Apr. 12, 2010
It has been an exciting week, but unfortunately (or typically depending on how you view this) I forgot the camera.
Last week, I went to Nate’s site to help him and Justin install a new computer lab at the high school. Ryan came along to help too. Nate had 30 computers donated via a NGO and a mining company. There was no server, but there was a router. In the end, Justin had us clean and remove all the hard drives. He then cloned them from a master that we made. It was totally fabulous with all the basic programs that we need, virus protection, and then a pile of games. All the pop-cap games that we use for mouse learning, then some chess games, the physics games, and some astronomy programs. In the end, there are some totally cool things for the kids in Dikong to use. They will be learning a lot!
I thoroughly enjoyed being with the guys all week as well. One of the things that I have found that I really miss is intelligent conversation with men that aren’t in the least related to sex. Friendships here between men and women are non-existent. Usually, in fact, men and women sit on separate sides of funerals, church services, etc. They really don’t mingle much at all. Consequently, it seems that the relating that IS done is sexual in nature. I must say that it really gets annoying. I loved being able to discuss normal stuff with these guys and not have to explain myself. We talked about things we missed most (I can’t decide if it is the Austin music scene or independent movies, although I get some of those in mail packages), people we’ve met, projects we’ve worked on, and things we’ve observed. Hard work and good conversation seems to have done the trick for me. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and it was fun to meet Nate’s host family and his principal. They are all wonderful people.
We also popped into Kuruman to have lunch with Jonelle and some friends of hers who were visiting from the US. Other volunteers who I was not expecting to see were also there. Good luck to Kelsey as she changes sites in the coming weeks.
I then spent the weekend in Kimberly. Connie and I took the Blue Train on my first trip to SA in 2002. It stopped for a brief visit to the BIG HOLE, the first diamond mine in Kimberly. I was so disappointed this time to not have enough time to read all the information at the little museum—as anyone who knows my family, we like nothing better than to spend time in museums and we will read every little bit of signage that exists. It is a great trial to some in-laws…This time I managed to spend about 3 hours there. In the intervening years, DeBeers has spent several million rand on a new visitor’s center. There is now a movie, a viewing platform, and underground trail, and a big new museum with vaults and such. You can tell DeBeers sponsors it because there is no mention of the brutality that existed on the diamond claims or the fact that there are enough diamonds already mined in the world today to meet the demand at current consumption levels for the next 200 years. And the little museum that housed a big pile of diamonds behind a glass case (thick glass, but glass nevertheless) has now been replaced with a vault that is bigger than my current house. The story is still interesting though and I enjoyed the opportunity to revisit this gem. I had feared that Kimberly, being out in the middle of nowhere, would be too difficult to ever return to once the Blue Train departed. Now it is only 3.5 hours south of me in a speeding taxi.
So although I sent a few postcards home, you will have to imagine a hole that was hand dug with pick axes. 22.5 million tons of earth was removed in this manner from 1871 to 1914. 2722 kilograms of diamonds have been found (2.2 pounds in a kg) including some of the worlds largest. The perimeter is 1.6 km around (1 km is 0.6 miles) and it is 214 meters deep (a meter is a little longer than a yard). Sorry about forgetting the camera…outside of the mine itself, Kimberly have relocated some buildings of the era so that there is a large open air museum that tells more of the story of what life in a mining town must have been like. The buildings are pretty much what you would see in any recreated late 1800, early 1900 setting with churches, millinery, funeral parlors, beer halls, a dentist and medical surgery, claim offices…that sort of thing. Very well done though and truly worthy of some pictures…next time.
There is a lot more to Kimberly than just the Big Hole though. It is the seat of the provincial government for the North Cape province. It is also chock-a-block full of museums. I went to the William Humphries art gallery. There is a very nice collection of early Dutch and Flemish masters, some very nice San rock art (the San people were the early settlers of Southern Africa, bushmen to an extent), and some other exhibits. I especially admired the art of Peter Clarke who paints and does lithographs of African themes. Many were done during the apartheid era, but there are others that are post era. He reminded me a bit of Keith Harding with the bold lines, but the themes were very African. No postcards of his stuff though so alas, once again the camera would have been useful (except art museums always seem to disapprove of cameras in their patrons hands).
Having an opportunity to go to the cinema is always high on my list of things to do if I’m anywhere near the theater so I also headed to see a couple of movies. First I saw the John Travolta flick, From Paris With Love. Maybe I just needed a laugh, but I loved this movie. Something about the straightforward just shoot the guy approach appealed to me. Could it be that I really was frustrated about not getting report cards issued? Then I saw the Meryl Streep movie, It’s Complicated. Meryl Streep is always good and I thought Steve Martin was quite good in a serious role. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him in anything serious, but he pulled it off. Naturally, I never notice product placement, just ask my friend Kim how dense I am about this stuff, but she’s trained me to look for Dell computers. Alas, It’s Complicated seems to have gone with the Mac and I noticed. Could also be that the iPad just came out and I’m looking for a good reason to get one. I’ve got inside information from Shelly though that I should wait until the USB is added and that would definitely be a must for me at the present time. And then I saw The Book of Eli. I love Denzel Washington, but was kind of leery about this one…the movie poster which is all I have to go on wasn’t all that appealing and the title seemed to be something that wouldn’t necessarily interest me. So I ended up enjoying this one too, but thought it was a bit predictable. The genre, quasi sci-fi, isn’t my thing at all, but if the other two movies aren’t available, then it is ok. Not much of a recommendation, but if you have to go 3.5 hours in a death defying taxi, then give it a shot.
I’m back at home now and we managed to get the report cards printed out today. I’ve got a dentist appointment tomorrow morning to have my teeth cleaned so that will be interesting. The Peace Corps feels that a cleaning once a year is sufficient. I feel that every 6 months is necessary so I guess we will see what happens. The dentist has been on maternity leave since January so I hope she remembers what to do!
Till then…PEACE OUT.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Happy Easter
Apr. 1, 2010
Happy Easter!
I have been at site now for 6 months and it is likely a measure of routine that blog updates are becoming less and less frequent. I’m happily settled into a routine that has me at the primary
school Mondays and Tuesdays, the high school teaching computers to 458 kids and 20 adults on Wednesdays, and then the middle school on 
Thursdays and Fridays. Although I really like all the schools, I find that I can relate better to the older students and I do a lot more with them. At the primary school, they really need an 
effective administrator and I don’t know how I can be that person as it really isn’t a sustainable thing for me to do.
It is hard to believe that ¼ of my service is now completed. This year is the only full year that I will be here in South Africa. When I think of it that way, time is really flying by. That and I think I’ve done more in the last 6 months than I did during the last 6 years of working for corporate America. It isn’t that I didn’t do anything, but I didn’t learn anything new there. Here, I am certainly learning a lot and I’m learning a lot that I can apply to life in America as well. The ironic thing is that most of what I’m learning has to do with computer networking and as most of you know by now, that is not my forte. In fact, I’ve mentioned to Katherine that if someone had told me that most of what I’d be doing in the schools was computer networking, I’m not sure I would have come. That’s a measure of what I didn’t want to know about computers in my prior life.
On the other hand, I’ve made some really wonderful friends, both young and old. My village is full of the friendliest people on the planet. My host family couldn’t be better. In fact, I can’t wait until the weekend when a lot of them will descend upon us for the Easter weekend! I still feel for the sheep that will be slaughtered, but I’ve been told that I don’t have to watch. Kgosi won’t even tell me which one it will be, but he laughs and says I will like the meat when it is cooked. I said that we’d see.
There have been frustrations along the way. Looking from the outside into a culture isn’t always easy. There are certain things that I don’t think can be assimilated. For example, from my perspective, teachers don’t have a sense of ownership or urgency and it is hard for me to see that from their perspective, the group’s feelings are far more important. I’ve also seen this with respect to HIV/AIDS, some things are more important than taking drugs and leading a healthy lifestyle. For example, death surrounded by many friends and family is better than admitting to having AIDS and dying a pariah, even if admitting to being HIV+ and taking the drugs can keep you healthy for years to come. I will be the first one to admit that my way of doing things can be unhealthy in that there are so many Americans/Western Europeans/Asians who die of stress related illnesses. Type A personalities have been proven to be unhealthy in many ways. On the other hand, getting the job done before going off to do other things has also contributed to great productivity rates and it keeps an enormous economic engine running smoothly. For the most part, when I was working it seemed that most of us genuinely liked what we did despite the sometimes long hours and urgent deadlines-even when we realized that no matter how fast or good we did something the corporate wheel only turned so fast.
Nevertheless, I’m happiest when I’m working with the kids.
I’m least happy when I’m at a funeral for a kid (2 in 5 months) or when I’m entering grades that in the rest of the world would universally be considered failing. I’ve been working with a group of 
boys mostly who seem to be improving, but they can’t believe that an average grade in America or nearly anywhere else is considered 70-79. The system here pretty much even prevents the kids from knowing what their grades are. Exams often 
don’t get returned to the kids. I have yet to see anyone review the exams to show the kids what they got wrong and why. Many times there is only one grade for the entire term so their final 
grade is based 100% on one thing. The grades also are not normalized so they might have an assignment worth 35 points. The 
kids will get 10/35 and that is it. The mark isn’t translated into something out of 100 so that the kids know where they stand. I can’t remember NOT knowing what my grade was and what exactly I needed on the next thing to get an A. At the beginning of a term, the kids are not told what their final mark will entail. I remember the first day of classes we usually got something that said homework will be worth X, exams will be worth Y, quizzes will be worth Z, participation will be worth Q, and so on. I felt that I always knew what it took to be successful. I do not see the same thing here, but again it could be that I’m on the outside looking in.
If I could have an impact on the system in general, I’d minimize the subjects that are taught so that the fundamentals can be strengthened (i.e. Economic Management Sciences can be taught in conjunction with Math), I’d make the class schedules consistent so that the kids got the same subject at the same time everyday (we’ve got the craziest schedule I’ve ever seen-a 6 day cycle if you can believe that), and then I’d make it perfectly clear what was required to be successful. Then I’d broaden the national exams so that they encompassed both the urban and the rural settings. The rural kids are all fighting an uphill battle when it comes to the national exams. For example, the grade 4 kids last year were asked to read a passage and then answer questions. The passage was about flying in an airplane. I have met exactly 2 adults in SA who have flown in a plane. Rural kids travel in taxis all the time. If the goal were to determine reading comprehension, it would help if the exam provided examples that the kids are familiar with.
These are all things that I think are beyond the scope of what a Peace Corps Volunteer can do, but I do think that these are all things that will prevent South Africa from moving forward rapidly in a global economy. There are entire cadres of kids who are under-educated and hence underutilized in the work force. The public schools must abide by the Department of Education rules, but there are multiple private schools that exist in part to circumvent the rules and provide a more quality education. I don’t know of any principal who sends his or her kids to a public school. Ditto for Department of Education officials. They all utilize private schools to educate their own children. The private schools seem to be able to focus on having strong fundamentals as well as providing stricter measures for success. Having higher standards and expecting kids to perform to these standards appears to generate great results in several cases. Strict standards in some public schools also seems to produce some great results, but those schools are fewer in number and seem dependent on the principal and his or her work ethic.
These are just my observations and I’m sure if it were as easy to fix as it looks, then it would have been done by now. So I’m positive that there are other difficulties that I can’t see that prevent change from happening. As I said, there are many things that are just beyond the scope of one person to impact.
As for fun stuff, our middle school is planning a trip to Durban during the September break. Nearly all of the 350 kids have never seen the beach, a museum, an airport, a stadium, or a sugar mill. Those are most of the things on the itinerary. There is also a planned trip to an Indian market that I think will be fascinating. Durban is where most of the slaves came who were imported from India during the 1700-1800’s and is where Mahatma Gandhi first practiced civil disobedience. There is a lot of excitement building about the trip. The kids are fundraising to come up with R800 each. This is an enormous amount for most of the kids. Every adult will pay the entire R1600 and the school is working to fundraise the remaining R800 for each kid. I’ve been writing letters to big South African corporations to try to get donations as well as to our smaller business partners for slightly smaller donations. And I just found out about a way to write a grant proposal so that someone in America can sponsor a child for a tax write-off. R1600 is about $230. Most importantly, this would allow me to fund some of the orphans out of my own pocket, but anonymously using U.S. funds. I don’t want to give the kids money here because then they would all come asking and I don’t have THAT many rand. But I could do it from a U.S. perspective and then they would only know that it came from America. Then there is the tax write-off J
The Peace Corps also had another training workshop at the end of March. It was called Life Skills Training. I took a fellow with me from my community who works with the Home Based Health Care organization. The two speakers were excellent. David Patient and Neil Orr have put together a course on HIV/AIDS and Positive Living. I found it to be very interesting albeit somewhat biased as all things are. David Patient has been HIV+ since 1983. He is one of only two survivors who was on AZT and has been on anti-retroviral drugs for some time. He’s an amazing speaker and along with Neil has developed this course to explain how diet can influence immune systems and such. Neil presented some interesting data on communication style and something called Spiral Dynamics. It reminded me of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Spiral Dynamics focuses on something called Memes and basically explained to me why my logical arguments do not change the people in my village. Very interesting to me, but I think I’ll need an awful lot of practice to be successful at this! This week was also where we learned a bit of different types of grants and about project management. To me, the Jacuzzi, the shower, having someone else cook great food, and the absence of whining was a real treat. I guess I needed to get away more than I thought!
Speaking of getting away—I’m planning to go see Dennis in Madagascar in July and I’m planning to raft on the Zambezi river in December. September is the Durban trip and next week I’ll head to Kimberly to revisit the diamond mine and maybe see a movie or three. Hope everyone at home is great and has a super Easter. In my heart, I’m with the St. T’s group at Cyndi’s and I’m wishing Donna a very, very happy birthday. She’s a very special Mom of mine so send happy birthday wishes to her too!
Happy Easter!
I have been at site now for 6 months and it is likely a measure of routine that blog updates are becoming less and less frequent. I’m happily settled into a routine that has me at the primary
school Mondays and Tuesdays, the high school teaching computers to 458 kids and 20 adults on Wednesdays, and then the middle school on Thursdays and Fridays. Although I really like all the schools, I find that I can relate better to the older students and I do a lot more with them. At the primary school, they really need an 
effective administrator and I don’t know how I can be that person as it really isn’t a sustainable thing for me to do.It is hard to believe that ¼ of my service is now completed. This year is the only full year that I will be here in South Africa. When I think of it that way, time is really flying by. That and I think I’ve done more in the last 6 months than I did during the last 6 years of working for corporate America. It isn’t that I didn’t do anything, but I didn’t learn anything new there. Here, I am certainly learning a lot and I’m learning a lot that I can apply to life in America as well. The ironic thing is that most of what I’m learning has to do with computer networking and as most of you know by now, that is not my forte. In fact, I’ve mentioned to Katherine that if someone had told me that most of what I’d be doing in the schools was computer networking, I’m not sure I would have come. That’s a measure of what I didn’t want to know about computers in my prior life.
On the other hand, I’ve made some really wonderful friends, both young and old. My village is full of the friendliest people on the planet. My host family couldn’t be better. In fact, I can’t wait until the weekend when a lot of them will descend upon us for the Easter weekend! I still feel for the sheep that will be slaughtered, but I’ve been told that I don’t have to watch. Kgosi won’t even tell me which one it will be, but he laughs and says I will like the meat when it is cooked. I said that we’d see.
There have been frustrations along the way. Looking from the outside into a culture isn’t always easy. There are certain things that I don’t think can be assimilated. For example, from my perspective, teachers don’t have a sense of ownership or urgency and it is hard for me to see that from their perspective, the group’s feelings are far more important. I’ve also seen this with respect to HIV/AIDS, some things are more important than taking drugs and leading a healthy lifestyle. For example, death surrounded by many friends and family is better than admitting to having AIDS and dying a pariah, even if admitting to being HIV+ and taking the drugs can keep you healthy for years to come. I will be the first one to admit that my way of doing things can be unhealthy in that there are so many Americans/Western Europeans/Asians who die of stress related illnesses. Type A personalities have been proven to be unhealthy in many ways. On the other hand, getting the job done before going off to do other things has also contributed to great productivity rates and it keeps an enormous economic engine running smoothly. For the most part, when I was working it seemed that most of us genuinely liked what we did despite the sometimes long hours and urgent deadlines-even when we realized that no matter how fast or good we did something the corporate wheel only turned so fast.
Nevertheless, I’m happiest when I’m working with the kids.
I’m least happy when I’m at a funeral for a kid (2 in 5 months) or when I’m entering grades that in the rest of the world would universally be considered failing. I’ve been working with a group of 
boys mostly who seem to be improving, but they can’t believe that an average grade in America or nearly anywhere else is considered 70-79. The system here pretty much even prevents the kids from knowing what their grades are. Exams often don’t get returned to the kids. I have yet to see anyone review the exams to show the kids what they got wrong and why. Many times there is only one grade for the entire term so their final 
grade is based 100% on one thing. The grades also are not normalized so they might have an assignment worth 35 points. The 
kids will get 10/35 and that is it. The mark isn’t translated into something out of 100 so that the kids know where they stand. I can’t remember NOT knowing what my grade was and what exactly I needed on the next thing to get an A. At the beginning of a term, the kids are not told what their final mark will entail. I remember the first day of classes we usually got something that said homework will be worth X, exams will be worth Y, quizzes will be worth Z, participation will be worth Q, and so on. I felt that I always knew what it took to be successful. I do not see the same thing here, but again it could be that I’m on the outside looking in.If I could have an impact on the system in general, I’d minimize the subjects that are taught so that the fundamentals can be strengthened (i.e. Economic Management Sciences can be taught in conjunction with Math), I’d make the class schedules consistent so that the kids got the same subject at the same time everyday (we’ve got the craziest schedule I’ve ever seen-a 6 day cycle if you can believe that), and then I’d make it perfectly clear what was required to be successful. Then I’d broaden the national exams so that they encompassed both the urban and the rural settings. The rural kids are all fighting an uphill battle when it comes to the national exams. For example, the grade 4 kids last year were asked to read a passage and then answer questions. The passage was about flying in an airplane. I have met exactly 2 adults in SA who have flown in a plane. Rural kids travel in taxis all the time. If the goal were to determine reading comprehension, it would help if the exam provided examples that the kids are familiar with.
These are all things that I think are beyond the scope of what a Peace Corps Volunteer can do, but I do think that these are all things that will prevent South Africa from moving forward rapidly in a global economy. There are entire cadres of kids who are under-educated and hence underutilized in the work force. The public schools must abide by the Department of Education rules, but there are multiple private schools that exist in part to circumvent the rules and provide a more quality education. I don’t know of any principal who sends his or her kids to a public school. Ditto for Department of Education officials. They all utilize private schools to educate their own children. The private schools seem to be able to focus on having strong fundamentals as well as providing stricter measures for success. Having higher standards and expecting kids to perform to these standards appears to generate great results in several cases. Strict standards in some public schools also seems to produce some great results, but those schools are fewer in number and seem dependent on the principal and his or her work ethic.
These are just my observations and I’m sure if it were as easy to fix as it looks, then it would have been done by now. So I’m positive that there are other difficulties that I can’t see that prevent change from happening. As I said, there are many things that are just beyond the scope of one person to impact.
As for fun stuff, our middle school is planning a trip to Durban during the September break. Nearly all of the 350 kids have never seen the beach, a museum, an airport, a stadium, or a sugar mill. Those are most of the things on the itinerary. There is also a planned trip to an Indian market that I think will be fascinating. Durban is where most of the slaves came who were imported from India during the 1700-1800’s and is where Mahatma Gandhi first practiced civil disobedience. There is a lot of excitement building about the trip. The kids are fundraising to come up with R800 each. This is an enormous amount for most of the kids. Every adult will pay the entire R1600 and the school is working to fundraise the remaining R800 for each kid. I’ve been writing letters to big South African corporations to try to get donations as well as to our smaller business partners for slightly smaller donations. And I just found out about a way to write a grant proposal so that someone in America can sponsor a child for a tax write-off. R1600 is about $230. Most importantly, this would allow me to fund some of the orphans out of my own pocket, but anonymously using U.S. funds. I don’t want to give the kids money here because then they would all come asking and I don’t have THAT many rand. But I could do it from a U.S. perspective and then they would only know that it came from America. Then there is the tax write-off J
The Peace Corps also had another training workshop at the end of March. It was called Life Skills Training. I took a fellow with me from my community who works with the Home Based Health Care organization. The two speakers were excellent. David Patient and Neil Orr have put together a course on HIV/AIDS and Positive Living. I found it to be very interesting albeit somewhat biased as all things are. David Patient has been HIV+ since 1983. He is one of only two survivors who was on AZT and has been on anti-retroviral drugs for some time. He’s an amazing speaker and along with Neil has developed this course to explain how diet can influence immune systems and such. Neil presented some interesting data on communication style and something called Spiral Dynamics. It reminded me of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Spiral Dynamics focuses on something called Memes and basically explained to me why my logical arguments do not change the people in my village. Very interesting to me, but I think I’ll need an awful lot of practice to be successful at this! This week was also where we learned a bit of different types of grants and about project management. To me, the Jacuzzi, the shower, having someone else cook great food, and the absence of whining was a real treat. I guess I needed to get away more than I thought!
Speaking of getting away—I’m planning to go see Dennis in Madagascar in July and I’m planning to raft on the Zambezi river in December. September is the Durban trip and next week I’ll head to Kimberly to revisit the diamond mine and maybe see a movie or three. Hope everyone at home is great and has a super Easter. In my heart, I’m with the St. T’s group at Cyndi’s and I’m wishing Donna a very, very happy birthday. She’s a very special Mom of mine so send happy birthday wishes to her too!
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