Garrett's Tales from the Peace Corps

Still Trying

2010-03-18T11:20:00.000+02:00

This is Zama. Her name means ‘try’. She is a 13 year old girl in grade 8 and she lives across the street from me. She enjoys watching movies and playing board games. She doesn’t really enjoy playing catch but she plays begrudgingly to humor me. I have spent far more time with Zama than anyone else in South Africa. I call her my surrogate child.

---

When I was preparing to leave America, I felt as if I was preparing for death. Saying goodbye to all my friends and family, organizing my possessions, canceling accounts. I packed two bags with things that I bought especially for Africa. Neutral color shits, jeans, a new laptop. A Penn State baseball cap, a handful photos and my orange survival knife were some of the few things that hinted at my past life. I often think about the experience in terms of being reborn. The Me that landed in South Africa was stripped down to the basics.

As time passed I began to figure out who I was all over again based on the things I owned as a starting point. The guitar was an essential item that I missed immediately. As the anonymous pieces of clothes wore out, I replaced them with ones that I would have worn back in the US.

After a few months at my site, I was turning into a hermit. I was figuring myself as kind of a Howard Hughes of Tjakastad. People who wanted my help would need to have the courage to venture to my door where they would find me with a long beard, wearing tissue boxes for shoes. I even dreaded going outside to use the pit toilet for fear of someone calling ‘umlungu!’, the kids running up to bother me, or even the chance of someone seeing me and wanting to interact in more or less any way at all. More people on my street knew Scott’s name than knew my own. Meanwhile, at school my role was split between mascot and ‘that guy who comes here for some reason’. I lived for the weekend.

Then slowly, imperceptibly, everything started to change. I got the family kids under control and started to really enjoy their company. One by one I met my street neighbors. I was loving life in South Africa. My mindset was generally positive and it remains so to this day.

- - -

I have learned to live without certain things that I thought were necessities back in the USA. For example:

• Paper Towels: It has been over a year since I used one of these. I can’t even remember what I needed them for.

• Refrigerated Eggs: They sit out on my counter for up to two weeks. No problem.

• Television: Was already moving away from this back home but now its final.

• Voice Telephone: In the last year I have probably talked on the phone less than 2 hours a week because airtime is so expensive.

• Microwave Oven: I still miss this sometimes. Would open up a world of possibilities where leftovers are concerned.

• Any Kind of Oven: Again, the occasional baked good would be pretty nice.

The internet is the latest thing that I have lost due to an issue with my cell phone modem. Suddenly my access to information has been heavily restricted. Where it once took me a couple minutes to find the answer to a computer issue online, it now takes a great deal of trial and error. For some reason, last week I needed to find out the winner of Superbowl 38. It took me several days to learn the answer. I had to borrow a teacher’s phone to look it up. This makes me thing of the disadvantage that people in Tjakastad (and in South Africa as a whole) have as far as access to information resources. How would you find an answer to a question dealing with anything relatively modern if you have no access to a computer or internet and your local school library collection’s newest book dates from 1985? Whenever I watch a movie where a character is surfing the web with pages loading instantly, I am startled. It’s hard to believe the internet can be that fast.

My Counterpart

Over the year I have had to re-evaluate my own definition of successful Peace Corps service. I created a three part HIV/STI/Condoms presentation that I wanted to give to all of my secondary school. The grade 8-10 English level is very basic. They would sit and watch but likely only pick up about a quarter of what I was saying. I have met grade 12 students that can barely speak it… Also startling because all their classroom texts, tests and notes are in English and supposedly English is the required medium of instruction after grade 4.

Anyway, I envisioned that my counterpart, whose job is ‘Life Coach’, would watch my presentations, commit them to memory, and present them to the lower grades. I don’t know how he spends most of his time. It seems like sitting around in the library is his main job task. So one day when he was doing nothing of importance and I had everything set up to present, I asked him if he wanted to watch my presentation and get some practice with it. Just your standard idea using free time to its fullest. His response was that it was kind of cold that day so he wanted to just sit out in the sun for a few hours until it warmed up before coming in and doing work. After a bunch of this sort of waffling, I gave up the headache of working with him. I would rather walk down the road alone than have the additional burden of dragging a cart with me. Not worth the hassle.

One of the other volunteers summed up the situation pretty well when he told me the story of his interaction with a clerk at one of the schools in his area. He had been offering computer instruction to the teachers at this school with a less than enthusiastic response. In frustration he told the clerk that he should just start charging the school for his services so that they would have an investment him and actually attend his lessons and take advantage of his skills. The clerk said ‘Ok. We will pay you 10 cents’. Hilarious, but it says it all. There is a lack of investment on the part of the schools in this area and the volunteers. We work for them for free. This is a benefit in the sense that many schools are poor and would not be able to pay much. It is also a drawback because overall the schools have no incentive to take advantage of our presence. If a person is not willing to pay for a service, then they probably do not value that service. The clerk appraised the value of the volunteer’s work at R0.10 which is about 1.5 American pennies. It is no surprise that he gets little help or initiative on the part of the staff at this school.

Anyway, back to Zama.

I have decided that if all else fails, at least I can try to affect this one kid’s life and steer it for the better. We have had ups and downs usually she gets angry at me more often than the other way around. If I can’t save Tjakastad or my secondary school, maybe I can at least leave Zama encouraged to pursue a bright future.

We watched the Harry Potter series last month. Zama really enjoyed it. I stopped the movie sporadically to explain the finer parts of the story she might have missed.

I had the idea to buy her the books. I figured I would start her with the first book and if she read it then I would buy her the next one. When I leave, I would be leaving her with a complete book series that she could have and feel good about.

The first book got here last week. Scott happened to be around and he suggested that she read some of it aloud. We all listened as Zama started to read the first chapter of the Sorcerer’s Stone. There were other kids in the room who were not playing attention but Zama kept reading. If nothing else she was excited at that moment about having a book and reading English.

A few days later I saw her with the book and it had words in pen written on it. I said look you wrote on this book, now its dirty. I opened it up and found a bunch of writing on the inside cover. Again I was annoyed but before I said anything, I read the paragraph. It went something like:

‘Don’t touch this book without my permission. This is my book and it is from America. My friend Garrett David Rhodes gave me this book. He is also from America and he is my best friend ever in Tjakastad.’

Of course I couldn’t criticize her marking her book after reading that. I let it slide.

Peace Corps is definitely about the small victories and the one-on-one interactions with people, not about the 1 amazing project. Those short stories would make for a better book anyway.

Christmas Juice

2009-12-30T13:30:00.002+02:00

Happy Christmas / New Years. My second holiday season in Africa. Christmas Eve was one of the hottest days this year. It must have been 92 degrees outside if not more.

This year my present from Father Christmas (better known as Santa Claus) was quiet meditation delivered in the form of a power outage. I spent Christmas Eve in Scott's village, celebrating with his host family. Sometime in the afternoon a lightning storm came through with a bit of rain. This same storm wrought havoc about 15 miles north in Elukwatini where it ripped the roofs of a bunch of homes and businesses, tossing them into the street, ripping apart power lines in the process.

In my village, the storm caused a minor blackout which was fixed by noon on Christmas day. Except for my house.

I don't know why my house has the electrical problem. In the past two months I have probably spent equal time with and without power. I have started to suspect that the box on the pole outside which controls my house's flow has a flaw which permits it to short out when it rains. Maybe. What I know for sure is, repeatedly its my house alone without power. When this happens I call up the power company who respond in about 8 hours or more and take 1 minute to push the reset tab on my power box using a telescopic pole. That's all it takes. I watched them do it one time.

Now on Christmas day I got back to my house around 12. By that time the scores of houses without power in Elukwatini had reported their faults, leaving me number 500 or something in the queue... I was told Eskom would be here in 4-6 hours but if they don't show up, just call back... This is when I began to enter the twilight zone, or maybe a Philip K. Dick novel.

By dark the power still wasn't on. I called again as instructed. This time I was told 'They are on their way... but if they aren't there in 4 hours, call back'. Keep in mind, it doesn't take four hours to get from my local power office to my house. Its a 10 minute trip. Dinner is bread and water.

On the 26th the power was still out. Another Eskom call. 'They are on their way.' "Yea well I was told they were on their way last night..." 'They were held up but they will be there this morning... if they aren't there by noon call us back.' Of course, by noon nobody had arrived. By this time I was pretty angry with the ineptness of the system. Two days without power. No cooked food. No cold food. I yelled at the operator and told her I wanted my electricity 'fixed today!!'. She said there was nothing I could do.

December 27th. I have given up calling Eskom after 10 calls. Each time getting the same instruction. The box haunts me from the pole. It is about 30 feet in the air. I can see it from my house. A ladder or a long rod would have allowed me to fix the problem myself minutes after seeing the problem... I gather sticks, and using rope and a knife, fashion myself a 4-part super stick which I raise in attempt to reach the box. By the top, my construction is leaning a good 10 feet in either direction. There's no way I can safely reach that 1 inch tab on my power box without smashing into the high tension lines in the process. I give up and return to my dark house.

I have my brother call and talk in Zulu to the Zulu speaking operator thinking that maybe some kind of bond formed through an African language would allow him to be served better than I had.

6 hours later, no electricity. I get a text message that says that two of my service orders have been completed and the electricity is on. If its in reality off, please report again.

On the phone once again. Given another reference number. The insanity is that each time you call, they give you a 4-6 hour time and then tell you to call back if the technician does not arrive. You get a reference number to refer to... 6 hours later, they say 'Ok the technician has reported that he is on his way', but call back if he isn't there in 4-6 hours. Here is your new reference number. This process continues to infinity. I imagine workers sitting in front a closed network of computers displaying no actual information. Instead it functions like a Magic 8 Ball, giving one of 3 scripted phrases as well as a random reference number. Ask them what the problem is and you get no answer. Ask to speak with someone in charge and its impossible. Ask for some efficiency and you are told there is 'Nothing we can do'.

On the 28th I decided to have another go at my power box. This time I borrowed a 4 inch thick, 25 foot long house-building pole from my neighbor, put a nail on the end and wrapped it in electrical tape. Followed by a flock of children I went out to my supply pole...

This thing was inflexible meaning it would be no problem to guide it to the mystical tab, haunting me from above. The problem was, the new pole was heavy which meant I could only hold it vertical for a few seconds at a time before my strength gave out. I also couldn't focus because what I was doing attracted a bunch of attention. For some reason, the idea that I should try and reach the tab of the box supplying electricity to my own house was outrageous to the local village fathers. One guy in particular who smelled of booze came over and argued with me. He told me to put the pole down, that I wasn't Eskom. I asked why he cared. This wasn't his house, his pole, even his section. I was doing my own thing so leave me be.

He walked away for a minute and then came back. This time his arguing point was that this area was a black homeland and not a white place. (Apparently the villagers are warned to watch out for white guys messing with the electricity in the locations. Not really.) I asked him what his point was. I don't think he had any.

Next he came back with his belt off saying he was going to hit me with it. This is the rage caused when one tries to fix his own electricity. I cant imagine the riot that would occur should I try to mend a fence or pour a concrete sidewalk. I tired of this drunkard and repeated 'Go away' until he left. (But not before he threatened to beat one of the nearby kids for telling him to 'voetsek'. I guess I wasn't the only one tired of his antics. I gave that kid some candy later.)

Finally a well meaning guy who I didn't know came over and helped me try and reach my tab. We got close but by this time it was dark and once again we decided to bag it for the day. He told me he knew where some moderately important Eskom worker lived. So together me and my new friend set out across the village after dark to see the Wizard himself. Halfway there all the lights across the village flickered and then went out. Now nobody in town had electricity. So here I am coming in person to report an electricity supply fault to an off-duty power company worker when the whole of the village is in the dark.

I explained to him my situation. He gave me his phone number and told me to call in the morning when he would help me out. I did this at 7am on December 29. At noon another text message 'Hello. Is your power still off? If so please call'. At some point I had started to lose my sanity.

Finally... at 8:30pm on December 29, 2009 the Eskom truck rolled down my street. In 2 minutes (according to my stop watch) my electricity was back on. But not fixed in the way I expected. I had watched the Eskom guys do this before. On that distant night they reached up to the far box and pulled the tab. 'Go check and see if its on now.' I then went to my house and when I got there, the lights came on... What I didn't see was that as I was walking to my house, those guys realized that box wasn't mine after all. Mine is a good 4 feet lower, 3 times as big and a thousand times easier to reach. The whole time I was building these giant rods of wood, struggling to catch a tiny tab on the wrong power box!! Had I known the truth I could have nearly stood on a chair and pushed the tab with a broomstick, bringing my lights back 4 days prior.

Celebration of the return of electricity mixed with the heartbreak of so much pointless effort.

Still, this cold milk tastes great.

An Unfortunate Series of Events

2009-09-27T12:19:00.000+02:00

Behold! This picture taken on the 19th of February 2009 shows the 25 brand new computers donated to Insika Secondary School by the Department of Education. They were soon after set up in the computer lab and were maintained over the last 7 months by yours truly. I spent hours locking them down, installing educational software, keeping them running smoothly. It was slow going because they are not networked so each computer needed to be addressed individually.

These computers were not the first to be used in the lab at Insika. A year or two ago they had another set of computers. These ended up getting stolen in the night. A certain teacher was the main suspect and he ended up hanging himself in his office after school one day. But that was in another time. Surely progress has been made and the mistakes of the past have provided a learning opportunity which the present has been based on...

The story even goes further. Insika lucked out big time and was promised an additional dozen or so computers for the library. I was skeptical about the school's ability actually utilize 40 computers since they barely used the original 25 but in the end it does not hurt to have too many resources. These newest batch of computers just arrived on Tuesday, September 15. I was called by a teacher in the morning to rush to school so that I could take photos of the occasion (I still have not moved past role of Peace Corps Volunteer Photographer since my photo fundraiser back in March) so I made it there and we all took various pictures in front of the boxes of new computers with various students of the school and various staff members.

It was this whole event that really annoyed me at the time which helps to make the whole story so pathetically ironic for me. The spectacle of all the teachers hamming it up, holding the monitors. Me being shoved the camera because the teacher who owned it was too 'busy' to take photos; my own plans, which obviously involved working elsewhere that day, were not of concern. Also of note, whoever was donating these newest computers had built desks for them months prior with big cages cemented to the floor. The computers would be locked to the ground in these contraptions and thus would be immovable... The day after this photo-op I headed out of town for a week of vacation.

Supposedly on Friday, September 25, someone broke in during the night and, Surprise! Surprise!, all the computers were stolen. I could have wrote this story months ago: the day the first batch of new computers came. Even the newest-new computers were stolen since they had not been locked in their cages, having just arrived the previous week. This same scenario is played out on probably a weekly basis all over this country.

The whole thing is rather heartbreaking. So much for the computer classes of 2010. I guess the students will just read about computers in a text book. Or more likely be told about them by the computer teacher whose job seems a bit outdated now. Moreover, nobody did more work with, or spent time on those computers than did myself. Hours upon hours I spent on those things. I had them all perfect. Offline Wikipedia, math games, antivirus. A great resource all working beautifully. I had Scott write a complicated code that I implemented which would delete all files that the more mischievous students would hide on the machines. Since February I have been trying to organize computer classes which would take place after school. I certainly don't have to worry about that anymore.

At the same time, its all absurdly hilarious. I have to watch myself so that I don't go on a rant about the ineptness of the controlling parties of the school and the idiocy in the way the place is managed. Were security upgrades made since the last time this happened? Not much more than in the aesthetic sense. Was an experienced guard recruited to watch over the place during the night? Not unless you consider an old man who lives across the street as a huge deterrance to theives.

I would hold the school at almost the same fault as the robbers. Especially because of the giant eyesore that now sits outside the newly emptied computer lab. When I got here, there was a giant metal skeleton of what was once a covered car port. A while back the shade cloth had been ripped off during a storm and went flying across Tjakastad. The teachers adapted by parking under the trees. Just last month, a brand new covering was installed. Supposedly stronger than the old one. Who knows how much this atrocity cost. Thousands of rand, easily. Just so the teachers don't have to suffer so badly when they get in their cars for the 13 minute drive home at the end of the day... Or when they choose to go and sleep in their cars during school in lieu of actually teaching in the classroom. I look at that car port and think of the steel fence that wasn't built, the backup generator that wasn't bought, the security guard that wasn't hired. As far as I am concerned, it is a symbol of greed, not to mention a failure of learning from your mistakes. The main factors dragging down development in this region.

I'm sure this thing was an inside job. It always is. I am very interested to see how everything develops, if it does at all... And I would be willing to bet a large amount of money that come the summer storms, that giant green canopy is going to get ripped off and go sailing over Tjakastad once again.

A Year of Firsts

2009-07-08T10:35:00.002+02:00

Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me.

This will be my first birthday spent outside of the USA. Plans for the day: Prepare and eat lunch and dinner, read in the sun, sleep around 8 or 9pm. Every American-type person in the area has left to explore locations of various distances so I have just been doing a bunch of time passing these days.

Painting my house seemed like a pretty solid project so I went and bought 10 Liters of the cheapest white paint the store sold for 85 Rand and set to it yesterday. The claims of 1 liter for every 6-8 square meters were highly exaggerated as I ran short of covering my 50 square meters of wall. I had a bit of an outcry against the covering of the Ndebele paintings. One teacher who stopped by said that I was destroying the only piece of Ndebele art in the whole of Tjakastad. I told her it that since it was American who painted it that I had no qualms about covering it up. Besides in my minds eye I'm planning on painting it again in that style but more elaborate. Also the walls were turning into more grey cement than white paint. They needed a new coat.

I will have to buy another 10 liter bucket and give it another layer since the old paint is clearly seen through the new white. Also of note are the two sunflowers I have growing. They are the 'American Giant' breed of sunflower whose heights are regularly supposed to reach up to 15 feet. Needless to say these ones underperformed.

...In other news I have been hanging around with the kids exclusively these days. My oldest real friend in the village is an 18 year old born-again Christian guy who lives across the street. He has been off at some work internship thing in the mountains for the past few weeks so the average age of someone I have been spending time with is 12.

This is doing wonders for my siSwati skills. It also makes me feel like I am a kid on school break all over again. We watch videos, throw the football in the yard, and play monopoly. Nothing to do and nothing needs done. Carefree living.

At times it also makes me feel like Puff the Magic Dragon. There seems to be a pretty reliable age at which kids lose interest in the friendly neighborhood Peace Corps volunteer. I would say that age is somewhere around 15 or 16. Younger kids love hanging out with me. I think its partly because I have lots of good food in my house and partly because I am the only older person who will give them any attention and spend time with them. Raising kids here is a pretty hands off process. The 3 kids of my host family play all day in the yard or around the block with no supervision whatsoever. They return to the house when called for chores or to eat or bath, etc. No adult plays with them, reads to them, or as far as I can tell does anything with them whatsoever except smack them when they do something bad. I have also never seen a high school age kid play or have fun with a younger one.

One 18-ish guy told me on the bus that he always sees me playing with the kids. He said that the reason he doesn't bother with kids is that they say if you play with children then it means you yourself will not have any children of your own. So he said he is going to wait until when he has kids before he pays them any attention. I don't know if this is the dominant ideology amongst men in the area, but absentee fathers surely are. One 2o-something guy I know in the village had his child over to the family house on 1 single day in a year. As far as I know he doesn't see her much more than that over the course of 12 months. I have also never met any of the fathers of the 3 kids in my family. I think more likely that superstition is just an explanation for a behavior rather than the reason for the behavior. My theory is that raising children (until they can walk and talk) is seen as a woman’s responsibility and the men couldn't really care less about the task. After that the kids raise themselves in packs.

In any case the kids love the attention they get from me. When they color with the crayons I bought for them for Christmas (which stay in my house) they run back and forth to me in turn and show me their scribbles to see what I will say about them, running back to the table to tell everyone else what I said. Since they don't speak the language, it doesn't matter what I say if I say it in English...'Ah it looks like a house!' gets turned into "Garrett says 'loo likay how!'" when they proudly tell the other kids what I said about the drawing.

It is different for older kids. Once they hit that certain age mark, they start to have other priorities. They start trying to impress other people their age and they don't to be known as the friend of the umlungu (white guy). They worry about wearing nice clothes and having cool cell phones with features they will never use. And Garrett the Magic Peace Corps Volunteer gets left behind.

There is also an issue of the communication barrier. Kids in high school are usually embarrassed to speak English in front of me, worrying about how their mid-level abilities (which should be fluency by this point according to the national school system who says English only should be spoken in the classroom starting by grade 4) will sound to my perfect-English-speaking ear. There also is the issue of connection on a deeper level. How can you as a 16 year old village kid who has rarely been out of the village, let alone the province, who doesn't read books, only experiences culture through afternoon television shows and has no real opinions about anything relate to an advantaged 24 year old American who has probably experienced more of the world and accomplished more than you probably will in your entire life. The big fish in the village because of familial wealth or personal attractiveness has his or her bubble burst when I come into the picture. Again, this is my theory of my friendships drop off after maturity, unintentionally self-important sounding.

Sometimes I get a lot of stress through these relationships. I worry about these kids. I had a pretty tormented time a few weeks ago when I got a midnight phone call from the 2 14-year old girls who live across the street. They said they were at one of the local taverns (probably the one owned and frequented by one of the high school teachers) and were drunk like this was something to brag about. 6am comes and their friend is outside my house concerned because those two never came home and she’s worried about getting in trouble... Taverns here aren’t your laid back local bar in USA. They are usually dark, seedy 1-room brick buildings with blasting music. 4 guys for every girl. No carding so the age of entry starts around 13. Beer bottles are disposed of by throwing them in the parking lot. Broken glass everywhere. The mens toilet is the side of the building. Guys jump at the opportunity to feed girls drinks and take advantage of their drunkenness.

I called their mom. Doubt they were given the slightest reprimand. Probably are excited to go back as soon as the parents are out of town for the night. I lose sleep over stuff like this.

It can be a dangerous world to grow up in.

New Phone Day

2009-06-17T19:41:00.001+02:00

Yesterday in Pretoria I was once again granted the opportunity to buy something new. This time it was a cell phone. The dark forces of the world were apparently weighted against me. I was walking to the small mall not too far from our hostel at 10:00 in the morning. Keep in mind that this hostel is in one of the most quiet and nicest neighborhoods in the area. Another volunteer had just left before me by herself. I walked alone because I figured that 1. I could buy some stuff I needed and have Scott meet up with me in a few hours at the mall and 2. This area is one of the nicest and most quiet neighborhoods around... I didn't make it 2 blocks.

I came out of the gate and strolled down the street in my happy-go-lucky and innocent way enjoying the morning sunshine and wondering if all the dogs on the street bark at me in particular or at everyone who passes by. At this point three shady looking guys come around the corner and scatter. I saw these guys and thought 'Damn... I'm getting mugged'. One by one I was surrounded as they asked me random stuff which I ignored. One of the guys grabs me from behind and the other two more or less empty my pockets. I decide to help them out and take out my cheap cell phone saying 'Here take the f****** thing'. I made rare vocal use of the F word because I was under a bit of stress at the time and it seemed wholly appropriate.

One of the guys goes 'Where's the money??'. I say 'I don't carry money on me because I don't want people to steal it...' and with that I turned and walked away like nothing had happened. In reality I had a good 200 Rand in my pocket. I guess I earned the trust of the robbers when I so kindly handed them the phone. They must not have been able to think of any reason why a person getting robbed wouldn't keep any secrets from their assailants.

I went straight to the mall and bought myself a new phone. I had Vodacom switch my phone number back and amazingly retrieved all 40 Rands of my airtime. So in the end I was out: 1 Nokia phone that was almost a year old which I paid less than $30.00 for and a camo patterned bandanna that I had recently used to dry the entirety of my body after a shower. Not a very good haul by any means.

I have to give mad props to our Peace Corps security officer who told us all about muggings, how to handle them and how to limit the damage. Thanks to him I had my cheap phone in my pocket and my nice phone buried in my bag. I pretty much bought that phone for the purpose of being stolen.

Also, Vodacom was very quick in getting my number back to me and everything up and working like old.

Finally, to the robbers themselves. I think the mugging experience was one of the most expedited processes I have been through in this country. Quick and to the point. They took my cheap things off my mind and allowed me the freedom to renew my phone inventory. I hope they are enjoying that handkerchief.

Sunny Side of Life

2009-06-03T21:05:00.000+02:00

Don't get me wrong. Some of these entries may lean towards the cynical side of life. The negatives are over-represented on my blog. In practice, day after positive day will pass. Days where a spontaneous game of football with 40 kids in the streets takes place as the sun sets. Or days where a rare power outage at night allows for a wild game of hide and seek in our yard. These good days are plentiful. But usually they don't make for thrilling subject matter. It is when something bad happens that I am compelled to write. I also don't like to only blog about sunshine and skittle rainbows. The Peace Corps is by far the toughest social experience I have ever had. My self esteem has taken many a beating and my patience given plenty of exercise. That side of this job needs to be addressed.

I love it here and I am very happy. I really dislike school holidays and I am starting to consider weekends as the time that gets in the way of working, instead of the light at the end of the tunnel that got me through my weeks last year. I look forward to just about every new day. I appreciate every piece of fruit, deliciously fresh and dirt cheap. Life is beautiful...

Last week I gave a presentation about STI's, safe sex, HIV, and the like, to all the grade 12 students at my high school. I worked on it for about a week or so in PowerPoint. I tried to make it cool and hip. I use the SiSwati slang when I refer to the private parts. The kids laugh at all the right parts. It was probably the most fun I have had doing 'work' since I got here. All the teachers preach abstinence while half the school gets pregnant. I was told to stress the point that if you needed to resort to using a condom, it is because you are a failure at abstaining.

I disregarded that. My approach is one of total honesty. Ideally, I would like to be the guy that the kids can feel comfortable coming to and asking for advice. That won't happen if I act like some kind of American saint who is free from vice. 'Yea, most people drink alcohol in America. Yes I drink, too.' I think this approach is working for me. Others have chosen to put on the Respect-Costume and I guess that works for them, too.

I want to give the talk to the entire school, grade by grade. Unfortunately, June 2 marked the start of exams. From here until the end of the month, the students will be taking texts. Most won't come to school everyday. When they do come, they will come late or leave early. Teachers will be sitting around all day. I can't stand this time of year.

Luckily I now have Kristy's map painting to help on and Scott has somehow started getting me inroads at the Tjakastad home-based care NGO that he has never even visited. This school break should be a productive one.

Truth in the 'Stad

2009-05-25T17:06:00.002+02:00

Pineapples!

Something Finished

2009-05-15T08:53:00.001+02:00

I can say that my world map mural project at the high school is complete. Once I had all the supplies together, I went out and masked off an area of wall and started painting by myself. Within the hour a group of grade 9 guys, who apparently were doing nothing in class, came out and started picking up brushes. We had the whole 2-4 meter wide world map space and its sister 1.5 meter squared South Africa space primed in under 3 hours. The next day we covered both with light blue paint in even less time. That night 2 students, my friend Thokozani, Scott and I used the schools digital projector to trace the map onto the wall. Next morning we painted in the countries with the help of Jeff and Kristy. I traced the countries on the following monday. Basically the whole thing took less than 5 days of work. Speedy.

In other news, I have been waiting since the 25 new computers arrived in February to start computer instruction. 13 of those computers were missing the correct power cords and I refused to teach in a half completed lab when the school was easily capable of buying the needed cables. Again this week I asked the guy in charge of the lab how we could move this process along. He told me that the computer teacher was given the task of getting a quote and that I could help him get some quotes. Called the big computer store in Nelspruit. 1150 Rand for 13 cables. I tell the principal... 'Ok that's fine. When can you go buy them?' Didn't matter how much it would cost. The school would cover it. So I am left wondering what the heck took so long when the purchase did not even need approval.

Still, we will have 25 fully functional computers this time next week. Hells yea.

Extreme Scripture

2009-04-18T20:15:00.000+02:00

I was hanging out in the library at school yesterday with my counterpart and a few other people. We were talking about the upcoming painting of my big world map mural when this social worker, Nombuso, said that she can't paint if it is on a Saturday because she goes to church then, nor on a Sunday because that is her day of rest. I didn't react much to this beyond saying 'Psh' and shaking my head. A few seconds later I happened to look down and see a mini-bible on a desk. I picked it up.

Now this girl Nombuso likes to be sarcastic and bother me whenever possible. She is very annoying. She asks me if I would like to read one of my favorite passages, throwing in a smirking laugh for good measure. I certainly am not the bible quoting type but I couldn't give her the satisfaction of besting me.

I thought back to watching the WWF when Stone Cold Steve Austin was around and his slogan was 'Austin 3:16' and I remembered that when he coined he mentioned John 3:16. I decided to would wing it and so I say "Sure. That would be John 3:16" and I flip to it. I used a voice of gravity and meaning. "And god so loved the world... that he gave his only begotten son... that whoever believes in him shall not perish but shall have everlasting life."

My counterpart let out a gasp of surprise and the cleaning lady stopped her mopping to hear me read it. Everyone was amazed that I knew the scripture and I totally proved my skill in the area of bible knowledge. Holla.

... In other news, Kristy and I went down to the local hardware store Build-It to get our final shopping list for the map murals. We figured we would just use our fundraising money to pay for the most we could and do the rest out-of-pocket. That is when the manager of the store told us he would just donate all the paint for our maps. 350 rand of paint. 10 liters of paint. I can honestly say that I was shocked. Completely amazed. Total happiness. With this paint we have plenty of money left over to fund the other materials for the project.

The birds sang, the sun shone and for this week in South Africa, all was well in the world.

Prepaid Phone Charged With Prepaid Electricity

2009-04-09T08:12:00.003+02:00

I am loving this autumn weather. Once the sun sets the temperature quickly starts dropping into the 50s. Then it seems like as soon as the sun rises we are back into the 70s, getting up in the 80s around noon.

School has been out for two weeks since the end of the first term. The Longtom Marathon took place on the 28^th. Thank you to everyone who donated to the KLM foundation in my behalf! I think Peace Corps South Africa as a whole raised around 14,000 bills. I finished the 13.1 mile half marathon in 1 hour and 56 minutes. That’s a bit less than 9 minutes per mile on average.

April 12 will be the 9 month mark for my time in country. I can gauge how long I have lived here based on the number of people in my cell phone contact list. The more personal connections I make, the more I have felt at home here.

Concerning cell phones, most people use prepaid phones instead of contracts. At least in the village, there seems to be a continual shortage of air time. When kids come over to my house and see my phone they automatically pick it up and type in the code to see how much air time I have. I have seen this happen over and over with people between the ages of 12 to 24. When they see that I have about 40 rand of airtime they turn to show their friends in amazement or shock. ‘Why do you have so much airtime?!’ I guess nobody buys airtime in sizes greater than 5 rand at a time.

This 5 rand of airtime is then put to its best use calling people and hanging up after 1 ring. The goal is that the person will see the missed call and use their own 5 rand of airtime to return (and pay for) the conversation. I get this kind of thing all the time. I usually refuse to call back. Sorry but there is no way in hell I am going to pay to call a certain teacher who probably makes 7 times as much money as I do each month, owns a local tavern and drives a black 3 series BMW. This guy can afford to buy some damn airtime.

*Philani is standing next to me right now with his hands down his pants dancing to the Marvin Gaye song I have playing.

Overall, prepaid bills are an amazing thing. You know exactly how much of whatever service you’re using. The electricity is prepaid too. One night I was suddenly plunged into darkness. It wasn’t a blackout because the houses next door were still lit. I used my cell phone banking to buy a code for 50 rand of electricity, walked outside, opened my Eskom box and punched in the code. At the very last number of the dozen or so numbers I heard a metallic clink and all the lights in my house lit up at once. That’s convenience.

Street (American) Football

2009-03-23T09:13:00.000+02:00

The projects I started still seem to be in the process of starting. First the World Map Mural...

I wrote up a proposal outlinining the process we planned to take for the project and needed funds or resources. I gave 10 copies to the 'Fundraising Chairperson' at my school and distributed another 10 to the local South African chain stores in our shopping village. Two weeks later I met with the fundraising guy. "OK Mr. S. How many funds have you been able to raise so far?" 'Unfortunately none...' He then gave me detailed reasons why raising funds is impossible in our village. "Well did you ask the teachers to contribute?" 'Well in the past, teachers have not been interested.' So I am left wonder what the hell the Fundraising Chairperson actually does if fundraising is the Impossible Task. More likely than not, Mr. S just took my proposals and put them in his desk or filed them under 'trash can'.

I can't say I did any better myself. Not a single one of the businesses we contacted ponied up any cash. One guy had clearly did absolutely nothing. I caught his lie and happily grilled him on the details of the ficticious upper management person who supposedly rejected our proposal for no reason.

Meanwhile at the high school I started my photo fundraiser. I decided to just take pictures of every kid at school and have them pay later. I feared that letting them come to me for pictures with money in hand would result in me sitting alone all day with 5 total pictures to develop. I have about 250 pictures taken now. A grand total of 23 paid for. At 8 rand a piece that's about 184 rand that I raked in. Almost 19 US dollars! I almost feel like just taking my bank card and buying the paint myself, paint the map and be done with it already. I am at a loss as how substantial money is actually raised in this country.

Note that my lack of success is not the average. Kristy in the next village has over 150 photos paid for so far and Scott in his super rural school is approaching 100. What the flip.

... On a positive note, the other evening Scott and Jeff (who was visiting from 17 hours away to lead a financial workshop) played a spontaneous game of American style football in the street with about 25 village kids. Lots of yelling and running around in random directions. Lots of great fun. Eventually the sun went down, night started to fall and we all went home.

The Nice Bed That Wasn't

2009-03-12T17:40:00.000+02:00

As it was related to me...

The department of education for our province, Mpumalanga, paid 20,000 Rand per volunteer to buy us a bed and a wardrobe for our homes. Well, we received these beds and wardrobes. The odd bit comes after you calculate the 800 Rand cost of the wardrobe which is available at any local store and are left with 19,200 Rand devoted to the bed... Now, I'm no conisseur of bedding supply (I have always slept best while lying on the ground on top of a thin foam pad) but I can say that there is no way in hell this is a near $2,000 bed. After just a few months of my lightweight self lying upon it, I can clearly feel in detail the inner hardware of crisscrossing wire and coiled springs. I'm sure that the volunteers who are more inclined to gravitional pull are risking a punctured kidney from this rogue metalwork.

The story goes that the D.O.E. paid a contractor to buy these beds for us and then turned around to discover that the plywood and wire beds we had delivered cost under 1,000 a piece. The contractor accordingly pocketed the 18,000 Rand in change per volunteer left over from these purchases. Now the Department has taken the company to court for a legal dispute of unknown length.

In the meantime, they have decided to purchase a egg crate pad for each of us to serve as a sort of shield from bodily injury. In addition they are supposedly planning on once again buying us beds, this time of the much higher quality originally intended.

Now this is all well and good. It is very kind of the Department to spend so much on our comfort. The 5,000 Rand beds at the local stores are extremely opulent. However, thinking about the amount of money involved in this process makes me ill.

In my case, I have 3 beds in my house. This will make it 4 beds. I could use another bed like I could use another rescheduled School Management meeting. In a personal needs sense, I could put that money to buying a quality bike that would significantly increase my inner-village range and thus letting me visit more schools, more often. I would have enough left over to fix the windows and roof of my house and then buy books for both of my schools.

In a pure working sense, that 20,000 Rand would fund pretty much EVERY project I hope to do over the next two years. World map murals painted on all my schools, a boys club, giant life skills/HIV mural on the community hall and on and on and on.

If I could just get that money in paper bills, I would eagerly take it. Gosh.

Kruger National Park

2009-03-02T17:55:00.000+02:00

Not much going on this week. I have been continuing to train for the Longtom Marathon at the end of the month. So far I'm up to 17 kilometers of constant running which I did this morning. I will be doing the half-marathon so I only need to add on a few more kilometers and I will be all set. On Wednesday all of my group is meeting with our community counterparts for several days of training near Blyde River Canyon.

Last weekend I paid a visit to my friend Henco who lives outside of Barberton. He and his family are white South Afrikans. They are known as Afrikaners or Boers and speak Afrikaans as their mother tongue (also fluent in English and SiSwati) and live on a farm with zebra, giraffe and crocodiles.

It was very interesting to hear the Afrikaner point of view about South African life, politics, and so on. I was treated to fresh farm-raised crocodile tail for dinner (tasted sorta like chicken) and even taken to the Kruger National Park! They made me feel like an honored guest and I had a great time.

Below are some pictures I took at the park. I also added a link on the right side to all my photo albums.

Kruger Park

New Developments

2009-02-23T20:28:00.000+02:00

The earthmoving equipment has come to my village. Tjakastad is surrounded on three sides by a tar road, making a horseshoe shape. The bottom of the horse shoe also has a new tar road, built last year, which extends halfway towards the far end of the horseshoe. The surface comes to an abrupt end at my high school, but extends the rest of the way in dirt form. Adjacent to this road is my house.

The workers went from nothing at all to 4 dump trucks, skimming, grading, bringing in filler material, compacting etc. in just a few weeks. I am impressed with the speed of it all. I could see the road paved and finished by mid March. I will be able to flag a passing taxi from my doorway. A downside is suddenly I will be living on a major throughfare of the village. Lots of traffic, lots of house music blaring from car windows.

Meanwhile, last week my high school finally got their shipment of computers donated by the MTN cellular company. 25 brand new PC's with flat screen monitors. They will all be networked together and supposedly have internet access. Now I can teach some legitimate computer courses.

As for some development work that I want to focus on, I recently presented the School Management Team with the following ideas:

School Portrait Day: Students can buy a 4x6 picture of themselves for 8 rand. 5 rand of that will be profit that will go to other school projects.
World Map Painting: Raise money and collect supplies to paint a 14 foot wide world map on the wall of one of the school buildings. Increase geography knowledge, give participating learners sense of pride and accomplishment.
Books For Africa: Apply to receive a load of 733 books to start a quality library at the school.
Library Organization: Sort and catalog those library books to increase library functionality.
Computer Lessons: Teach computer courses on the new computers. Either after school or on weekends. Any teacher in the area is free to attend. Also possible to open this up to the community in the end, too.

Overall these ideas were received very positively (though I cannot see a reason why they would not want me working for free in any way to try to improve the school). It feels pretty good to finally have some things to work towards and which will have legitimate results if successful.

One last development, at the Pick and Pay grocery store down the road I found, to my sheer delight, they have started to sell Ranch salad dressing! Now thats what I call progess.

Back Again

2009-02-08T07:29:00.064+02:00

The week before last we had an in-service training at the teachers college where our pre-service training took place. It was pretty wild being back where we started. I found myself getting nervous like I did during the first week at the college when we were preparing for homestays and stuff like that. We did have some very good training sessions especially one focusing on HIV and AIDS. Really useful information.

Our hopes were to find a satellite dish and watch the Superbowl. Unfortunately the only satellite that could be found used some kind of free satellite service. Of its 12 or so stations, 9 were religious programming and another one was solely devoted to advertising for the chain store Pep. Football is the closest thing that America has to a national religion but it didn't make the cut for the programming schedule of those channels. So we decided to play our own Superbowl.

Things started off well as a 3 on 3 match in a bricked courtyard near the cafeteria. After fumbling a kick return I took Jasen out at the knee, sending his shoulder into the stone; a play which was heavily disputed. My team was down 0-7 when Liz had a callus ripped off her foot during an intense defensive maneuver. She walked off the field to the applause of the crowd. While a few spectators were converted to paramedics to medicate her, we found 2 subs and began play once again. After about 6 plays Jasen made an acrobatic effort to catch a pass which was nearly out of bounds. I didn't clearly see what happened next, but I was able to piece together that Andrew was sufficiently irritated by this to elbow slam Jasen in the face. Now Jasen is bleeding all over the place and the game has to stop and there is a triage unit set up next to the field and Peace Corps tells us we aren't allowed to play anymore. Overall it was a pretty good superbowl.

Passing through Pretoria on the way home I was granted the opportunity to buy a bunch of new clothes. Sweet. I also picked up a new pair of running shoes for the KLM Marathon that many of us are doing next month.

Here are some pictures of the Brooklyn Mall in Pretoria. This is by no means the biggest or best of the malls here. Still it never ceases to amaze me how opulent the malls are in this country. After dropping most of my months pay I headed for the village.

Now to adjust all over again...

Kid Control and a Smiley Face Chart

2008-12-14T12:06:00.000+02:00

As far as those kids in my family here are concerned, our relationship has had its ups and downs. For the first month and a half at site they were pretty much out of control. They would constantly ask for food, yell my name until I would come to the door and then demand to be let in, run around and look in all my windows, hold those windows open so I couldn't close them and so on. They pretty much drove me crazy. I told their mom about them bothering me so much. She said "I know they come here and bother you. You must use the belt. Please. They need discipline."
Now... beating the kids with a belt would have been incredibly easy. They had me in a rage more than a few times. But really, do I want to be hitting someone elses kids? Kids that don't understand english?
I decided instead to reward good behavior and ignore bad behavior. I did this kindergarten style with a smiley face chart:

If the kids behave, ie dont bother me, dont hit dogs, etc I give them a smiley face.
If the kids do something to tick me off, I call them over and cross out one of their smiley faces.
If you are bad enough, I draw a sad face and you're done for the current chart.
When one kid reaches 5 smiley faces (takes about a week and a half of good behavior) I bring them in the house and give them cookies, juice, chocolate, chips. Maybe 1 small handful of each food so its pretty cheap for me.
The other kids get as many cookies as they have smiley faces.
Then I reset the chart and everyone starts fresh.

It is amazing the wonders this chart has worked. It took 1 run through to implement. I basically had to speed it up and pick one good behaving kid to reward so the others would see the incentive. Now the kids want to reach 5. They control themselves. If they are getting on my nerves I warn them to stop or I will take away one of their faces. They usually cease whatever they are doing at an instant.

They seem to be getting better and better each week and our relationship improves and improves. Score one for positive reinforcement!

Those Darn Kids

2008-12-08T09:14:00.001+02:00

Now that school is out and the days are long you have to continually look for things to keep you occupied. Lately I have been amusing myself by playing around with the kids. Two stories:

I should preface this by saying the kids have stopped asking me for food because I'm stingy and "No Free Food" has become a mantra in my house. So, Fundo, the 8 year old girl, was in my house yesterday. She asked what was in a water bucket I had on the table. Poison, I said. "Are you going to drink it?" asked Fundo. I said yes. "You will die!" I thought I would give her opportunity to think about how much she appreciates me being here so I say: "Yea I will drink it and die. You will come here one day, you will knock on the door and say 'Come here Garrett' but I won't come. Then you will look in and see me on the floor dead". Instantly and with much enthusiasm Fundo responded "Then I will come in and I will eat THAT and eat THAT and eat THAT" and so on...

The other day I was at Scott's house. His family has a new mangy puppy named Danger. So Danger walked on over and I was petting him when Scott's little homestay sister comes up and starts petting him too. She is a bit younger than Fundo. I reach my dog petting quota and stand up while the girl keeps playing with him. Then the little girl starts to squeeze the dog's... boy parts, in concentration. "What is this?" she says... "What is this?". So I say, "Um... That is his reproductive organs". Now the hilarity in this is that the girl asked her question in a way that sounded as if she had been wondering about that thing for a while... Like 'Hey by the way what is this tube thing attached to this dog?' Also, hilarious was that PCV Kristy knew we were playing with the dog but was just out of sight and only heard the exchange. So much laughing that my stomach hurt.

Sick Again

2008-12-01T12:15:00.002+02:00

You wake up at 5:30 am. The sun is up and the temperature is a comfortable 75 or so. By 10 its at least 85 outside and inside my house it is at least 90. Normally this situation is remedied by either sitting with the fan 2 feet away from your head or lying down on the concrete floor and sleeping as much as possible. Except this time you have a 101.4 degree fever and the pharmacy is closed.

One by one I am working my way through the different diseases one can get here getting more exotic as I go. This time I found a tick attached to my ankle a few days ago. Pulled it off. Two days later there is a black pimple type thing where the tick was and my legs are sore. Thermometer says I'm running a fever. Tick Bite Fever this is called. Supposed to be pretty popular in this country. After an ordeal of getting in touch with a doctor, I have to wait a day for the pharmacy. This brings us to today.

I text the Doc, Hey let me know when you fax them the Rx.
Doc calls, fax sent.
*Now if this was back in the American times I would just proceed to the pharmacy but being here I know that this cannot possibly this easy, so I call the pharmacy*
Pharmacy says they didn't get a fax.
Text the Doc, he calls back, faxed again.
Call the pharmacy back, nice they got the fax. Too bad they don't have the medicine.
Another text message to the doc and the waiting game starts all over.

Meanwhile my bloodstream is under siege by a parasitic bacterium called Rickettsia. Suppose I would still rather have this than food poisoning.

-Up to Speed-
I have the antibiotics now and feeling better and better. No sweat!

Speaking of that Rain

2008-11-18T16:01:00.003+02:00

Last night the storm of the century came through my village. The evening started like any other. I was sitting at my threshold, talking to Philani and Sihle, while rain sprinkled on my roof. The sky started lighting up and a wind began to blow as I heard the white noise of pouring rain. I went to the window in time to see the gray mass of sheeting water coming full speed down the street.

I got the window closed just as the rain hit, the sound on my roof a defeaning roar. For some reason the electricity in my house had been out for the prior 24 hours I had to scramble through the dark shutting the other 4 windows. Also not helping matters was the broken window in my bedroom caused by a wayward frisbee thrown by the unskilled hand of a local kid 2 weeks earlier. I repropped my piece-of-styrofoam patch job and ran back into the kitchen where my once watertight tin roof was spouting water from various locations.

Ironically one of the only places in my house from where no water appeared was my kitchen faucet. I sat in the dark, earplugs in ears, warm beer in hand, waiting for the storm to pass.

When I went out to survey the damage I saw that my yard had been turned into a pond and the big papaya tree, the signature focal point in our compound, the bearer of free papaya fruit, had fallen victim to the wind. Another victim was the tin roof of one of the local preschools.

Today I went out and took a hand saw to the mighty corpse of the 'pawpaw' tree, reducing it to a stack of logs. I can say that cutting these things makes you feel like the hulk. The wood isn't much harder than bread.

Let it Rain

2008-11-16T17:19:00.000+02:00

I have spent the last week taking hot showers on a daily basis. I am awash in water. As soon as I bought two new tanks, increasing my storage capacity to 100 liters, I had more more water coming out of the pipes than I knew what to do with. Still, I am skeptical of the running water. I keep my tanks full just in case I need to weather a dry stretch.

My schools have gone into exams because the end of the school year is approaching here. For the whole month of November, the schools do testing. This means that kids just stay home (supposedly to review) except for the one day a week on which they have a test. One teacher suggested that I watch a class taking an exam to make sure they do not cheat. Hah, right. I act like the task is beyond my capabilities and walk away.

Meanwhile my principal at my primary school has put me to use by having me make labels for the 5 binders in his office that lacked labels. It seemed to me he didn't even know what was in each folder and was just coming up with labels to make his bookshelves look important. While flipping through the pages: "Ok lets just call this one 'School Monitoring Forms'". I used my immense technology skills to print out the labels, cut them with a scissors and stuck them on to the binders. All in a good days work as a volunteer.

You have to be careful about things like this. Once you start opening the door of clerical grunt work you can find yourself flooded with typing and filing tasks. Tasks which the school clerks are paid to do. But sometimes the projects are so menial that it would take more time for me to explain to people with limited English abilities why I don't think I should do them than it would for me to just type up the labels.

I just heard today that I might be getting a new friend in my village. One of my fellow siswati speaking volunteer's site didn't work out and so the Corps is considering moving her here. How exciting! To have a 3rd persons perspective on a discussion! To be able to bust out the 3 person board games I have. Wow!

Crappiest Week

2008-10-19T17:33:00.003+02:00

Man what a piece of junk of a week. I finally got a stomach virus. I felt fine all morning Tuesday. Ate lunch, went home and an hour or so later started puking my guts out. Couldn't sleep that night because I had to keep getting up to go to the toilet. Didn't eat for the next few days.

As a result of this I did not leave my yard for the rest of the week. I barely talked to anyone. I played a lot of Minesweeper. Thank god that's over now. Feeling back to normal.

So let's look at some positive things right now because I'm tired of these negatives...

- Thanks to everyone who has written me letters. I've really enjoyed reading and writing them. I sent a letter to each person to whom I promised one. If you never got it, I guess it got lost in the mail. It happens.

- Thanks to my dad for sending me the football. It is one of my favorite things here. I throw it with the kids at my house and with any PCV who is around willing.

- Thanks to my mom for sending me the Penn State football DVDs. I have taken great pains to not learn about the season so far and watching the games feels good and makes me happy. Scott, though not a Penn State fan, is a drinking fan and so he has enjoyed them as well.

- Thanks to Bethany for mailing me seeds for the garden! I was and am so excited about them. I started planting them around. Hopefully they grow here.

- Thanks to Richa for mailing me a bunch of media including Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Weekend at Bernie's and other fun stuff to watch! I haven't gotten this yet but it is on its way and is highly anticipated and appreciated.

- The rains started finally! I had running water today and I took a hot shower. Nice!

-A part of blogger that had broken just started working! Hooray. Now I can format things and post pictures again. Like this one.It is the hill behind my house burning last week. The flames looked to be over 6 feet high at this point.

Long Roads Ahead

2008-10-13T20:38:00.000+02:00

I have now been in South Africa for 3 months. Thanks to the internet I have been well informed of the happenings around the world but all that stuff about the financial crisis and Russia at war seems so remote. Speaking of finances, 1 US dollar is now worth over 9 South African Rand compared to the 1-7 ratio when we got here in June. Other events in the last month since I got to site: the president resigned, the ruling party is threatening to split, I actually had running water here twice, I've seen no other PCV's besides Scott.

We are still waiting on the real rains here. In the meantime fires continue to burn untended across the mountains. Looking up at night to see lines of flame miles away, miles wide, never loses it's surprise factor.

Meanwhile I have been observing various parts of my 2 schools. The fact that kids are able to learn and sometimes excel in environments like these is amazing. The classroom life of a learner in my village is that of the choir in a call and response play. The class waits for their turn to say their collective phrase. 'The symbol for a circuit is a longer LINE and a shorter -' "LINE!". The kids remember the phrases and orders but they don't learn content. I looked through a stack of written tests. The answer for number one was '1910-when the SAP enacted a number of laws restricting the freedom, etc etc'. That was the exact same answer verbatim on nearly all the tests. Some kids didn't do as well. Their answers were something like '1910-when the SAP'. That's it. They forgot the line so they can't answer the question. The kids don't know jack about 1910. They can't think about general things they remember and build their own answer because all they know is that one line of memorized words. It was probably repeated over and over by their teacher.

Meanwhile the teachers complain that their schools have no resources. This can be translated to 'we have no computers'. The idea seems to be that if you have a computer lab suddenly your school is going to excel in all ways possible. But when you have a look through these schools, dig around in the store rooms, you find things like: unused book series for teaching young kids English, instruments, teaching aid posters, text books still in their wrapping, a gigantic science kit with a treasure of chemicals, tools and instruments under a layer of dust, and on and on. In Scott's school the world map became a handy substitute for a window curtain and the nice computer got boxed up and put in a closet because no teachers were using it.

You see this kind of stuff and realize the challenge you have. You could give these schools a wealth of resources and 90% would get put in a box somewhere and never be touched. Do I want to work to get maps for the classrooms when there is a likely chance they will be ultimately ripped up and used as window washing towels? Do I want to get the school nice computers so that my principal can keep one in his office as a status symbol that he has no idea how to use?

Of course I didn't sign up for this stuff because I thought it would be easy.

Starship Troopers

2008-09-25T19:24:00.000+02:00

In my house, I have ants. Not just a few ants. Not like once in a while I see one on the floor. No. I’m talking hundreds and hundreds of ants. Thousands of ants in different colonies in different corners of each room. Drop something edible on the floor and I guarantee you it will be swarmed within 10 minutes. I decided to kill them all.

My first line of attack was aerosol weaponry. Scanning the supermarket shelves I found a wealth of products whose titles broadcast their penchant for insect death. I went with ‘Doom’. Back at home I unleashed streams of the lethal spray directed at their ant gangways. Hundreds fell before me. As a side note; the scent of Doom is not unpleasant. I thought my ant problems were over. Not so. You see here in Sun City we have a water problem which leads me to cart a wheelbarrow down a hill to refill some buckets every few days. I keep these buckets moderately secured in a corner.

The effect of Doom was immediate but not lasting. Soon the ants returned and I ignored them, embarrassed to admit a defeat. Around this time I kept noticing ants in my water pitcher. I thought they crawled in there. Then I noticed more and more ants in my drinking water. I realized they must be getting into my buckets. Sure enough, peering inside my containers I saw a terrible spectacle. A floating continent made of at least a thousand ants, amorphous in their ways, clambering upon one another to get above the liquids surface tension. This meant war.

I came at the ants with a three staged chemical weapons attack. 1: Borax mixed with peanut butter. The ants take this back to the nest, share it, and a few days later it dissolves their bodies from the inside out. 2: Doom to mop up surviving ant groups days after the mass borax killings. 3: Silicone caulk to systematically seal the entrances to their colony.

The plan worked great thus far. Four days after the laced peanut butter, the ant numbers dropped by a huge percentage. I’ve now got most of the colonies sealed off. Soon, if I may be so bold to say, I will have an ant free existence.

Official Peace Corps Volunteer

2008-09-13T12:08:00.001+02:00

Yesterday the 40 remaining Peace Corps Trainees in SA-18 were sworn in by the US Ambassador as official Peace Corps Volunteers. This means that yesterday the two-year count began and today is day number 2 of 730. After swearing-in we all left Marapyane and traveled to our sites.

If I ended up with a shorter end of the stick in homestay assignments then I definitely won the lottery for site placements. My village is not too far from the town of Barberton and about 20 miles from the border of Swaziland. I am surrounded by mountains. I have my own small house in a family’s fenced yard. Mine is a three roomed deal with a shower, flush toilet, separate electricity supply, 2 beds and running water inside. There is a tar road right outside the house as well as a monolithic street light that shines over the compound.

I have been assigned to a high school and a primary school which are about a mile down the street from my house. The schools really don’t seem in too bad of a shape which makes me wonder how I’m going to help. As of now I am thinking of doing a photo fundraiser, teaching computers to the school staffs in the area and maybe an after school boys club. I have the next three months to come up with ideas since this period after swearing in is called ‘lockdown’. The new PCV is supposed to sleep at his or her house each night with only day trips outside of the village. We have assignments to complete each week with the goal of familiarizing ourselves with our community.

Right now my house is pretty empty. For lunch today I heated up a can of baked beans (while in the can) and ate them on bread. Baked bean sandwiches aren’t too bad. I plan on taking a taxi down to the next town where I can buy housewares and groceries at the chain stores there.

Peace Corps took us to a mall in Pretoria earlier this week. They had a McDonald’s outside. I felt as if that lot was a small patch of American soil transplanted to South Africa. I almost saluted. The mall itself was impressive; as nice as if not nicer than most American malls. I found myself forgetting I was even in Africa or the Peace Corps and instead found myself trying to decide which fancy 3g internet cell phone I wanted to buy. To say I went overboard on this phone would be an understatement. After the phone purchase my pockets felt too empty to buy the mini-fridge I want so I decided to put that purchase off until later. So I ended up moving into site with little more than a super phone and 10 plastic cups. But at least I have the internet. Glorious, glorious internet.

My Phone Number

2008-08-23T16:58:00.000+02:00

072-950-5353