As per usual- it’s been awhile, huh?
I have to say life/time in this country is absolutely flying by lately. It seems that time in our service is upon us when everyone is talking about their plans for their return to the United States and applying for dates to leave the country and finish Peace Corps service. I’ve been waffling a lot lately between feelings of relief and eagerness to go home and nostalgia for what has made up my life these last two years. Mostly I have to say I’ve been experiencing the former. I’m feeling very ready to be an RPCV, to exchange my homeless chic wardrobe and appearance for something resembling my former put-together self, to finally be able to call up my best friends and family back home without worrying about the cost and to simply have a change of pace. On the other hand, I’m absolutely dreading having to say goodbye to my dear host family here in Lego City. I don’t even know how I would begin to describe my feelings for them all. So I’ll just leave that for a few months from now when I actually do have to confront the fact that I have no idea when I will see them again.
For now though, I have somewhere between 3-4 months left in the country. Winter has arrived for which I am truly grateful. I’d say about a month ago it started cooling down more at night. It’s still quite warm during the days now but I’ve been sleeping under blankets at night and waking up to 60* F in the mornings, which pathetically I’m finding quite cold. This almost-forgotten feeling of being cold is, however, a very welcome change. I never have to live through another South African summer again and for that I’m unduly relieved.
Quatchi the cat is doing great. He is currently sleeping on my bed, his preferred place to be. I’ve had to be a little mean though and restrict his time in my room- he never gets to sleep inside, be inside when I’m eating (that cat will eat anything he smells), eat his own food inside, or be inside when he is dirty (pretty much only when it’s been raining). If I knew he was coming home with me I’d probably just allow him to be an indoor cat which I think he’d love, but as I’m leaving him here with my gogo he needs to toughen up. It’s been delightful having him as a companion these last several months and his presence it’s quite convenient when my host family catches me talking to myself- I just claim to be talking to the cat, which to them might be just as strange as talking to myself now I think about it. I’m sure I’ll be sad to leave him behind but as he’s a fairly new addition to my life here and I know the family will take good care of him once I’m gone, I’m not too worried it.
School stuff is pretty normal with the exception that I’m trying to wind down my projects instead of thinking about what projects I’ll be starting next. I realize I haven’t written a whole about my work at the schools on this blog, mostly because it took me awhile to find work I actually both enjoyed and found meaningful. What has ended up working well for me and the learners as my main day-to-day work has been reading intervention groups. Literacy is a pretty big problem in the schools and communities here and when children struggle greatly with reading and writing in English and often times their home languages as well, it creates a problem for them in all of their learning areas. Previously I had been team-teaching the entire grade 5 English classes with another educator which was a good learning experience for both me and the educator but I didn’t think it was really benefiting the students all that much. When I went home at Christmas my friend Laura and I decided to do a pen pal letter exchange between our two classes. Before my class received their letters from America I had them practice writing letters and from those practice letters I identified the learners who were really struggling the most- this pretty much meant that their letters were not at all coherent and most identifiable words were misspelled. Some copied words from their textbook and one copied off of his neighbor’s letter. I ended up with a group of 8 boys who really needed some help with reading. Not being an educator, I asked fellow PCV’s with a background in education for their suggestions and did a ton of research online and had my mom send a few helpful resources. I split the 8 boys into two groups and we meet for 1-2 hours a day per group to work on phonemic awareness (a new concept to me), phonics, reading comprehension, spelling, grammar, and writing. The boys love coming to the library with me (to my great surprise) and I enjoy working with them. There have been virtually no behavior issues yet which has made it so much easier than teaching an entire class. We’ve been doing this for the last two terms and I can see that progress is being made. It’s slow, to be sure, but if nothing else their regular teacher has told me that they seem more confidant in class than they used to be. For a lot my service I had felt largely unsatisfied with the work I was doing at the schools, or lack thereof. This one thing I’ve found that works certainly doesn’t constitute a full-time work load and I’m not training any teachers in the process or doing anything apparently sustainable, but it does at least give me the sense that I can leave South Africa knowing I’ve made a difference on some level. Certainly for that I’m thankful that I never left early.
