Home life. . .

My host father has been in Hammanscraal for the past two weeks. He's been in a hospital for either high blood pressure, dibetes, or his kidney problems. He doesn't know when he'll be able to come home. I hope he gets better! With him away, my host mom visits neighbors more and I'm free to cook my own food and lounge about without feeling guilty for not sharing or be lazy. I even had the house to myself for a night when my Mma went to a funeral.

My host brother, Hans, who works in Johannesburg came home late last night (it's at least a four hour trip). He has a bandage around his right forearm covering stitches. He says that a machine did it. I don't really know Hans, but I do know that he's gone a lot when he's home (drinking?). Aloso, he caused property damage at one of the shebeens. It was enough damage that the police kept coming to our house and requesting that someone goes to pay it before they have to take action. Hans didn't take care of it himself, but waited for my host parents to take care of it.

Some eighth graders have been coming to visit me lately. They like to teach me traditional dances and learn simple ballet steps. Recently they've been coming to work on Sudoku puzzles with me. Maybe by learning logic they'll also learn critical thinking?

Athletics

Track and Field season is here! At all three of my schools they are holding try-outs to see who's the fastest. The fastest learners will be trained and will race. If they are really good, they will be able to compete at the regional, provincal, and national level. Some of the kids were really fast! It was great to see people running and I'd love to help train the learners (although I really don't know how much an 8 year-old should be trained. I think they should just have fun). Unfortunately, it's also an excellent opportunity to see corporal punishment. Yesterday I watched learners pinched on the upper, inner thigh, hit with wooden switch, chased with an umbrella, and hit with a rope tied to a stick (to make a whip). From what I could tell the learners received punishments for being late, running slow, or playing a game while waiting their turn. It was especially hard for me to watche learners wince and jump as perfect lines appeared on their skin from the wooden switch.

Becca, Alicia, and I are planning on doing a corporal punishment workshop which will be presented at each of our schools. Topics will include the history of corporal punishment (it was encouraged during Apartheid to teach the learners to fear authority), results of corporal punishment, and an introduction to positive reinforcement. I can't expect corporal punishment to go away, but maybe my teachers will think about it in a new light.

New Year's

For New Year's, Becca, Alicia, (the two closest volunteers) and I travelled to visit some friends in the Northwest Province. Some highlights:

-We spent a whole day travelling each way. The Northwest has landscape that reminds me of home with green, irrigated fields, silos, and holsteins. The only thing that reminded me that we were in South Africa were the occasional thorn bush fields, the cramped, hot taxi, and villages composed of corrogated steel shacks.

-Lalo made delicious refried beans and spanish rice for us. We helped with fresh guacomole and flour tortillas.

-In Kimberly, we had to wake up early in order to travel to meet up with the other volunteers. We couldn't find the night watchmen for our hotel, and we ended up climbing over a fence in order to get out. Kinda felt like a prison escape. . . Alicia is laughing up high with Lalo reaching to help her down. Becca is in the lower right of the picture.

-On the train from Kimberly to Hartswater there were men walking the aisles selling beer, cold drink (soda), hats, toys, and chips. There were also a pair of men singing accompanied by an accordian. None of the men were employees of the train, but sold things in order to pay for their ticket and hopefully make a profit. On the seat next to us were five or six drunk men (normally I'd be surprised to find people drinking at 9 AM but to completely wasted is another story). Sometimes they would start to yell at each other or slouch down next to the toilet to smoke.

-New Year's itself was a lot of fun. There was alcohol, friends, card games, and dancing at an Afrikaner bar. Just before we went to sleep, we raced shopping carts down a hill. I held my own with the lighter person and a bright red cart.

-The adjustment to being alone and in my village was really hard. For four whole days I was completely happy and then I returned to nothing.

It's raining. . .

Will it rain or will the clouds disperse as soon as they get overhead? Clouds form almost every day but they always seem to blow away before anything can happen. Novemberish through February is the rainy/hot season and there have been two big rainstorms and ten or so sprinkles this summer. I was told that February is either unbearable hot or extremely rainy. These clouds sprinkled for five minutes. On the ground you can see the outdoor cooking area, our shed (looks like a shack), a big pile of wood for cooking, the neighbors' home, and a red taxi that Pele, my neighbor drives.

school woes

School started again and I was welcomed by warm hugs, queries into how my holidays went, and comments to how I'm getting fat and the number of pimples on my face. I have gained a little weight (bored eating and less running than when I was in college) but not enough for anyone but me to notice. One teacher told me that I lost weight. I'm convinced that the comments on my size and complexion are as meaningful as discussing the weather. I'm trying to smile and ignore the comments plus tell myself that anyone bigger than me isn't allowed to tell me that I'm fat. Since only big mamas inform me of my size. . . this plan seems to work well.

For the first couple of days I was busy, actually busy, working on the school timetable for two of my schools. At the third, they had already completed it. I looked it over (not hard to do when it's on the chalkboard and in the staff room) and proceeded to ask questions. My big points: why do some classes have more periods than the national guidelines and the number of periods per subject differ per class? I should have expected the answers. More time is spent on languages because a lot of learners can't read in grades 4-7. The extra periods were taken from Maths, natural science, and social studies. I argued my best for more time in all three, but it was in vain. The time allocation per subject is unbalanced because the last three periods on Friday are not taught and any old subject was thrown in to fill the space. The reason that the last three periods aren't taught is that everyone from the circuit down doesn't work on Friday afternoons. Specifically, one of the teacher's unions supports the Friday afternoons off. I've already noticed that none of my teachers take work home at night and workshops, meetings, and athletics are scheduled during school hours cancelling classes. Grading and class planning is either not done or done in class leaving breaks free for gossip. This translates into four six hour workdays and Friday mornings. And I wonder why they think I'm working so hard when I'd define it as doing nothing. I keep planting the seed that teaching is a hard job and that good American teachers work just as hard outside of school hours as during. I'll keep trying to think up alternative phrasing.

Another issue is Limpopo Province's insistence on temporary teachers. Temporary teachers fill a postion in the school and work as teachers just like the permanent ones. The difference is that they face losing their jobs at the end of each term if the school can't justify their exsistence. Many of the temporary teachers in my schools have been teaching at that school for over five years. Each school should have a learner to teacher ration of 35:1 (translating into classes of 30-55 in real life) and the temporary teachers keept the ration close to what the government says it should be. In December, I discussed planning for the coming school year but the principals and teachers were wary because they didn't know how many teachers they would have in 2006. The decision was finally made in January and the schools started on January sixth for the teachers. Mmera was told by the circuit office to welcome two teachers from a school that closed (last year it had 18 learners and this year none came). They were quickly given a class, introduced to the rest of the teachers, and started to get used to the new environment. This morning, the circuit manager came and told them thtat they need to go to another school. The new teacher cried!

Finally, I've started to notice the different school management policies at my schools. My key school has the school management team (SMT) make all the decisions: assigning classes and committees to teachers, how many classes in each grade, and which things to spend the school budget on. The decisions are then told to the rest of the teachers with little discussion. The SMT even set it up so that they taught less periods per week than the other teachers. The other teachers accepted the changes, but weren't happy that they were excluded from the decision making process. At my other schools, the teachers all sat down and decisions weren't made until there was a concensus. All the teachers need to be present and nothing happens until they are. At one school I comforted the teachers who felt jipped and at the others I pushed the teachers to move ahead.

post-holidays update

The holidays weren't quite what I was expecting. . . I suppose I was hoping for the American-style family days except in hot weather. The festive season brought people home who are working in Gauteng Province. Almost everyone spent their time at the local shebeens until they passed out or their money ran out. Plus, there were firecrackers going off at random times of the day accompanied by shouts of, "Happy!" The first time I heard them I thought they were gunshots!

Internet is now only 5 rand on hour! A whole hour is about the same price as mailing a letter, a little less than a dollar. I haven't been feeling the letter writing business lately. It's not that I have more to fill my time (I don't); it's more that I realized that I'm living beyond my meager peace corps means and the amount of letters each week was getting pricey and it takes so long for a letter to get here and even longer for it to arrive home. Plus, my life is dull. I swear. I spend mutliple hours reading each day with highlights of selected telephone calls and text message conversations with other peace corps volunteers.

With that said, a few people have mentioned plans of packages. Could you post a comment or e-mail me if you have sent one with when you sent it and to which address. If I know about it, I can corner the post office workers.