So the roommates and friends have just left because a few of our girls are leaving tomorrow since they were only here for three weeks. I, however, have chosen to stay in on a Friday night because I.AM.SICK. It was bound to happen; this place is a cesspool for germs. I can count on both hands the number of people here with persisting illnesses so I was bound to catch something. I put it off for three weeks so I thought that was pretty good but my vitamin C and fish oil were no match for the virus my roommate Danielle passed on to me. Living with this many people and playing with snot-nosed children all day was definitely at some point going to make me sick. How fortunate I was to start feeling it at our going-away dinner right before the weekend. I couldn't even go to placement this morning because I couldn't swallow or breath through my nose. My head hurt so bad it hurt to open my eyes, plus I had a fever. Feeling better now after taking some sinus medicines and antibiotics prescribed by the doctor here. But alas here I am...sitting alone on the futon in my big cold room, alone, writing. Oh well, it brings such pleasure to me when I get comments on here or the sweet and thoughtful e-mails from everyone reminding me of how much I am loved and that yes indeed someone is reading what I'm writing. Thank you for the updates on the Cubs and Barack, and of course, hilarious SNL skits. Tina Faye as Sarah Palin was perfection. "I can see Russia from my house." Love it.
Speaking of politics, click on the video on the right hand side of this page if your'e interested in Barack's popularity in Africa:
http://www.thetimes.co.za/specialreports/USElections/Default.aspx?id=430579&gclid=CMHn9LHG6JUCFQ5PMAodqDEQfwBut this post isn't really about my illness or my love of mocking the Republican party. I'm so excited to tell you about what I really came here for and what I spend my days doing here. It's going to be quite a long post but there is so much to say about it and I think that all of it is important in order to fully understand what I see and go through each day.
Everyday I wake up between 6:30 and 7:00 depending on how tired I am. We get ready in a hurry, grab breakfast (three times a week we have scrambled eggs, otherwise it's toast or PB & J and coffee), and hop in the van by 7:45. Wonga, who is now our driver (Malinga was fired but that's another sad story for another day), drops Hillary and I off at Luthando Educare first and then goes on to drop off the other five ladies on our route. On the way home, we are the first to be picked up so at some point or another we get a glimpse of where everyone else is and what sort of neighborhood they are in. Luthando is in a poor black township named Guguletu. In Xhosa (that clicking language I spoke of before) Guguletu means "Our Pride" and I truly get a sense of that when I am there. During apartheid the black people were forced out of their homes into these townships and people continue to live in them today. These are highly highly underdeveloped areas where the poorest poor continue to reside. Each day I am reminded of the extreme poverty in Africa when we drive through the townships. Some of these people, their houses are no more than wooden frames with corrugated tin/aluminum siding. Some of their homes are smaller than my bedroom at home or even at my apartment back at school. They could be perhaps 6 x 8 ft. You may think I joke when I say shacks but that is literally how they live. Shacks and shantys just sit there, row by row by row. Sometimes I look and it's all I can see. In most of these townships the only running water is in a communal pump and their toilets are either holes in the ground or if they're lucky they have port-a-potties. I used to think the south side of Chicago (the projects) was bad. I would feel lucky to live there if I were living in a South African township. Surprisingly however there are these makeshift shops and business all over. Mostly they are these little places called "cash stores" and hair salons. These are usually set up inside what I believe were once cargo crates, like what you would find on a shipping dock. They simply open up one side door, slap a sign out front and BAM! A lucrative business. I laugh when I see all of these little cash stores that sell soda and chips because they ALL have signs sponsored by Coke. These are all mostly illegal little shops but yet Coca-Cola will still give them a sign with their name/logo as well as the name of the shop as long as they carry Coke products. The other popular thing I see driving through the townships are these makeshift BBQs. Raw, disgusting and questionable meat sits outside on a table with nothing covering it next to an old metal barrel that has been cut in half to create a grill. You'll see a dozen of these all in a row.
It may seem really awful but yet I find it hard to come by a person in a township really sit down and complain to me about their life. I find that so many people here have just accepted that this is the way it is. People work hard to make enough to live and eat and clothe their children but that's it. I notice that almost all of my parents who drop their children off are walking them on their backs because none of them have cars. It amazes me when I see them walking up in the drizzling rain with a 4-year old strapped on their back by a tightly tied towel or sheet. This is how many women will carry their children. If I ever saw this back in the states before now I would have marched right up to that mother and told her she should find a safer alternative to carrying her child, that her baby could fall out any minute. But I have found nothing different than this here and it actually seems like a very safe and economic way to hold your kids-all you need is a large enough towel or blanket. Sometimes Tandeka (the teacher in my room) will even have two kids on her, one in front and one in the back. It's insane. I usually just pick them up and let them hang on me like little monkeys.
When Hillary and I arrive at Luthando we take a few minutes to sort of assess the day and see how the children are behaving. We can usually tell right off the bat what sort of day it will be. We finally have a schedule so we have a flow going for us. The first week we were totally clueless as to what we were doing and when we should be doing stuff and the second week Hillary was practically on her death bed and I was alone with the little Rugrats so I had to sort of start doing things the way I needed them to be done. We've started doing some stretches in the morning and then some jumping jacks and running just to get them moving and excited for the day. We also sing nursery rhymes. They know almost everything I know! Itsy Bitsy Spider, Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, You are my Sunshine, The Ants Go Marching, and on and on it goes...By 8:30 it is time for porridge which the cook prepares for them. It's this white chunky oatmeal lookin' stuff-pretty dodgy if you ask me.We serve them their bowls and help clean up. Around 9:00 Hillary busts out her iPod and speakers and does dancing with them. Hillary is 18, a nice little Mormon girl from Utah. She is a dancer and teaches pre-school dance classes at home so we have worked that into our program. It's a lot of songs like the chicken dance or The Wiggles and they just asbolutely love shaking around and pretending to be animals. I can't imagine that any of their parents have an mp3 player or a stereo system beyond a radio so this is a real treat for them because they can't find this anywhere else.
I usually take this time to visit the baby room. The baby room has about 20 babies from 4 months to 3 years. It's really the saddest part of my day when I have to go over because they have NOTHING. When I say nothing I really mean NOTHING. The room reaks of dirty diapers and baby wipes. There are tons of flies and no fly traps. The only toy I ever see them playing with is the mat on the floor because it is made out of foam puzzle pieces that they can pull apart. There is one woman in there and I feel so awful for her because she has to sit in that stench all day and change diapers. This room is also connected to the dirty bathrooms (no toilet paper in the children's bathrooms) so she gets that stench as well. There is only so much she can do as far as singing or playing games because they are so young and she is so overworked. I'll see the cook (who is probably about 70) go sit in there with her but she can't really do much either. There are three actual babies and one of them is always crying. The toddlers are actually very happy and they listen to me better than the big kids but it's just too heartbreaking (and smelly) to spend my entire day in there. One of them has this mold growing on her head and this other one has deep scabs and scratches on her face. I want to ask but I'm afraid to know what is wrong. I'll usually try to take the babies out of the room for a bit so the teacher can change their diapers one by one and get a break. We have an outdoor covered area in between the two rooms (which leaks when it rains) so I usually take the babies out there to just run around, get fresh air, and if we're lucky I'll try to play a 'Simon Says' type game with them. They are absolute gems to be around and they are so appreciative of a hug and some attention since they receive so little in that room. I doubt any of them gets coddled or picked up when they're crying but when I'm around I can't help but just give them that loving. And truthfully, it shuts them up and they're fine after 30 seconds in my arms. It's a good feeling when I calm one down and assure them that someone is here watching over them.
After dancing and shaking our sillies out, most of the children have arrived and their parents have gone off to work. On a full day we generally have about 50 kids in the 'Big Kid' room from ages 3 to 5. They're favorite thing to do is something I picked up at UCA Cheerleading Camp back at high school. It's called 'Bananas' and it goes a little something like this:
"Form Banana, form form Banana"---raise one arm
"Form Banana, form form Banana"---raise the other arm
"Peel Banana, peel peel Banana"---lower one arm
"Peel Banana, peel peel Banana"---lower one arm
"Go Bananas, go go Bananas! Go Bananas go go Bananas!"---dance around as crazy as you want
They go NUTS for this. We've taught it to other volunteers and even our program directors who have taught it to their kids at their placements and even their own children. It's a hit here. We also do the same thing with 'Potatoes' and at the end we 'Mash potatoes mash mash potatoes'. Try it sometime. We thought it was fun and dorky and silly in high school but holy crap do these kids absolutely love it.
It's then usually time for crafts/toys. When we first arrived I could barely find anything for these kids. The puzzles and toys were scattered everywhere buried in crates and boxes filled with garbage and old crayon drawings. There are two wooden shelving units that open up which were totally unorganzied and unmanageable. I finally got so sick of never having enough stuff for all of the children that I (surprise surprise) ORGANIZED ALL OF IT. I asked Cynthia (the head of the program) if I could throw away things that were absolute garbage, things that were rendered totally useless. I was afraid she would say no and would say that we should salvage as much as possible but she was totally cool with what I was doing. I did find myself saving a lot more than I would have back at home because I knew that I had to keep as much as I could possibly use. Even broken crayons and books that have been colored in were saved as long as I could still see them being used. My longterm goal here is to assess their resources and materials and see what I can get donated from the community and stores. Ideally I would also like to involve the parents for a clean up day and try to get a fresh coat of paint inside. I know that CCS is working to help them build some stuff outside, I'm pretty sure one of the things being fixed is the playground that is not in use right now. Playing outside right now usually means running around in the dirt and gravel.
Anyways, I organized everything and finally found a lot more than what we had been using for two weeks. We have plenty of crayons and coloring books. We have lots of books but many of them are quite old and on the verge off falling apart. A big pile of them are also in Xhosa which makes them useless for Hillary and I since we don't speak or read the language. I found more wooden block and legos and small toys but what I'm most disappointed about are the puzzles. I find that the kids love the puzzles the most and that they work in teams to figure them out. Only five out of our perhaps 15 puzzles have all the pieces. They aren't your typical puzzle with 50 pieces and such. They are the wooden boads with cutouts that you have to match the cutout to the shape on the board. It amazes me that I can give the same puzzle to same table each day and they still love figuring it out and having something to play with. I have tried to implement sharing techniques and teaching them how to be more polite and more generous with their toys but it's going to take some time. The minute I put a handful of crayons on the table there are 2 or 3 kids who immediately grab the whole pile for themselves. I'm still working on it...
We have stencils and white paper and some colored paper. No scissors, no glue, no stickers, no colored paper and a very limited supply of markers and pencils. We have flash cards which we do every day for about 20 minutes but the kids are very smart and I want to start working on more advanced topics. The older ones know all of their colors, numbers, shapes, animals, body parts, and basic nouns like car, sweater, or tree. The little one, like my three year and young four year olds, know most colors, animals, and body parts and some numbers and shapes. Hillary really wants to work on phonics and learning their ABCs (beyond the song) and I want to create Bingo cards to teach them what their numbers look like, not just how to count from 1-50.
At 11 we have snacktime. This is my favorite part of the day because we get to give the kids their backpacks. You may think this is crazy but I love to watch the kids light up the way they do when they get their backpack. You see, all of the kids sit down at their chair and we hold up their backpacks one by one and the child raises their hand if it's theirs. They get this huge grin on their face and yell 'me me me!' if it belongs to them. They are SO PROUD of THEIR backpack, THEIR possession. It's amazing because when I hold up one backpack all of the kids know who it belongs to and will shout their name and point to that kid. How they know all 50 backpacks is beyond me. They like to play this little game with us that when I hold up one backpack a kid will raise their hand and when I go to give it to them they give me a devilish smile and say, 'no, not mine'. They LOVE to play tricks on us! Stupid white girls. There is one who always plays this game on me and even when I ask him to stop he continues to do so and therefore he has started to receive his backpack last. That'll teach him, eh?
When snacktime is over and I'm done peeling about 7 oranges for them we have story time until Wonga comes back to pick us up at noon. We read about 2-3 books in English and sometimes I'll have Tandeka read a story in Xhosa. I'm not sure how much their minds process all of the English stories so I try to pick out books that rhyme because if nothing else, I heard that rhyming is good for developing young minds, even if they don't understand the words.
So now that you've done that math and you've figured out this is only a 4 hour day I can assure you that it is probably just as exhaustive as working an 8-hour day back in the states. I'm not discrediting anyone who has worked long days with children, like my mom or my roommates Brittany and Mia, because I remember watching them all collapse after a day's work. We just face so many different challenges here, especially the language barrier. And when all else fails and we can't find the supplies or resources to keep them entertained, we sing and dance for hours at a time. I leave feeling like I've had a total body workout. Hillary and I are really left to do everything in the classroom for the time we are there. We really just use Tandeka or Cynthia or the cook as our Respect monitor. The kids love us and have so much fun when we are there but they give us ZERO respect or quiet when there is no other teacher in the room. Yet the minute of those ladies walks in BAM! Silence. Good behavior. Respect. I apologize to any substitute teacher I ever had who I terrorized because they were not my 'real' teacher (aka-sorry Mrs.Coslet).
I know this has been long and there is so much more I plan to write next time but my illness is kicking in again and I am freezing so it's time to crawl under the blankets and crash. I still miss home quite a bit but I'm having a better week now. Keep up with the e-mails and comments, I love 'em!
