Break Time

25 June 2009

This is the coldest June that I can remember. You win Southern Hemisphere. You win.

It's 5:00 pm and I have some pasta sauce simmering away on the stove. I gobbled down the rest of my homeade bread with my supervisor's homemade quince jam, so it will just be pasta to go with the sauce. When Mike and I ate a fresh quince off the tree in the fall, I wrote off quinces (quincii? is it a fish-like singular-plural? Do I use hyphens correctly? Ugh, English is difficult.) forever. That delicious spread that is in my cupboard has made me a convert though. Food has become a big part of my life, as you can tell.

Anyway, I'm nearly through with my second week of winter "holidays." It has been a bit of a random one so far. I began break by going and spending a couple days with Melody, then travelled to Bloemfontein in RSA (Republic of South Africa) to have a few sitdown meals where the wait staff actually knows what's going on, see a mall and attend a Confederation Cup game. We saw Spain beat Iraq 1-0, but cheared heartily for Iraq. It was fun, and I had my first Budweiser. Ever. That's right, I had my first Budweiser at a soccer game between Spain and Iraq in South Africa. I'm not sure what to make of that, but it sounds poetic. Well, loosely poetic. Okay, I retract that. It's just a weird place to have an all-American beer that is owned by a Northern European clongomorant. But, I digress.

Back to the game. I think my favorite part of the game was towards the end when the largely South African crowd began chanting. The two chants that I had translated were, "Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy!" and "A team on the right. A team on the left. Play in the middle." It was very cool to see 15,000 people just there for the love of the game. There was no roudiness, just people cheering for their team, or if they didn't have a team, cheering for good play. I left the stadium with a good feeling.

I also bought a telescope. It will arrive with the Peace Corps Country Director when he visits in a couple weeks.

So, after waiting for 3.5 hours on the taxi before it even left Bloemfontein and another 2 hours in transit I made it back to Maseru. I was eagerly greeted by 4 packages. One of them was much awaited and contained the mini-projector from my pals at NGC. It is about the size of an iPhone and works great when the room is sufficiently dark. My principal is going to raid the trash bins in Butha-Buthe when he goes down to retrieve some cardboard for blacking out the windows. Then, it will be time to blow kids minds. Not only with Planet Earth, but also with some graphic pictures of STIs that I got from the PC Doctor. The Clap was never so scary. I also got a phenomenal package from my sister with long underwear, chocolate, books, socks, basically everything that is good in this world. Next was Maggie's package with backdated letters, which were a great read one cold afternoon and a world map that will be going up in the library. Lastly I got a surprise package from Mr. Dan Judnick, a dude who graduated a year ahead of my at LMU and returned to LA just before I left after studies on the East Coast. Thanks man.

Needless to say, all the other PCVs in the office were fiercely jealous. Support from home as been a real blessing. Thanks y'all.

The next day I had a meeting to talk with my program director about what kinds of secondary projects I can do that might utilize my talents (or at least let me use math). The meeting got me a ride to Appropriate Technology Services, a government funded group whose purpose is research, development and dissemination of technologies that are appropriate for Lesotho. This includes food driers, efficient ovens, briquette makers that use junk paper and eventually some biogas digesters and other more time, money and labor intensive projects. The food driers and efficient ovens are especially interesting for Ha Sefako because there are a ton of peach trees and many of the peaches go to waste and an enormous amount of wood is used for cooking year-round and heating in the winter. So, those projects will hopefully take up some of my time come Spring.

Then I returned home, where I had great weather for one day. Then a storm came. In 48 hours roughly 5 cm (judging by the amount that accumulated in the wheel-barrow) fell. The wind has been horrific and steady and the temperature has been maybe up to 40, in the sun, during the day. So, I've been reading and baking bread and trying to stay occupied. It gets lonely, especially when the sun goes down. I have to try to plan out those last 3-4 hours of my day to try to keep busy so that I don't get bored and depressed. Winter nights were bad enough in the US with electricity and TV and the internet and friends. But, I'm figuring out things to do.

Umm... I think that's about it for now. I hope everybody is enjoying warm weather and BBQs back home. Oh, and check out the US in the FINALS of the Confederation Cup on Sunday. They'll be playing South Africa or Brazil. They made it, I don't know how, but they made it. If they win, I will have some serious street cred in this part of the world.

Blessings.

Last Week of School

Tuesday June 9th

The weather here is schizophrenic. Sunday I started work on my keyhole garden (see picture above), and it was a little chilly but comfortable enough to work in a T-shirt. Come Monday 2 cm of rain had fallen and was still falling, the surrounding mountains were snowcapped and the wind was blustering. NOT COOL. That is just deceptive and rude.

More difficult than dealing with the cold was that it totally incapacitated my ability to spend the day outside. We are in the last days of finals, i.e. I have to go proctor my last final, and their last final, in 45 minutes, and yesterday I had nothing to do. I finished Freakonomics, an excellent short read that my mom sent me, studied biology, chemistry, calculus, electronic circuits and drew up some plans for an animal powered battery charging station. I still had lots of time to burn, so I ate most of a loaf of banana bread, a few pints of potato soup and ploughed through a Car and Driver.

This is not good if most of winter break is going to consist of miserable weather. I just don’t have the stamina to study all day without any hands on tinkering to use up some of my energy. Let’s all hope that this storm blows through and behind it is some nice 60 degree weather so that I can finish my keyhole garden, and go for hikes, and take pictures.

Wednesday June 10th

The weather has cooperated a bit and slightly relented. It probably got up into the low 40s today, which was nice. Also, the wind died down, which was arguably the worst part of the storm.

Now I’m just waiting for the water to boil for my twice, or thrice, weekly (depending on coldness) winter bath. It is surprising how quickly you just stop worrying about taking baths and changing clothes when it is cold. Actually, it may be a good indicator of general loss of brain function due to the sustained lowering of core body temperature.

Regardless, things are going well here. Like I said, I began my keyhole garden this weekend and was working on it today when my principal stopped by. He was excited to see that I’d started. We have talked about building a keyhole garden for an orphan in each of the 7 villages that are tributaries for students at the school, and when he saw that I had started mine he wanted to actually get started with theirs as well. He asked me to slow down my construction so that we could get maybe 10 students together to help me build it and in so doing learn how to build one of their own. So, when I get back from Confederation Cup (Spain vs. Iraq in Bloemfontein on the 17th) we’re going to get some students together and start work. Many of them literally don’t have anything to do during break, so taking a week or two of their 7 week break to slowly build a keyhole garden isn’t much of a sacrifice. A couple could actually get built. I’ll take pictures.

We also had our first Library Committee meeting yesterday and it went about as expected. Two student committee members were elected and a staff committee member was chosen. Then I asked them to give me feedback on how they wanted the library to operate and what kinds of books they want for it. General silence ensued, slowly followed by me and another teacher prodding them for answers. There is a culture of silence upon any group asked to answer a question in this country, be it a teacher asking students, or the principal asking teachers. The questionees do not respond. A clearly frustrating trait when you’re trying to lead a creative discussion about “What you want YOUR library to look like.” There is a good chance that the students have never had a brainstorming session, so I’ve got to go easy on them. They’ve also never spent legitimate time in a library, so they don’t have any ideas to synthesize. So it goes…

But perhaps the most positive experience I’ve had so far happened on Tuesday. After I proctored my last exam, I was at home trying to absorb heat and mark exams when I got a knock at my door. It was one of my favorite and most self-motivated students. It took a few tries, but he eventually reminded me that I had promised to teach him English. As some background, I sporadically take the best students aside to give them words of encouragement and make lofty promises in the hope that they will actually take me up on it. One finally took me up on it. This specific student, Kemelo, is a double orphan who lives with his grandparents in a VERY small, secluded village about an hour and a half away. Days when he is not in school, he has to take the cattle to graze. This leaves early mornings to meet. So, for 3 our 4 weeks over winter break I will be hiking in the morning cold to Saballa, which is about a 50 minutes hard walk, to meet Kemelo and have some private English tutoring. I find tutoring to be an order of magnitude more fulfilling than teaching students who are not interested, so I’m extremely excited about this development.

Um, I guess that’s about it for now. If you have any questions about life here, or day to day, or what-have-you, feel free to leave me a message. I’ll get back to you ASAP, which might be a few weeks.

First Semester Grades

I just finished marking (grading) my exams for the first semester. If I wasn’t in a better mood, and if I didn’t have insight into the local primary schools, I’d be pretty devastated right now.

The high score was 77 (of 100), which isn’t too bad, until you look at the following statistics:

Mean = 22.3
Standard Deviation =14.6
Median = 18

And a low score of 5.

Looking at a bin chart of the frequency of scores within a certain range tells the tale. It is nearly the inverse of (admittedly inflated) grade curves. A pass here is 50%, and just 4 of my 64 students passed.



Naturally, I went and had a chat with my principal. He knows the story. He is teaching seniors here and hopes that maybe 3 will pass the Cambridge Overseas Exam (for developing nations) in November. We began to talk about what we could do to improve the math proficiency of the students. I shrugged. Then said, “How many of the Form As passed math in Standard 7 (the last year of elementary school here)?”
“They all passed.”
“No, how many passed math?”
“Oh, we will have to look at the scores. Probably just the 4 that passed your exam.”
“Is it a requirement that they at least get a pass in English to get into high school?”
“No.”
I really didn’t think any more analysis was needed to identify what the problem is. The curriculum I am teaching is nearly identical to the Standard 7 curriculum. It is supposed to be a time for them to master the material, not to learn it. It is supposed to be a review to cement the concepts and skills. Instead, I have functionally illiterate students, most of whom did not pass the math or English portion of the Standard 7 exit exam, which means they got less than 50%, and it may even be as low as 40%, I’m not sure.

But, I don’t have the time or energy to go butt heads with the primary schools about their clear lack of teaching, teaching ability and moral duty to the children of the community to end the cycle of ignorance and poverty. So, here we are with 64 students in Form A, 4 of whom have gotten above 50%, and one of whom, the brightest in math, would have gotten a C+ in an American classroom, in math at the 5th or 6th grade math level. I’m stumped. I suggested we do individual counseling with students to help them create an educational roadmap to achieve what they want. This was smiled at. It’s honestly the only thing I can think of, but would require a massive change in culture at the school. It would be a huge increase in workload by the teachers. We have trouble enough maintaining simple directions, let alone a school wide program of student mentoring and career counseling. I would love to start meeting with two students a day, but they don’t understand English and I’m not exactly conversant in Sesotho. Any ideas out there?
That’s the current school situation in Lesotho. In other news, I’m working on building a keyhole garden and a little fire pit in the ‘yard’. I’ll put up some pictures when the projects have moved along a bit. There is also some local interest in homebrew windmill technology, which I’ve been researching a bit (I’m investing some time reviewing the circuits and mechanical-to-electrical energy sections in the new textbooks I received). If anybody knows of any good DIY windmill sites, I would appreciate some direction, as internet research is quite slow and expensive. Also, we’re hoping to get a small grant (like $50) to improve a foot bridge that half of the students use daily to cross a river. I think that’s all the auxiliaries.

OH. If you are interested in helping with the African Library Project book drive for Sefako High School, the deadline for shipping books to the container in New Orleans is November 20, 2009. So, if you’re attached to a school schedule somehow, you should still have 5 weeks to collect books before you need to ship them to the container. Please visit the African Library Project website for great tips for book drives!

OH OH. I am going to share a different mailbox in Butha-Buthe with some other PCVs so I have better access to my mail. The new address is in the sidebar.

Be well. Be happy. Be good. Cheers All.

19 of 64

Pictures are: Me trying to stay warm in my down jacket. Kingsley Holgate (not Ben Kingsly like I said last week). The school choir in semi-traditional dress. An iconic Basotho dancer in front of the choir. He has covered himself in red for a reason I have yet to ascertain from ANYBODY.


Today started like most days, with me heading to the pit latrine before sunrise, crunching through the frost covered grass in my down jacket, fleece pants and boots slipped on. Also, the school day started on typical note. I entered the staff room where a few teachers were milling about chatting about this or that in Sesotho. Furthermore, class started in a typical manner, with students being a little rambunctious and taking a while to settle down. Then something different happened. I got a knock on the door, which is typical when students are late, but this time it was the principal at the door. He stood in the doorway with his typical good-natured smile while a herd of students walked towards the school gate behind him.

“Can I make an announcement?” he said.
“No problem. Announce away.” Said I.
He stepped into the classroom and faced the students, “The following students need to go to Sabala [the next village over]. It is all of the students who are single or double orphans, everybody who has lost one or two parents.” Then turning to me, “Sir, you’re going to lose most of your class.”

At that he began to read student names from a list. They one by one grabbed their stuff and shuffled past us, out the door, to Sabala. Over 20 students walked by me. Only 10 were left in A1, 9 in A2. There are 64 students split between those two classes.

The principal turned to me and smiled. “Sorry about taking most of your class,” he said. “This is heartbreaking.” That’s all I could say in a low voice. I stood there for a while looking at the remaining students. They just looked back, at first not sure what the big deal was, then looking a little nervous while I tried to take it in.

I knew that a huge portion, 30%-50%, were orphans of the single or double variety, but it is much different to have them called off a list and walk out a door. And I know that there are a lot of singe parent homes and broken families around the world, but not this. Not dead. Not when the kids are just 15.

The most difficult thing is that there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t be a parent to these kids. I can barely teach them multiplication; let alone dignity, self reliance and hope.

So, what about the less depressing stuff?

The Form A Honors Book Club I started is going pretty well. There are about 10 students who show up, and we talk about a three page chapter in the British English book we have about a girl who plays soccer with the boys. I showed them the Encyclopedia this week. They had never seen anything like it. Growing up in the Information Age has made me annoyed with actually having to flip pages in giant books to find my information, but that encyclopedia is the best source of knowledge available to these students. Tobelo asked me to look up engineering, so I gladly accepted the task, then realized that the language in the article was about 3 good years of English class out of his reach. He’ll have to use the children’s encyclopedia for a while yet.

I also got a DVD from my engineering friends at NGC. It has about 80 books or papers ranging from Neuroscience to Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World to Quantum Physics. Amazing. I nerded out hard just browsing the titles for a solid hour last night. It made me happy. Thank you. It is hugely appreciated by me and the other education volunteers who are often at a loss not having references and the internet at hand to look up information. The biology and chemistry books will be especially useful as sources for pictures and digital content for showing on the projector that will be here soon.

Winter break will be upon me in two weeks. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do to burn the time. There will be a few days dedicated to returning Mel’s favor, so I’ll be heading down to help her organize her library. I might spend some time with a volunteer who lives near her. He is borrowing my GPS to map some trails for a resort/lodge in Leribe that currently has no trail map.

Then I might spend some time making a small mockup of a little wind turbine, something functional but small that I can use for the demonstration of various physics principals. We’ll see. It might require some investment in tools, which would make me happy. My soldering iron has been therapeutic.

Okay, I’m rambling. Things are interesting, monotonous, infuriating and rewarding here. Same old same old. Cheers everybody.

Mental Health Day

Images above: Slaughtering a sheep for a celebration at a local primary school for a student who got top honors in his exam last year. Three of my students on the walk back from the celebration. They needed an escort because herd boys are back from the mountains and are generally harrassing and sometimes dangerous. Erik and a local principal at the shop later yet. I dressed up the principal like a "cholo". He loved it obviously.


I stayed in Ha Sefako last weekend. It went well enough. I finished organizing the library, put some local patterned fabric on the pads that constitute the seat cushions around my “Moroccan” table and finished a few books (I especially liked Franny and Zooe by J.D. Salinger).

Monday was pretty good too. We didn’t teach on account of another Cultural Day that was being held in honor of “tourists.” At first I was surprised that we would miss a day of school for tourists, then I realized where I was and just took it in stride. We got up there two hours after the invitation had stated and we were still an hour and a half early. Eventually the tourist convoy showed up in their fleet of Land Rovers, which made me laugh. These guys had probably taken an hour longer to get up to Mafika Lisiu, in their $65,000 customized Land Rovers, than the taxis take with 24 passengers. Later a full sized bus showed up.

When the convoy stopped, an oversized lawn gnome of a man stepped out of the lead vehicle. His beard was enormous and white. I packed up the remnants of my snack (dried fruit and oats) and headed down to inspect these unusual tourists. As I got closer to the convoy I realized this man was much less an oversized lawn gnome than an life-sized Santa Claus, a true-to-life South African safari Santa Claus. He was greeted by some half naked 9 year old girls and taken to the tent where the esteemed guests were sitting. I decided to head towards the back of the line of vehicles because I figured the less important chaps would be back there. The trucks were all covered in numerous decals, from Garman to Captain Morgan. One of the vehicles in the rear had a large decal on the hood with a map on it, and in the lower right hand corner of the map was our Santa’s photo with his alias, Ben Kingsley (I’m not really sure if that is actually his name).

Just then a couple of guys on $6000 full carbon cross country mountain bikes showed up along with their support vehicle. The two cyclists were soon whisked away like Mr. Claus and I struck up a conversation with their support driver to try to figure out what was going on. It turns out that one of the cyclists is a world class cross country cyclist, multi-millionaire and victor of the Seven Summits. The second cyclist was a bicycle shop owner in Durban who was a world class down hill rider named Shaun. And, this Mr. Claus fellow, also known as Ben Kingsley (I’m not sure if that’s really what his name is) is a household name in South Africa. He’s an adventurer and philanthropist who is on this current 110 day adventure to promote tourism, adventure, culture and education.

I had a great time talking to a number of people in the convoy and it turned out to be a much better reason to skip school than I had anticipated. I left the cultural day in high spirits.

I walked back a little early with another teacher, then walked further yet to the place where I get enough reception to send a text message. On the way back I ran into students who were walking home. It turns out they had run out of food at cultural day, and some of these students walked 16 km that day without an food for over 12 hours. The reply I got from the deputy principal upon my remarking on the grueling day was, “At least they are used to it.”

At least they are used to it.

Tuesday class didn’t go so well. Students lied to my face, were repeatedly obstinate and refused to cooperate. In a total reversal from the previous afternoon, I couldn’t stand being in Ha Sefako any longer. I left. We have a long holiday weekend this weekend, so I left a day early, and here I am in Ficksburg, South Africa, having a draft beer and a Greek salad, with crisp, cold lettuce and feta cheese. It is good.

Needless to say, winter break is fast approaching and I need it badly. I need time to get ready for next semester, stop worrying about school and building relationships with students and the community. I’m still pursing some different low-cost, renewable, rural power options and am hoping to spend a significant amount of time working on that.

Cheers all, and remember that your mental health is an important health.

Oops, I almost forgot. I am going to apply for the African Library Project (ALP, www.africanlibraryproject.org) and I need some people who would be interested in leading book drives and raising some cash (chelete) for the cause. If you're interested please send me an email or leave a note. THANKS!

Library and Transport

Last weekend Melody agreed to visit me in Ha Sefako and to lend much of her three day weekend to helping me organize our library. The before and after photos at the top of the blog may not look like much, but they represent a solid 25 man-hours of work. We color coded all of the books and created a master list on my computer so that we can easily see what books we have and sort them accordingly. During winter break I may become so motivated as to create a database of the books so that we can do legitimate queries of the library. That will require me learning a database program as well as a whole lot of time reviewing each book to create keywords and summaries. I think I’ll check to make sure there are some computer literate people around first…

Anyway, things have improved somewhat at Sefako High School. I introduced question jars in my class. In a fit of self delusion I told students that they could put any question, literally any question, in the question jar and I would answer it. This may have been a little brazen on my part, as I got some doozies, and also some non-questions. “Sir, I don’t understand the maths.” Not a question. Also, an understatement. “Sir, the HIV is get how?” Etc, etc. Aside from the bold statements of lack of understanding of my course material, there were a number of questions that were really good, and they finally give me a segue or cue to start talking about the life skills issues that will do these students much more long term good than finding the Highest Common Multiple (HCM) of 27, 84 and 113 (not useful to hungry students). So, now I have to review the monumental amount of information that Peace Corps gave me about HIV/AIDs, STIs/STDs, etc.

Also, I’m going to have to try to find ways to explain the immune system, viruses and other such biological issues. When I started to try to explain basic atomic theory, e.g. atoms exist and are made of protons, neutrons and electrons, I realized that despite all of the “paying attention” that these kids can muster, the absorption of such radical and abstract concepts is going to be very, very slow. It is not obvious that most of the volume of concrete is actually empty space. At least it was never obvious to me and is only real to me on a non-realistic level, i.e. only when I’m talking about chemistry and physics, not when I’m talking about, or falling on, concrete. It certainly doesn’t feel empty. I’ll keep you informed about how that goes.

Yesterday I was sent to help set exams (write tests) for the district. It was a fantastic case study in Lesotho’s fledgling transportation system. First, some background on the taxi system here. It consists of a massive fleet of Toyota mini-buses, which are 80’s Vanagan-sized vans with custom seats (sheet metal with some vinyl over the top and 5 inches of legroom). Now, a substantial portion of the fleet has been stolen from South Africa. The police have sporadic inspections of the taxis, and on those days the taxis don’t run. It is worse in and around Maseru. Observing police inspection day around here is impossible because the ‘term taxi’ schedule has yet to be translated into this society.

The fleets are also apparently run by small mob bosses with their own territory or routes or whatever. This is no big deal unless you try to run your taxi on their route, in which case various intimidation tactics and violence options are used to show you the errors of your ways. If there is any logic or reason behind how the taxis here are run, the lay people are unaware, and the outsiders are especially not privy to it.

Okay, back to the story. I started waiting for the taxi at 6:10 am. It was still dark, and quite cold. One taxi passed me at about 6:40 and yelled something indecipherable. It was empty. I almost went back to sleep and called it a day. The next taxi came just 15 minutes later. A 45 minute wait for a taxi in Ha Sefako is my shortest wait time in 10 weeks. 3-4 hours has not been uncommon. So off to Botha-Bothe we went with only one inexplicable 15 minute wait at a junction. We made good time to town and disembarked the taxi around 9am. I ran around town to make a few purchases before returning to the taxi rank to find the Moteng taxi which would take me to St. Peters, the location of the workshop. I saw a coworker in the taxi who had come from his home in Leribe. He looked bored, so I asked if he thought it was going to be a while before the taxi filled. “… I think so… I’ll call you when it gets close”. This was fine by me as I had some more errands to run. I ran around, checked some emails quickly and returned to the taxi at about 10:30. Half an hour later we were on our way. Half an hour after that we had been dropped off and made it through the maze of 2 track roads and trails to arrive St. Peters 3 and a half hours late and roughly 5.5 hours after I began the journey. St. Peters is only 65 miles from Ha Sefako.

To cut the story short, we got out a little late, waited 2 hours for a taxi, it got dark, we got in town too late and missed the last taxi to Ha Sefako, so I crashed at another volunteer’s house, woke up at 5am today to catch a taxi back to school. Ugh. “Transportaiton is a problem in this country” is a common Basotho understatement. In fact, ‘understatement’ in that context is an understatement, perhaps an overunderstatement is more apt.

I want to make sure I thank everybody for your continual support in emails, comments on the blog (keep ‘em coming, they make me happy), phone calls, text messages, cards, packages and good vibes. They help keep me grounded and help me to just chill out. I’ve never been good at reigning in my expectations of myself, or others for that matter. So, thank you. This experience would be much less interesting without all y’all at home keeping tabs on me. But, know that in exchange for this aperiodic blog-tainment I fully expect to sit down and have a beverage and meal with each of you upon my return. Cheers.

Starry Nights and Griping

Another Starry Night

Outside of my back door is the Milky Way, along with the rest of the Universe, spread, scattered, placed, what-have-you, in all its glory. Every night it’s there. Some nights I step outside and stare. Tonight was one of those nights. And is often the case in these situations, my lack of thoughts, and feelings of the sublime, inverted to thoughts of the sublime and lack of feelings. Luckily for me the former lasted much longer than the latter and even luckier for you, I don’t recall the latter.

But after that short jaunt into freshman year English had finished, I had some other thoughts. I thought about how difficult it is to learn a new profession. I thought about relationships and how fortunate I’ve been to have encountered people in my life who are willing to maintain them intercontinentally (it is nice to use that word and not have ‘ballistic missile’ following it). I thought about the conversations we have here, on huge topics, like developing a nation, and how remote those discussions are from my day to day in the classroom. I thought about how frustrated I get with students when they are unable to make even the smallest step in logic. I thought about how somewhere between a quarter and half of the students are orphans with a total lack of intellectual stimulation. And I thought about what a great adventure this is.

It’s nice to have these thoughts. Despite the early feelings of slowness and lack of anxiety, my personality has taken over and the year and a half I have left here already seems too short. There are days that I frantically try to figure out how to teach without x, y and z … and alpha, beta and gamma, and other days that I feel setup for failure by the students’ primary education, or HIV/AIDs, or the communication barrier, or other teachers or any number of huge obstacles. And so it is those nights, that I decide to step outside to look up at the stars, that are most useful. They help me to forget about the lack of materials and resources, and help me to remember that I am here to teach. I am here to inspire curiosity and questions. I’ll let you know when a student comes with that first big question.

Another Bleak Thursday

There is something about Thursdays that is really difficult. The recuperation that happened over the weekend has been depleted with four days of blank stares and near total lack of comprehension.

I’m going to try to get some long distance pity-love by giving you a little background to this melodrama. Last week I discovered some science kits that I had hitherto not known of. I spent the weekend getting them in order and taking stock of what was missing. There are probably 6 nearly complete kits that are very well thought and very cool. So, after last Friday’s lecture on electrical cells and discovering that students had absolutely no background in atomic theory (e.g. electrons, protons, neutrons) I decided I should get back to some basics. Due to my discovery of the science kits I decided to use the science lab for the first time this year (by any teacher).

I put together a quick measurement lab with 8 stations. They would measure temperature of water in a beaker as the water was heated by a candle, measure the sides of the building with a measuring tape, measure volume using a graduated cylinder, etc. All of the measurements were very simple and there was nothing more complicated than multiplication. Again, I overestimated the students’ background by assuming they had ever measured anything. A lab that was supposed to take up the double period on Tuesday and maybe run halfway into Wed. took up all of Thursday also. The students had never used any piece of the equipment before.

I had planned on focusing more on calculating volume from measurements of a box than on teaching students how to read a thermometer, which it seemed that none of them had ever actually seen before. Teaching 18 year old kids, who are in the 8th grade, to read thermometers was not in the agenda. In retrospect I feel pity for these kids. I wish it were empathy, but they don’t realize how far behind they are. I’m ashamed to say that at the time though, I felt bitterness towards them. Bitter that they didn’t know how to measure length using a ruler. Bitter that the concept of volume is totally lost. And mostly bitter that they don’t give a shit.

But I took a walk. And I reflected. I realized that my expectations of having a group of students who are eager to learn, to better themselves and who were curious needs to be thrown out. I am working with kids who have grown up in a culture that only newly is going through the Western style educational system, in a country without the wide and varied industries available in the US. The only money-making jobs that most of these students are aware of are teacher, pilot, policeman, taxi-driver, shop owner, nurse, doctor, thief or marijuana grower/smuggler. You can probably choose the three professions that are available to a kid here whose English is at a 3rd grade level. HIV/AIDs and death are oppressive and there is simply very little motivating these kids in a positive way. “The Rod” is the go to form of motivation, and is not particularly self-perpetuating.

So, I’m in a much different position than I expected. And it’s going to take a little while for me to take on the role of trying to put students in situations to discover measurement, the different between mass and weight and why -100 is less than -50. It was a long time ago that I discovered them for myself. This teaching thing is so hard, and dynamic, frustrating and exhilarating. But here it goes. Friday will surely be better.