week 4

So we are in our fourth week of training which means we are about halfway through! Actually we are a little past halfway because training seems to fizzle out during the seventh week and then week 8 will be devoted to going to the PC office in Pretoria and getting stuff that we need for our permanent site move-in. But I’m definitely getting into a routine here and everything is starting to feel more and more familiar! I’m even starting to find a soft spot for doing everything out of buckets (bathing, laundry, even a pee bucket for the night!), so moral of the story is that I think if I try hard enough I can really get used to anything!

Last week was definitely a good one! We had 2 school visits, one where I observed a teacher in her class and then the next day I “team-taught” a class with this girl Zita. The observation was really interesting… the school we are in is actually one of the top-ranked high schools of its kind (as in, it competes with the scores of some white schools) and the teacher I observed was the deputy principal. Because of this I expected this class to maybe not follow the pattern of bad teaching that we have been learning about. But in fact it was a textbook example of the effect Bantu education has had on these teachers. It was an 11th grade English class and she was having them read this article on HIV/AIDS.. obviously something that could have been a really interesting class! But instead she just kind of had them silently read it, and then instead of checking to see if the understood the content, vocab, etc, she just preached to them for 30 minutes about how abstinence is the only way to go and that condoms are pointless. Luckily I did not witness any corporal punishment, this school seems to be opposed to it in their school policy (it’s illegal but practiced in many schools).

We taught the next day in another 11th grade English class and it was really fun! It was with a different teacher who teaches literature mostly, so we did a short story that they had been working on for a couple days. We had about 4-5 students whose English was absolutely flawless, so it was a little hard to get the others to speak up. It’s possible that they were maybe the only ones who could understand us and our different accent though! Overall it was a great experience, I would absolutely love to teach at that level of English – it would be very interesting!

This weekend we went to the Apartheid museum in Soweto, which is the biggest township in Joberg. It was definitely one of the better, but definitely most depressing museums I’ve been to. I found it really interesting to see the Bantu education stuff, because the pictures of classrooms from the apartheid era they were showing honestly weren’t that much different than the ones we have been in. There’s definitely still a long way to go in that respect. Afterwards we got to go to a mall in Joberg!! I had a veggie burger and fries at the food court, and it was just amazing. We didn’t have time to do much shopping though, so I only got a couple of little things. The weekend was kind of brought down by the fact that I have been suffering from my first round of sickness, along with many others in our group. It seems to be a flu with the body aches, chills, fever, and inability to keep food down combined with a cough coming really deep from my lungs. Every day it seems like 4 or 5 more people get it, pretty inevitable when we spend all of our time together and don’t really have the capacity to wash our hands as much as we’d like. Luckily everything seems to have gone away for me except for the cough and throwing up, hopefully that’ll be next! Too many new sicknesses and germs to get used to…

This week we have 2 more school visits, one where I teach a class alone (!!) and then another we do something with the school that shares American culture, we haven’t decided what we’re going to do yet though. Should be fun! At the end of next week we have our site announcements and then the week after is our site visits so we can get to know where we will be living! I’m pretty excited to find all of this out and be done with training…

Thanks for the mail!! It seems like it takes about 8-15 days for something to get to me, which isn’t too bad. Oh also I forgot to tell you my Setswana name – “Lorato”, which means love. They just think it is hilarious and awesome that a white person would have a setswana name, it’s pretty funny! You can still address my mail to Kristin though, haha. Anyways hope things are great at home!

Realllly long update!

Sunset we saw from the airplane upon arrival in Joberg!


Dumelang!

Things here in S.A. are just moving right along! We are in our third week of training, which actually sounds kind of crazy because they’ve really packed a lot of things into a fairly short amount of time, it feels like we have been here forever already.

The first week was spent in the dorms at the Marapyane education college, which is actually one of many abandoned teacher training colleges around the country since they decided teachers should be trained at the regular universities. The first night we arrived we were greeted with song and dance from our LCF’s (Language and Cultural Facilitators) followed by a traditional South African meal… a perfect welcome to Africa! We’ve been in our host families ever since in the villages surrounding the college.

Our training consists of General Peace Corps Policy and medical stuff, Setswana language, and technical training – everything education related. Before we really got into the technical stuff we had a lot of sessions on the history of South Africa, a lot about the apartheid and where we fit in in post-apartheid SA, history of the South African education system, etc. A big part of our role here will be helping implement the Outcomes Based Education system that was part of South Africa’s transition into a democracy. OBE is pretty much the system we are used to in the States – just the basic idea of having set goals and ways of assessment for every subject at every grade. During the apartheid era the black Africans were only educated under the “Bantu Education” system which kept blacks far behind white schools in every subject and prevented them from gaining any higher education. This created generations of black Africans (80% of the population) that couldn’t be anything more than laborers or domestic workers. So even though it has been 15 years since the apartheid government was overthrown, many of the teachers were raised and educated under this system and are therefore not familiar with what OBE looks like. Many are not equipped to teach the subjects to which they are assigned and some haven’t even had the proper schooling that is required to teach. This is also coupled with the fact that many of teachers are suffering from or have died of HIV/AIDS, resulting in a huge lack of teachers.

Basically we are learning that the problems facing schools here are plentiful and they don’t stop with the teachers. There is a really big issue with teens getting pregnant and becoming infected with HIV/AIDS. Many of their parents are forced to leave and work in Joberg or Pretoria, leaving the kids without supervision or a strong mentor and even leaving some with younger siblings to take care of. And let’s not leave out the severe lack of resources due to economic disparities in rural areas and the problem with corporal punishment practiced in many of the schools. Basically we have our work cut out for us!

Many of the PCV’s that are part of previous groups have been helping with aspects of the training and given us a good idea of what to expect at our permanent sites. We swear in on Sept. 17 and have about 3 months at out site to just feel it out, develop our bearings and connections in the community, and learn as much as we can about the schools, after which we decide what we want our focus to be depending on their needs. Right now I am doing my school visits (part of technical training) in a secondary school, but whether I work in a primary, middle, or high school will largely depend on which school has the biggest need and where I can be the most help. I might even end up teaching something other than English (many end up doing math, science, health, geography, etc. just because there may not be someone else who is qualified) just depending on the situation in the school. I indicated that I would prefer starting out primarily teaching – I think this will give me a good opportunity to really get to know the schools, students and teachers before I start trying to make any changes in the school itself. I think ideally I would teach English in middle school – mostly because primary school can get pretty difficult with the lack of English knowledge and the high schoolers often think I’m 16 and not a teacher. But who knows – I think I could find positives in any of these situations! Some PCVs decide that they would rather focus on HIV/AIDS education, getting a resourced library, teaching IT, alternatives to corporal punishment, training teachers and holding workshops on OBE, or extracurricular activities and projects. I think the great thing about the flexibility of the SCRP (school/community resource project) is that it really is tailored to meet the actual needs of a community…

Wow, only as I’m writing this am I realizing how much we have really learned in these last few weeks! It’s been great though, our group is extremely diverse and intelligent and they are really fun to work with on all this! Most of our training is done by South Africans (many who were previously teachers/principals) so I think we’re getting a pretty solid knowledge base to prepare us to go into our communities.

Adapting to our host families has been a crazy experience. Mine is very nice – my host mother is a woman named Elisabeth and her son Thabiso is 16. She, like many of the women in rural areas, works in Pretoria as a domestic worker and lives there during the week with her older son (who I haven’t met). Thabiso is a really polite and smart kid who actually goes to the high school that I do some of my training at. One thing I’ve definitely noticed about students here is that no matter the extreme lack of resources at their schools, they are way more eager and ready to make something of their lives than students in the states. It’s very inspiring!!! But the housing situation has been fine, because of our differing schedules I mostly cook my own food and allows me a little more independence which is great! Thabiso is also a great resource for me – im learning all sorts of things about challenges facing students in South Africa and the students’ vies on education itself. My host mom came home this weekend, so I decided to go with them to a confirmation of one of the cousins in the family on Sunday. What a CRAZY experience. It involved getting up at 5 in the morning, long walk to the taxi and then my first “koombie” ride, a nearly 6 hour hot, stuffy, African Catholic church service (of which I only really understood the words “modimo” – god, and “tshegofatso” – blessing), and a crazy party after with thumping techno music (yes, techno… not quite the African music I was expecting). I was also required to go around and greet EVERYONE there, and be stared and gawked at for hours. Definitely got a lot of pointing at me with people yelling “lekoa!!!” (white person). I got home around 6 pm to the comfort of my bed, and I have pretty much decided it was one of the longest, most exhausting days of my life. It’s crazy how much culture shock and the inability to communicate can take out of you! So, I don’t think I will be going to church very often but at least I got a great cultural experience! I think the anthropologist in me is definitely coming out in this whole experience…

Anyways I guess I don’t have to write a novel for you all to read! There is still so much to say, this is by far the craziest, most challenging and incredible I have ever done… maybe that I ever will do! Internet usage has been sporadic, but hopefully more updates are to come soon! This week we are shadowing teachers in our high school and then team-teaching a class so it should be fun! I honestly can’t wait to see what this whole experience has in store for me – it really is different for every person that goes through it.

I'll try to update more soon! Miss you all and hope everything is going great stateside :)