After-school school

I sat in the circle of high school students next to Sanele. I was interested in why she was here, where she was from, but she was more interested in me.
"Have you seen any celebrities?" she asked me, almost interrupted in fact, when I told her where I work.
I laughed. "No, I haven't. When I go to California I go to San Francisco, not LA or Hollywood."
"San Francisco?"
"Ja, the university that I work for, that's where they're based. Just outside of San Francisco."
"But it's in California?"
"Ja, it's in California."
"Oh." She sounded disappointed.
I started laughing again, "why do you sound so disappointed?"
"I thought celebrities all lived in California, that you saw them everywhere, you know. Like you see in magazines."
"Well," I tried to find a way out of it, a way to keep the dream alive, "actually you know, when I'm there on campus, I spend all my time working so I never really get to explore the city. So there probably are celebrities there, I just don't get out much."
She smiled this time, "Ok."

Sanele is one of a group of about 25 high schoolers, here for one of their three weekly after-school sessions. Today they're doing life skills, this group at least. Their peers are next door having a physics lesson. I sat in that class for a while too, listening as the teacher explained an equation involving letters and more letters and curly brackets. Three times a week they come here, for extra lessons. The lessons start at 4pm, they go on till 6pm. Three times a week. I ask them why they come; why they don't just go home.
"There's nothing for us at home. There's nothing to do." The boy speaking sits squished sideways into a schooldesk.
"And you have to think about your future," the girl in front of me starts to say, "if you go home, ja, you can relax, but what about your future?"
"What about it?" I ask.
"To get a job you must have a skill, and to have a skill you can't somme go home." The kids around me all nod in agreement with the boy.
"So what skills do you get here, why do you come?"
There's some silence, some thinking. Another girl starts to speak. She explains that she comes here because she can learn. In a big class at school she never asks questions because someone will tell her she's wrong. Even her teachers sometimes, they just tell her she's wrong. But she doesn't understand so she needs to ask questions. She explains that in this class, with this group of nine students, she'll ask anything. Her peers agree.

They move on to the content for today's session; time management, and I leave them to talk about their study schedules. The grass in the courtyard outside is patchy, sandy, clumpy at places. There's a picnic table in the far corner, where a couple of kids sit in the last of the sun, their tutor tapping his pen to some imaginary rhythm as he waits for them to look up from their workbooks.