officialy a pcv!

Dumelang ditsala (friends)!!!

Time for another long update on my life here in S.A. THings are going really well here, and I am very safe, healthy and happy - what more could I ask for? The past few weeks have been really crazy and awesome, so I'll split this entry into sections for your organized viewing pleasure....

Last days of training

The end of training was super fun and bittersweet. We took our language, safety, cultural, medical, and technical tests, which sounds a lot worse than it was. In my opinion all you had to do was just be present during the 8-week training and you'd be fine. I got "high intermediate" on the Setswana test which pretty much just means I was able to have a coherent conversation.. though after moving into my village this is much much harder than it was at training. The last Saturday we had a farewell party at the college with all of the trainees and their host families. We had a big lunch (chicken, pap, potato salad, beets, coleslaw, and custard - pretty much your typical S. African feast), some speeches from the trainers, and we sang both national anthems. That tuesday we went to Pretoria to visit the Peace Corps office, which was awesome because I got to stock up on like 10 books from the resource center. Then we got to do our shopping for our site move-ins - I got my internet phone and some basic household things for my room (dishes, basins, etc.) Tuesday night about 10 of us decided to stay in the dorms at the college to swap files on our hard drives and have one last hang out. We made a campfire and shared some yummy snack we got in Pretoria - it was a really fun night!

Swear-in

Wednesday we travelled to Mafikeng with all of our luggage and new purachases (stressful!) for the swearing-in ceremony. It was at the Mmabatho Palms resort, which super swanky and awesome. Hot showers, a bar, delicious buffet meals, and all of the PCTs together for the last time! It was so much fun, definitely a little bittersweet though. We had the ceremony after breakfast on Thursday. I think this was one of my favorite days so far.. it sounds cheesy, but it was pretty inspirational to hear the country director, our trainers, representatives from the Department of Education, and the Ambassador. Speaking of whom... he's from Boulder and we had a little geek out session on the gloriuos state of Colorado. Yeah no big deal, just kickin it with the ambassador! From there we travelled with our supervisors to our villages...



Home sweet home!

So I have been in my village for about 5 days now and I am really starting to get into the swing of things and feel at home here. The people here have been incredibly warm and welcoming - I can't even go outside my house without someone waving to me and yelling "Dumela Lorato!!", no matter how far away they are. Yep, Peace Corps has totally given me celebrity status. I have actually really enjoyed getting into my routines here. I've begun to love the sounds of our sheep (which is ALL DAY LONG), watching donkey carts go by outside my window, fetching water at the community tap (literally, this is my favorite daily routine for some reason..), and not to mention I have perfected my bucket-bathing skills. I have also been trying to run on a regular basis, not just for exercise but also for something to keep me busy and a way for me to be seen in my community. I really like to go on the main streatch of gravel road to the next village (where my other school is) and back, which turns out to be about 6km - I'm glad I brought my trail runners as there is no paved road for miles and the roads here are really bumpy and rocky! Sometimes this can be a very mentally exhausting task - I can't go very far without people yelling at me, running out of their house to greet me, kids running with me, and sometimes even cars completely stopping to figure out what I'm doing. I'm sure this will ease with time though. I've really started to love all of the time I have to myself (especially on weekends). This will probably be challenging at times but for now I'm loving reading (my books are dimishing at an astonishing rate... HINT HINT if you ever want to send something ;) ), journaling like crazy, listening to music, and cleaning my room (I'm weird, I know)!

Food

Many of you have been asking what the food situation is like for me here - and I'm happy to report it is much better than I ever expected joining the Peace Corps! The S. African cuisine in the rural areas pretty much consists of porridge (made from cornmeal and water), pap (also cornmeal and water) and meat (we're talking every part of the animal - brains. feet, the works). Needless to say, because SA has fully stocked American-style grocery stores in the towns, most volunteers opt to buy their own food and cook for themselves, as I have. This way I can eat what I want and continue being a vegetarian. So mostly I have been eating a lot of yogurt and granola (which I hope to start making myself soon...), fruits, oatmeal, rica and beans in any form, eggs, and potatos. Oh yeah, and I am a fully addicted to peanut butter, at any time of the day. Not bad overall!!

My shcools!

This week marks the end of Term 3, so the learners go on break for a week tomorrow. This week I am spending at Mecwetsaneng Primary (the one in my village) and when school reopens I will begin at my other school (Baduana Primary). I have literally loved every second of being in the schools so far. My supervisor - Mma Magketla - is one of the most wonderful people I have ever met and has been great in helping me get the hang of things at school. Yesterday I spent the whole day with Grades 2 and 3 (taught by the lovely Mma Modise) and had so much fun - there is nothing in the world cuter than these kids! Today I spent with the Grade 7 class, taught by the only male educator Rra Meremintsi. At first the kids were really shocked to have me around and were pretty shy but now that they are more used to me they get SO excited anytime I'm nearby. Like today when I decided to sit with the Grade 7s they started cheering when I walked into the room! haha I'm telling you... im a total celeb. These two great girls from grade 6, Oratile and Lerato, like to wait for me at the community tap by my house so that they can walk with me to school in the morning, it's so so cute. I'm still not positiver what projects I will focus on once I am out of this 3 month "lock down" phase, but as of late I'm thinking I will do a world map project where you get paint supplies donated and paint a big world map on the outside of the school. They also have a school garden that rocks, but they have only been winning 3rd prize in the school garden competitions and next year they want to shoot for first, so I'll have to think of ways to help with that. These are all the small projects I will do though, I'm still not sure whether I will jump into teaching or focus on teacher training or what. I think I can help them get a computer lab and maybe a library though, so maybe I'll start there. For sre they need a lot of help with literacy and maths (not a typo!), so I'll be focusing on that. For the next few weeks I am going to take pictures of all of the students and their teachers and put up posters in the classrooms with all of their pictures... this really excited them as some have never seen a picture of themselves! I really want to spend these first couple months working on getting the kids self esteem up.. this is really an issue with S. African kids! They have virtually no positive reinforcement in the classroms, and everytime they do anything slightly wrong they are either scloded verbally or hit. I have yet to actually witness the corporal punishment but I have heard the educators threaten it, and everytime you go near a child they flinch like you are about to beat them. It's really sad, so I really want to put my energy into having fun with the learners and giving them some postivity in their lives!


So as you can probably tell, things are are going quite well and I'm really excited to see what the future holds! I feel really lucky to be in such a safe, welcoming community - and one that really wants me to be here. Sometimes the tasks before me seem really daunting, but I'm sure it will be easier to visualize solutions to the problems once I've been here a little longer. I see why they put us here for two years though... development is a very slow and long process!

End of training!!

Hello from Mzanzi!

I just got back from my site visit and had a pretty crazy week! During site announcements our group was broken up based on whether we were going to live in the Northern Cape or the Northwest Province, then they told us a little bit about our villages and what our shopping town is. My village is in the Northern Cape about 35 km east of Kuruman, which is the shopping town I share with about 12 other volunteers placed in the province. Monday my group left for our supervisor’s workshop, which was 3 days at a hotel outside of Kuruman so we could get to know the principals we are working with. This was really a lot of fun because the hotel was really nice and we got really good meals, hot showers, and a really good view of the hills just by Kuruman… an unusual site as it is right in the Kalahari! Oh and there were baboons! Awesome. On Wednesday we all packed up and went with our supervisor to our site.

My village (which I can only tell you the name of in an email… PC policy) is really cute and small, which is nice because typically the smaller the village is the more community-oriented and safe it is. It’s a pretty desolate, barren area, so there is not much to look at, but in my mind its really what I thought Africa would look like so it works for me! There are a couple of slight hills where I am, and right in between them is a small stream with a little bridge over it – which is right down from my house. I guess during the rainy season the water in the stream gets pretty high and the landscape turns green pretty fast so that should be cool. In fact, the name of my village means “Little rivers” because I guess at one point there was a lot more water in the area… not anymore as it is the desert! I’ll post pictures as soon as I decide to take my camera out in my village…

My host family has been really friendly and welcoming, and I think they will be one of the best parts of this whole experience. It’s the Mokhukhedi family, and the main people that live there are the two, very elderly grandparents. They don’t really speak any English but we somehow find ways to communicate and they are just about the two cutest people I have ever seen in my life. The Mokhukhedi family is pretty extensive in the community, it seems like everyone is somehow related. My host “sister” Mpho, the granddaughter, is 30 and we have already become fast friends. She has a 33 year old husband named Dick and a little 6 year old daughter named Onolo. They actually live maybe 20 minutes away in a different village but they are around at my house a lot and even stay there for days at a time sometimes. Onolo (Nolli for short) and I are obviously already best friends! I’ve met many aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. and I’m still not sure what everyone’s names are and how they are related but I guess that will come with time. We live right next door to the chief, who is a very nice man and the added bonus there is that its extra safe when you live next to the chief cause no one messes with him! But like I said, the family has been amazing to me and are so excited to make me a part of their family. They even held a little prayer ceremony right when I got there with some community members to officially “induct” me into their family, so I am now “Lorato Mokhukhedi”. Pretty cool! Haha, this was quickly followed by someone trying to “give me away” to their son to marry and make me officially a Tswana… I respectfully declined indicating I had a boyfriend!

My room is a separate bedroom that’s attached to the front of the house and has a separate entrance. It’s a nice bright pink color, which I totally enjoy. There is electricity but no running water, and thankfully the community tap is not too far from our front gate! And they were telling me that since the tap is on a slight downhill, it will always have water running to it whereas some of the others end up drying out at certain times. I will take pictures of the house once I get back, that will be much easier than trying to explain it all here! It’s a cute house and I’m really comfortable there, so that’s all I can really ask for! Because my room is attached to the house it will be kind of difficult to establish my privacy, but I think if I focus on that right when I move there it should be fine. South Africans seem to do this knock-as-they-enter thing – the concept of privacy is really a different cultural thing here!

I will be working in 2 primary schools, one is the only school in my village and then the other is in the next village over about 4 km away. Luckily one of my schools got bikes donated to it for those who have to travel from other villages and they are going to let me use one to go back and forth between my schools. Both are extremely small and extremely understaffed and don’t have many resources. The one in my village has about 80 learners (in South Africa it’s learners and educators instead of students/teachers) and 4 teachers, and the other has only 40 learners with one teacher other than the principal. So in both cases a huge problem is multi-graded classes… for instance grades 1, 2 and 3 will be in one class together and 4, 5 and 6 in another. The educators are barely present in the classroom because of administrative and family issues that need to be addressed, leaving the learners just sitting in their classes without anything to do! My first term in the schools (3 months) will be spent just observing and figuring out where I can be the most help, but so far I think they really need me to help them do lesson planning that goes along with the OBE system and can deal with 3 or 4 grades in a class… a very daunting task but really needed. They also need to have these lessons planned for the whole year and turn them in to the Dept. of Education, which neither of my schools have been able to do. Each school has a couple of working computers so I think that I will get some programs installed that I can train the educators how to use to make things run more efficiently and effectively. The problems in the schools are numerous though, so I have my work cut out for me! I really do want to help them teach because of the staffing problem, but I’m worried that this really won’t be sustainable at all. If they get used to me filling that space and lightening their load, there isn’t much they can do to keep that going when I leave.

My smaller school actually has some alternative and progressive teaching styles, and they teach the learners traditional Tswana and Zulu dances for their “Arts and Culture”. I got to watch them perform them for an entire afternoon for my first day there, in their costumes and everything! It was really a lot of fun, the principal hooked up a stereo and I got to hear a lot of traditional songs. It’ll take me a little while to learn the dances but they’re convinced I’ll be an expert by the end!

My village is very small (no tar roads and only one very small tuck shop) but I’m not too far from Kuruman, which is a pretty nice little town where I will do my shopping. It’s weird to have the amenities so close by, the comparison of living standards in the rural villages, townships, and towns are still so dramatic, something definitely still leftover from the apartheid era. I think that’s one thing that makes South Africa such a difficult place, there is a crazy contrast between the wealth and poverty. And the poverty is REALLY bad, like a tiny tin shack that you truly wonder if you can stand up in housing 10 people. This is mainly what you see in the shantytowns and townships (in South Africa the pc term is “locations”) outside of the towns, but it’s really visible and very shocking. I will also have to write more later about the race relations in Kuruman itself, it’s pretty crazy to see and much more of a separation than I thought there would be.

This is our last week of training and we have our language testing Thursday and Friday. I think it should go fine, and regardless of how I do I think I will find someone in my village to continue tutoring me so I can become more proficient in the language. I’m beginning to pick up a lot more in conversations but the speaking is still pretty hard. Speaking of which, today is our language test signifying the end of training so I hope it goes well!! MOnday we have a couple more sessions on moving to our sites, Tuesday is shopping day and visit to the PC office in Pretoria, Wednesday we travel to Mafikeng and Thursday is our swear-in ceremony where we officialy become PCVs and then move to our sites! Should be an exciting week!!

I should be getting regular email soon (via my first internet phone, haha the irony...) so keep the updates coming! Love hearing from everyone!