In total, how long were you away from home?
One month
What was your motivation to take a gap break?
I’d felt for a long time – several years in fact - that I’d wanted to take some time off work and go and do something worthwhile. I have a great job but I didn’t feel like I personally was doing anyone any good! Timing all came together for me and work were great about me taking the break.
How did you feel before you joined the programme?
Before getting to SA I was incredibly excited – really looking forward to it. I had a couple of wobbly moments – one at the UK airport when I left my husband, and another when I landed in Jo’burg on my own. I couldn’t believe I was going so far for so long on my own and had a few “oh my God, what am I doing?!” moments.
How did Gap Year For Grown Ups compare with your expectations?
GYFGU exceeded all my expectations – the experience from beginning to end was exceptional.
What was the accommodation like?
Actually, this was much better than I was expecting! I knew I would have basic facilities, but wasn’t expecting to get hot showers – the advance literature prepared us for the worst but the volunteer accommodation was very comfortable! Hot showers, comfy beds, kettle, fridge - lots of mod cons that I wasn’t expecting.
What was the most memorable moment of your trip? Any anecdotes? Most memorable individual moment for me was the impact of arriving in this incredibly poor community, in a school struggling to provide mere basics for the children, and to be met with this overwhelming warm welcoming group of children and teachers – almost celebrating your arrival.
Oddest moment was the fantastic old Xhosa woman – Mama Tofu - that we stayed with on the orientation, which included a night in a mud hut in her extended family homestead. She was very scary – told us she can spot a virgin at 20 feet based on how droopy their boobs were! She said she could tell there were no virgins in our group – I’ll wear my sports bra if I go back. She also still gives sex education lessons to the community – we didn’t ask too many questions about this.
Most entertaining moment for the school children was when a giraffe walked past the school room window – us volunteers all got really excited and were rushing for our cameras, and the children who see this everyday, were just in fits of giggles laughing at us!
What do you feel you accomplished during your programme?
I thought when I arrived that it would be difficult to make a difference in such a short space of time, but that was so far from the reality of it. These children are so keen to learn, they make it easy for you. We taught IT to children from 7 -17 years. We were able to introduce the youngest children to using a mouse and keyboard – we would set up the font to be bright pink, size 72 and sparkle text, and got them to type their name – as soon as they saw the first letter sparkling on the screen, they were hooked! Older children we were able to teach word processing skills to. All exercises were linked into the school’s syllabus – which at the time was animals.
We also started an adult class while we were there too – one evening a week. The adults were more excited about learning than the children!!
Another afternoon we went to a different school to help them plant some fruit trees.
In a nutshell, I think I added a great deal of value to an extremely fragile education programme, working hard to try and break the poverty cycle these communities are caught up in, and which rely so heavily on people giving up their time to support.
How have you benefited from your experience? This is without a doubt, the single most rewarding experience of my life. I have been incredibly uplifted by the warm and friendly Xhosa community and children that I met, and their love for life taught me many things about how I live my own live. Seeing the children learn and knowing you are playing some small part in helping them change their life was unbelievably rewarding.
I came on this trip expecting to give selflessly, but feel that I ended up taking away much more for myself from the programme than I ever expected. I will never forget this experience, it has been the most uplifting and invigorating time of my life!
What advice could you offer to someone considering this programme?
It’s really simple, stop dreaming about it and start planning your trip! For years, I found many reasons why I couldn’t set aside the time or funds to do this – having made the decision to do it, everything else was extremely easy. Work out what you want to do, find your location and start looking forward to the experience of a lifetime!
There are hundreds of children in Cape Town’s inner city who live in poverty and are do not have the opportunity of an education and who have to grow up quickly to be able to survive. They do not experience a childhood that you or I take for granted. This is where your help will prove invaluable!
This is a great opportunity to experience the real South Africa in a small community near Cape Town, as well as making a massive difference to children’s lives by helping them to reading. Not only is this a very rewarding project but you will also be helping towards a generation of children build a brighter future.
On this volunteer programme, you have the opportunity to work with African children and contribute to the under-privileged communities in a positive way. You can really make a difference by sharing your skills through sports or computer literacy training, it is a fulfilling programme particularly for any first time traveller or for those wishing to gain teaching experience.
Janet Horsley had an incredible time on her tailor-made gap year, blazing a trail through Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America, read her story here.
What was the accommodation like?
What do you feel you accomplished during your programme?
