15 February 2006

15 February 2006

Greetings, everyone!
These past two weeks have brought more rain than I ever thought the ‘desert’ could get. We’re not quite in the desert, but close enough to expect sparse rainfall. Last week it rained from Sunday to Wednesday, pretty much around the clock. It was quite an impressive display. I don’t even know if I have seen it rain like that back in the US. I never thought I’d be so happy to see that burning African sun. It finally came back out on Thursday of last week, but we have had rain showers and thunder storms since then, which doesn’t allow the ground to dry. It makes it slightly miserable at times – we would get drenched going to and from school, and wouldn’t dry. The humidity was so bad that our shoes and towels wouldn’t dry, and pictures and maps on our walls wilted. When the sun wasn’t out, it was chilly. There were HUGE (and I mean big enough to swallow a donkey) puddles all over the ground – especially in the ruts of the dirt roads. It made quite an obstacle course of riding to and from school. It was so wet that one of our unfortunate neighbors had the back wall of their house collapse, and a few other entire houses in the village followed suit. Apparently it hasn’t rained like that in 18 years. Thankfully our village is relatively flat and didn’t experience any of the flash floods that plagued other parts of the country. We didn’t know if the rain would ever stop, but thankfully it has. With the recent sunlight, the plants have grown about a foot. At least it will be good for the village’s crops, as long as they didn’t drown.

We are preparing to give our first official workshop to our teachers, starting tomorrow. It is called ‘Effective Classroom Management’, but if we didn’t want to be so P.C. it would be called ‘Ways to Punish Your Students Without Having to Beat Them’. Yes, even though it has been illegal to beat students for 12 years now, the practice of corporal punishment is still happens. So we have made it our mission to do everything we can to stop this practice and provide some alternative ways to control the classroom. It will be a challenge. It doesn’t happen a lot, but it really shouldn’t happen at all. We’re going to see if we can provide some insight and alternatives and stop the practice once and for all. Wish us luck…

Other than that, life carries on as normal. As of Friday, we will have been here in South Africa for 6 months. I can’t believe it – time really flies. This place is really starting to feel like home at times, and it’s a welcome feeling. I hope life is treating you all well. Until next time…

Lerato


Well, I have been busy waiting and watching my learners run in two track meets (consider them like a conference meet where different schools get together and compete). I say watch because I would stand on the sideline and watch. I say wait because for every minute that I watched a learner run, I spent one hour waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting. For those of you don’t know, I am not the most patient person. So for every minute of watching, I spent 60 minutes waiting….not the best odds for organization. The first meet was on 04 February. A Saturday. We arrived at the track at 8. The meet was supposed to start at 8. The first runner from an elementary school was 11:30. For those of you bad at math that is 3.5 hours of nothing! Some learners from our school won a few races, yada, yada, yada, at 19:30 we finally left. Yes, we were at a track me in the blazing sun with 25 elementary school kids for 11.5 hours! 7 learners from our host school and 2 from another one of our schools advanced. Exciting! The races consisted of a mass chaos start, fast running and one quarter of the children falling over at the finish live from the heat and sun. The judges carried them into the shade!? And that was that. In total a 14 hour day with 12 hours of waiting! Organization, man do I miss it.

The next track meet was on 10 February. This was the second round of the conference meet. Again, I waited and watched. I am guessing the ratio stands pretty firm at 60:1 here too! I was meeting the learners and educator in front of our host families house at 5:30 (yes, in the morning) because the bus was supposed to be there around that time. Suffice it to say, I waited on the corner until the bus came at 9:00. Yes, again 3.5 hours! As the other meet, this one was supposed to start at 8. We arrived at 9:30. Meet started at 10. Ended at 12. Waited another 2.5 hours to get our ride back to the village. I was proud of the learners…not proud of how disorganized the event was. Of the 7 from the host school, two advanced to the area meet on 18 February. One boy advanced from our other school. So there are three runners for the upcoming meet! This meet is in the town 1.5 hours away….so I think I will be doing some more waiting this weekend!

Other than that, just trying to stay positive and out of the sun. I don’t understand how it can be so hot!

Valentines Day (yes, they have it here…which I won’t necessarily say was a good thing) was yesterday. Kids wore red to school. We had a lovely BBQ. I like this place because: a) you have BBQs at important holidays where I am normally inside from the cold b) our host father LOVES meat on the grill. BBQ and a candle light dinner with our host family. They were kind enough to give us a gift too!?

Hope all is well and let me know how everyone is doing.

The Team

Running the 1200 m (shoes? Who needs ‘em?)

Yes that is a big bug, and yes Lerato’s feet smell

One of the rain damaged houses in the village

Thabo

03 Feb 2006

03 February 2006

Dumela,

Well, the month of January has come and gone with the blink of an eye. Nothing of great importance or excitement happened. School started for us. And the first few ensuing weeks gave gone from chaos to more chaos. Some of the schools have settled down but don’t run at an efficiency that I would consider acceptable.

Last Friday, our host school held an Inter-school track (what I mean by track is the dirt soccer field) meet. (I was told that the school competes in track and field. They have various running events and no field events!?) The day started off overcast and kind of rainy. The day ended prematurely due to excessive wind and rain. The day began by walking over to the field by taking whatever path that the students liked. Once arrived, and after a few directions, the 80 m race began. Separation of the runners is not done by grade but by age (1993, 1994, & 1995), this is due to the fact that there are 15 year olds in grade 3 and 12 year olds in grade 6. After the 80 m race, it was the 100 m race. I am pretty confident to say that the 100 m was double the length than the 80 m, but who is counting really. Either way the kids were enjoying themselves. After the 100 was the 150. This event probably added another 10 m at most, but again who’s counting. With the start of the 150 came cold rain. And since half the kids didn’t bring a coat, the event had to be cut short so less of the students got sick. Tomorrow, 04 February is the area track meet. 25 students from the host school will compete against other schools (I guess, don’t really know what will happen.) in different track events. I think there is a good chance that a few of them will be victorious, too. The thing that still amazes me is the running full speed over rocky dirt and fields with thorns and broken glass in their bare feet. Some have shoes but a majority doesn’t. If you are running 800 m and you step on a thorn, you stop for a second, pull out the thorn, and sprint off to catch the others that didn’t stop.


The races

After the track meet we took a little weekend trip to see our friends and watch two of them, Andy and Mark, compete in a 30 k race (Mark and Andy finished the race with smiling faces!) in Kimberly. Kimberly is a big city (think Madison WI not New York City when thinking of the term big city). It has several malls, a movie theater, and stores that are open on Sunday (this is a HUGE novelty, normally nothing except the grocery store for a couple hours is open. When I say nothing, I mean ghost town nothing.) Kimberly was built because of diamonds. They used to mine diamonds in one location, which hasn’t operated since 1914, and is now called affectionately ‘The Big Hole.’ As one can see from the pictures, the name is right on. There were a lot of diamonds dug up here. It wasn’t too exciting of a weekend. Just hung out with some friends and did things like we were used to back in the States. Did make a purchase of Monopoly South African Style with all new properties and using the Rand instead of the good ol’ dollar.


The Big Hole


The Big Hole


Facts about the Big Hole


Quantity of total diamonds removed from Big Hole in Total

The little host brother is getting big. He has learned to sit up, but has not learned what he can eat and what he cannot. Anything that he can grab goes straight to his mouth. He is a good little eater though.

Big boy

Go Siame,
Thabo