A new post for you the interested few

about some happenings here in the southern hemisphere

It’s so flipping hot, Colorado legalized pot??

I miss you all A LOT

ok gonna stop this rhyme before you lose your mind…

;)

My school re-opened at the end of September. No road has been started or even planned as far as I know so everyone is in the same spot as before, big surprise. It’s complicated to explain how the strike was able to go on so long in the first place. There were threats of burning schools and intimidation by coercive men but parents and teachers were also complicit in a sense for not doing anything to change the situation. The principals and teachers were still getting their paychecks so there wasn’t much incentive for them to stand up in opposition to the strikers. I get it, they’re tired and someone handed them an unexpected vacation-- being a teacher is HARD work especially out here where the fruits of your labor are rarely ever seen or acknowledged. School in the village isn’t an avenue for a child to equip themselves with knowledge to succeed in the world like it should be. It’s a past time, a space for kids to be kids and if they happen to learn something throughout the day it was probably an accident anyway.

One of the biggest problems with the education system is the huge disconnect between what the national and provincial governments think the rural areas kids can handle and what they actually can. The same curriculum that challenges white children in the suburbs of Cape Town will never ever be even remotely appropriate for kids in the villages. I use a modified version of the fourth grade curriculum for sixth grade and even that is far too advanced. Fourth grade has them writing plays and debating social issues when some kids can’t even read and have no concept of what a story is, let alone a play. The gap only widens when something like the strike happens disrupting what little learning momentum they had. After three months without regular schooling, whatever progress they made in the year has been erased, it was like starting over from January. The provincial education department came up with a “recovery plan” to make up for the months lost by synthesizing the most important lessons and concepts from the time missed and the time left before the school year ends on December 7^th. They mandated longer school hours during the week and tried to make Saturday school happen but the teachers’ unions nixed that. The recovery plan implemented in this area, even more so than the regular curriculum, is way too ambitious. I want the government officials in charge of making education policy to sit in a village classroom for an hour cause I’d bet you my first born child they never have.

I could say a lot more about this but thinking and writing about it makes me tired. Watching the strike unfold gave me some more perspective as to how unstable the entire country is. Around that time the 34 striking miners were killed by the police in Marikana and other strikes and protests were erupting. It was almost as if you could feel an energy pulsing through the country. The government’s ruling party is messing up big time, people are starting to notice and resentment is starting to build. The ANC has created a small elite that largely ignores the needs of the rest of the country, especially the rural areas, because they’re too busy filling their pockets and driving around in slick new cars. White South Africans have been upset about the ANC for a long time but black South Africans are starting to rise up as the gap between rich and poor gets wider. According to the World Bank and the Gini index, SA is one of the most unequal societies in the world. It’s difficult for a lot of people to challenge the ANC, in their minds and with their voices, because it is the party of Nelson Mandela and the long walk to freedom. But if they keep up their current practices something crazy is going to happen in the next couple years. A lot of western countries point to South Africa as a beacon of hope, of racial and economic success in Africa. People love the story of SA, rising from the ashes of Apartheid as a rainbow nation committed to democracy and human rights. Not to say that there isn’t truth in that narrative, but in my opinion it is no longer a foregone conclusion that South Africa will continue on an upward trajectory. I see it as teetering on an edge with the chance of going either way, imploding or prospering. I can’t explain this as well as I want to but there was an article in the Economist a couple weeks ago that hits the nail on the head if anyone is interested: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21564829-it-has-made-progress-becoming-full-democracy-1994-failure-leadership-means   Don’t worry Peace Corps hasn’t managed to take away all my idealism, but after 16 months some cynicism is inevitable. This country is filled with millions of good people doing good things, but if they want a better future for their children the political situation will have to change.

Despite the problems related to the strike, since school re-opened I’m feeling the most confident I’ve felt as a teacher. My kids have been very well-behaved lately, it’s kinda freaking me out. I know their individual personalities really well after all this time and I’m happy with how my relationship with each of them has evolved. We’ve done some cool stuff lately like made drawings for December’s World Aids Day and exchanged letters with the people my aunt works with in a halfway home in Virginia. They were so excited to get their own personal letters one of them cried. Journals are still a hit, they love writing in them almost as much as I love writing in mine. Day to day it’s easy to block out the larger issues and negativity. I try to focus on each day, each lesson, each kid and go from there.

I applied for a grant from PEPFAR two weeks ago. It’s a $1000 grant from the US government to be used for HIV/AIDS education and prevention endeavors. Three other volunteers and I are planning a GLOW  (“Girls Leading Our World”) camp for the girls in our schools in March. It’s going to be a four day girls’ empowerment camp with crafts and games, interactive lessons about important topics like HIV transmission and protection, gender roles, sexual abuse, good decision-making skills etc. GLOW is done by volunteers in lots of Peace Corps countries, I’ve talked with a couple people who said it was the best part of their service. The four of us are excited about it. I know it will be so worth it despite all the work we’ve done and will have to do to pull it off. The need for information about health and safety is so crucial. The week I turned in the grant a sixth grade girl at my school was raped by a twenty year old guy. It was mentioned at a staff meeting, not in an off-handed way, but not with the sensitivity and significance I thought it deserved. The scary truth behind the teachers’ response is that it happens more often than I want to admit. My counterpart who will come to the camp with me is the life-skills teacher, I respect her a lot. She told me that the girl remembered from her life-skills class that she shouldn’t wash herself before she went to the police. That was huge to me, and I hope for the teacher as well. They caught the guy who did it, don’t know what’s going to happen to him but I hope it involves rotting in hell. Development and empowerment work when directed at girls and women can be immensely successful because of their integral roles in their families and the community. The camp will be a small response to a big big problem, so much more is needed to build up the new generation of women to protect their bodies and respect themselves, but I hope it will give the girls who come information and skills they will use and pass on.

Soccer is going great. The district games ended for the year so I wanted to find a way for them to keep playing. Melissa, a friend of mine who lives about forty minutes north of me, has a school team too so we were brainstorming how we could get them together. School funds paid for the cost of transport and food to the district games so I just assumed it’d be easy to get funding for a friendly match. Negative. My principal not only said it wasn’t possible to use school money for non district games but also that there aren’t supposed to be any extra-curricular activities until next year due to the strike recovery schedule. I was like whaaaaa?? Soccer is the one thing the boys get really excited about and the bogus rules really got to me. I personally talked to some important person from the district office about our specific situation and waiving the no extra-curricular rule for Saturday games-- he said yes! I kept my principal in the loop so she didn’t feel like I was going over her head. Melissa and I tried to fundraise, we asked the boys to bring money but the most they could scrape together was 10 rand a person (about $1.30). We advertised taking pictures of the kids with my camera and printing them for 20 rand, making a profit of 10 rand each photo. (Everyone LOVES pictures of themselves cause no one has any. My dad took a bunch when he was here and mailed them to me in a package, when I gave them out it was like Christmas morning.) We raised some money with the pictures but not enough. Both of us were about to throw in the towel when it hit me to email the NGO that does development work in this area. One email, two paragraphs, and they gave me 6000 rand (about 700 USD) to be used for soccer related expenses for the rest of my service. F YEAH. so exciting. They gave me a little less than the PEPFAR grant without the 17 page grant application. Our gameday was awesome. We organized transport and lunch and Melissa’s school performed a traditional dance for us. The dancing was incredible. The teams were evenly matched and the level of soccer played was impressive. Her team is coming to my village next weekend for another game, everyone is pumped. I can now plan more games and buy new balls and soccer nets, a little money can go such a long way.

I’ve been doing a lot of work for the NGO that gave me the money for soccer, the Kalahari Education Experience. They are making progress with the plans for the orphanage that’s going to be built on the school grounds. Things are taking way longer than they projected but I’m not at all surprised. The KEE found an SA mining company based in Johannesburg willing to fund all the building and construction (including, so they say, water access for the orphanage and the school.. this is me not getting too optimistic but I HOPE it works out) so the funds the Australians’ have raised can be used for non construction related expenses like furniture, appliances, school books, maintenance etc. I’m learning alllll about how much work goes into a project like this, how to make it sustainable, the limits of what can be achieved by development work in poor regions of the world. The construction is the easy part, keeping it running, making sure the community takes ownership of its progress, and manages the money required to run it properly, are going to be a few of the many challenges in the future. I’ve inadvertently become a building/construction/planning authority which is just as much of a joke as it sounds. The Australians want the village to be involved in the decision making process but that isn’t as straight forward as it sounds. Decisions need to be made about the type of construction material to use, the blueprint layout, the rules for the orphans, the criteria for who gets to stay and for how long, different budgets for all sorts of things etc. The emails keep coming and they’re all addressed to me because I’m the only one with internet. It’s been difficult to be the bridge between the two worlds: the high standards of a functioning first world NGO with expectations and goals and a need for answers, and the reality of what can be accomplished in the village. It’s tough getting straight answers out of Africans regarding what they are going to do tomorrow let alone what they think of the dimensions for the new floor plan someone far away just came up with. I end up making lots of decisions myself which isn’t sustainable or the way it should be, but I’m at a loss for how to balance the expectations of everyone involved. I’m still trying to figure my role out, to set boundaries about what I will do and what I can’t because what happens when I leave in July and there’s no one to answer those emails ? I want to help however I can because I believe in the project but I’m sensitive to the fact that I could be creating future problems by doing so much now. Life lessons left and right I tell ya.

The first week of October I went to Pretoria for Mid-Service Training (MST), a milestone that sounded light years away when I first got to site. SA24 back together, it was a great week. Half the week was spent in sessions, half in doctors’ appointments… half at happy hour haha. The sessions were basically just revisiting stuff we’ve gone over tons of times- stress coping mechanisms, mental health strategies, planning for the second year, safety and security. We were informed about the national plan in place for when Nelson Mandela dies because when it happens it’s going to be madness. It even has a name, WHAM: “What Happens After Mandela.” I keep waiting to see WHAM news headlines and to get a text message from PC that says something like “Brace yourselves, It’s happening.” The man is getting old and I feel like it could happen any day now. I’m not saying I want it to happen (seriously I’m not) but I wouldn’t mind being called to the capital to hang out with Barack and Michelle and all the other foreign dignitaries who would attend the funeral if he did. Just sayin. I went to the doctor’s for a physical and the dentist for teeth cleaning. The dentist we went to was very fancy. I was feeling super first world until the power went out in the waiting room and I remembered what continent I’m on. It’s the same dentist that Bono uses when he’s busy saving Africa, I was hoping we’d run into each other but no such luck. I’m a healthy girl, no cavities and proud of it. Only problem I’ve been having is with my IT band and my left knee, it bothers me every time I run and sometimes when I walk. I got xrays and went to a physical therapist but there isn’t much to do besides some exercises and icing every day. I’m hoping it’ll go away soon.

I applied to a bunch of Master’s programs the past couple months. It was super satisfying to click submit every time. It was quite a feat without regular internet on my computer, I feel like I’ve earned my diploma already. Most of the schools are in Washington DC cause that’s where I want to be, in the center of the things I care about the most. I feel good about my decision to go back to school, I’m just as sure about this as I was about the Peace Corps, and that’s really all you can ask for in big life decisions.

Researching programs and filling out applications has got me daydreaming about my future American life, the post PC apocalypse. I can’t wait til my problems are like .. “shit I don’t want to write this 30 page paper and I’m out of coffee” instead of  “F this storm, parts of my ceiling just fell on me” which happened last week. Thank you, rainy season. I know I’m idealizing, that problems exist in the States too… even if I can’t think of any right now haha. I’m not wishing the time away, I’m not ready to be finished yet. When this is over there are things that I already know I’ll miss so I’m trying to actively enjoy them. Stuff like the ritual of sitting in my doorway at sunset and the quiet nights punctuated by occasional drum beats. On Saturday morning I went to a funeral and listened to three hundred people sing beautifully in a graveyard, that kind of emotion and community isn’t as easily found other places. I truly cannot wait until washing machines re-enter my life but I do enjoy the small sense of accomplishment I feel when I’ve finally pinned the last piece of hand washed clothing on the line. Living at the mercy of the elements usually totally blows--when it rains I can’t run or do my wash or use electricity, when it’s hot I can’t sleep or stop sweating or breathe for that matter, when it’s windy the entire Kalahari blows through the cracks in my room. But all of that has given me more flexibility and patience to adapt to my physical environment as best as I can, and a different kind of respect for mother nature. She calls the shots and I know it. Also, later when I am just as poor as I am now I’ll have no legitimate excuse.

 Year 2 is already picking up speed. I was told over and over again that the second year would be much easier and faster than the first, that it takes a whole year to integrate before you hit your stride and start to see something come of your efforts. I didn’t think it would apply to me but around the time school opened things got easier. It will never actually be easy, but it feels like things are coming together in a way they hadn’t before. Every little success isn’t such a struggle like it used to be. I feel more capable of accomplishing the things I want to and more aware of what I want those accomplishments to be. I’ve known from the beginning that I’d find a way to make it through to the end, but for the first time I can actually envision what the other side will be like. There’s about 9 months left, so basically I just have to have a metaphorical PC baby and then I’m golden. The US will be waiting for me when I get home, I have faith it’ll still be standing. There was a mildly important election that took place last week and I know the man who won has got things under control ;)

lots and lots of Love