Ferry launched to help pupils cross lake
WHEN Thandiwe Ngubane sees her daughter, Bawinile, off to school, she does so with mixed emotions.
“I want her to have a future, to go to university,” she says hopefully, “But I am always scared.”
Ngubane and her daughter live on the island of Enkovukeni – a small strip of green that rises from the glassy waters of Lake Kosi Bay in the dense bush of the northernmost part of KwaZulu-Natal, near the Mozambican border.
In order for Bawinile to get an education, for years she has had to wade through the kilometre-long stretch of waist-high water that separates Enkovukeni from the mainland and the closest high school, Nhlanga.
In winter, she has often come home sick from spending the day in wet clothes.
Year around, she has had to keep an eye out for the hippos and crocodiles that lurk beneath the lake’s surface.
But yesterday the provincial Department of Basic Education launched a pupil ferry to transport Bawinile and her neighbours to and from the mainland.
It will also serve to transport the mainland’s younger children to and from the island because the only primary school in the area is located there, presenting the little ones with the same problems that Bawinile experiences.
One 16-year-old boy said he had only started school at the age of nine.
“I was too scared to cross the lake,” he said.
He told of coming face to face with a hippo once on his way to school.
“But an old man came and chased it away,” he said.
MEC Mthandeni Dlungwana said yesterday that the affected community was small and that Enkovukeni Primary catered to only 32 pupils.
“But we can’t then say we can’t provide services to them,” he said, “Education is a right and we have to provide.”
He also said the problem was not isolated to the area and that the department had purchased a total of eight ferries to assist pupils in similar situations at 180 schools in other parts of the province.
And, Dlungwana went on to say, they would be allocating a further R10 million to providing this type of transport to needy pupils in the province in future.
Ngubane said the community was happy with the new ferry.
“We’re very grateful to the government,” she said.
But, she went on, it was not enough.
“What we really need is a bridge.”
The lake cuts the islanders off from more than education.
They have no electricity or running water. “We share water from the lake with the cows,” Ngubane said.
And she said that when they needed groceries or building supplies, they had to cross the lake and make their way to the mainland. “Even when someone dies, we have to get a coffin through there,” she said.
“This is my home and I dream of it improving it,” Ngubane said, “But we need help.”