The Grade 8 Guide to our Galaxy

Professional tour guides could have learnt a few tips from our Grade 8 Guides on our recent Open Days.  They proved, yet again, that passion creates energy – and certainly passion and energy was very evident in the corridors of Wynberg when close on four hundred families were egged on round the sights and sounds of South Africa’s second oldest school.

'Welcome to Big School, let me show you around ..'

Nicholas Moss introduces himself to Josh Edwards from Sweet Valley

Grade 8’s are very deliberately chosen to be our Guides for the important job of showing potential pupils around the school.  They exude a combination of enthusiasm, naivete and innocence as, resplendent in their newly acquired blazers, they show off their new school. Full credit to their matric buddies who had ensured earlier in the week that their charges had a working knowledge of the geography of their campus. For a full week, breaks were taken up with matrics intently walking their buddies around the school.

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Of course, there is an air of unpredictability about what these young men espouse as gospel truth.  The manager of the Old Boys’ Clubhouse in the Bill Bowden Pavilion, Glenda Martindale, was still chuckling hours after the tours had passed through when she heard one Guide earnestly state with the confidence of one WHO KNOWS that ‘this is where the teachers come to drink at breaks’.  (‘Not true, My Lord, although some teachers might wish to have a stress reliever after a double period of Grade 10 Maths….)

I still recall one Guide a few years back who, while showing his group around the matric quad, duly informed them that ‘this is where the matrics go and smoke’.    (I will take the 5^th Amendment on that one, My Lord).

Some groups had the privilege of being shown the school toilets; some went on an orienteering course to the Oude Wijnberg Vineyard (with an anxious mother in heels…); another group was dragged across the suburb of Wynberg by an enthusiastic hockey player to see  our Astroturf hockey field.  A number of groups were fortunate to watch a lst Xl match on the Jacques Kallis Oval where they saw one of the school’s star batsman, David Bedingham, smash the bowlers of Marlborough College (UK) for 95 runs in 27 balls. 

Neil Eddy, sitting in his office, was amused to hear one Guide explain the concept of the mirror in the A Corridor:  ‘This is where you must check your appearance.  You had better tuck your shirt in before Mr Richardson sees you….’

A tour round a school must reveal more than mere buildings, artefacts and facilities. One year, a bemused family was informed that ‘this is the Alf Morris Building.  Do you know that one of our teachers was named after this building?’

The tours are about people.  Young Wynberg Men showing other Wynberg Men in action in the classrooms, on the sports field, on the stage, in the music rooms.

The tours were more than that.  Most importantly they were about giving our newly-blazered freshmen the confidence of speaking in front of strangers.  The confidence of bragging about their school and its 171-year-old brand and traditions.  The confidence of knowing that they belonged.

I was delighted with our 13 year-old Guides.  They did us proud.