Reflections on IST

In the land of Peace Corps acronyms (which could be a blog post in and of itself), this one stands for In-Service Training. I’m not quite sure if IST is the same in every PC post, but for South African volunteers it’s basically meant to re-group everyone after our 3-month lock down phase, discuss what we learned, challenges we faced, and possible projects for the school year. While some of the sessions were pretty informational, what it really meant for us volunteers was a week of hanging out and having fun, catered meals 3 times a day along with morning AND afternoon tea breaks, and a couple days in Pretoria since most of us cannot make it back to our sites in a day. Overall a very good time was had by all!

We arrived last Friday at a teacher training college in the Mpulanaga Province and training began with a day and a half of language sessions in small groups. This was nice in theory, but to me it seems kind of silly to think we were really supposed “learn” much in this short time. It did help to reinforce and review some grammar points, which are sometimes hard to pick up on when your language learning is almost solely conversational and informal. It did make me realize I should work harder at finding a language tutor in my village, because the potential is there to become really proficient in Setswana. When I first arrived here I made it a point to look for a tutor, but it became sort of half-assed when I realized the only ones jumping on this opportunity were men who wanted the chance to pay me regular “visits”. But perhaps with some more diligent searching I’ll be able to find someone with better intentions!

Other sessions included how to deal with corruption, being a “resilient” volunteer, the state of education in South Africa, cross-cultural issues, and of course got a few more shots! I was hoping for more sessions on things like project design and management, but I guess that comes more at LST (Life Skills Training) in March. It was nice for the new teachers in the group to get some advice and ideas from the more experienced teachers for different activities and methods to use in the classroom!

Of course the week wasn’t all educational, and we took full advantage of every evening we had to all hang out together! Activities included a “PCV” themed costume party, a mini-Gossip Girl marathon, mattress skateboarding in the hallways, a couple giant and epic games of capture the flag on the campus (I have battle wounds to show for it!), a really hilarious talent show, and Peace Corps Prom (obvi). Kinda felt like a big high-school sleepover, but much better! I guess this is what happens after months of little socializing…

We definitely took advantage of our days in Pretoria and lived it up in the first world. Within the two days I was there I saw three movies: The Stepfather, New Moon, and Brothers (in which I cried from beginning to end), gorged myself on pizza, Chinese food, ice cream, and beer, and spent entirely too much time in malls. It was awesome. We also did a lot of file-swapping on our hard drives (yay new movies and music!) and I got about 10 new books to read… not bad!

Now I’m back in the village again, and thankfully this transition has been a lot smoother than the last. IST gave me the little boost of motivation I needed to really get some projects going. These gatherings are great if only for the opportunity to talk with the other volunteers about their sites and get ideas for different projects... it’s great to see what everyone is up to!

So what’s on the horizon as far as projects go? A couple of girls in my area are equally as enthusiastic about doing a girl’s leadership camp for sometime this year, so we are going to start planning that (which I’m super excited about… I’ve heard from other volunteers who have organized this that it was one of the most rewarding things throughout their service!). I am also going to try and start up an after-school girl’s club that focuses on life skills and HIV/AIDS education, along with fun things like crafts and games. Hopefully this week I will start volunteering a few days a week at the adult education program that happens after school – I will gladly accept advice/ideas from anybody with experience teaching adult literacy! I really want to get involved with the clinic and do some sort of community health project, so I am going to make more of an effort to meet the right people who would get involved in something like this. Other than teaching my own classes, I will be using time in school to plan lessons and team-teach with other educators (specifically with Grades 1-3 Numeracy and Grade 4 English), work on putting together a library, and help sort out the administrative mess that both my schools are in by digitalizing their records and documents. I’m sure other projects will come up as the year progresses but I think this will be a good start! Wish me luck!

Ups and downs and back to school

It’s true, the “rollercoaster ride” is a huge reality of life here. While I am overall quite pleased with how life here has taken shape for me, I am a passenger on this ride just about everyday.

Let’s start with vacation: a HUGE up. We’re talking one of the funnest times ever, with awesome people who understand each other, who can effortlessly converse and joke around, in one of the most beautiful places I’ve been to, blacks and whites interacting without shocking stares, etc.

Of course, that area of SA is not without problems. In fact, I would say (at least the area we were in) is more poverty stricken then where we live. Makes me think about how many more provinces the Peace Corps could migrate into to help….

In any case, vacation was really, really awesome and traveling is obviously a huge perk of this job.

Upon returning to the village, I was actually still riding the “up”. I was really happy to be back! I was embraced by my gogo in a big hug, and enjoyed the visits from the villagers asking how my holidays were, why I didn’t bring them anything from America (no matter how many times I say I didn’t leave the country…), or why I didn’t bring any seawater back (why didn’t I THINK of that?!). I was especially pleased that it really felt like I was returning home, thrilled with how comfortable life has become here as I’m coming up on 6 months in SA!

But, of course, after about a day of being back something started to weigh on me and bring me down a bit. I had an entire week in the village with nothing to do before school started, so perhaps it was due to just pure boredom and not having much to do. Maybe it was the sweltering heat, preventing me from even wanting to move, let alone do something productive. This kind of boredom was like nothing I had ever felt before, because there really were productive or useful things I could have been doing. But instead I just kind of paced around, took a lot of sweaty naps, and half-heartedly attempted to get back into my routine. I dunno, maybe it was just a little post-vacation blues settling in…

So there you have it, last week was just kind of a down for me. I felt really unmotivated, unsure of how the school year would begin and how teaching would pan out, and yes I’ll admit it: a little homesick. Luckily it didn’t really get to the point of really unhappy or sad, just kind of blah. (Perhaps my next activity should be to actually sit down and study my GRE vocab list, as “blah” seems to be the only word I can find to describe my feelings haha…)

Sunday things started to look up a bit with a gigantic all-day rainstorm. Turns out all I needed was for things to cool off a bit for me to actually get some things done!

School opened back up this week, and Monday and Tuesday I spent with the staff getting things in order for the learners to come on Wednesday. Frankly I was thrilled to get back in school – I finally remembered what my purpose here is and what it feels like to be… gasp… BUSY! What an incredible feeling… something I took for granted at home! Being at school makes me feel really good, and I generally really like working with my teachers. So school starting = things starting to look up!

Naturally, things head back down on Tuesday afternoon. We found out that the Department of Education has decided we no longer qualify for one of our teachers OR our administrative assistant. Apparently these decisions are made based on the number of learners in the school… so to them it only matters that there is an average of 35-40 learners per teacher and not that ONE teacher has to handle 3 grades and 8 learning areas (subjects) in one class. Oh, and we only learn of this the day before school officially starts. So now we are down to only 4 teachers, thanks DoE! And of course, everyone starts looking to me saying “So what can we do about this, Lorato?”. My response: ummmmm, welll…….

A big, BIG down of the past week and a half: there is no water coming to the community tap in the village. I’ve done some investigating on the topic, and apparently something at the municipality that controls our water supply is “broken”. Huh? Thankfully there is someone with a borehole in a nearby village, so my host family has taken the donkey cart there a couple of times and filling my buckets along with their own. I’m still in crazy water conservation mode, though, because if I run out I don’t know what I’ll do! (An upside to this: I’ve discovered that about 20 liters of water can go pretty far and last days! Read: I am getting kind of smelly, but so it goes in village life…)

Since then things have been kind of a mix of ups and downs throughout the days. The upside: teaching!!! I love my Grade 7’s. And there are only 9 of them this term (technically Grade 7 is part of the “Senior Phase” and therefore can not be combined with any other grades…), so this should be a pretty fun project for me. I know of other volunteers teaching with over 50 kids in a class, so I guess there are benefits to small schools, no matter how understaffed we are ☺. The downside: now that we have no administrative assistant, I spend a lot of time hiding from my principal because every time I see her she throws something at me saying “Type this, Lorato” or “Print this, Lorato” or something of that nature. No matter how many times I tell her I did not join the Peace Corps to be a secretary, she just doesn’t quite seem to get the whole point of my presence…

Overall the ups outweigh the downs, by a lot actually. I was still all smiles when my kids picked me up to walk to me school or when my Grade 7 cheered when they found out I’d be their teacher 3 days a week! But it is a kind of funny feeling to never really know what each day, or even hour, will make me feel like. Shall we henceforth name this PCBS: Peace corps bipolar syndrome?

a new year

Happy 2010!

So I have safely returned to my village from my AMAZING trip to Coffee Bay. The area we were in is called the Transkei, and charactized by gorgeous green rolling hills, dense forests, and the best: tiny little village with TEAL rondaval huts everywhere! I guess they use this color because they use to make paint from some green plant, but now they just buy paint that color because it is traditional. It was a place I was just made to be.. so so pretty. The vacation was the perfect mix of doing fun adventurous things and just relaxing - we did lots of hiking, cliff diving, but most of all playing in the ocean! I realized that I become a little kid when I get to play around in big waves... it's pretty much the funnest thing ever. I was going to do surfing lessons but unfortunately the day I signed up for got cancelled. It's ok though... I'm sure in 2 years I'll have another chance considering South Africa is like a surfer's paradise!

The backpackers we stayed at (Coffee Shack) attracted a very interesting crowd of young people. I met people from more countries than I can even keep track of! It was really cool to hear about all of the amazing trips people are taking.It kind of reminded me of backpacking around Europe and meeting a bunch of travelers, but S.A. seems to attract more long-term travelers than I have ever met. Most of the people we met seemed to be traveling for at least multiple months, some even for years! The Eastern Cape is mostly home to the Xhosa people of South Africa, so I also got a chance to hear a new language (Xhosa has four different clicks in it and really hard to learn!) and see a new culture. It was interesting to see the things that are typically South African and those that are more unique to each ethnic group.

Another good thing about the trip was that I got to spend 2 nights in Pretoria, so i am becoming a little more familiar with the city and how to get around. This is where PC headquarters is so I'll definitely be having to make trips there throughout my service. It's crazy being there.. it's basically like being in any American city and does not make me feel like I am in Africa at all. We went to the mall, had some really good food (including an incredible Indian lunch buffet) and went out to the bars one night. The 1st world/3rd world juxtaposition in this country is something that is still really hard and confusing to deal with... but I won't pretend that it isn't nice to have amenities somewhat nearby. Oh and we went and saw Avatar... weird at times but I liked it a lot! We got to see so much different landscape on the way and back, and now I can't stop thinking about all the different possibilities for future trips.

Now I am back in the village and jsut getting my life back in order for school to start. I am very excited for this schoolyear to begin, especially now that I know what I will be doing and I am no longer in "observation" phase. At the school in my village I will be teaching Grade 7 English and Life Orientation. L.O. is basically like a life skills/health class, which will be good because I want to be able to show the educators I work with how to implement more HIV/AIDS education into the curriculum, and I think this will be a good way to do it. Along with teaching I will be holding teacher workshops on things like alternatives to corporal punishment, classroom management, lesson planning and delivery, positive reinforcemnet, etc. I will work at my other school Tuesdays and Thursdays and trade off working with each of the teachers. This way I will be able to do some team teaching and help the (2) teachers deal with having 3 grades in a class (not an easy feat). I am really happy I will get some solid teaching experience here, it's obviously really good experience to have long term and it will help me get to know a group of students a lot better... and hopefully my classroom will be a model for the other teachers on how to teach without beating your children! So this week I'm spending getting my lesson plans for the term ready to go and school starts up on the 11th.

These next few months are going to be really busy and probably fly by. In only 2 weeks we have our next Peace Corps training, called IST (In-Service Training). The purpose of this week is for 2 days of further language training and to discuss what sort of projects we will all be taking on in the coming year! It will be so nice to get the whole group back together and see how everyone's doing (there's even talk of a Peace Corps prom that may occur...). In March there is supposed to be the next training (LST - Life Skills Training), along with the Longtom Marathon and another 2 weeks of school break in between terms. The World Cup begins this summer and should be a crazy time in S.A.! I have a feeling summer (winter) will arrive pretty quickly...

Hope everyone had a great christmas and new years!!!! Pictures will hopefully come somewhat soon....