:) heyy there  

I’ve been living at site for about six weeks now and all’s well. I’m not allowed to identify the name of my village online for security reasons (something about the possibility of using PC volunteers as soft targets for taking down the US gov’t, very pleasant to think about) so I’ll call it Simba-- cause everyone loves a good Lion King reference ;) Life in Simba is going very well, it’s different from anything I’ve experienced before, but I like it a lot.

My host family is really great, things only get better the more time I spend with them. They are good kind people, plain and simple. Both of them are retired but they always manage to stay busy. My Gogo (I call her Mama Molefi) is the gardening guru of the neighborhood- she spends hours everyday in her garden and in the community garden down the road. My host-father, Papa Molefi, is always doing something with his hands, working on the engine of his tractor, fixing something, or building a structure of some kind. He worked in a coal mine for 35 years so I think he’d go crazy if he didn’t occupy himself like that. Neither of them finished elementary school but they made sure all of their twelve children finished high school (no small feat in rural Africa) and more than half of them graduated from some kind of professional school. They fully recognize the power an education can give a person and worked hard themselves to give their children what they did not have. That’s not the norm in this village at all. All that and they’re just nice to be around, I feel very lucky to be living with them.

Papa Molefi loves soccer and I’ve spent lots of time watching games with him on TV. His team is the “Orlando Pirates” (Orlando in SA, go figure). There are two major teams in the country- the Pirates and the Kaiser Chiefs- and their rivalry is SERIOUS. It’s one of the first questions people will ask you, “Chiefs or Pirates?” and they’ll size you up from there. People love soccer more than their mothers. I was on the fence about who I like more but it took about five seconds of being in his presence while watching a game for me to become an unequivocal Pirates fan for life. His enthusiasm is infectious.

School is going well. Peace Corps calls the first three months at site “Phase II: The Integration Phase,” (we call it “lockdown,” affectionately of course). During integration, I’m not technically supposed to teach or start any significant projects. I’ve been given weekly assignments by Peace Corps which are supposed to facilitate my getting to know the teachers, the way the school runs, and other important aspects of the community. The idea is not to rush into anything so a PCV can make good decisions about how to spend their two years. I have to find out what the school and the community want and need, and what they’re willing to work with me to create, otherwise they won’t be invested in the projects once I’m gone and no real sustainable change will have been created.

Having said that, it’s a little impossible not to want to get started and hit the ground running. I’ve started teaching English to grades 4, 5 and 6 a couple days a week and I like it. The feeling I get after a good lesson is a great one. In January, when the new school year begins, I’ll start teaching for real with my own classes everyday. We also decided it’d be best for the beginning of the sports program to coincide with the new school year too- for now it’s just pickup games and lots of high fives from elementary school soccer ballas. I observe a lot of classes too. My favorite thing to do is sit in on the kindergarten class; you would not believe how fun it is to yell out the days of the week and count to 100 in Setswana with a bunch of six year olds. Speaking of which, Setswana learning is going well. I study it a lot and try my best in every conversation. Everyone is so encouraging and immediately impressed with what I’ve learned, no matter how many mistakes I make. It’s the same the world over, people will always be happy you’re trying. I’ve got such a looong way to go, I decided I’m going to keep at it til I reach honorary Afreeekahn sistah status.

The teachers are really nice. They are all women besides one man. I feel like I’m walking into a women’s club every morning in the office- they’re a funny bunch of ladies. The principal is great too, she’s very committed to the school. I’ve enjoyed getting to know them more and more. I can tell they’re warming up to me and watching out for me, which is a good feeling. That’s one of my biggest priorities right now, because building relationships with everyone as best as I can is the only way to get anything done, not to mention it makes life significantly more enjoyable on a day to day basis.

I’ve learned a lot about the South African education system in the past couple months. The good, the bad, the ugly. One example: After 3rd grade, all instruction and testing switches to English from the home language (in my village it’s Setswana). The problem is that the students are never really taught how to speak or read English properly before the switch because there are not enough teachers who can teach it correctly. They end up losing the ability to read and write in their home language without really acquiring the ability to do it in English either. A large percentage of South African students are illiterate, they manage to go from grade to grade without ever learning how to read. They can’t pass tests, not because they’re stupid, but because they can’t read or understand the material that they’re being tested on. The school holds them back a couple times, (there is a 6 foot 2 seventeen year old MAN in the sixth grade at my school), then just fudge the grades and let the kids pass so they can be someone else’s problem. Its craaazzzzzy to witness. Most kids drop out before they finish high school as well. For these reasons and about a hundred more, I want to start teaching. I’m not a certified teacher and I sure haven’t been doing it for long, but already I know I’m capable of helping them with their language skills, just listening to a native speaker can make a big difference.

The other major problem is the lack of support from students’ home environments. The majority of parents are illiterate, they don’t own any books, they can’t help their kids with their homework, they can’t pay school fees, sometimes they can hardly feed their kids. A significant population of the students have lost both their parents to AIDS or something else and a lot of those kids have little brothers and sisters at home that rely on them for survival, so education is understandably not a priority. There are also very limited prospects for their futures even if students do graduate high school. No one in my village works. There are literally no places to work besides the school and the one convenience store. Entire extended families live off a government pension of 1000 Rand (70 US dollars) that comes once a month. What I’m trying to say is that there isn’t a lot to motivate the students to care about school, so a lot of them don’t, and I honestly can’t blame them.

I’m probably sounding super pessimistic but it’s not all hopeless. Some of the kids at my school are really good kids with a desire to learn and to make something of themselves, and like I said before, there are a lot of books and other resources laying around that can be put to good use. These problems aren’t unique to Africa. They can be found at any inner city school in the United States, they’re universal. The only way to fight the system is to lower my expectations, minimize my scope, focus on one group of kids at a time, and try not to be so hard on myself when I don’t see immediate results. So that’s what I’m going for. If a couple kids learn to read, or learn to love reading, or learn to speak English a little better, or learn SOMETHING from me, I’ll be happy.

Two weeks ago school was out for “Spring Break” so I had a fun time gallivanting across the Northern Cape with PCV friends. Seven of us met up and traveled to one guy’s site for a couple days to camp in the mountains nearby. We received many warnings from the locals, and from the chief of the village himself, about the snake monsters and mermaid sirens that live in the mountains (S. African stories and legends are like nothing I've heard before—too crazy/awesome/irrational/entertaining), but we decided to brave the unknown and take our chances. Instead of mermaids and snakes, we found lots of cows, a couple monkeys, beautiful views and some good times. From there we traveled to a game reserve to do some more hiking and camping closer to where I live. In the course of the week we had our own personal meeting with the chief of a village, spent a very eventful and interesting night in the hospital when my friend Andrew got lockjaw, met and were completely spoiled with drinks and food by a very nice Afrikaner couple, were interviewed and published in the local newspaper, slept under the stars, hitchhiked multiple times... The whole week was a blast. I don’t think I stopped laughing for more than two minutes at a time. After a couple weeks in the village, it was so nice to be with people who totally get me, with no language or cultural barrier dividing us. I love riding in near broken down buses and trucks and taxis, gorgeous landscapes to my left and right, with friends (and sometimes chickens) next to me. We get a lot of vacation time which is really sweet cause I’ve got toooo many trips in my head that I want to do and nothing holding me back besides my meager bank account but that's never stopped me before and I’m not gonna let it now ;)

The pace of life is much slower here. Everyone operates on “African time,” which was one of the first things I learned about upon my arrival. African time means that if someone says they’ll be somewhere at 12, they probably mean 3. It means no one is in a rush to do anything. It means the littlest things take weeks to get done. It means sometimes school ends at 10AM on Fridays, just because. People walk slowly. They stop and have long conversations with each other on the road. They visit each other’s houses to sit on the porch and gossip at any time of day. Of course it can be a negative thing in excess, but I think there's something to be said for approaching life like this. They take each moment as it comes, largely concerned with what's happening now and not what's coming later.  It’s very different from the “rush rush rush, if you're not busy you’re lazy, sleep when you’re dead” work mentality of the US. I figure years of my life will be spent multitasking and being insanely productive and stressed out. Here, there’s no place for any of that and I’m happily adjusting.

Highlights of a normal weekday include: waking up as the sun is rising (which a couple months ago would have made me want to murder someone but now it’s routine), drinking coffee on the back porch with Mama and Papa Molefi who have already been up for at least an hour. Throughout the course of the day someone usually asks me if I’m married, why not, and will I marry them/their son/their grandson/their neighbor. It was funny to me in the beginning but now it’s getting old, I’m considering just marrying one of them so it’ll stop…kidding.  I usually have a couple visitors after school, students from the high school who come over for help with their homework. This I like very much for two reasons: One, that they care enough to ask for help, and two, because I can see if they’re actually getting it much better one on one. Then I usually go for a run, which I’ve been doing way more than I ever did at home- something about this African soil’s got me itching to go go go. It’s the part of my day where I feel the most in control and the most free. I signed up for a half marathon in March so I gotta start training for that sometime. It’s a PC fundraiser that nearly all of us are doing, should be awesome! Then it’s all about taking it easy, either with a good book, with a movie, with email writing or music listening or news reading or quality fam time. We watch “Generations” together every night. “Generations” is the most famous and loved South African soap opera and nearly every family in this country stops what they’re doing to watch it at 8:00. It’s dramatic and ridiculous but strangely addicting, and it’s half in English and half in Setswana with subtitles so it’s great for my language learning. I usually end the night by wishing myself and all the bugs and other living things in my room sweet dreams.

Somehow, things have gotten themselves off to a great start. The longer I live here, the more sure I am that I can make this life work for me. I know I can have an impact and I know I’ll be impacted in good and important ways. I keep waiting for the “what the F am I doing here?!?!?” moment, that devastating moment of utter and complete freakout and uncertainty, but it hasn’t come and I’m hoping it never does. I’m where I’m supposed to be, under these African skies…

Wishing you all the best! with love.