The Plight of South Africa's Boys, Continued

For the past few weeks, I had been considering e-mailing Oprah my opinions on this issue, basically because if I were in her shoes, I'd feel a responsibility to help the boys of South Africa not just the girls. I don't know how much she knows about the challenges faced by males in this country, but on the off chance that she doesn't know anything at all, maybe my e-mail would get read by someone sort of important and make a difference. I know the reason that she started her school here wasn't really for South Africa, but for Africa itself where in most countries, girls have a horribly impossible time and for herself, as she is very dedicated to women's issues. Still, it makes me wonder why not base your school in a country then where girls really need your support.

This desire to communicate with Oprah had been brewing as, as I mentioned in the last post, we've been watching a lot of Oprah (we get episodes about 4 months behind so the final episode has not yet aired) since winter started. She's really quite good at making you feel like she is accessible and might just call you up when you really know that's never going to happen. Now, my reflection on this issue has been enhanced by the chance of me ever meeting Oprah has gone from never in a million years to slight chance we'll be in the same room, but would I even get to talk to her and if then, would it go beyond hello?

So a few more thoughts to ponder about boys, education and life in South Africa. In my research for our conference paper, I had the chance to read the report on South Africa of the 2006 PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study). This study which compared scores of 4th and 5th graders in 35 countries around the world (most of them developed, the only other African country included was Morocco) found that South Africa performed the lowest of all countries. Within South Africa, students from rural schools also performed significantly worse that students from urban and suburban schools. These statistics were not suprising to me, but what I found most interesting was the gap in performance between girls and boys. Overall, in all countries, girls performed better than boys, but South Africa also had one of the greatest performance gaps between girls (gr 5: avg. 319, gr 4 avg. 271) and boys (gr 5: avg. 283, gr 4: avg. 235). For context, the international average score (and most countries only tested grade 4) was 500. I wish they would have given the breakdown of rural students' scores by gender, but they don't.

In my schools, I see boys lagging behind consistently. I know a number of boys who dropped out of school after the finished 6th grade (end of primary school.) Because of my interest in this issue, I decided to disaggregate the scores on the pre and post assessments I did for creative writing for our research by gender. The overall average on the pre-test was 11.4 (out of twenty) and the overall average on the post-test was 13.4 so the average went up by two points. For girls, the pre average was 11.8 and the post average was 13.2 (an increase of 1.4). For boys, the pre average was 11.14 and the post average was 13.48 (an increase of 2.34). So as you can see, boys originally under performed girls, but made a much larger increase in score to outperform them.

I can only attempt to understand why this happened, but my guess is that, the boys were motivated by the kinds of activities we did because they were interesting to them. In my schools at least, the culture of girls seems to be very achievement oriented. They want succeed. They do everything that they are asked to so that they will get good marks. Though there are a few girls in that class who really just do not know how to read and continue to fail, most girls average 3 and 4s (above average). The boys just don't seem to care as much about getting high marks. I think it has to do with the factors I discussed in my previous post. They don't see the point. The creative writing activities we did were motivating to them because they were fun. Not a single one of them was for a grade (though in retrospect, maybe the should have been), but they did them anyway (boys and girls). Kids who completed their writing assignments got to go type them in the computer lab which was a big motivator. They got to write stories about things they were interested in. When I collected the post assessments (a story about a sequence of pictures), a few boys told me 'I think you're really going to like my story.' I don't know that fun and challenging activities are going to suddenly sweep across this nation, but I would guess they might help motivate boys.

TV in South Africa

Unlike the vast majority of volunteers, we watch a lot of South African TV. This is mostly because we have a TV in our bedroom. We had never planned on buying a TV when we decided to join Peace Corps a second time around, but when we arrived at our fully furnished house, there it was (along with 3 couches, something most volunteers also don't have the luxury of in their PC abodes). Now, we are both extremely happy that we've had our TV, not just because of the hours of entertainment it provides, but because it has helped us to integrate into our community and to be more effective at our jobs.

We get the 4 free channels (our host mom has a satellite but we did not pay to get a second box so we only watch satellite TV very infrequently) so it's not like we have a lot of programming to choose from. Most of our students are also too poor for satellite TV so that's also what they watch. Usually in the evening, we watch Oprah, our favorite soap opera Rhythm City, the news and possibly something else if there is something good on (for whatever reason old seasons of American reality shows...Survivor, Amazing Race and American Idol lately...are the most entertaining to us). Oprah we most only watch in the winter because it's on at 5:30 at which point it is too cold to be outside any more while during the summer we sometimes stay outside chatting with our host mom til 7 or 8.

Watching the news has really helped us to understand what's going on in South Africa. Yeah, we could look up news online, but the news we see on TV is the news that most people are hearing so it becomes part of the collective consciousness. We often have conversations the next day about the news with teachers and other adults that we run into. It has helped us to learn more about the South African government, politics, and important people (hence why we were very excited to see South Africa's Police Commissioner Bheki Cele at the basketball event. He is on the news almost every night.) It also makes our favorite South African TV show "Late Night News with Loyiso Gola" (which is trying to be like the Daily Show) a lot funnier when we know who and what he is talking about.

Having background in ESL and sheltered instruction, one of the things I know is most important with teaching in a second language is accessing background knowledge to help kids connect that to what they are learning. I have found background knowledge kids have of life in the village a little bit helpful (teaching about mammals, I got kids to think about which animals give birth to live young for example), but I've found knowledge of TV shows even more helpful as it is shared by almost all of the kids and it helps even struggling kids to get the context of things that are farther from their own experience. Recently, I taught a lesson about the elements of a story (setting, plot, characters, and theme) and explained that not just stories that you read have these elements, but TV shows and movies too. I got kids to identify these elements on the most popular soap opera, Generations, before moving on to a story they had read. To explain that sometimes characters can be animals instead of people, I got them listing the characters on the cartoon "Skunk Fu". To discuss theme, I had them identify the theme of "Captain Planet" which was a great example because it's so obvious. Then, it was a lot easier for them to look for the theme of their story which was also pretty in your face, but is daunting to kids because it requires reading.

Anyway, even if had watched Captain Planet as a kid, I wouldn't know that it was on TV on Sunday mornings if I didn't flip through the channels. We don't usually watch movies on TV because why watch a movie filled with commercials when I have 100s of movies at my fingertips, but I always make a mental note of what movies they are showing each week because you never know when one might make a good example in teaching or just a good topic of conversation.

Nearing the End

With each passing day, we get closer to the end of our Peace Corps service. As I alluded in our last post, we have applied for an early Close of Service date of July 20th so if this date is approved we have less than 8 weeks left here in South Africa and only 4 weeks left of school (there is a school break at the end of June and beginning of July). We will most likely be going to school during this time anyway to finish up with sorting library books, but it doesn't feel the same when the kids and teachers aren't around.

The weird thing about leaving so soon is that it doesn't really feel like a particularly big deal. I think most people have just gotten so used to us being here that they forget we are leaving at all. While in December, it seemed like every 5 minutes I was being told not to leave and how much people would miss me, now people have settled into the year and aren't really thinking about us leaving. There has not been any talk about a "farewell function" in months. A farewell function is the typical large extravaganza held when someone retires or moves away for a new job, it usually involves a long program followed by a big meal. Though we are more than happy to go out like lambs, it is a bit of a weird ending to these two years of our lives in which we have been constantly thrust into the spotlight.

The biggest reminder that we are leaving is when we meet new people and are asked to help them with this or that project and have to reply that there just won't be time in the next two months.

In other news, though every day seems to be more important than the next in the quest to finish up our work here, we have both come down with a pretty bad flu/cold. James could not speak for about four days and I had a pretty high fever on Friday. Now, we both just seem to have pretty horrible sinus/throat situations going on, and I couldn't really sleep through the night last night because I just couldn't breathe. I'm hoping to make a fast recovery so that Monday I'll be good to go, but the freezing temperatures and constant dust clouds (dry season has officially arrived) are making it a challenge.

We recently had the opportunity to read a magazine article in a tourism magazine for the North West province that described our village in the context of a car passing through on the way to our neighboring national park (usually Friday and Sunday we see lots of Afrikaaners driving by, mostly intending to go fishing in the dam there as it's not as known for wildlife as other parks in the province). They say our village is clean and organized without a lot of trash on the side of the road. It is quite a funny description since there usually is quite a bit of trash on the side of the road, but I guess since there aren't like piles of it, it has gained the approval of the magazine writer. I was pondering this statement on Friday as I walked home, just 100 m or so from that same road the Afrikaaners were driving down, past a women and some children digging in the dry riverbed for water as, as usual, the water is out and has been for weeks. I wonder how that would fit with their image of this perfect, idyllic village where everyone is happy and properly disposing of their trash.

Culture and Friendship

As an anthropologist, how you define culture is part of how you situate yourself theoretically, and I don't intend to discuss the many different definitions and ways of looking at culture that there are in the world, but I want to reflect a bit on culture and how people view it. When I first came to South Africa, I commented to some of the Peace Corps higher ups when they were asking me about differences between here and Chad that people are a lot more proud of their culture here. They were surprised, and I've heard repeatedly both from South Africans and foreigners living here that South Africans no longer embrace their culture, that ubuntu is dead, etc, etc. Yet, I have not changed my opinion on that matter. Never in Chad did I see anyone perform a "traditional dance" or wear "traditional dress" (though the way people danced was certainly different than how people dance in South Africa or anywhere else I've been and South African's would describe the way Chadians dress as traditional, but having seen photos of how people dressed in Chad 100 years ago, it's certainly not.) This country works very hard to promote the idea that every person has a culture and as part of that there are traditions including dance, music, dress, and food. The textbooks promote it. The existence of 11 official languages promotes it. TV shows promote it. Heritage Day promotes it. School competitions in traditional dance promote it.

Never in Chad did I hear anyone say they were proud to be Ngambaye or anyone tell anyone they should be. Speaking Ngambaye at school is forbidden, and other volunteers were shocked to hear that the teachers would speak Ngambaye sometimes to each other at my school between classes because that was not the norm. But when it came to way of life, the life people lived was certainly much more "traditional" than the life of the vast, vast majority of South Africans. Personally, I do not think you can say that one group of people have more of a culture than another group of people because culture isn't just traditions or living a certain way. It is all of that and more. What I would say is that for South Africans, especially those living in rural places as those in urban areas often deal with competing cultural identities, recognizing themselves as cultural beings is much more a part of their culture, and whether this recognition only comes from the imposition of others that it should be valued or is something comes from within, I cannot say.

I've been thinking a lot lately about friendship as we are nearing the end of our Peace Corps service. Though I feel that I have been successful here in becoming a part of my community, I do not feel like I have made any friends that I feel anywhere as close to as I felt to my host mother/sister (she is a year younger than me so hard to call her a mother) Isabelle in Chad. I think that part of our ability to become as close as we did came from not sharing a knowledge base of pop culture and the world. I can have conversations with friends here about just about anything because they watch the news, have seen lots of movies, have seen the latest Lady Gaga video, but it often feels like small talk because that's what it is. I think I was able to get to a deeper level with her more easily because we couldn't have those kinds of conversations. I don't remember 90% of what we used to talk about but we hung out for hours at a time every day. Of course, we were also able to do that because we had the time. People like to say that life in the village is boring but I don't know anyone who has time to just spend their whole afternoon just sitting around, talking and playing Uno every single day.

I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes the gulf of difference between two people can actually be a blessing and that you cannot assume that just because you share knowledge or interests with another person that will allow you to relate to them. Culture and identity are much more complex than interests or even traditions as these things have different meanings to different people and it may be harder to get to the meaning behind things that are more familiar to you than things that are foreign.

Cats Funerals Elections and Work

We have recently started to possess a cat. We do not own this cat and do not feed it, but it likes us quite a lot. It started about two months ago when I had the great urge to pet our next door neighbor's cats. No such thing was possible as they would not come within twenty feet of me so we bought two cans of tuna fish and started leaving out a tuna/lentil combo every night which was gone by morning. After a few days of this, we put it out earlier in the evening and then sat patiently inside until the cats showed up at which point we snuck outside and watched while they finished their meal. The next step was to sit outside the whole time they were eating. Finally, we tried to pet them. One of them, the dominant one of the two, allowed petting, but the other still won't come near us. At that point the feeding stopped (we had also just run out of tuna fish). We have not fed the cats in almost two months but the dominant cat comes to our door every day. She will walk with me to and from the bathroom or wherever I may be going as long as I stay inside the yard. She loves being petted, and it seems that that is her only incentive for hanging outside our door all day long as it never results in food. It's kind of the perfect relationship as I like her but not enough that I will be sad to leave her behind.

Last weekend, we attended the funeral of our host mother's nephew in law. It was a sad funeral because he had died in a car accident, but it was a wonderful time to be with our extended family here. We had to spend the night because it was in a nearby village and funerals start so early in the morning that you can't really get there on a taxi at that hour. Spending the night in an unfamiliar place is always a bit nerve-wracking because you never know how much time will be spent just sitting around with no one to talk to since Mma was of course busy taking care of the immediate family. That was not the case at all though as we arrived just when our sister and her kids arrived as well as our cousin. It was great to spend time with all of them. In some ways, even though this was a funeral for a person I didn't really know, I felt like I was getting a chance to attend my grandma's funeral. I know that's a silly thought, but it was the first time I got to be in a family oriented setting since she died and it was really nice.

This week was the municipal elections in South Africa. As Peace Corps volunteers we are not allowed to have political opinions, so I will just say that the election for ward counselor in our village was quite interesting and quite different from in nearby wards. We had 3 candidates, an ANC candidate, a DA (democratic alliance) candidate, and an independent candidate. The ANC candidate won with 57% while the DA candidate got 18% and the independent got 22%. In most other wards around us, the ANC had 80% or more of the votes so it was a relatively close election.

We've been really busy wrapping things up at our schools lately. If our early COS gets approved, we have only 5 more weeks of school and there's lots to do. It's been great finally getting to do things I've wanted to for the past two years. I have done some workshops for teachers and have been helping the English teacher a lot at one school. We're also getting the books organized at each school which is a bit of a task since they all have different levels of shelving situations. The community service club has been sponsoring after-school activities for the younger kids which has been crazy but fun. I'm also doing a leadership retreat for one school's prefects next week which I'm excited about. All in all things are going quite well, but it's crazy to think about how soon we'll be leaving.

viruses

This blog is not intended for reading by family or friends or fellow Peace Corps enthusiasts though of course you are welcome to. It is intended for those people who create computer viruses and other malware because for some reason they find that an enjoyable pastime.

I may be wrong in assuming that when people make viruses they do not understand the full impact that these viruses have around the world. They must find it funny to think about all the people that their viruses impact, but I cannot imagine that they include people in developing countries in their private laugh fests.

Viruses spread like wildfire here in South Africa as I'm sure they do in other places with similar conditions (where technology is very prevalent but not very well understood). It seems like it's a constant battle to keep the computers at our schools free of viruses which are mostly spread by USB sticks. Whenever the administrative assistants get together for a workshop or to submit data about the school, they come back with new virus from other administrative assistants. Some people are more concerned than others and follow the directions we give for checking their USB sticks and computers and can usually keep their computers pretty clean, they have to be extremely vigilant whenever anyone else uses their computer. Others don't seem to mind wiping their hard drives clean and reinstalling Windows every few months and just throwing away (or they know how reformatting) USB sticks.

So all this is to say, if you like to make computer viruses for fun, please stop. You are making the lives of people working in under resourced rural schools in South Africa more difficult. Is that really that fun? Are those really the people you thought you were messing with when you made your viruses?

going to africa

My recent trip to Kinshasa has led me to a bit of pondering about the influence of South Africa and other big players (i.e. China, America, France) on the rest of the continent. I've only done it twice (to Liberia and now the DRC) to get on a plane in Jo'burg and get off in "Africa". Neighboring countries that I've visited are just too influenced by South Africa to feel really different. The closest I've come to feeling like in I'm "Africa" on ground based travel was on our short foray to Zambia, and Livingstone (one of the biggest towns, of course) is still chock full of South African chain stores.

The main reason we did not pursue employment opportunities in South Africa is that we didn't want the suburban lifestyle that is the norm for people living in towns here. We are done with malls and chain stores at least for a while. Though these things exist in America too, they are much more prevalent here where you have to really go to Jo'burg or Cape Town to find good independent restaurants or shops and even there they are few and far between. This relates in a way to something we call the illusion of fanciness that exists here. You can go spend the afternoon sitting in a chain coffee shop, but you'll most likely be disappointed. Just like the fancy houses you see looking nice from the outside with bad construction inside, most of the chain restaurants provide mediocre food and the clothing stores provide ill fitting, bad quality clothes (unless you are willing to pay an arm and a leg, and I'm not just talking Peace Corps money standards).

Anyway, so being sick of all this and not wanting to truly adopt it (which we'd have to living in a town), we searched elsewhere for employment. Ironically, the first conversation I eavesdropped on on the plane to Kinshasa was a few South African businessmen discussing their plans to bring a mall to Kinshasa filled with all of the retailers I've grown to abhor. Inquiring more of folks in Kinshasa apparently this has been in the works for a while so I'm sure it won't be happening anytime soon. I was also surprised to find out that South African fast food chicken place Nandos already has a location not far from the school where we will be teaching. I was less surprised to see all of the South African food products available in the ex-pat grocery stores (for inflated prices of course). It was even interesting to see a local version of Cheetos (which we call snacks or Zimbas in South Africa where they are much more popular than in America and exist in lots of flavors) being sold as part of the school lunch. I never saw a salty mass produced snack product for sale in Chad though there were lots of, mostly Nigerian made biscuits, so I am guessing that this idea came from South Africa but who knows.

Even in Liberia, a country that loves the US more than anywhere else I've ever been, there was South African DSTV (satellite tv), cell phone service (lonestar cell owned by MTN), and the nicest hotel/resort was operated by South Africans. I do not remember hearing much about South African influence in Chad, but I wasn't so well versed in South African commerce at the time either. Chad is not a country much worth investing in as it doesn't have the natural resources, population or tourism potential of a place like the Congo (it has oil of course, but not that much, and it grows lots of cotton but that's not going to ever send the economy soaring) or the strategic port location and natural resources of Liberia. The only country that seems to be investing strongly in Chad is China as they are doing across the continent very liberally.

The investment of countries with strong economies in developing countries brings up some serious questions about neo-colonialism. How can a country develop itself when all of the businesses are owned by foreigners? Certainly a better quality of life (if you consider the ability to buy processed foods and all the goods imported a better quality of life) is available to a small proportion of the population, but how does this develop the country? If these companies do decide to bring production to the host country, this creates jobs but how is it different from colonization? Is there a difference between colonies created by nations and colonies created by corporations? Does foreign investment encourage local entrepreneurship to compete or encourage a culture of complacency and expectation that others will support them?

I have read a bit on this topic and so I know I am certainly not the first person to ask these questions, but I am struck by them every time I wander outside of this country into the rest of the continent. Maybe returning to "Africa" with a new perspective on South Africa will help me to unravel the mess, but I don't know. I of course have my own beliefs, but that is not the way that development and investment seems to be going. It's hard to see how either aid or investment will really help these countries to develop, and I sometimes wonder if that is even the goal.