Monday, November 2, 2009

Life is very busy

Oct. 8, 2009

When the guys were here welding security bars on the windows and the door, they had a welder and some kind of saw hooked up to the extension cord. The fuse on the extension cord kept popping. At one point, I saw the guys (they volunteered a youngster for the job) over at the extension cord holding in the fuse button on the extension cord. At this point, I went over and unplugged the extension cord from the outlet and just plugged their welder and stuff into the outlet which then stopped the fuse from popping on the extension cord. This was a couple of days ago.

This morning, I wanted to hard boil eggs. The kettle boils water fast compared to the hotplate. So I put three eggs into a pot with a smallish amount of water. Put the pot on the hotplate and turned it on high. Then I put water for the morning into the kettle meaning to boil that water and pour some of it into the pot for the eggs and the rest to have for my tea. I walked to the other side of the room to get bathed and dressed. It was probably a good thing I was on the other side of the room because at some point the fuse area on the extension cord started to smoke and when I headed towards it to turn it off, the thing exploded with a very loud bang. Needless to say, it blew all the breakers thankfully. There wasn’t an actual fire when I finally got up the nerve to look closely, but I took no chances taking it outside and putting it in the sand. I figured I’d go to school and then come back in an hour or so to deal with the carnage. Apart from the smell, when I turned the breaker back on, everything worked. So, I bought another extension cord in Mafikeng last weekend. They are a must when there is only one outlet in our rooms.

Full contact Frisbee is still the order of the day at the primary school although the middle school kids are doing much better. At the primary school, I’ve done everything except say only some kids can play because mostly they have a good time. About 100 kids try to play at once. I spend a lot of time consoling those who have either gotten trampled, beaten up, or hit with the flying Frisbee. I generally say the Setswana version of “is there blood?” Once we determine that these are mere flesh wounds, I try to coax a smile out of the tears, give them a hug, and send them on their way. Believe me, the girls give it out at least as good as the boys here and everyone participates who wants to so no need for Title 9—we’ve got it already. There is no money to spend on anything anyway so it works out great. There is a soccer team nearby who is doing their damnedest to win the division because then the prize is enough money for uniforms! That is some incentive.

We worked on grades last week at the primary school. The parents were told to come Friday at 1pm to get report cards. The grades 1-3 teachers had their act together probably due to a head of department who is on the ball and knew what she wanted. She and I met during the week off to get the data all entered and print out the forms so the teachers had all week to basically find any mistakes (I don’t spell well in Setswana because of some different letter combinations that my fingers aren’t yet trained to do), add comments, and sign the report cards. The grades 4-6 guys on the other hand were entering data starting the day before it was due and right up through the time they were supposed to be handed out. Time is a funny thing here in SA. Parents were told to come at 1pm. They came at 10am. The report cards were finally done at 4pm. Everyone was happy all day and it was fine.

At home, we have been shearing sheep. The herd is about 30 sheep strong with about 20 of them who needed a haircut. The other 10 are small and don’t have a lot of wool yet. The first thing to do is to run all the sheep into a corner where farm equipment has been strategically placed so that the sheep have to sort of move through the area one at a time. Then you pick out a sheep and make a grab for it. Usually this takes 3 or 4 of us and this was the part I got to help the guys do. When somebody gets one, you must hang on tight and everyone converges on it until one of the guys can get the feet tied together. Then the cutting begins. This is done with a pair of scissors and takes about 45 minutes to an hour per sheep. Naturally, the sheep isn’t happy during this process, but eventually learns to just take it lying down so to speak. Once this is done, we treat the sheep for ticks (paint something clear and turpentine smelling using a feather as a paintbrush), address any cuts from the scissors, and shove some de-worming fluid down the throat. At which point the indignations are complete and the sheep is untied to run and join the rest of the herd and the process starts again. For two days work doing this to 20 sheep, guys were paid R160, that is about $20, for them to split. I’m told they did it for cigarette money as they have other jobs that provide real money.

Oct. 12, 2009

Saturday, Sonja and I went to Mafikeng as it seems like most supplies last about 2 weeks. I can get most things from my little local village shop, but there are some things that you really have to get in a bigger town. So far, that is Tang, canned green beans and canned tomatoes, Wheatabix and cereal, crackers, chocolate, shampoo and cream rinse, astringent, and wine. We are learning what to get, how much money to get when we are in town (no ATMs anywhere in any of the villages and things mostly just run on cash), and what things we can get in our little areas that we don’t have to carry. It takes some practice, but I think we are just about there. Of course, anything like mixing bowls, sharp knives, cotton sheets, any appliances, that sort of thing has to be bought in Mafikeng. All in all, I think we’ve got it.

Sunday, we had both planned to wash clothes. It is a pretty big job and you don’t want to let it build up or you’ll be washing forever. I had planned to wash sheets specifically. Alas, it started raining when we were in the grocery store Saturday and really didn’t stop until Monday. So, no washing got done. I did listen to a book on tape (Light My Fire by Katie McAlister—thanks Jennie!), worked on some cross-stitch, cleaned my room, and visited with Kgosi and Mma. Kgosi had been at a funeral in Setlagole, Mma stayed home and killed a chicken.

Funerals are a pretty big part of village life. For example, just this week, there are at least 4 from Sunday to Wednesday. Yesterday, a boy from our grade 3 class died so it was shocking to the students at assembly this morning to hear about their classmate. I heard it was a problem with asthma, but you never really are sure of the cause unless there was some hospital visit (like one older lady died of a massive stroke). Anyway, everyone was in the dumps today at school for good reason. Tomorrow, the memorial service will be at the school at noon and then we will bury him Wednesday morning. Funerals are done very early in the morning here. So, I’ll go to the middle school again in the morning and then walk over to the primary school for the memorial service. The entire community celebrates happy as well as sad times together.

At the moment, I seem to be settling into a fairly busy routine. I get up at 6 to get ready for school. I take a bucket bath, eat, and make a lunch which is usually PB&J and some apples. I leave about 7 or 7:15 to walk to school. The middle school is about a 15 or 20 minute walk. The primary school is closer, maybe 10 minutes at the most. Usually I meet kids along the way so we talk. You’ve got to greet everyone you meet along the way and ask how they are. It doesn’t really matter how far away they are, a greeting is required. If you are a little too far away to shout, then a loud whistle will let you know that a hand wave is required to greet someone you can’t shout at.

I go to the middle school on Mondays and Tuesdays at a minimum. It depends on what we are doing whether I go more. The students here are in Grade 7,8, or 9 and range in age from 12 to about 21—this can even be all in one grade like Grade 7. Usually, we play Frisbee until the bell for classes rings so anywhere from 20-30 minutes. There is usually a morning assembly they attend and I like to go because there is spontaneous song. When I asked who led it, I was told it was just a volunteer. It is always a cappella, but some of the most beautiful stuff. This even happens at the primary school. I’m not sure where they all learn to harmonize, but it is even done at a very young age.

Lately, I’ve been helping teachers learn the computer so I spend quite a lot of time there. I also sit in on classes to see how the teachers actually teach. It is quite an art, especially when teaching the older kids. There often aren’t enough books, papers, desks/chairs, etc. All the supplies that I brought and that you all have sent go to good use.

School usually lets out about 2pm. The middle school kids will often ask to play with the Frisbees until about 3 when generally everyone heads home. If I go to the library, I go at this time. It is open until 4:30, but it is a 45-minute walk to get there. I also have been teaching some adults computer skills. This has been everything from showing some how to turn it on and what the parts are to how to use quick keys. All the volunteers, or a large number of us anyway, are teaching everyone how to use Excel for spreadsheet information. For some reason, this has been done as a table in MS Word so it is really awkward to manipulate things. It seems crazy, but Word is what people know so that is what gets used. Excel is a revelation.

I usually get home around 6:30 or 7, get myself some dinner, and read, write, visit with my host family, check email, that sort of thing until about 8:30 when I generally head to bed. I’m usually pretty tired by then.

On the weekends, I wash, go to town if I need to, relax, play with kids, etc. I generally wash my hair on Wednesdays and Sundays so that takes a bit of time. I do this with a bucket again and it takes some practice to get it clean and then get all the soap out. One trick is to keep your elbows in or water goes everywhere.

It is a simple life, but I really, really like it here. I’ve made lot of friends in teachers, neighbors, taxi drivers, board members, parents, shop owners, in Mafikeng the guys in the restaurants know us, etc.

One thing I need to still do is to find a tutor for language. I’m not bad when it comes to everyday stuff, but I get lost when someone throws something out of context at me. For example, one fellow last weekend wanted me to pay for his taxi fare which I didn’t expect so I didn’t really understand it. He switched to Afrikaans which I really didn’t understand, I said it had to be Setswana or English or French so he switched back to Setswana and I finally basically said I didn’t have enough money to do that which was true. If we don’t get enough money in Mafikeng the one day we go, then we have just enough for taxi fare back in two weeks. So I’d like to be a bit more fluent when it comes to unordinary situations.

Oct. 20, 2009

It has been a while since I had a minute to write…I hope it sorta slows down a little bit. I started writing about the funeral last week of the grade 3 boy who died. The memorial service was at school. Everyone crammed into two rooms at school. It was hot and the service lasted about 2 and a half hours. This sort of thing is not done quickly here. There were speeches by a lot of people at the school and in the community, tributes read by grade 3 classmates and his teacher, songs, a prayer by the reverend, and then some cold drinks and cookies for the adults. The whole school attended so about 400 people in the two rooms and, no they aren’t that big. When someone was overcome by emotion, friends helped them outside. The teachers are so wonderful. They dole out toilet paper, laps, hugs, sugar water, and just sit with someone who needs some support.

The singing is wonderful and it seems like everyone can do it. I have got to get someone to teach me to sing as I certainly feel as if I could do it if I had some help, especially knowing the words.

For the funeral, we go to the house where a tent is set up. The middle school arranged for the tent to be put up. The casket is under the tent in the middle and not all the learners went, but a representative group from both the primary school and the middle school. Both choirs were present and all the student leaders. All the teachers from both schools, all the principals including some from nearby villages, the school governing boards, parents, and probably about 100 kids. The kids from the primary school carried chairs over to the house so people would have a place to sit.

It is customary for the men to be in suits or at least jackets that open in the front. Women have their arms and hair covered. Apart from that, there isn’t a color to be worn or a style of dress. There is a lot of singing and pretty much the same people say a few words. It takes about 2 hours and starts early in the morning, 7am usually. The principal, one of the teachers, and 4 classmates carried the coffin to the car. The car drove to the cemetery flanked by the primary school students who walked along side. All the people followed with the older ones or ones who aren’t able to walk well riding in the few cars that are there.

At the gravesite, the hole was already dug. I was told that this was done either earlier in the morning or the day before by some of the men in the family or in the community. A few prayers are said and the casket is lowered into the grave using a type of pulley system. Some men gather around the grave and they take a shovel full of dirt, each take a handful and then throw that onto the casket. Then the men and some boys take turns with 2 or 3 shovels to fill the grave with the dirt. Eventually, the mound of dirt is covered with rocks and a tombstone is erected. There is a big ceremony for the tombstone unveiling. During this time when the shoveling is taking place, everyone else is singing. Some more prayers are said and songs are sung. Then everyone goes back to the house for the meal that the family has prepared.

At the house, there are two or three buckets of water at the entrance so you come in and wash your hands. This is symbolic in a way to wash death from you, but also cleansing if you were shoveling. You must wash your hands. Then the family and friends serve the food. It is usually rice or pap and some meat. It is very good. At this point, people start wandering back home. Friends will go check on the family often afterwards to make sure they are well. The mourning period for the family depends on who died, but can be up to a year.

All in all, I found it to be a tough day—I was only sad until the boys started helping to fill in the grave, then I was crying. The girls and women watch and make sure to take care of people who are sad. Someone will give you a cup of water, toilet paper, and a big hug. It was such a comfort to be with our kids from school—hard to imagine how they get so wise at such a young age. I have an enormous amount of respect for our principals, our teachers, our governing boards, and our learners. It is such a community here and they really show me the way to be part of a larger body.

The weeks here have gotten VERY busy. I’ve been helping the schools with computer work for the end of the third term. In addition, I’ve been with the middle school classes doing work with xenophobia, chemistry, and probability. I’ve started tutoring some girls after school with maths. This is on top of teaching adults and kids computers at the primary school. We are just getting a letter-writing project off the ground at the primary school. We will correspond with Wells Branch Elementary students via my very dear friend, Lisa. The kids are super excited about it. I’m also teaching a couple of kids to use the computer. They are learning touch-typing and to use the mouse playing games. I can’t give them information fast enough!

Sonja visited last weekend and went with me to Mafikeng to buy a stove. We went to the new mall in town called MegaCity. There is supposed to be a cinema there and I wanted to see what that involved. In fact, it isn’t opened yet so we were disappointed in that. But there are two very big market stores that were a bit like a Walmart. I found my stove/oven in the Pick N Pay store and it was very reasonably priced. It also isn’t very heavy which is good since we bring these things home in a taxi. I, for one, am usually dismayed at the amount of people/stuff that fit in a taxi. You get kind of used to it, but in America, you would call it full when it is about ¾ full, maybe even ½ full. Believe me, more can fit than you could imagine.

Anyway, Sonja came on the bus Friday afternoon which is pretty easy to do and stayed until Sunday. We enjoyed meatloaf, green beans, baked potatoes, and some red wine. It was fun to just speak English to someone and not worry about them understanding me. I really enjoyed having her visit. Kgosi drove her home on Sunday and then we had to stop and visit the chief in her neck of the woods. When I asked about it, Kgosi said it was rude to just drive by without stopping. I’m not sure how he would have noticed that we did that, but we stopped anyway. There is a lot of chief protocol to these villages.

I am hoping to go to Sonja’s village this Saturday for a day painting the school. It seems the principal, the teachers, the parents, the governing board and anyone else comes to paint the school. People are either painting or cooking and I hope to learn a little of both. It sounds like lots of fun, but arranging transportation can be a bit of a problem.

I also met another principal last Friday who has invited me to come teach excel classes at his middle school. It is near Setlagole. I’ll go this Thursday afternoon and then two afternoons next week to teach science and technology. I think it will be a lot of fun and I think that spreading the word about the Peace Corps is one way to get more progress in the area. I guess we will see how it works out. There are plenty of opportunities and I’m pretty sure I could keep 5 engineers busy here full time just with all the things people want to learn.

One really, really great thing that I’m doing is working with a couple of kids who are 11 years old who want to learn computers. They show up at the house basically asking to learn stuff. We’ve had the maps out along with the picture books (some of the VERY BEST things I brought, thanks Penny, Ed, & Melissa)! We’ve watched the Texas video that I brought. Now they are playing games on the computers and they love it. I think they’ve figured out how to play on my laptop and adjust the skill level. They’ve got Go Fish, Crazy 8s, UNO, and a couple of others down pretty well. I’ve started them on Solitaire which is a little bit harder concept to grasp. I’ve also had them looking at pictures on iPhoto. Needless to say, opening pictures is perfect for learning to double click on the mouse. The card games are good for drag and drop. There is a typing program that is great for teaching touch-typing and they are pretty fascinated by anything I show them. I have to introduce a bit about how the computer works, the computer parts, and the internet. I figure once they see the internet, they will be better at the computer than I am—I know, quit laughing, it isn’t that hard to do. If you guys could just see their enthusiasm for learning, you’d be stunned. I don’t know if we just take it for granted at home as it is always there, but these kids are totally loving it. I honestly can’t give them information fast enough. I really need to get to Sonja’s on Saturday to get some kid’s movies from her as she’s got some on her hard drive that I thought I wouldn’t need and had already seen. Stupid me! If anyone out there is looking for a very worthy cause, I would tell you to fund a computer lab with maybe 30 computers for Thutlwane Primary School. One former volunteer pulled down some Dell Foundation forms so maybe I’ll go that route. If I do, I’ll contact some of you guys for help!

Attached are a couple of photos of the village from Google Earth that Katherine put together. The far away shot shows the tar road. You can see the sports complex and the library is just about where the R507 is on the map, on the east side. Library is south of the sports complex after a field. Then the village—so you can see a bit about what I’m talking about.

Oct. 25, 2009

I did go to Madibogopan yesterday to help paint the school. Sonja lives and works in this community. It is about 30 km SE of Thutlwane and is relatively hard to get in and out of. It is about 15 km off the tar road and the dirt road isn’t graded very often so the taxis don’t want to drive there. You can hitch a ride with someone who is going and that is just about your best bet to get there. I hitched a lift with some educators (teachers here) who were going from Mafikeng. We got there about 9 in the morning and pretty much just grab a job. We painted two buildings and you can see how hard people work here.

The first thing we did was take large brooms and scrub the walls free of dirt, nests, loose concrete, etc. Then the school was painted with primer, followed by paint. For some reason that we can’t quite fathom, they want a line between the yellow paint at the top and the brown paint at the bottom. To that end, they put some masking tape along the place where they want the division to be. Sonja had the temerity to point out that we are putting the tape over the primer and there will be a line between the two paints. A five minute little controversy ensued, mostly in Setswana about this line. Basically, you just have to paint and ignore the details. For those of us from the US with type A personalities, it is a little hard!

Anyway, there was a guy who patched the concrete in areas before we painted it. Then the walkways were scrubbed clean using a mop and some steel wool (that we cut off a very large ball of steel wool with a tree saw). There was one ladder, but it turns out that you can use a table frame with a piece of metal balanced on top as a ladder if you don’t step too close to the edge. Chairs works pretty well too. Anyway, there were plenty of jobs to do so just pitch in and do whatever job you want to do at the time.

There were a couple of ladies working in a classroom to cook food for everyone. I, for one, thought the lady cooking the pap had the hardest job of all. I tried to stir this stuff which is mostly like really, really stiff grits. It is really hard to stir and the pot was huge. They made sandwiches for 11am break and then chicken and pap for the evening meal. Just as when someone else cooks after a hard day of work, the food was fabulous. I’m pretty sure Sonja and I have adapted well as we eat with our hands now (right only) and can get the entire meal in our mouth as opposed to when we first arrived. It takes some practice.

The only thing that was missing after a long day of hard work in the sun was a good old American shower. One fellow volunteer has said that for her birthday she plans to go to her biggest shopping town, rent a room, and indulge in a shower. I must say, that idea has merits!