Monday, Feb 11- Thurs Feb 14

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Monday Feb 11

Had our Program Director meeting—it took an hour and a half! I was given another task, which is to develop a continuous management training program for our staff—building on what we learned the past two weekends with Andy Sachs. Should be interesting how that turns out.
I had a meeting with Ntobeko right after it and we just talked about plans for this week and about our coaches. He told me that Ndumiso, who is the “lead coach” for Umbumbulu, was going to have to step down from coaching altogether because he wanted to focus more on his business… I think he is a carpenter or cabinetmaker. It’s a good thing for him, but a big blow for us. We were able to find another coach to replace him as far as coaching, but we still need to solidify who will take over the role of “lead coach”. Much of the staffing problems in Umbumbulu have to do with the idstance the coaches are from the schools, and cost of transportation. The schools are pretty spread out and half of them aren’t on the main road so that means a lot of walking for a coach…and it’s getting darker earlier now. The coaches don’t want to spend all their money on taxis going around the township, and I don’t think there are a lot that go to the schools after school is out. So we’re having a hard time finding one who will be able to go to the schools.

Tues Feb 12

Talked to my friend in Denver for a bit before our staff meeting. Laura has been itching to get a laptop and she has spent the last few days trying to figure out which one to buy and where to buy it. She really wanted to go out to the Pavilion Mall to buy it today. She convinced Ntobeko to take us in his car since the other two staff cars would be gone all day. I said I’d like to go with them to try to find an adapter for my power cord since I’m borrowing Raquel’s extra. Laura ended up getting stuck in meetings about our Life Skills Managemetn Orientation that would take place the next two days. She, Nokwanda and I ended up walking downtown to try to run our errands. Nokwanda and I went to Game, which is a multi-purpose store but on the cheaper end. They didn’t have the right kind so I was without luck again. Laura met us back at the office with good news that she found the laptop she wanted and was going to pick it up later.
I went to the Canon store across the street from the office to try to upload my picrtures again but they are still without internet. Matt & Dave were gone by the time I got back and so were Raquel and Laura…Douwie was stil there and I was asking him how I was going to get home if neither of them came back to get me. But Raquel and Laura finally came back. Raquel asked Laura if she should just order food and I was a bit lost… turns out we were to spend the rest of the night in the office helping them get ready for their training the next day. Now, granted I’m writing this on Thursday night after two nights of this so I’m a bit tired and cranky…so I apologize if I sound bitter…but There is a Life Skills Team which consists of 4 of them.. Where were the other 2? Raquel had to call Sharan at one point to print out something he had on his computer since our internet was down… and he was out at a casino!!!!! We were in the office until midnight!!!! I have no problem helping out, but I had absolutely no warning about it in the first place…and needless to say I didn’t think we’d be there til midnight!!! But again, I had no choice but to stay b/c I had no way of getting home. Raquel is very detail oriented and wanted to run through the whole thing—literally…but it was so late and everyone was grumbling and just saying -we got it—we can wing it… just to try to get out of there.
Finally we left and the blue car that I was in had a flat tire. This tire has a slow leak so we keep a tire pump in the car. Finally dropped Laura off and made it back to the house where I passed out.



Wed Feb 13

So today started out as a good day—funny, happy…. Then something happened to shake me up.
We were in the office until midnight last night trying to get everything ready and finalized for the management training we were putting on today and tomorrow…. Laura and I had no idea it was going to be like that last night. I actually had no idea that there was stuff that needed to be done- let alone be there all night…. They forgot to tell us that htat is a regular occurrence. Anyway, I’m wiped out today so I don’t want to get into all that. But got up early and got to the office. At one point we almost got sideswiped by a BMW that was changing lanes at the same time we were… and then in our parking garage, which must have been designed by morons, (I don’t know which engineers thought the way it was designed would be a good idea)…anyway- in our parking garage, the turns are impossibly tight and two cars can’t really pass next to each other. But a car was coming at us and we stopped, but he just kept coming…we were all surprised at how long it took him to realize that he needed to stop. So twice in an hour we almost got hit….not good odds for the day.
Loaded up one of the cars and headed out to the Chatsworth Youth Center to help set up for the day. Douwie drove us and Dave, Laura and Raquel and I piled in the car, and we picked up Sosha on the way so we squished in the back. I led the “ice breaker” exercise to get the day started. We did the “name game” where you have to pick a verb that starts with the same letter as your name and act it out as well… We ended up having a few adjectives thrown in there but it was still really funny….Some of our guys decided to use their “real” names and not the nicknames that we all know them by so that threw us for a loop. My verb was limboing Lael and everyone cracked up and one guy that I don’t know all that well forgot my name and called my Larry…. That was really funny for everyone.. I think he was the same guy who called Lester “LaLa” so that’s what everyone called us for the rest of the day. We didn’t have enough time to do the next exercise but it was fine.
We did a version of “Family Feud” and that was really funny as well. The last question was between Menzi and Ntobeko. It was asking what sport I played in college…and Menzi got it right! I was surprised and we all gave him a big cheer!
Everyone was pretty attentive and participated well in all the activities. We had to act out some skits for demonstration purposes and I had to be a big sister who’s little sister found drugs in their brother’s room and had to tell her about them and then confront the brother…that was interesting.
Tanja, from the Center for Support of Peer Education (CSPE) was there to facilitate some exercises as well. She has been working with PPI for a while and is super nice! I’d heard a lot about her so it was nice to finally meet her. We ended with a game of “Jeopardy” which was pretty good--educational and funny. Raquel and Laura and I drove back in the car together b/c Douwie had to take the car back to the office early and Matt and Dave went in the taxi we hired to bring all the coaches out to Chatsworth since it’s a hard place for most of them to get to. Stule (Sthu—lay) (not sure how to spell it-but she’s a girl), she’s a coach for us, she asked me how long I was here for and then she said I was welcome to stay for 5 years if I wanted… I thought that was kind of cute of her to say.
Raquel said we should pick up our laundry before we went back to the office. She also wanted to go thru the McDonald’s drive thru. I saw that they had the “real” apple pies—the way they used to be in the US---ffrrrriiieeeedd! And tasty!!!! So I said I’d get one of those. This is when the scary thing happened for the day…We saw police lights ahead and there had been an accident…we switched lanes and passed by the accident and that’s when I saw the dead body lying in the road… It had been covered up with a sheet, but the feet were left uncovered….I said-oh my god that my first dead body I’ve ever seen…and I don’t think it’s hit me yet but I’m not looking forward to when it does. That image will be burned in my memory unfortunately. I don’t want you guys who are reading this to freak out… people do get hit here, more often than we would like… with the crazy taxis and not great drivers…but people just play “Frogger” and try to dodge cars while crossing the street.
We continued on to the beach to get our laundry.. there’s a shop next to the laundry place and it’s called “Seema’s”… so I will have to take a picture to send to my friend Amna, since that is her mother’s name. It was 30 Rand for a whole load of laundry! However, since I had gotten an apple pie- I was down to my last 20 so I borrowed the remaining 10 from Raquel. We picked up Matt’s and Dave’s laundry as well. Got back to the office and I went with Douwie and Lester to the Workshop so I could go to the ATM in there and ask about my phone (it’s supposed to vibrate but nobody knows how to make it work so I wanted to ask…). I went to the ATM and it ate my card!!!!! It told me that I should contact my local branch…. HI- My branch is in AMERICA!!!!! Needless to say I was a bit panicky--- I couldn’t get any money and I didn’t have any left back at home….I knew that my dad was giving my new ATM card to Andrew who would be coming down from the DC office on the 18th so I would just have to borrow money until then…. I finally figured out the reason that happened… I had a temporary ATM card from when I opened my checking account before moving down here… My dad had gotten the ‘real’ one in the mail and had activated it… which obviously cancelled my temporary one… pphhhewww!! Glad I figured that one out. Went to ask about my phone while Douwie and Lester were at the grocery store (Pick N’ Pay)..but of course I hadn’t brought my phone with me so they couldn’t really figure it out. Hopefully I’ll get there by the weekend.
Everyone else had left the office and Dave and Matt were ready to go- I had already asked Raquel and Laura if they needed any help and they said they were good… So we didn’t feel bad leaving them at all…I got home and showered and put away my laundry. Made some dinner and went back to my room. I happened to go back to the kitchen for something and Dave and Matt were sort of helping Raquel with the next day’s training. So it was weird but I felt like I was supposed to have known that we were going to have to help her again and that I had to stay there. It was more frustrating than the night before b/c I literally was going to go to bed then. She had us cutting up a ton of little pieces of paper and then at one point, she literally had us sitting there watching her type info from one power point presentation into another….I had a phone call thank god and was hoping they’d be done by the time I was off the phone… I was so tired and my eyes hurt. But nope, so I went back in to sit there and not do much other than offer my support. Dave was working on the basketball training plan for next week, and Matt was going over the presentation he had to do the next day with Raquel. I offered to help Dave, but he didn’t’ need it but again- I felt like I had no idea what to do or if I even had to be there, but I thought it might sound really snobby if I asked if I still needed to be there….so I stayed until they were done. I know my time will come when I’ll need some help with a project or some presentation, but I wanted to know again where her “life skills team” was and why we were having to do this again until midnight—sorry I sound so unhelpful and bitter. It’s just that the communication is so bad.. being the only new one, I feel like they forget to tell me certain things b/c they understand how it goes, or this is how it’s been before or they’re just so used to it they don’t even think about it. I know I could also do a better job of asking but I was genuinely worried both nights that they’d think I was being snotty or think that that job was beneath me or something. I need to work on communicating though.

Thursday, February 14

Happy Valentine’s Day!!!!!! Up super early again with little sleep. Had weird dreams again which meant not the best night’s sleep. I knew I was going to be a little bit cranky so I reminded myself to just keep my mouth shut and go along with the flow. Matt and Raquel went into the office and Dave and I went to pick up Laura. I drove so Dave could finish his breakfast but then we had to go back to the house b/c Raquel forgot something. We looked looked but couldn’t find it so we improvised. Dave drove b/c we were running late at this point. Got to the office and picked up some supplies and went back out the door to go set up.
The “staff”, meaning Dave, Matt, Raquel and I were defiantly dragging a bit this morning but it seemed like the whole group was. I led an active ice breaker. I used Sku as my partner for the demonstration of “knee tag”, where you try to smack your partner’s knee without letting them smack yours… it was pretty comical. Then we did the question game that we didn’t’ get to do yesterday. I had made up 10 random and funny questions and everyone had to go around and find a person that fit the answers….It’s a good way to learn more about people.
Then we got into the next exercise for the day. We were split into our areas and the Lead Coaches and Program Managers had to give a bit of background on their area, what the problems are there, what life skills issues are prevalent there and what goals they have for their area this year. Since Laura and I have no program managers for the city, we are them so we had to do this with our lead coaches which was totally fine. A few groups went and then the Umlazi group got up there and for some reason it got a bit odd…people started asking them tough questions about the problems they face and giving them advice and telling them how to fix it…. It started to get a bit heated.
Raquel had planned for this exercise to go on for about 45 mins….but we were only half way through when it was time for lunch. We scrapped the rest of the lessons for the day and finished the one we were doing. It was helpful for me to hear that info about the other areas. I was a bit nervous when it was our turn for the city to get up there….The other areas are more rural and have much different problems than the city schools do. The city schools and their students are much more privileged than the rural kids. They don’t’ have to worry about transportation, they have a “Life Orientation” program in their schools so they already know about HIV/AIDS….There actually is parent involvement.. anyway my point is that our problems sounded pretty petty compared to the major drug problem Lamontville has, or the squatter problems in Umlazi, etc…so we were finding ourselves justifying the need for PPI to be operating in these schools in the first place. But we did point out that all kids in middle school and high school need proper role models and need some direction in their lives. While these kids have money, and transportation and nicer things in life and multiple extra-curricular activities… their priorities are all over the place and they need to focus and harness that energy on something positive. They need to explore why they say Beoncye is their role model or why they want to be like Jay Z…..
Only had time for one more activity before we had to leave. We did a team building one called “Beam Me Up Scottie”. They had a piece of paper on the floor they all had to figure out a way to stand on without any feet touching the ground off the paper. We kept making the paper smaller and smaller. It was pretty funny, b/c one group had the two biggest guys, and another group had a lot more people than the others.
Raquel and I feel asleep in the car on the way back to the office- I was so out of it when we got back to the office. I went over to the Cannon store to see if their internet was working yet and they said yes so I was so excited. Turns out only the local websites were working so I got my money back and said I’d try tomorrow. Bummer…so close….
Talked to my parents on Skype for a bit and they’re finishing up putting stuff together for Andrew to bring down when he comes on Monday.
Went home with Dave and Laura since Raquel and Matt were going to be in the office for a while. Went for a walk since I’d had a big schwaarma late in the afternoon and was feeling over-stuffed. I finished a book on my ipod when I was walking and started the “Kite Runner”. Watched “Something’s Gotta Give” for a bit with Dave and Raquel joined us but then I was getting sleepy so I went to bed and worked on my blog journals for a bit.

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