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!