Ending term 2 with a talent show

At the end of term 2, I organized a talent show for the school. Basically, after the kids finish their exams, they sit around doing nothing for a few days while the teachers grade. So I had my quasi-functional PACT club sign up potential acts, and took over the big hall again like we did for the Youth Against AIDS assembly. I count this as lifeskills- they are developing self-esteem and acknowledging things they like and are good at ;)

We had dancers,

singers,

quite the audience,

a pretty funny skit

some of my PACT girls,

and -everyone- wanting their picture taken.

Literally 2 days later I moved across the village, so my house looked like this:

 These are the before pictures of the new place... a future post will have the settled in version.

I should have taken pictures of all of my things hanging out of the back of the pick-up during the actual move, but I was way too busy to think of such things (and Lord only knows where my camera actually WAS at that point). So you get one of my favorite pictures of KT.

KT- That’s my spot… but you are like three times my size… so I guess you can stand there.

Goat- Yep. –munch-munch-

So... what exactly IS lifeskills???

I feel like my cohort and I were asking ourselves and everyone around us this question all during our pre-service training. It was only at our in-service training that we got the formal answer of, training teachers on how to use some specific guidance and counseling curriculum- both in guidance and counseling classes and infusing the topics into other subjects. This was a bit weird to start with since it was so specific- most people come into Peace Corps thinking it’s all about figuring out what your community wants to do, not being an extension of a government ministry/outside agency. It was also weird because it took us so long to figure it out.

In reality though, lifeskills volunteers do a lot more than curriculum workshops. So here is my description of my job in a nutshell, mostly for future volunteers, but also for my friends and family back home.

What the assignment of ‘lifeskills liaison volunteer’ basically means is that you will be based at a school, and assigned a counterpart (cp) from that school, most likely someone involved in the guidance and counseling committee/department, often the senior guidance and counseling teacher. This is often a little bit of a crapshoot whether the person a) knows what you are here for, aka you are not another teacher, b) cares about lifeskills and guidance and counseling, and C) has time to work with you. You are by no means limited to working with this one person!! My cp is great and I’ve done a lot with her. Other people have found other teachers and people in the community to work with if their assigned cp didn't work out too well. Actually, I recommend working with multiple people anyway, because then if someone gets sick/ moves/ is busy, you aren't stuck. (Problem I’ve had this term because my cp has been out sick.)

The "liaison" part is sort of weird... at first I thought it was between the school and the community, but I think it’s meant to be between the school and ministry of education(MOE)/EDC. (EDC is an organization that with the US CDC developed the afore mentioned life skills curriculum). Most of us try to avoid everything having to do with MOE other than this curriculum, which is good curriculum.

In summary, being assigned a specific thing to do is weird, and most of us try it if we can, and ignore it if it doesn't work.

So what do we actually do? That really ranges from volunteer to volunteer. I've been at my site for a little over 7 months. I am currently trying to get/keep some clubs going- PACT (peer approach to counseling teens, aka lifeskills using peer education) club at my school and the primary school in my village (I'm at the equivalent of a middle school), and an English club. This is one of the most frustrating things I've ever done, because the schedule seems to change every 5 seconds and clubs are often cancelled or moved. But I'm learning to show up, run a club if I can, and not stress if I can't. 2/3 of my clubs I have counterparts for, and one I'm running on my own. PC -really- wants us to have counterparts, for sustainability and capacity building and honestly, things just work better when you work with locals who know how everything works. It's often tricky to find people willing to work with you, especially in the beginning. We all try to work with people, and from time to time we try doing things on our own as well. Back to things I've done: I've presented/facilitated three workshops for teachers and one all school assembly. I've also had a workshop cancelled on me twice- back to the crazy scheduling thing. I've talked to students in guidance and counseling classes, having them write questions anonymously and I'll answer them to the whole class later. I’m probably going to actually teach some guidance and counseling classes next term. I helped coach volleyball and facilitated getting a few kids at my school interviewed for a website project. I get a crowd of kids on my porch often, wanting to color/hula hoop/ play soccer. I may try to make this into an informal club.  

In the future at school I'd love to regularly have clubs, possibly tutor math/science, do more workshops/assemblies, and maybe a typing class- for students and/or teachers. Lifeskills is really broad- it covers HIV/AIDS, sexuality and safe sex, teen pregnancy, communication, decision making, drugs and alcohol abuse, goals, study skills, relationships, anger management, assertiveness, self esteem, job training,  etc. Literally it is skills for life. So, while we try and do HIV activities and awareness periodically, almost anything you are interested in can fall under lifeskills. Lifeskills volunteers do PACT club, English clubs, tutoring, teaching (although PC doesn't want us to, but it happens), sports, arts and crafts, hanging out with students, holding workshops for teachers on life skills/typing/lots of other things, working with out of school youth, and promoting awareness of lifeskills issues with big events such as world AIDS day celebrations, alcohol awareness events, and safe male circumcision campaigns. Some people with counseling experience can also capacity build their guidance and counseling departments on how to counsel students, and sometimes counsel students themselves.

Working with out of school youth is something I'm trying to start. Same lifeskills topics, but with older teens/younger 20-somethings that aren't in school. Another volunteer and I are putting together workshops for interested youth in her village, and I’m trying to see if my village youth would be interested in them as well.

So lifeskills is my primary project- written on my Peace Corps invitation and everything. PCVs also have secondary projects, although at times they can be bigger and more time consuming that your primary project. With secondary projects, the sky's the limit. You can plant gardens, work at the clinic, volunteer at NGOs/anything you can find at your village, build pit latrines, build libraries, build playgrounds, etc. You just need to make sure it’s something your community wants. I know of volunteers doing all of the above and more. I don’t have any big secondary projects right now, unless you count trying to start an English club at my school and working on permission to read to kids at the primary school. Or my volleyball coaching.

I sort of approach my service as lifeskills themed. Almost everything I’m interested in doing in my village, and that my village seems to want (besides hand-outs), can have a lifeskills aspect.

So, I try and tie in lifeskills to whatever I'm doing, but I do what I want/what my community wants.

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.

Month of Youth Against AIDS

 This is some back-blogging, because describing this without pictures would have been a bit boring. March is designated Youth Against AIDS month, and my school picked March 25th to celebrate with sort of an all-day assembly.  It was after their term final exams, so there wasn't much to do in class anyway.

This is all of the students gathered in the big hall.

Between each 'act' there was an impromptu dance party on and near the stage.

 About 17 different students and student groups sang, danced, rapped, spoke, or demonstrated sports moves, all with the theme of Vision 2016: Zero new HIV infections, zero AIDS related deaths, and zero discrimination.  This was a singing and dancing group.

More dancing than singing with this group.

Traditional dancers getting ready.

Traditional dance! They were really good.

One of my PACT club kids giving a speech.

Another of my PACT club kids as MC.

Guys dance group. Dancing is huge here- all types. 

3-man dance group.

Karate club demonstration.

Boxing club demonstration.

The coolest part of this day was that I didn't do hardly anything to get it together.  My counterpart and I got together with the PACT club to go over logistics, but the kids found all of the student groups to perform.  A great end to my first term here. 

a MUCH better week

This week turned out much better than last week, due to it being the 2nd week of school and things finding a rhythm, cool people, and you know, things didn't explode in the US.

Highs
- I'm now an assistant volleyball coach!  And it's a lot of fun.  I didn't realize how much I've missed volleyball until I was around it this week.  I also didn't realize how long it's been since I actually PLAYED volleyball, and I need to not injure myself =P
- I met with the PACT club at the primary school and had fun teaching them Kingdom, Wisdom, Condom, with lots of resulting giggles and enthusiasm
- Aileen (another PCV near to me) and I talked to the ENTIRE student body about HIV facts and myths.  This could also fall under challenges, but for the most part it went pretty good.  In other news, my school could use a bull horn for such events =P
- 2 of my fellow PCVs have asked me to help them with workshops in May and June- yay for being productive! (and getting to visit friends)
- getting to know a few more teachers, and I got invited to one of their houses to meet their adorable 2 year old =)
- bumped into some fellow volunteers on my shopping trip in Moleps
- my mom and friend booked their plane tickets to come see me in July!!

Lows
- No real lows- at least none in the category of things exploding in the US or animals dying on me during desert hurricanes.

Challenges
- I didn't get to meet with my Lempu PACT club this week because I couldn't figure out when to meet with them- sports have sort of taken over the world this term.  So I need to keep pushing for a time to meet and chase down some kids this next week.
- Still feeling like I don't know very many students.  A lot of this is because of the language barrier. So I think I'm just going to bite the bullet and attempt to hang out with them during some free time during the school day.  It'll be super awkward at first, but maybe some conversations will happen.

Hopes
- I have a teacher interested in starting an English club with me at Lempu- really hoping we can find a time and some interested kids!
- Potential to read with/help out in some classes at the primary school
- Methinks I've lined up 2 interesting groups to come and do stuff with my students and teachers- more on that when the events take place

Randomness
- We randomly pulled students for a blood donation workshop, trying to promote students to participate in blood drives. They all jumped and squealed when the speaker pulled out the needle and blood bag they use though...
- I've started feeding my neighbors dog.  And by that I mean I actually bought dog food. We'll see where this goes...
- One of my teachers saw me making a poster for the HIV presentation and now wants me to help him design a visual aide of the reproductive system of a chicken
- I saw a botswana squirrel for the first time.  It looks like someone stuck a squirrel tail on a small ferret.

Shoe-leather development

I’m finding out how grassy and rooty grassroots development can be.  I borrowed the shoe-leather in the title from the term shoe-leather epidemiology, which is where epidemiologists would actually wear down the leather of their shoes tracking disease cases as they sought to figure out what was making people sick.  I think I’m wearing down some shoe leather getting projects and people together.

My current going-ons are 2 PACT clubs, attempting to find out of school youth and show them a movie, talking to some guidance and counseling classes, co-leading a workshop with my counterpart, and planning for an NGO to come and do a training in my village. 

This doesn't sound like a lot considering it’s my full-time job, but let me tell you, it is.  And that’s because I have every day things going on too- school meetings, spending time with teachers and at the clinic. I also have random things going on, like helping to clean out the volunteers house that left, and going to an out of town wedding this weekend.  Also it’s nearing the end of the school term so teachers and students are busy.

It comes down to, I’m actually busy!  Woo! 

Today, case in point.  Walk to Kgotla (where the village chief is) for 8am meeting.  Chief is not there, so there is no meeting.  See from a distance that the social worker is in.  Surprise her in her office and try to get another date to show a movie in the village.  Walk to Lempu and find that exams ARE happening, because the school now has ink to print the tests.  So no visiting a class to talk to them this morning.  Talk with counterpart instead, and arrange to meet tomorrow to plan a workshop we are facilitating next week in another village.  Find teacher that has invited me to wedding, get asked to tea at her house.  I discover I do like soft porridge, hang out with a friend (side note: I have friends!!!), and catch up on Generations.  Walk to clinic to see if we can use a room there to show a movie.  They say they will bring it up in their weekly meeting and tell me Monday.  I see them packing a truck and note that their mobile clinic to another village has moved from Fridays to Wednesday because of transport- this is important because I want to go with them some time.  Go home to finish preparing for PACT club at primary school.  Get a text saying the students are testing so no PACT club.  Go to primary school anyway to meet with guidance and counseling teacher and school head to get permission for teachers to participate in next weeks workshop.   Go home again and try to make travel plans for the weekend, plans for the NGO training, and prepare for tomorrow’s PACT club.

I text and call people when I can, but an awful lot of grassroots development at the village level works much better face to face.  It's partly culture, partly communication.  There's also some formality in asking permission for things here, so I usually can't get fast answers to questions like can we meet here?  The answer needs to come from a committee or a meeting.

So I traipse around my village a lot trying to get things going.  This is by no means a complaint- I like to walk, I have an umbrella to shade myself from the sun, and a good fan to plop in front of when I’m done J  But I might need new shoes at some point.  ^_^

The good, the bad, the progress, and the completely random

The good:

- We had PACT club at the primary school, with students AND teachers!

- PACT at Lempu for the 2nd week in a row

- I’ve used my soccer ball to hang out with kids some- whee!

- I’m building relationships at the schools and clinic- slowly but surely

- Lempu wants me to talk to ALL of the girls at school – whoa/yikes, but yay for school initiative, and a platform to recruit for a girls club!

- I was able to pay rent, YAY! 

- I got a stove and gas tank from MOE, YAY!

 - Rain!

Works in Progress:

- The class schedule keeps rearranging at Lempu, so I keep missing one class I want to talk to.  Oh well, onto next week!

- Still looking for a place with electricity to show some HIV/AIDS films in the community

- Planning multiple workshops for teachers, and looking for people to work with me on them and clubs

- Not broiling.  It’s been freaking hot lately.  I've discovered that dunking my head in water and sitting in front of my fan is particularly effective.

- My attitude.  I don’t want to be a downer about everything, and I’m beginning to loosen up more and be less frustrated about stuff (of course, it really helps that things seemed to work this week!).

The bad:

- Ministry of Ed wants my entire group to to go a workshop in 2 weeks- oy.

The completely random:

- A truck came and dumped a load of sand in my yard at 3:45am one day this week.  Huh??

- Got complemented by one of the nurses that I have a nice pelvis.  She was like, you’ll have no trouble delivering babies!  Me: … Uh, good to know! o.O

- A bird flew in and out of my room and scared the bejesus out of me for about 30 seconds.

- Saw the Salajwe branch of the Botswana democratic party meeting under a tree near my house.

A day in the life of a PCV

6:00am- Hit alarm and go back to sleep.

6:25am- Remember that you have a 7am meeting and spring out of bed.

6:45am- Quickly walk to school.  Halfway through your walk amongest the students, they all take off at a sprint leaving you in a cloud of dust.

6:46am- Check behind you to make sure there’s not a lion or something.

7:00am- 30 minute staff meeting that is 2/3 in Setswana.  Make an announcement about your teacher survey and stalk teachers with it afterwards.

7:30am- Hang out with counterpart in her office, do final preparations of this afternoon’s PACT club.

8:00am- Go home to get a box to put said surveys in.

8:30am- Eat random breakfast.

8:45am- Power randomly goes off.  Shrug.

9:15am- Surprise!  Ministry of Education people come with a stove and a gas tank!

9:16am- Suppress your happy dance until after the nice men have left.

9:30am- Rearrange your kitchen for gas tank.

10:00am- Wave goodbye to the MOE truck, and then happy dance!

10:15am- Tell facebook you have a gas tank.

10:45am – Realize the MOE people left your gate open and your yard is now full of donkeys. 

11:00am- Check e-mail.  Find out that 3 of the things you have been planning just changed dates.  Make mental note to write on calendar in pencil.

11:10am- Power randomly comes back on.

11:15am- Realize that someone chased the donkeys out of your yard for you and closed the gate.  Score!

11:30am- Go back to school with PACT club supplies and box.

11:45am- Chill in teachers lounge.   Are not surprised to see no completed surveys.  Read. Chat with a teacher.

2:00pm- Go attempt to find PACT students.  Find 3.  Send them to round up the rest.  They come back 5.  Send them out again, they come back 8.  Decide that’s enough.

2:25- PACT club!  Have interesting discussion about teenage pregnancy.

3:15- Stick around to hang out with kids and have them color your PACT club sign.

3:45 – Walk home.  Try not to pass out from heat.  Greet every single child you see.  Don’t get angry when a few ask for money.

4:00pm- Change clothes.  Dump bucket of water on head.  Sit in front of fan for foreseeable future.  Drink copious amounts of water and crystal light.

6:00pm- Cook on shiny new stove.

6:15pm- Wash dishes in buckets on porch.  Fill bath bucket.  Doom several cockroaches in bathroom.

6:30pm- Bucket bath.  Settle in room with fan and watch a movie on computer.

8:55pm – Gaze at gorgeous full moon from porch.

9:00pm- Get into makeshift bed, tucking mosquito net 360 around bed so there are no unexpected visitors in the night.

The conversation I have in my head at least once a day:

Emotions: This is really frustrating.

Brain: What is frustrating?

E: Trying to get ANYTHING done.

B: Well, you are still learning the system.

E: Their system sucks.

B: Come on, just cause it’s not how we do it in America doesn’t mean it’s bad.

E: But I feel like less gets done in their system, and it takes way longer.

B: Well no system is perfect.  And this is a developing country.  If they had all their crap together, Peace Corps wouldn’t be here.

E: I guess.  I just feel like the things that are lacking prevent me from doing much.

B: Like what?

E: Well the ministry of Education (MOE) wants us to do lifeskills.  That’s kind of hard when there aren’t enough teachers and the kids are hungry.

B: All school systems, probably in the entire world, need more teachers.  Ask your friends in the states, I’m almost positive they’d say the same thing- lack of teachers and lack of resources.

E: This is different.  This is entire classes being left with no teacher for multiple terms, and then yelled at for failing their classes.

B: Ok.  How can you fix that?

E: Um, I can’t.  Even if I were to just randomly start teaching a few classes, which technically I’m not supposed to do, there would still be lots of classes without teachers.  And I don’t think the kids would understand me anyway,

B: Ok.  So you aren’t going to be able to fix everything.  You aren’t superwoman.  That’s probably the first step to lessening your frustrations.

E: I’m not trying to be superwoman, I just want to actually have something work!

B: What about your PACT clubs?

E: What about them?  It’s taken more than a month just to try and start them, and I still don’t know if I have teachers on board.

B: Kids show up to the one at Lempu.

E: Yeah but the teachers don’t.

B: I didn’t say it’s perfect, but it’s something.

E: But the point of my being here is to build teacher capacity.  Running the club on my own won’t do that.

B: You are here for many reasons, one of which is capacity building.  That’s not limited to teachers; I’d say it also counts with students.

E: So I should just focus on the students and do everything myself?  That’s not sustainable.

B: I didn’t say stop trying with the teachers, I just said don’t discount the impact you are having on the students, even if it doesn’t seem like much.  Building lifeskills in students is really long-term sustainability.

E: Ok.  I’d really like to actually work with teachers though.  And that is my frustration with the lack of resources.  They seem to actually want to help, but are often too busy and overwhelmed.

B: Well, getting things off the ground often takes more work than sustaining them.  If you get the clubs going, trying to draw them in as much as possible, they may feel less overwhelmed at the idea of keeping them going with you.

E: Yeah, but they are still really busy.

B: Remember getting in arguments with you parents in high school about homework and stuff?  Was the issue really being too busy, or priorities?

E: Usually priorities.  So I’m supposed to have them prioritize clubs over classes? That’s whack.

B: No, I don’t think they have to make that decision.  You just have to help them understand the importance of the clubs, that even though there are no examinations involved, that they still really help the students. If you can get the teachers to prioritize some of these activities, they will make time for them.  They’ll figure out how to work it in their schedule.

E: That’s easier said than done.

B: That’s probably a good description of Peace Corps in a nutshell.  Besides, the hardest part is done- they care.  Making someone care is infinitely harder than getting them to work on something they already care about.

E: Yeah.  What about my hungry students?

B: Feed them?

E: With what? I can’t pull paleche out of thin air.

B: Doesn’t your school have a garden?

E: In theory.

B: I think your friend already pointed out, theoretical tomatoes are much less useful than real ones.

E: :P

B: Look into the garden- if 200 students are planting vegetables, that should help with the food problem.  Be creative.

E: Arg.

B: Now what?

E: It’s just… I worry that anything I do is going to turn out wrong.  I feel like there is a real culture of dependence here, and I don’t know what to do with it.

B: There is a culture of dependence.  It’s the result of centuries of colonialism and lots of other things. 

E: It’s annoying.

B: It’s worse than annoying, but do you really think your 2 years in your village will erase hundreds of years of dependent thinking?

E: Of course not.

B: Good, we’re back to figuring out what you can and can’t change.

E: Jerk.

B: Dweeb.

E: My issue is not to fix it, my issue is to not contribute to it!

B: How do you think you will be contributing to it?

E: Starting clubs, or anything by myself. Giving anything to people, even my friends.  Sharing ideas.

B: But even if that happens a little bit, think of the programs you are providing them with.  Lifeskills.  Some of the ideas in which are critical thinking, taking control of your life, and making good decisions.

E: Yeah, but I’ve already had people say things implying they can’t do this type of thing on their own, and that’s not true.  I’m not smarter than they are.

B: You aren’t smarter than them, but you are more empowered.

E: Stop throwing around development buzzwords, it’s annoying.

B: But I think it’s true.  You believe you can do these things and that they can too.  They don’t believe that yet.  That’s where you can come in.

E: And how do I do that?

B: A lot of what you are already trying to do-  Pushing people to work with you. Later on in your service, having them run more and more stuff until you can step away. 

E: -sigh-

B: It’s not something you can really put on your to-do list for the day.  That’s where the relationship building comes in.

E: And that’s the hardest part.

B: Always.  Try inviting some teachers over for dinner on the weekend, or actually using your soccer ball for once.  Talk with people instead of taking pictures of goats all the time :P

E: Fine, fine.  I’ll start when it’s not 500 degrees outside.

B: -facepalm-

Edit: I should give credit to my best friend Babs for supplying most of my brain's side of this conversation, via a conversation she and I had a few days ago.  ^_^

Second week, same as the first, a little bit louder and a little bit...

better, actually!

It was another busy week, but things are running more smoothly at school.  We apparently have food and firewood, because meals seemed to happen and no one was sent home early.

I got to sit in on several guidance and counseling classes, and then taught 4 of them at the end of the week!  The regular teacher left for 2 days to take care of a sick family member so I covered the remaining classes.  It was kinda fun, a little scary… but since they were mostly form 3s, they seemed to at least understand me for the most part.  The coolest thing was I had them submit questions on anything at the end of class, and I got some really really good questions.  They were very honest, and some of the questions almost made me cry.  Questions about sex, abuse, alcohol, where to get help, suicide, stress, why they don’t have enough teachers.   I have 6 pages of questions to answer and that was only 3 of 18 classes J

I was also able to have PACT club this week, yay!  10 kids showed up, and several had been in PACT before.  This was good because I let them take charge since the teacher helping me was a no-show.  They told me topics they were interested in and planned to talk at the next morning assembly.  Awesome to see kids taking the initiative!

I also interviewed the village chief, police, and social worker during the week.  And made 3 trips to the primary school to meet with their guidance and counseling teacher to plan PACT club for that school.  And finished typing up my community assessment for Peace Corps, which is now the length of a term paper :P

Tomorrow I leave for 2 weeks of Peace Corps training in the capital.  Looking forward to a BED, and a SHOWER, and not cooking for 2 weeks, wooo!  And probably useless training and more language classes J  It’s rained the past 4 days straight, so I was very glad the sun came out for a couple of hours this afternoon to dry my laundry.  It’ll be interesting to see what my dirt road is like tomorrow, and whether I can get out of my village…