Grant Projects!

I spent most of last weekend writing grants for a couple of projects that I’ve been involved in.

The main grant I’m working on is for some women in the next village (1 hour walk or $1 public taxi ride if you can get one) over. They came to me wanting to start a “Home Based Care.” These are huge in South African villages: basically HBCs are the rural community’s NGOs that have about 10 local women on salary and can literally do anything from starting recycling programs, make home visits to ensure people are taking their medication or host after school programs for kids. Or, in a lot of cases, do absolutely nothing – just have a bunch of women sitting around all day.

Anyway I’ve been working with about 6 women for the past 3 months, teaching them Life Skills (more on that later) and helping them figure out how to really get their organization growing. We’ve decided to start with them teaching Life Skills to boys and girls clubs at the local primary school and then have monthly meetings
with the parents in the community. The Life Skills that the women and I have been working on basically encompass the skills needed to keep yourself healthy (focusing on avoiding HIV). So HIV/AIDS  and STI (Sexually Transmitted Infections) prevention, communication and decision making skills and relationship skills. We do condom demonstrations – those bananas never know what’s about to hit them – and focus on the facts and myths about HIV.


Because of the culture here, many girls feel they cant say “no” to males and/or can’t demand that men use condoms. So we practice ways of saying “no” and assertiveness. Also it is culturally acceptable for men to have multiple sexually partners at the same time (and most do, even if they are married and/or religious). This is why the HIV infection rate here is so high.

The above reasons explain why Life Skills education is essential in South Africa.  The black South African cultural norms are a hot bed (pun intended) for sexually transmitted diseases. Most non-profit organizations in the country in some way work with Life Skills education or HIV/AIDS prevention.

Its been interesting to work with the 6 women. Even though they have volunteered to teach Life Skills classes, they are still so shy. Part of it is that we speak mostly in English (their 2nd or 3rd language) and that they have never been this close to a white person before, but some of it is that, they too are still embarrassed by some of the topics. Parents don’t talk to their children about the facts of life and they tell me that there aren’t even Sepedi words for sexual organs. Slowly, slowly slowly they are opening up, they are becoming more confident and we are forming friendships.  I’m not sure if their organization will be up and running by the time I leave, but they at least will have a good start.

I tried to attach a picture of me and my best friend, Tebogo. (Unfortunately my Internet connection didn't allow it)  She is 22 years old, in Grade 10 and has a 18 month old son named Rodney. Tomorrow I’m going to a funeral with her. And you may have heard me mention funerals before. We will be cooking all evening, spending the
night, then waking up ridiculously early to finish cooking and go to the ceremony that will start at 6 am.

Dear friends and family...

As usual, it has been a while since I wrote you an update about my life!

Now when I first told many of you that I was going into the Peace Corps, some of you wondered why the Peace Corps is actually in South Africa. South Africa hosted the 2010 World Cup and is considered an "emerging economy” not a developing nation. I hope that my e-mails thus far have convinced you of why we are here: the rural areas seem to be a completely country than the modern urban areas. This week in The Economist, there was an article that pretty much summarizes the situation in this country and gives you insight into the politics and current economic condition. Its worth a read if you have any interest.

I have now been taking bucket baths and living in a rural South African village for 15 and a half months. Which means, if everything continues as planned, I will be here for another 10 and a half months. And honestly I can’t wait to get back place with convenient transport and easy access to Mexican food.  Don’t get me wrong, I know I’m where I’m supposed to be, but it’s a daily struggle.

This country has to be one of the most racially tense places in the world. With apartheid (their version of segregation) ending in 1994, I encounter the effects of racism on a daily basis. This past month it has really been on my mind. Race and color is constantly part of the conversation here.

An new Peace Corps Volunteer recently moved to my area, so I’ve spent some time travelling with her. She is African American and it has been interesting to see how she can blend in when we are out shopping or using public transportation. I'm jealous that she doesn't get stared at all the time, but the downside is that she is not treated with the respect I get in these same situations. When the public taxi marshalls see me coming they are happy to help the only white person in the rank and are further impressed at my local language skills. My fellow volunteer is pushed aside and looked at with aghast when she makes one tiny language mistake. When we are together, speaking in rapid English with American accents, people stare at us and you can see them trying to figure out our relationship.

On the other hand, people in my village are used to me now, but I am the only white person that most of them have ever had a friendly conversation with. Life in the village leaves very few opportunities for Sepedi people to meet anyone from a different race and its interesting to hear about their thoughts. This week I had a very
intelligent boy in my Grade 10 class write in his journal, “What do you like about our village, because I know you don’t like black people?” I was shocked that after living here for over a year, a boy that I work with on a weekly basis still thought that all white people were racist. Later that day I had a conversation with this boy about his journal to see if I had done something to make him think this. It turned out that he didn’t have a specific reason for his assumption, he just thought I had been pretending this whole time. It breaks my heart that the people in my community have had such negative experiences with people of different colors.

Makes me realize how important it is that I am living in this community for 2 years. If I do nothing else in my entire Peace Corps service, I have shown that friendship, kindness and respect transcends color lines. I have attended funerals, initiation parties, church services and weddings. I have helped cook and prepare for these
events. I have dressed in traditional clothes and danced the traditional steps. I take public transportation and buy my food at the monthly market.  I laugh, joke and visit with people who haven’t left the village in months. My job is more than working with teachers, teaching English and educating people about HIV/AIDS. Its about improving race relations in a small community in Limpopo, South Africa. And slowly by slowly, I think I'm helping to accomplish that goal.

Better Late than Never!

Today I sat down to write you guys a letter and realized that I
literally haven’t sent out any updates since the beginning of March!
What?!?! I do apologize. Time flies when you’re living the dream.

Monday was the beginning of the 3rd quarter in the South African
school system. Here we begin the school year in the middle of January,
which is kind of nice because the school year coincides with the
calendar year. Its also winter here in the Southern Hemisphere. It
doesn’t get down to freezing where I live, but we have to bundle up
because no one in this country has central heating.

I just passed the year mark of living in South Africa. Wow. Hard to
believe I’ve been here that long and at the same time, hard to think
about having more than that left to go.

Guess the reason I haven’t written in a while is that I’m getting so
used to everything that most of my daily life seems normal, and
nothing to write home about. However, despite how long I’ve been here,
I’m STILL figuring out how this community works. Last weekend I went
to my first burial society meeting. Believe it or not, there are at
least 5 different burial societies in my village of 1,000 people. A
burial society meeting is a monthly meeting where the women get
together and plan for funerals. Here all the community women and men
gather together to help the family with the funeral. They cook a huge
meal which is served to the guests after they walk back from the grave
site. In this village, hardly a weekend goes by when there isn’t a
funeral, usually for someone who was “sick for a long time” (which
most likely means that they had AIDS).

One thing I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to is being stared at ALL
the time. Everywhere I go, people are staring. If its not because I’m
the only white person in that part of town, then it’s because I’m
walking through the city with my huge backpack. Sometimes I get really
frustrated by all the stares, but I’ve recently tried to combat it by
just smiling back! You’d be surprised how many smiles I get in return
and how good a smile is for promoting race relations in this broken
country.

Quick story to end this update. Last month I had some friends visit
from America. We were travelling around the country when we decided to
take a local metro train in Cape Town. Being a poor Peace Corps
Volunteer and being used to taking public transportation, I decided we
should purchase 3rd class tickets . We got on the train in what looked
like the 3rd class car - there was graffiti all over, the windows were
clouded over. Unfortunately, we thought wrong. When the guy came
around to check the tickets, he told us we were in the 1st class car,
kicked us off, and made us pay a fine that was 6 times the amount we
paid for the ticket; plus we had to wait for the next train and STILL
ride in the 3rd class car. Of course we tried to explain that we were
confused tourists, but he was having none of that. It all worked out
because on the next train we met some cool kids that were playing my
favorite South African house music jams on their phones. Just the sort
of thing that continually happens to me in this country – a
frustrating experience that stems from things not being made clear,
turns into something good.

Its Nelson Mandela’s birthday today! The first black president of
South Africa and an amazing example of how to encourage cooperation in
the midst of hatred. Here the tradition is to volunteer for 67 minutes
today in honor of him. Don’t worry – I think I’ve got that covered for
today:)

Christmas!

One of Dr. Easton’s favorite stories came to my mind as I wrote this today. The one about a man who was apologized to his friend for writing such a long letter, because he didn’t have time to write a shorter one. That describes me with this blog post. 

Today I cleaned my room/house while listening to Christmas music and while sweating profusely.


I drank tea out of a Christmas mug, but it was iced tea.


I dried my dishes with a Christmas towel, after I took a cold bath. 

Basically my point is that I’m in the middle of the South African summer, yet its Christmas time! Its hard to remember that its really December and the holiday season.  School’s out here because their summer vacation starts the beginning of December and runs through the middle of January.


I kind of like that set up –  during the busy holiday party season kids are out of school and people can schedule their summer vacations around Christmas and New Years. 

Of course vacation and busy holiday season with parties and what not are not exactly my daily reality in the village.  Instead the “festive season” is business as usual here in the village with a few extra family members coming back from jobs in the cities. 

I actually recently got back from an adventure in the city myself. After our first 3 months in our villages all Peace Corps volunteers in SA get together for some more training. To the training we bring one person from our village with us. This person is to become our “counterpart” – working with us to organize activities and hopefully taking complete control of the projects we help start.  

During the training we learned about program development and management and we started gathering ideas for projects we want to start. Paulina, my counterpart is one of my neighbors who is on part of the School Governing Body. She is very excited about working with me, but lacks experience and background knowledge in setting up programs. 

The training was funded by PEPFAR (as US grant that funds HIV/AIDS initiatives).  I’m pretty sure I learned everything there is to know about HIV during the training. For instance, did you know that after the initial infection, if someone with HIV takes good care of their health and has a high CD4 count, they can have unprotected sex without infecting their partner? Life with HIV doesn’t have to be the death sentence it once was! People are living long and full lives as long as they know their status and take measures to lead a healthy lifestyle. 

One of the best moments of the training was when they gave us all a game called Master AIDS. It was an adult version of Chutes and Ladders that substituted in condoms and viruses. Land on a condom and you climb up the board, land on a virus and you slip back to the beginning. But of course you must answer a question about HIV before you even get the opportunity to roll the die!


The training was a great opportunity to get excited about the upcoming projects I will be working on. Sometimes its easy to get discouraged in the village, but meeting up with other volunteers who are experiencing the same things that I’m experiencing and have the same desires that I have is awesome. Now the problem is that I’m inspired about too many projects and now I need to narrow/focus my attention on just a few. Currently I want to focus mainly on establishing libraries in the schools that also cater to the schools. I’d also like to continue and expand a young women’s support group and an exercise club that have both spontaneously sprung up.

In other news I was one of 3 people in my group of 55 volunteers that was elected to be part of the Volunteer Advisory Committee (VAC). The VAC meets once every quarter with PC staff members to discuss current issues and concerns that volunteers have. It was an honor to be elected in this capacity (plus it means a free weekend in the city every quarter!) – I’m excited to get to know a little bit more about how the Peace Corps office functions. 

Now I’m off to start my own Christmas vacation! It will be my first Christmas outside the US and away from family. To ease the pain I’ve saved my pennies for a vacation with a few other volunteers hiking through the Drakensburg mountains and ending in the beach town of Durban for New Years! We’ll be staying in hostels the whole trip and on Christmas Day we are taking an 8 hour hike to a famous waterfall. Don’t worry, last weekend I bought a Santa hat from a guy selling them on the street. If its not too hot, I’ll be wearing it the whole time!

SIDES!

So this week as I was washing my laundry by hand and listening to my iPod on shuffle, one of Dr. Easton’s infamous recorded lecturettes came on. I was reminded of my fabulous friends and professors in the SIDES department. I also was reminded, again of a Dr. Easton colloquialism in talking about our papers for his class.  I keep throwing my dishwater out into the bushes only to find that I’ve also thrown out a fork or spoon. He’s always commenting about how we don’t want to “throw the baby out with the bathwater” when we establish our arguments.

Thanks for all the support and emails I get from all of you. I hope you enjoy reading these updates. And thanks to Miz Cobb for making sure it all gets posted!

Right now I’m in the middle of what we in South Africa Peace Corps (SA PC) call “lockdown.” It’s the first three months while you are at your permanent site. For the first three months we are supposed to work really hard to make the village our home. We are also supposed to create a portfolio all about our village and organization that we are working for. Since I’m working at schools, my portfolio is mostly about the schools I’m working with. So I’ve been doing a lot of interviews and observations.

But “lockdown” also means that you are only allowed to spend the night away from your village one weekend a month.  I really think it’s a good idea, because it forces us to spend the weekends going to weddings, funerals  and parties in the village instead of visiting other volunteers, which I know would be tempting in the beginning when we are getting used to being the only American for miles and miles (I mean kilometers and kilometers).

I’m learning that no Peace Corps experience is the same. In fact from what I’m hearing the different countries do things completely differently with training, regulations, and schedules. If you’re going into the Peace Corps, I’d suggest following a blog of someone who is in the country you’re going to because that is going to be closest to your experience. But even that might not be similar. The people that I trained with (all education volunteers) all have different set ups in their villages, and the people who are health volunteers have even different situations. I recently visited a volunteer who lives at a game reserve outside a big city and works at the municipality office. She lives in one of the “cabins” at the game reserve that are rented out to vacationers and has a maid come in everyday. At first she refused the maid service, but the reserve pays the maids per cabin they clean, so she was preventing them for getting paid, so she allows them to clean for her.

Some of my friends live in villages with grocery stores, while others have to take an hour bus ride that costs 10$USD to get to a grocery store. Some people love the families they live with and eat dinner with them every night. I prefer to cook my own food and just spend time with my family in the afternoon and on weekends.  I’m working at schools where the principals are really receptive to my ideas and they let me put my plans in action. Other people have principals that are not so open to new things.  Some people have toilets and showers with running water, while I’m swiping cockroaches off my butt when I use my pit latrine. You just can’t compare your experience to anyone elses.

At the end of our “lockdown” period we have a 10 day training session the first week of December in Pretoria to discuss what we’ve seen/done so far and talk about establishing new projects, etc. We also bring a “counterpart” or helper from our village for 3 days of training so that we can have someone help us work with Life Skills. Life Skills focuses on HIV/AIDS with youth, but also targets decision making skills, confidence, genders roles, and healthy living. I have been talking to my fellow volunteers about international education and a few of them want to know more. So I asked one of my supervisors if I could do a session on an “overview” of International  Development Education during this training workshop. She said yes, so I’m signed up to lead a session. I’ll probably need some assistance from the SIDES department in putting the session together. I basically
want to explain the concepts of EFA and UPE and explain where we are in this process and how ideas about development education are evolving (ie Learning for All instead of EFA).

School Days

So finally I’m going to get around to what I’m actually doing here, which I’m sure you might have been wondering.

Well first of all, for the first three months that we are living in our villages we are just supposed to observe and learn. This is so we can learn village dynamics and needs before starting projects, etc.
I’m currently in the process of completing a fairly extensive portfolio about my schools and the village I live in.

My main project here is to work at the two schools in my village. One primary school and one secondary school. One class for each grade. That gives you an idea of how big my village is. I spend all day, every school day at one of the schools, alternating days. I’m interviewing teachers, observing classes, developing rapport with teachers and discovering how the SA school system works.  Not to mention I have reorganized books in the staffrooms so that teachers can actually see what resources are available to them.

I’ve also done a bit of working with teachers to plan and deliver lessons, but I hope to do more of that. I started a long term journaling project with Grades 5 and 9. I write individual questions in English to them and they write answers back. This provides a safe space for them to practice reading and writing English on topics they know and at their level.

Sometimes when I notice that a class has been left alone I go in and do extension activities, like English and Math games with the students. I also tutor small groups, do read alouds, and am trying to make sure every secondary school student gets a lesson on test taking strategies. We are also creating artwork for World AIDS Day which is December 1!

The most exciting thing I’ve done with the students happened this week! The school year here goes with the calendar, so they start in January and end in December. The secondary learners (as they are called here) have already started their final exams… Thus, if the students aren’t taking an exam that day, they don’t really have any teachers teaching them. So this week the Art and Culture teacher asked me to teach some ballroom dancing lessons. I started teaching swing dancing to Grade 8 and 9. They absolutely LOVED it! After the lesson was over they were still practicing on their own and Grade 9 stayed after school to learn more. Everyone participated and they are fairly good. They keep asking me to teach them more, and I have. My fellow Peace Corps volunteer and dance partner on multiple occasions, Howell, suggested that I try to use dancing as a way to model appropriate cross-gender interactions, so I’m trying to throw in that kind of thing as I teach them basic swing dancing.  Its going really well! Howell and I are throwing around the idea of hosting a dance workshop during a school break in 2012, so hopefully that will come to fruition.  There is definitely enough interest.

So that’s what I’m currently up to in the schools. I hope it helps you to see what exactly I’m doing. I hope that I will be able to do more working with teachers to improve lesson plans and diversify their teaching methods. I’d also like to start some out of school clubs for girls, reading, and/or dance. I'll be starting up more official things in  January when school begins again.

Village life

My “mom,” Josephine, and I go visiting and help out with community events together (more on that later). She helps me make social connections around the village.

Nolo and I also have a weekly exercise group that spontaneously formed. My first Sunday there, we ran down to the school soccer “field” (really just a flat area with dirt) and did an exercise routine. Now we have a group of small boys that join us every week at 7:00am and children ask me about it all the time – “when are you exercising? Can I come?”

The other day Josephine asked me if black people in America spoke Sepedi. She was amazed when I told her that, “No, they speak English.” She then went through the list of all the neighboring South African languages, asking me if black people in America spoke those, as I kept telling her that everyone speaks mostly English.

The gender differences here in rural South Africa are amazing. I really don’t ever hang out with any men except I sometimes talk to the male teachers at school. The men and women lead totally separate lives. For one, most of men with jobs work in the bigger towns and villages, only coming home at the end of the month. Josephine’s brothers drilled holes in my wall so I could hang my curtains.

Elias is retired. Josephine does everything: cooking, washing dishes, fetching water, washing clothes, building a fire, taking care of children, sweeping, mopping, polishing the floor, spreading cow dung on the patio (?!?! I think its supposed to “clean it”). And remember this is all done without running water, which makes everything take longer.

The women also are involved in community events almost every weekend. It seems that every weekend there is a party or a wedding or a funeral. For all of these events neighbors are expected to contribute. They lend chairs, bowls, plates, kettles, big cast iron cauldrons, and spoons. They contribute 2 liters of soda, bags of flour and corn meal, canned food, firewood they’ve gathered from the bush etc for feeding everyone. The women are at the host’s home for days before the event cooking and brewing local alcohol. They cook food in huge iron three-legged pots over the fire. Everyone helps cut up vegetables and cook the food. It appears to be an organizational nightmare because no one person is in charge , 30+ women and girls are working together and it all gets done. Of course we take plenty of tea and scone breaks because they always have that on hand for the helpers.

During the weddings, the men are in charge of slaughtering the cow. I still haven’t seen the actual killing, but I have watched them cut up the cow. They use every part. Did you know that there is a lot of cow dung  and grass in the stomach that they have to clean out before chopping up the intestines to cook? They use the skin as kind of a table cloth on the ground to do the chopping up of the parts.

One thing that I have found interesting is that a lot of the older women use snuff. At least that’s what I think it is – they put coarse powdered tobacco in their noses. I don’t think the men do it, but I’m not sure because I never hang out with them.

These women carry everything on their heads. Josephine and I were headed to help with a party last weekend. She had a stack of 6 heavy duty plastic chairs and a large bowl. She said to me “help me put these chairs on my head.” I did and she carried them to the neighbors. The other day I was carrying a blanket and some other small items on my head and I thought I was really cool. Then I ran into a woman carrying a HUGE cast iron pot on her head! Literally, she had what we would consider a witches cauldron on her head. I felt not as cool with my simple blanket.

Our town went without running water from the spigot for 4 days a while back. After my family finished off the drums of water they keep stored for occasions like that, Josephine and I had to fetch water from the river. We walked about ¾ of a mile through the bush, down to a river that I didn’t even know was there. Then we carried our buckets of water back on our heads. I felt like a real African woman after that. Now I’m trying to carry more things on my head. It really makes sense – the weight is dispersed more evenly throughout your whole body and your hands are free to carry other things. I saw a lady in town the other day carrying a cake on her head through a bustling shopping area with her hands full of shopping bags.
Currently we are without electricity because the transformer in our village blew up. Who knows when it will get fixed. And I’m also learning that cell phone reception and cellular Internet connections fluctuate on a daily basis. But at least I usually have electricity and often have Internet access.

My mailbox is in a town 45 minutes and a $6 “shared taxi” ride away, so I usually only check is once a week or so.

I’ll try to post some pictures of the parties soon. But here’s a story to leave you with: I went to a wedding a couple of weeks ago. In the morning I helped cook as all the neighbors do. I was invited to go to the church for the ceremony with the bridal party (an honor because not everyone gets to go since it requires transport which not everyone has). Well we left for the ceremony 3 hours after they said we would leave, me not realizing that it took 45 min to get to the church. When we arrived back at the wedding most of the food had been eaten, including all the meat and moved to a back room. I served myself out some healthy portions of veggies and rice and was pleased to note that there was still a bowl of custard/pudding left for dessert. When I headed back for dessert I filled my cup with custard and licked a big spoonful. Unfortunately it was not the YUM I expected it to be. Turns out it wasn’t custard at all – but  BUTTER! I has just eaten a spoonful of butter! It was so warm that it was the soft consistency of pudding… YUCK! I almost threw up!

I feel like I’m getting to know my village and the culture more and more everyday. I have friends I visit on a regular basis and I can greet people by name. Next post I’ll tell you more about what I’m doing in the schools.