Living and Learning in South Africa

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Will Harper, Kent State alumnus, didn’t just gain new perspectives on teaching when he studied in South Africa — but new perspectives on living. The pursuit of a teaching degree took him far from home to a place where education can be an expensive commodity and many families are caught in the cyclone of an insatiable pandemic.

Photo courtesy of Will Harper

Kent State alumnus Will Harper took an opportunity with the Consortium for Overseas Student Teaching (COST) in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. That semester of student teaching soon turned into an 18-month volunteer position.

Before graduating in May 2005, Harper took an opportunity with the Consortium for Overseas Student Teaching (COST) in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

“C.O.S.T. allowed me to experience a different school system, new material and just a different way of doing things,” Harper says. “I have always felt that the best way to really see a country is to live and work there, and that has definitely been true with South Africa.”

Harper lived with a local family, taught at an English/Afrikaans high school and coached the high school’s rugby team. He was able to experience the culture and interact with the people.

A semester of student teaching in South Africa soon turned into an 18-month volunteer position.

Harper originally intended to return to the United States to find a job after his student teaching in Africa was complete; instead, he was offered an opportunity to volunteer with MaAfrika Tikkun, a nongovernment organization (NGO) in Johannesburg.

Harper helped the NGO develop after-school programs for children and adolescents.

“I was only supposed to stay for one month and then continue to travel, but one month became two and so on, until I was offered a full-time position,” he says. “I really fell in love with the kids, the projects and South Africa.”

Harper’s education program reached out to youth at Orange Farm, the largest and most populated informal settlement in South Africa. About 60 percent of the township’s population is infected with HIV, and 80 percent of the population is unemployed. His program targeted approximately100 orphans and children, aged six-months to 21 years, who live in child-headed households, which commonly emerge as a consequence of HIV/AIDS.

The peer-to-peer education program gives these young people a place to belong, Harper says. Through the program, “the kids were given the chance to act as kids, since most of the time they must act as ‘parents’ to younger siblings at home,” he explains.

The AIDS crisis in sub-Saharan Africa has altered the lives of millions of families. One in eight South Africans is infected with HIV, and the number of children infected with HIV or orphaned by AIDS will reach 18 million within the next three years. As of 2005, 1,200,000 children have lost one or both parents to AIDS.

Bearing the burden of grief in the wake of their parents’ deaths, these children are at risk of exploitation as they attempt to earn income to help support remaining family members. Sometimes thrust into the role of caregiver for younger siblings or elders, they are more likely to quit attending school because of financial or time constraints.

A primary goal of MaAfrika Tikkun is to create safe environments for children as well as to ensure they’re not ostracized or labeled “AIDS orphans.”

According to findings from the United Nations Children’s Fund HIV/AIDS Orphans Survey, children grieving for dying or dead parents are often stigmatized by society through association with AIDS. The survey found that because of this stigma, children may be denied access to schooling and health care, as well as to the inheritance and property their parents left behind. Further, bereavement counseling is focused on the elderly, not on the children.

Harper says he focused on empowering and teaching young people from the communities to transfer skills and knowledge to orphans and children attending the NGO’s programs. “Sustainability and true impact are really only possible with community involvement and support,” he says.

While Harper’s future plans will take him far from Africa — he plans to attend graduate school for counseling psychology and community counseling at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this fall — he says his time in South Africa has made an indelible impression.

“The experiences I have had here and the people I have met — the poorest I have ever known and some of the most generous — have changed my perceptions and shaped who I am,” he says.

By Megan Grote, Kent State Public Relations Student