When I attended Victor Central Schools, most parents assumed that their kids were going to graduate; with a graduation rate of 86%, why wouldn't you? Well, in case you haven't realized yet, Victor's schools are far superior to the ones I am currently working in. Only 77% of South Africa as a whole complete the 6th grade and 58% of the students entering 12th grade in my province actually graduate.
In 6th and 3rd grade the students have to take national exams and they ended on Thursday so assuming they pass there's nothing left to do this year. December 6th is the official end of the school year but there hasn't been all that much productive going on since about November 6th. Since graduating 6th grade and moving on to 7th grade is likely to be the last time a child will graduate it is a much bigger deal here. They have a graduation/award ceremony at the school and then a school-sponsored brai for the graduates.
Yesterday my school canceled classes in order to allow all of the educators and principal to go to the brai event. I guess it is sort of understandable since they are usually so understaffed but this is still something that shouldn't be happening; apparently the education of the R-5 doesn't matter.
When we graduated 6th grade, the teachers said, "it was nice having you this year, good luck in Junior High, and enjoy your summer". Maybe my family had a beginning of summer barbecue at my house to celebrate the beginning of vacation, but nothing else. I'm not disappointed, it just wasn't that big of a deal for me.
Transport to and from school events usually was provided by a big, boxy, yellow bus; not in South Africa. Since all students are within walking distance of the schools there is not need for regular transportation so they rented some khumvies. Khumvies are shared taxis that run on specific routes and drop you of near your destination--I have to walk about a half mile from where I get off the khumvi to where I live--they are usually overcrowded and people are getting on and off along the way. Khumvies are 15-passenger vans that are usually rusty and look/sound like they're about to fall apart. These khumvies were extremely nice both inside and out.
One of the educators told me to pick a khumvi and get in since we would be leaving soon. So I got in the nicest looking one. I soon found out that the reason they asked me to get in a khumvi is because they didn't want to! I climbed into the passenger side seat and the 13 children were in the back screaming, shouting and whistling at this really high pitched tone that was piercing my eardrums so I decided to see what was playing on the stereo. There were more speakers than seats in the vehicle so when I turned it up it was blasting clubbing music. The khumvi erupted into a dance party that caused it to bounce up and down; this continued all the way until we got to the grocery store then we opened the doors and the party moved to the parking lot.
The students went in and got bought a ton of sugary drinks and snacks and then we were on our way again. After about 10 minutes of relative calm--the music was still shaking my body to the core--while they ate, they began dancing again; I felt like I was in a low rider with hydraulics bouncing me up and down.
After waiting at the gates of the recreation center for a half hour we finally got through the gates at about 10 am.and then the students rushed to the pool for about 5 hours of swimming before the brai was ready. The male teachers went over to the brai pit to start the fire for cooking the meat; less than three minutes into the process the senior teacher had already popped open a beer and began drinking. Other volunteers told us about this in our training but I thought to myself, "no, my educators wouldn't do this"; I obviously overestimated them. They finished cooking the meat by 11:30 so flies had a full 2.5 hours to crawl all over it before the food was to be served. At about 12:30 they called the students over and fed them bologna sandwiches to fill them up before serving the meat at 2:00.
I was showing one female educator who is about my age what an American $5 bill looked like and then she chose to pocket the money. Then some of the other educators started ragging on me and saying "oh you're married now because you gave her labola (a gift, usually money or cattle , to the father of the bride from the groom's family)". Even my principal chimed in with, "oh you do make a cute couple". I voiced my concern to the Head of Department with the behavior of the entire faculty including her and she gave me the usual lip service and she said "no, this shouldn't be happening, it's inappropriate" then resumed laughing at the whole situation. This type of behavior was extremely unprofessional, especially coming from a principal. If this were in the U.S. there would have been considered harassment and probably have resulted in a law suit in which several people lost their jobs; however, this isn't America. Since the situation wasn't dissolving I just said told the educator that I wasn't going to renovate her classroom as part of my project. My money was quickly returned.
At about 5pm they started gathering the children up so that we could board the khumvies. The educators had bagged up some suckers, chips, and fruit as another present for the students. They were eating these while drinking cold drink (soda/pop) from styrofoam cups; I watched as one by one they dropped wrapper after wrapper, cup after cup and bag after bag on the ground. I am not terrible shocked but the fact that they do it so casually is sickening. I walked around and told them to pick it up and surprisingly they complied even when I told them to pick up garbage that didn't belong to them. I addressed the issue too late so I had to pick up the remainder of the trash up after the kids had gotten on the khumvies just so I could clear my conscience.
The senior educator who had started drinking early was hammered at this point and he was the one that drove. I told him that I think he shouldn't drive because he was obviously unfit. Culturally it might not have been my place to tell him such a thing but I said the same thing to a guy who had an opened bottle between his legs at 10 am when he gave me a ride to the bus stop. The next time I saw the guy he was waiting for the bus stop because he and his car were arrested because he was caught driving drunk.
I climbed back into the khumvi to the same loud music with a little less bouncing because the students had gotten a little tired from the day. We were cruising along and I thought we were going to get home without interruption. The driver got a call, we didn't take pictures, so we pulled into the same grocery store parking lot and the kids again poured out and started dancing again. Since students rarely get a chance to have someone to take their picture--they call it "shooting" so when I walk around with my camera they are always yelling "shoot me! shoot me!"--this was very important. So important that all 53 of them had to have their picture taken alone, alone with a special pose, and then with a friend. After another 45 minutes and a group picture we boarded the khumvies again.
I am not sure if it is genetic, learned, or contagious, but it seems that all rural South Africans like to dance. It was rush hour on the way back so we got stuck at a 4-way stop and slowly crawled to the intersection. The whole way people stopped what they were doing, whether it was selling fruit, carrying groceries, or just walking home they came out in the street and started dancing. It was kind of crazy how much of an impact music has on them.
Finally we arrived back at the school, half deaf with my whole body aching from the constant vibration caused by the music. All the kids were standing around talking and dancing again and they had thrown their trash everywhere. The khumvi drivers also threw all of the trash out the door that the students left on there; although it was littering, it made sense since they made a mess of his khumvi so he returned the favor by making a mess of their yard. I had a bunch of the students clean most of it up but then they stopped listening to me. One of the other educators who I think they all feared shouted at them and they promptly cleaned the rest of it up.
On the walk home I saw a boy with his pants down just peeing on the school yard. I asked the boy "Would you pee in your front yard? How would you like it if someone else came to your house and peed in your yard?". He had an ashamed look on his face and I walked away. I had a similar conversation with a girl who finished eating something and dropped the wrappers on the ground.
Mentally defeated, physically sore, and with an ear ache I walked home. I sat down frustrated by what seems to be a lack of knowledge of basic appropriate conduct on the parts of both the students and educators. Changing something that appears to me as a problem that others don't see as a problem is going to be challenging. If they don't see it as a problem then why would they want to change it?
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
No Plans?!
My principal and I met with the planning board the Thursday before last to see about the future of the building that was in terrible condition that needs to be renovated in order to assign the educators to the classrooms. I found out that despite the condition of the building it was not scheduled to be worked on until 2012ish (They are still working on projects that are dated for 2005). They informed me that they do not have any drawings for the school since it was built during Apartheid by the Ndebele Government; this is understandable. Usually they would hire a consulting firm to come in and do the drawings but there is no funding for it and it would be best to do it myself; what?! They suggested that we set up a meeting with them and the Circuit Manager who is in charge of all of the schools in my area. We immediately went over to the circuit office to schedule a meeting and the manager wasn't in so we left a note with the administrative assistant to have him call us.
Since nobody in the Department of Education seems to like to follow up with anything, I asked my principal to call and follow up with him if she hadn't heard from him by Monday afternoon. I asked her about it on Monday to see if anything was set up; not surprisingly she hadn't followed up with him. She called and the result of the conversation was that we should call a week from Tuesday to set up an appointment since exams would be over by then. I voiced my concern with her-in private and calmly-about the absurdity of that request. She seemed like she was intent on heeding to the request so I resigned myself to the fact that it wasn't going to happen like I wished/thought it should.
I spent the rest of Monday through Wednesday following up with the principals about the parks project I'm working on. Not surprisingly, they hadn't gotten anything done either. By Wednesday night the idea that I had to wait until Tuesday to even SCHEDULE a meeting had me at my wits end. I decided that I doubted the circuit manager was completely unavailable so I decided to call him myself the next morning.
At 8:00 am on Thursday I called the circuit manager on his cell phone and he said he was tied up most of the day with exams but he would meet with me at 4:30. I knew he would have time to talk to me and I have a feeling that the principal never talked to him directly. Lesson learned: if you don't give someone the message yourself then it probably won't get to them and if it does, the message will be misinterpreted. I was extremely relieved because I felt like I could claim I accomplished something last week.
I went over to my school and took pictures of the horrible state of the buildings so I could show them to the circuit manager. I talked to each of the educators to collect any additional concerns to further my case. Since my principal wasn't there I couldn't communicate this to her to prevent her from feeling like I went behind her back again.
After 6.5 hours of painstaking waiting I finally went over for the meeting. Since we share the same last name (My South African name is Jabulani Skosana) I walked into his office and greeted him with "Skosana!" to which he replied the same way. After some small talk we started talking about what I wanted. I described the condition of my school while showing the pictures I took to him on my camera; as I had hoped, his jaw dropped!
Unfortunately, his wife called because she locked the steering wheel by turning it before putting the keys into the ignition. After 20 minutes of back and forth calls and then spending 10 minutes locating someone who he could send to help her we resumed our conversation.
I showed him the document that explained why educators should be assigned to their own classrooms and the schedule that I had arranged that would allow it to work and he was impressed. Then he showed me a document that confirmed my school would not be serviced anytime soon and informed me that there weren't any drawings of any of the schools properties or buildings in the office. This left me greatly disappointed and not very surprised. The more that I think of it, the more I suspect that some people just aren't doing their job.
I do have an old to-scale drawing that I'm going to use as a reference for the property size and am going to do the rest from scratch. Hopefully the Planning Office will let me use their computers to draw the buildings in AutoCAD. Even better, I am going to see if they'll buy me a copy of the program that I can use on my computer and give them any drawings I do related to the project.
In the meantime, I have begun doing surveying of Mnyamana's property and buildings with the intention of creating the drawings myself and finding private funding for the renovation. Fortunately the buildings are very basic so my degree in architectural engineering and minimal experience with building construction have provided me with enough expertise to do it. I am actually very excited that this is going to be more challenging because I will get to use more of what I learned and it will give me an opportunity to teach the learners about doing construction projects before moving on to the much larger parks project.
Since nobody in the Department of Education seems to like to follow up with anything, I asked my principal to call and follow up with him if she hadn't heard from him by Monday afternoon. I asked her about it on Monday to see if anything was set up; not surprisingly she hadn't followed up with him. She called and the result of the conversation was that we should call a week from Tuesday to set up an appointment since exams would be over by then. I voiced my concern with her-in private and calmly-about the absurdity of that request. She seemed like she was intent on heeding to the request so I resigned myself to the fact that it wasn't going to happen like I wished/thought it should.
I spent the rest of Monday through Wednesday following up with the principals about the parks project I'm working on. Not surprisingly, they hadn't gotten anything done either. By Wednesday night the idea that I had to wait until Tuesday to even SCHEDULE a meeting had me at my wits end. I decided that I doubted the circuit manager was completely unavailable so I decided to call him myself the next morning.
At 8:00 am on Thursday I called the circuit manager on his cell phone and he said he was tied up most of the day with exams but he would meet with me at 4:30. I knew he would have time to talk to me and I have a feeling that the principal never talked to him directly. Lesson learned: if you don't give someone the message yourself then it probably won't get to them and if it does, the message will be misinterpreted. I was extremely relieved because I felt like I could claim I accomplished something last week.
I went over to my school and took pictures of the horrible state of the buildings so I could show them to the circuit manager. I talked to each of the educators to collect any additional concerns to further my case. Since my principal wasn't there I couldn't communicate this to her to prevent her from feeling like I went behind her back again.
After 6.5 hours of painstaking waiting I finally went over for the meeting. Since we share the same last name (My South African name is Jabulani Skosana) I walked into his office and greeted him with "Skosana!" to which he replied the same way. After some small talk we started talking about what I wanted. I described the condition of my school while showing the pictures I took to him on my camera; as I had hoped, his jaw dropped!
Unfortunately, his wife called because she locked the steering wheel by turning it before putting the keys into the ignition. After 20 minutes of back and forth calls and then spending 10 minutes locating someone who he could send to help her we resumed our conversation.
I showed him the document that explained why educators should be assigned to their own classrooms and the schedule that I had arranged that would allow it to work and he was impressed. Then he showed me a document that confirmed my school would not be serviced anytime soon and informed me that there weren't any drawings of any of the schools properties or buildings in the office. This left me greatly disappointed and not very surprised. The more that I think of it, the more I suspect that some people just aren't doing their job.
I do have an old to-scale drawing that I'm going to use as a reference for the property size and am going to do the rest from scratch. Hopefully the Planning Office will let me use their computers to draw the buildings in AutoCAD. Even better, I am going to see if they'll buy me a copy of the program that I can use on my computer and give them any drawings I do related to the project.
In the meantime, I have begun doing surveying of Mnyamana's property and buildings with the intention of creating the drawings myself and finding private funding for the renovation. Fortunately the buildings are very basic so my degree in architectural engineering and minimal experience with building construction have provided me with enough expertise to do it. I am actually very excited that this is going to be more challenging because I will get to use more of what I learned and it will give me an opportunity to teach the learners about doing construction projects before moving on to the much larger parks project.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
The U.S. Elections
This election season I gained a sense of how detached from the rest of the world some parts of Africa are. I have been able to vote in only 2 presidential elections in my life and I was in developing countries during both.
During the 2004 elections I was studying abroad at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. Everywhere I went I found stickers that said "Gelme Bush" (don't come Bush). They didn't particularly like him then and they didn't want him to come to the NATO Summit that was held there in June of that year. Everywhere I went, as soon as someone pegged me as American, the first thing they said was "Bush or Kerry?".
During this election season I found myself abroad again only in a different country on a different continent. Unless I was in a government office or at a school I would rarely hear anyone ask me who I was voting for. The piece of news that was being broadcast on every major news outlet worldwide and the people seemed totally oblivious or indifferent on the subject. At first this seemed odd but the more I thought about it it makes perfect sense.
Most people here don't have anything above local programming, not everyone watches the news, and very very few people read the newspaper; so how would they even find out about what is going on? They don't get the news, their friends don't get the news; if they don't talk to anyone else, where are they going to get this information? The biggest concern in most households is, whether or not they are going to be able to feed their family this week. Why would they think about whether or not the person elected in a foreign country has a sound economic plan or foreign policy?
The difference is a lack of information about events outside the immediate area. In 2004 I was in a highly resourced university full of highly-educated professors and students with aspirations to become doctors, engineers, and educators. This year I am in a poorly resourced rural village where an overwhelming portion of the adult population did not graduate from high school and kids are more concerned with what happened on "Generations" than they are in how world events impact their lives.
Today I found out that Barack Obama was officially the president-elect at 11:30 EST (6:30 am South Africa time) via a CNN Breaking News e-mail. Thanks to the internet I knew at about the same time as the rest of America. A large portion of South Africa lacks access to the internet which I access through my cell phone. However, many people here have phones with internet access which they appear to use mostly for downloading music, videos, and ring tones; How many of them were using it to find out the results of the most significant election of this century? I would wager not too many.
I was asked if I was happy at the results of the election today only by my parents, principal, a Department of Education executive, and a few teachers. But really, other than whether or not I am happy with the outcome of the election, how many people in my village really care who won?
During the 2004 elections I was studying abroad at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. Everywhere I went I found stickers that said "Gelme Bush" (don't come Bush). They didn't particularly like him then and they didn't want him to come to the NATO Summit that was held there in June of that year. Everywhere I went, as soon as someone pegged me as American, the first thing they said was "Bush or Kerry?".
During this election season I found myself abroad again only in a different country on a different continent. Unless I was in a government office or at a school I would rarely hear anyone ask me who I was voting for. The piece of news that was being broadcast on every major news outlet worldwide and the people seemed totally oblivious or indifferent on the subject. At first this seemed odd but the more I thought about it it makes perfect sense.
Most people here don't have anything above local programming, not everyone watches the news, and very very few people read the newspaper; so how would they even find out about what is going on? They don't get the news, their friends don't get the news; if they don't talk to anyone else, where are they going to get this information? The biggest concern in most households is, whether or not they are going to be able to feed their family this week. Why would they think about whether or not the person elected in a foreign country has a sound economic plan or foreign policy?
The difference is a lack of information about events outside the immediate area. In 2004 I was in a highly resourced university full of highly-educated professors and students with aspirations to become doctors, engineers, and educators. This year I am in a poorly resourced rural village where an overwhelming portion of the adult population did not graduate from high school and kids are more concerned with what happened on "Generations" than they are in how world events impact their lives.
Today I found out that Barack Obama was officially the president-elect at 11:30 EST (6:30 am South Africa time) via a CNN Breaking News e-mail. Thanks to the internet I knew at about the same time as the rest of America. A large portion of South Africa lacks access to the internet which I access through my cell phone. However, many people here have phones with internet access which they appear to use mostly for downloading music, videos, and ring tones; How many of them were using it to find out the results of the most significant election of this century? I would wager not too many.
I was asked if I was happy at the results of the election today only by my parents, principal, a Department of Education executive, and a few teachers. But really, other than whether or not I am happy with the outcome of the election, how many people in my village really care who won?
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