The End of An Adventure

SA 23 Community HIV/AIDS Outreach Project Volunteers 2011-2013

As I write this my countdown on my calendar tells me I have 19 days left in Alexandria.  As my time winds down I’m struck at how complicated my feelings are towards leaving.  Some days I think with joy and relief: only 19 days to go!  Other days the number makes me panic and wish I had another two years.  Usually I get both of these feelings within the same day, even within minutes of each other.  I’ve been thinking about all the things I will miss and all the things I won’t and wanted to share them with you. 

 

I’ll start with the things I’m not going to miss once I leave South Africa.  I will not miss…

• Children harassing me (which is happening right now as I write this: “Zoleka, do you have sweeties?”), cockroaches, bathing in a bucket, hand washing clothes, line drying clothes, burglar bars, not going out after dark, marriage proposals, electric fences, no air-conditioning, no central heating, bad internet, not understanding 50% of what is said at any given moment around me, and trash everywhere. 
• The following things I have had experiences with in South Africa and even though I know these issues exist in the United States I will not miss: blatant racism, violence against women, child abuse, animal abuse, and living in poverty.      

Things I will miss… 

• My host family.  My host sister Phakama and her little boy Qhama who recently turned five.  Qhama just started kindergarten this year and his English is getting better.  I’m going to miss him coming home from school and saying shyly “Look Alana!” as he shows me his school work. 
• My friends and South African “families”.  I’ve made some amazing friends here in South Africa and I’m so sad to be leaving them.  I can’t imagine not seeing my friend Noxolo weekly for our Girls Club and catch up session where we share things going on in our lives.  She’s been an amazing support to me and I’m going to miss her dearly.  Most of my friends here are people who I’ve worked with on projects and they know me the best – it will be hard to say goodbye to them.  I have two families that have “adopted” me since I’ve been here.  Both are going to be heartbreaking to leave.  My South African moms have taken care of me like their own daughters.  Feeding me dinner, buying me medicine when I was sick, sharing South African life with me and allowing me to become part of their lives.  I’ve gone from having no sisters to being the “American sister” of six of them!  I hope that one day I can show them the same kindnesses they showed me and some of them can come visit me in the States!  
• My Ikhwezi co-workers.  Despite them occasionally driving me crazy, they all have good, kind hearts.  They make me laugh daily and I’ll miss them terribly. 
• The youth I work with.  The disabled learners, my girls from Camp GLOW and GLOW clubs, the orphans and vulnerable children that come to my organization, the neighborhood kids, SKILLZ participants, and my students.  I can’t even remember what it’s like to not interact with these amazing young people daily.  I wish I could grant wishes, and make all of theirs come true.  I wish I could solve their problems, and protect them, and see that they all reach their goals.  I know that they were fine before me, and they will survive on their own without me, but I’ll be thinking of them and sending them love for the rest of my life.  I will worry about them, and hope that they continue to believe in themselves no matter what. 
• South Africa.  The people.  South African’s are so quick to laugh and make friends.  They welcome you with open arms, are amazingly generous, and support you like you’re family the instant they meet you.  I’ll miss the name Zoleka and being greeted by everyone I see on the street with a smile and “Molo, MyZo!”  The beauty of this country.  The ocean, rolling green hills, the brightly colored houses that line the streets.  The beautiful trees and flowers that bloom all year round.  The long summer days. And the sky that’s the bluest blue you could imagine. 
• My Peace Corps friends.  I wouldn’t have been able to get through the last two years without the friendship of my amazing fellow Peace Corps Volunteers.  When you’re questioning your sanity, or just need to complain to someone about how a massive cockroach just woke you up in your sleep, the only people to turn to are other PCVs.  They are the only other people who understand exactly what you mean without having to go into a long explanation. 
• The little things: Nando’s Peri Peri sauce, my little room, Hungry Eye’s delicious chips, being a local celebrity, biltong, children harassing me, milk tart, walking everywhere, my street, Algoa FM, my neighbors, South African slang, and probably a million other things I’ll only realize once they aren’t a part of my life anymore.

As I explained above the weirdest thing about ending Peace Corps service is the daily contradictory waves of emotions you get.  I’m incredibly sad to be leaving.  I’m beyond excited to come back to the United States.  I don’t want to leave my new families and friends.  There is nothing more I want than to see my family and friends after two years.  I can’t imagine not living here anymore yet I think about the United States and all the things I want to do there on a daily basis.  It’s the most pure and true experience of bittersweet that I’ve ever had.  I am satisfied and proud of my service, and I know it’s time to move onto the next chapter but now that the time has actually come, it feels impossible to leave. 

After I leave Alexandria I head up to Pretoria to finalize the end of my service along with several other volunteers from our group.  Some people from SA 23 have already gone back to the States, others are staying in South Africa longer.  I’m ending my service on the day we always knew we would – and there are a lot of us who didn’t change the plans.  It will be good to get the opportunity to work through all this with my fellow SA 23s.  After March 22^nd – my last day as a Peace Corps Volunteer – my friends and I will begin our travels around Southern Africa for the month of April.  I am really looking forward to this, but it’s on the back of my mind as I get ready to say goodbye to my community. 

“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished.  That will be the beginning.”
- Louis L'Amour

This post is dedicated to Aya – my friend.  We will always miss you.   

Teaching English

When I thought about my last three months in the Peace Corps I imagined they would be full of stress free work: transferring my remaining project responsibilities from myself to my South African counterparts, and taking my time to wrap up and say goodbye.  I imagined it would be relaxed.  In true Peace Corps fashion the unexpected came along and I’m busier than I’ve been in possibly my whole service.  I am currently volunteering as a full time English teacher at one of the two high schools in my town - Alexandria High School. 

The situation came about because since the beginning of the new school year in January, Alexandria High has been short ten teachers (in which is an already understaffed school).  The Department of Education has some internal issues which have resulted in schools across the Eastern Cape not receiving the number of teachers they are supposed to have.  Therefore schools like Alexandria High find themselves in desperate situations with children coming to school and no one to teach them various subjects.  The children come to school and go to class if they have a teacher.  If they don’t, they go to sit in the school hall for that period.  Most classes are sitting in the hall for multiple periods a day. 

A few weeks into the school year I met with the Principle and offered to help if I could.  They asked if I could teach English and I agreed.  A month into the school year the students hadn’t had a single English class.  I began right away and started with six different classes grades 8-11.  Most of the students take English as their “First Additional Language”, and their “Home Language” is Afrikaans.  They couldn’t believe that I can’t speak or understand Afrikaans and it’s quite a departure for some of them, especially the younger students, to be expected to speak English all the time. 

In the last few weeks my students and I dove in head first as we try to accomplish as many required “tasks” as possible for all the classes so they can have grades for the first term.  I am enjoying teaching, the challenge, and getting the chance to spend time with some of the community youth I didn’t know before.  On the first day of class I explained how I’m from the United States and allowed questions.  The best questions were: do I have Rick Ross’s phone number, am I friends with Demi Lovato, and in the United States do I drive a Bugatti.  To their disappointment the answers to all of those questions was no.    

Being back in a high school classroom everyday has me thinking a lot about my own experiences and noticing the things that are similar and different.  It makes me appreciate my education and the opportunities I had more than ever.  The challenges the school, teachers, and learners face can feel overwhelming to me but they push through and do the best they can with what they have.  Some differences between Alex High and its learners from my own experiences in high school are: required uniforms, no lunch periods or cafeteria, no passing periods or lockers, and no gym class.  They don’t have regular use of technology in their classes no teachers have computers or TVs in their classrooms.  The support staff is very small with two administrative staff, a few grounds and cleaning staff, and a part time “Learner Support Agent” who deals with counseling.  The extracurricular activity options are really limited which is the opposite of how it was at my high school.    

The similarities are numerous but have more to do with the teachers and learners than anything else.  The students love participating in sports, the big ones here are rugby, soccer, and netball which is a no-dribble version of basketball that’s considered a “girls sport.”  The students remind me of high school students anywhere in the world.  They are trying to figure out who they are and in that process can show many different sides.  They can be overly confident, insecure, quiet, talkative, shy, outgoing, inquisitive, and unsure but mostly they are funny.  They love to laugh and tell jokes, and as long as it doesn’t take up too much time I don’t mind.  Some are eager to learn, others aren’t.  Some are very well behaved, others…not so much.  They are high school students and they are fun.        

On Valentine’s Day there was a school dance and I volunteered to be a monitor.  It was so fun to see what a school dance is like in a small town in Africa!  The grade eleven students were responsible for running it.  They had to bring food and refreshments for the tables they decorated, and help clean up afterwards.  Before the dance a group of students who weren’t actually attending had come to the school and were sitting outside.  When I asked them if they were going to go in they said they had just come to see the different dresses – it was like they were there to see celebrities! 

A DJ from the community was brought in and played the most popular current dance songs - mostly “house music” by different African DJs.  One of my favorite moments was at the end of the dance when they played Gangnam Style and everyone got on the dance floor and did the moves.  It made me laugh, and I imagined the same thing happening at high school dances all over the world.  Not even tiny Alexandria, South Africa can escape the phenomena Gangnam Style.

 

I don’t know what’s going to happen when I leave in a few weeks if the school hasn’t found another volunteer or been approved to hire the ten teachers that they desperately need.  In the meantime I’ll try and teach them as much about English as I can and hope that my brief time with them has helped a little! 

Random story:

Even though my time here is almost done, I still have new experiences happening!  The other day there was a larger than normal group of kids standing outside my room watching me boil water for my bath (HOW they can possibly think staring at me while I do these completely normal tasks is interesting is still beyond me).  I needed to brush my hair so I did and then cleaned out my brush of the broken hairs.  As I dropped the tangle of hairs into my yard a gust of wind blew my hair into the air at which point all I heard was “MLUNGU HAIR!!!!!” (white hair!) and a race ensued to grab my discarded hairs.

Once they got them, they proceeded to sniff (I mean, really, really sniff) them, rub them on their faces, and put them on top of their own heads.  It was both slightly disturbing, and hilarious all rolled into one “is this happening?” moment.  I’m going to miss this place.