For the Days When I Forget

Sitting in a traditional Zulu hut with Leadership Academy women

People laugh at me all the time. Yes, at me. I say the world’s dumbest sentences. (“I need to wash the bread” is a common one because the words for ‘bread,’ ‘dishes,’ and ‘dogs’ get jumbled in my brain.) Strangers giggle and point at me when they see me riding in a taxi; 20 black people in a cramped minibus with one white person causes people to scream and chase the taxi for a few minutes. You’d think I was Justin Bieber on tour in Japan or something, especially because it doesn’t even faze me anymore. I am 26 years old going on 15. Mama stopped me on the way out the door on Sunday and made me put on tights because my dress (which went down to my ankles) was a little revealing. I live in the space past humiliation. I’m sure my dad contributed to my comfort with extreme embarrassment, (Thanks, Dad.) and Africa has reduced my ability to care to probably the lowest level imaginable. As much as I can explain my lack of dignity, there’s something about this job that highlights my strengths more than any other job I’ve held. This culture responds to who you are, not what you do. Today, I felt the benefits of that.

I have daily tasks that I create for myself to push along improving the school and teachers, the systems and the capacity for the staff to use them. I meet with principals, clerks, teachers, and learners. I run from school to school and try to plan to hit one of them at lunchtime so that I eat before 3pm. I often discover a lack of follow-through, miscommunication, no communication, poor time management, forgetfulness, no motivation, lack of participation, poor planning, and cancellations being made to plans and projects people have fully committed to completing. Last week I uncovered that we misordered the yearly school supplies for the second year in a row, that we haven’t planned for nor communicated to the principal about the private school visitors next week, that teachers did not prepare anything for our 3-hour meeting with learner leaders to prepare them for our Heritage Day Tour of the Battle of Isandlwana, that Peace Corps forgot to process my VAST Grant, that my guest speaker was going to be 45 minutes late to my hour-long GLOW Club, that the individual who delivers the keys to the GLOW Club meeting room is not in the village, and that both of my counterparts forgot about the 2.5-hour long meeting about Grassroots Soccer we’ve had scheduled for two weeks. The phrase that takes the cake for most-frustrating-thing-a-South-African-can-say-to-me is: “Khethiwe, we must do this, but we cannot because… So, can you just do it for us?” As one can imagine, this leads to a few headaches. I let these little things build up and block my perspective of what is going well.

I have a community that believes in me. My teachers, principals, and learners believe that I have good ideas, proper execution, and am capable of the work in front of me. I have a loving host family that enjoys my company and begs to play with me, is delighted when I watch television with them, and serves me food when they spend time with me. I can sit around complaining, but the reality is that I get more credit than I can begin to realize. I live and work in a community that is at the heart of the Aids epidemic, in the most populated province in the world, and walk around clean. I get proposed to, not raped like the girls in my community. I hear of funerals on a daily basis, none of them are my loved ones. The Peace Corps Volunteer mid-service slump highlights my frustrations but I still count my blessings.

My Peace Corps supervisor visited today and asked me about my teaching in grade 12. I told her the truth: “Well, I don’t think Peace Corps would fully approve of the way that I ‘team teach.’ The teacher I work with usually assigns me the poems that she doesn’t understand, the learners do not understand, and the pieces she hasn’t covered because they are difficult. I take them home, prepare my strategy for how to introduce and dissect the literature and bring it back to school. I explain my strategy and we review the meaning and context of the poem and I usually teach without her in the room. I know this isn’t transferring skills because I am still doing so much of the work. We have a good relationship. We talk about everything and work alongside each other every day. It’s not so much about teaching –”

“Brilliant.” She cut me off, “Your relationship with this individual is what we want to see. The rest comes from there.” She continued to praise my work and informed me that district officials, who are usually unaware that Peace Corps Volunteers live in their communities, know me by name. “Katie," she said, "people talk about you and your name has reached its way back to me on numerous occasions. You are doing good work.”

I am the worst individual at writing a resume. I forget what I’ve done and don’t know how to put on a single piece of paper what I do. Most jobs judge a person on their performance, which just makes me nervous. When I focus on the performance aspect of my work as a volunteer, I find myself popping a Tylenol and needing a nap. I have been recognized among my community and school district because of my ability to connect with people. I believe that ironically, my lack of self dignity has welcomed in respect, trust, and genuine love from those around me.

In The States, I believe all companies strive to have employees that are good with people and create lasting relationships, but that is often the x-factor that few successfully obtain. Here, in a world far from cultural comfort, that x-factor is the most important variable in the equation. Without the ability to become humiliated, no human connection is made, no understanding of one another is established, and no care for your work will ever be shared by community members. When I joined Peace Corps, I had faith that my sacrifice would come around. Then, I thought that my sacrifice started and ended with what I left at home. I’ve grown to recognize that I sacrifice small pieces of pride throughout the day and this is service. Service, as a mentor once taught me, is when you lower yourself below others; and by lowering ourselves, we are truly lifted up.

Being served umqombothi (traditional beer) by a student leader

The Big Man Visits

There are various programs that come to help our school improve the education for learners: David Rattray Foundation, MIET Africa, Wildlife Foundation, EduPeg, Columba 1400, Soul Buddyz, Isandlwana Lodge, banks, Kingsmead College, even the good ol’ United States Peace Corps. Most of these outside organizations are not funded by the district nor were they requested by the district. Rather, these organizations have donated a lot of valuable services and materials on their own: books, program instructions, DVDs, documenting systems, math boards, reading kits, paint, school uniforms, pencils, chalk, erasers, cabinets, the list goes on and on. Many have funded retreats and trainings for educators and principals. Some have even gone so far as to hire a local individual from the community to oversee that the program is correctly implemented. Every once and a while, depending of the organization, the program supervisor arrives.

The supervisor never observes the teaching schedule, doesn’t even care to ask about the bell schedule. The supervisor demands to talk to various people because the visit’s schedule is very tight. The teachers must be pulled from class because the supervisor is priority. He/she waltzes in dressed in nice clothing and decked out in accessories. The supervisor demands to see this and that. When the logs are blank, he/she asks, “Have the teachers been using this?” The response is a strong ‘Yes!’ Lie. Follow-up questions, logical questions, are fired out of the supervisor’s mouth: where are the materials kept, why is there so much dust on them, why is no one using them now when the schedule states someone should be using it at this moment? A few lies are caught and someone is cornered about the lack of implementation. The educator and/or principal is talked down to for a conversation that makes me want to walk into the office and slap the visitor across the face and yell, “Why don’t you take the time to see what they actually need before you plop some useless item in their hands and come around to scold them for not utilizing the tool?!” I withhold and many apologizes are uttered by the teacher or principal taking ownership for his/her failed program until the supervisor says, “Don’t you understand how much effort we’ve put into this? You must also care!” Perhaps the visitor walks around the premises, judging our teachers left, right, and center. Then, finally, at the end of the few hours, he/she gets back into a car to drive off to go live in a nicer place and work in an office.

Do we all do this? Do we put on a sparkling smile and pretend to use materials that we never touch? Do we try to prove that we are fully utilizing what has been given to us? Do we try to show our boss, supervisor, or superior that we are doing our job? Or is this a rural, South African thing? I remember a fear of my boss judging my work, but I don’t recall lying about using materials. Why does this happen here? It must come back to this organizational stimulus towards these schools. It must lie in the fact that to use these resources is not in the job description.

And I, heavily influenced by the Peace Corps trainings I’ve attended, still ask: what’s the point of all of this stuff? Why do we have fancy books and loads of colored paint when a) the educators aren’t using it, and b) the basics are not being covered as is? I’ve looked for reasons why the materials aren’t being used. I’ve arrived at the conclusion that it lies within the fact that the educators rarely prepare much before the lesson, the new materials requires much more effort, the teachers are not confident in their teaching skills to try something new, and they simply aren’t interested. Culture teaches South Africans that children don’t need to be entertained and that they should be teaching themselves. The teacher is merely there for facilitation of learning. The learners are responsible for their own knowledge and baby-spooning information and varying teaching styles is just gibber gabber that soft Americans believe to be true. Besides, who among these children is going to a) pass their matric b) go on to university and c) use much of their education anyways?

I’m telling you, I don’t know the answer. I try to be here on a daily basis and ‘transfer skills’ (Peace Corps language that feels impossible). I still ask for money and supplies from time to time. Am I at fault? Sometimes I believe all I can do is SHOW others how I do things. If they care to imitate me, I welcome the opportunity. I am not alongside someone showing them how to do their job; how prissy would that be? They show me how to be like them, I just add little things here and there, hoping to display my motivation and longing for doing my job well.

I haven’t tallied all the meetings where principals tell teachers how much they are failing to do their work, are expressing disappointment in failed efforts, are communicating that only one teacher has met a district deadline… It’s nearly every week.

This is where I serve. It isn’t difficult because of the living conditions or the lack of resources. It’s difficult because sometimes those things that lead to an excellent education are here, you just won’t see it until you unlocked a dust-filled room.