Friday, October 14, 2011
Still in Pretoria
We are in Pretoria waiting for a new site. Peace Corps has some sites they are working on, so we are hopeful that something good will work out soon! Sorry for the lack of communication, but our (new) laptop is broken so we are again without a computer. Otherwise, things are good. We'll update as soon as we learn more.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
And We're Out
So it’s finally official, we are leaving the Eastern Cape. It’s a somewhat long story and we’ll fill you all in soon, but here’s the current situation. Matt has a meeting on Friday in Pretoria for a Peace Corps committee that he serves on. So he was going to have to leave tomorrow night anyway to arrive Friday morning. Today Peace Corps told us that we should pack up our things and both come to Pretoria tomorrow. We will each travel with one bag and on Tuesday Matt will return with a Peace Corps driver to quickly pick up the rest of our belongings. After weeks of uncertainty and waiting, it’s been a very surreal day. The awkward part is that our NGO still has no idea that we are leaving. They have known for a few weeks that it’s been a possibility, but Peace Corps is not notifying them until Tuesday (as you can imagine this piece of news doesn’t always go over well, but fortunately our organization is too apathetic to care!).
So for the foreseeable future we will be Pretoria residents. It’ll be nice for the first few days but we are anxious to get started at a new site as soon as possible. We will let you know more later, but back to packing now.
So for the foreseeable future we will be Pretoria residents. It’ll be nice for the first few days but we are anxious to get started at a new site as soon as possible. We will let you know more later, but back to packing now.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Quick Update
The water is not getting turned back on. We're still in Pretoria but taking the overnight bus back to site today. Peace Corps is giving our org 3 weeks to find us alternative housing. If that doesn't happen (which is very possible), we'll be moved to another site. We don't know where we might go, but it won't be in the Eastern Cape.
We're fairly disappointed and sad, but, as this point, we just want to know what is going to happen and move on. We're fairly anxious about going back to site. It's going to be hard teaching, working on projects, playing with the kids, etc. when we know there's a high likelihood of leaving in a few weeks.
Anyway, please hold off from sending any mail/packages for now. We'll keep you all informed.
We're fairly disappointed and sad, but, as this point, we just want to know what is going to happen and move on. We're fairly anxious about going back to site. It's going to be hard teaching, working on projects, playing with the kids, etc. when we know there's a high likelihood of leaving in a few weeks.
Anyway, please hold off from sending any mail/packages for now. We'll keep you all informed.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Nothing Works
Our water doesn't work. Our fridge doesn't work. Matt's ipod, watch and sunglasses aren't working. And our laptop is making crazy noises. At least it's warm.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Water...ugh
Quick post to let you guys know that our water was turned off by the govt. Even though we have been paying what we owe, they shut it off due to the huge past bill from the owner. We spent the weekend in East London, and we just need to make it thru the week b/c we have a training in Pretoria (yes, again) next week. The problem is we don't have an outhouse or taps in our village, so our house isn't really livable. Our supervisor is going to try to take care of it this week, but it would take a miracle for it to be turned on w/o a significant payment. We have no idea what is going to happen, but we'll post more when we find out anything.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Cannot Believe We've Been Here 7 Months
Week 2 of teaching is in the books (we only teach Monday, Tuesday and Thursday) and we can say that things are still going well. The challenge we still face is that we haven’t yet worked out a schedule with the man who teaches 5th and 6th grades (combined classes). Our tentative plan with the principal is that we’ll teach for an hour or so on each of the three days. This week, however, we taught for two and a half hours on
Wow, 7 months. Sometimes it feels like forever, but usually we just wonder where the last 7 months have gone.
Monday and Thursday and on Tuesday we taught the 4th grade all day. So at least for this week we became more like substitute teachers. But we are more than happy to do it because the kids love us and it’s very rewarding.
On Monday we took a short break between subjects to field any questions the kids may have about America. Two highlights were whether there is Vaseline and carrots in America?
Word of our teaching has spread very quickly. Actually, word of pretty much anything we do spreads quickly. But with respect to our teaching, we’ve been approached by children from two other primary schools and one high school student to come teach at their schools. So it looks like our fan club is slowly building unbeknownst to us.
When we haven’t been teaching this week we’ve been at our NGO and things are also going well there. We are still in the process of starting an afterschool drop-in center for orphans and other vulnerable children. We have been “in the process” for some time but there is definitely movement and we should know in the next couple weeks when we will actually be able to open the doors, so to speak.
We will post again when we have more to say. And on a side note, it’s very difficult to make these posts humorous when life is going well, so I guess as readers you should be rooting for something bad to happen. Maybe a drunk lady will kiss us this weekend. Fingers crossed!
Wow, 7 months. Sometimes it feels like forever, but usually we just wonder where the last 7 months have gone.
Monday and Thursday and on Tuesday we taught the 4th grade all day. So at least for this week we became more like substitute teachers. But we are more than happy to do it because the kids love us and it’s very rewarding.
On Monday we took a short break between subjects to field any questions the kids may have about America. Two highlights were whether there is Vaseline and carrots in America?
Word of our teaching has spread very quickly. Actually, word of pretty much anything we do spreads quickly. But with respect to our teaching, we’ve been approached by children from two other primary schools and one high school student to come teach at their schools. So it looks like our fan club is slowly building unbeknownst to us.
When we haven’t been teaching this week we’ve been at our NGO and things are also going well there. We are still in the process of starting an afterschool drop-in center for orphans and other vulnerable children. We have been “in the process” for some time but there is definitely movement and we should know in the next couple weeks when we will actually be able to open the doors, so to speak.
We will post again when we have more to say. And on a side note, it’s very difficult to make these posts humorous when life is going well, so I guess as readers you should be rooting for something bad to happen. Maybe a drunk lady will kiss us this weekend. Fingers crossed!
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Things Are Good
Wow, we’ve been waiting a long time to be able to write those words. As most of you know, between being frustrated by not having much to do and having water drip on our heads while we try to sleep, our first few months here at site have been fairly challenging. This week, however, was actually great.
First of all, we’re now teachers. Or at least trying to be teachers. We visited the primary school in our village a couple of weeks ago, and the principal was very enthusiastic about having us help. We taught two Life Orientation (sort of health+life skills) classes this week, as well as a short math lesson. On our first day, we asked the 17 5th-6th graders which of them knew where we lived. All 17 of the students raised their hands, which made us laugh. The hope is that we’ll go to the school for a couple of hours three days a week. It’s definitely not going to be easy, and a number of the kids struggle with English. It is a national requirement, however, that classes past grade 3 be taught in English, and it is extremely unlikely that the kids will be able to pass high school (the Matric exam, which is an exam needed to pass high school, is in English) if they don’t learn the language, so hopefully our presence will be beneficial. Plus, the kids seem very excited to have us there, at least until our novelty wears off.
Secondly, our NGO co-hosted a community Women’s Day event this week, which was really fun. The majority of the people in attendance were kids from area schools. We watched kids play soccer and played with a number of kids from the school where we are teaching. There were performances by school choir groups, traditional dancers, gospel singers and way too many speakers. A man we are friendly with emceed the event and embarrassed us by making us stand up in front of everyone. We talked to tons of people and actually felt like part of the community for the first time.
Also, as we may have previously mentioned, the man who emceed the event works with Sports and Recreation and wants us to help develop a softball program for kids. He actually invited some members of the Eastern Cape Softball Association (or something like that) to the event. Our friend may have touted Matt as some softball expert, which of course meant the 20 year-old female softball player (who previously played on the under-19 national team) wanted to pitch to Matt. It was too late for Matt to explain that he played co-ed D-league slow pitch softball in Santa Monica. So Matt, wearing jeans stuffed with keys, wallet and cell phone, had to dig in against this South African softball whiz. The first pitch was inside and almost hit Matt in the kneecaps. When Matt swung at the next pitch it was the most pathetic imitation of softball, or athletics in general, these kids had ever seen. Matt was determined to make contact with the next pitch no matter what. And Matt certainly made solid contact, as he fouled the pitch off to the right …. directly into a boy’s forehead (luckily it bounced once). Fortunately, the boy is fine, though he may not be interested in softball anytime soon. The next day, our friend the emcee with a good sense of humor, told Matt that he had been fielding questions all morning from the police because the boy’s mother was angry. He said he was kidding, but only after Matt’s complexion turned ghostly white.
The good news, however, is that the kids showed a lot of interest in softball, and we’re thinking about buying a wiffle bat and ball to start playing with the kids in our village. And we will definitely be playing SLOW-pitch softball.
Finally, the other piece of news that has made our week good is that our NGO has funds again (after a huge delay from the gov’t), and our coworkers want to have a meeting on Monday to discuss putting a number of OVC (orphans and vulnerable children) program back in place (yay!). We are hoping to reinstate an afterschool drop-in center at the organization. Basically, kids would have a safe place to come for a couple of hours after school to do homework, play games and have a small meal/snack. Our NGO had such a program about a year ago, but the Department of Social Development (our primary funder) had them stop it for a number of reasons that we’ve never really been able to get to the bottom of. We are hoping to develop a proposal that will convince DSD of the value of the program and start having kids come next month. Fingers crossed.
Anyway, we realize that there will continue to be ups and downs, but we are more hopeful than we have been in a looong time about everything working out at our site. Plus, it was warm enough to sleep without our sleeping bags two days this week. That also helped morale.
First of all, we’re now teachers. Or at least trying to be teachers. We visited the primary school in our village a couple of weeks ago, and the principal was very enthusiastic about having us help. We taught two Life Orientation (sort of health+life skills) classes this week, as well as a short math lesson. On our first day, we asked the 17 5th-6th graders which of them knew where we lived. All 17 of the students raised their hands, which made us laugh. The hope is that we’ll go to the school for a couple of hours three days a week. It’s definitely not going to be easy, and a number of the kids struggle with English. It is a national requirement, however, that classes past grade 3 be taught in English, and it is extremely unlikely that the kids will be able to pass high school (the Matric exam, which is an exam needed to pass high school, is in English) if they don’t learn the language, so hopefully our presence will be beneficial. Plus, the kids seem very excited to have us there, at least until our novelty wears off.
Secondly, our NGO co-hosted a community Women’s Day event this week, which was really fun. The majority of the people in attendance were kids from area schools. We watched kids play soccer and played with a number of kids from the school where we are teaching. There were performances by school choir groups, traditional dancers, gospel singers and way too many speakers. A man we are friendly with emceed the event and embarrassed us by making us stand up in front of everyone. We talked to tons of people and actually felt like part of the community for the first time.
Also, as we may have previously mentioned, the man who emceed the event works with Sports and Recreation and wants us to help develop a softball program for kids. He actually invited some members of the Eastern Cape Softball Association (or something like that) to the event. Our friend may have touted Matt as some softball expert, which of course meant the 20 year-old female softball player (who previously played on the under-19 national team) wanted to pitch to Matt. It was too late for Matt to explain that he played co-ed D-league slow pitch softball in Santa Monica. So Matt, wearing jeans stuffed with keys, wallet and cell phone, had to dig in against this South African softball whiz. The first pitch was inside and almost hit Matt in the kneecaps. When Matt swung at the next pitch it was the most pathetic imitation of softball, or athletics in general, these kids had ever seen. Matt was determined to make contact with the next pitch no matter what. And Matt certainly made solid contact, as he fouled the pitch off to the right …. directly into a boy’s forehead (luckily it bounced once). Fortunately, the boy is fine, though he may not be interested in softball anytime soon. The next day, our friend the emcee with a good sense of humor, told Matt that he had been fielding questions all morning from the police because the boy’s mother was angry. He said he was kidding, but only after Matt’s complexion turned ghostly white.
The good news, however, is that the kids showed a lot of interest in softball, and we’re thinking about buying a wiffle bat and ball to start playing with the kids in our village. And we will definitely be playing SLOW-pitch softball.
Finally, the other piece of news that has made our week good is that our NGO has funds again (after a huge delay from the gov’t), and our coworkers want to have a meeting on Monday to discuss putting a number of OVC (orphans and vulnerable children) program back in place (yay!). We are hoping to reinstate an afterschool drop-in center at the organization. Basically, kids would have a safe place to come for a couple of hours after school to do homework, play games and have a small meal/snack. Our NGO had such a program about a year ago, but the Department of Social Development (our primary funder) had them stop it for a number of reasons that we’ve never really been able to get to the bottom of. We are hoping to develop a proposal that will convince DSD of the value of the program and start having kids come next month. Fingers crossed.
Anyway, we realize that there will continue to be ups and downs, but we are more hopeful than we have been in a looong time about everything working out at our site. Plus, it was warm enough to sleep without our sleeping bags two days this week. That also helped morale.
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