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Jr. Before Walking
It's hard to imagine this chubby little guy walking so soon.Without question, the most difficult part of our service here is being so far from family and friends. We think about you everyday and wonder at how quickly time goes, how much all the children must be changing, and the companionship we are missing. We certainly see the changes with the neighbor kids. The baby, Jr., who was born on July 13, is now toddling and chattering with every step. He walks like an old man with a bellyful of chibuku (traditional beer), and it is tempting to rush to his rescue with each faltering step. Tselang, the three-year-old who spoke no English when we came now parrots almost everything we say and understands us very well. Chantelle, the nine year-old, is quickly turning into a beautiful young lady. It makes me a bit sad to think of all the changes that we've missed back home. Still, it is a delight to have children around us here.
As to our current work, it is still difficult to describe some aspects of it. Steve has made some wonderful connections with young men here and has become a mentor. He also has quite the following of young children who now know him
A Wonderful Young Friend
This is one of the young men that Steve has befriended. In this shot he is enjoying a chance to take photos at a school celebration. as Mompati and upon seeing him put their thumbs and forefingers to their front teeth in a pulling motion and then squeal with delight when Steve obliges their request by taking out his teeth. Though less novel, he also works with a group of young boys at one of the primary schools here as the leader of an art club. He is doing an excellent job of integrating life skills information into those art lessons. The children are quite skilled at copying what they see and seem to have a lot of potential. It is wonderful to see the light in Steve’s eyes as he describes his work with them.
He continues to help in a variety of ways at the clinic, but I know that he sometimes becomes frustrated at the waste of resources and lack of training that he sees. We often have to remind ourselves of the youth of Botswana as an independent nation, which helps put into perspective what we first perceive as incompetence or apathy. I think that social development, like human development, goes through certain phases, and as much as our impatient western minds would like to hurry things along, it is to
A View of our Classrooms
This is what many of the government school classrooms look like. One positive change that pleases me is that there are more colorful charts and teaching aids in the classrooms at KJSS than when I first arrived. the detriment of a culture to do so. Each phase has a purpose and if not seen through to its completion creates gaps and imbalances that can retard that development. Yet, I must say that based on what little I know of cultural development around the world, it has some serious flaws no matter what the sequence and time frame of its growth. Much of that may be due to westernization.
Steve and I are both happy about the prospect of helping to develop a preschool for needy children here in our village. It is a story of synchronicity. Near the end of break for last school term is when we reached the one year mark of our Peace Corps service. For me it brought a tangle of emotions. First, I was amazed at how quickly the year had passed, but at the same time I felt that in that time I'd accomplished little. The next thought shifted my perspective. It was something like, "Oh crap! I still have over year to be away from all of you." That was followed by thinking that if I'd done so little in the first year, how could I possibly accomplish anything
Life Skills Bulletin Board Contest
As part of the Month of Youth Against HIV/AIDS we held a bulletin board contest among the classes. There were different life skills topics that the students depicted along with the connection as to how those skills help to prevent HIV infection. worthwhile with only a year and two months of service remaining? So swung my little monkey mind from thought to thought, worry to worry, until I had to take the little creature by the throat, gently of course, and shout, STOP! It was then that I was able to come up with some ideas of what I might do to restore some sense of balance and direction for myself. I decided to talk to Gladys. She and her husband own the house where we stay and the children I described earlier are part of that family. Gladys had taught at Kopong Jr. Secondary School for nearly a decade before transferring to a Sr. Secondary School in Gaborone. I figured that she would be able to give me some good advice on what I might do to accomplish something worthwhile in my last 14 months of service. I planned to speak to her on the morning following my mental acrobatics.
That morning after Steve left for the clinic, there was a knock on the door. It was Gladys. She asked if we had any trash inside the house. She was gathering everything that she could find because the trash truck
Steve as a Contest Judge
Steve had been talking to this young man about the bulletin board that his class created. arrived unexpectedly after one of its usual long and unexplained absences. I emptied what we had into a plastic grocery bag and took it outside where she was busily collecting bits of rubbish that the wind, dogs, chicken, and possibly a goat or two had strewn about the compound. I began helping her clean up, and was about to tell her that I’d like to sit down and talk to her when she had time. Before I could form the sentence to speak it she said, “A friend of mine and I want to start a preschool here in Kopong for needy kids.” She pointed across the fence to where our ragged and often hungry neighbor children live.
“It could really help them,” she said. She went on to talk a bit about the benefits of having a preschool for children like our neighbors. Then she added, “So my friend and I thought we’d see if you want to help us. It could be a good accomplishment for you in your last year here and would help us as well.” So there was an answer before I even asked her the question.
Last week we had our first meeting
Students Posing for Us
I've yet to meet a student at KJSS who is camera shy. They enjoy having photos taken, even if they are never printed out. with the kgosi (village chief) who gave his support and suggested that we have a meeting of the stakeholders as soon as possible. That same day I prepared letters of invitation that included an explanation of intent we’d prepared earlier, and gave them to Gladys for delivery to several community leaders. The meeting is scheduled for this Tuesday, May 18. I have no idea what direction this may take, but am grateful for the opportunity to be a part of it, particularly because it a project that is locally conceived and directed, rather than something I’m pushing to make happen. If Steve and I can play any useful parts in creating it, it will be enough.
As to other activities, I’ve now had several opportunities to give PowerPoint presentations on substance abuse and addiction, primarily focusing on alcohol and HIV. The latest one was a presentation for young medical students at the University of Botswana. The education system for physicians here is very different than in the U.S. These are second year undergraduate students who have had a year of university science courses. I gave a 50 minute lecture followed by a workshop. Kip and Maureen, two PCVs in our group, are both mental health professionals. He is a psychiatrist, and she is a psychiatric nurse. Both had private practices for years before joining Peace Corps. They are teaching an entire unit on mental health and asked me if I would present a segment on addiction. I was grateful for the opportunity and very much enjoyed it. I am scheduled to present next week at a staff development workshop at a junior secondary school in a neighboring community.
Work at my own school continues to be challenging, but interesting. I have created a number of lesson plans that infuse life skills into specific subjects, but am slow in making opportunities to co-teach the lessons. When I am able to help, it is often in unexpected, but rewarding ways. I’ve been able to assist students in math and agriculture classes. Currently, I’m teaching crochet to students who are interested in making doilies for one of their required craft projects. I’m grateful that some of them have had a little experience with it because their projects are due in mid-June, which can be accomplished. Still, I would have preferred to start with them earlier.
Scheduling at the school is not the problem. Keeping to a schedule is. Things are scheduled, over- scheduled and rescheduled. Last term, several of the alcohol education presentations that I scheduled for students had to be rescheduled repeatedly due to activity conflicts. It didn’t seem to matter whether or not I followed protocol about putting events on the calendar in a timely manner. If something comes up at the last minute everything else is pushed aside whether or not that something is urgent or important. Just last Friday, I discovered only hours before the program, that although my counterpart and I had booked school transportation weeks before to bring PACT (Peer Approach to Counseling by Teens) members from another school to address our prospective PACT members, that the van was going to Molepolole because another school asked two days ago to use it, and whoever gave permission never bothered to check the schedule book. It didn’t seem to matter that our trip was for our school, for our students or that it had been long planned and confirmed about two weeks prior. It also didn’t seem important to let my counterpart or me know that this change had been made. We only found out because I happened to see the driver arrive at the school near lunch time. As he got out of the van, I smiled and said something about his going soon to pick up the students from Lensweletau. He just laughed, shook his head, and said that he was going to Molepolole. I was left to call on short notice and disappoint the students from Lensweletau who had been preparing all week for the meeting. I was angry, but once I got over myself, was able to organize a productive meeting for our students without the help of my counterpart who had to leave before the meeting began.
I don’t want to give the impression that I have a difficult counterpart. I do not. I am fortunate to work with someone like her. I have heard horror stories from other volunteers who either have no support in their school, have counterparts who are uninterested and unmotivated or actually have counterparts who actively work against them. My counterpart, Janet, genuinely cares about students and staff. She is kind, honest, resourceful, and adaptable. For me, the difficulties lie, as they often do, with the institution. Systems are broken and the people who understand them best have little power to repair them. This leads to frustration or apathy. Compounded by cultural and language challenges, it sometimes leaves me feeling ineffective and inept. My habitual response to such feelings is anger and defensiveness. I am grateful that being in a strange environment has heightened my awareness of this and is giving me an opportunity to find new and more helpful ways of responding. That isn’t to say that old habits are easily broken, it’s just that I no longer live in the bliss or hell of unawareness. Which it is depends on the day.
Other things that Janet and I are working on are ways to help teachers help students, as well as ways to help students directly with topics such as goal setting, study skills, early sexuality, and at a student’s suggestion, continued drug and alcohol education. At the heart of all of this is the intention to reduce the students’ risk for infecting themselves with HIV. We do our best to develop a framework for the year and build on it as we go. I’m excited that I may have the opportunity to teach about Gardner’s multiple intelligences as part of goal setting. Based on what I’ve seen, students have little opportunity for self-reflection. I think that anything that can be done to help students discover their strengths and talents will be very beneficial. In general students are unaware of what opportunities may present themselves if they can learn how build a foundation based on their own values and talents. I found a free multiple intelligences assessment that students can take. It was created in Excel, scores automatically, and creates a graph of the scores. I’m hoping that I may be able to install it in the computer lab, so all interested students can access it. Realistically, I don’t see teachers being able to administer it for all the classes, but I may try. A saying that is particularly popular here comes to mind and seems true more often than not: “Time is not on our side.” I imagine it may not be on your side either, so with that I will end this entry that updates you on life in Kopong where children play, donkeys bray, and I often pray the Serenity Prayer.
If you have an interest in reading more about the challenges of reducing HIV in Africa, check out this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/world/africa/10aids.html?sudsredirect=true
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Vashti
non-member comment
Thank you
Hi Mom, thanks for the update! I enjoy reading about your life in Bots. We miss you everyday. We often think "Hey! This time next year we will be planning your welcome home party!"