Expectations, Part 2

Sorry this got kind of long. I would make it 2 posts, but I don't know where to split it.

I’ve been thinking about expectations a lot since I wrote my first post on it.  Mostly trying to figure out why I feel so frustrated so much of the time, when I didn’t think I had any high expectations.  What I’m actually doing is continuing to uncover my hidden expectations, evaluate them, trying to figure out if they are valid, and then figure out what I can change to unfrustrate myself. Sometimes I can change my own behavior, more often the expectation. It’s actually a good learning process, and it’s one of those things that I know will benefit me in the long run, but… its like character building.  End result good, process sucks.

Chatting with fellow volunteers, one thing we keep coming back to is being frustrated with systems in this country. I’ve already blogged that the ministry of education is like the ministry of magic in Harry Potter. But it seems all of the systems are mysterious, overly complicated, slow, and change without warning. Yes, I realize I’m living in a developing country. But Botswana is actually a middle income country, and with that and a good government, goes so much potential… and I think therein lies one of my (and a lot of people’s, including Batswana’s) hidden expectations.  There are a lot of resources here.  Things should work better than they do.

Tied to that is an overarching theme that has been weird to digest, an expectation that I got from listening to Peace Corps stories from other volunteers before I came. I thought I would be placed in a country with a lot less resources, but a lot more people eager and willing to change things. Instead, I’m in a middle income country with comparably, lots of resources and a population that overall, wants the government to fix everything and doesn’t think they individually can change things.  The first part of this is understandable- the government build roads, clinics, and schools when the country had nothing. Since the government owns half of the diamond mines, they could afford to. Currently the government is the largest employer in Botswana. On the surface there’s nothing wrong with that (other than the fact that the diamonds are going to run out in 10-20 years, but that’s another post for another day), but its lead to dependence on government. And not the type you hear politicians in the US wailing about during election season. American welfare will never rival the amount of financial, and really emotional, dependence that Batswana have on the government right now. Financially, it’s not necessarily a bad thing that the government is preventing a lot of people from starving by providing a welfare system to people without jobs (although job creation is a problem as well). Emotionally… it’s hard to convince people that there can be good jobs outside the government. And that good things can be done outside the government. And that you can create a village group that doesn’t have to be registered under some branch of government, for the love.  The people in some ways seem sort of stuck. With resources around them.  It’s such a weird environment to work in.

I also expected to make friends with people as I worked with them. That’s how it goes in the USA a lot, at least in my experience.  Here, I’m finding that people don’t want to do a lot with you until they know you. You become friends with someone and learn to trust them, and then you can do things together.

I also expected there to be a learning curve, but things would get progressively better. And while things are getting better, it’s not linear. It’s not even one step forward, two steps back. If that were the case, I’d just walk backwards and still get things done. It’s like a complicated square dance from one side of the room to the other. You think you are going one direction and then all the sudden someone spun you in a circle and you are do-si-doing someone you never met, and then you are back where you started going, what the hell just happened? And then you can skip halfway across the room and feel super productive, until you get spun around again.

In the beginning of May, a few weeks into the term, I had some returned Peace Corps volunteers (RPCVs) come to interview some of my kids for a project they are doing. It was sheer pulling teeth to get it to happen. My counterpart was out sick, and I just had to start frantically pulling teachers, anyone that was a friend of mine or had ever been nice to me, to help me find kids and be translators.  The interviews were 1-2 hours long. That’s a lot of time to pull teachers out of classes. Plus we had to translate the consent forms to the kids and make sure they were okay doing the interview. We may have had to do this 6 times for form 1 girls, and –still- didn’t get one to consent. It was kind of insane. At the end of the several day interview marathon, I did the Kings Foundation training. And learned not to schedule things back to back, because holy cow I was tired.  But in the midst of the relief and pride of actually getting those two activities to work… I was frustrated. Is every single thing I do in my village going to require this much effort? Am I going to have to sit on people to get things done, every time I want/need something done? A, that’s insane, and B, that’s not sustainable. And C, that’s going to piss everybody off, including myself. –Sigh- I took a few days off to visit friends and do some Peace Corps business in Gabs. When I got back to my village, I was in a bit of a funk. And it’s lasted a couple of weeks. I’m sort of on the verge of pulling myself out of it, we’ll see. But during this funk, I didn’t want to leave my house. Several days I just didn’t. And all my clubs got cancelled anyway for the last 3 weeks. A few other things got done. And I thought a lot.

I didn’t expect clubs to be such a battlefield during my Peace Corps service. This sort of goes back to the ‘things should work better’ expectation. Clubs get scheduled, and then get stepped on by anything else going on in school. Sports, testing, teacher workshops, outside groups coming in, meetings, late lunch, etc. And really, I can’t change the slightly wacked out school system, consisting of end of month testing, a 6-day schedule for a 5 day week (seriously), and overworked teachers. I can do everything the same, prepare things, check the calendar, etc, for clubs, and half the time they happen, and half the time they don’t. I think this is related to the definition of insanity- doing the same thing over and other again, and expecting different results. Except I’m expecting the same results and different things happen.  So, I decided that my give-a-damn is busted as far as clubs, or at least PACT club, is concerned. I’ll show up, and if clubs happen, cool. If they don’t, fine. I can’t sit on people or stress about something that’s supposed to happen weekly, that’s planned into the schedule, but still evades actually happening pretty often.

I decided that I need to take more initiative on my own to hang out with kids, because the club structure only works sometimes. And if I have an informal lunch scrabble club, and an informal yard hula hooping club, well, I’ll make the best I can, formal structures be damned. Ball sports, which have contributed to my lack of clubs this term, has given me the opportunity to hang out with the volleyball teams, and I’m hoping to continue getting to know those girls after the season ends.

I’ve gotten 2 teacher trainings to happen this term, as well as an all-school assembly. And aside from reminding people a few times to come, they were relatively painless. I’ve learned that things like this can happen if I can get them on the school calendar at the beginning of the term. If they don’t get on the magical calendar in the beginning, I can’t add them on in the middle of the term, even if the day is free. That would make people’s heads explode. So although it’s odd, it’s something I can work with. And I’ve decided that I don’t mind sitting on people to make one-time events happen. It’s one thing to remind everyone you have a workshop tomorrow, 1-2 times a term. It’s another to remind them to show up to your club every week. I’m learning to pick my battles.

I’m also learning not to put all of my eggs in one basket. Or, don’t count your club meetings before they happen. I’ve met members of the HIV support group in Salajwe and hope to help them with future projects. I’m also hoping to make a contact with someone working with out of school youth in my village, to work with them as well. I need to stop thinking that all I can do is go to school, because I need to find other things to do if school isn’t working out all the time.

I’m also learning to just show up more. It doesn’t matter that I’m not doing much. Being there makes people see me and shows I care. It helps me find opportunities when I catch random announcements, or hear that the schedule changed for a weird reason. I feel more productive out of my house than in it, which is pulling me out of my funk.

I guess that’s a lot of hidden expectations. But things are still happening; I’m less in a funk, and who knows? I’m still finding things to do, and I may have a PACT club before 2014.