March 4, 2010

4 March

Wow, it’s March already!
Last weekend was the first since I’ve been at site that I just stayed home. No overnights with friends, just a quick shopping trip to Mafeteng to load up. And boy did I load up… to make up for last weeks popcorn-less meals, I bought 2kg of kernels. I needed Weetbix (not heavy but they take space), cake flour, cocoa and butter for the cakes I was going to bake, a fresh 1.5kg of apples (Gala again! Even though they were a little soft!), and several other items. I’m pretty sure the 45-min hike could have killed me, or at least seriously done damage to my left shoulder (I have some crazy bruises from carrying the bag on my shoulder), but thankfully my principal was coming back to school around the same time, so I was able to hop in the truck.
Saturday morning here was unbelievably peaceful (and by morning, I mean after I woke up at 9:30). Some students were around, studying, watering their crops for agriculture class or picking up books to take home. Several stopped by to ask math questions, but mostly I had the house (and schoolyard) to myself. After my bowl of oatmeal and cup of coffee, I attacked the huge pile of pictures, cards and notes from home and went to work with my ticky-tac (they call it bostick, pronounced bah-stick, here). With the radio cranked to my iPod’s music, I decorated my house while generally rocking out. It was pretty great, singing and dancing around, surrounded by photos of my favorite people. Needless to say, my house is now beautifully decorated, and there are considerably fewer piles of things to hang up.
Saturday after lunch, I ventured down to the next village (about an hour away), where another volunteer stays. Emily had come to my home several weeks before, so it was my turn to visit her. She met me halfway and showed me around the village, introducing me to some of her host mother’s friends (who wouldn’t let us leave without a very generous bag of delicious peaches). Emily has one of the most beautiful gardens and was gracious enough to give me a huge, fresh cucumber.
One of the best parts of meeting up with other volunteers is the inevitable exchange of goods. Maybe my house has fresh peaches, and your garden has a huge tomato crop. Naturally, we’ll exchange some; it just seems to go without saying. Books are also frequently exchanged, thanks to the Peace Corps Training Center’s nice library of donated books from past volunteers. You never have to worry about getting the book back to Maseru, just to another home where it will also be loved. Currently, I’m working on Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Only after I returned home later Saturday did I realize how appropriate this book was for me. Al Franken is, after all, my senator. The book is quite a hoot. Maybe its just how long I’ve been removed from the crazy American political stuff, but some of the statements he makes are pretty bold (even if there is truth in them)… In any case, its an enjoyable read, and has definitely added variety to my life as of late.
I arrived home after hanging out in Ha Thoahlane to find the cat sitting on my stoop, waiting for me to unlock my door. At this point, I suppose I should mention that on Thursday of last week (February the 25th), one of the teachers from school took the cat, in a big flour sack, to her village, about a 50 minute walk from school… how the cat made its way back to school is beyond me, but the song “The Cat Came Back” has been in my head ever since. Who knows if/when she’ll take him away again, but I want to believe he’s learning that I don’t want him in my house.
Sunday was also pretty relaxed. Try as I might, I couldn’t drag myself out of bed until 9:30 again. Oh well. Sunday was spent marking all the exams from the previous week, and there were a lot. It seems the physics exam I wrote for my Form A students was much too difficult and the math exam was too long, but I think the physics for Form B’s was actually pretty reasonable. This doesn’t mean they did well by any stretch of the imagination (I’m pretty sure the majority still failed with flying colors), but at least I got one about right. The tricky part was making sure my questions are at about the same level as their English reading comprehension.
After marking though, I felt like I could have hosted an episode of “Kids Write the Darnedest Things” … On my Form A physics exam, I asked questions pertaining to energy: different sources, renewable and non-renewable, etc. I asked them to explain the difference between renewable and non-renewable, and the best answer was “Renewable are made by God.” I guess this sort of makes sense? Wind, water, solar, geothermal… they’re all very elemental. But if they want to think about it that way, technically, shouldn’t they believe that everything is made by God? (I won’t get into a religious discussion now…) I also asked them to identify certain kinds of energy. Energy of motion? Rather than calling it kinetic, the student wrote, “is important.” How could I fault him when he’s absolutely correct, it is important! My favorite though, had to be the question “What kind of energy is it when: a woman collects wood and cow dung to burn, in order to cook her papa” The next two words were “and cabbage.” Man, that student knows how things work in this country! If a woman is going to collect wood to burn to cook papa, she might as well be cooking cabbage too!
Some students also wrote very nice notes, thanking me for teaching them, or saying how much better they understand when I teach them. I’m really not sure how much of it is true, but it’s all very flattering, and I hope I am indeed explaining things clearly.
This school week has been a bit of a struggle. First of all, I’m “on duty” this week, which means I have to be up (and outside) by 7am in order to close the gate. This distinguishes the students who were on time from those who were late. Any student who arrives after the gate has been closed is punished. I’m “on duty” with another teacher, a younger woman who lives in the village, not too far from school. ‘M’e Puleng is kind of like a cross between a crazy aunt and a best friend who can’t keep quiet because she always has something witty to say. I wasn’t dreading being “on duty” too much since she had expressed to me earlier last week that she also didn’t like beating students.
Well, on Monday, there were so many students who were late that she couldn’t think of any alternative punishment, so she hit them all. Needless to say, it was a really tough way to start out my week, especially knowing that there were four more days of this. All I could do was make my breakfast and try to convince myself that the next day there would not be as many latecomers. Thankfully, there were not as many on Tuesday. In fact, ‘M’e Puleng was also late. As students came running in before the gate closed, I saw her coming too, jogging in her skirt and heels (passed by quite a few students on the way). Tuesday’s punishment was to clean up the school grounds, picking up trash the students have scattered throughout the day. I was much happier with this punishment. Wednesday, there were even fewer latecomers, and this time, they got to run laps around the soccer field. There were some boys who pretended to limp so they wouldn’t have to… only their “limps” were so comically fake that I couldn’t even look at them with a straight face. I told them that if I ran a lap faster than they did, they would get to run five more. That shut them up, and they took off. It’s now Thursday. To the best of my knowledge, there hasn’t been any more beating. In fact, in one of my classes, the students were joking around with one of the sticks used by a teacher. I asked what it was, what they were doing with it, and if I could see it. They quieted down and handed it over. I took it and snapped it into two pieces over my knee. Believe me, it was the most satisfying part of my day, seeing the looks on their faces as I hurled the pieces out the window and over the fence.

Most of my lesson planning early in the week was pretty easy; I was just handing back exams and either assigning corrections or explaining the questions and what I had wanted for responses. Most of my students have not been very quiet during class. As much as I hate to threaten or punish, I did threaten to make one student run laps around the soccer field if he kept talking. That shut him up for a while, but ultimately I had to pull out the big guns. “Do you all know that the single subject that your fellow students fail the most on their J.C. and C.O.S.C. exams is mathematics? Why do you think that is? I bet it’s because they didn’t listen in class when they should have been paying attention! Do you want to fail like them? Or do you want to pass and succeed?” (Insert dramatic pauses wherever necessary, I assure you, the room was silent) The next lesson went much better with that class, but again today, they were frustrating.
In other news, I changed my hairstyle: I shaved my head! It’s pretty great, though it took a lot of convincing. It’s unbelievably cool, and when I go running, I just use a bandana or hat so my head doesn’t burn to a crisp, and washing it has never been so easy. No, I’m totally kidding, there’s no way I could shave my head… I did get braids put in though, and I think they look pretty sweet (I promise I’ll put pictures up sometime, I’m just not sure when!). I bought one package of fake hair (because I guess otherwise it doesn’t look like you have any hair?) and the Woodworking teacher (of all people!) happily agreed to give it a try (even though white people hair is so “silky” or “slippery”), saying she braids her daughter’s hair all the time. I guess one package of fake hair wasn’t enough though, so I have a solid two braids going around my head, with sort of a patch in the middle of the back that is still unbraided. When the principal went to town yesterday (Wednesday), he agreed to buy another package of hair so she could finish up the braids, but picked up the wrong kind (surprisingly enough, there are quite a few types of fake hair to braid in), so we’ll continue next week. I think the time total so far is around 3 hours, and I expect it will take at least 2 more to finish up… the color is not my natural color, it’s reddish-brown, but the “brown,” as the package called it, was basically dull black, and I figured I’d look sort of funny with black hair. I opted red-brown.
Last night (Wednesday) was my official welcoming party. Technically, it was also for another teacher who moved to campus and is now staying in one of the teachers’ houses here, but I’ll take credit too. Ever since I baked a pan of brownies, all the teachers had been pestering me to make another cake, so I pulled out the recipe book and found the easiest looking chocolate cake recipe, knowing that ingredients can be hard to find (and carry back from Mafeteng, see earlier in this post for details!). Well, I got plenty of ingredients and decided to double the recipe. One of the other teachers had begged me earlier to let her help me with the cake so she could then make one for her family whenever she goes home next. I was happy to have help, and before long we had all the delicious chocolate batter ready for baking. I am proud to say that the bigger of the two cakes we made in my Dutch oven (look Ma, no oven!), and it turned out amazing. The smaller one went into a real gas oven (luxury item!) that one of the other teachers has (but doesn’t use, I assure you), and turned out just as well. The cake was a hit.
The main draw to this party though, was the cow that was slaughtered. No, I’m joking again, but there was so much meat. And yes, I am still a vegetarian. There were nine of us total: (including myself) eight teachers, plus Emily (my next closest volunteer, and a fellow health-nut vegetarian… we get along well). I kid you not, for seven people, there were eight (8, yes 8!) kilograms of meat. Let me say that again, so you can think about the quarter-pounder burger that probably fills you up. There was more than a kilogram of meat for every meat-eating person. Wow. I mean, I’m sure the whole novelty thing factors in, but good gracious, a kilo of meat?!
The women worked on the chakalaka, a delicious blend of shredded and cooked (with lots of oil!) onion, carrot, cabbage, mixed with some other veggies and almost a mango chutney type thing, plus some beans, plus lots of spices and chili sauce. Really greasy, really good. Even better the next morning with scrambled eggs and toast. My mouth is watering even now, and I just ate some.
The men worked on the meat. It took a long time. The fire-pit was probably about 3 feet by 3 feet, and even if we built up a good fire to actually cook the meat, the meat-master would dump water on the fire so the chicken and sausages wouldn’t burn. I can understand not wanting them to burn, but the smoke was pretty terrible, and it took forever to cook 4kg chicken and 4kg sausages on nothing but smoldering ash. It didn’t matter though, we were all pretty content just hanging out around the fire. I bopped back and forth between the women inside and the men outside; I guess I just break the social norms like that.
The whole party was pretty great. We didn’t eat until almost 9pm and stayed up until midnight (you need to understand that this is really late here, especially for me), just chatting about anything: politics in South Africa, Peace Corps, teaching, dancing, food…all sorts of things. It really made me realize how lucky I am to be at this school. Some of my friends are at schools where they’re a little less than comfortable hanging out with the other teachers, but I wouldn’t trade mine for the world. Sure there are one or two who I’m less comfortable around, or who I don’t know as well, but in general, they’re pretty great.

One of the great discoveries this week (on the part of my colleagues) was my ability to type copious amounts of words in ridiculously little time. This meant that anytime there was anything to be typed, guess who got the call. I typed assignments for some workshops they’re attending, several application letters to various employers, as well as parts of a Sesotho exam. They were astonished that I could even type a foreign language quickly. Naturally, I’m happy to help out, and truly, I like typing, but today it started getting a little old. “’M’e Katie, couldn’t you help me type this? I just want to give Ntate Kolobe the schedule for my workshops…” “’M’e Katie, I just realized there are some few mistakes in this paper, can we fix them?” Now, fixing mistakes in a paper is something I completely support, but I don’t have any sort of control over the generator or when it is used. This means I either have to use my precious laptop battery, or tell them that I’ll help when the generator is on. This presents a problem. For example, several times this week, they’ve turned the generator on when I’ve been away on a run. Naturally, I can’t type if I’m running in the next village, and chances are good I won’t want to rush into that warm, crowded, noisy room and type immediately after I get back from a run. I probably should learn to say no, but it’s so much fun impressing them with my typing skills! It’s been draining though, trying to balance being “on duty” with regular teaching, and on top of that all this typing business. I wonder what would happen if I started charging them a per page fee…
This weekend is the “Newbie Party” in Mafeteng, which means all the volunteers who serve in the Mafeteng district will head into town to cook and hang out together. I think Italian food is on the menu, which means a big pasta dish, fresh garden salad, sangria (which is technically Spanish, I think, isn’t it?) and gelato. Ha! Gelato, yeah right. The ice cream here is a pretty sorry excuse for ice cream; gelato would likely be a huge letdown. Dessert is TBA, though the remaining chocolate cake (of the two I made yesterday) is definitely one part. In any case, it’ll be fun. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing everyone and having an excuse to cook an elaborate dinner. It’s also a really nice way to decompress and share experiences. Somehow things don’t seem so crazy if I know someone else is going through the same thing.
Well, my battery is at 25% which means I should probably shut ‘er down till the next time the generator is run…
All my love from Africa,
-Katie