"Knowing is Beautiful" - Common

Now they rot and live together

Life they can live it better

Just knowing

A love they created and made better

Now neither of them is afraid

Just knowing

That they got each other’s back

And

Respect is an action not an act

Now knowing

Each other they embrace

In love and it’s safe

Now knowing

Knowing is beautiful.

I found this when I was looking around for a video to show my Life Orientation classes tomorrow. I know this, World AIDS Days event piece. Check. Some kids will have to memorize and recite this one. I have to say in the last month or so I have found some of the most interesting articles on Sex Education, HIV/AIDS studies, tools to use to NGOs and nurses, come across new and interesting things that were all news to me....oooh LEARNING!

Funeral Starter Pack

I'll have to do a longer post on this in the future, but one of the largest businesses here in South Africa is the selling of Funeral Insurance.

It only starts at R 19/month, which right now it slightly more than $2 USD. Most packages you see advertised on TV cover enough to cover the coffin, embalming of the body, fees for services, and the huge meal people get at the end. We've had people show up at my school selling these packages to the teachers.

This guy recently showed up saying, "don't you want to have the reassurance that your families will be covered, since anything could happen." AND and then the clutch of the sales pitch was "don't you want to protect your children if they were to suddenly die of AIDS?" The sales man then asked the teachers, who stood in the staff room at their 10AM lunch-break, "Who from a show of hands has had a love one be taken away from us by this Disease?" Everyone raised a hand.

The sales men then thanked the teachers for their time and then passed out the incentive for them coming to the meeting at all....a big bucket of fried chicken (KFC of course). The oddest thing. It was as if he were dishing out bait to fatten up and weaken his victim. Did someone say ATHEROSCLEROLSIS??

There I sat typing up something I needed for class listening in on this sales pitch and then watched this man dish out the greasy KFC and just rolled my eyes...the 2 things that are single-handedly bringing down South Africa: KFC and AIDS.

Hence the need for all the advertisement for all these funeral packages. I have never seen in my life such a market for this. My host family members each has their own account which they will go into town once a month to pay the fee.

So here I stand in line at the Shoprite in Kuruman and there you have (picture above) funeral insurance in a box, a starter pack. Sad :( that I even have to be looking at this.

We are the fighters....

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2012/02/20/science/100000001362994/michel-sidibe.html

I just watched this and loved it. MICHEL SIDIBÉ'S drive and commitment to his career and the people he works for just shines through in this piece. He is the executive director of the United Nations’ AIDS prevention agency.

The way he talks just reminds of how I feel about teaching my 84 7th graders. Knowing that I might be able to save just one of them from contracting HIV is why I go to class every day. Every day brings its own challenges and you can't give up on these kids, they have it in them to realize they have the power to beat this disease with out me there telling them that. Fight.

Lesson planning music....on a Sunday

I love this song. Anyways back to the lesson plan and handout make-up to my STIs and STDs and all things disease done in 30 minutes on Monday. I hate how short the classes are. Then test on Tuesday, another day lost of assessment and book keeping.

At least I get Friday off to go to yet another workshop, this one for Peace Corps. It will be with our school principals and meet up for on a discussion on....hmm have not received an agenda yet, so I say this with assumptions, that it's probably on "using your volunteer efficiently and correctly." And it will be yet another class lost, I'm soooooo behind on my syllabus!!

Saturday morning ko Aforika Borwa

Today I managed to sleep into just before 9 AM, what an accomplishment! Given I usually wake up at 5:15 AM on the dot to the sound of a heard of elephants rolling through my door and burglar bars to the sounds of Rihanna or South African Christian gospel. "We found love in hopeless plaaaace!!!!" comes bellowing in from the other side of my wall on a very-off falsetto pitch with several cracks of his Muppet-Gonzo-like-voice. It's Gonzo, it's a bird, it's a plane, oooh oooh wait, it's my host brother at it again doing his morning crack ass of dawn ritual dance-off and sing-off in his room at 5 AM. I usually groan and mumble: "Are you F#$%^ing kidding me? I have 1 more hour till my alarm goes off."

But, today NADA. AWESOME! So I slept into to the pitter patter of the falling rain on my tin roof. I cannot tell you how relaxing that is. AND it's cool out so I was actually able to snuggle under my sheets and putting off getting up.

So I get up and unlock myself from my fortress (3 doors to get out of my house: normal door, burglar barred door, sliding door)and stumble out to the latrine and breathe in the freshly rained upon African air....Aaaaah. Then I walk over to my outdoor tap and fill my plastic bucket with water my morning bath.

I get back into my room and put in my modem and go to Facebook instantly - anything crazzzy going on in people's lives back home, ehhh not really. CHANGE....right to the NY Times. In the background my electric kettle warms up my morning coffee water and I begin to scan through the headlines, nothing too moving. Hmmmm..."In Maryland, House Passes Bill to Let Gays Wed," the only article I read. Then my eye reaches The Fashion & Style section....

Guilty pleasure, yes! Omigoodness, so I'm here sitting in my gross jeans, Peace Corps - South Africa shirt that I've been wearing to bed for the last week, hair a mess and with my nerd glasses on, surrounded on the outside by what is the rural village life of the Northern Cape and I have the gumption to go look at this. Bucket baths, funerals, kids running around with no shoes on, women carrying goods down the road balanced on their head, unpaved street, black outs, no water, hunger, living on 1 meal a day - the different life.

Look at High fashion, the fashion of New York's fashion week,while in the African Bush is like looking at that really good gourmet French patisserie rich chocolate cake and not even being able to eat it. It's almost like an oxymoron, it's something unheard of in these parts and something completely out of my current budget.



However, my eyes and interest can't help but be pulled into the glitz and glam of what is part of the central aspect of what makes New York City, The City. Fashion.

So I've got to look at Bill Cunninham. OOOOooh Hmmmm, fall coats, and fur coats with no sleeves dressed down. Lovely: http://video.nytimes.com/video/2012/02/17/fashion/100000001368347/bill-cunningham--coatings.html

Then pulled into the happening of the Jason Wu show marking multi-culturism and the other shows that highlighted the upcoming season themes of the military look [now - I've been reading Vogue since I was 12 and the military look is something that comes in and out every several years for fall fashion, this is nothing new, but at the same time all the pictures I see all are great looks].

Names and things like: Joseph Altuzarra, Rag and Bone, Michael Kors with his outer wear knit alpaca fringe coat, Brad Goreski commenting on Tory Birch, and seeing the faces lined up at the front from of shows at New York's Fashion week....art and beauty. I just love it.

I flip through the AmfAR (The Foundation for AIDS Research) gala pictures and Sarah JessicaParker dressed in, what else, Oscar de la Renta. This is the side of New York I only saw from the outside but I can't help but be drawn in.

But that's what I do my Saturday morning, flip back to the the life in the States that I do not see here, nor was I ever a part.

I open up a few more tabs and spend about 15 minutes looking for information on the prevalence of STDs in South Africa curious to find things to have my 7th graders need to know. We're still on Sexuality and Disease in my Life Orientation class and it's been a really interesting time. I wish I had a good 3 months to work on this with them, instead the Department of Education allots you 3 weeks to teach them about these

2 topics. I'm already going onto 4 weeks pushing into our next theme which is Personal Choice and

Self Image, but I've been going over that with the kids as I go through Sex Ed. We spent this last week going over Decision-Making and terms like "safe" and "risky" and "alternatives" and then I've prepared a midterm exam for them next week, there is NEVER enough time!

But anyways, I need to get back to the lesson plan research and then get my lazy bum into town to do my grocery shopping. Here's a great message from one of my old Yoga teachers in NYC:

"Research has shown that a simple act of kindness directed toward another improves the functioning of the immune system and stimulates the production of serotonin in both the recipient of the kindness and the person extending the kindness. Even more amazing is that persons observing the act of kindness have similar beneficial results. Imagine this! Kindness extended, received, or observed beneficially impacts the physical health and feelings of everyone involved!"

Be good people and enjoy the weekend, and go out there and extend some kindness - know I will :) I'm out
.

"What I really do...."

What my friends think I do... [not yet! someone please find me an elephant ASAP!]

What my Mom thinks I do... [this is me with the kids every day all day - sometimes it's def too much]

What the US government thinks I do... [eeeh...no comment]

What locals think I do... [soooo not true but, hey I'd love to work for the C.I.A.]

What I think I do.... [this is me when I go for a run]

What I really do.... [this is me EVERY day, sometimes 2x a day]

Haha I just saw this posted on Facebook by one of my friends here in South Africa, and it cracked me up since any volunteer here could tell about the close and personal relationship they have with their bucket bath.

My bucket looks more or less like the one this girl is squished into but it's a little big more oval and darker green. I can even do a Yogi-Headstand in my bucket bath!

How I figured out how to do that while I was in there was that one day when I leaned over the bucket on my knees and washing my hair, I leaned over into the bucket to rinse out my hair. In the process of doing that I noticed a familiar hand placement, that of a yogi-headstand. So I thought to myself, "hmmmm....why not?" and I leaned over a little bit more and pushed up my bare bottom (yes, I was actually naked - I mean that is how you get cleaned when you take a bath) and till it reached just perpendicularly above my head and then...UP went one leg and then the other. Yup, yogi-headstand...IN my bath.

The End of bath time stories :) haha

Yogi headstand!

Here's one for the weekend and so hot in SA, one of my fav's: Mi Casa

Watch for the little kids dancing in the end of the video, that's like every little kid in my neighborhood to comes over to dance and play with me :)

Ntsanyana's ntsanyana

So cute! All the little Grade R's (aka Kindergardeners) at my school posing with the little puppy of one of the cooking staff at our school. The cooking staff's names is Ntsanyana which is Setswana for "puppy."

After all the little ones looked at the picture and ran away, one runs back yelling "Mma Susana!" And comes up to me and gives me a big HUG like he had forgotten to give it. Haha...these kids just love me so much and I have to say it's definitely what gets me through each day :)

Pollo frito existe en Africa!

Happy Valentines Day :)

Hugs and kisses from me and my friends in the Northern Cape, South Africa :)

PS: Here's some great reading that could easily describe me or any other PCV or RPCV!

http://www.peacecorpsconnect.org/2012/02/12-reasons-to-date-a-returned-peace-corps-volunteer/ #2,#8 and #12 and #1=me

How long have I been complaining about my lack of ENERGY???! Time for B!

I'm starting to think I'm a bit DEFICIENT. Vitamin B12 deficient. I am eating meat here but not enough I think. So just cracked open that expensive bottle of CVS "SUPER B Complex." I'm going to try 2 weeks of this and see what happens...this could be me being anemic or just low on that B12 -- which Peace Corps was so anal about during my medical review. I think I may have had to write an essay about this along with how I don't deal with my lactose intolerance, I just avoid dairy, or eat it in private and suffer with the bloat/gas. I miss my monthly B12 shots...they. were so much easier. I'm really bad at daily medications and maintaining diets.

Pump up the protein and the B - I'm hoping this helps!!

Merienda de la tarde: Guacamole!! AND missing manners.

All to myself and no one to bombard me and asking for a taste...I'm really into claiming my food these days. Giving out all the free samples daily of fruit, peanut butter, and my expensive Nescafe Classic "smooth & rich" coffee is really starting to take a dent in my wallet.

It's odd how an act of kindness and sharing becomes an expectation, even demand on the part of some, that I give them my food. I do appreciate how America is a culture of "PLEASE" and "THANK YOUs." Courtesy and manners have been so ingrained in me so sometimes it's a shock to never hear it here...but when I do, it quite a delight:)

Thanks mom for the training, I do value all the persistent nags of the past (and present at times)!

Litchi REHAB!!!

It's official I need to go to Litchi rehab!! I must consume at least 1 kilo's worth per week. The fact that I just happened to be in Town and then made a detour to the Pick 'N Pay just so I could buy a big bag of litchies and run home and lock myself in my room so I could secretly eat in peace without any neighbor or family member come and ask me to share...SAYSss A LOT! Haha it's a habit that will be broken when the fruit's season ends.

Today I was called: LEKGOA ?

Today I ran out of school instantly over to the tuck shop, just down the street, and bought my fav soda, Stoney. It’s this ginger beer with a lot of kick made by Coca Cola and the village people (and I) love it here! “Cold drink” so they say. When it’s summer here, it’s all about The Cold Drink, that could be any Fanta, Coke, Sprite, Twizza, i.e. any cold liquid carbonated drink you can get your hands on that is not alcoholic.

With my Stoney in hand and umbrella open to cover me up from the hot African sun, I headed down the dirt road to my Barbie pink house. I came across a small group of neighborhood kids playing on one of the public taps and I waved and smiled and said, “hello!”

Their response: “LEKGOA! LEKGOA!”

My response, I said jokingly: “Lekgoa?? Do I look white to you??” as I held out my arm from under my umbrella.

I laughed and smiled and just walked on….AND then thought, hey that is the FIRST time I was called that. All the other Peace Corps volunteers (the majority of them being what I would call "white" – but is “Caucasian” more PC these day? ) always complain of this ongoing pestering from locals - it being most likely the first time in their life to be pointed out for the color of their skin. Our training manager Victor talked to us about this during pre-service saying he's had past volunteers come up to him and say, some of self discovery to their actual skin color having come out of such a color-blind society never having to deal with their own race before. I think I this before how race is huge here in South Africa, given the history of Apartheid. Either way that’s their own inner challenge dealing with that, but I just thought water off a duck’s back, but wow….how long have I been in South Afrika anyways? AND when was the last time I really wrote on my blog, apparently too long!

So here’s a small description of why the “white” people can take offense to this word Lekgoa and will hear it perpetually throughout their 2 years of service (talk about annoying):

“In Southern Africa, Lekgoa is often considered a contemporary racial slur for people of European descent. However, usage of the term actually derives from historical racial power relationships and is not a stereotype, but rather a description of disrespectful behaviour patterns associated with whites.

Many expatriates in Southern Africa report that they are called 'lekgoa' - spelling 'lekgoa' (Tswana) 'lekgowa' (Northern Sotho), 'lekhoa' (Southern Sotho) - by the approximately 15-million indigenous black inhabitants of certain countries, namely Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho.”

Get the full story on LEKGOA at http://www.enotes.com/topic/Lekgoa

I guess I should feel blessed that I fall somewhere in between where people do not know what I am and assuming I’m just “coloured” (i.e. mixed race, which is basically true, a little indigenous mountain and jungle native, and then some Spanish blood, and hey throw in some true Indian blood there given my grandfather on my birth mom’s side is a “Gringo de La India” = light-skinned one from India). There’s no Tswana term or slur I’ve heard yelled out to me yelling “Coloured! Coloured!” so looks like I might be in luck and will not have any derogatory slurs yelled at me for the next 2 years (NOW less than 2 years, look at how time flies, it’s now only 20 months or so left).

I’m already thinking of ways that I could maybe stay in South Africa for another year but in one of the major cities (given out release date is at such an awkward time, being September 2013 - after grad schools have started). This is a pretty amazing country in terms of what it has to offer and I just feel like after 2 years, which are already flying by, how can I even have time to see the rest of the country. My dream is to befriend the ambassador’s wife who works at USAID in Pretoria, and have her offer me a job. We did have a really nice long chat at my swearing in ceremony back in September and I do go into Pretoria enough to maybe weasel my way into getting an informative interview. I’d be really curious to see what it’d be like to work at one of the American governmental offices abroad. But maybe I should hit up the Peruvian embassy while I’m at it haha.

Mma Susana doing what she does best: playing hand games with the kiddies

Bottom line, I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned over these last several months is that time flies! Just look at my past month at site since school started up in the beginning of January.

Today I left school at about 4 PM, an ungodly hour for staying at school to do work; however, I had been asked by my principal to help out with the data entry for our learners’ registration for some regional test. I don’t think it was for all 700 learners but we (me and the 2 other admin assistants) stayed in school from 9 AM to 4 PM doing 7 solid hours of data entry. My eyes kill from looking at all the small lettering and numbers all day. I was told that it was due today at the district office, so I forfeited my 2 Life Orientation classes to pitch in and help, yet by the end of day all the information wasn’t even finish. Apparently it’s ok to hand things in late. Our school’s Improvement Plan (SIP) and Development Plan (SDP) which I helped pull together before I left on vacation in the first week of December was due sometime then, yet the first week I got to school in January my principal was asking me what I ever did with all the SIP and SDP information. I thought, “Are you kidding me? Was it not passed into the Department already?”

Since I’ve been working at school I’ve come across so many moments where deadlines are not even paid attention to, and the learner classes are compromised for teachers to go to workshops or finish busy work, like grading papers or filing Department of Education stuff. It irritates me. I think of myself as being very on top of things, however, when information is not properly communicated and deadlines are not even held, I often feel like it’s hard to do my job. So in the midst of all this chaos I have been assigned to work with two 7th grade classes in English (which they call “First Addition Language”) and Life Orientation, so 4 classes in total. On top of that I’ve begun working with one of the community’s home based care groups and already helped them write and submit a PEPFAR grant application. I’ve been told at the school that I am a track coach and sports team manager, but I have done thus far is hold a stopwatch and take all the top 3 times for all age groups at the school and then root on all the kids as they run in their track competition for which they did not even really trained. But can't complain...I love being their cheerleader!

My little track cadets age group 7+ years at their first track meet!

But I always try to keep a big smile on my face and when in doubt ALWAYS ALWAYS stay positive and keep my energy high, which at time has been really hard. Speaking of energy, I have never felt sooooooo tired in my entire life. Always feeling like I needed a nap or a cup of coffee, but then realized that I think it’s the heat here, NOT a sign of depression haha. IT IS HOT HERE. REALLLLLY HOT. I don't even want to know was the real temperature is outside so try to not pay attention to the degree but it will be in the 30s Celcius regularly. I will come home to my concrete little room with its tin roof and I unlock my door and out pours the heat as if it was its own Easy Bake Oven. I then run to open all the windows that “have to remain shut” while I’m away and open up my curtains and door to let the breeze roll through, which is quite effective but come nighttime when the temperature will have plummeted and it’s cool outside the walls will still be warm and retain the heat. And then my room will be rampant with mosquitos, and of course I still have yet to put up my mosquitero, principally because there are no good beams to hang it to. So I will spend the majority of the night swatting the mosquitos and itching in my sleep.

Then, of course there are the animal sounds, donkeys screaming and doing their odd mating ritual, which sound like someone getting jumped (but that is what is going on anyway). Also, there are my newest neighbors, the herd of I’d say of about 50 cows and there little baby calves. I awoke the other night to what I thought was some little boy getting attacked outside my house. I jumped out of bed and threw open my curtains and looked out to the sandy, barely lit street and saw a small cow having what looked like a temper tantrum or what my host mom describe as “the baby cow crying for its mother” the next morning. Ugh…I just rolled back into my bed, I should have known better to think it was anything really important, just another animal assault by noise.

So my goal is to get a fan finally this week and beat the heat and then start sleeping with ear phones in, since this lack of sleep is messing up my half-marathon training (21.1 km)! I will be running my 1st marathon in Mpumalanga in the end of March. I’ll be joining a huge group of PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) who will all be running and raising money for a local charity to fund college education for some very lucky students. It’s actually for an NGO started by a few PCVs called the KLM Foundation and the biggest fundraiser for them is the Longtom Marathon where every PCV who runs is required to raise $100.

Check out the KLM website for more detailed information on what exactly I am raising money for: www.klm-foundation.org for the general organization site, and to meet the learners currently being funded through KLM and the Longtom fundraiser:

I will leave you all with a short video of what my life is like here in my biggish village in Northern Cape: Beauty and the Beast, “This little town.”

Belle’s life just reminds me so much in this first part of what my mornings are like, walking through the village not on my way to a bookstore but to the school. It’s so me to be stopping to say to everyone who passes, “Dumela…..Dumela…Dumela!” which is “good morning” in Tswana. I’ve had even a friend say to me, “why do you say hi to everyone? You know you don’t have to do that.” And there her dress is just like mine, completely covered from head to toe as to try to not get too much attention. Though I was called out the other day for wearing a “mini dress” to school. The dress came to my knees and I made sure I came into school with my arms and shoulders covered. Sometimes you can’t please everyone, plus these days its crazy hot – so as little clothing that you can wear and get away with is necessary!

And then spot on me is this lines: “That girl is so strange! No question!” said a few time and then this is said as well, “Behind that fair façade, I’m afraid she’s rather odd…very different from the rest of us! ” Because I run through the village like a true Peruvian hooligan.

“I want much more than this provincial life” is me and trying to build the dreams of these kids in my school to expand their world view to beyond their rural life – we are ALL global citizens, Tufts taught me that one. But also encouraging them to believe in their community and to make it shine…that would be great if I can just get that into my 83 minds of my 7th graders.

My little village buddies here riding a bike with no chain.