In 2002 the Vrygrond Trust raised the money to build a large room onto the existing Trust office. It was to be a place where we would give Vrygrond residents basic computer education. Simple stuff, - how to turn the thing on, how to understand the Windows ‘desktop’, how to open MSWord, and how to type a simple document, like a Curriculum Vitae.

One of the touching things about communities like Vrygrond is the number of people who want to produce CVs. Unemployment is one of the three fundamental issues facing this country (the other two being housing and education), and people are desperate to find work. Those who have little or no education look for work as labourers or domestics, - no CV’s needed. Those with some schooling hope that by sending off their CVs they will find work. It is desperate stuff. The CVs so often record poor matric results achieved at third rate schools, but the person is still filled with hope that some employer somewhere will respond. And I suppose some do.

So our computer trainees would be able to type out their own CVs and obtain some familiarity with a computer. Enough that in a job interview, this basic skill might help tip the balance to get them employment.

There was some discussion about costs. I wanted the lessons to be free; the income we might get from fees would be so slight that it hardly mattered. The others argued against this saying that even the smallest financial commitment would make the pupils take it more seriously and apply themselves. So we advertised all over Vrygrond a course of computer lessons at R5 per lesson. We told the computer instructor we hired, that if anyone wanted to do the course but did not have the money, to let them in for free. And many did attend for free.

Twelve second hand computers were obtained, as well as the necessary desks and chairs, and in August 2002 it started with a bang. Full classes several evenings a week. We even started classes in Excel. When pupils finished the course they were honoured in a little graduation ceremony and given Diplomas. But slowly the numbers dropped. We did all we could. Our teacher went around Vrygrond putting up posters and trying to whip up interest. We advertised as much as we could.

Eventually I let our computer trainer work part time at another place, New World Foundation, which offered more advanced computer classes. If we were paying his salary he might as well do good elsewhere. But by January 2005 it was just not worth paying his salary for the one class per week, and we closed down the centre and donated the computers to the New World Foundation. In the 2 ½ years we ran the centre, about 400 people passed through the courses, and presumably learned something about computers. But the fact is that this could not be sustained and must be considered a failure.

I have thought much about why the Vrygrond people were so little interested in this. Most of us, if we were sitting at home, no job and nothing to do, would seize the chance to take courses in almost anything. Flower arranging, Ikebana, anything that increased our knowledge. How much more eager would we be to learn how to use computers, which are the heart of almost every office job in the world.
But they did not see it that way. One suggestion is that the people who came, thought that once they had completed our course, they would immediately find employment. As it became apparent that this was not so, the word spread “Those computer courses are no good, you don’t get a job afterwards”. Maybe.

But there is a more fundamental issue. The years I have spent working in Vrygrond convince me that the concept of self-improvement is not natural to human beings. The idea of taking action in order to improve your life seems to us middle class Western-educated people to be so obvious that it does not need to be taught; it seems natural. But I don’t think it is. I think we absorb the idea of ambition and improving ourselves from our family and our society. There are many societies where passivity and a dumb acceptance of one’s lot is more prevalent than the drive to move upwards.

The politically comforting interpretation I suppose is that the poor are so ground down by their desperate existence, that they have lost all hope that they can do anything to improve their lives. This does not square with the people I saw at the computer centre. Many of them were young, in their teens and twenties. They did not seem to have lost all hope. Why did they not bother to build on what they had learned?

There are thousands of others like them in Vrygrond who did not even bother to investigate the lessons. It is a strange phenomenon and one which none of us involved in this failed project really understands.