Goals 1-3 (and 4)

Peace Corps Officially has 3 goals.

1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

The one that everyone thinks about when they hear 'Peace Corps Volunteer' is goal one. This is the development work- clubs, projects, etc. So far in this category I officially have a few teacher workshops, and some quasi-functional clubs. Unofficially I have kids playing in my yard and lots of random conversations with kids, teachers, and the occasional community member. This often falls under goal 2 as well.

For goal 2, I've explained everything from food, dating customs (please at least ask me my name before you propose. Seriously. Arg.), education, sports, weather (our school bell sounds like a tornado siren and made me jump the first month or so I was here), family, college, transportation, pets, politics, healthcare, you name it.

Part of the reason I'm keeping up this blog is goal 3. I also hope to talk to a lot of people and groups when I come back to the USA. For the rest of my life, I'll probably be talking about Peace Corps and my time in Botswana. That's why when you go back home, you are a returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV), not a former PCV. Once you join, you'll always be a PCV in one way or another :)

Unofficially, there's also what volunteers like to call goal 4. That's the things we hope to accomplish on a personal level during our service. While you shouldn't join PC only for personal development, it's good to acknowledge that PC service will change you as a person. As our director said once, the volunteers that do the best tend to have joined for a mix of personal reasons and to give back to others (paraphrasing, don't quote that).

So I thought I'd share some of my goal 4. Since my goal 1 is inching along and sometimes feels like its regressing, I've decided to focus more on goals 2-4 lately. This also comes from some soul searching last week when I realized I need to take charge of my own happiness more. I need to come up with my own ways to feel productive and give good effort to my projects and life, and not rely so much on outcomes right now.

Some of my 4th goals:
- Read 200 books during my service, 100 of which are classics. I'm almost at 60 right now, and around 15 of them have been classics.
- I want to learn to cook more things, especially vegetarian dishes. So far I've learned to cook a few more things- pancakes from scratch, morogo (the way they cook greens here), lentils a variety of ways, homemade tortillas.
- Writing. Keeping up this blog, some reminiscences, some creative writing ideas, some journaling. If I'm brave enough I might post some of that here. So far I've got the blog, a journal, and a few other things.
- Keep in touch with people at home. Facebook/E-mail/Letters for now.  If you write me I promise to write you back!  Safe to say my facebook addiction has survived Africa.
- Learn to play guitar. I bought one here and haven't touched it yet.
- Trivia- I'm trying to memorize the periodic table and all of the countries and world capitals. Maybe I'll be good on a trivia team for once when I get home! Yes I know I'm a geek.
- Get in shape. I brought some exercise bands with me and also haven't touched them.
- I'd like to learn some of the constellations. Once again, I have a small star chart I haven't touched.
- Finding different ways to be creative. Sometimes I've colored, or sketched, or watercolored. I've made friendship bracelets to give to kids, and I'm planning on making some collages for my walls. And I want to keep track of my digital pictures and caption them as I go along, so when I get home I'm not overwhelmed.

So these are some of the things I try to do in my current large amounts of free time. 4th goal for the win!   I also watch TV/movies sometimes and play too many computer games, but those aren't really goals :P
Anyone else have ideas of things for me to do?

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.

Delta pictures!

I finally got some decent internet and uploaded a bunch of pictures from the delta to my Shakawe post. Scroll down or click here to see them :)
http://travelinghokie.blogspot.com/2013/04/shakawe-marathon.html

Scenes from my porch

Usually when kids come over to my house, they either play with my soccer ball or color on my porch.  

So my porch often looks like this.  I like it when I have between two and four kids coloring.  Sometimes I'll try to talk with them or sketch as they color and jabber.  More than 5 is a little overwhelming.  Sometimes I've had my porch colonized by like 11 kids attempting to "share" 1 coloring book.  I don't know how to say in Setswana that sometimes the kids in my village have a mob mentality :P

But the other day about 6 girls showed up with long wool strings and played a fantastic jumping game. 

You can't hardly see the string/wool they are jumping over, but they jump and clip it with their feet and bring it down to a place they can get over it. So little kids can get over a 4 foot rope.

They almost always land on their feet, and they have amazing style and form while jumping.

The girls friends look like its no big deal that she's got a 2-foot aerial right there.

And sometimes I swear they can defy gravity. My village kids might actually be ninjas.

And this is KT, my neighbor's dog. He comes by when I'm cooking to get leftovers and scraps.  And I might have bought him dog food. I promise I'm not actually trying to kidnap my neighbors dog.  Just fatten him up a little bit. He's a sweetheart. 

So this also happens sometimes, even though I try to have a, 'no kids in the house and no dogs on the porch' rule =)

The Kings Foundation

Last Tuesday I had a guy from the Kings Foundation come to my village.  Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of Victor to post here, but he was great.  The Kings Foundation is a Christian UK charity that uses sports to reach and teach kids in the UK and multiple countries in Africa.  Although they are a christian organization, their main idea-  that kids are valuable and important-  is a universal idea, so they will partner with lots of non-religious organizations, including Peace Corps.  KF runs lots of camps in the UK and South Africa for kids using sports.  They then in turn use a lot of the money made at those camps to buy sports equipment to distribute to rural areas in Africa, and train people how to use it. http://www.kingsvolunteer.org/

Enter my village.  Victor came Tuesday and trained 6 teachers- 4 from my school and 2 from the primary school, 9 community police volunteers, and 6 other community members in how to engage kids, run games with and without sports equipment, and then gave us a whole bag of sports equipment for our village.

This is a ninja game, and the community police volunteers really got into it.

Passing the hula hoops down the line.

All ages love parachute games. 

I should have taken a picture of the base pack- that's what they call the packs they donate.  It's got a soccer ball, 4 tennis balls, jump ropes, cones, arm bands (so you know who is on your team), frisbees, 3 hula hoops (that can also be destructed into pieces for relays), bean bags, a parachute, and a first aid kit. It. is. AWESOME.  And even more awesome is that there are now 20 people in my village that have played with the equipment and know that it's at my house.  Here's hoping we can have some game days in the future!

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. 

Things that happened today

Text message at 7:16am. Grump grump.  It was important, but today's a holiday. And... I'm up.

Waited to leave my house until the dipapata lady set up shop in the field next to me.  Instant breakast.
Missed hanging out with a teacher at school in the library due to said laziness.  Bummer.

Lent out my soccer ball and coloring book to 2 kids.

Wrote for a bit.
Water colored for a bit.
Finger painted for a bit.
Hid from children during this time.

Had the following conversation via text message with Aileen:
M: I just did an abstract watercolor of peace corps and or ministry of education. Clearly I have too much free time.
A: I am assuming there's a lot of red and vague hints of teeth in this painting. And yeah, we have too much time.
M: No actually it looks more like a tragic circus.
A: Also accurate.

There's no point to this post except to say that sometimes my life is really random.