Healthy Living Camp

Hello everyone! We finally had our Healthy Living Camp!! I’m not sure how much I wrote about it, so I’ll tell you about the camp.

My friends Meg, Nicole, and I sent out applications to 10 High Schools in Botha-Bothe. 6 students from each of the schools filled out our applications and we chose one boy and one girl from each school. This past weekend was the first of three Healthy Living Camps for these students. We had the camp at Likileng Lodge, which is right outside of town. The lodge was amazing and had a great conference room that we spent a lot of time in. It also had a great field outside that we played games in. The lodge has a beautiful pool, but the filter wasn’t working so we couldn’t swim.
The kids came on Friday and were a little nervous about coming to a place they have never been before with people they have never met. Some came early and had a chance to explore the area or relax in their room. We were so excited to find out that the kids were all getting to know each other in one of the camper’s rooms! As more kids came, they were invited to come into the room as well.
Throughout the rest of the camp we got to know the kids by playing games and answering some of their many questions. We had discussions about HIV/AIDS, gender equality, and goal setting. The kids created and preformed dramas about gender equality, stigma regarding HIV, multiple sexual partners, and testing for HIV. We were so impressed with the quality of the skits. The ideas they came up with were incredible.
On Saturday afternoon a friend of ours facilitated an HIV transmission discussion. We started the session by showing how HIV is spread using the students and colored pipe cleaners to represent people having multiple partners and unsafe sex. The students were surprised to see exactly how one person can affect so many other people. Once we were finished with that Thabo, our amazing facilitator, asked the students to list activities that are considered high risk, low risk, and no risk. The students were able to discuss why some activities are more risky than others and were really surprised to learn that some activities are more risky than others. Once we finished with that, we broke the students into a boy group and girl group to see if they had any questions about that last session. Without going into too much detail, I was so proud of the boys for their questions. Sex is not talked about very often here and there are so many myths that boys learn about as they get older. I spent about an hour trying to answer some of the questions and talking about the importance of each of them protecting themselves. The conversation really helped me to connect with the boys.
Some other fun activities include showing TV shows that focused on HIV, Jurassic Park, and one episode of Planet Earth! The kids were so excited to watch all of the shows. They were all so new to them. We’re looking forward to showing more Planet Earth and another movie next time…maybe Men in Black??


I spent the week before camp with 9 other volunteers and a whole team of Basotho to plan and prepare for the new education group to arrive in Lesotho. We planned all of their sessions and talked about some of our favorite activities during our training. It was an exhausting week going from planning training to our camp, but it was worth it!

To go back a little further….I spent 2 days visiting 4 schools in Lesotho to help them prepare for their library books to arrive or to help them organize the libraries they have. We helped organize books and showed the teachers how to maintain their libraries. The workshop usually lasts about 2-3 hours and we talk about using the books as resources and model reading aloud to their students, how to read aloud to children, how to take care of books, checking out books, library rules, and how to use the HIV section that we set up as a resource. The teachers were all really excited, which made me even more excited to receive the books that my mom has been collecting! Thanks again to everyone who has been helping her!!!

I will be going back to my village on Wednesday for my friend’s funeral. I’ll be back down in about 10 days for a Library workshop…African Library Project is hosting librarians and project coordinators from a few different countries to discuss things that are working and things that aren’t. I’m really looking forward to it. Hopefully I’ll get some ideas to make the libraries that I’ll be creating at my schools better.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Pictures

Hey everyone! I put pictures on facebook. This link will let you look at the album. There are almost 150 pictures! The internet isn't very good, so I wasn't able to take out all of the doubles and they are not in any order.

Hope everyone is doing well!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2965394&id=9320551&l=5c32b9cfe6

African Library Project

Hey Everyone!!! I sent out this e-mail and thought I would paste it into my blog as well. The e-mail explains it, but I'm working with African Library Projects and am looking for a little help!
*Thank you so much for everyone who as already e-mailed me or contacted my mom. You are all amazing!

Annndddd I asked my mom to put some pictures up of two maps my friends and I painted in a high school in the south of the country. The pictures should be up in a day or two! I will try to write more in the next few days!!














Hello! I wanted to send an update as I approach the 1 year mark in my
Peace Corps Service! It feels like I left Penn State just a few weeks
ago. It is officially the rainy season in Lesotho, which means warm
weather and no more snow! I've been working for the past year as a
resource teacher for 4 primary schools in a very rural village in
Lesotho. I work with about 32 teachers to help them teach their
students in new and exciting ways. We also focus on their classroom
management, material development, and different teaching methods. The
students are taught mostly in English and all of their exams are
written in English. I have been helping the students as they learn to
read, write and speak English. Our biggest problem is there are no
books in my village!! I have applied to African Library Projects, a
non-profit based in New Orleans, to try and create a library in each
of the schools I work with.

I was very recently asked to join the African Library Project team,
which will be traveling around the country giving workshops on how to
set up and run the libraries that volunteers are working with schools
in their villages to develop. Through African Library Project
Lesotho, Peace Corps volunteers received 55,000 books for 54 new
libraries in this past year. We hope to exceed this accomplishment
next year. I currently have three library donation drives started at
home with the help of my mom, a family friend, and a group that
African Libraries has selected to help.

Most of the education volunteers in my group have also applied for
books through the program, however not everyone has a donor to work
with in the States yet; we still need to find 15 donors before
November! As a donor you would be collecting approximately 1,000
books and $500 for the cost(s) of shipping the books. If any of you
have some extra time and are interested in helping one of my friends
with their libraries, please email chris@africanlibraryproject.org
asap; she will give you more information and pair you up with a
volunteers school or community that you can help :) Here is the link
to the webpage if you want to learn more: www.africanlibraryproject.org

There are some really fun and creative ways to undergo this project
and we all would appreciate it so much-especially the children of
Lesotho, who in most cases have never even held a picture book before.
There is no pressure at all, and if you want to help, but are weary
of taking on so much responsibility you could give something as small
as a book or a dollar to my personal libraries (contact my Mom, Shari,
if you are interested 412-480-2191 or dissen1@comcast.net)!

I hope everything is going well! If you want to check out more about
my experience here or see some pictures, visit my blog! And please
feel free to e-mail this to anyone you thing might be interested in
helping!!

Thanks a lot!

Mike

The Dentist came to visit!

Hellooo! Big news! I learned how to flip my tongue over! I know, I know. It took me a long time to figure it out, but with lots of practice, I can do it. I’m pretty excited about it.

In other news…I have been talking to a Nigerian dentist that works at the hospital in Botha-Bothe. I asked him to come and visit one of my schools to teach about the importance of brushing. He came yesterday with a psychologist, another dentist, and a guy who spoke about mental health. They had those big teeth you see in dentist’s offices and a huge toothbrush and showed the kids how to brush. They also had a set of fake teeth that showed what theirs would look like if they didn’t brush. I didn’t know the other doctors were coming, but they talked about drug abuse, ways to keep mentally and physically healthy, and gave some career guidance. When they were finished talking to the kids, the dentists looked at each kids teeth and recommended that a few of them come to town for him to fix their teeth. He even offered to do it free of charge! It’s kind of expensive to get them to town and back, so I’m looking into ways to get the kids down to see him. I’m pretty excited about it. I went to visit him today and he told me that he would love to visit the other schools I work with, but he would have to find some time to do it. I also visited the local HIV testing center and asked if they would like to visit the schools to teach about sexual health. They said they would love to and we are looking into having them come in January and February! Big day!

Well I am on my way to a workshop with some teachers from town. Hope everyone is well!

Workshops...

Hey everyone! I got my computer fixed! There is a guy who fixes Mac’s in Bloemfontein, South Africa. He fixed it up for $25! I’m going to try my hardest to write a little at my house and upload it on my blog when I’m in town.

Like any job, things happen that make you feel amazing and like you love your job…on the other hand there are days where you want to eat an entire chocolate cake and sleep for a few days. I ate a whole chocolate cake last Saturday. With the help of a few other volunteers, I planned a workshop aimed to help the male teachers in my schools understand how to work with women and treat them better. A few other volunteers came up to help run the workshop and to see how they worked. I gave invitations to each of the five schools and talked with each teacher. A local shop owner cooked about $50 worth of food, which was amazing and a ton of food. We had everything planned, trained a facilitator, and began to wait at 8:45 for the teachers to arrive and the workshop to begin at 9. By 10:00 no teachers had arrived. 11:00 rolled around and Lerato came with the food, but still no teachers. We decided that they weren’t coming and asked 25 high school students to come instead so the local youth group could perform the skits they had come up with and so we could do something with the food. The workshop ended up going really well and the kids learned a ton and really enjoyed it. I actually think it went better with the high school students and not the teachers.
I spent the first two hours of waiting going back and forth between being mad, embarrassed, and defeated. I really didn’t know what to think. I thought I would be really upset with the teachers and would show that when I visited the schools. Instead, I used the opportunity to talk to some of my neighbors and teachers to figure out how to fix the problem that ultimately goes back to my work at the schools. The Monday after the workshop, for example, I showed up still angry only to find 2 teachers at school. I purposely came late because I knew teachers often arrived to school late. I thought about it for a little and realized that attendance is something that I can work on that might have an impact on the school. I talked to a few teachers, principals, and neighbors about the problem and they all told me to have a meeting with the principals. I have on scheduled for Thursday and hopefully we can talk together about encouraging the teachers to work harder.

In other news…the next few months are pretty full for me. I’ll be working with other volunteers to prepare for an amazing camp for high school kids, more workshops (hopefully teachers will come), a fajita night at my friend John’s house, meetings for a few committee’s I’m on, and a welcome party for some of the new volunteers in country.

Soooo things are going pretty well here. I’ll be back in town Saturday and will try to write more! Hope everyone is doing well at home! Miss yaaaaa

Oh! The pictures…The one with the trailers – my friend and Nicole and I ate there in Ficksburg, which is right across the border in SA. We got a huge plate of food for $2! We were a little nervous to eat there, but it ended up being amazing. Some of them are of Lesotho in the spring. It’s starting to look beautiful again! The peach trees all turned purple and the willow trees look so green against the brown hills. And one of them is of kids playing with Lego’s at Nicole’s house. Her aunt sent her Lego’s and she lets the kids play with them when they come over. I had just as much fun with them as the kids did!

Hey everyone! I typed a long blog a few days ago and it didn’t save to my USB!! OOhhh noooo. So here’s an attempt to recap the last month!

I decided to try to stay in my village for a month to get to know everyone better and to save some money. I ended up coming down a few days early, but was still there for a pretty long time!

Ok so some of these pictures might be on there a few times...the internet is crazy.

The kids/farmers have been burning the grass and mountains in my village for a few weeks. I have no idea why, but it seems sad to me. You can kind of see the fire line in the picture.





The other ones are of the snow day we had! I spent all day inside reading and drinking hot chocolate. It was amazinnggg!

I'm aliveeeee

Sorry for being the worlds worst blogger! It’s been over a month and I have a ton of stories. I’ll try to go in order and keep things short…

I went with four of my friends to South Africa, Mozambique, and Swaziland. It was incredible! We started our trip by renting a car in South Africa. We heard mixed reviews about the roads and driving in Africa. We decided to take our chances and drive ourselves. I took the second shift driving, which started right before the Mozambique border. It took us forever to get across the maze of customs and visas. When they asked me to write down the engine number, I started sweating and had a guy come and find the number for me. After two hours of that, we drove through the country into the night. Around 1 am I nailed one of the hundreds of potholes on the road and bent the rim of one of our tires. As we were changing the tire, our friend Kristin froze and told us that there was a lion across the dirt road. We all stared at the “lion” with the help of the world’s smallest flashlight. We all stood there and waited for a car to drive by so we could really see it. It ended up being a large dog that had no interest in what we were doing. A few hours later, we safely arrived at our backpackers in Tofo, Mozambique!
Surprisingly, we woke up at 8 the next day and were ready to go to the beach. My friend John and I wanted to explore the area, so we decided to take a quick trip to pick up water and some snacks. We told the girls that we would be back in a few minutes. During our attempt to get water, we met a few guys that lived in the area. They ended up taking us to their homes where we had fresh coconut and met a ton of other people. After that, they took us to a local soccer game, which was amazing. Some guys played barefoot, while others played with cleats. Half of the field was covered in hills and sand, and the other side had patches of grass. It looked impossible to play on. After all of that, John and I returned back to our backpackers with no food and water.
We spent the rest of the week playing soccer with kids on the beach, exploring the area, hanging out with people at our backpackers, and relaxing. Towards the end of the week, we discovered the fish market. We ended up buying a not so fresh fish and 2kg of prawns. Our backpackers cooked it for us and it was pretty good. We tried it again the next day with a group of people we met from Zimbabwe and bought a much more fresh fish. I loved buying fish that were just caught that day…or week. We ate them on top of a sand dune overlooking the ocean. It was incredible!
At the end of the week the girls traveled onto Cape Town and had an amazing time. John and I decided to head back to Lesotho. Swaziland was right on the way, so we decided to spend a night in Swaziland. The country was beautiful, but we decided to move on the next day and tried to get to Pretoria, South Africa in time to get tickets to the Confederation Cup game later that night. We ended up getting in town too late, so we watched it on TV with a bunch of guys we met at our ex-mafia mansion turned backpackers we stayed in.
All in all, our vacation was amazing. We met people from all over the world and got to escape the cold weather in Lesotho for a while. When we got back, we layered up to keep warm and even played in the snow one night!
Since then, I’ve been visiting other volunteers that live in slightly warmer areas than I do. I also had the chance to teach 2 workshops last week for college students working towards becoming teachers. My workshop focused on literacy and reading to students in the classroom. It went really well and I’ll be doing it again this week.
I’ll probably be in town for another week or two for a funeral, two more workshops, and to see a few more friends before I head north.
Well I think that’s all I have for now. I’ll try and post some more later this week. Hope everyone is doing well at home!