FORTY students from Catholic high schools across Brisbane have returned home after a three-week immersion trip to rural South Africa.
And, they’ve come back with more than just bulging suitcases to unpack – they’ve adopted new life perspectives, too.
The trip’s purpose was to provide two schools in South Africa’s northern province, Kwazulu-Natal, with 11 laptops each, and teach students and staff how to use them.
But it was students from the traveling schools – Brigidine, St Laurence’s, Iona, Lourdes Hill and All Hallows’ – who felt they were the lucky ones.
Brigidine’s Brigid Donelly said she gained important insight from the trip.
“I believe we learnt a lot more from the students, teachers and all the locals of South Africa than they did from us,” she said.
Brigid remembered the group’s visit to an orphanage as being one of her most moving experiences.
“The children there were so happy and it opened our eyes to how we take many things for granted, because we have so much and still complain, but these kids had nothing and still had huge smiles on their faces,” she said.
“They were some of the kindest, happiest people we’d ever met.”
The expedition was initiated by St Laurence’s College principal, Ian McDonald, after he met two Zulu women at an education conference in South Africa two years ago.
“You couldn’t see these people and see how they were so committed to improving the lives of their kids, and not want to do something,” Mr McDonald said.
“So, we thought we’d give our boys and girls an opportunity to help people, who are their age, in a really poor part of the world.”
Students journeyed through bustling South African cities Johannesburg and Cape Town before eventually arriving in Eshowe, where the schools were located.
Mr McDonald recalled the desperate state of the schools and their obvious need for help.
“One had no running water, which meant children had to use surrounding bush land to go to the toilet,” he said.
“And, they can’t even use four of their classrooms with broken windows, because the wind howls up the valley and freezes the kids to death.”
He said 70 per cent of students in both schools were orphans, whose parents had either died from AIDS or moved to bigger cities to earn money.
Despite having returned home, the Brisbane schools plan to continue improving conditions for their Eshowe friends.
They have already started fundraising and organising a return trip for next year.
