A quiet leader - Nokuphumla Pakamile

It is a bright, sunny Thursday afternoon and we’re meeting up with Nokuphumla ‘Ma Phumla’ Pakamile, mother, wife, guardian, teacher, student, gardener, singer, and dancer.  It is after school, and Phumla is down in her garden behind the classroom block picking iMifino, an indigenous and edible ‘weed’, which she will add to the supper she prepares at home tonight.  She is accompanied by Gloria Kumalo, a fellow teacher, and they are talking about how the children have been progressing with their navigational skills on the brand new computers that have just been donated to their school.  They laugh as they refer to how both their students and their own children are growing up as ‘Digital Natives’ in a world of technology, with its sleek hyper-speed cell-phone and internet communications, and how very differently their own and older generations of ‘Digital Immigrants’ are experiencing the world.

For those of you who have met and worked with Phumla, you need no introduction.  We are talking to Ma Phumla today because we think that personalities such as hers deserve more attention.  We are talking about people who are sensitive to the needs of others, who have just a human-full of compassion but are able to stretch it as far as they need to because they have found within themselves the will and the self-love to empower this natural urge, and that this is what truly makes a difference in our world.

Phumla adding mulch to the plants in her garden, with Gloria behind her, and the buildings of Chintsa East Primary School in the background

Phumla started working at Chintsa East Primary School in 1998 (the original school was established in1972, and the new and existing building went up in 1996).  Before that she was teaching at an informal school that was housed in a shack.  It was during this time, round about 2010, that she made the decision to start doing short Early Childhood Development (ECD) courses.  In the same year she started studying her National Professional Diploma in Education (NPDE), which she manages to work on each Saturday through the University of Fort Hare, East London campus.  She will complete the diploma this year.  While she studies she is teaching at Chintsa East Primary as a Grade R Practitioner.  On completion of her studies she wants to become a full-time teacher.

She started learning about Permaculture in 2003, joining up her school garden with others in the surrounding area to form a cluster of functional, learning environments in which to further the aims of permacultural principles.  She shows us the soil in her garden, saying “This beautiful earth was once a mixture of clay mixed with weak sand.  It was very unforgiving.  We have worked hard in the garden to rehabilitate the soil.”  In 2008 she did a one-year sustainable living course in East London, graduating at Rhodes university, and gives full credit to Laura Conde (of WESSA) for introducing her to the course: “She put me closer to nature!”  She is an ambassador for eco-schools (http://wessa.org.za/what-we-do/eco-schools.htm ) and keeps the garden we are standing in, as well as a garden just a hundred meters away, known as the ‘Biogas’ garden, because it is fed by water that runs out of the BIOGAS system located on the west side of the grounds, off the school’s toilet block (this system is also designed to feed the school’s kitchens, where the ovens are fired up by the methane gas by-product).

But all of this is only the ‘professional’ side of Phumla.  She has been married for 20 years and has 5 children, and this is the beginning of her colourful life story.  Her mornings are taken up by her teaching, but her afternoons are filled, not only with her studies, but with looking after her own children, as well as the children who can not go home directly after school because there is no one at home for them to be or play with: Phumla has also opened up her home to a number of children both from within her own extended family and without, who have either a very disruptive or dysfunctional home situation, or who, due to some other unforeseen circumstances, simply have no home at all.  So she has quite a large home now, and her charge is to cook for all these mouths as well as to see to all their individual needs, as a mother can only do.  Her home has now come to be known as a ‘safe house’ for these children, but Phumla says, “I love them and they love me but it is not easy as we live right next door to a shebeen.  It is very noisy, very destructive.” 

In the Biogas garden, Phumla and Gloria work as they talk to Kate & Shaun

And her children are doing well!  Her youngest, Awonke (9), is in Grade 3 at the new African Angels Independent School, a bright spark of a boy who loves reading and is already full of self-confidence and an eagerness to engage with others and with his world; Neziswa (14), is in Grade 9 at Bylett’s School, is a flyhalf on the local girls’ rugby team, and until last year she was the only girl on the Unstressed Surf School program; then there is Sandile (16), who also plays rugby at school, and soccer with the local team too.  He is also a promising surfer and a student with the Unstressed Surf School, and he has recently started doing weightlifting too; and lastly there is Tina (19), an I.T. student at CTI.  Tina is the adventurous one: she’s the #10 on the girls’ rugby team (the same team as her sister) and has won numerous awards for eco-challenges.  She is also very musical, like her mother, and she wants to get into sports science or sports management.  Phumla’s eldest son, Sthembiso (29) lives around the bay and works in Chintsa Bay Restaurant.

So Phumla has her hands full, what with teaching and being a mother to all these outgoing young people!  She tells us, “If I get some time to myself I like to read a biography, or some Xhosa stories, and I also keep some Mills & Boon books around for an easy read.”  But the rest of the time she is directly involved in her community, serving as both a councilling ear to the many issues and grievances of her village as well as on the committee of Friends of Chintsa.   She runs the weekly Garden Club held at the school’s ‘Biogas garden’, helps to manage the Surf School on weekends, and she is also partly involved in the girls’s rugby team.  She also does Zumba once a week.  How does she do it all?

She says it all has to do with responsibility, and also that the children love her so much.  When we asked her what her biggest challenges are, and what her vision is for herself, her family, her school and her community, she replied “One of the issues that concerns me is the lack of appreciation from some of the members of the community for property and projects that find their way into their village.  That, and a lack of funds.”  She wants to see her village become a place for responsible citizens, and her school growing with more effective leadership, teachers, and learners.  “I can definitely do with more teachers, and more buildings to expand the school,” she says.

WHERE AM I FROM? A poem by Phumla 

  

I am from Nonqaba Tubby Pati, a Xhosa girl from  Macleantown village

I from waking up early, go to the veld fetch iNzinziniba herb to make tea

for my brothers and sisters,

I am from milking the goats and making tea in the morning

I from making tea for my aunties and uncles before going to school in the

morning.

I am from dolls made from mealie-cob and old materials,

I am from the doll’s house made of mud and stones,

I am from a village, houses made of mud, wood and thatched roofs,

I am from a village without electricity, but the moon and the stars are lights.

I am from mealie-fields, planting, weeding with a hoe and harvest.

I am from a traditional family wearing traditional clothes I am from a traditional family wearing traditional clothes,

I am from tradition, women wear long traditional dresses, smear

their bodies with yellow or red clay,

I am from going and collecting cows and goats from the veld every evening

I am feeding the chickens, pigs and dogs every day.

I am from eating cooked mealies, samp and beans, African salad, and amarhewu

I am from eating traditional imifino picked from the garden

I am from always welcoming the traveler and giving him something to eat and water

I am from listening to the elders when talking to me,

I am from respecting people older than me and not call them

by their names rather call them ‘bhuti, sisi, mama , or tata’,

I am from the family values where you greet everyone you

meet on the road even if you don’t know who she/he is.

I am from respecting God, not calling him by his name but rather calling him Jehova

I am from collecting firewood and water from the dam

I am from ‘you are not allowed to choose your own husband—your elders will choose for you.’

I am from breaking that law and choosing my own husband.

I am from growing up without my dad and not even knowing him.

I am from growing up without staying with my mom but with my aunties and uncles.

I am from going to school in a far away village, barefoot sometimes

I am from a family believing in ancestral spirits, from dancing and singing for these spirits

I am from the slaughtering of the goats, sheep and cows in respect for the dead.

I am from Xhosa beer, called umqombothi, drank only on special occasions.

I am part of my family and ancestors and they are also part of me.

I am Nokuphumla Pakamile         

___________

Her message to all of you: “Stand up for your community.  Never give up.  Keep up the good work!”  And to children she has this to say: “Focus on your studies at school today so that you can be a responsible citizen tomorrow!”  How often do we meet people, indeed women, of this calibre?  Ma Phumla, we salute you!

For more on Phumla's incredible life journey please read this blog