2009--The Year of Change as my friend, Kim, so describes it. I must say that I whole-heartedly agree. As I think back over the year, it is hard to describe the dream I’m living out
The year, for me, started and ended with death. My friend, Walt, died in early January after a long fight against brain cancer. Despite this, I know we all miss his humor, his compassion, and his gentlemanly ways. I think back over the times we shared from Valentine’s Days with the girls to October fest and arguing about whether or not we should have beer at the party and I think the loss is still felt strongly by our whole group.
And just this week, I learned of my Aunt Patti’s death. Again, cancer is the culprit and although she was 73 years old, she is someone I will miss. When I was home in February for my Aunt Yoli’s 95th birthday, Aunt Patti hosted a dinner at her house. It was so fun—the usual fare with Italian leading the way and plenty of family present. We all laughed and ate and laughed and ate and ate. Her cookies were the hit of the dinner. Although I knew she was tired and that hosting took a lot out of her, I didn’t realize that we wouldn’t have her at the end of this year. She is one person who encouraged my needlework and we shared cross-stitch adventures through the years. I’ll miss her as well.
I’ve been in South Africa now for 5 months. It is hard to believe I have less than 2 years left. I love the village where I live. My host family couldn’t be better. I’m proud to be sharing Christmas with them. People have been arriving now for the better part of two weeks. Kgosi and Mma have 12 kids that are spread out over the country. They consider me to be another of their children so I claim to be the first one. Their oldest is 46 so I just beat her out for the title. There are 7 boys and 5 girls and 2 of them have already passed away. I remember my friend saying once that African families had to have a lot of children because so many of them died young. That turns out to be true unfortunately.
I think I’m a rarity among Peace Corps Volunteers. Most of us keep up with each other via Facebook. I think I’m the only one who is quite happy to stay in my village for the holidays. I know of volunteers who leave their village every weekend to spend it at a hotel in the closest big town. While we each have our own reasons for being in Africa in the Peace Corps, I can’t say that I want my experience to be of hotels on the weekends. I want to experience life as the people here do. I want to make new friends and consider them part of my extended family. We each have our own situations to deal with, but I feel as if I hit the site jackpot when I landed here in Thutlwane. I like living here among the people and I like having them for friends. My principals are great and the teachers have become real friends to me. I don’t usually have much of a reason to even to go Mafikeng. I go generally because Sonja wants to go. It is nice to be there for the day, but I’m pretty happy to get back home at the end of the day.
With respect to change, I do find some situations harder to manage than others. I’ve discovered about myself that some things really make me mad. Many people here have remarked that I’m a happy person. While that is generally true, there are things that I’ve found I just can’t tolerate. Child abuse is something that I just can’t sit back and do nothing about. The constable who is assigned to our schools for the Adopt-A-Cop program knows me well by now. She’s a nice lady and she knows if I’m calling her, it is about a kid who is being beaten or worse by someone in the home. I make sure the family knows that we all know about it (teachers, parents, kgosi, etc.) and that we aren’t going to tolerate it. I also give kids food from the garden if they aren’t getting enough at home. I’ve yelled at teachers who have pinched kids to get them to behave. I remember thinking in training that there were some issues that were just too big to tackle—women drinking, for example. Some volunteers really felt like that infringed on their rights just too much to ignore. Not me, I thought. Now here I find myself fighting against child abuse. So much for noble thoughts!
Other things that I’ve found hard or just miss—intelligent conversations with men of my age with whom there is absolutely no sexual interest or tension or whatever. The gender roles here are so well defined that this is a non-starter. Women have their place and it isn’t for conversation. While I do have occasional conversations with some of the principals (two to be exact), generally the conversation is something along the lines of why I’m a failure because I’m not married with children. I’ve talked to a few of the female teachers about this. They all generally have a child or two because the pressure in the culture to have kids is so strong. Usually by about age 28 if there is no child, then the questions begin about what is wrong with you. The concept of a woman having a choice in the matter is so foreign that I’ve given up trying to explain. And if they are in a relationship and no children result, it is automatically the woman’s fault.
Another thing that I’ve found hard is not being there to support friends and family during tough times. For most of my life, I’ve been able to support people when they needed it and in turn relied on them to support me when I was in need. I find that I really miss not being there when I could be of great value in someone’s time of need. I know, for example, that Katherine thinks that if I come home early it will be because I can’t fix all the child abuse problems. But in fact, if she breaks any more bones, that might send me home early sooner. I found the same feeling to be true when my Aunt Patti died. I wished I could be there to help especially the first few weeks. I remember when my mother died and how I felt as if I were in a funnel and there was only one way to go. It helped a lot to be able to rely on Katherine, Kim, Lisa, and my Aunt Rita to help me get through the weeks that followed.
So as I sit on my stoop outside, the reservoir is filled up with water. The frogs (they come from the ground, not the sky with the rain) are singing their songs. The air is unbelievably fresh and the sky is so clear. I count satellites and look at constellations that are usually blocked by the city lights. We’ve got lots of baby donkeys, cattle, lambs, goats, and whatever roaming our village. I think back to the first time I was in Africa with Connie and my determination to live here someday. Now I’m here and I can’t believe how lucky I am to be doing something I love. Ok, I’m networking computers and all of you know that isn’t something I love or would have chosen, but it is something that we need here. I think back to the past year and all the things that had to happen to make it all possible. Hunter led a great life. Working as an engineer was successful and fulfilling most of the time. Tina had to come into my life at just the right time in HER life. And my lungs had to decide to be happy living in a place where there is a lot of dust and smoke. Not to mention all the support that I’ve gotten from the people I call my pit crew—you know who you all are.
It is hot here as it is summer. There are no Christmas decorations to speak of. The malls don’t have a bunch of things advertising all the things we all need to own. In fact, listening to Christmas carols even felt a bit ridiculous when it wasn’t cold or about buying things. Family is surrounding me and more are coming as I speak. Finding places to sleep for everyone is a challenge, but there is a lot of help to cook and a lot of laughter. I can’t eat a slaughtered sheep (in truth, I’ve found I can’t eat a slaughtered anything that I once fed), but the cole slaw, carrots from the garden, beets, pap, potatoes, squash, and gravy are mouthwatering. I’ve made my own contributions with oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip cookies. I’ll take a big family photo and we will enjoy each other’s company and getting to know each other over the next week. It is Christmas in a way that is very different, but may be closer to the true spirit than other holidays that I’ve celebrated. I hope your holidays are as wonderful as mine and I hope that you are also able to live out your dreams like I am. It seems more important than ever to live the life that you always want
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Dec Update
Dec. 13, 2009
I can’t believe how busy December has been. The school year finished on Friday so there were grades to complete and school planning for 2010 to do. The middle school principal wanted this all done before the teachers left for the break so he scheduled a workshop
at a nearby conference center. It was fun, but it was scheduled right in the middle of the primary school trying to complete their report cards. I was torn about going to the workshop and not helping with the primary school grades. In both places, my primary talent is typing fast. I ended up trying to do both—as you all knew I would! It was mostly successful.
I can’t believe how busy December has been. The school year finished on Friday so there were grades to complete and school planning for 2010 to do. The middle school principal wanted this all done before the teachers left for the break so he scheduled a workshop
at a nearby conference center. It was fun, but it was scheduled right in the middle of the primary school trying to complete their report cards. I was torn about going to the workshop and not helping with the primary school grades. In both places, my primary talent is typing fast. I ended up trying to do both—as you all knew I would! It was mostly successful. Monday the grade 6 kids went on their trip to a local
swimming hole. It was closer than the place Sonja’s school chose and I thought it was equally nice. Sonja went with our kids too and she commented that with less than half the kids of her school, it was much more controlled. 
I have to agree with her. The chaos is fun after you get used to it, but it certainly was easier to control the kids with fewer of them.In going, I can’t say that the planning was a big improvement over Sonja’s class trip. On hers we
sat in Vryburg for 2 hours while the teachers went shopping. For ours, we sat in Stella for 2 hours while the teachers went shopping. The kids were allowed off the bus as Stella is a much smaller town than Vryburg, but still there were kids everywhere. 
Sonja and I ventured into the local store there in Stella and I managed to find something that I’ve been searching in Mafikeng and Delareyville for now for two months. I think I’ve checked at least 4 stores in Mafikeng and 2 in Delareyville—both much bigger towns than Stella. So I can move onward now to baking with my newly found digestive biscuits.Last weekend Sonja and I went to Mafikeng for a little shopping. We went to Mega City mall and I managed to buy a fan AND a little refrigerator. I’m still waiting for the refrigerator to be delivered, but I own it. They said they would deliver and that Thutlwane isn’t very far. That is easy for them to say, but a refrigerator is not something that I can carry on the taxi no matter how small it is. The taxi ride is a good hour long so not far is relative. They also didn’t charge me for the delivery, yet anyway. Since it is the holiday season here, the store is very busy so there is no telling when I’ll get the refrigerator. I can be patient because I’ve got a fan!
I decided to stay close to home for Christmas this year, as I want to go back to the Serengeti in March to see the migration. I’ve heard it is awesome and knowing the number of animals there in the dry season, I’d like to see it when there is water too. My host family has 12 kids ranging in age fro 43 to 15. They and their families will all be here. I keep joking that I’m the oldest kid and we need to take a big family picture. If it happens, I’ll send it along.
I do plan to go to Kimberly for a couple of days. Connie and I stopped there for a couple of hours when we took the Blue Train in 2002. I was disappointed that I spent about 30 minutes in the diamond museum. Anyone who knows me knows that I need about 2 days for any museum. So I plan to go back to see it. I can get there pretty easily by taxi and there is a youth hostel there for sleeping. That will do me for traveling and getting away.
Some of the young people have talked about planning a New Year’s party and my house is big enough for several people to stay easily. Another advantage to my house is that it is easy (relatively compared to some other places) to get transportation in and out of Thutlwane. I said plan away and let me know what you decide. My host family, Kgosi and Mma, seem to love having all of us around so that is yet another plus. They join right in the fun.
During the school break, I’ll be teaching some computer classes, networking the computers at the primary school, setting up some programs for 2010 preparation, and putting together a math fundamentals class. We are going to focus on building the math foundations as even the best kids do poorly in math here. I will use the computers to do more math and English learning—in other words, they will have to learn something before they can play the shooting games. I really hope in two year’s time that we can say there has been some improvement in math and science literacy. The grade data that I put together from last year shows that the poor math skills eventually affects the science literacy. That is not surprising, but it is something that must be improved before South Africa can generate large numbers or engineers and scientists to fill the employment gaps. So it will be a busy break for me even if the kids are not at school. They still come to my house for all kinds of things…
Thursday, December 3, 2009
November Update
Nov. 2, 2009
After being at site for 6 or 7 weeks now, I’ve made a lot of new friends and have been able to ‘see’ with a bit more insight. There are places where some tough management practices would solve some problems and more places where people work together to mostly get the job done. The things I’ve talked about that bug me about South Africa, namely the inefficiency and the indirect communication thing, turn out to be the very things that in my opinion cause a few of the problems. There is only so much the people are willing to take responsibility for. Although there are many ‘agents of change’, there are definitely some tired people here. I guess I would be too if I had worked under apartheid for so long and then was thrust into this new democracy and was expected to perform differently. On the other hand, young people seem open to change and many of them are on the ball. They will get there.
We kicked off our letter-writing project last week at the primary school. There are still a few
who aren’t done yet, but I expect to get them in the mail to Lisa’s elementary school in Austin this week. I need to go through the letters for any points of clarification so that Lisa can interpret them. The kids were really excited about the project 
and we spent some time talking about how letters go and where America is. There are drawings and good stories and all sorts of experiences. Some of the kids
were talking about what to write about. A smattering of what I heard: goat herding on the weekends, balancing 25 liters of water on their heads to walk home from the community tap, driving a donkey cart, killing green mambas with their bare 
hands…I’ve told Lisa to expect some great letters.
Speaking of killing things...we had a mouse in an office after school today. I mentioned it to a couple of grade 6 boys who had nothing better to do just to see if they could catch it and take it outside. Well, it got caught all right. The direct quote was, “this is a very clever mouse. I thought he was dead, but I had to kill him again because he was just pretending”. I had to laugh despite my desire for the mouse to just live outside.
There are clever mice and then there are clever boys! Then he reminded me that we had a date tomorrow after school to walk to the library. I’ve got an escort service for the shortcut through the bush to the library. It makes a 45-minute walk more like 25 minutes…the boys prefer to run and I said absolutely not—it is all sand and nobody is chasing us. Too much energy in youth everywhere!
I’ve been listening to books on tape as well as reading some from the library. The Mrs. Pollifax books by Dorothy Gilman, written in 1960 or so, are pretty good and the lady reading them is great. She’s the same person, Barbara Rosenblatt, who reads the Katie MacAlister Ashlyn Grey books so she’s got a good repertoire of voices to choose from. I read a book called In A Different Time that was written by a South African lawyer and it was better than a John Grisham book—and it was a true story. It is about 4 anti-apartheid activists who were on trial for treason. Very good. I just finished a book called Laying Ghosts To Rest by Mamphela Ramphele. It is an accounting of the progress democracy has made in 15 years in South Africa. Again, it is very well written, if a little academic and dry. She gives accurate criticisms and doesn’t pull any punches when naming those accountable, including the U.S. Our library is really very good so I usually get a good cheap detective novel and then something on South Africa when I go. So far, I haven’t been disappointed. There is lots of room to add books, but generally, the library is a blessing. I’ve only done a little bit of stitching, but I vowed to slow down a little and take some time for me…so soon.
I’ve also been doing quite a bit of experimenting with my oven/stove. Baked potatoes get done a lot, but I also found an apple crisp recipe that turned out great. I bought some dark chocolate last weekend so I’ll try some chocolate chip cookies in the near future. I’ve made chicken a couple of times and then more experimentation with vegetables, eggs, rice, pasta, beans, lentils, that sort of thing. So far, I haven’t killed myself, but more practice with ingredients available here is going to happen.
Nov. 7, 2009
Saturday arrived without a trace of rain. Some days are like that! Mr. Mphumela’s sister’s funeral is today, but it is in Sharpville, which is a township of Jo-burg. We are banned from traveling to Jo-burg for any reason really. So although I asked permission to join a taxi full of educators and school governing board members, I was told not to go by the PC security guy. In a way, I’m ok with this as the past three or four weekends something has been going on that has taken all, most, or some of the weekend and I want some downtime.
My host family went to a funeral here in Thutlwane this morning for a family member of one of the department heads at the middle school, Gaserengwe. You are probably getting the picture by now that nearly every weekend is taken up with a funeral on Saturday. Death is a pretty big part of the community. A few of our kids wrote that their parents were dead in our letters to Lisa’s school. I’m sure that will raise some questions. Unfortunately, it isn’t uncommon for 12-15 year olds to be head of households here. Others live with extended family members. I’d say people are happy enough, but I’m not sure how you tally the emotional toll on kids.
On to other things…I went to a workshop with some of our primary school teachers for SAMS this week. SAMS is a program that was put together to keep track of enrollment, teacher credentials, and grades, etc. In fact, I can’t imagine a more poorly written piece of software, but it is better than what they are doing by hand. Unfortunately, the computers here are so riddled with viruses that the department has indicated that next year there must be a computer with ONLY SAMS on it. Naturally, right now it is generally on the principal’s computers and there aren’t enough resources to just dedicate a computer to this. I guess we will cross that bridge when we come to it.
One of the worst departments I’ve run into here so far is the IT department for the district. There aren’t enough people and NO ONE in the field knows anything about the computers so there are problems everywhere you look. I’ve been trying to get a guy for three weeks now and he’s just not kept his word. I must say that although I didn’t personally love the IT departments that I worked with for the past 20 years, they did do what they said they would do.
Now for the better things…the kids here continue to amaze me. I was asking them about their families and one boy told me that he has an older brother who we ran into walking to the library. I asked him how many sisters he had. He said there were many and he didn’t know, but that “it was hard to get boys in his family”.
The kids all sat for exams this week and I saw some of the tests. I’m not sure how the department of education expects these kids to answer some of the questions. The test reminded me of something that would work in the urban areas, but not in the rural areas. There were questions about airplanes (we don’t even have them flying overhead), questions about wheelchair accessible bathrooms in three bedroom houses (kids use outhouses outside), math questions that they should have been able to answer if they had strong math foundations (they don’t, one good goal of solitaire is to get them to count backwards from 10), etc. The kids don’t even start learning English until grade 3 and then everything is taught in English from grade 4. Needless to say, their English reading in grade 4 is not strong enough to do the tests. By grade 6 it has improved, but still… At the library this week, I found some of those Goosebumps books and the boys in grade 6 took them to try. So far, I hear they like them. Before that, they were reading what I would say was the equivalent of a pre-school book. I said they should challenge themselves to help with English. On the plus side, they help me with Setswana and their English is definitely improving, at least spoken English.
Friday, I got a bevy of mail from home! I can’t believe how happy it made me feel. I got a card from Aunt Mina in Pa. with some pictures in it and a lovely note. Then I got some CDs from Katherine. As many of you know, I’m a bona fide NPR junkie and one of my favorite shows is Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. There were several episodes so I listened to them this morning, just like a Saturday morning in Austin and laughed and laughed. And to top it off, I got a mail package from Tina. I had to pay R25 to get that cleared out of customs…don’t ask me what they cleared as it was magazines and some independent movies mostly, but I can’t wait to read Science News and watch the movies! I’m totally thrilled.
So to top it off, I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies this morning. I made a little cookie sheet from the cardboard box and wrapped some foil around it. That worked just fine, but the size of the oven is such that I can cook 6 cookies at a time. So, it took a while to make 18 cookies—a half batch. At the cabin, cookies always make it into the cookie jar and then depending on whether or not Tat’s kids or Gord are around, they last a couple of days. Tat’s kids and Gord can pretty much polish off a batch of cookies in an afternoon with some help from Katherine (she just wants to make sure she gets a fair share and will hide them if pressed). Well, some girls came over to play on the computer. They tested them out and pronounced the cookies “delicious”. The smell drew a crowd outside so I took 6 to Kgosi and Mma who were sitting under the tree having a cold drink with friends after the funeral. Mma sent Mpho round with the plate and she wanted to try them and in about 10 more seconds, there were kids everywhere and the cookies were gone. You have to chop a dark chocolate bar up to make the chips here (and I can only buy them in Mafikeng). And it is a little more work to cook, but pretty much the kids were coming up 10 minutes later looking for them! Dicucu di fidile! Word spreads fast when there are good things for the taking. I’ll make more…I promised.
One of the teachers was asked to move out of her room at a local home as the family needed it for a son who was returning home. She is going to move into our area into Barbara’s house. She is supposed to come tomorrow so rumor has it that we are going to her current residence with the tractor to get her stuff. I volunteered to drive the tractor. Peace Corps didn’t say anything about that and David never would let me drive his tractor! Here’s my chance, I figure. I’ll try to take pictures of that event and post them with this.
Nov. 10, 2009
I spent the day at the district office and finally met the IT department. I see the problem…there is one manager and two technicians. One of the technicians is out on leave due to a car accident. They are both interns and the terms will be up in 4 more months. They will have been working for a year in the district office. There are three administrative offices for the district. The one I was in today had three two-story buildings with about 20 people on each floor as I estimate them. The manager and his technicians work in this area. The district that they support has 410 schools. I can’t speak for all, but I can say that both my and Sonja’s schools each have about 2 computers that are not functional due to viruses. (You’ve never seen anything like the virus problem here…). I also know of a computer lab at our high school that the kids say they can’t use. I haven’t been there myself to see what “can’t use” actually means, but I know they don’t have internet access and use the library computers for work because the library is across the street from the high school. So I could guesstimate that there are 1000 non-functional computers in the district. Since the administrators are right there where the IT manager works, I think you can guess whose computers are fixed first. The manager described his job as a fire extinguisher trying to put out a brush fire. I felt sorry for him and wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that he’d gone out and found a great job with a commercial company in Pretoria, Jo-burg, Rustenburg, Cape Town or anyplace in Africa or beyond. I’ll be more surprised if he is still here when I leave.
I’m really having a good time teaching chemistry and maths classes at the middle school. Our latest experiments were just to show reactants and products so we used baking soda and vinegar. One, you don’t need safety glasses. Two, you can taste the product and see that it tastes like water, not vinegar. Three, the kids actually know what this stuff is. We’ve also done some experimenting with endothermic and exothermic reactions. I’ve taken the hand washing powder and water and made a paste. Whatever is in the stuff, when it is mixed with water, it gives off a fair amount of heat. Since it cleans anything, I’m pretty sure it is some kind of acid (HCl?) and that my clothes will eventually be eaten away, but it sure works. I’ve promised them something more exciting next time so today when we were in Vryburg at the district office, we stopped by a store and I got some Mentos (mint, of course) and Diet Coke, Fanta Orange, Sprite, and some carbonated water in 2-liter containers. For this experiment, we needed some variables, right? I know that you can’t buy Mentos here in Thutlwane, but I have a feeling that these will be on the must have list in the very near future…the principal made me promise that I wouldn’t do the experiment without him as he’s out on leave Wednesday. I’m not sure how to top Mentos and Diet Coke so maybe we’ll need to move onto physics next.
One of the volunteers from the Northern Cape area, Kathy, is doing a project with Sonja so they are meeting in Mafikeng on the 18th. I’ve been invited to come along as Sonja’s birthday was at the end of October, Kathy’s birthday is this Saturday, and mine is the 18th. I’ve been told that the plan is to find a cake and eat it all in one sitting. I can imagine how my stomach is going to react to the shock. I’m not sure I’m looking forward to eating my share!
I showed the primary school kids how to shuffle cards this week. They think it is magic and have, after carefully watching, been practicing. Some are close to success. Others need more practice and maybe some bigger hands. It is funny what impresses kids. I will say that I finally beat the one boy, Gofaone, at Go Fish.
He is the head boy and is really pretty sharp. I’m working hard to turn him into an engineer and I’m pretty sure he’ll be on his way. Once he hears about the Mentos experiment at the middle school (news really spreads fast in this village) that will be on his list of things to learn. He’s my ace computer star too and I fear that learning about the internet will turn him into a true geek. Right now he’s still happy to play outside too. In fact, I have been left with a “see you later” if a soccer match was being played.
Nov. 15, 2009
Lots of laughs the last couple of days…Thursday, as I was walking to school, a group of my favorite boys met me at the gate. In fact, they came running to greet me. They were holding little brown things that at first I thought were mice. They turned out to be two small birds that they had caught on the way to school. I asked them about the birds’ mother. We ended up putting the birds into a box, caught a few bugs for food, put some water in there, and then released the birds back where their mother was in the afternoon. I asked them how their mother would feel if some really large creatures had taken them in them in the morning and eventually they agreed that birds belonged with their mother until they were off on their own.
At school, I found a little router. Not having a clue about hardware to network computers, I naturally gave a little shout to my brother-in-law. He gave me some great advice and I’m now trying to get three computers hooked up so we can use one printer and one database. As I’m coming to think of normal, the router power doesn’t seem to work. One step forward, and two steps back. I will go to the computer place with Sonja’s team on Monday and see what I can find to help the situation. One funny thing though was that I needed to drill a couple of holes in the pressboard to run the cables. I asked for a drill and then borrowed one from some guys doing a soccer field project for the school. The guys were pretty funny and I gather from all the looks that I got that girls in South Africa do not use power tools. One of the guys recently had a flat tire. I told him that I didn’t think he would be surprised to find out that I could change it for him if he had a spare. He just laughed and said he wasn’t surprised.
Speaking of Sonja’s team, we were invited to the Grade 6 Promotion program on Friday. We had a great time with the learners and I enjoyed seeing the teachers, the SGB team, and Mr. Phala, her principal. They cooked up quite a feast and we were greatly entertained by all. Baby, Mma Moremi, Rra Modise, and Rra Mphumela went with me. On Saturday, Mma Moremi, Rra Modise, and I went with the 130 kids and a bunch of educators, board members, and Mr. Phala’s family to Swartfontein for a swimming outing.
We stopped in Vryburg and Sonja spotted Kevin and Casandra walking down the street. We talked to them briefly as they were trying to get to a bank to complete a transaction. Kevin looks great and has probably lost at least 30 pounds. At least I’m not the only one! Kevin is the one who said during training, “figure out the least efficient way to do something and that is how we will do it”.
Once we got to the swimming hole, we had a great time. The kids unloaded the bus and I hit the pool. No one was in the deep end because most can’t swim so that was ideal. The chairman of the board took both buses of kids to a nature reserve right next to the pool, but I elected to hit the pool instead. Sonja said there were birds, zebra, and wildebeest. Although this was a school-sponsored function, there was plenty of alcohol. They bought Sonja and I two bottles of some kind of sparkling red wine. It was fine, but weird drinking at a school function. As Mma Moremi and I were taken home by a car full of drunk men (they had beer by 7am), we passed some kids who had been at the shebeens. I was asked about America and did we have this problem. I said that how were the kids to know that this behavior was undesirable if the educators and parents, in other words their role models, were doing the same. I said that school functions would never have alcohol present. I am pretty sure the cause and effect was lost on these guys.
The other thing that struck me as funny was the amount of people who can fit on a bus. I was reminded of news shows back home that said such and such bus crashed and 150 people were killed. I’d always think something along the lines of how did so many people die if it was one bus. Now I know. You put at least 100 kids on a bus, then add about 30 more adults and all the stuff and then you can fit more even…it is amazing. The buses are old rattletraps and the roads are not the best so just imagine a tire blowing or a cow in the road and I know how 150 people can die in a bus wreck. I know this is kind of a morbid funny, but it was funny to me to finally realize the truth of these things and how the rest of the world functions. In America, we want our own space. Everywhere else, no one knows what ‘having your own space’ means.
Nov. 28, 2009
Wow, what a busy couple of weeks. I went to Klerksdorp with Sonja’s team to check out the computer stuff. I bought a new router and found out that the power supply is the problem on the old one. I did see a new power supply in Mafikeng, but I want to take the old router with me to make sure it will work before I buy it. It was only 75 rand, but there are plenty of times when I don’t have 75 rand! Just like college…
Klerksdorp was fun, but the best part was that we were able to talk to Sonja’s principal about the grade 6 swimming trip and what went on with respect to drinking at a school event. The planning was terrible too in that the kids had to sit on a bus for a couple of hours while the adults all went off to shop, but the pool was only 10 minutes away. It would have been very easy to drop off the kids with some adults and then go back to town for whatever else they needed.
We also talked about some management strategies. The district promotes people to the principal position, but then never really gives any management training. I went back to the situational leadership model as it is pretty simple to understand and basically puts the onus for performance management on the manager. These are all things that would greatly help if there were any training whatsoever. I think one of the projects I’ll do is put together a management-training seminar for all the principals and heads of departments. A one-day workshop would do wonders if we could cover some basic principles.
The middle school administrator, Mma Kokie, Is absolutely fantastic. She’s very organized and has a handle on everything at the school. She knows all the kids by name and is as reliable as they come. I was working with her to input the financial data for the year into Excel. Excel is a new concept around here and people don’t realize the power that the program has. Of course, after we entered the data, I showed her some of the things that it could do like graphing data, pivot tables, and some other things that are really just ways to look at data so you can draw some conclusions. I didn’t really draw any conclusions except to say that we spend an awful lot of money at the school on transportation reimbursement and catering. It was something like a third of our budget which seemed really high to me.
The following weekend, I spent with the same school’s SGB at a workshop to review and amend policies. They asked me to type the policies into the computer because we only had hard copies of them. I can type about as fast as they discuss so I was merrily typing when I came to the travel reimbursement section. Naturally, when I saw the amount that was reimbursed for trips, I asked why it was so high when it only cost so much to go somewhere. The SGB was well on their way to raising the rates when I pointed this out. I asked why would we reimburse double for using public transport when in fact, the time involved is already covered by a salary. Why don’t we just repay the cost of the taxi? Then when private transportation was involved, the reimbursement was as much as 12X the taxi cost. I said that I thought some amount for wear and tear on a car in addition to petrol could be argued, but that the excessive reimbursement effectively was subsidizing those with cars at the school’s expense. Naturally all those who do not have cars were on my side and the amounts did not get adjusted.
Later on when they were struggling to come up with a 2010 budget, I listened for about 45 minutes. The letter from the district office did not adequately explain how much money the school would receive so it was hard for them to come up with their budget amounts. I broke it down for them after reading the letter and then listened to them for about another 30 minutes until they were about to give up. Finally, I said why don’t you do this, this, and this and then you’ll be done. The principal said go up and explain how you got these numbers to the rest of the team. I did, basically saying that you spent this much last year on these items and you haven’t changed your policies so I put this much in the buckets based on the data. About 10 minutes later they changed a couple of lines here and there and they were done. The principal asked me why I didn’t say that more than an hour ago—I said he hadn’t asked. Again, some basic financial training would have them working much more quickly.
The exciting thing about being at this SGB workshop was that we got to spend the night at a place with a shower. Naturally, the shower was cold in the morning, but I didn’t care. I washed my hair anyway. I had been fighting a cold for about two days prior to that shower, but everyone is convinced that the cold shower caused me to be sick for a week. No matter that I was sick to start with.
Our primary school had their annual parents meeting that Sunday. So I’ve decided that on the rare occasion when I’m not doing school stuff, I don’t feel at all guilty. The kids are nearly always here on the weekends, sometimes both Saturday and Sunday. And while I love them and am pleased that they want to know about the computer, it is nice to have a day off occasionally.
The kids have been taking their final exams at both schools for the past two weeks. They write exams from 9-11 and then school is basically out for the day. The kids generally stay around the school until it would be time to leave, but they are out in the yards playing. So, it seemed like a perfect time to teach more chemistry. I asked for 4 scientists to come help me with the Mentos in sodas experiment and then told all the others that they were to take data. We used fizzy water, Fanta orange, Sprite, and Diet Coke. Spearmint Mentos provided the bang and we had some great discussions. Some of the kids were there for the last experiment with baking soda and vinegar so they were able to taste the result to verify that the vinegar turned into water. Of course, they asked about tasting the sodas afterwards so I said sure. When we discussed the experiment, one of the comments was that the sodas didn’t taste much different. We talked about how much sugar was in soda and that adding a little extra sugar didn’t make much difference in the taste. But, did anyone taste the Mentos? One did and he said that the outer candy coating was gone and it was just in the insides left. So I asked what part reacted and he was able to say the outer coating. Then one of my favorite girls asked why the diet coke was the most reactive. I was so proud of her. I said she got the gold star for the day (I’m pretty sure they will all ask why as they know it is my favorite question!). We talked about what was in all the drinks by way of sugar, caffeine, acids, etc. Then I asked how we could design the next experiment to test to see which one had the biggest effect. At this point, I have to ask leading questions, but they eventually go to the point of saying Coke, Diet Coke, and Coke Zero. I’ll have to get more Mentos when I’m in Mafikeng next!
I had expected bad news from Dell because I had heard in Austin a couple of years ago that they were helping communities in which Dell had a manufacturing or marketing presence, but I was still disappointed to hear the news from the South African Dell office that they are only helping 3 or 4 large NGOs at present. The lady was helpful though in that she has given me a couple of other ideas to try to get our computer lab funded. In the meantime, I got a third computer up and running in our staff room. The kids, and there are usually about 30 of them, are amazing as they share pretty readily. I rarely have to intervene in that capacity. They’ve found a golf game that they can play with 4 people at a time. If they have to, they can trade out and play 8 at a time by taking turns in pairs. When I think of my nephews who squabbled over one computer and then have 30 kids taking turns, I think it has a lot to do with not having many things of your own. Pretty much everything they do is shared-even food.
Speaking of food, one of the hardest things I’ve had to deal with is the knowledge that kids are orphans who don’t get enough to eat. During the week at school, there is a hot lunch program whereby everyone gets at least one meal. I know they help some of the kids who don’t have enough by giving them the leftovers after school. But on the weekends or over the breaks, these kids don’t get enough at home. The ones that don’t generally live with aunts or uncles whose own kids take priority. The ones that live with grandparents, usually grandmothers, do seem to be well taken care of, but those that don’t have direct relatives seem to suffer more.
The primary school grade 6 class trip is coming up a week from Monday. They are going swimming. Each kid has paid R40 to go. I know some of them don’t have R40. I asked the question how many couldn’t afford the R40 and no one seems to know. This seems a worthy thing to break my vow to live on the Peace Corps salary and use my own U.S. money to pay for the kids who can’t pay. I also seem to be scheming about how to get some rice to some of the kids over the Christmas break. This is the part that I thought might be the hardest and it seems as though it is.
Thanksgiving was quiet and Christmas will also be. I’m going to do some sightseeing and revisit some places that Connie and I went to the first time I came to South Africa. I didn’t get to spend nearly enough time at the Kimberly Diamond mine museum so I think I will go there. I’ve been talking to Donatus about a trip in March to see the migration on the Serengeti so that is what I want to spend a week doing instead of doing something at Christmas. Kimberly is a couple of hours away, but I think very doable in a couple of days. Plus there is a Youth Hostel!
I did call Connie’s for Thanksgiving and talked to the whole gang. It was great to speak with everyone and I asked them to eat some pie for me. As a lot of you know, pumpkin pie is my favorite dessert and there is no way to make that in my little oven unless I get a refrigerator! In the meantime, it is getting hotter and I’m desperate to buy a fan. That will be my next appliance.
After being at site for 6 or 7 weeks now, I’ve made a lot of new friends and have been able to ‘see’ with a bit more insight. There are places where some tough management practices would solve some problems and more places where people work together to mostly get the job done. The things I’ve talked about that bug me about South Africa, namely the inefficiency and the indirect communication thing, turn out to be the very things that in my opinion cause a few of the problems. There is only so much the people are willing to take responsibility for. Although there are many ‘agents of change’, there are definitely some tired people here. I guess I would be too if I had worked under apartheid for so long and then was thrust into this new democracy and was expected to perform differently. On the other hand, young people seem open to change and many of them are on the ball. They will get there.
We kicked off our letter-writing project last week at the primary school. There are still a few
who aren’t done yet, but I expect to get them in the mail to Lisa’s elementary school in Austin this week. I need to go through the letters for any points of clarification so that Lisa can interpret them. The kids were really excited about the project and we spent some time talking about how letters go and where America is. There are drawings and good stories and all sorts of experiences. Some of the kids
were talking about what to write about. A smattering of what I heard: goat herding on the weekends, balancing 25 liters of water on their heads to walk home from the community tap, driving a donkey cart, killing green mambas with their bare 
hands…I’ve told Lisa to expect some great letters.Speaking of killing things...we had a mouse in an office after school today. I mentioned it to a couple of grade 6 boys who had nothing better to do just to see if they could catch it and take it outside. Well, it got caught all right. The direct quote was, “this is a very clever mouse. I thought he was dead, but I had to kill him again because he was just pretending”. I had to laugh despite my desire for the mouse to just live outside.
There are clever mice and then there are clever boys! Then he reminded me that we had a date tomorrow after school to walk to the library. I’ve got an escort service for the shortcut through the bush to the library. It makes a 45-minute walk more like 25 minutes…the boys prefer to run and I said absolutely not—it is all sand and nobody is chasing us. Too much energy in youth everywhere!I’ve been listening to books on tape as well as reading some from the library. The Mrs. Pollifax books by Dorothy Gilman, written in 1960 or so, are pretty good and the lady reading them is great. She’s the same person, Barbara Rosenblatt, who reads the Katie MacAlister Ashlyn Grey books so she’s got a good repertoire of voices to choose from. I read a book called In A Different Time that was written by a South African lawyer and it was better than a John Grisham book—and it was a true story. It is about 4 anti-apartheid activists who were on trial for treason. Very good. I just finished a book called Laying Ghosts To Rest by Mamphela Ramphele. It is an accounting of the progress democracy has made in 15 years in South Africa. Again, it is very well written, if a little academic and dry. She gives accurate criticisms and doesn’t pull any punches when naming those accountable, including the U.S. Our library is really very good so I usually get a good cheap detective novel and then something on South Africa when I go. So far, I haven’t been disappointed. There is lots of room to add books, but generally, the library is a blessing. I’ve only done a little bit of stitching, but I vowed to slow down a little and take some time for me…so soon.
I’ve also been doing quite a bit of experimenting with my oven/stove. Baked potatoes get done a lot, but I also found an apple crisp recipe that turned out great. I bought some dark chocolate last weekend so I’ll try some chocolate chip cookies in the near future. I’ve made chicken a couple of times and then more experimentation with vegetables, eggs, rice, pasta, beans, lentils, that sort of thing. So far, I haven’t killed myself, but more practice with ingredients available here is going to happen.
Nov. 7, 2009
Saturday arrived without a trace of rain. Some days are like that! Mr. Mphumela’s sister’s funeral is today, but it is in Sharpville, which is a township of Jo-burg. We are banned from traveling to Jo-burg for any reason really. So although I asked permission to join a taxi full of educators and school governing board members, I was told not to go by the PC security guy. In a way, I’m ok with this as the past three or four weekends something has been going on that has taken all, most, or some of the weekend and I want some downtime.
My host family went to a funeral here in Thutlwane this morning for a family member of one of the department heads at the middle school, Gaserengwe. You are probably getting the picture by now that nearly every weekend is taken up with a funeral on Saturday. Death is a pretty big part of the community. A few of our kids wrote that their parents were dead in our letters to Lisa’s school. I’m sure that will raise some questions. Unfortunately, it isn’t uncommon for 12-15 year olds to be head of households here. Others live with extended family members. I’d say people are happy enough, but I’m not sure how you tally the emotional toll on kids.
On to other things…I went to a workshop with some of our primary school teachers for SAMS this week. SAMS is a program that was put together to keep track of enrollment, teacher credentials, and grades, etc. In fact, I can’t imagine a more poorly written piece of software, but it is better than what they are doing by hand. Unfortunately, the computers here are so riddled with viruses that the department has indicated that next year there must be a computer with ONLY SAMS on it. Naturally, right now it is generally on the principal’s computers and there aren’t enough resources to just dedicate a computer to this. I guess we will cross that bridge when we come to it.
One of the worst departments I’ve run into here so far is the IT department for the district. There aren’t enough people and NO ONE in the field knows anything about the computers so there are problems everywhere you look. I’ve been trying to get a guy for three weeks now and he’s just not kept his word. I must say that although I didn’t personally love the IT departments that I worked with for the past 20 years, they did do what they said they would do.
Now for the better things…the kids here continue to amaze me. I was asking them about their families and one boy told me that he has an older brother who we ran into walking to the library. I asked him how many sisters he had. He said there were many and he didn’t know, but that “it was hard to get boys in his family”.
The kids all sat for exams this week and I saw some of the tests. I’m not sure how the department of education expects these kids to answer some of the questions. The test reminded me of something that would work in the urban areas, but not in the rural areas. There were questions about airplanes (we don’t even have them flying overhead), questions about wheelchair accessible bathrooms in three bedroom houses (kids use outhouses outside), math questions that they should have been able to answer if they had strong math foundations (they don’t, one good goal of solitaire is to get them to count backwards from 10), etc. The kids don’t even start learning English until grade 3 and then everything is taught in English from grade 4. Needless to say, their English reading in grade 4 is not strong enough to do the tests. By grade 6 it has improved, but still… At the library this week, I found some of those Goosebumps books and the boys in grade 6 took them to try. So far, I hear they like them. Before that, they were reading what I would say was the equivalent of a pre-school book. I said they should challenge themselves to help with English. On the plus side, they help me with Setswana and their English is definitely improving, at least spoken English.
Friday, I got a bevy of mail from home! I can’t believe how happy it made me feel. I got a card from Aunt Mina in Pa. with some pictures in it and a lovely note. Then I got some CDs from Katherine. As many of you know, I’m a bona fide NPR junkie and one of my favorite shows is Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. There were several episodes so I listened to them this morning, just like a Saturday morning in Austin and laughed and laughed. And to top it off, I got a mail package from Tina. I had to pay R25 to get that cleared out of customs…don’t ask me what they cleared as it was magazines and some independent movies mostly, but I can’t wait to read Science News and watch the movies! I’m totally thrilled.
So to top it off, I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies this morning. I made a little cookie sheet from the cardboard box and wrapped some foil around it. That worked just fine, but the size of the oven is such that I can cook 6 cookies at a time. So, it took a while to make 18 cookies—a half batch. At the cabin, cookies always make it into the cookie jar and then depending on whether or not Tat’s kids or Gord are around, they last a couple of days. Tat’s kids and Gord can pretty much polish off a batch of cookies in an afternoon with some help from Katherine (she just wants to make sure she gets a fair share and will hide them if pressed). Well, some girls came over to play on the computer. They tested them out and pronounced the cookies “delicious”. The smell drew a crowd outside so I took 6 to Kgosi and Mma who were sitting under the tree having a cold drink with friends after the funeral. Mma sent Mpho round with the plate and she wanted to try them and in about 10 more seconds, there were kids everywhere and the cookies were gone. You have to chop a dark chocolate bar up to make the chips here (and I can only buy them in Mafikeng). And it is a little more work to cook, but pretty much the kids were coming up 10 minutes later looking for them! Dicucu di fidile! Word spreads fast when there are good things for the taking. I’ll make more…I promised.
One of the teachers was asked to move out of her room at a local home as the family needed it for a son who was returning home. She is going to move into our area into Barbara’s house. She is supposed to come tomorrow so rumor has it that we are going to her current residence with the tractor to get her stuff. I volunteered to drive the tractor. Peace Corps didn’t say anything about that and David never would let me drive his tractor! Here’s my chance, I figure. I’ll try to take pictures of that event and post them with this.
Nov. 10, 2009
I spent the day at the district office and finally met the IT department. I see the problem…there is one manager and two technicians. One of the technicians is out on leave due to a car accident. They are both interns and the terms will be up in 4 more months. They will have been working for a year in the district office. There are three administrative offices for the district. The one I was in today had three two-story buildings with about 20 people on each floor as I estimate them. The manager and his technicians work in this area. The district that they support has 410 schools. I can’t speak for all, but I can say that both my and Sonja’s schools each have about 2 computers that are not functional due to viruses. (You’ve never seen anything like the virus problem here…). I also know of a computer lab at our high school that the kids say they can’t use. I haven’t been there myself to see what “can’t use” actually means, but I know they don’t have internet access and use the library computers for work because the library is across the street from the high school. So I could guesstimate that there are 1000 non-functional computers in the district. Since the administrators are right there where the IT manager works, I think you can guess whose computers are fixed first. The manager described his job as a fire extinguisher trying to put out a brush fire. I felt sorry for him and wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that he’d gone out and found a great job with a commercial company in Pretoria, Jo-burg, Rustenburg, Cape Town or anyplace in Africa or beyond. I’ll be more surprised if he is still here when I leave.
I’m really having a good time teaching chemistry and maths classes at the middle school. Our latest experiments were just to show reactants and products so we used baking soda and vinegar. One, you don’t need safety glasses. Two, you can taste the product and see that it tastes like water, not vinegar. Three, the kids actually know what this stuff is. We’ve also done some experimenting with endothermic and exothermic reactions. I’ve taken the hand washing powder and water and made a paste. Whatever is in the stuff, when it is mixed with water, it gives off a fair amount of heat. Since it cleans anything, I’m pretty sure it is some kind of acid (HCl?) and that my clothes will eventually be eaten away, but it sure works. I’ve promised them something more exciting next time so today when we were in Vryburg at the district office, we stopped by a store and I got some Mentos (mint, of course) and Diet Coke, Fanta Orange, Sprite, and some carbonated water in 2-liter containers. For this experiment, we needed some variables, right? I know that you can’t buy Mentos here in Thutlwane, but I have a feeling that these will be on the must have list in the very near future…the principal made me promise that I wouldn’t do the experiment without him as he’s out on leave Wednesday. I’m not sure how to top Mentos and Diet Coke so maybe we’ll need to move onto physics next.
One of the volunteers from the Northern Cape area, Kathy, is doing a project with Sonja so they are meeting in Mafikeng on the 18th. I’ve been invited to come along as Sonja’s birthday was at the end of October, Kathy’s birthday is this Saturday, and mine is the 18th. I’ve been told that the plan is to find a cake and eat it all in one sitting. I can imagine how my stomach is going to react to the shock. I’m not sure I’m looking forward to eating my share!
I showed the primary school kids how to shuffle cards this week. They think it is magic and have, after carefully watching, been practicing. Some are close to success. Others need more practice and maybe some bigger hands. It is funny what impresses kids. I will say that I finally beat the one boy, Gofaone, at Go Fish.
He is the head boy and is really pretty sharp. I’m working hard to turn him into an engineer and I’m pretty sure he’ll be on his way. Once he hears about the Mentos experiment at the middle school (news really spreads fast in this village) that will be on his list of things to learn. He’s my ace computer star too and I fear that learning about the internet will turn him into a true geek. Right now he’s still happy to play outside too. In fact, I have been left with a “see you later” if a soccer match was being played.Nov. 15, 2009
Lots of laughs the last couple of days…Thursday, as I was walking to school, a group of my favorite boys met me at the gate. In fact, they came running to greet me. They were holding little brown things that at first I thought were mice. They turned out to be two small birds that they had caught on the way to school. I asked them about the birds’ mother. We ended up putting the birds into a box, caught a few bugs for food, put some water in there, and then released the birds back where their mother was in the afternoon. I asked them how their mother would feel if some really large creatures had taken them in them in the morning and eventually they agreed that birds belonged with their mother until they were off on their own.
At school, I found a little router. Not having a clue about hardware to network computers, I naturally gave a little shout to my brother-in-law. He gave me some great advice and I’m now trying to get three computers hooked up so we can use one printer and one database. As I’m coming to think of normal, the router power doesn’t seem to work. One step forward, and two steps back. I will go to the computer place with Sonja’s team on Monday and see what I can find to help the situation. One funny thing though was that I needed to drill a couple of holes in the pressboard to run the cables. I asked for a drill and then borrowed one from some guys doing a soccer field project for the school. The guys were pretty funny and I gather from all the looks that I got that girls in South Africa do not use power tools. One of the guys recently had a flat tire. I told him that I didn’t think he would be surprised to find out that I could change it for him if he had a spare. He just laughed and said he wasn’t surprised.
Speaking of Sonja’s team, we were invited to the Grade 6 Promotion program on Friday. We had a great time with the learners and I enjoyed seeing the teachers, the SGB team, and Mr. Phala, her principal. They cooked up quite a feast and we were greatly entertained by all. Baby, Mma Moremi, Rra Modise, and Rra Mphumela went with me. On Saturday, Mma Moremi, Rra Modise, and I went with the 130 kids and a bunch of educators, board members, and Mr. Phala’s family to Swartfontein for a swimming outing.
We stopped in Vryburg and Sonja spotted Kevin and Casandra walking down the street. We talked to them briefly as they were trying to get to a bank to complete a transaction. Kevin looks great and has probably lost at least 30 pounds. At least I’m not the only one! Kevin is the one who said during training, “figure out the least efficient way to do something and that is how we will do it”.Once we got to the swimming hole, we had a great time. The kids unloaded the bus and I hit the pool. No one was in the deep end because most can’t swim so that was ideal. The chairman of the board took both buses of kids to a nature reserve right next to the pool, but I elected to hit the pool instead. Sonja said there were birds, zebra, and wildebeest. Although this was a school-sponsored function, there was plenty of alcohol. They bought Sonja and I two bottles of some kind of sparkling red wine. It was fine, but weird drinking at a school function. As Mma Moremi and I were taken home by a car full of drunk men (they had beer by 7am), we passed some kids who had been at the shebeens. I was asked about America and did we have this problem. I said that how were the kids to know that this behavior was undesirable if the educators and parents, in other words their role models, were doing the same. I said that school functions would never have alcohol present. I am pretty sure the cause and effect was lost on these guys.
The other thing that struck me as funny was the amount of people who can fit on a bus. I was reminded of news shows back home that said such and such bus crashed and 150 people were killed. I’d always think something along the lines of how did so many people die if it was one bus. Now I know. You put at least 100 kids on a bus, then add about 30 more adults and all the stuff and then you can fit more even…it is amazing. The buses are old rattletraps and the roads are not the best so just imagine a tire blowing or a cow in the road and I know how 150 people can die in a bus wreck. I know this is kind of a morbid funny, but it was funny to me to finally realize the truth of these things and how the rest of the world functions. In America, we want our own space. Everywhere else, no one knows what ‘having your own space’ means.
Nov. 28, 2009
Wow, what a busy couple of weeks. I went to Klerksdorp with Sonja’s team to check out the computer stuff. I bought a new router and found out that the power supply is the problem on the old one. I did see a new power supply in Mafikeng, but I want to take the old router with me to make sure it will work before I buy it. It was only 75 rand, but there are plenty of times when I don’t have 75 rand! Just like college…
Klerksdorp was fun, but the best part was that we were able to talk to Sonja’s principal about the grade 6 swimming trip and what went on with respect to drinking at a school event. The planning was terrible too in that the kids had to sit on a bus for a couple of hours while the adults all went off to shop, but the pool was only 10 minutes away. It would have been very easy to drop off the kids with some adults and then go back to town for whatever else they needed.
We also talked about some management strategies. The district promotes people to the principal position, but then never really gives any management training. I went back to the situational leadership model as it is pretty simple to understand and basically puts the onus for performance management on the manager. These are all things that would greatly help if there were any training whatsoever. I think one of the projects I’ll do is put together a management-training seminar for all the principals and heads of departments. A one-day workshop would do wonders if we could cover some basic principles.
The middle school administrator, Mma Kokie, Is absolutely fantastic. She’s very organized and has a handle on everything at the school. She knows all the kids by name and is as reliable as they come. I was working with her to input the financial data for the year into Excel. Excel is a new concept around here and people don’t realize the power that the program has. Of course, after we entered the data, I showed her some of the things that it could do like graphing data, pivot tables, and some other things that are really just ways to look at data so you can draw some conclusions. I didn’t really draw any conclusions except to say that we spend an awful lot of money at the school on transportation reimbursement and catering. It was something like a third of our budget which seemed really high to me.
The following weekend, I spent with the same school’s SGB at a workshop to review and amend policies. They asked me to type the policies into the computer because we only had hard copies of them. I can type about as fast as they discuss so I was merrily typing when I came to the travel reimbursement section. Naturally, when I saw the amount that was reimbursed for trips, I asked why it was so high when it only cost so much to go somewhere. The SGB was well on their way to raising the rates when I pointed this out. I asked why would we reimburse double for using public transport when in fact, the time involved is already covered by a salary. Why don’t we just repay the cost of the taxi? Then when private transportation was involved, the reimbursement was as much as 12X the taxi cost. I said that I thought some amount for wear and tear on a car in addition to petrol could be argued, but that the excessive reimbursement effectively was subsidizing those with cars at the school’s expense. Naturally all those who do not have cars were on my side and the amounts did not get adjusted.
Later on when they were struggling to come up with a 2010 budget, I listened for about 45 minutes. The letter from the district office did not adequately explain how much money the school would receive so it was hard for them to come up with their budget amounts. I broke it down for them after reading the letter and then listened to them for about another 30 minutes until they were about to give up. Finally, I said why don’t you do this, this, and this and then you’ll be done. The principal said go up and explain how you got these numbers to the rest of the team. I did, basically saying that you spent this much last year on these items and you haven’t changed your policies so I put this much in the buckets based on the data. About 10 minutes later they changed a couple of lines here and there and they were done. The principal asked me why I didn’t say that more than an hour ago—I said he hadn’t asked. Again, some basic financial training would have them working much more quickly.
The exciting thing about being at this SGB workshop was that we got to spend the night at a place with a shower. Naturally, the shower was cold in the morning, but I didn’t care. I washed my hair anyway. I had been fighting a cold for about two days prior to that shower, but everyone is convinced that the cold shower caused me to be sick for a week. No matter that I was sick to start with.
Our primary school had their annual parents meeting that Sunday. So I’ve decided that on the rare occasion when I’m not doing school stuff, I don’t feel at all guilty. The kids are nearly always here on the weekends, sometimes both Saturday and Sunday. And while I love them and am pleased that they want to know about the computer, it is nice to have a day off occasionally.
The kids have been taking their final exams at both schools for the past two weeks. They write exams from 9-11 and then school is basically out for the day. The kids generally stay around the school until it would be time to leave, but they are out in the yards playing. So, it seemed like a perfect time to teach more chemistry. I asked for 4 scientists to come help me with the Mentos in sodas experiment and then told all the others that they were to take data. We used fizzy water, Fanta orange, Sprite, and Diet Coke. Spearmint Mentos provided the bang and we had some great discussions. Some of the kids were there for the last experiment with baking soda and vinegar so they were able to taste the result to verify that the vinegar turned into water. Of course, they asked about tasting the sodas afterwards so I said sure. When we discussed the experiment, one of the comments was that the sodas didn’t taste much different. We talked about how much sugar was in soda and that adding a little extra sugar didn’t make much difference in the taste. But, did anyone taste the Mentos? One did and he said that the outer candy coating was gone and it was just in the insides left. So I asked what part reacted and he was able to say the outer coating. Then one of my favorite girls asked why the diet coke was the most reactive. I was so proud of her. I said she got the gold star for the day (I’m pretty sure they will all ask why as they know it is my favorite question!). We talked about what was in all the drinks by way of sugar, caffeine, acids, etc. Then I asked how we could design the next experiment to test to see which one had the biggest effect. At this point, I have to ask leading questions, but they eventually go to the point of saying Coke, Diet Coke, and Coke Zero. I’ll have to get more Mentos when I’m in Mafikeng next!
I had expected bad news from Dell because I had heard in Austin a couple of years ago that they were helping communities in which Dell had a manufacturing or marketing presence, but I was still disappointed to hear the news from the South African Dell office that they are only helping 3 or 4 large NGOs at present. The lady was helpful though in that she has given me a couple of other ideas to try to get our computer lab funded. In the meantime, I got a third computer up and running in our staff room. The kids, and there are usually about 30 of them, are amazing as they share pretty readily. I rarely have to intervene in that capacity. They’ve found a golf game that they can play with 4 people at a time. If they have to, they can trade out and play 8 at a time by taking turns in pairs. When I think of my nephews who squabbled over one computer and then have 30 kids taking turns, I think it has a lot to do with not having many things of your own. Pretty much everything they do is shared-even food.
Speaking of food, one of the hardest things I’ve had to deal with is the knowledge that kids are orphans who don’t get enough to eat. During the week at school, there is a hot lunch program whereby everyone gets at least one meal. I know they help some of the kids who don’t have enough by giving them the leftovers after school. But on the weekends or over the breaks, these kids don’t get enough at home. The ones that don’t generally live with aunts or uncles whose own kids take priority. The ones that live with grandparents, usually grandmothers, do seem to be well taken care of, but those that don’t have direct relatives seem to suffer more.
The primary school grade 6 class trip is coming up a week from Monday. They are going swimming. Each kid has paid R40 to go. I know some of them don’t have R40. I asked the question how many couldn’t afford the R40 and no one seems to know. This seems a worthy thing to break my vow to live on the Peace Corps salary and use my own U.S. money to pay for the kids who can’t pay. I also seem to be scheming about how to get some rice to some of the kids over the Christmas break. This is the part that I thought might be the hardest and it seems as though it is.
Thanksgiving was quiet and Christmas will also be. I’m going to do some sightseeing and revisit some places that Connie and I went to the first time I came to South Africa. I didn’t get to spend nearly enough time at the Kimberly Diamond mine museum so I think I will go there. I’ve been talking to Donatus about a trip in March to see the migration on the Serengeti so that is what I want to spend a week doing instead of doing something at Christmas. Kimberly is a couple of hours away, but I think very doable in a couple of days. Plus there is a Youth Hostel!
I did call Connie’s for Thanksgiving and talked to the whole gang. It was great to speak with everyone and I asked them to eat some pie for me. As a lot of you know, pumpkin pie is my favorite dessert and there is no way to make that in my little oven unless I get a refrigerator! In the meantime, it is getting hotter and I’m desperate to buy a fan. That will be my next appliance.
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