Here come the boys, all six of them, crouching down low, clapping their hands, slapping the sides of their boots, stamping their feet, rattling the bottle tops on their anklets.
They’re wearing white vests, dark blue trousers, mining helmets, green mambas painted on their faces, and of course — gumboots! — as they perform their version of the Isicathulo, the percussive dance that has its origins in the gold mines of Johannesburg.
But today, we’re in the quadrangle of the Hermana Primary School in Ladybrand in the Free State, and Remofiloe, Motaung, Njabula, Reitumetse, Lesedi, and Tlotliso, Grade 6 learners, are demonstrating the style that earned them First Place in the Gumboots category of the provincial Department of Education’s Performing Arts competition last year.
As their dance comes to a close, with a roar, a stomp, and a whistle, the boys freeze, striking a pose with their arms in the shape of a snake about to strike.
Watching from the sidelines, Kyla Lessing — “Teacher Kyla”, as she’s known — beams with pride and sends up a cheer.
These are her Creative Arts learners, and their victory is as much her victory, because it reminds her that childhood dreams can come true.
Growing up in Bloemfontein, Kyla would stand in front of her bedroom mirror and pretend she was teaching an imaginary class. Teaching was all she ever wanted to do.
After graduating from the University of the Free State, she posted on Facebook that she was looking for a position. The answer came from a primary school in Ladybrand, a lovely little border dorp fringed by rolling hills in the Eastern Free State.
“It was really nice,” she recalls, looking back on her interview. “I drank coffee. It was so informal, I felt at home immediately. I knew it’s definitely the place where I need to be.”
Hermana Primary School is a Quintile 3 school, meaning that it serves an underprivileged community who are unable to afford school fees.
Most of the learners come from the nearby Manyatseng township. The school provides them with a bowl of mealipap in the morning and a cooked meal at first break. For Kyla, who grew up in comfort in an Afrikaans household, it’s been an education.
She has had to navigate her way across the boundaries of language and culture, teaching in English and picking up a few words of Sesotho along the way.
“The children can be naughty,” she laughs. “They teach me Sesotho words, telling me to say this and that, and then only later do I realise what I’m saying. We joke around and they love it.”
But there was a more challenging line to cross, in the form of an invitation to send a squad of dancers to the hotly contested performing arts competition.
The chosen six were jumping up and down with excitement; Kyla, meanwhile, was Googling and YouTubing everything she could find about gumboot dancing. Happily, she had an assistant, Alexander Kouveldt, who knew the moves and the discipline well.
The two of them worked together to fine-tune the routine and source the costumes and props, crafting the all-important “ankle-rattles” by threading beer bottle tops onto wire.
As for the face-painted snake that became a symbol of the group, well, that was their bright idea.
“They wanted to do this thing for the dance where they start slow, so you don’t know what’s coming,” explains Kyla, “and then they’re like ‘bang, this is us, here we are!’ They wanted to strike like a snake and take people by surprise.”
It worked. The boys slapped, stamped, and rattled their way from the knock-offs to the finals in Bloemfontein, where they trounced the competition to earn a gold ribbon and a certificate that now occupy pride of place at Hermana Primary School.
More than the prize, though, the big reward has been a boost in confidence and self-esteem that has allowed Kyla to bask in the reflected glow.
“I have one specific learner who isn’t academically strong at all,” she says. “He’s very shy and reserved. I saw his talent in the art class, and when I asked him to be part of this group, it changed him completely. He now has so much confidence. He can walk around school and say, ‘I am part of the dance group, this is me!’”
That kind of confidence is catching. Kyla is now working with a group of 10 girl dancers, who are not just inspired by the gumboot boys; they want to beat them at next year’s competition. And as she studies towards her honours degree, Kyla has big ambitions of her own.
“I want to reach greater heights,” she says. “I would like to become head of department, vice principal, in future, perhaps even principal.”
For now, it’s enough for her to know that she has already made a difference to a group of children who are often seen as “less than” because they have grown up with less, when all they really needed was an opportunity to prove they have what it takes to do more.
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