Likusasa Letfu

I’m currently working on two major projects that make me very happy.

The first is a girl’s empowerment/HIV education retreat that will be held at the end of June. I just finished the grant application for funding, and hopefully I’ll hear back from Peace Corps about it soon. The basic idea behind the retreat is this: women, for any number of reasons, biological as well as psychological and cultural, are at a much higher risk of HIV/AIDS in the village than are men. The women’s movement hasn’t quite made it all the way to Steenbok yet (which is why my key school principal occasionally tries to get me to wash his shirts for him…good luck). Girls in high school and primary school feel compelled to have sex for all the same bad reasons that their counterparts in the US do – so that the boy won’t leaver her, to prove that she loves him, because all her friends are doing it, etc… They also feel far less able to force the boy to wear a condom when they do agree to sex (assuming that they have actually agreed.) Teen pregnancy is rampant and verges on no big deal in the eyes of the girls. I’ve heard estimates that upwards of 50% of the female learners at the secondary school have children. My own estimates put the teen pregnancy rate at about 15% a year in the village. So the idea is, if we spend some time talking to girls from every school about self-esteem, about their own plans for their own futures, about the fact that they really are good enough and strong enough to do whatever they want and say whatever they want, then that itself will drastically effect choices they make in the future. We’re also going to spend time discussing HIV myths and facts, ways to protect themselves, etc… Its impossible to live in South Africa and not have heard about HIV of course. By some estimates the HIV infection rate is as high as 25%. Its highest in Mpumulanga (my province) and rural villages (like mine). They’ve heard ABC. They’ve seen the slogans. But I think that sitting down and discussing HIV, and STIs, and pregnancy – processing things in their own way and words instead of being passive receptors for government slogans – will go a lot further. I hope. I have a teacher from every school in the village of the committee to put this together, and we’ve all already decided that this camp should come back and create some sort of peer-education club at each school when they start up again in July. Potentially this can be a really awesome and sustainable program, or that’s my dream. I’m also really excited because my brilliant host sister, Latoya, is just the right age to go. The girls are going to be chosen via an essay contest, and I know that her English writing skills are good, so I think that she’ll get to go (and I’m not above pulling a few strings either…)

My second project is a school library that has the potential to become a resource for the entire community. The thing about it is, too – I didn’t even start it! A teacher at one of my schools came to me and said that she wanted to start a library for the school. She had already cleared out a room (this is the only school with spare classrooms. Hopefully within the year we will manage to get enough extra space to create libraries at the other two schools too). I told her that I would be completely delighted to help her, and as I just happened to have my copy of Libraries for All on me at the moment, I lent it to her. Finally on Friday she showed me the spare class, already complete with bookshelves. We went through a list of potential book donors, and talked about who we thought could use the library – what kind of books did we want? We both agreed that the dream is creating a community resource and that she is more than willing to act as librarian (which is, in its own way, unfortunate since she’s also one of the best teachers at the school. But we can burn that bridge when we come to it). So we’re requesting books on agriculture and community building and appropriate technology as well as reference and reading books. Looking around the room we could both see it: the computer will go here, the shelves will go here, and chairs and beanbags and tables and lamps and rugs, and… So my job this weekend is to write a general letter from a list of key points that we put together and then tailor it slightly to each organization we identified. I’m also planning to hit up Adventures for Kids and any other groups I can think of for book drives (perhaps some members of the Santa Paula or LAUSD school districts would like to help…?). My nearest neighbor recently got nearly 3900 books donated from one drive to her schools. Not that I’ve ever been at all competitive or anything, but…I’d say I have an obligation to at least double that.

In addition to those major things, I’m also going to start English clubs at two of my schools, and I want to see if I can actually start teaching a class a couple days a week at my key school. What better way to show teachers that it really can be done than through really doing it myself every day?