A Very Busy Week

I recall that when I was teaching in America, the end of year always had a very busy feeling to it. Teachers and students alike tried to wrap things up amidst a traditional smorgasbord of extra assemblies and activities. Oddly, that seems to be happening here as well.

Our Books for Africa delivery!

First, on Tuesday, we took one of the last big steps to greatly enhance our school library. All the books that we have been raising money to receive finally made it here! The Books for Africa shipping container arrived in our shopping town of Nquthu after having been unloaded off the boat in Durban just the day before. The PCV that organized the fundraising and delivery of the shipment, Liz, was to meet the truck in town and then help the driver navigate his way to her village school for unloading.

The six PCVs in our area as well as dozens of school children from the primary and secondary schools in the village anxiously awaited the arrival of the truck at the primary school. We only had a few hours to unload just over five hundred and fifty rather heavy boxes into an empty classroom before the delivery service would start to charge extra! We really thought it was going to be impossible, but by some miracle, we finished in what had to be record time. Never

Our book moving brigade.

underestimate the power of a brigade. I may or may not have injured myself in the process, but I healed quickly, so it doesn’t really matter. Each volunteer involved is expecting to receive about 23 boxes containing 800-1000 books total for his or her library. We are all certainly looking forward to getting those books sorted and put on the shelves!

The Battlefield PCVs with over 550 boxes of books!

Parents are set in the tent for the ceremony.

Next up was the Grade R Graduation and Grade 7 Farewell function held on Thursday. It was almost too weird that this was my second time around in experiencing this occasion. At this point, I am an old pro at school functions and know exactly what to expect. I also know what I can busy myself with to make it look like I am doing my part without having to do my part in the kitchen. I really do hate cooking…as well as peeling, chopping, grating, stirring, slicing, mixing, and any of the other things that the women in the kitchen are doing. Pass. Instead I do things like print and copy the program, prepare plates of snacks, and walk around with my camera acting like there are lots of important things I need to photograph. They fall for it every time ;-)

The Grade R learners parade into the ceremony.

One of my favorite parts about last year’s farewell function, was that each grade had a group of boys and a group of girls that organized themselves to perform short cultural dances or songs in traditional dress. This year’s function had none of that, which I thought was a shame. The rest of the function went pretty much the same as the year before.  The students and parents assembled in their designated areas of the tent. Grade R came in wearing small graduation caps and gowns over fancy dresses or suits. Then Grade 7 paraded in wearing what I can only describe as outfits fit for prom and with hair to match. Most of the girls had gone to town the day before to have their hair done up in braids or other weaves. For many this was a first. The rest of the ceremony was full of somewhat inspiring speeches, fairly lively music, and a rather lengthy process to present certificates to the grade R learners. This was immediately followed by the typical function meal served to special guests, parents, and the learners in grade 7. As usual, the dirty dishes were piled up in the kitchen for clean-up the next day. Another Zulu function in the books.

Grade 7, ready for their farewell function.

What a week! I’ll be interested to see what else is in store as the school year wraps up.

White Wedding

Yesterday, I was up early (nothing unusual) to get myself ready to attend the wedding of our school’s Administrative Clerk (aka Main Office Secretary) and one of the grade 6 teachers. The whole event was a pretty big deal since they planned both a traditional ceremony and a modern ceremony, called a White Wedding (which I was told by a teacher is called this because the bride wears a white dress, not because the idea came from white people.)

I met my principal at the Shoprite in town so she could drive me to the hall where the whole event would take place. Quick side note: despite the many discussions we had about this plan, I was still totally unclear as to when she was going to pick me up. I kept asking for a time, and she would say things like, when I am done getting ready I will come to the Shoprite, or when the taxi drops you off give me a call. Yes, well, those parts seem obvious, but what TIME should we aim for those things to happen. Turns out it didn’t matter. In the end, I got to town, went to the bank to do my one errand, and just as I was finished, she called to say she was there to pick me up. I guess I really should have learned at this point to stop worrying about those types of things. Back to the story. When I met her in the car (around 10am) she said it was best for us to buy some chips (aka fries) as there was no telling what the day would bring and when we would next eat. Good call. After we finished our “snack” we were off to the community hall where the entire event (ceremony and reception) took place.

The ceremony and reception hall.

As soon as I walked in, I knew I was in for something pretty spectacular. Nearly everything I noticed paralleled a wedding I had been to in America at some point, but it also included that Zulu-twist. The hall was massive and decorated to the nines with turquoise, silver, and white gossamer. Luckily we got there just in time for the whole thing to start, and only a few minutes after I took my seat at a table near the very front (with most of the other teachers from school) the bridesmaids started to come down the aisle. They were wearing matching turquoise dresses covered in feathers with silver high heels. And they didn’t just walk down the aisle, they danced a sort of cha-cha style dance that took something like five minutes per girl to make the trip while some extremely

The bride and groom wave to the crowd
as they walk down the aisle.

lively music played in the background. Once all four bridesmaids and the maid of honor had entered, the groomsmen took their turn. Then the bride and groom walked down the aisle together – and then than walked back up and down again, this time waving to everyone. There was a program of events on the table but I really don’t think we followed it. In no particular order, here are the things I remember most:

• Nearly every word that was spoken or sung was done so at the highest possible volume you could imagine.
• Because there was so much electricity being used for microphones and keyboards and lights, there was a fuse that kept blowing out, and they would repair it and then it would blow again. Eventually they figured out the maximum number of things that could be on at one time and still keep power.
• People would spontaneously come up to the front and dance to the music.

• There was a point when the bride and groom re-enacted the moment of the original proposal.
• At another point the two sat down at a small table in the front and signed paperwork while a special choir was singing.

• I think there were vows spoken.

• They definitely cut the cake and then made a big deal about presenting different layers of the cake to the bride and groom’s families.

• Someone gave a speech titled “words of wisdom” which lasted over an hour and I later came to find out included important tips like: always have a meal ready for your husband or else he will hire a cook who will be more beautiful than you and they will run away together. I got the translation from the young teacher at the school who had a scowl on her face during most of the speech. It was perhaps best that I could not understand most of what was going on.
• There was a request for donations from the audience – for any amount of money – then the music began playing (blaring really) and everyone in the hall got up and paraded to the front to drop cash in a basket. Just an idea for anyone out there planning a wedding.
• Things were going so late that the food service started before the whole ceremony was really over which made for just a little bit of chaos.
• The food was, no joke, pretty much the same as every other Zulu function I have been to. This is pretty much a one-menu sort of culture. Luckily it is a good menu and I enjoyed my chicken, beef, butternut, coleslaw, beetroot, green salad, bean salad, and potato salad dishes with fruit and cream dessert immensely.

Almost immediately people finished eating, the place was clearing out. We did anyway. I’m not sure if there was a big exit spectacle, but I do know that there was more to the ceremony at the groom’s house. But as it was getting late (it was about 5pm), and I would have no way home, I was never planning to be in attendance for that part. This was my end of the line. Which was good, because I was quite tired. I am, however, quite glad that I got a chance to see one “white wedding” in all its glory.

Happy Halloween Hailstorm

This year's Halloween decorations at home.

Once again, I had the best of intentions to “share American culture” by celebrating Halloween at school on the 31st with the kids. But the week sort of got away from me. One of our staff members lost his eldest child to a heart attack late last week and we went to visit his family to express our condolences on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, a variety of visitors stopped by the school for an hour or so in the afternoon to visit the school library. So by Thursday, I had nothing prepared and it came and went like any other day.

A brief hailstorm was about the only
thing interesting this Halloween.

In some parts of South Africa (the first world parts), Halloween is a thing the same as in the United States. When I was in Pretoria earlier this month, I saw decorations with pumpkins, ghosts, and witches for sale at CNA. And the guys that run the backpackers where I always stay said that they will get a few trick-or-treaters in the neighborhood where they live. In the village, not so much. Witchcraft and ghosts are not something the Zulus think about in a light-hearted manner, so it is best to be careful with what is introduced about new holidays. I figured I would mainly focus on the costumes and candy. Since I can’t say, “I’ll do it next year,” instead I’ll say, “I’ll leave a note for the next volunteer.”

Instead, I did my best to decorate my hut with a few things sent from America. Otherwise, I enjoyed the afternoon hailstorm that rolled in right after I arrived home from school. Such lovely weather here at times. Hope everyone else enjoyed a candy-filled day!

Library Award and Prize

The school library is fully functional for all grades.

For those of you that are paying attention, you will remember my ranting about the library review process that the school underwent at the beginning of August. A group from the district came in and told us that we were doing everything wrong. Well, not long after that, a group from the province came and said we were doing a decent enough job and left us some notes on how we could improve. The visit was part of the School Library Excellence Awards pilot program. I’m not entirely sure how we got involved, but it was nice to receive the visit.

When I arrived at school this past Monday morning, my principal greeted me and told me that she had received a call over the weekend that we were being invited to Durban the next day to receive an award for our overall score in the process. I was a bit surprised. We hadn’t heard anything since they came in mid-August, and it seemed rather odd to get the news via a phone call on the weekend. But then again, this is South Africa – not sure why I am surprised at anything at this point.

Unfortunately, I was told that I was not allowed to attend. When my principal phoned the district to let them know who would be coming with her, the district manager said that he expected a full-time teacher to come, not the volunteer. I said nothing. I just couldn’t. I know my principal. I know she wanted me to go with her. But I also know that she will never argue with the district manager and there was nothing to be done. I surprised even myself with how well I handled it. I shrugged it off, saying it was fine. Since I had missed school nearly the whole week before for a visit to the dentist, it was better not to miss any more days of school anyway. Funny enough, the teacher the principal asked to go instead begged not to, but in the end, she had no choice, and she and the principal were on their way to Durban at 5am the next day.

Our award sits center shelf.

When the principal came to school on Wednesday with the framed certificate (I cannot tell you how many teachers commented on how impressive it was that it was framed) she immediately asked where in the library we could put our important award. I said I was sure there was a shelf somewhere that could be cleared for its display. To be honest, I recognized at once that it was simply a “certificate of participation.” There was nothing about it that said we were any better than any other school. But I didn’t care. The school was so happy and so proud of it. I think that it is so rare that they get any sort of positive feedback from the DOE that something like this made them feel really good and that their school and their work are not invisible.

A plethora of new non-fiction books was the prize!

Much to my surprise, this award had another unforeseen positive consequences. The “prize” that came with it was two huge boxes of brand new books for the library. Really good books, in fact. Non-fiction children’s books; something I scarcely thought I would ever get my hands on. The Natural Science shelf is practically full! Overall, I think that we received about 175 new books, nearly all of which were fantastic. I pulled a few out to give to the grade R and grade 1 teachers because it seemed like they would be better served in their hands. And I found a book about aliens that was sort of creepy and I questioned how well it would go over if kids took it home. So yes, I did a little censoring. Otherwise though, the books were amazing, and I was excited to get them recorded in the accession register and on the shelves. All it took was a piece of paper in a frame to get them!

In the library with our Library Excellence Award.

Home Redecorating

The new covers for the tables and chairs
in my "sitting area."

After a quick trip to Pretoria this week to get some cavities filled, I was feeling good and looking forward to having the whole weekend at home. I decided it was time to do a little cleaning and redecorating in the hut. A few weeks back I purchased some traditional Zulu fabric to make new covers for the cushions that sit on my two chairs, as well as table clothes to cover the two water buckets I use as side tables. The setup has been around for a while, but it needed a little updating. One of the grade R teachers at school happens to be my neighbor, and also happens to be a bit of a seamstress. My family recommended that if I wanted things sewn, I should take them to her. I dropped off the fabric, cushions and buckets a couple of weeks ago, so on Saturday I decided it was worth a visit to see if my order was complete. It was! I brought everything home, made a few adjustments (because that is just how I am) and invited my family to see the new “sitting area.” I must say it looks quite nice. If Home and Garden magazine ever does a “deep, rural” edition, I should really make the cover.

The kitchen area as viewed from the front doorway.

My wardrobe and work area as viewed from the front doorway.

Here is what I see when I look up!

Some of my new card and photo collages.

I was so inspired by the new décor that arrived on Saturday, that on Sunday I decided it was time to do something about the what was hanging on the walls. Since I first arrived, I have hung all the cards, pictures and letters that people have posted to me around the hut. There was no rhyme or reason to where they were put, and there was also a distinct lack of pictures of anything I had done since I arrived here in South Africa. I had time to remedy that second issue, as I was able to visit the local CNA (like a CVS) to print out 20 or so 4x6 pictures of things I have done since I arrived. After carefully considering all the new and old memorabilia I had to work with, I decided to create seven different themed posters to display the different types of cards and pictures I

Cards and pictures I have received from back home.

had. One poster is Christmas / Holiday cards from last year; one is birthday cards from April; one is a poster of pictures and cards family members have sent; there are actually two posters of pictures and cards friends from America have sent; one is cards celebrating miscellaneous holidays – a few Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter, Valentine’s Day, etc; and the last is the poster of all the pictures I printed of my time as a Peace Corp volunteer. There are pictures of me with the family I stayed with during training, as well as my current host family, pictures of random things I have done at school, hiking adventures I have gone on in my village, my trips around South Africa, Lesotho, and Namibia, and the recent Mid-Service Training we had in Pretoria a few weeks back.

When I brought in my family to see the new decorations, they were overjoyed, especially with the collage of pictures from my time as a volunteer. They kept asking if they could keep things after I left. I said of course, but they pointed to nearly every single item and asked individually if it was something that they could keep. I told them that there were one or two cards from family and friends that I wanted to take home, but otherwise, they could keep all the pictures and most every card. I mean, I am a pretty sentimental person, but even I have limits. I don’t think the card from my sister that says Happy Easter is going to go anywhere but the dustbin when I unpack, so it may as well stay with people that seem to enjoy its existence a little more. At the end of the weekend, the house felt like new place; and in some ways, the homiest place I have ever lived.

Problems with Communication

I’m not sure if I have mentioned this before, but I never had a smartphone in the United States. My Motorola Razr lasted many years, and when I accidentally put it in the washing machine, I was able to find a used one on Amazon to replace it. When I got to South Africa, though, all the cool kids in the Peace Corps had a Blackberry so I figured I better buy one too. Bad move; mostly because it is a piece of junk. Well, at least the one that I bought was a piece of junk. It was fine at the beginning, and admittedly, it suffered a bit of abuse here and there, but it didn’t take long to start running slowly and freezing up randomly. Not long after I returned from Namibia it started to get a lot worse; the screen would go white and then just shut off completely. Also, the button in the center that serves as the mouse took a minute or two to respond or it simply did not work at all without restarting the whole device. By the time I came back from Mid-Service Training it was all but a paperweight. Another volunteer lent me a Nokia he bought when his Blackberry was on the fritz, so at least I had something that allowed me to check my email, check the weather on the internet, and communicate with other volunteers using Whatsapp (which, by the way, is a handy way to text back and forth with me, should you be interested. It uses data, but I don’t think too much.)

At one point, my Blackberry was up and running
it the remote deserts of Namibia. Those were the days.

The Blackberry was handy for a lot of things, though, so I didn’t want to just give up on it. BBM is nice, but not that important. The bigger thing was being able to download and upload documents and other files much more easily via email. And the Google Maps app was useful, as was the Twitter app. So not long after I got back from Pretoria, I took it to my shopping town, to a local “electronics shop,” and had it looked at. It seemed like the main problem at this point was the center button, which had completely stopped working. The guy at the shop agreed and replaced the button while I waited for about 15 minutes for the equivalent of $10. When he turned it back on, it appeared to be as good as new. How exciting! Not for long, sadly. The Blackberry was back to its old tricks after a few days, so it seemed the problem ran deeper than the hardware. I switched my SIM card back to the Nokia and figured I would give the Blackberry a rest until I had a chance to take it to Pretoria and try to “get it sorted” as they say here.

Unfortunately, that did not work either. When I took a trip back to Pretoria for a visit to the dentist, I made a stop at another “electronics shop” for a software update that I really thought would do the trick. No such luck. Boo! This guy suggested that maybe I get a new battery; another volunteer suggested maybe I get a new SIM card. But I was done at that point. I tried my best to fix things up; it didn’t work; time to move on. Let me say that I am not the least bit sorry that the company is looking at financial ruin. I look forward to getting an iPhone when I get back to America.

Battling Insomnia

It is frustrating when you can’t fall asleep. It is equally frustrating when you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back to sleep. By the end of September, it seemed like one or both of these things were happening to me on a nightly basis. Even though I would be tired (read: exhausted) at the end of the day, I would toss and turn to no avail. On the nights that I did fall asleep, very often I would wake up between 3:00 and 3:30am and not be able to fall back to sleep again. It was like my body got itself into a bad routine and could not shake itself out of it.

As much as I tried, I didn’t seem to be able to solve the problem on my own. So I was grateful when the PC Medical Officer agreed to give me some medication to assist in getting me back on track. I took only half a pill starting the day after our September training, as well as changed a few things about my nightly routine, and it made all the difference. For starters, I made myself go to bed at the same time every night: 9:00pm. There was a time that I would have said that was impossible; I couldn’t possibly stay awake past 8:00pm or even 7:30pm. Now, the goal was to keep myself completely awake until nine, in the hopes that I would then be tired enough to fall asleep. Reading and writing tended to put me to sleep quickly, so I started to watch a TV episode or two. I had resisted having any media on my computer for the first year of Peace Corps, for a variety of reasons. Not having electricity meant watching anything would drain the battery all the faster. And given my slightly obsessive nature, I thought it might be difficult for me to watch just one episode of anything. I wanted to avoid becoming one of those volunteers that hid in their room after school and on the weekends and watched episode after episode of whatever they had. But at our Mid-Service Training, I finally broke down and “borrowed” two television shows from other volunteers: Parks and Rec (which I loved in America) and The Newsroom (which I never saw until I arrived here, but find highly entertaining). So I had a few things to help keep me awake at night, and my lack of electricity kept me from being too obsessed.

The other major change to my routine was that I no longer kept my phone next to my bed at night. Too often when I would wake up in the middle of the night I would check my email or twitter or look up something on the internet, that sort of thing. It really did nothing to put me back to sleep, and usually made me feel even more awake. So before I went to bed, I would turn off the phone and put it on the other side of the room to keep me from reaching over half-consciously and using it.

The real key to my battle, though, was the Ambien. Within ten minutes of taking just half a pill I was out like a light. The couple of times that I was with other people when I took the medication, I was told I was quite hilarious to speak to. I would answer questions basically in gibberish and more or less fall asleep in the middle of a sentence. Neither of which, I remember. But by the end of the first week of October, I was back on track. I was sleeping through the night and not waking up until 5am or 5:30am. That first weekend of October, I was brave enough to go to sleep without taking anything to help. I woke up around 4:30am, which was not necessarily ideal, but certainly better than 3am. A few days later I was sleeping until 5am without a problem. If I did wake up in the middle of the night, I was also able to fall back to sleep. Battle won, and I am happy to say that there haven’t been any problems since. It’s funny how helpful our body clock can be when it is working but how frustrating it can be when it is not. Glad mine is back on track.