The First 6 Months!

Hello everyone! After living in Lesotho for 6 months, I thought it was time to explain what I do everyday. I just submitted 11 grants requesting over 4,000 books for 4 schools. Woaah! The next few paragraphs are copied from my grants and changed a little to expand on some of what I do!

I work as a resource teacher for the four most northern schools in the country, which include Ha Sefako Primary School, Liqobong Primary School, Monontsa Primary School, and Mifika-Lisiu Primary School. I have been working very closely with the teachers at each school to improve the way the students are being taught with a focus on literacy. To do this, my friend Meg and I designed a literacy workshop to provide teachers with creative ways to introduce reading, writing, and public speaking into the classroom. Each teacher walked away with several books written in both English and Sesotho, a complete list of Dolch words for their classrooms, educational games, and much more. The following two weeks were spent working with the teachers as they tried new teaching techniques and read to their students for the first time. It was incredible to see the teachers get excited to try very simple ideas when they taught. I walked into one class as a teacher was explaining that students had to put a finger between words so they weren’t 5 inches apart and words weren’t running together. A few teachers were really excited to play Bingo with their students. They were even more excited when I told them that they could change they game in any way they wanted.

During the six weeks between Easter and our winter break, I will be working with teachers from grades 1-3 to create a phonics program that another volunteer has been working on in her school. Students are learning that each letter has a name, sound, and can create a word with the help of other letters. The teachers think I’m crazy and that I’m having their students make nonsense sounds, but I showed them where I was headed and they like the idea. Since the workshop, they have started to trust me a lot more and believe me when I have new ideas.
Students in grade 3 and 4 replied to pen pals from Costa Mesa, California. I set up pen pals with a friend of mine that I interned with in State College. The kids here were so excited to learn about California and write back to their new friends. The letters they wrote were unbelievable. Their teachers spent days reading letters to their students and helping them write back. For the students, it was their first time having someone helping them read and helping them create a letter. In response to their remarkable writing, I am working with teachers in grades 4-7 to schedule a time for creative writing in their week.
The same students are also learning about community service and how to plan, implement, and analyze projects. They will be working in their villages in June and July and reporting back once school begins again in August. None of the teachers understand why the project is important or why I want to do it, but the agreed to let me teach about community service and give an assignment. I told them that I would grade it and everything as long as they watched me teach the lesson.
I’ve also been working with teachers teaching math, science, and health. Each school has a pretty well stocked math and science kit, so I’ve been encouraging teachers to use them. I’ve done a lot of explaining and modeling so the teachers understand how each object is used. I made sure all of the teachers understood how dangerous some of the chemicals in the science kits could be and asked them to use them for the first time when I was visiting their classroom. For some reason, the chemicals have been one of the more interesting items for the teachers and they have used them as zit cream, to unclog whiteout, and to demonstrate soluble and insoluble liquids. Nothing has blown up yet and everyone’s skin seems to be ok, so I guess things worked out!
As for health…I think it will be an ongoing battle over the next two years. I am trying to teach teachers about HIV/AIDS and try to talk about it often so they are more comfortable talking about it with their students. Teachers are slowly starting to ask questions and we are clearing up some of the many myths that they have heard over the years.

I haven’t been good about answering the many questions that I’ve received, so I’ll try to answer some of them here! This might end up being a jumble of ideas!
Students walk anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 hours to school. The youngest ones wait for older students to walk by their homes and they walk with them to school everyday. Grades 1-3 get out of school 2 hours earlier than the older students and they also wait until the older students get out of school to walk with them. I asked a teacher how students know when to go to school, and he told me that they use the sun. They also have radios, which announce the time pretty often. If they don’t use either of those methods, they wait for the high school students to walk by and then leave. All of the students are pretty loud when they walk to school, so I imagine they just wait for a group of kids in a uniform to walk past. The teacher also said that on cloudy days most kids are late for school. He said that the clouds made it harder for them to figure out the time, so they just leave when they are ready!
Students in all four of my schools wear uniforms. As far as I can tell, they each have one sweater and pair of pants. They wear them all week and wash them on Friday after school. I brought a sewing kit to school a few times to sew torn clothing, but it’s been too cold lately to hold a needle. A friend of mine donated an awesome sewing kit and the teachers are all amazed that I can sew. As soon as it warms up again, I am going to dedicate a week or two to fixing clothes. Now that the kids know me a little better, it isn’t as weird.
To heat my house, I have a heater that runs off of my gas tank. It has a little flame that is always lit and I’m not exactly sure how to work it. I thought I had it figured out and was sitting smugly waiting for it to heat up and then a big ball of fire exploded out of it…nothing too big, similar to waiting just a second too long to light the grill. Then I noticed that the bottom of it was on fire. I’m still not sure if it is supposed to be on fire or if I messed up. I blew it out and haven’t tried to light it since. Plenty of layers are keeping me pretty warm at night! I’m typing on Phil’s computer and I’m in shorts and a t-shirt. I don’t mind the cold…well I do, but it’s almost 65 degrees today and was a few degrees below 50 in my house a few nights ago.
A few questions have come through about the teachers. Most of my schools have about 8 teachers. Usually about half of them are actually paid and others are volunteers. I’m not entirely sure how that works. They have a syllabus that they follow that has been supplied by the Ministry of Education (reminds me of Harry Potter!). They do follow the syllabus, but are not always sure how to teach some things, so they skip them. Usually it is just a topic or two, but I noticed that art has been skipped completely. One of my other self given jobs has been to figure out what is being skipped, why they aren’t teaching it, and working with them to present it to their students. On those days, I go home and sleep for a while! It’s exhausting.

I spent 2 hours of yesterday talking with standard 7 students in my farthest school about HIV/AIDS and sex. It was amazing how much they didn’t know and how much more they had wrong. We talked about HIV prevention, how to get it, and what it is. We also talked about other STD’s, sex, where to get condoms, how to say no to aggressive men, and tons of other stuff. I let some of the teachers sit in on our discussion for the first half hour. They were really interested and would occasionally ask each other questions and ask me to explain more. One example is boys and girls “practicing” with each other. This is done with children of the same sex. Most people I have talked to, including most of the teachers and students, thought that HIV and other STD’s could only be transmitted through male/female sex. Boys also practice with farm animals. We talked about that a little, too, but I had a hard time convincing them that it was dirty.

When I felt like I said all that I wanted, I asked the teachers to leave and gave the kids time to ask questions. It took about 10 seconds of awkward silence for students to start mumbling questions. After that, it was nonstop questions for the next 90 minutes! I left glowing. The kids stayed in their classrooms talking about everything we had discussed. I put a box in the room for students to write any question they had and I would answer it next time I visited the school. I am also going to take any student wanting to test for HIV/AIDS to the local clinic in the next few weeks! I’m pretty excited 

After that, I left with the principal of the school for the hour walk to the dirt road to catch a taxi. Along the way, we visited the local chief and a few other homes. A few men asked me to come back next week to help slaughter a pig. I might go...Our last visit was to a friend’s house. He invited us into his home and told us that he would be back. A few minutes later, he returned with a bowl of meet and told us that he killed a pig earlier in the day. I didn’t want to be rude, so I took a piece of meat and put it in my mouth. I was sure it was meat. It had the right texture, shape, smell, everything. A few seconds later, I realized that I was chewing on the liver. Then I realized that I was out of water. I gagged for a second and then forced it down. He smiled and was pretty pleased, I think offering me the liver was a huge compliment. I waited for my friend to eat more and then felt like I should take another piece. Again, I was sure it was meat. I double checked. As I began to chew, I realized it was the heart. I stopped eating the meat after that! When I was finished, he showed me the rest of the pig. It was about 4:00 and he had killed the pig early in the morning. By the time I left, he had only taken out the insides and the rest of the pig was lying on the ground covered in flies. Blah.


Well I am off to Maseru to meet with several people in the Peace Corps office. I'll be able to check my e-mail tomorrow morning. Miss everyone!

More Durban Pics (and 2 blogs below)

Durban Pictures!

Durban story! So we discovered the night life pretty quickly and had a great time meeting new people and visiting new bars. When we asked people where to go, they assumed we wanted to go to upper class, white bars. We didn't mind checking out a few, but the locals were a ton of fun to hangout with. We asked a taxi driver to take us to a fun bar. It was late in the night and we weren't too choosy, we just wanted to have a good time. We all had nice beach clothes on, but as Peace Corps volunteers, we weren't dressed too well. When we got to the bar, we stood in line for about 10 minutes and started talking to the bouncer. After a minute or two, he looked at my shoes, which were sandals, and told us we couldn't come in. He said that I wasn't dressed well and that slops weren't allowed in this bar. It was toward the end of the night, so I told him what I thought and we left. As it turns out, we couldn't get into several bars because of my "slops." It is a pretty funny story now, but I was not happy at the time.

I'm back from Durban!

I’m back from Durban! 9 of my friends and I spent the last week in Durban, South Africa. We had an amazing time exploring that part of the country!!! So we started last Thursday and took a 6 hour bus ride to Durban. 5 of us traveled together to make traveling easer. We had intended on getting to Durban early to get to our hostel, check things out, and get a bite to eat. Instead, we got there just as the sun was setting and ended up in one of the three “don’t go there” areas on the map. We wanted to go to a small town called Umzumbe for the first night and then head back up to Durban for the rest of our vacation. We missed the last bus to Umzumbe and our amazing bus driver drove us around for a while until we found 2 taxis to take us to a different hostel. Things ended up working out, so it wasn’t too bad.

The next day, the five of us went to the beach, which was amazing. I felt like I was back in America. There was a board walk with a ton of little shops and places to eat, a small amusement park, and a great beach. We figured out the hard way that the beach was about an hour walk from where we were staying, but it gave us a chance to meet some people and figure out where things were.

It was either rainy or cold for two or three days, so we went to “the biggest mall in the southern hemisphere.” It was big, but I’m not sure if it was the biggest. I ate about 4 meals at the mall, including chicken pot pie and sushi. They were both amazing! They also had beer on tap! Having cold beer on tap was definitely a change from living in Lesotho.

The mall was pretty big, so I ended up buying a long sleeved t-shirt, a hookah, and an Obama t-shirt. The people in my village always tell me not to fear the black man and ask me if I like black people. They are also convinced that only white people live in America. I figure the t-shirt will spark some conversation!

To all of my first graders, now second graders! I have not seen a lion yet, but I have seen baboons, ostriches, and impalas. It was really cool! I wasn’t able to take a picture, but I will have my camera ready next time!!

So now I’m back in Lesotho and am getting ready to go back to my village. I’m staying in the camp town until Saturday or Sunday to get some work done. I have 6 weeks of school until winter break. My goals from now until then are to get all of the paperwork for my upcoming projects done. Some of the projects include…creating libraries in 3 schools (my mom will be in charge of that on the American side), adding 3 classrooms onto one of the schools that I work with (I’m going to need some help with that, but will post more in a month or two), and I want to have a camp in October for high school students to learn about HIV/AIDS, career counseling, and to play a ton of games for kids. I’m pretty excited about all of these and hope they end up working out.

I’ve gotten a few e-mails asking what kind of things I need and what kind of help the schools need. I’ll start with the schools.
I’ve been working with preschools that are next to each of the primary schools that I work with. Unlike the primary schools, the preschools are not given much, or any, financial help or school supplies. I would love to bring in Lego’s, art supplies (a lot), and educational games. I’m working with them on creating educational games out of things that can be found in many homes here. I’m hoping to have a workshop for each school between now and June, but we’ll see!
For the primary schools, I am working on creating 3 libraries. I have to fill out the paperwork and might not have it done until schools are out, but I definitely want to import roughly 3,000 books. My mom is going to be in charge of collecting the books and shipping them to New Orleans through the African Libraries Project. The whole thing will cost around $1,800, which we will also be raising. If you are interested in helping financially or donating any books, e-mail me! I’m really looking for books for K-3. The kids aren’t strong readers and are working on basic reading skills, so easy readers, leveled readers, and books with a lot of repetition would be great. Picture books and simple educational books would be great, too. So e-mail me if you want to talk more about this!! I could always use more books, but 1,000 per school is the minimum and it costs roughly $600 per school.

Another project that I’m working on is to add onto one of my schools. I still have a ton of work to do for this one, but the total cost should be around $4,000. We’ll talk more about this in a few months!!!

A few people have been asking what kind of things I need, so I made a list!! I would love things to make an easy dinner, pasta in a bag or soup in a bag. The just add water kind of stuff! I’ve gotten a few packages of chicken, which are great and easy. M&M’s and Hershey kisses would be amazing, too!! I tend to wake up a little late for school and have been running out the door with a cereal bar in my hand. I haven’t been able to find them here, so they would be helpful. All of the packages that I’ve received so far are great. Really anything that you think I would like would be perfect.

Well that was a jumble of information! I hope everyone is doing well. I will be able to check my e-mail on and off for the next 6 weeks and then should have more regular access over winter break! I might write more about Durban tomorrow or Sunday before I go back to my village!

Hello from Durban, South Africa

Hi! I'm taking a short vacation at the beach in Durban, South Africa. We are staying at a lodge called the Hippo Hide.

Here is the link to the lodge:

www.hippohide.co.za/English/aboutus.asp.

If you would like to call me while I'm here, my South Africa Number is:

011.278.34831098.

You should be able to reach me at this number through Wednesday and remember the time difference is 6 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.

I'll try to update my blog again when I return to Lesotho.

Until then Happy Easter!