Limpopo Born-Free Project
The weekend of November 15th
through 17th the American International School of Johannesburg
(AISJ) Limpopo team consisting of 13 students, 3 teachers, 2 guards, and a bus
driver drove the 4-hour trip to Marumofase High School in Limpopo. The purpose
of this mission was to assist the Marumofase High School students in writing,
editing, and typing there personal born free short stories. This project is
aimed to encourage the students to become very creative, expressive, and to
tell their own personal explicit story of being the first born free generation
from the oppressed Apartheid. Thanks to the hard efforts and support from the
STUCO Committee whom implemented the Stationary Drive, which was very
successful. They were collecting school supplies to be donated to the
Marumofase school students allowing them to have the tools they needed to get
their stories completed. This consisted of an incredibly generous amount of
pens, pencils, erasers, sharpeners, packs of paper, notebooks, books, binders,
and gadgets. The STUCO Committee was able to collect these by holding a House
Competition between the houses of Apollo, Athena, Hermes, and Artemis at AISJ. Shout
outs to Mrs. Murgues and her homeroom for the most donations. Our hats are off to
all of you for your hard work and dedication. Of coarse none of this would be
possible without the support of our entire school. Go eagles! Mrs. Fazenbaker
and Rea Ralethe, the student leader thank you both for your hard work and
coordination. The secretary, Raquel Wilson, kept careful notes, prepared the
parent information letter, and collected the permission forms. Thank you for
your dedication! To all of the AISJ Limpopo team members thank you for your
positive attitudes, hard work, and consistency. On behalf of the AISJ Limpopo
team we want to thank all of the Marumofase High School students for sharing
their personal stories and allowing us into their lives. We know you all had to
dig deep and become honest with yourselves to tell your stories to us. Your
stories will live on forever and teach others the value of freedom and
perseverance. On the other hand, the AISJ Limpopo team had to be sensitive and
caring to each word that was spoken from the storytellers. With the support of
Coach Funky and his inspirational speech to the Marumofase High School Students
the AISJ Limpopo team was able to slowly immerse themselves on a personal
friendly open level to encourage the students to begin their journey to allow
us into their worlds. Students arrived with written story of their journey as a
born-free. The AISJ Limpopo team carefully listened to the spoken words that
were written on once blank papers. A collection of blank papers became
incredible stories of courage, loss, and strength. The AISJ Limpopo team helped
the students with pronunciation, spelling, grammar, and editing. Many of the
young girls mourned over fathers that never raised them. While, the young boys
expressed fears of self-protection. The stories that we read were raw, the
students that we met were driven and motivated to achieve something higher than
what they have, and their dreams are big. However, poverty still stricken them.
Their sorrow and laughter was heard not only written. In conclusion, their
stories reflected desperation but desire to achieve greatness. The AISJ Limpopo
team along with Marumofase High School will meet again in February 2014 to
complete the typing of the student’s stories, and produce a rough draft of the
book to send to a publishing company.
-Written by Enya Calibuso, the
Communications Officer
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