Monday, November 12, 2012

Rolling Along


It has been over two months since the last blog update so it’s time to check in although not a tremendous lot has happened with us here in Africa since the end of August.  We can write about our weather, baboons, special events, and service highlights.

The weather has changed from cold to warmer.  In August nighttime temperatures were still just above freezing warming up into the 70’s during the day.  We were still wearing our fleece jackets inside the house, wrapping a blanket around our waist to keep warm, using our bed warmer to prep the bed before we jumped in, and huddling on our couch in front of the space heater at night. Notes of explanation:  When cold, South African women wrap themselves in a blanket at the waist down.  They do this all the time in winter and don’t hesitate to go out in public wearing a blanket. This is not to be confused with another common sight when mothers and gogos (grannys) wrap a thin blanket around their upper body to hold a baby or toddler on their back.  A bed warmer is an electric mattress pad that fits under the bottom sheet and, when turned on ten minutes before you hit the sack, makes the initial chill of the bed evaporate into sweet warm comfort.  The couch we are sitting on is a cot that has a mattress folded in half and tied with twine as the backrest.  The coffee table is an old wooden Italian packing box once used to ship medicine to the clinic and found discarded out back.  Once cleaned up and lightly sanded, it substitutes as a coffee table nicely.  When in the Peace Corps, one learns to improvise furniture just like impoverished college students.

Starting two months ago, the weather began to grow steadily warmer and in October the wet season started.  There was no rain here during winter about May until September. When it rains here in Mmakau, it is violent falling hard for about a half an hour then quits. During the last few weeks we have had storms like this about two to three times a week.  The mountains are turning green and the wandering cows and goats are busy fattening themselves on the emerging grasses.  Now our bed heater and space heater have been put into storage, the extra blanket on the bed removed, and the electric fan made ready.  Grannys wrapped in blankets are a rare sight.  Shorts and umbrellas for shade from the hot sun are common but the kids are still sitting in hot classrooms wearing long sleeves and their jerseys (sweaters).  What those of us used to cold weather think is a warm tee shirt day is to most South Africans still a cold jacket day.  They look at us as we sweat in the heat and say “Aren’t you cold without a coat?”

No discussion of our spring would be complete without mention of the Jacaranda trees.  These trees were brought here from Australia long ago and have become the signature tree of Pretoria and the surrounding areas.  Sometime in October before their new leaves emerge, the jacarandas sprout clusters of purple blossoms that are beautiful. In Pretoria jacarandas line many streets and create a purple overhang of solid blossoms. There are also many jacaranda trees around our house from which this year we enjoyed their colorful blossoms for over a month.

This is a picture from the window of our apartment looking across the school yard of Mmakau Secondary School at classrooms in the foreground with blossoming jacaranda trees in the background.  The young men in the picture are members of a local soccer team having their afternoon practice.  They have no uniforms, play without shin guards or decent shoes, are lucky to have a functional soccer ball, and use a large rock on the ground as the goal.  But their skills are very good and they are fun to watch play.
 This time of year also sees our friends the baboons making their presence known. Winter robs the baboon of their usual fruit based food supply in the mountains and their appearance becomes more of a daily experience as they scavenge for whatever they can find.  Nearby Tsogo Secondary and Morekolodi Primary Schools both back up to the mountain habitat of the baboons and each school day feeds 700 learners daily.  Whenever there is fruit with lunch, the baboons seem to know beforehand and openly raid the school grounds for discarded fruit.  Although the baboons keep their distance from people, they scare the younger learners.  It is not uncommon to hear some kids shrieking as they spot a baboon coming their way and flee in terror. When the school day ends, the baboons invade opening classroom windows and doors, overturning dust bins, and messing up the classrooms just cleaned by the learners. At other times if they find a learner’s school bag (backpack) or food container, they open them and take anything edible.

Most educators (teachers) and other adults swear that the baboons can recognize the difference between women and men because they seem to ignore the women but run when a man appears.  Last week when Tsogo’s day ended, I stood in the courtyard and counted a dozen baboons wandering down the walkways and into classrooms of the two story school building.  If someone comes close, they just scamper up onto the roof.  Gardens cannot be grown anywhere close to the mountains because the baboons steal all of the ripening vegetables. It’s impossible to build a fence that they cannot find their way through.

To me the baboons are clearly a nuisance.  They have pulled pipes apart and collapsed the roof of water tanks.  One story is told that a few years ago the lid to one of the water tanks was open and a juvenile baboon fell into the tank and drowned.  This wasn’t discovered until someone noticed bits of fur coming through the tap.  Allegedly once the South African SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) was called in for help and they concluded that eradication of the baboons was not possible because the baboons were here first. Baboons rights.

To us the baboons are a lot like bears were in Yellowstone in the 1960s.  As long as the schools provide them with food from discarded fruit, open access to garbage cans, and kitchen scraps dumped onto each school’s burn pile, the baboons will keep appearing.  There just doesn’t seem to be sentiment by the educators, school administrators, or school governing boards that action should be taken to implement measures to reduce the nuisance.  Baboons are wild animals and deserve to live in the wild.  These animals are dependent on people and are being artificially supported to the point of over-population. Public safety and respect for the baboons are not being considered.  But it’s a small problem here in a community with many other bigger issues like unemployment, crime, and poverty.

One day not long ago I came home through the bedroom door going outside and was talking to Merideth in our den.  It was a warm day so I had left the door open.  While we were talking, we heard a rustle in the kitchen and found two adult baboons stealing vegetables.  Alarmed they quickly scurried out carrying half a dozen onions.  A similar invasion had happened to Merideth a couple of months ago.  That time as she jumped up and chased the baboon out the door.  Although in general she likes the baboons (especially the mothers carrying their babies on their backs) at school the kids admire her bravery because she will chase the baboons away when they get too close. 

One last baboon story:  A few weeks ago I was returning to Roma (the mission’s name because of the Roman Catholic Church) in a taxi and struck up a conversation with a young woman sitting next to me.  She had matrixed (graduated) from Tsogo in 2011 and told me that a few years ago the baboons had entered a house that backs up to the mountains and made off with an infant.  The girl said the police had very difficult time tracking down and rescuing the kidnapped baby from the baboons.  Whether this was a true story or another village legend remains to be determined but I bet that night it made the policemen’s what-did-you-do-today story interesting.

At the end of the third school term, there was a week school vacation.  During that time all of our Peace Corps class gathered in Pretoria for our mid-service training (MST).  We are halfway done. These were 53 of us at MST which is a few less than the 58 that initially came here.  Just recently three more left so we are now down to 50.  We are called SA-24 which stands for the 24th Peace Corps group in South Africa since Clinton and Mandela agreed to start Peace Corps here in 1996.  MST was two days of the usual PC meetings and two days of medical checkups.  The most fun was seeing again all those we had trained with when we first arrived and sharing our stories.  For me the biggest treat was the whole group singing Happy Birthday to me during dinner on October 1st.  They said I turned red. Here is a group picture of all the SA-24s at MST. We are third row far left.


Merideth and I along with a few other PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) left MST early and travelled about two hours west to Phokeng near Rustenburg.  We had volunteered to assist with an event sponsored by Special Olympics called the African Unity Cup.  Teams of Special Olympians from about nine African countries had come to SA to participate in a soccer tournament.  Each Special Olympic team consisted of a set number of athletes half with developmental challenges and half with no challenges.  This made the matches competitive and provided same age player coaches for the special needs athletes.  The winner of the tournament (South Africa) qualified to go to Brazil next year for the Special Olympics world cup.  The actual event was held at Lebone College which is a new deluxe high school facility constructed by the Royal Bafokeng Tribe.

The story of the Royal Bafokeng Tribe is interesting.  Many years ago this tribe started to buy land and invest money earned by tribal members working in the gold fields near Johannesburg.  Once last century platinum was discovered on tribal land, the tribe began to collect and invest royalties from the mining companies. Lebone College was built from mining royalties and is the nicest school we have seen in South Africa.  Today the Royal Bafokeng Tribe is one of the most successful tribal organizations in South Africa.  If you are a member of this tribe, they will pay all of your university education costs. And the tribe has many other programs intended to improve the lives of tribal members.  One night we assisted Special Olympics to host a dinner at the Royal Bafokeng Sports Complex which is home to a five star hotel, contains the practice area for the Platinum Stars professional soccer team (tribal owned), and is without question exceptionally nice.

The African Unity Cup was a treat for all of us because we got to meet some celebrities.  We met the Bafokeng king, a young man in his 30s.  We met the king’s mother called the Queen Mother. Once the king got wind of Peace Corps, he cornered our director to lobby for PCVs in Phokeng.  From Special Olympics we met CEO Tim Shriver, son of Sargent and Eunice Kennedy Shriver and President Kennedy’s nephew.  The tribe has hired a US basketball coach to work full-time with b-ball programs and so Special Olympics brought along Dikembe Mutombo who is a former NBA (shot blocking) star who grew up in the Congo. During a basketball clinic, a bunch of us PCVs 9 (orange shirts) posed next to the 7’2” Mutombo.  The top of my head as you see in this photo reached his armpit.


On Sunday there was the final boys soccer match held in the Platinum Stars home stadium in Phokeng.  Merideth was in charge of organizing the opening and closing procession.  When the athletes walked onto the field, they were each escorted by a young Special Olympian.  Here is a picture of Merideth entertaining three of the escorts before the entrance.  She loved being with these little guys because she felt like she was back in her pre-school classroom and they were adorable.


The African Unity Cup was a lot of fun.  It showed us an example of what a focused tribe can accomplish, let us help out with the Special Olympians, and we got to meet some celebrities.

Peace Corps transported us to Phokeng and back to Pretoria.  On the return trip we got a little off track and drove by Marikina where back in August 34 striking miners were shot by the police.  The strikers had gone having returned to work but the streets are still littered with strike debris. Because the miner’s wages are so poor, many of the locals can get better paying jobs elsewhere so the mining companies hire workers from other SA provinces.  Most of these itinerant workers live in hostels under marginal conditions.  If their families come, local housing is equally inadequate.  A miner’s wages are barely enough to subsist let alone get ahead or support a family. The mining companies are making decent profits that the miners feel should be reflected in their wages.  The strike demand was to raise typical salaries from less than $1000 per month to about $1500 per month so that miners could afford better homes and family support.  The miners also felt that their labor union was not acting in their best interest thus the strike was wildcat. Mine union officials were collecting large salaries and were seen as being in collusion with the mining company officials. Not long ago this strike was settled and the miners returned to work.

As the result of the Marikina Massacre a blue-ribbon investigation is now underway and is revealing some disturbing facts about police behavior during the incident.  In addition other miners and workers throughout SA have joined the platinum miners in striking.  The result is the country’s economy is facing some difficulties due to lost business revenue and President Zuma is pleading for workers to end their strikes and return to work so the economy can recover. 

October saw the start of the fourth school term.  Although the term ends December 7th, by the  first week of November any meaningful classroom instruction had stopped.  Educators are getting ready for the learners to write (take) exams.  Nobody besides us seems to think not having instruction or classes for five weeks is a problem.  To pass high school classes, the learners only need to score a 30% or better.  Someone who only gets one out of ten correct does not know the subject matter.  South African public education has a long way to go before it could be considered as effectively educating the population.
In August I started a new project involving some of the carpentry students at Mmashiko ABET (Adult Basic Education and Training) School – one of the four public schools here at the mission.  The Tsogo high school principal was out of functioning classroom chairs and tables.  Behind Tsogo was a small mountain of broken chairs and tables.  I had repaired chairs and tables at one of our primary schools earlier this year but in this case had the idea to recruit the services of a few of the trade school students.  It was arranged and during four days each week for the next three weeks three to five Mmashiko students and I worked on the chairs and tables.  When we finished we had repaired over 300 pieces and the crisis was averted.

Our next project involved replacing a plugged water line serving one of the buildings at Morekolodi Primary School.  The old ¼-inch water line was plugged with algae and buried under concrete driveway. We dug up the courtyard and installed about 80 meters of new pipeline.  We also went room to room at Morekolodi to fix broken shelves, chairs, desks, and whatever the teacher needed.  Our final project at Tsogo involved fixing the water tap used by the learners to replace a single muddy pit with two nicely paved faucets with catch basins.  Over the last three months working with these young men I have grown to know and like them all.  We have a fun time together.  They have taught me as much as I have learned from them

At the start of this project, the principals all agreed that the ABET learners needed to be compensated for their work.  Unfortunately, that was as far as the principals went with the idea. I had suggested giving the guys some cash and buying each of them a toolbox equipped with some basic tools.  One weekend in October we went to see a movie at Wonderpark Mall and wandered into a Home Depot like hardware store.  On a whim I asked the manager if he’d consider donating tools and to my surprise he agreed to consider it.  So I wrote him a letter and he  replied that he was trying to organize the donation.  The ABET term ends in two weeks and I hope this donation comes together. Here is a picture of three of the four workers – Oarabile Makgapela (that’s a twig not a cigarette), Johannes Madibana, and Alfred Moselakagomo.  Half or more of SA surnames start with the letter M.

 
Our other interesting time recently involved two weekend trips in October north to the Borakalalo Game Reserve to help other PCVs with their camps.  These camps are funded by a Peace Corps grant and involve about 60 students in the 12-15 year old range.  The first camp was just for girls and was focused on teaching girls leadership and empowerment skills.  It went well even when a few warthogs and monkeys appeared.  The campers slept in large circus-like tents and cooks prepared food in big cast iron pots over the open campfire.  The weather was good although sleeping on the hard ground was hard on our bones.

The second camp the following weekend was half boys and half girls with a focus on HIV/AIDS education.  Friday night and Saturday during the day went well.  But then the weather took a turn for the worse. 

Seeing a dark storm coming all of the boys went into their tent and the girls into their tent.  Then the wind started to blow - hard and strong.  It collapsed the girl’s huge tent forcing all of the girls to flee into the boy’s tent.  Merideth stayed with others in the cook tent bravely trying to keep it from collapsing.  After about an hour the rain and wind stopped giving everyone time to recoup for the night.  The girls moved their sleeping gear into the cooking tent and the rest of us retired for the night into our tents.  Adults were in four man tents and all the boys were in their large tent.

Unfortunately the bad weather wasn’t over.  Another storm front arrived from a new direction and in short order the entire campsite was flooded with water flowing over the ground. It was worse than the first storm.  The ground in the girl’s tent was completely flooded soaking all of their bedding. Merideth and I were huddled inside our tent trying to keep our stuff dry and the tent upright.  The bottom of the tent felt like a waterbed.  We could hear the girls screaming and people shouting but the rain was falling so hard it was fruitless to try to help. When this second storm stopped about midnight, the campsite looked like the scene following a tornado.  The situation was desperate.  Most of the bedding was soaking wet and there was nowhere dry for 60 kids and about 20 adults to sleep. 

The solution for most everyone was to hike to the next campground where the bathroom building offered a dry but clearly uncomfortable place for the night.  Merideth and I spent an equally uncomfortable night at the wiped out campsite. At dawn the day began dry and we started the task of sorting through piles of wet stuff and hanging it out wherever possible to dry. 

When the kids returned from sleeping in the bathrooms, they were hungry and cold.  We had heated up water a large cast iron kettle to make tea and to prepare jungle oats (oatmeal) for breakfast.  Unfortunately the distribution of sugar for the tea got out of hand and all of the sugar was used.  There was none left for the oatmeal.  This shouldn’t have been a problem except the three women cooks refused to make the jungle oats without sugar.  No amount of threatening, pleading, or begging would change their minds. The kids didn’t care about the sugar.  

This was an example of outright refusal by someone to do their job.  We have seen this before and each time it baffles us.  The only explanation is that losing your job because you perform poorly is rare.  So why worry?  Managers are unwilling to fire someone for not doing their job.  They don’t realize it’s their job to fire deadbeat employees.  As long as this type of practice continues, SA will never operate effectively or efficiently.

Peace Corps to the rescue!  With a little consultation to the directions, Merideth soon had a ten gallon kettle of jungle oats cooking away and in short order the kids were eagerly lined up to eat.  The small problem of bland oatmeal was solved with typical American ingenuity when  chocolate spread (meant for Some-mores the night before) was spooned onto the oatmeal.  

It was amazing how good these kids were throughout this nightmare.  None of the kids cried or got angry.  They just took it all in without batting an eye.  For many, it was their first experience camping.  Hopefully, their future trips will be drier.

Starting in July I took on myself to help out with the mission water system.  It took me awhile to figure out how it operated and gradually I worked to fix broken valves, clean dirty tanks, simplify operation, and run the system efficiently.  In August I wrote a memorandum to the parish priest outlining a number of recommendation I felt were necessary for the water system to become viable and self-supporting.  An operator, meters, user charges, and improved controls were suggested.  When October came and the priest had not responded in any way to my recommendation, I gave him notice I was done because he had totally ignored my suggestions.  So as of last week, I am no longer helping.  (Ya-hoo!) The priest’s failure to make any decision is not uncommon here in South Africa.  Often long discussions are held on an issue but no action is taken.  The need to address a problem with action is forgotten once everyone is allowed to express their views.  Consequently problems persist and never get fixed.  What they need here are effective managers not aid or money.

A bright spot happened last week when after hearing that the US Presidential race was neck to neck, Barrack Obama won.  We can truthfully say we never came across a South African who didn’t support Obama.  As one of the other PCVs said, “With Obama’s re-election, we can now return to the US in 2013.”

Merideth is going to give her Grade 7 English final next week which will finish her English teaching responsibilities for the year.  She has grown very attached to these 75 kids who will be moving to other schools at the start of the next school year in January. In 2013 she won’t be teaching English like she did this year because we will leave partway through the year.  Her school has already identified a teacher to take over the Grade 7 English classes.

 Some of Merideth’s learners recently seriously told her that they thought they’d been delivered to their family in a package.  So she decided it would be good to have a few days on human development during the down time after the final exam and the end of the term.  It’s planned that  she will take the girls and I will take the boys.  Sexuality is not something SA parents normally discuss with their pre-teen children.  We located an excellent book to help us approach the topics.  We’re hoping for an open and frank discussion with the students so that they have the knowledge to make the right choices. 

Another exciting thing recently happened for some of Merideth’s students when they were given the chance to apply to attend a new LEAP school starting up in nearby Ga-rankua.  All of the Grade 7 learners took a test and those that scored well attended a weekend camp where about twelve of the learners were selected to attend the LEAP school next year.  LEAP schools are academic-focused, privately-funded schools that aim to accelerate the math and science achievement of disadvantaged village students.  They have small class sizes, a rigorous curriculum, and strict behavior standards.  The LEAP school in Ga-rankua is the sixth such school in South Africa and presents a wonderful opportunity for these students. 

So the next couple of months will see us finishing out the school term and going into the “festive season” which is Christmas and New Years.  Thanksgiving this year for us is planned to be a trip to Polokwane on the weekend to have dinner with a bunch of other PCVs.  We’re looking forward having some important visitors and doing some exciting travelling during the festive time.  Life will return to normal life by mid-January by which time we will be on the Peace Corps backstretch with just 8 months remaining and coasting toward the finish line in early September.

And that’s the way it was.