What’s in a name?

There are some really funny names here: For females: Happy-girl, Dorcas, Precious, Mummy, Mammee. For males: Goodwill, Doctor, Bongo and one unfortunate waiter who said, “My name is Fanny; they call me Fanny-Boy”. Mmm. I bet they do, sunshine! The traditional African names are difficult to pronounce as they seem to have a series of consonants at the start, like “Mphleko. I feel like saying, “Vowel please, Carol” and working them out as anagrams!
Then there are the Afrikaans names, where “a” is pronounced “aw” so you get Fanie and Sanie. Also, terms of address are quite formal. I am usually called Ma’am but some younger women and many children call me “Auntie” or Tannie” in Afrikaans. Les is addressed as “Sir”, “Boss” or “Captain”. Oh, and once by a waiter as “The old man”. Not to mention some of his workforce wanting to call him “Uncle Les”, this from the Afrikaans form of respectful address of “Oom” for uncle, used to address older men.
When I visited a school, the librarian called the class to attention and introduced me. All the boys immediately stood and chorused, “Morning, Ma’am”. Wow!
And as for school uniforms, I have never seen so many! There are loads of schools in our area, some private, some government, some religious, some Afrikaans. All have strict uniform codes adhered to by everyone. When I think that some people earn less than £40 a week and there are no clothing grants, it must take some effort to turn out these immaculate children every morning. When visiting Soweto, even the poorest shacks had a line of washing, invariably including some white school shirts. Each child has only one; it is removed and washed immediately on returning home, to be clean for the next day. The uniforms are quite traditional and old fashioned; knee length socks for boys and girls, shorts for boys and skirts for girls. Blazers are proudly worn, with some wearing loudly striped ones, like London stockbrokers. These are for “colours” earned for sports. Not just tacking on some braid here! Many boys wear caps and in the posh schools in Joburg they wear boaters! A common accessory, for both boys and girls, is a big umbrella in the school colours, used as a parasol as well as to keep the rain off. Mind you, behaviour is much the same, in the streets on the way home from school and indeed in the schools! One school I visited was a posh boys school and they run in the corridors, slap each other and horse around just like back home. The private girls school was a little more refined, the girls posing around the central courtyard fountain, smoothing their hair and preening, gossiping in small groups, just like schoolgirls everywhere. They too, were very polite when my colleague asked the way to the conference room, all standing up when we approached and one leading us personally to our location.
Later this month, I have been invited to visit some township schools where I understand the emphasis is more on attending, eating a basic breakfast after what is often a 5k walk and dealing with basic literacy and numeracy. I have also been invited to a storytelling workshop and next Wednesday to meet childrens author Eoin Colfer, so hopefully I will get some ideas for working with the children. Oh, I have also been asked to help at a volunteer literacy group for youngsters in a near by public library. Looks like I will have little time for housework, what a shame!