KYP

At KYP, Kliptown Youth Program, a group of high school students from Massachusetts were visiting. They were pen pals. A wealthy American had donated a hundred small computers to KYP children to work on. As they learned English, they wrote to their pen pals in the USA. It was exciting to watch them share each other, sing songs and play games together. The KYP boys, big and small, in their rubber boots, gathered at the center and performed the Gum Boot Dance. The Gum Boot Dance goes back to the old mining time. It was an amazing dance in unison with joyful voices and rhythm. They tapped their knees and the front and backs of the boots, while clapping hands in between in a fast mode. It went very fast. I could never catch up, especially in my kimono. The first picture shows the Gum Boot Dance performance. There are office and library cabins in the background. The second picture shows the open area of the KYP ground with a couple of log cabins. The blue one on the right is the kitchen.

Kliptown Youth Program

My next visit was to KYP, Kliptown Youth Program, in Soweto. I chose KYP because students at the school I taught in Tokyo had sent KYP some used books as one of the Values education projects, thanks to Mr. Creighton. KYP is an educational and social organization, which was started by Thulani and a group of young black people from Kliptown squatter camp about three years ago. It was financially supported by white people within and outside of the country but was run by ten young black leaders. Most of the neighboring people lived in shacks without water and electricity. The young leaders took leadership and offered the children chances to learn, share and grow in a healthy manner otherwise they spend time on the street and get into trouble. KYP offered a home environment between school and home. When the children came to KYP after school, they got what their family could not give. Besides reading, writing and mathematics, the children were looked after with their homework from school, with play and games with children of all ages, with higher education guidance counseling, and with a substantial meal before going home.

At KYP I had a pleasure of speaking about my country, Japan, the concept of reuse and recycle, and introduced a Japanese paper folding craft, Origami. I used old newspaper so that they could learn the basics of paper folding and could make a container to pick up litter. Then we used origami paper to make simple toy animals using English words. It turned out to be a cross-curricular activity. I am a school teacher and this is what I can share.

At KYP, a group of high school students from Massachusetts were visiting. They were pen pals. A wealthy American had donated a hundred small computers to children to work on. As they learned English, they wrote to their pen pals in the USA. It was exciting to watch them share each other, sing songs and play games together. The KYP boys, big and small, in their rubber boots, gathered at the center and performed the Gum Boot Dance. The Gum Boot Dance went back to the old mining time. It was an amazing dance in unison with joyful voices and rhythm. They tapped their knees and the front and backs of the boots, while clapping hands in between in a fast mode. It went very fast. I could never catch up, especially in my national costume!

Soweto

My first stop in South Africa was Soweto on June 16, 2009. I passed the Soccer City Stadium which was under construction. Soweto is where black people live. The name came from the first two letters of the "South West of Town" from the time in 1886 when black people were forced to move into the marsh land to live in shacks and work as miners. I went straight to the open area, Freedom Square, in front of the Hector Pieterson Memorial Museum and the national heritage site intrinsically linked to the origins of the Soweto Uprising and its aftermath in 1976. The area and streets were packed with thousands of black people who were commemorating the Soweto Uprising of students on the same day in 1976. There were walls symbolizing the hardship with a photograph of a boy carrying a young boy, Hector Pieterson, who was shot by the police, and running to a hospital with his sister. I have never seen so many black students. I have never met so many students in perfect uniform in my life. School uniform showed their love for learning with choices. I was impressed by their pride. They were queuing up with their teachers in orderly manner to visit the museum in order to learn about where they came from and where they were going to. Education was a key. I saw posters that said, "Children needs roots and wings to grow". The museum was a symbol of hardship of the past and hope for the future. The picture is a newspaper article from The Star on June 17, 2009.

Africa, Cradle of Mankind

The summer of 2009 took me to the Origins Center and schools in Johannesburg, South Africa. At the origins Center (National Health Lab Service) I submitted my DNA sample for genetic ancestry testing. They reported to me later that I was one of the descendants of "Mitochondrial Eve." When they compared my mt DNA profile to two international databases with about 10,600 mt DNA haplotypes, they found 64 identical matches in Chinese, Indians, Thai, Mongolians, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Turkish as well as one South African white individual. My mt DNA did not match with the Japanese samples that they had. My guess was that the long history of the settlement of the complicated mixture of peoples at the tip of the Asian continent made the Japanese mt DNA samples very diverse. I was happy to know that I am small but truly a mix of the genes of the earth. No doubt I shared my new information with my students back in Tokyo. I also showed an image of Motochondrial Eve that is presented in Stephen Oppenheimer's book, "Out of Africa's Eden"(Jonathan Ball Publishers, Johannesburg, 2003).

North Pole

My name is Kazuko. In my native Japanese it means "child of peace." I chose a career in education, "to serve children of the world", with the hope of helping reach my parents' dream of peace and stability throughout the world. I am a teacher without borders. During school breaks, I travel to overseas schools. I speak about my country Japan and learn about other countries and people. I share my learning experiences with my international students back in Tokyo. I cross many borders. The picture shows the Arctic Circle at Rovaniemi, Finland. My dear friend Mirjami took the picture on our visit with Santa.














North Pole