Learning gratitude in South Africa

Having electricity and running water 24 hours a day is not a given. Three young people from the Südheide area around Hermannsburg in northern Germany learnt this and much more in South Africa.

"This time will definitely have an impact on my actions." Marcel Schwab, 17 years old and a pupil at Christian-Gymnasium Hermannsburg (CGH), is pretty sure of that. At the end of March, he returned from a two-and-a-half-month stay at Hermannsburg School, CGH's South African partner school, together with his classmates Augusta Dyckerhoff and Paul Rabe.

Getting to know new people and a different culture and improving their English skills were the most important reasons for all three eleventh-graders to apply for the exchange programme, which is organised at CGH by the teacher Kathleen Weber and supported by the Ev.-luth. Mission in Lower Saxony (ELM). After a preparatory seminar with the ELM's secretary for ecumenical relations to South Africa, Botswana and eSwatini, Dr Joe Lüdemann, the students set off from Hamburg on 12th January - in snowy conditions. One day later, they found themselves in a different world in Durban, South Africa. "It was 35°C hot, dirty and there were lots of people everywhere", recalls Augusta of their arrival and of the journey by car to Hermannsburg, a settlement founded by German missionaries in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, around two hours' drive away. There were cyclists on the motorway, but also animals. There were deep potholes and they saw corrugated iron shacks on the side of the road.

Everyday school life at the public school with an attached boarding house was also unfamiliar for the three Germans. Lessons were characterised by teaching from the front, lots of written tests and a system of punishment and reward points, which the foreign pupils felt could be awarded very arbitrarily at times.

Despite all this, they look back on a "great time", as Augusta says. And that was mainly due to "the people we got to know." Paul also reports that he made good friends and smiles as he shows photos of some of the boys play fighting. "We let our energy out there," he reports. Marcel raves about a visit to a schoolmate whose father owns a flying school in Pretoria. They were invited there during the holidays and spent four days enjoying the life of a privileged minority in the country.

The three of them realise: "The gap between rich and poor in South Africa is very wide." And that makes them sad in retrospect. "I already knew beforehand that we are comparatively very well off in Germany and that people in other countries are much worse off. But I hadn't experienced it. People in South Africa are much more grateful for much less", says Paul Rabe. For example, for electricity, which often fails for several hours a day, for water or even for medical treatment. The three also know that they were unable to communicate with the really poor because they usually don't speak English and live in other areas. For the three young people from the Südheide, the conclusion remains: "We should also be grateful: For electricity, running water, our house, our family and the many opportunities we have."