Weekend in Swaziland

May was entirely too busy of a month, culminating in a weekend trip to Swaziland…….. haha mostly it’s just fun to say you went to Swazi for the weekend. Some friends and I took the weekend to go to the Bush Fire music festival in Manzini and it was amazing to see a new country, some different landscapes, and really fun live music! My favorite was the band Freshly Ground, a fairly popular South African band. Apparently they are becoming even more mainstream with their new song with Shakira – “time for Africa”, the new World Cup theme song… pretty catchy if I do say so myself.

It was definitely interesting to see a new country after being in SA for so long. Because it is a country that is snuggled right into its richer and more developed neighbor, the influence of South Africa can be seen all over. I’ve heard the countries surrounding SA (or surrounded by, in the case of Swaziland and Lesotho) often reffered to as “South Africa Lite” since the country influences so many aspects of this region of the continent. While Swazi does seem to have many similar things (banks, restaurants, transportation, etc.), it was definitely evident that it is significantly less developed (especially if you compare the cities – HUGE difference between a capital city like Pretoria and Mbabane, the capital of Swazi). This may have been because we were there for a festival that celebrated Swazi’s music, art, and culture, but I felt as though the local Swazi culture was much more strongly embraced and present in everyday life than that of the local cultures in South Africa. This is not surprising at all when you think about the long-term effects colonization and the apartheid era had on the traditional African cultures. [As a side note, I think this may be even moreso the case with the Tswana culture. I’m not sure because this is obviously the only place I live, but they seem to embrace their more traditional culture a lot less then their flashier Zulu and Xhosa neighbors.]

Lately I have been meeting more and more PCVs who serve in other countries. This is partly due to the fact that South Africa is the regional medical hub for anyone who is serving in Sub-Saharan Africa who needs medical attention that their host country can’t provide, and partly because Southern Africa is extremely popular for traveling. Many of them (known as “med-evacs”) gush about how amazing it must be to serve in such a developed country with so many amenities. I think this becomes the view of many people who travel here – due mostly to the fact that when you are traveling to SA you are most likely not going to our rural villages out in the bush (especially those of us out here in the deserty north.. there is not much as far as tourism goes out here). While I can’t deny that it is nice to have things like malls, restaurants, and movie theaters when I go to Pretoria or other large cities, it’s hard to get across to people how different life really is in my tiny village that is cut off from access to such amenities. All I can conclude is that SA is just a really interesting and unique place to be a PCV. It also makes me very eager to visit other countries in Africa and see what life is like on the rest of this continent!

In any case, I’m sad I didn’t get to stay longer and see more of the country, and I’m not entirely sure the 2 days of treacherous taxi rides through mountain roads in the rain was really worth the day and a half that I got to spend in the country. But it is most definitely on my agenda for next May, as that will be nearer to my COS date (Close of Service) when I can justify going crazy over the AMAZING craft shopping there ☺.

Teaching...

Lately I have really been loving teaching. Many of us came into the education program in S.A. with little or no teaching experience, and I am still a firm believer that Peace Corps is a great opportunity to discover the teaching profession with limited experience. During my teaching English internship in France while I was studying abroad, I began to find that I just really really enjoyed planning lessons and being in a classroom. I was definitely still skeptical of doing it as a full-time career, hence why PC has been a great way for me to entertain this idea without committing long-term.

This came to mind today because of the particularly successful lessons in my English class I have had this week. On Monday I decided to give them a listening and reading comprehension exercise from their book on Nelson Mandela’s famous speech from when he was released from prison in 1990. It was a pretty difficult passage and I was worried it would be too advanced for the class (especially with a few learners who are still at the phase of sounding out their words in Setswana). It actually turned out great and the class ended up enjoying it a lot! I decided to stick with this for the rest of the week and do a similar exercise with MLK’s “I have a Dream” speech. It was nice to show them the parallel between the histories of South Africa and the US, and they were all really surprised to hear that A) black people live in America too (they consider Obama to be “coloured” and not black) and B) that we had a similar history of oppression and revolution.

One thing that’s really fun about teaching ESL is that you can incorporate a lot of other subjects into lessons depending on what you’re teaching. My lessons this week included new vocabulary, listening and reading comprehension, history of SA and the US, human rights, as well as a little geography (MLK’s speech references a lot of the southern states). Fun stuff!

One of the downsides of becoming more sure of teaching as a career for me is the recent increase in thinking about my post-PC future and making plans – and if you haven’t noticed already, I’m kind of an over-planner. With this has also come a recent re-obsession with French. I have been reading as many French books as I can (thanks to my fam for sending some!) and reading French news from lemonde.fr. I know, I’m a huge nerd… feel free to mock me as much as you want! I just can’t help it! Being in a country where I only really understand 1 (and a half, if you count my limited understanding of Setswana) of the 11 languages spoken makes me miss living in France, where I am continually challenged but can understand and communicate quite well. I guess I probably should have fought harder to be placed in Francophone Africa… but there’s no use in pondering the “what if” scenarios… SA is pretty cool too. I am really excited at the prospect of teaching French when I return though, even if it is a ways away… it’s nice to feel like I’ll have some direction after all this.

On a side note, I am going to Kuruman this weekend for a Peace Corps Cinco de Mayo party that will probably rock my whole world, and from there going to Pretoria for yet another week. This time it is for GTOT (General training of trainers), where a group of us will plan sessions for the incoming group of education volunteers who arrive July 15! Crazy to think that soon enough we will have been here for a year and meeting the new group of volunteers!

*** Speaking of which, any new PCVs headed to South Africa this summer... feel free to leave a comment! I know I was fairly fixated on reading peace corps blogs before I came to help with my packing, so i understand…

winter in may!

So I know I mentioned in my last post that the weather had changed, but after months and months of 80-100 degree weather, I don’t know if I really got my point across. It. Is. Amazing. I find that my whole demeanor has changed… turns out I’m just kind of a cold weather kind of girl. The crazy thing is really how abruptly it has changed…. I can safely say it is not just cooler here but actually cold. As in, I have taken out two extra blankets for my bed and comfortably hang out in my room in fleece pants and a hoodie. Granted, it is nowhere near the awesomeness of snowy Colorado winters – a season which apparently has decided to last all the way into May this year! In any case, the South African winter will do for now, and I know it’s only going to get colder for June/July. Bring it on!

I just got back from yet another trip to Pretoria. Peace Corps has been keeping me pretty busy outside of my site, which is not something I had really expected. Actually this time it was mostly my fault, since during PST I volunteered to be the warden for my region of Northern Cape PCVs. Being a warden basically means I get to keep track of when my volunteers leave their sites, so that in the case of any sort of emergency I will be able to contact people. I will also have to organize a consolidation in regional towns if PC ever feels we are unsafe in our region. The warden system is actually pretty cool…. Peace Corps works in some fairly unstable countries and is able to evacuate volunteers from their sites in all sorts of crises. Lucky for us consolidation or evacuation are not likely to ever happen as SA is a pretty stable democracy, but it’s nice to have the system in place just in case! And really if something ever did happen here, our villages would likely be much safer than any town or city.

I shouldn’t complain about going to Pretoria that much… it’s really an enjoyable time! We stay at a backpackers in town and I usually get the chance to meet and hang out with volunteers from other groups. It also means being able to go out at night, go shopping in malls, and get delicious food… on this trip we had really awesome Indian food and some good sandwiches. It will never be less weird to go back and forth between the incredibly developed first-world Pretoria and my tiny tiny village and it always takes a few days of adjustment.

I have been talking with other volunteers lately about a kind of “rut” we feel we’ve been in lately. I am still really happy at my site and feel very comfortable with my life here, but it’s just now starting to weigh on me how incredibly hard the “work” aspect of Peace Corps can be. I think maybe part of it is that I am more invested in my projects and seeing results, making it that much more frustrating when plans fall through, projects are postponed, and meetings are cancelled. Even harder to deal with than that is just the teachers’ general lack of motivation and excitement to do anything that could potentially improve their school. Of course raising learners’ scores is a nice idea, but when it comes to doing actual work it is extremely hard to get people moving. I guess this is all part of the “cultural adjustment” process… sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m in Africa, which means doing about the exact opposite of what I would think is the logical and efficient way to do something.

For example, take our library project. I have been in the village for almost 9 months and the lack of any sort of library was one of the immediate tangible areas where I saw I could help. We had a storage room full of dusty old books (some never opened) and an empty classroom. Put them together and we have the start of a library, right? My school agreed we could use a library, but it took my first couple MONTHS just to convince them that we should take the books out of storage and start using them at all. Their logic is that the kids will destroy and steal the books, and they can’t read anyways, so why should they use them??? Yes, silly from our American standpoint… but after a couple months of fighting to at least display the books somewhere I began to clean out the storage room. So then I spent a month or so sorting them, and we now have nice piles of books sorted by learning area and level. But nowhere to put them. So then I start pushing for one of our 2 empty classrooms to be made into our official library. But, of course, they disagree for another couple months because that classroom is being used for storage. Moving the books out of the storage room and into the classroom and putting the junk that is “in storage” into the storage room was a surprisingly difficult concept to explain. But after some more pushing they seem to agree and we begin that process. The next problem is that we still had piles of books and a classroom, but no shelves of any nature. And we are most definitely still working on this one. We have been asking for donations for wood to build shelves from local business, along with asking the community for anything they can give, neither with any luck so far. On a positive note, after a few months of community meetings and pushing the idea of a library, we officially have a volunteer librarian from the community. She is great and has come everyday so far, even when there has been nothing to do… so that’s a good sign! Our next step is raising money to fix up the room, get tables and chairs, build shelves, get burglar bars and doors, and to ship over more appropriate books. I’m going to look at getting at least 1 computer donated too… so if any of you have ideas let me know!

[I think I could also use the example of the use of corporal punishment here, as it is the thing that frustrates me the most and the thing that will likely NOT change. But, I feel I have done enough complaining about this issue in my blog already ☺]

So in any case, this is all just such a huge learning process of how incredibly long it takes for things to get done here, and it has really taught me to manage (in some cases lower) my expectations. Which is sometimes really hard to do when you have a vision of what could be done how things could change. But alas, this is not just the case in Africa but really a fairly standard way things happen for PCVs around the world. Just have to keep moving forward!

Crazy month!

So I am finally back to my village after 4 weeks of traveling South Africa! It was a fun month and nice to get to see some new parts of the country, but pretty exhausting and needless to say I was very ready to get back to my home and not live out of my backpack any longer! So here’s an update on all that went down:

LST


Life Skills Training was my first stop and help at the Sparkling Waters Hotel near Rustenburg – this in itself was awesome as we had incredible meals, nice rooms with awesome showers, two pools, and a SPA! The counterpart I brought was the administrative assistant at one of my primary schools who has been wanting to get involved in some sort of community project. The workshop was run by David Patient and Neil Or…. Two very interesting South Africans who own a company that gives workshops and trainings on healthy living and HIV/AIDS. In fact, David Patient is one of the longest surviving people with AIDS. We learned all sorts of things about the virus itself as well as how to live a healthy life and keep your cd4 count up once you are already infected. My big complaint was that it was mostly directed at the Americans and not so much the South African counterparts we all brought, so it will be interesting to see what they got out of it (hopefully some of it seeped in!). The last half of the training was on project design and management and grant writing, so maybe some sort of community project will be able to come out of this!
Me and my PC besties being awesome...


My counterpart (Lorato) and I


Longtom Marathon

From LST we piled in a coombie to take us to Sabie where we ran the half marathon! I ended up running most of it and finishing in about 2 hours 34 minutes. The marathon went from Sabie to Lydenburg down the windy and hilly Longtom Pass that provided us with spectacular views as we ran! The water stops were also awesome, where people would give us not only water and powerade but also coke, sweets, and at one point even mini potatoes!!!!! Haha… I haven’t done a marathon anywhere else but I have a feeling that was one of those “only in South Africa things”. Again, THANKS TO ALL WHO DONATED!!!!!!!! I ended up raising about $200... 100 more than required, and as a group we raised over $17,000!! That is about $1500 more than last year. So give yourselves a pat on the back for taking part in sending a disadvantaged learner to a prestigious high school on a 5-year scholarship! I look forward to doing this again next year, possibly even training for it and shooting for 2 hours.

Here is a link with some pictures from the race!


Kloofing and hiking

After the marathon (and a much needed rest day on our sore muscles) a group of us decided to go “kloofing” (canyoneering in US terms). This involved putting on a padded wetsuit, a helmet, tennis shoes, and a “rubber bum” (shorts with rubber on the butt), hiking down into a canyon and basically trekking down the river. It was pretty much like a bunch of sports combined – we hiked, did a few small cliff dives, swam under waterfalls, rock climbed, scrambled over boulders, went through a couple caves... at one point we even slid down trees like fireman poles!! IT WAS SO AWESOME! My new favorite sport for sure. The canyon we were in was extremely jungly and made me feel a little bit like Tarzan (in a silly looking suit), making it extra awesome.


Haha I love this picture, we look like little bobble heads!

Us in our awesome suits, complete with rubber bums..

After this we went on a 3-day backpacking trip on the Fanie Botha trail. The first day was pretty easy and we ended up at hut #1, right on the edge of a thick jungly forest. The best part was that there were a whole bunch of monkeys jumping through the trees that we got to listen to all afternoon while we relaxed and napped! Day 2 was much more difficult but incredibly gorgeous. We went through extremely dense forest and had to cross a whole bunch of creeks and stumbled upon many waterfalls and beautiful pools along the way. The uphills were pretty rough and were covered in extremely slippery rocks… it took us almost a kilometer an hour through the hard stuff! Once we climbed out of the forest we were pretty much on top of a plateau and walked through the clouds a few more kilometers to our next hut. We also saw some animals on the way – not sure if they were springbock or gemsbock but they were way cool! Day 3 was mostly downhill and looped back to where we started. Overall it was an awesome hiking trip and I was pretty much like a kid in a candy store being back in the mountains again!!
View from Hut #1
Crossin' a creek..
Bunch of awesomeness at the last hut


Camp GLOW

After Sabie and a stop in Nelspruit along the way, a few of us went to help a PCV who was holding a girls’ leadership camp in Schomensdal (which is right near the border of Swaziland in Mpumalanga). We did sessions on journaling, goal setting, dealing with peer pressure, overcoming challenges, and some guest speakers came to talk about HIV/AIDS, child advocacy, and other issues. We had a lot of fun and learned a lot for the camp we will be holding in December! One of the best parts of this week was the place we stayed, which was a home for orphans that this Irish woman runs. The compound was amazing and there were about 15 orphans living there along with volunteers from all over the world (U.S., Zambia, Canada, and Germany to name a few) living there and volunteering in various places in the community. The kids all have amazing English and are tutored by the volunteers, and the household runs smoothly with everyone helping out with various activities. It was awesome to see and be a part of for a week (although I have to admit I had major site envy to know that a PCV has been living there for 2 years… what an awesome site to have!!!)
The whole group!
One of the facilitators running a session


Pretoria/ Global Camps Africa training

From camp glow we made our way back to Pretoria for a couple days before heading o yet another conference. We had a lot of fun staying at the backpackers, gorging ourselves with delicious food (we found an amazing Lebanese restaurant..), and seeing a couple movies. We then went to the camp training with about 8 PCVs and many other people from organizations all around the country. The days were packed (8am to 9pm everyday!!!) with info on how to run and manage youth camps. Some of it was very helpful – especially being able to network with other South African organizations – but much it was directed at American-style camps and didn’t really include the African perspective as much as it could have. While it didn’t really cater to the South African cultural context, everyone seemed to really enjoy it!

Back home!

Yesterday I FINALLY made it back to my village, after an exhausting ride into Kuruman on Sunday. I have never been more thankful to be back at my site and stationary again. I wasn’t even upset to find my new bug friends that have taken over my room in my absence! I was also THRILLED to find that the weather has actually become chilly!!! Everyone keeps saying the winter has come early…. Which is better news than I could have ever hoped to receive. Today I went to school in both a sweater and a scarf, and I am fully planning on taking out the extra blankets for my bed tonight! I have officially made it through my first summer in Africa.. only one more to go. I am feeling good about my work at school, as I also learned that one of the mothers in the community has volunteered to help with the creation of our school library!!! I could not be happier with this news, as I was really hesitant to begin a library project without having a community member on board to help. My principal kept telling me that no one in the community would want to volunteer their time… so this was a good lesson in persistence paying off! I am much more eager to take these projects head on with a little community support. Term 2 is pretty short since it’s ending early for the World Cup break and I have a lot of work to do for my classes, projects, and PC stuff… it’s going to be a busy couple months!

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!!