2 Weeks Out

Two and a half weeks until we report for staging.

One week left of work.

Wowzers.

Leaving for Africa is quickly becoming more real. Partly because in the last few days I’ve found the blogs of a couple current Maths/Science Education PCVs who have given specific accounts of what to expect (classes with up to 60 students, near-total lack of math education, teachers who often don’t show up for school, a steady decline in students enrolled as a function of grade level, and low expectations of students). There is clearly a huge need for teachers as well as teacher education, for development of curriculum and investment in students, teachers and parents. I want to respond with energy, focus and patience, but some of my initial responses were dread and foreboding.

How do you make a difference in a school of 600 kids where perhaps a third of them are orphans? It should have been more obvious during all the lead up to actually going overseas, but I think I am just now realizing how little of energy in Lesotho will actually be spent teaching the quadratic formula, or, more hopefully, projectile motion. But, at this point, it’s all unbounded conjecture, and it reminds me too much of an over-confident, uninformed, eight year old version of myself, ridiculously expounding nonsense, to continue. So I’ll stop.