Today’s best quote: “This policy document is like the bible – it has all the answers.” And then my agnostic, insubordination-loving brain started to go: “grrr-argh-ahhh…Plooey!!!”
Immediately followed up by: “You know, if a woman sleeps with more than two men, she is a harlot.” In reference to a fairly intense discussion of what exactly the bible means when it refers to harlotry. The parts of my brain that hadn’t exploded after the initial comment -- the crazy feminist parts -- those promptly went “POP!” too. Now I’ve got nothing left.
Fortunately, these last few days have been all about the arts, and so I’ve been enjoying myself enormously. One of my favorite learners is a girl named Zanele. She’s bright, inquisitive, and speaks near-perfect English. She lived in Johannesburg before moving out here to live with her grandmother and has already skipped one grade, with the school considering skipping her again. Last term I asked the principal if I could pull her out of class during English and work with her in a sort of one-on-one GATE program. I’ve never taught GATE before (I’ve never taught much of anything before) so it turned into a very student-driven sort of thing. Zanele set whatever topic she was interested in, I would try to dig up as many resources and facts as I could find, and we would discuss it all until she was satisfied and decided to move onto something else. The only thing I really set in stone was that I wanted her to ask as many questions as possible. She was not allowed to read and regurgitate the information. She had to come with new questions about it – or anything else that struck her fancy – each time we met. So far we’ve discussed world history, astronomy, volcanoes, and Plato. At the end of last term, she told me that she would like to talk about Shakespeare when I came back. And my poor, literature-deprived, recently exploded brain said, “Hooray!!”
Yesterday, then, I spent a lot of time talking about Shakespeare with Zanele. We talked about the language he used (still English, but “deep” English – a play on “deep” SiSwati, which is the official formal sort of language that they use in Swaziland, and that we certainly don’t use here.) and why people still care about his plays 400 years later. Then we started on Much Ado About Nothing, because everybody reads Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet is a little over the top for a 12 year old, and as awesome as Rosalind is in As You Like It, the constant character gender-bending might get a little confusing. The Taming of the Shrew was not even up for discussion, might I add. Plus, I think I may be able to track down a copy of the movie Much Ado About Nothing, in which Kenneth Brannagh is a little bit ridiculous, but the story comes across pretty well*. Anyway, we started discussing the play. We read through the beginning of the first scene together, and then I spent a few hours summarizing the first two acts for her – a sort of home made Cliff Notes.
The other thing I did yesterday was make a whole lot of learning aides. Alphabets, number lines, vowels, and individual desk name-tags for each learner, including a little decorative alphabet. Because I didn’t want to waste the school’s ink, I printed each of them out in black and white, and then spent most of my day coloring them in. It was like kindergarten. I got to have a coloring day. A Shakespeare and coloring day. All while a Dolly Parton’s Greatest Hits CD serenaded the office over and over again.
Yesterday was a Shakespeare-coloring-Dolly Parton sort of day. Today is shaping up to be a Shakespeare/Chaucer-coloring-Dolly Parton sort of day. Just what I needed to regenerate those brain cells. This is my nine to five.
*I majored in literature. Can you tell?
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Walk the Line
Being a Peace Corps Volunteer grants a sort of flexible identity. “Us and Them”—this concept of ‘the other’ what was so fashionable when I was in school – becomes a little bit slippery. There is one clear us -- other volunteers, especially those in your group, though not necessarily excluding those of other years or other countries -- and that is stronger than almost anything else, though it’s not completely inviolable. But the questions start to come when I wonder who, exactly, ‘them’ is – and what are we to others, an ‘us’ or a ‘them.’ (Stick with me, here.)
It is our job to be flexible, to be sinuous and a little bit tricky. We are told to integrate into a village, to learn the language and the customs, to take a new name and do our best at the laughably impossible task of blending in. So we do. I’ve learned SiSwati, kind of. I work hard to make friends and to gain the friendship of those around me. I only use my right hand or both hands to give and take things. And it’s worked, kind of. One of my proudest moments here was when a teacher said to me, “Ay Nomvula! UmSwati, really!” (“Nomvula, you are really a Swazi!”). I’m still weird, sure. I still talk English funny and have those darn blue eyes and blonde hair, but I’m an understood weird. I’m not just *the* other, I’m *our* other. Close enough, I’ll take it.
So I can walk in the village. I am a part of things, even if briefly, and in a way I become a part of us. But then I leave, and there are other places I can walk – by virtue of my language, my education, my nationality, my gender, my upbringing, and an ugly fact in this country is by virtue of my skin color too – that my friends or teachers in the village can’t. Nomvula and Becca aren’t entirely the same person, 98% overlap maybe, but not 100%. I can walk into a resort hotel or nice restaurant and know the rules and be accepted, because that’s where rich Americans go. I can go to the Afrikaan pub in Malelane, because while I may not be quite ‘us’ there, I’m certainly not ‘them’. With some friends, over a year ago, I found myself in a township outside Pretoria, a place where I almost certainly would have been in deep trouble were it not for our guide vouching for us – instead we became ‘us’ and spent the evening drinking beer and arguing about Generations. Last month a friend and I met the wife of the Irish Ambassador to Lesotho. She offered us a three hour ride to town (“I knew you guys were Peace Corps as soon as I saw you. I love Peace Corps!) and we spent the time chatting as equals about Africa, Dublin, America, and all the rest of it. As a volunteer, I feel like we have so many opportunities to switch that it does two things: At once it obliterates any sense of ‘us’ or ‘them,’ because when you are granted the ability to walk through walls it becomes more difficult to pay attention to them. But at the same time the only people experiencing this sensation of walking through worlds, of belonging everywhere and nowhere, are other PCVs. And so while everybody may find some way to accept me, and I them, its as if the line becomes even more starkly drawn between the only us I ever really use, and the rest.
We work – well, maybe I should stop talking for other volunteers – I work in one of the poorest areas of one of the most schizophrenic countries in the world. On one side of the divide is this conservative rural village, where culture and tradition are still the trump card, where there is extreme poverty and child-headed households, and no running water, and some of the most beautiful and heartfelt music I’ve ever heard. On the other side is a country that could be Europe, western and wealthy and occasionally even cosmopolitan. These two sides, they don’t understand each other so well. I came home one day after a braai to tell my shocked family, “did you know Afrikaaners eat pap too?” “They do??!!”
We can, I can, walk that line and see both sides. Becca and Nomvula, the part that walks in both and tries to balance perfectly on the fulcrum. I go to grade 7 functions at my school, and celebrations at the US Ambassador’s house. I send my reports to the Lubombo Circuit Manager and Congress. It is odd, exceedingly extremely odd, to live on that pivot point and have access to so many worlds. I am not a tourist in a human zoo, I live here. I am not an awe-struck kid, I grew up with this.
It is our job to be flexible, to be sinuous and a little bit tricky. We are told to integrate into a village, to learn the language and the customs, to take a new name and do our best at the laughably impossible task of blending in. So we do. I’ve learned SiSwati, kind of. I work hard to make friends and to gain the friendship of those around me. I only use my right hand or both hands to give and take things. And it’s worked, kind of. One of my proudest moments here was when a teacher said to me, “Ay Nomvula! UmSwati, really!” (“Nomvula, you are really a Swazi!”). I’m still weird, sure. I still talk English funny and have those darn blue eyes and blonde hair, but I’m an understood weird. I’m not just *the* other, I’m *our* other. Close enough, I’ll take it.
So I can walk in the village. I am a part of things, even if briefly, and in a way I become a part of us. But then I leave, and there are other places I can walk – by virtue of my language, my education, my nationality, my gender, my upbringing, and an ugly fact in this country is by virtue of my skin color too – that my friends or teachers in the village can’t. Nomvula and Becca aren’t entirely the same person, 98% overlap maybe, but not 100%. I can walk into a resort hotel or nice restaurant and know the rules and be accepted, because that’s where rich Americans go. I can go to the Afrikaan pub in Malelane, because while I may not be quite ‘us’ there, I’m certainly not ‘them’. With some friends, over a year ago, I found myself in a township outside Pretoria, a place where I almost certainly would have been in deep trouble were it not for our guide vouching for us – instead we became ‘us’ and spent the evening drinking beer and arguing about Generations. Last month a friend and I met the wife of the Irish Ambassador to Lesotho. She offered us a three hour ride to town (“I knew you guys were Peace Corps as soon as I saw you. I love Peace Corps!) and we spent the time chatting as equals about Africa, Dublin, America, and all the rest of it. As a volunteer, I feel like we have so many opportunities to switch that it does two things: At once it obliterates any sense of ‘us’ or ‘them,’ because when you are granted the ability to walk through walls it becomes more difficult to pay attention to them. But at the same time the only people experiencing this sensation of walking through worlds, of belonging everywhere and nowhere, are other PCVs. And so while everybody may find some way to accept me, and I them, its as if the line becomes even more starkly drawn between the only us I ever really use, and the rest.
We work – well, maybe I should stop talking for other volunteers – I work in one of the poorest areas of one of the most schizophrenic countries in the world. On one side of the divide is this conservative rural village, where culture and tradition are still the trump card, where there is extreme poverty and child-headed households, and no running water, and some of the most beautiful and heartfelt music I’ve ever heard. On the other side is a country that could be Europe, western and wealthy and occasionally even cosmopolitan. These two sides, they don’t understand each other so well. I came home one day after a braai to tell my shocked family, “did you know Afrikaaners eat pap too?” “They do??!!”
We can, I can, walk that line and see both sides. Becca and Nomvula, the part that walks in both and tries to balance perfectly on the fulcrum. I go to grade 7 functions at my school, and celebrations at the US Ambassador’s house. I send my reports to the Lubombo Circuit Manager and Congress. It is odd, exceedingly extremely odd, to live on that pivot point and have access to so many worlds. I am not a tourist in a human zoo, I live here. I am not an awe-struck kid, I grew up with this.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
The Real Africa
I've just gotten back from a fantastic three week vacation all over the place, it was very refreshing and probably one of the best holidays I've had here. We went pony-trekking in Lesotho, which was phenomenal. Two days, six hours of riding a day -- I've never had my butt so sore in my life, but it was totally worthwhile. Lesotho is very mountain-y, and a lot of the time the trail was nothing but incredibly steep switchbacks, anywhere from 8 to 36 inches wide, covered in scree and perfectly round smooth rocks, with a 300 foot drop off a cliff right on the other side of it all. But the view certainly is beautiful from that drop-off. Occasionally it would be so steep that the guide, Mpho, would tell us, "If you guys are nervous, you can get off and walk down the trail," "Um...do you think we should walk?" [Pause. Pause. Mpho eyes nervous horses as they refuse to get within 15 feet of descent. Pause]. "If you guys want...you can get off and walk down the trail." We got off and walked. That night we stayed in an incredibly rural village, a little bit past the middle of nowhere, where our horses decided that they were tired of nothing but grass, grass, grass all the time and wanted some delicious mealies instead. Unfortunately, this delayed our departure in the morning a bit, since the owner of the mealie field was exceedingly pissed when he found out. Somebody had to run for the chief, who then had to negotiate a settlement between the field owner and our guides, which of course took several hours. Had I not spent the last 20 months in Africa, it might have been a fun and authentic addition to out trip. As it was, we were just irritated. TIA. After Lesotho we headed on to the mountains and the beach successively and had yet again a fantastic time. All in all, a great vacation.
One phrase I did keep hearing -- and that I have been hearing, and even use myself -- is "the real Africa." As in, "well, the Wild Coast is beautiful, but its not the real Africa." "Cape Town is a cool city, but its not the Real Africa." "Come on our tour and see the Real Africa!" What does that mean? What is the Real Africa? There is a universally understood sense of what you mean when you use this phrase: The Real Africa is somewhere poor, somewhere rural, somewhere black. It's somewhere where you can still see women carrying things on their head, and watch handicrafts get made, and see people walking everywhere and depending on subsistence farming. Why is that the Real Africa anymore than Pretoria or the wild coast or anywhere else? Why is it that the preconceptions of Africa become our definition of what is real? The realest, most scraped-to-the-bone place I've ever been in South Africa was a township about 10k from Pretoria. But nobody would ever consider it the "Real Africa."
One phrase I did keep hearing -- and that I have been hearing, and even use myself -- is "the real Africa." As in, "well, the Wild Coast is beautiful, but its not the real Africa." "Cape Town is a cool city, but its not the Real Africa." "Come on our tour and see the Real Africa!" What does that mean? What is the Real Africa? There is a universally understood sense of what you mean when you use this phrase: The Real Africa is somewhere poor, somewhere rural, somewhere black. It's somewhere where you can still see women carrying things on their head, and watch handicrafts get made, and see people walking everywhere and depending on subsistence farming. Why is that the Real Africa anymore than Pretoria or the wild coast or anywhere else? Why is it that the preconceptions of Africa become our definition of what is real? The realest, most scraped-to-the-bone place I've ever been in South Africa was a township about 10k from Pretoria. But nobody would ever consider it the "Real Africa."
Friday, April 04, 2008
brief hiatus
I am on vacation. I needed it very badly. Lots of very fun things have been happening, and I will write about them in a week or two.
Yay.
Yay.
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