Random

I am currently killing some time at an internet cafe in town, thought I'd do a little blog post for ya! This morning I had to help my pricipal in town getting internet hooked up to her laptop... which we succesfully did but I'm still confused as to why she needs it. The Department of Ed. has been urging schools to get email, so instantly she just NEEDED an email address (though I doubt shell ever use it). So that was what this week was spent on... good times! School officialy has email. Anyways here's some random thoughts for the day...

Village motto?

So in South Africa, because there are 11 official languages, many people will communicate in their second language, which is most often English. Many people are really fluent in it, but because the education system pretty much sucks at teaching it the english used is often quite incorrect and misused... but it seems to work just fine here as the majority of people don't speak English as their first language. Well, I have gotten over this for the most part (even though simple mistakes like the misuse of he/she as well as horrible butcherings of common phrases still bother me), but there is still one thing that just makes me laugh everyday. Apparently we have a village "motto", posted on a huge billboard at the dirt road intersection to get to my village. It is as follows:

"Together we can forward ever, backward never."

This definitely threw me for a loop the firs time I saw it. I mean I see what they are saying, like always move forward and never backward but as you can see the English used is horribly incorrect. I mostly just laughed at this and never said anything because they always think I'm wrong and say "No this is just South African english". Haha. And anyways, the billboard recently blew down in a big storm. BUT now my school wants to paint an emblem and the motto on the big wall of our school. I just don't know if I can go without saying something..... at a school at least you want the language to be correct right?! But I'm sure they'll just argue with me and then ask me to create a new village motto, which I don't really think I'm in a place to do. Hmmmm do I let it slide? Thoughts?

Tortillas

That's right... this week I successfully made a batch of flour tortillas... and they are delicious!!! I've had one everyday since, usually with eggs and veggies since I don't really have many fixings for mexican food. They have made me so so happy though.... my quest for more mexican meals is on!!

Plans

This last week has been a scramble to get things finished up for the end of the term because I am leaving on Monday and may be gone for close to a month!! I have been in full test-giving and final-grading mode. Next week is Life Skills Training (LST), an HIV/AIDS training that is funded by PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief).. which means we get to bring a community counterpart and spend 5 days at a fancy hotel getting an awesome training. I'm really exciting, and so is my counterpart which is awesome. We're thinking of doing some sort of big community testing drive event, which has never happened in our village so it should be exciting.

After LST we go on to the Longtom Marathon!!!!! Thanks so much to all who have donated... and for those of you who haven't there's still time!

Here's how to donate again:

Method 1: Online (preferred)
Go to the KLM Foundation website.
Click on the Donate photo in the upper left corner.
This opens up a secure https connection for people to donate.
Make sure you put 'Kristin Mayer' in the Longtom Marathon field so they know the donation was made in my name.

Method 2: Check
Make out a check to: Kgwale Le Mollo (US)
Put a post-it note saying the donation is in my name with the check.
Mail it to:
KLM Foundation (US)c/o Bowen Hsu461 So. Bonita AvenuePasadena, CA 91107

After the marathon we're taking advantage of the location and hiking for a few days on the Fanie botha trail, which I've heard is pretty awesome. There are also activities like cliff diving and kloofing... can't wait! Then after this me and a few other girls will be helping facilitate a Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) that is being held by another PCV in Mpumalanga. It'll be an awesome opportunity to get ideas for the same camp well be hosting in December! After this I will either head back to the village or attend another HIV/AIDS training hosted by USAID... this is still up in the air though! In that case I wouldnt be back until well into mid-April... crazy stuff!

So those are my exciting adventures for the upcoming weeks. It's nice to keep so busy, plus it will be great to get to see a bit more of the country!

Development?

Here is a really interesting article I just read in the NYTimes on an apparently successful development project in Sauri, Kenya. Pretty awesome and inspiring!

My time here has given me a chance to really see and get involved in “development” in the field, and frankly I have yet to develop any solid opinions on the matter. First of all I haven’t seen very much yet, and my knowledge is very limited to South Africa. The project discussed in this article is really interesting though!

I don’t know too much about this “Millennium Villages” project, but based on the example of the work done in Sauri, it really seems to have been quite successful in implementing its goals. I like the idea of taking these 80 villages around Africa and using them as a sort of experiment in development to see what is really possible. And as this is part of the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), obviously funding isn’t a problem.

But of course the question is is this really a realistic and sustainable project? I do like the idea that each village that is successful in these practices is used as an example to surrounding villages, but with all of the funding being used in each of the villages, it seems unlikely that other communities would just be able to “pick up” these great practices. I guess I just have a problem with the international aid community being so focused on highly-funded projects. Even in the Peace Corps, I have read statistics that there is no correlation between the amount of money put into a project and how sustainable or successful it turns out to be. In fact I have heard (though I’m not sure where so don’t quote me on this) that often the more money put into a project the less sustainable it turns out to be, as the funding will likely completely cease once the PCV is gone. Many PCV’s believe their work in the Peace Corps is much more about relationship-building than it is about actual development. Which in a sense is really true, because really I am only one person, and a foreign person coming from a very different culture… how is it that we are really supposed to “develop” our communities?

I suppose I’m a bit jaded on this matter because of my experience here. Everyone in my villages are soooo focused on just getting money and material items, which is really frustrating for me as someone who has devoted to years to solely HELPING and teaching them… something much more valuable than money or things in my opinion. Even just the other day there were some British missionaries in the Kuruman area, and my school was just about to freak out trying to get them to come here and “help” us. I kept asking them exactly what they did or gave and they just said “they give money to villages to develop them”. It was like nails down a chalkboard for me, as I am here giving MYSELF to them for 2 years but all they can think about is getting money - money does not equal development! It’s all about the immediate satisfaction, not the long-term process.

Of course you hear amazing success stories, maybe not quite to the extent of what happened in Kenya but there is still so much possible in what we are doing as PCVs. But then there is the corruption, which happens everyday here. I’m not sure if it’s quite as bad in S.A. as it seems to be in Kenya, but I know it goes on at both the large scale (government officials taking large sums of money for themselves) as well as the much smaller scale (NGO workers “skimming” money that should be going to AIDS orphans). You hear about it all the time. For example, South Africa spends more per capita on education than almost any country in the world, but where is the money going?! Obviously not to the schools (or at least not to rural, predominately black schools). This seems to be especially bad in this province, the Northern Cape, as the provincial department of education is quite bankrupt and oftentimes schools aren’t even receiving books they need for the curriculum. Much of this is due to corruption (as well as the astronomical salaries for the under-qualified teachers).

One thing that has really rang true with me here is that change on a large-scale has to come from the inside, from the people who are themselves affected. If the communities don’t have the drive to change, then it won’t happen... no matter how much money is put into it. Anyways, this was sort of a rambly post but I thought this little development experiment was really cool... you guys should go read it!

On life becoming normal....

Well I wish there was a bunch of stuff to update on but apparently once you hit a certain point in your Peace Corps service life begins to become a little bit less of an exciting adventure and more of a routine and well, more of an actual day-to-day normal life! This has actually been a pretty great transition for me. Although the language is still a very difficult hurdle to overcome, the culture is much less exhausting to me than it once was, and integration into my community seems to happen more and more everyday with much less effort. Most of all, life here in the village has become very comfortable… really that’s all that I could have asked for!

One big change I’ve noticed in myself is my capability of dealing with free time. During training and for the first few months at site, I had no idea what to do with my copious amounts of free time. I would read, pace around, journal, and pretty much just count down hours until it was time to do something (prepare a meal, go to bed, fetch water, etc.). Not that I didn’t enjoy it, because it’s definitely not a rough lifestyle. It just took some adjustments. Especially coming from the insanely busy year I had before the Peace Corps with two packed semesters to graduate, a thesis to write, work, applying to the PC, along with the normal jam-packed social life of a soon-to-be college grad.

Now I find myself basking in my free time, and most of the time just loving it. I can now spend an entire weekend in my village without going to town and carelessly find ways to fill my time. Even weekends where I don’t have to wash my clothes (which is normally occupies half of my Sundays). It’s great, and though I am normally one to find joy in a busy life, I recommend everyone adopt a little more careless free time into their lives. I spend my days reading, cleaning, journaling, coloring and playing with the kids, lesson and project planning, jogging every now and then, and just sitting around with my family. It’s awesome!

The only downside to this new feeling of normalcy is work actually feeling like work. Who knew Peace Corps was actually a job? It is definitely more fulfilling than most jobs, and small successes feel better than I could have ever imagined (even if it really is as small as one of my students remembering a vocabulary word). The only real issue is that I feel like I am constantly in a struggle with my educators. One day it will be about how I am not a secretary and shouldn’t be called every other second to type something. I’ve been remedying this lately by flat out saying “no, but let me sit down with you while you type it” and show them how to use things like excel and word. The next day it will be either them pulling me out of the classes I am teaching for some pointless “meeting” (I am not even going to get started on how much South Africans love their useless gatherings), or pulling my students out of my class for some menial task (like running to the shop to buy them soda…. and no that is not a joke). Really frustrating. Most of the time I’ll just walk to the meeting, ask what it’s about and if they really need me, and walk straight back to the class. Maybe… just MAYBE they’ll begin to see the importance of a teacher actually…. gasp…. TEACHING. I know, quite the concept!

The worst of it all is the corporal punishment that I’ve been witnessing. You know what? I hate the term corporal punishment…. this is flat out child abuse and I think the phrase just covers that up. It seems to only be getting worse with my educators becoming more relaxed around me, although they know my firm stance against this. The worst part about this is that although they know how I feel, they think its funny how sensitive I am. For instance, one morning when I was on a computer working on something while the morning assembly was going on, I looked out the window only to see my principal going down a line of students smacking each of them over the head with a meter stick for being late. One of the teachers walked in and laughed at the horrified look on her face, saying how funny she thought it was that I get so upset. I was nearly in tears... really really funny I know. The worst is that the kids are huge tattle-tales. The second one learner does something wrong someone else runs and tells on him, only resulting in the smacking of all those involved. You’d think they would learn that telling on people is a lose-lose! I lost even more hope the other day when the ONE teacher that I was almost positive did not hit her kids ran at a group of kids with a whip (yeah, the kind used for donkeys) for fighting. She also is a firm believer that the reason Matric (the test for seniors to graduate high school) rates are so low is because S.A. has made corporal punishment illegal. I’m not even going to start on how illogical that is.

I’ve been trying my best with them, I just know that it’s going to take a while for them to see where I’m coming from. These things are all they’ve ever known, and then one day it just became illegal. I want to show them why the government decided to take that step, and that hitting kids really doesn’t make them learn better. This may be one of those uphill battles, but I am going to keep trying!

Anyways, this post wasn’t really meant to rant about things bringing me down, because all in all life is good. The great part about being in this phase of my service is that I am very invested in my community and my mind is overflowing with wonderful ideas for projects, and I’ve had an awesome time collaborating with a couple of other volunteers on them! It’s hard because I don’t want to become too invested in any one idea, I really want to follow up with the ones my community wants and sees the need for. I am trying to maintain my realism in all of this – I know that the actual lasting impact I have on my schools may be very small (as almost any previous volunteer will tell you), so I’m just holding onto each small success with all I have and going with it.

I turned 23 last week! Yay for me! It was a very relaxing birthday, and a pretty normal day in the village, which is a pretty good reflection on what this next year has in store for me. I did receive a plant from my school for my room and the kids sang to me in English and Setswana.

This turned out much longer than I expected… my goal was to start writing shorter posts on more specific topics instead of the all-too-general update on life in S.A. thing. Oh well, maybe next time! Oh also, I’ve made a little resolution to get more pics up on here, so start expecting that at least! One thing about life becoming so normal here is that I feel much less inclined to take pictures of things, especially in the village. I’ll work on that for the sake of my fellow readers. Tomorrow I am headed to a workshop on creating libraries in a neighboring village and then to a pasta dinner and sleepover with some volunteers! Should be fun!!