The Mystery Case of Why No One is at School Today

Walking to school today, I saw no children outside- in their uniforms but not in class. Unusual, for sure.
There was no singing in the morning.
None of the teachers' cars were present as I rolled in.
There were no children hanging upside-down dangerously from already-bending-too-far-tree-branches.
There were no dogs sniffing around the grounds in search of spare bits the zero-nutrient snacks sold by the hawkers just outside the school grounds. Nor were there chickens.
There were no children playing around the water pump that only has water every once in a while.
There was no one working on the new pit toilets.
There were no teachers in the staff room singing as they grade their papers.
There were no classes left unattended and chaotic.
There were no children to still be slightly scared of me and greet me shyly ... even after I've been here for a year and a half.
No belts being used as weapons, and no need for me to scold little boys to put them back on properly.
No grocery store bags, rice or mealie bag backpacks.
No "hello, how are you?"s followed by bashful faces buried in hands.
Nothing.
No one.

No text messages returned, no one to answer my phonecalls ...

Why the heck wasn't there anyone at school today????

It's That Time of the Year Again!

That's right.
It's time for me to shamelessly beg for donations for KLM. I've lost so much shame here.
It's time for the Longtom Marathon, and I need to raise $100. I know that we're all a bit tight these days, so I am not asking for much. $10 if you can spare it, more if you can, less if you can't. I'll even accept $1. I will. I'll accept it with extreme gratitude.

How to help me out:
Go to the KLM website ( www.klm-foundation.org )to make a donation- just click on the 'donate' photo. Make sure to put my name ("Megan," if you've forgotten!) in the white box where it asks for the Longtom person you want to sponsor.


As a thank you, I am planning to collect vials of my sweat during the race and send them to those who donated- so after you donate, go on and shoot me an email with your mailing address!

I'm a Lazy Blogger. Must Be Because I'm a Woman.

You may have noticed that I haven't updated my blog in a while.

Sorry.

I just spent this weekend at another PCV's site doing a Life Skills training with her students at the FET college. They were an incredible group of kids, and I had a blast doing it.
Arlean set the training up and was looking to have sessions from 7am to 10pm. I talked her out of this plan, using the excuse that "the kids wont be able to absorb the information," when in reality I just plum didn't want to facilitate that much.
What we ended up doing was pretty perfect.
We started out with HIV information- the same we did at my high school. Then we focused on communication, decision-making, goals, and then on gender issues.

The gender roles session was ... interesting.
I found myself getting a little worked up at one point when one of the males said something to the effect of, "while men and women are 50/50 in the eyes of the law, we all know that men are still better than women." I lost it a little bit, which was very unprofessional of me! I challenged him by saying, "you think you're better than me? You just said you're better than me. Look me in the eye and tell me you're better than me."
I said it with a laugh, but I was definitely far more aggressive than I would have liked to have been. He avoided meeting my eyes and kind of stammered, "not ... right now ..."

I felt bad, I was a bit of a bully. But like hell I am going to take that kind of disrespect from a kid!

Later, another young man stood up and said a piece about how wrong it is that a man could go and claim he is better than his mother just because of his gender, even after she birthed him and raised him. How anyone who claims that they are better than anyone is better than no one. His comments were met with applause from the group.


One thing that I have noticed that has been met with great resistance every time we do a gender session, is whether or not women can dig graves. This has been resisted by both men and women. No one here has ever seen women participate in grave digging during the funerals, so many people can't even fathom that a woman could do such a thing. I was once told that, "women can dig a hole, but not a grave."
It took quite a while to convince the group this time around that women are physically capable of digging a grave (though it may take longer than a man- unless you're my mom who could probably outdig plenty of dudes.) One young man said, "if a woman can dig the foundation of a house, why can't she dig a grave?"
Eventually, most came around to accept that it is physically possible for women to do such a thing, though they weren't likely to see it happen or encourage it. That's fine, whatever!
The point was to demonstrate what culture tends to dictate. What culture tells us we can and can't do on account of our gender. It's clear that these gender roles are in a great transition right now.

At one point in the gender discussion, I compared the oppression of black people to the oppression of women. That seemed to make an impression. Clearly the oppression of black people was wrong, and white people said much of the same crap that many males say about women. "They're inferior in this capacity or that capacity," "they can't do this or that as well as we can," "blub blub blub, blah blah blah, I'm full of crap in this way or in that way."


Anyway. I guess my point was that the session was pretty interesting.

I bring all this up, mostly because I find myself becoming more and more a feminist. Some of it is sparked by pure outrage at the oppression that women here suffer- the constant physical threat, the way that men will often grab women on the street as means of "flirting," the all too often abandonment of women once they're impregnated.

I find that I often have to fight my own mind. It can be so easy to blame males, to be angry and hate men for all the crap that they pull. It can be hard to remember that they're suffering, too. They're also being oppressed by the same roles and expectations that lead them to oppress others.
And then, of course, there are some incredible men here. Sometimes at our soccer games, some of my teammates will bring their children along. They'll tickle them, teach them how to kick the ball, give them love and attention. Little else here makes me happier than seeing a dad spending time with his child.

I don't really know where I'm going with this entry, I just felt like I had to post one since it's been so long.

2009: Already Ridiculous

It's already been a hell of an eventful year, and we're only one week in. I'll spare everyone the details, because it is my suffering and glory, not yours. You can't have them. Get your own.

I will talk about my past couple days, though. I helped Erin run a leadership camp. We went to a pleasant little place with 35 kids from two schools. It was very likely the first trip away from home for many. There seem to be a couple of firsts- first cans of pop, first time splashing around in a pool (holy cow, was that a nightmare for both of us former camp counselors). Thankfully, most kids displayed the appropriate amount of fear.

At the end of the workshop, we had some special guests come in. The South African Police Service. They came to give a talk on the dangers of drugs.
Part of their talk included giving the children some "sweets"- actual bags of marijuana. There the children were, sitting there- sniffing, fondling, and thoroughly examining their own little bags of weed distributed to them by the SAPS. Granted, they were not theirs to keep- but I am not convinced that they had counted how many bags they gave out, nor were they impenetrable.


Over all, I felt that it was generally quite a successful presentation, and the children learned a lot.




And finally, there was a really sweet dog at the resort:

I'm at the office in Pretoria right now. I have an ear infection. I can't hear out of my right ear, which was such a shame a few minutes ago as I only half heard the dude who sat next to me at the Pigly Wigly talk to me about how psychiatrists were responsible for the Holocaust.

I was sitting there at the table, reading my all-time favorite newspaper, the Daily Sun, as I shook my head in disgust over an article about some of the horrific injustices of the world. He took that opportunity to ridicule me for reading newspapers at all. Then he proceeded to tell me about how Hitler had 6 psychiatrists, Mugabe has 3, and everyone who has ever started a war only did so on account of Big Pharma. I debated whether or not I should tell him that I am planning to join the field of psychology, which he deemed "psychiatry's little brother."

It was all very interesting, and stupid, and a little bit scary. This guy had such an intense and passionate hatred for psychiatrists and psychologists. He even went so far as to say that he didn't consider them human. At that point, I decided I should just listen, and let him spew his vitriol rather than to bother trying to reason with him.

Afterwards, he reached out to shake my hand. In retrospect, I can't figure out if I hesisted to take it because he was crazy and probably would want me dead if he had any idea who I was and plan to be, or if it was because he had a horrible case of pinkeye that he kept rubbing at throughout our conversation.



Anyway, I'm in the city now. We just came from Durban, where we helped out with the training on the Life Skills Manual (my Peace Corps Bible). I'll be serving at a meditation course starting on the 12th. It'll be good for me to sit again and recenter myself.

I've got a lot of other crap on my mind lately, but I've got to sort through it all before I put any of it up here. So ... give me a few days, yeah?

The Big Event

Friday was the big event. It was the culmination of all the Peer Mentors' effort in the form of our last session on how the HI virus is transmitted, a celebration of sorts, and a testing drive. I was a little skeptical at first, but it turned out to be a giant success.

I invited my APCD, who is more or less my Peace Corps boss, to come to the event. I also invited some other volunteers to the event to come and help. Four PCVs came over the course of the campaign, Mike and A.J. came beforehand to help with the kids' training, and Katherine and Adam came to help with the event.

The event wasn't quite as important as all the sessions the kids had been going into the classrooms and giving. I wanted Lydia to see a session. And she saw one, she did!

We needed to combine two classes, which we've had to do all this week on account of scheduling problems. ("Oh, by the way, Lerato, the learners are going to be writing examinations this week." WHAT?????? AGH!!!!!!) So we had a classroom packed with students, and we had teachers (who were generally very flexible and considerate of our sessions) that would come in and pass out papers or make kids come up and get them during the middle of the kids' presentation. People were coming in and out of the classroom the entire time. It was CHAOS.
AND THERE WAS A DOG OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM (more on this later).

Regardless, the Peer Mentors handled it with grace and class. Much better than I did. According to Adam's account I was pretty obviously fuming at least one point during the session. All I can say is that it was a good thing that the kids were in charge and not me!

So Lydia got to witness this typical chaos and she seemed to think it went fabulously. Well ... it did, to be honest. Through all the ridiculous amount of distraction and absurdity, it was obvious that the class was getting the information.
I feel confident that the majority of the students at Onkabetse Thuto High School now clearly understand how HIV is transmitted.
And more importanly, they know how to protect themselves.

After we concluded the sessions it was time for the event.
We were originally supposed to start after school until the day before someone said to me, "but if you start after school, everyone will be gone! We've got to start after short break."
AGH!
Okay, so I got permission to start around 10 to 11, after the kids had finished cleaning their classrooms.

10 rolls around, still cleaning. 11 rolls around ... most kids are standing around and not doing anything. Why can't we start? Oh, there's one classroom that refuses to clean their room.
At this point ... I'm stressing out. We've spent a lot of money and done a lot of work, and I have no idea if we'll even get this thing off the ground.
12 o'clock, the principal gives us permission to start.
The music turns on, and all is right and well in the world.

Erin, who I love so dearly, and who has helped so tremendously, started the day off by announcing that she was going to test for HIV. Soon after, many students followed her, and there was a LONG LINE of kids waiting to get tested for HIV.







We kicked off our event with a candlelighting ceremony for those who have passed on because of HIV/AIDS. The wind was strong, so uh, it wasn't so successful. But we tried. We tried.

Then we went on to do a condom demonstration. We had a couple of representatives from LoveLife, which is a fantastic organization (that I hope to work with in the future), who helped to get the energy going by getting some volunteers to come up and show how to put a condom on.

After a couple of volunteers, one who used his TEETH (eek! don't do this), one of my Peer Mentors came up to do it properly. And I must say, he did a damn good job and was very professional.



After the condom demonstration, we had a two poets read their poems, some jika ma jika (a dance competition) and then we did a little HIV Jeopardy.



Just a quick note- remember earlier when I mentioned the dog? Well, you may have noticed it in most of the pictures I've posted. If you didn't notice, you can do a little Where's Waldo'ing.
Anyway, that dog, Dookie, is Erin's dog who followed her to school. Over a half hour walk. He stuck around the whole time. He slept outside the door of the classroom we were teaching in, and even found his way into the office while we were eating lunch. It was completely absurd. He also terrorized some donkeys, so that was cool.

Enough about the dog.

The main point of the event was the testing. Overall, we had 37 high school students who got tested for HIV, and there was a waiting list for at least 23 more kids to get tested. This way exceeded my expectations, and I am beyond pleased with the way things turned out, even if it did almost give me an ulcer.

Onkabetse HIV Awareness Campaign

This week has easily been one of the most gratifying weeks of my life.
My Peer Mentors have put in a lot of hard work towards getting ready for this HIV education campaign, and it is very clear.
It helps that this kids are incredibly bright and gifted in a variety of ways- but the hard work and dedication ... that's been the key.

It has been a real pleasure to go into all the classrooms and watch as these guys so easily demand respect out of their peers by using their skillful facilitation and passing on their solid understanding of HIV. They set the tone when talking about sex and anatomy by being super professional and demonstrating a level of maturity that has blown me away!

I have witnessed several "a-ha" moments that good teachers become so addicted to seeing on the faces of their students. I truly believe, with the bottom of my heart, that our combined efforts have really set a lot of learners straight about many of the myths and facts that are going around the community- and there certainly are some interesting myths going around.

There have been a lot of interesting comments and questions that have come from the classes. Some kids want to know, is sex a form of exercise? - To which I answer, "why yes ... sex CAN be a sort of exercise- but so can running in front of a train! ALWAYS USE A CONDOM!" CONDOMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One of the most rewarding moments of the campaign was after my kids ran one of their amazing sessions, and a young man from grade 12 came up to me afterward, thanked us for what we were doing, and asked if he could join in the efforts. YES! Yes. Yes, my dear friend, you can.

It's really encouraging to hear the kids at the school talking about the campaign- and they are. They're excited about learning about the virus, and I think they're really excited to be talking frankly about sex.

It has become so incredibly clear that an Abstinence Only form of education would be so completely ineffectual, preachy and ridiculous. Through the questions the kids have asked, it is ABUNDANTLY clear that a large portion of kids are having sex. Behavior change is hard enough as it is ... to try to get them to stop having sex when they've already started is a far cry from realistic. I want these kids wearing condoms. Condoms!!!!
We will support the kids who are choosing not to have sex by affirming their behavior and encouraging abstinence as their safest and most reliable protection against HIV, other STIs, and "falling pregnant."
By the way, the term "falling pregnant," while referring to a very serious situation that can range anywhere between devastation and jubilation, is a rather hilariously tragic term.



One of the biggest, hottest topics in the classrooms is always the topic of testing.
People are terrified of testing. And indeed, I can't very well blame them.
I remember taking an HIV test myself in order to join Peace Corps, and it was completely uncomfortable. And I cannot even think of a single time in my life where I may have been exposed to HIV- but the fear still resonated in the core of my being. "What if I DO have HIV? What then?"
I could hardly imagine the kind of fear that some of these kids would be facing. It is obvious that many of these kids have been engaging in unprotected sex. The infection rate among adults in the village is around 40%.
There is ample reason to be terrified.

We have also been promoting a healthy lifestyle, and been working hard on encouraging people to support those living with HIV- and they've really seemed to respond to the message. We've been working towards addressing the stigma of testing. I think this generation has been inundated with information about HIV- this week has been focused on trying to help them sort out the good information from the bad. They've been made aware of the fact that HIV is a problem in this country- it's been our impetus to make sure that people recognize that this problem is one that they need to own themselves.

One thing has become pronounced- the kids in the Peer Mentors have definitely owned the battle against HIV as their own battle.


During almost every class, after we've announced that we're putting on a testing drive at the school, there's been a wild reaction. A lot of "Aw hell nah!"s, and a lot of other, assorted, mixed reactions. It's got the kids talking. They're talking to their teachers about their fears, their reluctance to know their status ... it's a big deal.


This next week will be more hard work.

We'll see if we can pull this event off.
Wish us luck.