am a killer. When I tried to be honest to my boyfriend, he also told me it was over between me and him. Even my friends left me all alone.”
“I felt bad and I even asked my mother if I could have an abortion. She said no, and she promised me that she would fire me if I had an abortion. I did not do it but I was so angry. I stayed days without eating and I was drinking medications that could kill the baby, but the baby survived. I was so scared and freaked out.”
The students were asked to title their essays, and 75% of their titles were either:
- The man who left for a job
- My father left when I was young
I don’t know what goes through your mind when you read those quotes, but I know I was hurt, confused, and torn up inside. Some of their stories were horrifying, and I was dumbfounded by the fact that those “stories” were their realities. Countless accounts of abortion, abandonment, isolation, paranoia, hate, and distrust flooded the pages that I turned. The red pen I held between my fingers re-wrote the grammatical errors and idiom confusions, but no matter how badly I wanted to, I couldn’t re-write their realities.
I stared at the faces of the learners at PopUp trying to match each story to a face, and every time I hit an unfamiliar face, my mind wandered. I imagined the story that each person would tell about their lives if they had the chance. I thought of how painful it would be for me to have to read all those stories, and then I realized reading those stories paled in comparison to the pain of living them out.
Many of the stories I read did not have happy endings, but a few did. Those were the pieces that confirmed to me the happy ending that PopUp becomes for these learners – the happy beginning that God becomes for them:
“I realised that God did not make a mistake. He does miracles because he had a plan for everything. I lost three members of my family at the same time, but now I still remember them. I think they rest in peace.”
“I am saying this with tears falling down from my face to the land of tears. I was born into isolation, confusion, no affection, no stimulation.
I never thought I would be given an opportunity to study at the lowest price ever. I never thought I would ever repent my sins to God. I never thought someone would lay a hand on me and pull me out of those cardboxes to lift me where I am today.
My very being constructed in someone else’s womb, though PopUp is the foundation of my future. He [God] bothered to search for miles and when he finally found me, his body pulled to grab for me.”
“But through everything I survived and found my self – who I was and what I need in life. I got saved and God accepted me the way I was.”
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Could you do something for me now? Pick a quote from this blog – any quote – whichever one spoke to you most powerfully. Once you have your quote, pray for the person who wrote those words. I know you may not have a name or a face, but you have part of a story, part of a struggle, and part of a reality. Take thirty seconds, and pray over a situation, pray over a future, and pray over the work that God is doing through PopUp. God is seriously changing the lives of those who walk through PopUp’s gates, and I believe He will use those changed lives to completely alter the future of South Africa.
