The Real African Zoo

So it’s been a nearly two months at my site and I’m getting pretty used to things and, likewise, things (and people) are getting used to me. In a lot of ways, I’m grateful. I was way over the way people stare at me around the village at the shop and luckily, it seems like most guys have already asked to marry me so I’m getting less proposals, thankfully.

The one downside to this is at my school where I spend about two or three days a week. The educators have come to trust me (or find me as a relief educator) and often leave me alone with the kids while they do “important school-related things” (code phrase for sitting around drinking tea that they were too lazy to get for themselves so they had a student fetch for them). Now, at first this was ok. I could watch the kiddies as they ate their breakfast/lunch. I could even start them off in their prayer before they ate. I was pretty proud of myself, considering the kids don’t speak English and I barely speak Swana. However, now as the days progress, and as I’m assigned to spend full days alone with them, I feel more like I’ve been placed in a cage with what feels like 10 different kind of animals. Let me set the scene:

I walk into the junior class at 9 a.m. (where I’ve been placed on a daily occasion because the school can’t afford a teacher’s assistant) where ten special children who are seemingly so cute and adorable are seated around the two tables and lock the burglar door behind me which has a latch that is so high I can barely reach it. And yes, this locking of the door is essential; if the door is not closed and locked then surely my ten students will quickly dwindle down to two, believe me. I’ve learned the hard way. I walk over to the teacher’s table and take a seat. If it’s mealtime, which it always seems to be, I make sure everyone has a plate of the stuff that smells and looks very much like baby puke, the kids cross their arms tightly around them and tightly shut their eyes, and I initiate grace, “God bless…” and the kids carry on in an English prayer I am sure none of them really know the meaning to. (This I still don’t understand, it’s kinda like the belief is that God only speaks English because there is always English prayer being uttered from a non-English speaker who says the words but has no idea what he’s saying. Is it still a prayer if you have no idea what you’re saying? Hm, well, I guess if God understands…)

Immediately after grace, the kids start shoving the baby puke, aka “food,” into their mouths. Sometimes some of the kids just stare at their food and move their spoon around it and make little puke piles in their bowls, and I have to get the spoon and feed them a spoonful “airplane style,” and then they figure out that this baby puke is actually fairly safe to eat and then they continue on their own. However, there is this one child, Paul, who cannot eat by himself. The other educators say he is deaf, dumb and blind, but everyone still screams at him and sometimes he’ll laugh for no reason, which I think is pretty cool. But, anyway, I find him usually trying to eat his shoe somewhere in the classroom, stand him up and lead him to a chair that I place in front of mine and begin spoon feeding him myself. It’s a really easy thing to do because he opens his mouth to indicate that he’s ready for a spoonful, swallows, then opens his mouth again. Sometimes he’ll laugh and there will be baby puke down his shirt so to prevent this turning into a mess, I usually wrap him in a towel so the mess won’t be so tragic.

As I’m feeding Paul, I try to make sure the kids don’t start an impromptu food fight, which has happened before. Usually the two unofficial “class leaders” will finish first and begin kind of taking away the other kid’s plates before they’re completely finished. Or, they’ll yell at the other kids to hurry up, “O feditse? O feditse?” (You finished, you finished?) And then before they have a chance to answer yes or no, they’ll take the plate, schlop whatever is left into one bowl and pile the rest together. I would say something about this system, but I see it a lot and it’s not anything new or unexpected. As my mum would say, “tootie fruity” (mum language for oh well).

Finally I finish with Paul, clean him up a little, give him a wee bit of water from the community cup and give his plate to the class leaders who rush the plates back to the kitchen to be washed and ready for lunch. The rest of the kids take this time to go to the bathrooms while Paul takes a seat on the floor right by the door and returns to playing with his toes/clapping/laughing/chewing on his shoe. (Yes, I know that chewing on one’s shoe is not necessarily good for your health, so I do make an effort to take away his shoes as soon as he takes them off in the morning but he always ends up chewing on something. So the difference is when he chews on his shoe in front of other educators he doesn’t get screamed and swatted at with a belt like he does when he starts gnawing away at a chair or table.)

As the kids arrive back from the restrooms (my super fancy word for brick surrounding a hole in the ground, literally), they wash their hands in the water bucket filled with oodles of laundry detergent (soap is soap right?) and towel off and sit down back in their seats. Then they stare at me for a little while as I consider my options. Option A, give them the leggos and let them build things for a couple of hours but risk a leggo throwing war or option B, which is give half the kids the puzzle blocks and the other half their beadwork. With option B I know that at least half the kids will stay occupied so I go with that one and hope for the best. (I know some of you are thinking that I should have more options than this. Hm, have you ever been stabbed with a crayon? Yeah, it looks blunt and painless, but that mo’ fo’ hurts, man! And I don’t speak enough Swana to actually do anything besides coloring or the above mentioned options with them.)

I pull out the bowls of beads and the puzzle blocks. I put the puzzle blocks on the rug and half the class heads that way. I prepare some string for the other kids and let them get to work making strands of beads. It’s now nearly 10 a.m.

I relax for exactly five minutes before I see one of the kids has taken off his belt and is threatening to hit another kid with it. Ugh, I take it away from him. Then another kid starts screaming for no reason. He just likes to scream. One kid is pelting him with the puzzle pieces and that just makes him scream louder. I stop the throwing of the puzzles and try to get Mr. Screamer interested in the puzzle games. It works for a second but then I look over and I see the same child that had the belt now has a feather duster and is swatting Paul on the head. I rush over and take it away from him, I look him in the eye and tell him, “No,” in English, which I know he understands all too well. He smiles and tries to look innocent.

The kid who was previously screaming is now saying “No,” repeatedly and is flashing the middle finger at everyone. I’m not sure if this has the same meaning in South Africa as it does in America, but still, I tell him to stop. He stops, but then starts saying, “Mme, mme,” which is Swana for “ma’am” and is pronounced like “ma,” and tapping me on the shoulder over and over again. To play with him a little, I tap him repeatedly on the shoulder and say, “eng, eng, eng?” (what, what, what?) and he thinks this is funny, which I appreciate for a moment until he begins to think this is a fun game to play and I start to get annoyed. This goes on for a couple of minutes until another child shows me his shoe and a shoelace and says something that I think means that he wants me to re-lace his shoe. I take his shoe and begin to re-lace, then the kid who was screaming, then tapping me on the shoulder (his name is Terrance) starts screaming again. I look up and realize that the kid who had the belt and the feather duster has now found the scissors. I get up to take them away but he runs too. The classroom is small but has obstacles so it takes me a minute to catch him and take them away from him. In the meantime, Terrance and another child have begun imitating wrestling moves which pretty much means that Terrance is sitting on this kid’s head. I pull Terrance off and tell him to stop it. He mocks me like a parrot and continues tapping me on the shoulder and hopping.

The other kids who have been doing their beadwork during this time have stayed pretty much to themselves. One kid stares at me, smiles and occasionally laughs the whole class. He gets a kick out me trying my non-violent approach to discipline.

Then the kid who has had the belt, the feather duster, and the scissors now has another belt that the educator who is normally in this classroom has to keep the kids in check. I usually keep it on a higher shelf because I don’t believe violence is the way to keeping kids in line, and unfortunately, the kids know this and use my morality against me by being really bad around me when they know there is no one that is going to try to hit them. He’s swatting Paul while Paul claps his hands with his pants around his ankles. I have no idea how this kid’s pants came down, but I take away the belt and pull up Paul’s pants and look at my watch. It’s almost 10:45 I consider holding the belt for the next thirty minutes till lunch time but then I’ll be giving them the impression that I might hit them which theoretically means, they win. Junior class-1, Ausi (Sister) Dineo-0. I will not go down like that. So I put the belt where I hid the other belt, the scissors, and the feather duster. Ha. Take that!

I sit back down for a minute and take a quick count of the children. 5, 6, 7, 8…Oh crap. I look at the door and alas, it is unlocked and ajar. They have escaped. I instantly know who is missing. The only child who is tall enough to reach the lock, and this other kid Vero, who doesn’t talk apparently, the educators say, because he has epilepsy (yeah, I know, doesn’t correlate for me either). I look out into the yard and sure enough, I see the tall kid with two rolls of toilet paper walking around the yard. Grr, he took my toilet paper too. I open the door and yell for him to come back. I look around for Vero but no sign of him, he usually wanders to the kitchen because he’s always hungry. He’ll be fine there. I yell out once more and then let him be. If he needs sun, who am I to deny him? The school yard gate is locked anyway.

I close the door again and the wrestling has resumed. A kid, Thabiso, who until this point has been sitting in his chair acting very calm (which is new for him) has decided to join in. Two boys are sitting on a kid with quadriplegia. Ah! I rush over and pull them off of him. He’s laughing but I’m getting a headache. I tell the boys to stop fighting. I don’t know if they really understand but I figure that even if I could say it in Swana, I would not be able to get through to them. Eh, I try to distance them from each other as much as possible, but I know that as soon as I turn my back, they’ll be on top of each other again.

The door stars banging. I look over and through the bars I see the tall kid and he’s pulling Vero by the arm and screaming, “Gogo! Gogo!” (Grandmother! Grandmother!) I go over to let him in and somehow he’s lost the two toilet paper rolls and is covered in grass. I don’t think about the possibilities. He comes in, sits Vero on top of the table and then hands me the community cup. I refuse it, and he lets go of it and the water falls all over my skirt. Great, now I’m cold. It’s 11 a.m.

He runs back outside and I close the door. Oh well. Maybe he’ll find another educator and bug them for a couple of minutes. Again, screaming. I look back towards the rug and Paul is being kicked by the child who had the belt/feather duster/scissors/other belt in the face. I pull him away, look him in the eye again and tell him to stop. He has to stop now, right? I try to find my Zen as he smiles at me, and promptly continues to kick Paul. I will not hit this child. I will not hit this child. I will not hit this child. Every child is beautiful. I will not hit this child…..

hold him further back and try simultaneously to move Paul away from the kicking range of this kid. As soon as I let go of his shoulders, he moves back over and kicks him in the crotch, and I notice again that Paul’s pants are down. What the f...?

I decide this child needs a time out. Time out is a constructive disciplinary action, right? I look around the room and since it’s basically a 15 foot by 15 foot square, I decide that the only place that a time out will probably be halfway effective is if he is on the outside. So I lead him to the door, unlock it, and put him on the other side of it. Now, you think about what you did…

He looks pathetically through the bars as I simultaneously watch him and the rest of the kids. It’s calmer. An eerie calm. I know it won’t last, but I enjoy it anyway. 11:15 a.m, lunch time. Finally.

Two of the kids who have been doing the beadwork bring their strand for me to tie. I turn my focus away from my feisty boys and try to quickly tie the strands. When I look back up, five minutes later, I realize that my kid who was supposed to be in time out has disappeared and Paul still has his pants down. Oh, oops. I pull back up Paul’s pants, tighten his belt, and go over to look for my missing kiddie on the outside. I stick my head out the door and there is no sight of him or lunch. Damn.

Another ten minutes pass.

I hear the latch of the door trying to unlock and I look over to see that the principal is returning my escapees (Oh, you shouldn’t have…really). I tell her about my plight with my wannabe wrestlers and she asks me for the belt. I consider briefly whether I should tell her where it is and encourage her violent disciplining, but she finds another stick-like thing for pointing and goes to the boys and starts speaking rapid fire Swana, telling them to settle down and go to sleep, “Robala! Robala!” (Sleep! Sleep!) Ha, I think in my head, good luck with that. I’m tried the “nap time game” and it does not work with these kids. Too smart for that trick Lehoa (white person), they think, as they look at me demonstrating the sleeping position.

She stays for ten minutes and I sit down while they’re calm. Ah, I can think again! Fabulous. Then her phone rings and she leaves. Ugh. Lunch, where are you? Please come. Lunch, lunch…

Finally, at noon, lunch comes, not a minute too soon. The kids wash their hands, dry off, I try to beg Terrance to just sit and eat but he decides to play Duck Duck Goose by himself with everybody’s head while they eat and nobody really seems to mind, so I set my mind on feeding Paul.

Now, Paul’s fed, the kids are finished eating and I send them out to play. “Tsamaya!” (Go!) And they do. The room is a mess and I’m still wet from the water and smell like the kids do (read: not good). But, hey, I survived.

One day down, about 402 school days to go. And people wonder why I’m so pessimistic about survival...

A discovery

Peace Corps Volunteers do this really weird thing every time they meet for the first time. I remember the first time I encountered this kind of interaction was when I was at Staging (pre-training orientation) in Philadelphia prior to flying to South Africa.

I remember that day like it was yesterday… I left Houston early in the morning and arrived in Philadelphia still a little shaken and dazed from the combination of sadness, anxiety and lack of sleep from the night before. I somehow gathered my two checked bags, added them to my stack of carry-on luggage and got on a taxi. There, I encountered my first fellow trainees. They were nice, I thought. We talked about how we got to this point and how we felt about South Africa. It was an easy conversation and felt nice actually knowing someone else that had been crazy enough to try this out as well. We got to the hotel, checked in, found some other trainees and decided to go to lunch. At lunch the conversation focused on packing, leaving home, and the voodoo witch doctors that we feared lay ahead in South Africa. We got back to the hotel right before our orientation session was about to begin.

Orientation was overwhelming. I don’t understand why Peace Corps does this orientation in-country. I figure it is a last-ditch effort for Peace Corps to weed out those that are truly skittish about service and maybe save some money on the international flight if someone does bow out. A couple of times I decided that I was in way over my head and, just to make things worse, had packed completely inappropriately. It was not a fun feeling.

However, after orientation was over things got worse. I officially met my roommate for the night in our shared hotel room after orientation and immediately disliked her (I can say this now because I’ve decided her feistiness is fun, not annoying like I thought at first). However, since my feelings towards people when I first meet them are either dislike or fear, I decided to give her more time before making my final decision.

So awhile later, everyone met up for dinner. We walked the streets of downtown Philadelphia until we saw a sign that said “Free Wine” and like moths to a flame, we entered. The restaurant wasn’t bad and the wine was actually pretty tasty. We divided up into four-person tables and ordered food and chatted. It took less than twenty minutes to realize that this was going to be an awful dinner. It began innocently enough, why did you want to join PC? What are you expecting from South Africa? What do you want your assignment to be? Which were all fair enough, until the conversation stopped being a…conversation, and turned into a formal interview. Suddenly, each person was expected to explain (in detail) each and every professional, academic, and volunteer experience they had before this moment. Then that turned into trying to “one-up” each other with knowledge about South Africa and/or HIV.

I tried to change the subject to something a little more light (i.e, not something that made me want to gorge my eyes out) and asked if anyone planned to visit home during their stay in South Africa. Suddenly, I transformed from the quiet, uninterested one to Enemy. Each person at my table looked at me with disgust and literally turned their noses up at the very idea that our two years of servitude be interrupted for a foray back to America. How dare the thought!

After an hour or so of glares, I found a way to escape and as soon as I got back to my hotel, called my parents and boyfriend and told them I was coming home. The feeling subsided as I explained what happened and my boyfriend gave me the sound advice of “screw them.” Thanks, babe.

Now, a couple of months later, I still find myself in said conversations when I encounter new PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers). It’s agonizing. I don’t understand why my fellows in peace need to be so damn uppity. Was that a secret requirement that I was not aware of?

Sometimes I can understand how this can happen. I know that in Houston I liked to tell people that I was going to join the Peace Corps. It got me out of a early termination fee from my cell phone company and got me out of one (ok, two) traffic tickets the month before I was scheduled to leave. I enjoyed the look that people gave me when I told them that I was moving to Africa. It sounded cool. And, people were always telling me how “selfless” and “brave” I was. I tried not to let it go to my head, but I see now how it affected others.

Perhaps my feelings towards the whole thing came because sometimes I really don’t know how I became qualified to be here. Sure, I’m adaptable and well-traveled; I’m moderately friendly and patient; and, which is probably most important to qualify for service, I’m pretty healthy. But surely there should be more to being a Peace Corps volunteer than that, right? Well, whatever it is, I really doubt I have it.

So if near dimwits like me can get into Peace Corps, why try so hard to prove that you have the brains to get in? It’s not that hard. Most things that I’m going over with the people I encounter so far have been more along the lines of “No, you shouldn’t eat food off the floor,” and less along the lines of Astrophysics. There’s this one in particular volunteer that shall remain nameless that came to training and was always trying to tell us the “right” way to do things: go with this cell phone company, do this on kumbis (public taxis), don’t eat that. However, now said volunteer, unfortunately, lives by me and makes very public proclamations about how he’s never at the schools he’s assigned to or even in his village. And, I bet he was one of those volunteers that sat at staging trying to prove that he was better/more qualified than any one else. Puke on him. At least I make an effort of going to work even if it usually only consists of explaining the diet of Americans or the fact that America is not on the African continent.

So where am I going with all this? I’m not quite sure. But, thinking about all this makes me wonder if I enjoy being with my South African or American colleagues more. Sure, it’s nice to not be berated for speaking English when I’m around Americans, but there’s a since of enjoyment/fulfillment I get from explaining things that I consider simple but some haven’t ever considered or been made aware of.

And, come’on, it’s kind of funny that the only time I’ve ever really, really considered going home was when I wasn’t even around any South Africans or not even in South Africa! Now, that really says something, right? It puts my frequent rants about South Africa in perspective and makes me think that maybe it’s not as bad as I think.

Hey, maybe I can do this! Hm, who would have thought? Ha

Porn in the Workplace

Every Tuesdays and Wednesday, I pull myself out of bed, get dressed and walk myself to the Pankop Home-based Care and Drop-in Center. Sometimes (ok, most of the time) it’s quite uneventful. I sit and daydream while people talk in Setswana around me and I wait for a guy named MmmmPaul (I know his name isn’t spelled like this but it makes it funnier for me to think that it is).

This dude never shows up.

I met him once a while back when I went by the center after school let out to let him know I’d be there the next day. He gave me a lecture because I stood while I talked to him. “Dineo,” he told me, “you shouldn’t stand while speaking to a man.” Ha! My mind said, but I decided not to argue and willed my legs to sit. He told me he wanted to have a big meeting with everyone who worked at the center and formally introduce me to the organization. He made grandiose plans that I knew, because this is Africa, would never work out and said to come by at 9am tomorrow. I said my goodbyes and left.

At 9am the next morning, MmmmPaul was nowhere to be found. So, I cooked with the ladies at the center who made food for the school children and for the adult learners. It wasn’t too bad. Finally, at 11:30am, I was told MmmmPaul would not be coming in today. So I was given some food (a day doesn’t start off well without a plate of bogobe!) and watched a lame Nigerian film with a couple of other ladies who were “working.”

It’s been nearly three weeks since I’ve met MmmmPaul and we together decided working Tuesdays and Wednesdays would be best for everyone involved. I have not seen him since.

So now every Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I wake up pretty much whenever I want to (which in Africa, is usually no later than 8am for reasons unknown), get dressed, and walk myself to the center only to be turned right back around by the ladies at the center. “Come back tomorrow,” they always say.

However this Wednesday, in a defiant I will work today attitude, when I was told, “MmmmPaul isn’t coming in today,” I said ok, smiled and kept my ass in the chair. There was some Setswana chatter I’m pretty sure was about me, and then I was told to stir the chicken. So I stirred. Since it was late in the morning, most of the cooking was done so as the clouds darkened, the social circle that I had sat myself in began to move into the office. Although a part of me said that I’d made my case and could/should probably be leaving, I stayed and thought, What the hell, let’s see what happens after the cooking.

As everyone settled into the small office, somebody popped a dvd into the player and on came a recording of a street performance somewhere in Johannesburg. Damn, I thought, jibberish…at least the Nigerian films are in English. I watched anyway. At some point someone came to me with a bowl of bogobe and I began eating. I distracted myself from the boringness with the occasional glance at the TV and a lot of daydreaming of pizza and showers.

Then, thankfully, the film was over and I was halfway through my bogobe, which I consider a victory, and was about to excuse myself when suddenly rain started gushing down and the temperature dropped at least fifteen degrees. I considered walking through the rain but my beautiful handbag and my inability to explain a good reason why I had to leave right now made me turn back to my half-eaten bogobe and put my bag back on the ground. I was stuck.

Then suddenly, I heard American music coming from the TV. I glance over and do a double take as my mind processes what I just saw. Why is that woman on her knees? What is that…and then I read the script over the image, “Big Black Meat” and it all hit me.

PORN! Hardcore porn.

I turned towards the other ladies and must of given them quite the expression because they laughed at me and said, “Dineo, are you ok with the pornograph?” I hesitated only a moment. Was I being tested? How should I react? There aren’t any kids around, well, besides myself. How would Peace Corps want me to react to this? As the questions swirled in my head, I found myself faking cool and saying (whilst smiling, of course), “No, no. It’s cool. Ke siame (I’m good.).” Lie. All lies.

As I turned back to the TV, I thought more deeply about the scenario I currently found myself in. I resisted texting every PCV in my phonebook for some guidance and wondered if I should actually try to watch the film with interest along with these women I barely know or glance casually at the TV like it’s nothing, “Oh, Big Black Meat Two is so much better,” I could say as I roll my eyes. I looked around the room as casually as I could muster and saw that all the women had resumed watching the TV like it was Oprah and were back to eating their bogobe. I stared down at my bogobe and back at the TV where an Asian housemaid was showing the camera parts of herself that I don’t even want my doctor seeing. I couldn’t eat anymore. I put the bowl of bogobe down.

I tried to act casual. I didn’t know why I was so shocked. It’s just a little porn. I’m 23 and I’m in the Peace Corps. Surely I can handle a little “Big Black Meat”…at work…in Africa. South Africa just got a lot more weird.

However, as I tried to play cool, I found the relaxed nature of everyone during the film was more surprising than anything. About 20 minutes in, a man came by to sell some blankets. He came in, greeted everyone, said something about the blankets, some of the women felt the blankets and decided they were good, found some money, paid the man, he said goodbye and left…all like there were not three penises on the very large TV screen. At that moment I really started to believe that they were testing me, “Let’s see what the ‘lahoa’ (white person) does when we put on porn. It’ll be so funny!”

Another ten minutes passed as men and women came in and out to use the restroom in the office and only one woman mentioned anything about the fact that we were watching porn…at work. It didn’t even seem shocking to her. It was just, “Oh, pornograph.” It was kind of like she was at the zoo and had just seen the lion cage, “Oh, lions.” And then she left.

As the storm roared on and the sex onscreen continued, suddenly things were silent. There was a commotion as everyone wondered where the sound had gone. A few women tried to push the buttons on the two remotes that controlled the TV and dvd player but all they were able to manage to do was to restart the film. More Setswana erupted as they tried to get back the sound and to the place where the film had left off. As they scrolled through the chapters, the sound was nowhere to be found so the film was paused mid-sex scene and there was some yelling to someone outside. After awhile, a man came and they explained the situation to him and he pushed a couple of buttons without success.

I couldn’t believe it. It was porn. Sound in porn never really made any sense to me in the first place. How many times does one need to hear “Yes, yes, right there,” before it gets old? But these ladies were intent on having the sound back on. I guess they wanted to hear what happened in the lame and poorly-scripted storyline. I would have offered to narrate a story of my own, but wasn’t eager to add “Adult film scriptwriter” to my list of skills.

And then, just as suddenly as it began, it was over. The ladies resigned themselves to the fact that the dvd was not going to work and after a minute the rain stopped and I downed my tea and made my exit. I laughed to myself as I walked home.

Never a dull day.