1 year down 14 months to go

Today is my one year anniversary of my arrival in South Africa!!

Thus I present a few random thoughts of my first year:

1. I wish I would have learned the language better...sometimes...it also works well to play dumb when being harassed by drunk men and not hearing the women gossip about how fat I'm getting and how my pants are wrinkled.

2. If you are vain about your hair, and refuse to cut it short, you will inevitably end up housing cockroaches and/or scorpions at some point during your South African stay.

3. Warning: stairs in front of room, when wet, due to excessive polishing , are extremely slippery, remember this when you walk out to empty your "chamber pot"....

4. The kids make it all worth it- whether its coloring with them, playing football, playing games- anything- they will keep you from going insane.

5. South Africans call erasers "rubbers" knowing this is good- not leads to interesting exchanges with your principal

6. Stomachs can handle anything- I scoff at American hygiene- chicken that has been sitting out for a day as well as warm yogurt are both consumable products.

7. There is a correlation between the amount of time we spend at site and how much hair male volunteers have.

8. I read 4 books a week and constantly knit- I'm thinking this means I need to adopt more secondary projects.

9. I have learned, from my host family, that running will make me fat and eating pap will make me healthier.

10. Luckily, the people in the village expect me to be eccentric, I like to appease their view of me by randomly breaking into song and dance or by making face at small children- I think we're all happier when I act this way.

11. I have really bad days likewise I have really good days- is it worth it? I'm not always sure- but sometimes I think so- like when kids come and ask me to borrow books or a principal complains about a problem in the school and wants to dedicated themselves to fixing it or a child's face lights up as they yell "Sesi Makobo" all the while waving so desperately in such a manner that I fear they may dislocate a shoulder- then its worth it.

Today was one of those days...

Today is one of those days…one of those days when nothing seems to go right, everything’s a mess, and one frustration continuously compounds another. I know this is partially my fault, because one incident put me in a bad mood I find all instances that follow to irritate me to a degree that they would perhaps otherwise not. The following is my day thus far:

Story 1

Yesterday I discovered that the money I had fundraised for shelves for the library was “missing.” There is a very obvious and easy explanation for this: the school had some bill they couldn’t pay, but instead of problem solving in order to come up with a legitimate way to pay the owed money they used the funds I had raised. When I found this out I was not happy; the word furious does not even begin to cover it in fact, but I was left to fume as the principal was not at the school for me to confront him.

Thus, the day did not start off well. It began with a confrontation, something I notice that the villagers I live with and around will do anything to avoid, even if it means telling lies. The principal, when confronted, became very angry, but not at me, instead at the treasurer who he said was supposed to keep that information from me and had no right to disclose that information. This new information, the fact of the whole situation was purposely being hidden, goaded me against him. Our spat went something like this:

“The treasurer needs to report information like that to me. He can not just tell people about money matters. I do not find his behavior acceptable,” my principal said obviously attempting to diffuse the attention away from himself.

“But this is a school. People should know what their money is being used for. Money matters can’t be kept secret in this environment,” I vehemently spat back.

“We were going to reimburse the money. It was not going to be a problem.”

“When? When were you going to reimburse the money? What if I had come and told you I found a sale on shelves? What were you going to do then?”

“It is not okay that they told you about the money.”

“The parents knew we were fundraising for shelves. THAT was what they spent their money on. You could be sued if they found out you didn’t use the money for what they were told it was being spent on.”

My impassioned irritation went on against his avoidance and the circularity continued. At some point I gave up and sat at the computer and played FreeCell as my strike against doing work especially when the work I had been doing was obviously not effective.

At some point later in the day, after I heard much arguing from a conjoining room, the money appeared. I’m not exactly sure where it came from as it definitely wasn’t the same money I had collected nor do I really want to ask because I’m sure it was money raised for some other purpose but used now to appease “the crazy American.”

Story 2

I went to Nelson Mandela Barloworld High School to pick up an application for Lucky, a bright student who I want to make sure goes to a decent high school next year. The principal of the school was not there so I was left with the receptionist who doesn’t really know me. When I explained to her what I wanted she said I needed to write an application letter. I was confused since I had interpreted that he would need to fill out a form. Thus I asked what the letter was supposed to contain. She looked at me like I was an idiot and then told me it needed the name of the student and the grade. I asked her what else. She gave me another look that said “why are you so dumb,” and said that was all. I didn’t understand how that could be all. She handed me a piece of paper which I took notes on what I thought the letter was supposed to include. I got another “dumb look” and she said I was supposed to write the letter on the paper. In the end I left confused and frustrated.

When I got back in the car where the principal of Matshwi was waiting I told him what had happened. He explained that I needed to write an “application letter” to apply to get an application form. He also said that it was a shame the principal wasn’t there because she would have just given me the form since we had been regularly discussing Lucky’s situation. In the end, it means I will have to take at least two other trips out there which is very inconvenient for all involved and didn’t improve my mood.

Story 3

I got back to Matshwi after the last experience and stopped by the library room to check in since it was open and unlocked. I immediately noticed that the teachers had moved the fridge and other staff room appliances into it. When I asked the teacher sitting there about it he basically ignored me. I then noticed that some of the posters I had put up in the room were missing. I asked him about that, and he said some of the teachers had taken them to put in their classrooms. I explained, patiently, that the posters were for the library and that they needed to be put back. He then proceeded to tell me that this room wasn’t going to be the library since it was the computer room. I replied that it was, that the principal had approved it, and that they didn’t need a computer room as the school had no computers.

“But what if we get computers?”
“Then we will move the library then, but if you get computers you most likely will only get a few and they can be put in the library too.”
“But what if someone donates a lot?”
“I don’t know of anyone who is going to donate to you 40 computers, and I don’t know of any teacher applying to get computers currently.”

This proceeded as he then went on to ask what we were doing about shelves. I told him I was attempting to get them donated and we were also raising money. He then told me we needed steel shelves. I told him we most likely could not afford steel shelves. He told me the government was going to give the school money in September. My response, “the school has a lot of things they need to buy we can’t use al l the money on shelves.” His response, “while we only need one big shelf there aren’t very many books” (he obviously hasn’t looked recently because we have about a thousand books now), and I explained we would be receiving more.

Then I left because, frankly, I was sick of talking to him.

Story 4

I walked back to the office. About five minutes later the same teacher came to see me:

“Makobo are you busy?”
“What do you want help with.”
“I need you to type me this letter,” he said handing his teacher’s manual that had an address in it where you could write for to receive current statistics in the country.
“I will not type the letter for you. You can write the letter out and then I will show you how to use the computer to type it.”
“But I need it right away.”
“It won’t take long to type. It will be a short letter and I will show you how.”
“When?”
“Anytime you want. I will be here the rest of today and tomorrow. You could come after school.”
“But that is only half an hour.”
“You could stay longer,” I replied annoyed now by the expectation of me doing his work for him and his incredulity that he would have to do it himself.
“No I can’t do that. They can’t make us stay so late. You must do it for me.”
I ignored him on this comment and thought that maybe he should have been doing work instead of sitting around twiddling his thumbs in the now library/staff room and then I got angry with him.

“What will you do when I’m not here or if I’m at Letseku? Who will do it for you then? It isn’t my job to do your work for you. It’s my job to show you how to do it on your own. I will help you for as long as you want, whenever you want, but I will not do it for you. Plus, you sat and told me about the school needing computers but why does the school need computers? If you don’t know how to use a computer then how will you teach the children?
He replied (mainly as a means to escape my diatribe I believe), “Maybe I will come during a free period tomorrow and you can help me.”



Eish!!! What a day.

Library Update

I am really excited about my work right now. I finally have enough books to start setting up my library (thanks to an especially kind donor from Stafford, Missouri). Currently I’m trying to get two of my schools to become National Readathon Schools, which involves quite a bit of work, but will lead to activities that I think will be wonderful for the children once implemented. The plan, for one of the activities, is to have an "I Love to Read" week in October with different activities planned for each day- I’m thinking big- but maybe, just maybe, from all this a child will learn to love to read and will thus love to learn and perhaps will make it out of the village trap and accomplish a dream that they have of success in some designated part of their life.

Confrontation

I am assigned to three schools in my area but for the last term and a half have only been attending two of them. I have various reasons for this, but what it narrows down to is I want the work I do here to be as effective as possible, and I feel that I accomplish a lot more at Letseku and Matshwi than I do at Leakhale. Part of this has to do with management issues. While Letseku and Matshwi have dedicated principals who are in control of their school, the management at Leakhale is practically non-existent. As a result, anything I attempt to accomplish at that school tends to break down because no one is designating assignments and no one sets guidelines for teaching standards.

An example: earlier in my service I did a workshop on Learning Programmes at the school (an organization of standards that must be accomplished during the year as required by the province). I showed the teachers an example and then worked with them to begin their programmes. After, I told the teachers they were to complete it on their own, after all, it was a requirement of their job that they do these programmes. Instead, the teachers sat doing nothing for the rest of the workshop, and I found out later that they stopped teaching their classes for a week to work on them during school hours instead of completing the assignment before or after school. Though learning programmes are a new idea in the schools, they should have easily been completed in the course of two or three afternoons instead of paralyzing the school for a week and leaving the children without teachers. At that point, I was fed up and decided that would be the end of my regular trips to that particular school.

Now my other schools are particularly interested in the principles of fairness. They are concerned that at some point they will be blamed for trying to keep me for themselves instead of letting me help the third school. I keep attempting to reassure them that this will not be the case; that Leakhale is perfectly aware of how frustrated I am with them. Yet, this fact did not console my principals so they went to Leakhale to speak with the principal. I had told her that I was not coming to her school due to both my frustrations as well as the fact that I never had work to do there, that the teachers did not use me. The three principals talked about this and then the Leakhale principal made a list of things I could help the school with so I would come back. It read something like this: RNCS, IQMS, Assessments, etc. When I received this list my initial frustrations again surfaced since the specificity of the list was equal to if they had merely wrote "school development." Thus, I ignored it and continued at my other two schools.

This week I finally sat down with the principal of Leakhale and explained to her that I was willing to help the school but that I wasn’t going to spend a week at a time sitting on my ass, twiddling my thumbs, especially when I had so much to do at my other two schools. I explained to her that if she or the teachers wanted help with something they needed to be specific with their requests. For example, help with how to distribute school tasks and use school committees to help with management issues or a workshop on how to use group work effectively in a math lesson. I told her until she came up with such things I was going to continue working at the other two schools. She agreed (or maybe she didn’t but she didn’t confront me on the issue) and so, though I have been waiting to hear back from her, I haven’t.

What this all boils down to is something I often find myself proving to myself. The schools in my areas often want resources, they want "things," but they don’t want to have to do work for them, and often once they do receive them they sit unused on a shelf or in a cabinet. For example, Leakhale has science equipment and a ton of reading books that have never been used and sit in the office. Yet, it makes them feel that they have "something" simply by owning them. Likewise, if I go to their school, I become some sort of bizarre status symbol. I’m one more thing their school "has" even if they aren’t doing anything with me. The only problem with this scenario for them is that I’m past the point of allowing myself to be used in such ways. I’m not going to waste my time sitting around some school in the interest of "fairness" because they want the American around. Hell, if the only thing Leakhale learns from me is the need to implement resources then I’ve accomplished a lot more than I would have by actually being at the school.

Chicken Pox

Mapula called me yesterday to let me know she has chicken pox and is coming home while she gets well. I told her that she should hug Oupa a lot while she is here.

Women and HIV

I was reading an article in the June 5th Newsweek entitled "What Women Really Need" by Melinda Gates. Its main topic was the need to empower women in order to help curb the contraction of AIDS. Currently, there is no real way for women, particularly married women, to help themselves from contracting the virus: "80 percent of women newly infected with HIV are practicing monogamy within a marriage or a long-term relationship." "In many countries, sexual inequality compounds the hazard by making it difficult, if not impossible, for women to enforce their choices about whom they have sex with, or to insist that men wear condoms. But one of the deadliest problems is that women simply don’t have the tools to protect themselves." "For millions of married women, abstinence is unrealistic, being faithful insufficient and the use of condoms is not under their control."

The problem is evident- in the culture that I now live, women and girls frequently take the submissive role: they clean, they cook, they take care of the children- many of their husbands don’t work- in fact many of their husbands don’t do much of anything. A prime example of this situation is Portia. Portia is in grade 7. She comes to my house everyday to do the cleaning in order to make some extra money for her family. Her twin brother, Lucky, spends his afternoon playing soccer. No one questions this arrangement: why she works while he plays, just as women often don’t question whether or not they really want to be having sex with their partner- they do it to hold onto their boyfriends/husbands or because "everyone else is doing it."

Most women have never been taught that they have a say; can play a role in their sexual relations, because women are never taught about sex. Families don’t discuss it with their children, schools tell the facts of HIV but don’t empower children to have the self-confidence to stand up for themselves; to make choices regarding their own sexuality. The church only preaches abstinence which is not always realistic, specifically in a society where people are often older when they marry since they have to raise the money to pay "bride price" to the family of the woman whom they are marrying.

We need to focus on women to help solve the AIDS epidemic- give them the tools to protect their own health so they don’t have to worry about relying only on convincing their husbands to act or behave in specific ways (namely using condoms) when cultures can be prohibitive towards such ideas.

"Ten years ago, 1 percent of women in South Africa had contracted HIV; today the number is 25 percent. [] We need to develop prevention tools that can give women a chance to defend themselves."