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Dear friends,
It’s a Friday night...and as it is for all teachers, classroom work is over; but a stack of tests to “mark” and lessons to be prepared await my attention. Tomorrow I meet 4 or 5 other PCV’s at Kwagga where there is a nice little place called Roman’s Pizza which makes the best spinach/feta pizza anywhere! And I found licorice candy at Shop-Rite the other day...Oops! I got distracted talking about food...really, what I’m glad about is that I get to spend time with other PCV’s besides communicating by WhatsApp on our smart phones. Well, the others do 95% of the texting, becuz I cn’t keep up wth their speed, conversation, etc. (a bit of a generation gap) The last few weeks I have accompanied Sele (my school) learners on two Sat. field trips to career fairs or Open Days at the Universities in Pretoria. I’ve been very busy with school work, I inadvertently lost the international calling plan on my phone and haven’t called my Mom or anyone else for a while, my cell service has been slower than usual (or maybe I have been so busy with school work that I just don’t want to sit down with my phone and keep trying to get email to come up) I have lost touch with people here and at home it seems. And I have so much I want to share in my blogs, so many pictures I should take....but right now I just need to process things.
There have been sad events the last two weeks. A girl at my school was raped as she travelled to school one morning. Hitchhiking is common, but dangerous...and my village is considered quite safe. Villagers are saying “these things don’t happen here.” Also there have been 23 deaths of boys (around 16 years old) attending 2-month initiation schools in the mountains according to tribal tradition. Male circumcision is performed under unsafe health conditions and the boys don’t get to doctors fast enough. Sharon says the boys die of dehydration and blood loss. (a fact from my PCV training: A man who is circumcised has half the chance of getting HIV as an uncircumcised man, so I have no problem with the circumcision, just the conditions.) I have only two boys attending because my school is mostly Sepedi, not Ndebele (the language I was taught). But the other PCV’s live in Ndebele communities, where many more attend. And Sharon, the PCV who is my age, has been very troubled because people in her community are very sad, and she feels they have been avoiding her, as if they are ashamed of it. So, we have a lot to talk over when we meet tomorrow.
Language and culture make it difficult for a PCV to discern what is really happening. EXAMPLE: Today I had an early class preparing Gr 12’s for a test that would take them two hours to write, then ran to the copy machine to get worksheets ready, missed the first part of assembly when Mem Kwakwa announced that classes would be shortened because learners would clean at the end of the day. I taught my four classes straight and ate lunch with two teachers. I helped Mem Skosana answer questions about a poem about a mountain lion and two hunters in Mexico. It was a poem assigned to her Gr 8 son in his Pretoria school, and she said she felt so stupid because she couldn’t help him (she teaches Gr 7-9 English). Well, there were two lines of Spanish in the poem, it had snow in January which is the hottest month of the year here. I compared the mountain lion to a lion and the deer to a springbok, and tried to explain the dark spruce trees and hearing water running under the snow...It was a whole other world, of course, and a world I know particularly well from living in Idaho....Back to my day...It felt like classes were moving along swiftly...but I just listen for the boy who walks around outside ringing the handbell between classes and don’t even look at my clock anymore. Once I looked at my clock and thought it didn’t seem right...but shrugged it off..because I was busy and it didn’t matter..My Gr 12’s came back Period 6 to finish their tests and kept writing after the bell rang for end of school. Some girls came to borrow my garbage bucket to use to wash their classroom floor...but it still didn’t dawn on me that it was cleaning day. After my last test taker finished, two learners came in and started sweeping and cleaning the desks. These were two of my 4 part-time learners (older learners who passed some of their subjects in Gr 12 and are taking some of the courses again to get a certificate with better scores) These two were working away and the other two were hanging out...which is exactly what I would expect from them...Then Mem Banda and Mem Masango descend on the classroom with 6 boys in tow. They have taken it upon themselves to get my room clean...because they see so little action...And I still don’t know that this is cleaning day, I just thought Audrey and Linky were being helpful and kind. Now, I get it. But I never have figured out how to direct these kids with the cleaning. The mere presence of Mem Banda and Masango gets things done. And then Mr. Kgotsa arrives with a stick (which I’ve never seen him use, but he brandishes it well) They got the room clean but never got the floor polished which Kgotsa says we’ll work on next week. (I don’t see much point in the polish because the metal chair legs have no rubber protectors and leave all these marks on the floor which nothing will remove, and the polish doesn’t do anything....but it’s important anyway..) I felt inadequate, stupid, you name it.... I think Mem Banda and Mem Masango may have decided to step in because I had helped each of them with the field trips before. But Mem Banda was saying, “The learners have to know that you mean business...etc.” This is a strong forceful woman, which I’m not...but mostly... I just don’t get it yet....I’m really just laughing to myself about how little I knew what was going on all day..and how I may never really get it.......And I think this is my most “growing” experience of all. I know I must look like a fool to others...if I try to explain myself, it’s not in their language and who knows what they understand of what I’m saying.....And I can’t ask all the questions to really understand their actions, because of the language...and also because my questions don’t solicit the answers I really need anyway, (the culture again).
So when those tragic things happen, we PCV’s feel inadequate because we don’t know the whole story...can’t understand where things are coming from...But I guess I feel like I am here, doing my work, not giving up on being amongst these people who are so funny and warm, but who I can’t figure out!!! And they can’t figure me out either....It should be simple to get learners to clean your room, Mem Banda thinks....except that I don’t even know this is the day to clean rooms and I just can’t give it all my energy. The day I heard about the girl who had been raped, a Gr 11 learner of mine, I spent the afternoon rearranging my classroom. I moved boxes of moldy books to build myself a desk for my books, and was proud of organizing things. That was satisfying to me, and somehow cathartic. But not something that a South African would do, they like to be with other people! (I sometimes wonder whether there is such a thing as a South African introvert). The next day I found myself talking to Jane, a young woman who has become my friend here, as she washed clothes behind her home. She wanted to talk about the rape incident. She really said nothing more than “These things don’t happen here.” I just don’t know whether to expect more conversation than that.
I am looking forward to conversations when I get back home.... Just to hear your voices, laughter, is a comfort...it is comfortable. Which is what I intended to write when I sat down at my laptop...an email to the 9 people who sent me cards and letters in August-December. Two weeks ago I received a packet of old mail from PC headquarters. I had been calling and emailing about not receiving monthly mailings and it wasn’t until I walked into the office in Pretoria and asked in person that someone decided to look into it. So what a joy it was to receive 13 personal letters (some Christmas and Birthday cards), along with some financial stuff that was non-essential. I spread it out by reading one each day. I was hearing the voices of each of you in those letters and it came at just the right time, to remind me that there are those friends among whom I can feel just a little more at home. And it is just fine to be here and learn to appreciate that, while I also learn to expect to look like a fool to others and that others may look like fools to me and it’s all because we have lived such very different lives in this big world of ours.
Thank you all,
Love,
Carolyn
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Susan Lang
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Life
Carolyn, As I read your blog, I can hear your voice, see your expressions. You write so passionately, so sincerely, that I almost feel I'm across the table or back in the dorm listening to your latest adventures, happy and sad. I do so enjoy keeping up with your life...it's much easier to read your blogs than your hand-written epistles! :) You are certainly making the world a better place, as you always have. It's a cliché, yes, but such an important thing to do, however one chooses or is chosen to do it! The school year is finished here (my 38th in Larimore!) and summer promises weddings, travel to see Andrea and family in The Netherlands, a trip to Grimsey Island, north of Iceland, for Summer Solstice, a week at the lake in northern Minnesota. Blessings on you and the people who lost boys in the circumcision ritual, and to the dear girl who was raped. Love to you from North Dakota. Sue