Ups and downs revised - photos added

We got back from the US Sunday, Jan 19, a week ago. Last Tuesday was the first day of school. We knew time would be tight and we'd be tired and jet-lagged, so all through Christmas we'd been thinking about and drafting lesson plans for the first week of school. Hah!

Monday we went by our 3 schools. The High School was thronged – with parents! Lined up to pay school fees – in cash. Or to plead for more time. And a pick-up truck full of kids from the Refugee Camp applying for admission. The “poor” primary school was nearly empty – no one there was doing anything until the first day for which they were paid. The more wealthy primary school. partly subsidized by the railroad, was orderly, with hardly any parents showing up to deal with school fees. But the library on which we'd worked so hard before Christmas (not the one that got the Books For Africa Grant in December, but the one that got books last year but still hasn't made them available to the students) was now packed with boxes of school texts, as well as the construction equipment stored there at the end of last term.

We knew the first day at the Railway school would start with a faculty meeting for much of the morning with the students just sitting in their classrooms – no books, no work, no lessons. Grrr. But many of the teachers were away, either because they were taking tests for certification all week (!) or because they'd just been paid and they'd gone into town. Of course.

No one knew when, or even whether, we would have a slot for our teaching. Initially we were a little put off by this, but then we got a different perspective. We saw that at the “poorer” primary school there were some openings they were hoping to fill with “contract” (not permanent) teachers, some of whom were there, waiting to be signed up. But permission to hire these “contract” teachers had not been received from the Education Ministry. And at the other schools, teachers were just beginning to learn their assignments. Maybe we saw 4 or 5 30-minute classes taught, the whole week! So it wasn't a reflection on us that they couldn't commit to a place for us in their curriculum(we think!); the schools were just trying to get organized to start the term.

At the “poorer” primary school, a dozen or 15 Refugee Camp students interviewed and none were accepted because of inadequate English, which is a pretty low standard at that school. In their countries of origin, mostly troubled countries in central Africa, the second language they learned was Swahili or French, not English. We don't know what they will do.

We opened this week in the 5^th grade at the affluent Railway school (new students for us, last year's 4^th grade) a Christmas package my sister had sent us for our students, that we hadn't had chance to share with them before Christmas because the students were not in class much as the term wound down in November. The “Christmas” gift from my sister was an inflatable globe. Fantastic hit. All wanted to help blow it up. Then we showed them the path of our trip to the US, and tried to explain time zones and jet lag. Got the first mostly, not the second. Then passed the globe around to each student, finding Africa and Swazi, and then some other places they'd heard of. Really intrigued.

A ½ dozen students came to us asking to take books out of the library (this was the one that received the books last May, that we worked on over Christmas). The next steps on that library (staffing, procedures for checking out and returning books) have to be taken by the school, not us (The PC is big on local involvement and responsibility, hoping to promote new sustainable skills) so we had to say no to the students, but we really wanted to “seize the moment” so we proposed that they pick a book and we'd take it to their classroom and read it to them. They chose Disney's Lion King.

Turned out more than ½ had seen the movie (this is the wealthier “Railway” school). Now, I have to say in all sincerity, my voicing of Mafusa (the Father Lion King) and Scar (the evil uncle) is thought by many to be really, really good. I used to inflict my reading voices on our children, but not for the last, oh, say 25 years. (sob!) So this was really fun for me.

and I think the children were OK with it too.

Then the next day we tried an exercise Katherine had done with great success in training, where each of the students writes a nice thing about each of their fellow students on separate sheets of paper for each student posted around the room; this was part of an activity to develop self-esteem. We did this with the 7^th grade, whom we'd taught and related well with, we thought, as 6^th graders the previous term. But despite repeated instruction and admonition, ¼ or so of the comments were mean (“Your body is huge.” “You're a bully.”) We had to stop the activity. They were also terribly rowdy (despite repeated renditions of Katherine's piercing whistle), and we saw several “real” teachers peering through the windows, concerned for the ruckus. I told the class the next day that they were mean, and had made Katherine very angry, and that was a big mistake. One of them came up to me later and apologized.

We've been trying to teach at the “poorer” primary school, although they can't tell us that they will have a place for us in their curriculum. To expose the students to spoken English, we tried reading to them, books we “borrowed” from the “richer” school's library (there is no library at the “poorer” school.) The 5^th grade we chose was packed, as all their classrooms are. The 15 to 18-year-old (or older) boys (they keep failing; not sure why they keep coming back) were clustered in the back, barricaded behind rows of 2 or 3 younger students all seated together at a desk. The older boys would make jokes to the class in siSwati. The first step PC taught us in “positive discipline” classroom management is to go stand beside the disruptive student, but there was no way we were getting to these boys, as they well knew. We had the same problem at this school last term – I threw one of the older boys out of class and he flipped the lights off on his way out.

If we are going to teach something serious in that school, we're going to need to have a Swazi teacher in the room. They carry sticks. Hardly ever have to use them, because the students know they will if they need to. Hmmm.

We have a lot to learn.

In the January, 2014 SZ PCV newsletter SoJo on p. 3http://swaziland.peacecorps.gov/newsletters.php is an article I liked from one of my favorites in our group, One fish, two fish . . . . Her situation is the opposite of ours, in some ways: it sounds as if her living situation is quite comfortable (we haven't visited her site – it's quite remote.) but every minute of her day is scheduled and busy, especially during vacations when the regular staff leaves, but the orphans still need attention. When we visited with her over Thanksgiving she was exhausted.

This coming Sunday we assemble at one of our favorite “backpackers” hostels for some pool time in the afternoon, braii (SA for barbecue) in the evening, and then catch the Broncos in the Super Bowl! But that's not starting here till 3 a.m. I can't last that long! So I've booked a private room for K and me (instead of US $12/ person, I think it will be 15!), we'll catch a little snooze, and the 2^nd ½ should be starting about the time we usually wake up anyway. They are planning guacamole and jelly shots during the game – always my favorite breakfast! We really like the other PCVs, who are interesting and fun people, and it will be fun to get together with them.

Sorry this post is so long. My little camera won't take a charge, so lacking pix, I'm resorting to words. I checked with the pretty good photo shop in Manzini – the best I've found in the country - and they don't have the battery I need, but the owners will be going back home to Korea in a week, and will add that to their stocking list! Till then, no more pix. Sorry. (And these pix we got as it died are converted to the highest compression possible. Better? And I've tried to increase the print size – I got to look at the blog the way you see it in the US, and got access to the blog author design dashboard. Unlimited fast WiFi – such a luxury!)

GO BRONCOS!