I Will Always Love You

Our final days in KwaZulu-Natal included a day safari, rehearsals for a final concert, meetings and interviews with informants, photo sessions, video shoots and packing (yikes - that one nearly gave me a melt-down) and two Durban excursions.  After teaching my final class, I met with group leaders.

There are 18 small groups of 10/11 students each - totaling 189 students in my Arts and Culture class.  I taught in a large lecture hall part of the time, and took half the class at a time outside so that we could experience singing games, peer coaching techniques and methods for assessment of children's music learning.  The absence of internet communication, power points, handouts, and a much needed microphone made the teaching situation challenging for me...but more importantly, it showed me how challenging it is for future teachers to learn in crowded university classes without high-tech study aids and individual attention.  There is a class rep - Mr. Dlamini, who served as a communicator for me and would sometimes address the students to further explain my instructions or to divide them into groups for meetings and Q&A sessions.  The regular instructor observed my teaching and commented on my instructional style at a Farewell Programme (notice the two m's and e at the end) in my honor Monday night.  She said that my style of teaching students by actually having them sing children's songs and play children's music was new to her.

Farewell Programme at the Arts and Culture Centre

 The farewell programme was hosted by by the UniZul Choral Society and the International Linkages Director Gugu Gule.  It was a formally delivered program, complete with program directors, gift presentation, speeches and a reception at the end.  The choir sang some of my favorites as I had requested, and I directed them in an African American spiritual as well as one last rendering of the national anthem.  Dolly Parton most certainly knew what she was talking about when she wrote:

 “…so I’ll go, but I know I will think of you each step of the way.  I will always love you.”

When it was time for me to speak, I could hardly compose an appropriate few sentences of thanks and farewells, so I cut my thank yous short and did sing I Will Always Love You at the piano.  I knew that some of those present knew the song, but I was very surprised that it was such a popular song among the group.  I realized that all this time I was studying Zulu culture and learning their music and ways of thinking, many of them were studying me and learning my way of thinking.  My colleagues and students shared what they had learned from me, and much of it surprised me.  Some spoke of my willingness to learn the language, and one colleague said she learned by watching me engage my students with experiences rather than lectures.  As a teacher I cannot imagine any better gift those testimonies to my belonging in their musical learning community.

Shophi and Suzi

The first of the Durban excursions included an interview with a beautiful traditional musician named Shophi Ngidi, a forum presentation at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and then dinner and home hospitality at the home of our new friends Herman and Gordon.  In between all of it, we managed to eat lunch on the 32nd floor-rotating restaurant called Roma’s where the view of Durban was magnificent – all 360 degrees of it.  UKZN has a well-established Ethnomusicology department, and the forum attendees asked many questions and suggested contacts and directions for my continuing research into Freedom songs and folkloric music. 

The second trip was a slower paced one, because on Tuesday September 14, we packed all of our things and left my home of the past three months in the morning, then attended a reception for the visiting American Ambassador to South Africa in the afternoon.  The day began in tears for me, because I felt torn apart after having spent three months assimilating into the rural community surrounding the University of Zululand. 

The Mills with Ambassador Donald Gip

It was hard letting go of it all.   Bhekani Buthelezi accompanied me on several outings during my time in KZN, and made a study of ethnographic research by using me as his lens.  Having observed my efforts at getting all the relationships right, he once told me that he supposed one must prepare oneself for the separation of leaving a community before even entering.  I’m not sure if that would even have been possible for me.  I did prepare by making time for final meals and visits with my new friends, but there is just no preparation for that pang of grief I felt when Dennis took my first suitcase and put it in the car.