In-Service Training

 At the end of November we were finally able to leave site and head back into society for two weeks of in-service training. You better believe that all I wanted to do was take about a million showers and eat some food that I didn’t have to cook on my two burner hot plate. While that did happen, I also had to attend about eight hours of training each day, which was not all that exciting at times. A large part of the training was focused toward our school and community counterparts that were to accompany us for specific parts of the training sessions. The first few days were to be spent with our principals, then a few days with a teacher, then a few days with our HIV/AIDS education counterpart, and finally a few days with just our fellow volunteers.

Of course all of my counterparts had been informed weeks in advance about the dates and times that they needed to be at the different venues, but here it is apparently socially acceptable to have a change of plans the day before a prepaid event. Like my Thanksgiving experience, my principal decided the day before we were to leave for the principal’s workshop that he “just didn’t want to go”. Not only was I now out of a ride to the hotel that was two hours away, but the whole point of the workshop was to have the volunteers and the principals together to discuss issues the volunteers were having, and to sit down and plan the first term of school. However, that obviously wasn’t high on my principal’s priority list, so he had made arrangements earlier in the week to send the head of the department instead. Of course no one could tell me this until the day before, so I spent most of the time I was supposed to be packing on the phone with Peace Corps staff trying to figure out how to change reservations. To say I was pissed would be a huge understatement!

My mood drastically increased when we finally made it to the hotel the next day and I realized we were basically staying on the beach in the nicest three bedroom flats that I had ever seen, and we were right next to a real coffee shop. Score!!! Three vanilla lattes later, I was prepared to hang out with people who spoke fluent English, and who understood the struggles of transitioning to a village life. The stories that first night were epic. In some villages people were being stabbed, other schools had teachers that would leave in the middle of the day and never come back. Basically we decided that nothing in South Africa made any sense, and all of us were dealing with the same crap in a different village. Surprisingly this made me feel a lot better, and a lot less alone. However, I did learn that I was the only one at the workshop who didn’t have their principal, which made me feel a little awkward. Fortunately we all spent as little time with our supervisors as possible, so that worked in my favor.

After day one it became very apparent that our counterparts were not used to nine hour work days. We were usually in sessions starting at 8am and went until 3pm or 4pm with an hour break for lunch. There were also two 30 minute tea breaks throughout the day, so compared to an American work schedule it wasn’t that bad. However, you could slowly see the teachers start to fall asleep around 10am. Once the majority of the counterparts were asleep it was lunch time, and after lunch many of them seemed to disappear altogether. It was crazy. You could tell that many of them saw this as an opportunity to go to a nice hotel for a few days and enjoy some free food and place to stay. Unfortunately this made both the volunteers and the session leaders extremely angry, but what are you going to do?

For the most part the sessions were about different projects that we can do in our villages. We had sessions on Grassroot Soccer that combines soccer skills with HIV education, which I am planning on doing in my village. We also had sessions that pertained to the areas that we will be teaching in less than a month. Since I am focusing on teaching math I was able to attend sessions on things like how to teach fractions (something that kids here really struggle with), how to start mathletes, and how to use soccer (Africa’s favorite sport) to teach basic math skills. Those sessions were all very helpful and a valuable use of our time. Then there were the sessions on harassment and corporal punishment. These sessions were extremely stressful to sit through with our counterparts. For the most part they would just laugh at us when we talked about why sexual harassment and corporal punishment bothered us. When we discussed different ways to discipline kids the teachers would just shake their heads and act like they weren’t listening. When the female volunteers, including myself, talked about the issues we are having with sexual harassment even in our schools counterparts would make comments about how we just needed to deal with it, and that there was nothing they could do to help us. These sessions seemed to just make everyone mad and extremely annoyed, which seemed to make for good conversation once the volunteers were alone without the counterparts.

Overall it was just nice to be able to have some time with Americans, and to complain to people that could really understand what we are going through in our villages and school. To be honest we spent most of the time bitching about things that we have no control over, but that make our service harder. After three months at site it was very therapeutic to have a two week bitch fest!  

An African Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving in Africa, not exactly the same as it is at home, but it was a fun experience. This year my area leader, Chad, decided that it would be fun to invite all of our principals to his site for a traditional American Thanksgiving feast. Being away from home during the holidays can be tough, so all of the volunteers were excited to be able to have a little taste of home, and to spend some quality time with people that actually spoke fluent English. Inviting our principals to experience an American holiday was a nice idea, but really it was just a ruse to get our principals to drive us all out to Chad’s site so we wouldn’t have to navigate the taxi situation. Chad’s site is in a beautiful mountain location, but from my site you have to take three different taxis to get there, which becomes a serious problem when you are traveling after school. So the principals were invited to share our turkey extravaganza, and then were expected to head home so that the Americans could hang out and head to the beach the next day for the Kwa-Zulu Natal Provincial Conference put on by the Volunteer Support Network. In theory it was a great plan, but this is Africa, and nothing here seems to go the way that you want it to.

The first blunder on my way to African Thanksgiving was that my principal didn’t really want to go. This has been a reoccurring problem for me, but we will talk more about that issue later. So the Wednesday before Thanksgiving I was called into his office to discuss the logistics of making the hour car ride to the dinner. It took some time, but finally I convinced him that I needed him to take me because I probably wouldn’t make it before the taxis stopped running, and that it would look bad because he would be the only principal not there. This last part was of course a lie, but appearances here mean everything, so he couldn’t have it look like he doesn’t care about his volunteer. The next day I was packed and ready to go see some other white people, but of course we had to make a little stop in town at the local gas station. Little did I know we were picking up more than a full tank of gas. Turns out that my principal decided to invite a friend to our little dinner party so that he “wouldn’t have to drive back alone”. The already awkward car ride just got a whole lot weirder since I had to try and explain what Thanksgiving was to a complete stranger while at the same time texting my fellow volunteers to let them know there would be a random guest at dinner. Once we got to dinner I was hoping things would be a little less awkward, but they weren’t. My principal and his friend sat in the parking lot for the majority of the time they were there talking and smoking while I went inside to escape. They did finally make it inside right before dinner was being served, because no one in Africa would ever pass up a free meal.

Things got a little weird again when it came time to serve the food. In order to make sure that there was enough food for everyone, the volunteers served their guests. In South Africa men are always served first, and the women do not sit down until everyone else is eating. Being a female and having two male guests it seemed like I was playing right into the gender roles that are common here, and the ‘friend’ decided that since I served him once, that meant I was his personal server for the rest of the night. When he wanted more meat he told me, when he wanted pie he told me, when he wanted a drink he told me, and by the end of the night I was not having it anymore. Of course since I had no idea who this random person was I didn’t not feel that I was in any position to tell him no, so eventually I just stopped coming back to the table. Luckily for me they decided to leave right after they had finished all of their food, so I was finally able to relax and enjoy some delicious American food with friends. It still wasn’t the same as spending the holiday with my family, but for Africa it was more than I expected.