Longtom!

I ran the Longtom Half Marathon last Saturday in Sabie which is in Mpumalanga. My finish time was 2:20 which I wasn't really all that pumped about but I got the worst cramps of my life at around 10k. The race was also all hills, which made it intense for me because my province, North West, is all flat. Really, though, this is all just excuses. My friend Adam ran the 56k ultra marathon (The first 30k is uninterrupted uphill. No kidding.) and placed 11th. He's also been training in North West. So really, I just under preformed but that's okay, it was fun and I ran the whole damn thing.
This year PCV's raised over $20,000 for the KLM Foundation! Just to be clear, that's USD!! Many of you really helped out with that... and your sweaty, unflattering thank you pictures are coming soon! It was the most ever raised (by kind of a lot). Overall, it was a really nice weekend with a lot of volunteers in a beautiful place.
Michael and I stayed in Sabie for a week after the race. It was a VERY laid back vacation, much of our time was spent reading and cooking. It was great. We decided we wanted to go fishing so we asked around town for a place we could rent poles. Everyone told us we should go to this trout fishing place so we could rent poles and avoid buying licenses. We walked two hours to this place and when we got there it became obvious it was not exactly what we were looking for. There were lawn ornaments. And benches. Oh, and it was a trout farm. So we rented poles, chatted with the guys who worked there, and then went "fishing". This entailed putting our hooks into the water and immediately catching a fish. No lie, my hook was in the water less than 10 seconds before I had my first bite. In less than 10 minutes we had caught four rainbow trout and it only took us that long because we took turns. It wasn't exactly what we had expected and it definitely pushed my boundaries about killing and eating meat but it was really absurd and funny. The trout was really good...
I'm still homeless, but hopefully that won't be true for long. School break is over in a week and I'm hoping that means I'll be back to work soon.

support is pretty cool...

I'm working on setting my mind to the positive things about South Africa and my service here. This is a really stressful time, waiting for a new assignment. Thursday night, the night before I went and moved everything out of my home, I received an SMS (text message) from our Peace Corps Medical Officer. She's amazingly compassionate and thoughtful, and the message said "you're doing the right thing". I needed that reminder. This is a hard time but I do feel like I'm doing the right thing.

As I pulled away from my house in Majemantsho in a Peace Corps truck loaded with everything I own I started crying. Feel free to call me a whimp but it was sad, okay? ANYWAY, the Peace Corps driver who was with me turned and quoted (loosely) the crimethink poster I had above my bed. He smiled and said, "Erin, your life is your life". It was surreal to have a kind hearted middle aged South African man quote an anarchist poem to me, but it was so perfect.

Now I"m at Megan's. We went for an long run this morning (1:45:25 for about 18k... Dave I thought you'd want to know) as a part of our training for Longtom. Being here with her is fun and our conversations have helped me readjust to the idea that I'm starting anew soon and I've got some experiences under my belt to bring with me.

Yesterday I got letters form a bunch of people, and amazingly supportive emails from even more people. Really, Aunt Vicki, you have no idea how much it means to me to get so many letters from you!

All of this reminds me I have really good support from a lot of different people. I'm so grateful for that.

The other night there was a PCV staying at the hostel with me who was on his way home after more than 2 years of service here. I was telling him about my situation and he asked me what was next for me. I laughed and said I guessed I had a lot of waiting ahead of me. He clarified by asking me if I was thinking of going home. I'm not. After thinking about it for awhile I kept coming back to an incident that happened about a week and a half ago...

I was walking home from school when a group of kids started walking with me. I asked them what they did at school and they told me they learned multiplication. I started quizzing them and it became clear they didn't understand multiplication at all. So we stopped right there in the middle of the road (roads aren't exactly busy in the village) and I put a bunch of rocks in a big pile. Then I taught the kids that 4x3 just means three groups of four. I had them make three groups of four and we counted the rocks to find our answer. Then we made four groups of three and discovered it gave us the same answer (okay, I already knew that... but it's called discovery learning!). We did a few more problems in this way, taking the abstract notion of multiplication and making it concrete for these ten kids in the dusty road. I didn't want to ruin their excitement by pushing the lesson too far so I gathered up my stuff and was getting ready to leave when one of the kids shyly said, "Mistress Refilwe, will you teach us division?" Can you imagine kids asking you to teach them division after school? These kids are so hungry for knowledge. So we continued with the rocks, dividing 12 rocks into 3 groups and so on. They weren't exactly ready for algebra by the time we were done but almost all the kids present had a way better understanding of what multiplication and division are. It was fun. It was fulfilling. It was one of the best Peace Corps moments I've had.

I take moments like that with me to my new village. I can't leave now. Not when I know there are more moments like that to come. Peace Corps can be really hard. Living in rural South Africa isn't exactly a safari vacation. Sometimes I miss home so much and feel like I'm making so little headway I think about calling it quits and coming back to the US. Right now, though, I know I have more of these moments to give. I have more experiences to learn from. I have 18 more months of living to do here before it's time for me to pack up (again) and head home.

silver linings...

Peace Corps has decided to pull me from my site for security reasons. This means I'm moving. Right now this means I'm in Pretoria in a sort of PCV purgatory waiting for a new site.

I'm really torn about moving. Part of me feels guilty for leaving my schools. Part of me is really sad because my host family was amazing and I will miss them terribly. Part of me is freaked out because I'm back to square one, I have no idea where I will be living for the next 18 months. Then again I keep reminding myself I can really make a lot of a new start. I already have experience so maybe I won't make the same mistakes twice. It will be exciting to meet new people and settle into a new place. At least that's what I've been telling myself all day.

I hadn't realized how stressed I had become about safety in my village. I hadn't realized how much it was wearing on me to feel unsafe every time I left the house. Really, I hadn't even let myself recognize I felt unsafe when I left the house. I wanted so badly for everything to be okay so I could continue doing the work I was doing at my schools. I'm learning I need to start taking care of myself, it can't always be about the needs of everyone else.

I'm just going to keep looking for the silver lining and roll with this adventure.

sometimes...

Yesterday I was running and I saw a group of three women in the village. Greeting is a big part of the culture here and I always greet people when I'm running so I greeted these three women in Setswana. One of them began yelling at me. I did not understand all of what she was saying but she was calling me a "boer" (a name for Afrikaners that is sometimes-including this time- used as a slur). She was yelling and looking at me like she wished terrible things to happen to me. I'm not sure but I think she spit at me. All I did was run past and say hello.

This wasn't the first time something like this has happened. Unfortuneately there is a lot of racism in this country. Periodically I am called slurs for white people, for "coloured" people (people of mixed decent) and for Indian people. The racist legacy of apartheid has become part of my life.

For some reason this woman calling me a boer really got to me. As a middle class white girl from the US I'd never been called a racial slur before I came here save posturing teenagers calling me "cracker" behind my back when I was subbing. This is new ground for me. It's incredibly painful to be written off as an enemy by the people in my village because I'm white.

Every once in a while I'll talk to someone and get a "you're not like other whites... you're an American" response which is as offensive. Sure, there are a lot of racist white people in South Africa (there are a lot of racist white people in the US) but there are also a lot of racist black people in South Africa who not only hate whites, "coloureds", Indians, "chinas" (people from Asia who are not from India or Pakistan) they also hate people from other African tribes. Sometimes I feel like I'm surrounded by a country of people who are held together only by a border because there is so much hate between South Africans.

This history of this country is horrific. Apartheid was an attack on the humanity of every South African citizen and the population remains wounded. In some ways I think, "I can see why black South Africans hate white South Africans. White people did terrible, terrible things to black people for years" but this line of thinking becomes a supporting argument for racism and that's not a road I wish to travel. Anytime people begin to hate based on nothing but assumptions things really get awful.

I know I'm not being clear about all of this. I can't seem to articulate what it is like to live in a racist society that sometimes seems to be destroying itself because people are unwilling to see beyond their conceptions of race and power. In my truly American mind, all I can seem to think is "this sucks".

Really, though. This sucks.

NEW ADDRESS!

My host family's P.O. box was a two hour walk away and it was pretty hard for me to get mail so I took the plunge, splurged a little, and got my very own P.O. box in town. Now I can pick up my mail when I go to get my groceries... it's still an hour walk away but that's down right CLOSE.

You can send your adoring letters to:

Erin Gannon
P.O. Box 1973
Mafikeng
2745
South Africa

Happy "Super Tuesday". I hope you all get out and vote. It's a beautiful thing to live in a functioning and free democracy. Really.

now you, too, can do something.

As many of you know running has become a pretty important part of keeping sanity for me. Every year PCV's from South Africa (and some of the surrounding countries) run a marathon called Longtom. Actually, Longtom is an ultra marathon (longer than a typical marathon) and I'm for sure not in the shape to do that but I will be running the half marathon. I'm really excited.
Longtom isn't just for fun. It's also a chance to raise money for the KLM foundation. Their website is: http://www.klm-foundation.org/; please check it out. The organization was founded by two PCVs (Peace Corps volunteers) who served in South Africa a few years ago. They decided to use the Longtom marathon as a fundraiser; they fund a worthy, needy child to attend an excellent secondary school in Mpumalanga - Uplands College. I think maybe you all are starting to get an idea of how hard it can be for village kids to make it out of the village and into higher education and going to a good secondary school is an incredible first step.
I think the KLM foundation is pretty amazing, and it's a chance for you to stop being a spectator in my efforts to make small change in South Africa and sponsor me in my quest to run a half marathon.
Please give what you can; any amount is appreciated. Even if you can only give $10 or $20, it is much needed. (Of course, I'm not going to fight you if you want to give more) It is tax-deductible. So please go to the KLM website to make a donation, just click on the 'donate' photo. Make sure to put my name in the white box where it asks for the Longtom person you want to sponsor. The online donation is preferable, but if you need to mail in a check, please make it payable to KLM Foundation (US) and send it to:

KLM Foundation (US)c/o Bowen Hsu461 So. Bonita AvenuePasadena, CA 91107
And make sure to include a note that your donation is in my behalf.

You can spare $20. This is a good organization run by Americans who know how awful it is when people use the faces of impoverished african kids to buy land rovers or nice houses. These people will use your money really well.

Plus, if you donate I promise to take a picture of myself just as I finish the race and I'm red-faced and exhausted and sweaty and send it to you...

no power... etc.

I'm in Pretoria on a very rainy day. Next week I'm going to a training and I'm taking this weekend to get ready, to see some important people and to drink absurd amounts of coffee. It's been less than a month since I came back from Christmas/New Year's vacation and already I'm away from my village again which feels sort of strange.
I've told many of you that South Africa is like two countries in one because the economic divide is so great that you literally have both a developed nation and a developing nation within the same border. This week there was a little reminder that the "developed" portion of South Africa still developing. Eskom, the South African power company has been instituting "load shedding". This means that for hours a day (sometimes three or four, sometimes more) every day the electricity is just out. All over the country. Eskom announced this week that these blackouts will continue for the next five years. FIVE YEARS. The damage to the economy is already in the billions of Rands.
I've seen a lot of other Peace Corps Volunteers in the last few days, including my friend Michael who I'd count as one of the smartest people I know. Peace Corps South Africa volunteers are an interesting group of people, and the level of conversation when we get together tends to be pretty intense.
There were people from Peace Corp's DC offices here this week doing a program evaluation. One of the questions they asked was if Peace Corps should be in South Africa. It's an interesting quesiton. There have been some really great conversations about it this weekend. South Africa of 2008 is not Ghana of 1969. There is a huge number of university educated South Africans well qualified to work in schools. Many of the reforms teachers, students and others are calling for in the educational system are not grassroots reforms, they are system wide, broad based changes. These are not the types of changes new university graduates from the US are going to be effective in instituting. This argument is made pretty well in a recent OpEd piece in the New York times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/opinion/09strauss.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin)
I'm learning a lot. I'm working my tail off to do what I can in the schools I work in. I'm growing as a person and as a teacher and eventually I'll bring that growth back to the US. It's strange because I am questioning what role Peace Corps South Africa can really play in educational development but at the same time I'm in now way feeling less committed to my individual work. I don't see my work as futile, but I'm not sure how much of an impact I can realistically make.
An unavoidable lesson to be learned serving in South Africa (and I suspect elsewhere) is that as the world changes and as global markets dictate more and more the fate of haves and have nots devlopment is also changing. If you picture me as a dusty hippie PCV from the late '60's teaching English under a tree you're vastly wrong and probably in good company. I think most Americans like the IDEA that there are other Americans (mostly young, smart, well educated Americans) out there in poor countries making the world a more even playing field. I don't teach under a tree, in fact I don't teach at all because this country has qualified teachers. I also have come to realize that the level playing field is such a distant possibility that I'm not willing to fully give up hope in it but I'm also not willing to pretend that it is possible in the current state of international interdependancy and political affairs. It's a nasty beast we're all a part of. I'm going to keep hammering away at my part...