Village Living (in which the author is sickeningly happy)

In nearly every way our life is drastically different than it was at our old site. Some of the changes are very obvious. We are now cleaning ourselves, our clothes, and our dishes in buckets and hauling water from a tap (well, Tim is doing that part), and now we work in a school, rather than a regional office. Whereas before we lived in a large flat at the area office, here we are staying on a family plot, sharing space and water with a large family. And while before we lived in a small town with some basic facilities (namely, two small grocery stores) that was half an hour away from a major city (and yet so much longer, using taxis that never filled up...), now we are in a rural village, off the main tar road, yet minutes from a fair-sized town, via taxis that seem to be constantly coming/going. It is a 5-minute ride to visit other volunteers, whereas in Swartruggens it could take hours. Zulu versus Afrikaans/Setswana, tropical versus arid, etc., etc.

Yet after 2 weeks in, I think our new site is, to my surprise, completely ideal for a volunteer or two, even Tim and me. It's funny because when we arrived in South Africa I had the viewpoint that to use our freshly earned PhDs we would have to be in a place like our old site, where we weren't laboring just to clean ourselves, and where we had access to educational authorities in the area. And we were nervous to move here based on this kind of perspective, that a rural school may have less to do with two academics than would an education office.

I am of a completely different mind now, however. Either I didn't realize how much we were struggling there (I do tend to put on a happy face...), or I am seeing our new life now from rose-colored glasses. But this change is good.

All the things that made me nervous about village life have dissolved after the first few trials bucket bathing and pit toileting. While I was nervous about having a host family who may have different values or lifestyles than we are used to, or are so poor as to make us feel ashamed and uncomfortable about our things and our roots in the wildly wealthy (or at least consumerist) west, our family is warmly welcoming and generous, and with 22 cows (and calving) they are actually far wealthier than we are. (I think the laptop we bought here costs about as much as 1 bull.) Tim and I also have a strong appreciation now for a public transportation system that works, and this one undoubtedly does, giving us more freedom of movement than we had in Swartruggens, though we lived mere blocks from the national highway there.

School is very interesting, despite the fact that it is time for examinations and there is very little for us to do in terms of immediate work. As at the area office, the school originally had requested (and had) a volunteer for helping with maths and physics (who left shortly after swearing in, which is when they thought to move us here). However to Tim's relief and/or dismay, the main physics educator is quite strong, at least compared to what we are accustomed to in the North-West, as are his results (relatively speaking), and so Tim is not certain of his purpose, though others seem confident that his very American presence will somehow magically rub off on the learners. For me, as in Swartruggens, there is no obvious place or demand for assistance with English education or management tasks, as the administration of the school is quite strong--again, much better than I was familiar with coming from the particular area we were in, in North-West. Yet here the educators are largely youthful and highly motivated, and I have already become immersed in potential projects. Whereas I was "free" to do what I liked in Swartruggens but without much assistance or participation from any counterparts, here it is the opposite, and English educators are approaching me for assistance with projects they have tried before but struggled to complete, which they would like to pursue collaboratively in the coming year.

Next year we will both be team-teaching, then, which I feel is ideal from a sustainability viewpoint, and also likely assisting with building educator capacity behind the scenes, as well. I am planning to do a series of informal workshops for the English educators and other interested educators, based on their current challenges and maybe even on individual strengths. My goal is to increase the educators' comfort and experience with English while simultaneously encouraging them to reflect on their practices, possible best methods, and their challenges. Today I was approached by an educator with an idea for using these workshops also as a stepping stone for increasing educator involvement in after-school learner activities, which could actually work here as many educators stay in the area during the school week. This particular educator had tried to start a newspaper club and a drama club, and other educators have mentioned to me reading groups, both for educators and learners, that they are interested in. Workshopping for education methods and for potential extracurricular activities are thus two activities I am planning on for next year which many educators at the school seem enthusiastic about. We'll see if I can keep them smiling!

Tim may want to help with my program or else run some similar workshops on English in the content areas, as many of the challenges during examination time come not from problems with the content knowledge but from problems understanding questions written in English! And he already has a educator chess club going (as well as an informal cross-cultural men's group, since some young male educators happened to see us with a single female volunteer living in the area, who they all now seem to be in love with!). In any case, I think we will manage to stay much busier here than we were in Swartruggens with daily work to do, next year.

We were also approached by one of the deputy principals here who is involved with a wonderful independent radio station run from town, and we will likely be helping them raise funds in the near future if not also collaborating on some radio shows. While we had thought in the first place that we should be helping people with significant challenges, it turns out that people who are already highly motivated and able to achieve on their own are ideal counterparts for us as we strive to build existing capacity, rather than use our supposed midas touch around town.

Finally, I think we are really faring much better socially in this rural village, where they speak a language we have not even been trained in! Already we have slaughtered a cow with our family, gone on a small day trip with an educator to meet his parents, had dinner at the house of this same educator with his wife and newborn daughter, met up with some educators around town on the weekend, and are planning some game park weekend trip with one of the principals for sometime soon.

AND life is less expensive here! While we struggled to stay within our budget in the North-West, wondering how other volunteers were saving money with their living allowance, here I can see us also spending far less than our allowance, month to month.

With many of these things, I think part of the reason for optimism and a positive impression is that we are already accustomed to South Africa, and we can appreciate open-minded coworkers, taxis that fill up in less than 2 hours, and regularly running water and electricity more than we could when we arrived in the country for the first time. In many ways we have changed.* Bad or quiet English is not an obstacle now like it was at first, and an ice cream at KFC is a treat that one does not have to have a political or social or anti-imperialistic attitude toward. We also don't need to be glamorous, particularly well-dressed, or well-groomed, and in fact sometimes a little bad grooming can help a white person in the village to not stand out quite so much (which is not to say that people are poorly groomed here, but rather that there is no reason for us to be extremely middle-class in appearance in the rural village...which is, again, very different from the area office, where we were probably the only members of the staff who did not buy a new, expensive outfit at the mall for the local teacher awards ceremony).

*How have I changed? Let me count (some of) the ways...

• KFC is an acceptable option for a snack, not a horror plaguing the developing world
• Frozen/cold yogurt on a hot day, in a sweaty taxi standing out in the hot sun? Yes, please!
• I am Mrs. Tim. Mrs. Tim Wotherspoon. Also, Mrs. Wotherspoon. Yeah...
• Think high school girls should never, ever have sex? Cool!
• I know that my vegetarian (actually, pescatarian) ways are a major problem for others.
• Are we going to pray before eating, or before this meeting? Cool! (Not to say I follow a religion here.)
  
• Tim and I are using the present-progressive tense here. We are using it when we are speaking. The people here are loving the present-progressive tense.
  
• I like anyone who smiles. Hey, you don't even have to smile. Just don't glare. Too much.
• Skirts. I am wearing them. I am wearing them almost always. Although I only have 2.
  
• Finally starting to cringe less and understand more when people are excited to see me just because I am white or American in an unusual context. No reason to burst anyone's bubble.

AND I've always wanted to live with cows and chickens (seriously...), though all of the roosters in the village simultaneously shrieking bloody murder in the middle of the night every night is probably not something I will ever miss when this is all over! Anyway I think I have made my point. Who would have thought we'd be so at home in rural Africa? Maybe you did. I'm just glad it's the truth.