Giraffes and Half-Term at School

1. We successfully uploaded our first video. This was taken during the Khama Rhino Sanctuary trip a while back. It is a little rough, but it is a video. The content is self-explanatory.

2. We have reached the mid-term of the semester for the girls. The assessment system is so different here; they are much less focused on testing and grades. In general I love this approach, but on the flip side, I don't have any objective feedback on how they are doing.

Eden continues to love school. They just finished up their unit of inquiry on the human body, where her assessment was to make a model of the nervous system out of recycled materials. The unit of inquiry for this new half-term is plants and ecosystems. I do not know what the summative assessment will be, but she is doing some sort of creative writing project about plants, and had to design her own ecosystem on paper. She seems to be really catching the international education bug. She spent the entire morning this morning on the website of Cambridge University in England, (where Jane Goodall got her Ph.D.). She sifted through a big list of descriptions of the different colleges within the Cambridge system. The enormous history of the place seemed lost on her - some of the colleges were founded as far back as the 1400s, but that history and the related old architecture that was fascinating to me just bored her. I am not sure exactly what her actual selection criteria were, but she settled on one called Murray Edwards college, which is an all women's college with an environmental emphasis. She then started looking at admission criteria and everything... If anyone knows where I can borrow a WHOLE BUNCH of money to send my daughter to college, please let me know.

I have to add how proud I am of Eden and her after-school activities. She chose perhaps the two least popular activities, at least for girls her age, but has stuck them out with integrity. She does developmental swimming on Mondays, which is non-competitive swimming practice. She does this purely because she realized she was behind the other kids in swimming and wants to catch up. She is the oldest kid in this activity, no friends her age, but she gives it her all every week. She also chose science club, which turned out to be her and three high school boys. This has not gone as she had hoped. The boys, and even the instructor, have been irregular in their attendance. The project the boys chose, before they started not showing up, was to build an electric generator. This was not what Eden was hoping to do, but she felt too shy to say anything. I have offered her the opportunity to drop out several times, but she refuses. After last week where she was the ONLY one there (not even the instructor showed up) I had had it, and went to the principal and was pretty angry about the situation. So... this week the instructor showed up, but no other kids. She sat there with him anyway and worked through the steps to making the generator, including making a list of materials, and having to quickly try to convert to the metric system to estimate measurements and quantities of these materials. I watched this from outside the room, and it felt painful to me as a mother... I again said she could quit and hold her head high that she gave it her all, but she still insists she is going to stick it out. Given that we have rolling blackouts here due to electricity shortages (our scheduled outages are Wednesday evenings; they happen at other unforeseen times as well), her generator-making abilities may be a very practical skill. Now that I think about it, maybe she could start selling generators to fund her Cambridge ambitions...

Hope just finished a unit of inquiry on transport, which concluded with a "wheels day" in which they were all to bring their bikes or other wheeled transport to school for a big celebration on the tennis courts. This required an emergency trip to the store the night before, as we brought no wheeled riding devices with us. At the weekly assembly later that day, she got up in front of the whole primary school and showed a picture she drew of her "transport" and talked about sharing it with her friends on wheels day. I was very proud of how she handled this presentation. She didn't seem to flinch a bit, and said she did not feel nervous at all. Her new unit of inquiry is also plants, and they have already had a field trip to Sanitas (the fancy nursery/restaurant we wrote about several weeks ago) to draw pictures of plants and have a milkshake. She does struggle with separating from us some mornings, which started immediately after her teacher left for a week or so to visit her daughter's new baby in Hong Kong, but didn't go away as soon as her teacher got back, like I had hoped. It seems to be slowly fading... She does seem to still love everything else about school, it is just that 5 minute period between walking into the classroom and watching us leave that is hard.

Hope chose "Mad Science" as her after-school activity. This is different from Eden's Science Club, and is a for-profit organization that comes and does different science activities each week. She comes home each week with a whole set of materials for further activities at home, and the environment in the room is clearly designed to be really fun in order to get kids excited about science. But, they seem to be really doing some good teaching at the same time. Hope has explained to me what an eclipse is and how it works, and last week they built rockets. Ted is really excited about this program also, and has talked about how he would love to try to bring the program to Ft. Wayne. Hope does not seem as naturally interested in science as Eden is, but she really gets excited about the stuff she does in there, so I would definitely call it a success.

Trey may love school more than the other two combined. He is still quite focused on the lunches, and starts talking about what he is going to pack in his lunch for the next day as soon as he gets home each day. He also loves monkeynastix, and asks every day if today is monkeynastix day. For those of you wondering, when I stayed to watch the other day, monkeynastix was a bunch of very low trampolines covered with jumping children. They are supposed to perform the "big finish" when they jump off of them, which was very funny to watch. He also loves his art projects, and is very, very proud of them when he brings them home. Finally, he clearly loves his teachers, but in a clear pecking order. He walks straight through the gate each morning looking for "Auntie Natalie", but as soon as he sees "Auntie Eva" he will quickly bail on Natalie, even mid-sentence, to run to Eva. He also loves the third one "Auntie Tiny", but only after the other two. This is not to say that Tiny is not important. Earlier last week he asked if he could take his new Spider Man phone to school because "Auntie Tiny is goint to love this!" Once he has hugged the three of them, he is completely done with me or Ted, and has to be reminded by one of them to say goodbye to us. Ultimately that feels good, because he clearly feels comfortable, safe, and loved there.

For me, there are two weeks left before the end of the semester. All in all, I feel good about both my courses, especially given where I started: I taught two courses instead of the one that we had agreed on, neither course was the one I had been told I would teach (and therefore brought none of my materials for), and I took on one of the courses three weeks into the semester, with the students having no instruction at all during that first three weeks. Given all that, I feel good about the outcome. I think I have taught some good content and ideas, prompted some new thinking, and offered some good mentoring. The informal mid-term evaluations I conducted seemed to reflect that my teaching is style is different from what they are used to, but that they have appreciated it and maybe learned something from it. The main complaints were that I keep them too long and have too many assignments. In other words, I work them too hard. (This is very familiar feedback to me; I am not sure if these students were somehow able to consult with my students at home or something...)

On the down I think I may have failed to effectively grasp the British assessment system and the specific things that are required of me under that system. I can't tell conclusively yet, but I am getting the feeling that I may not have done my assessments and finals correctly. Therefore, I am dreading the upcoming faculty meeting where apparently we have to report all our scores for our students on all our assessments and have them "approved" by the rest of the faculty. Or something like this. This is a completely new way of doing things for me, and I am not looking forward to finding out I did not do it right. I guess the good news is I have next semester to redeem myself?

S.O.S.

S.O.S. is a children's organization that runs orphanages throughout the country, including one in Tlokweng, which is a small town or suburb of Gaborone, sort of. There are over 270 kids in this one orphanage alone. They hire women full-time to serve as "mothers". However, the child-mother ratio is very high, and there is a great deal of turnover in the position. This is of course very bad for the kids from an attachment perspective, and they are therefore less likely to develop a good relationship with the next mother, which makes that next mother's job even more stressful, and the cycle continues.


A week or so ago a group of really good students from my undergraduate class came to me to ask for ideas for a field experience they were doing for another class, in which they were to spend a Saturday morning with the younger kids (ages 2-5) from the orphanage; their assignment was to create activities that would promote resilience in the kids. I talked to them about some possibilities, and decided to sponsor the purchase of supplies so they would have something to work with.















In exchange, I asked them to come report back to me on how it went and what they learned, and to bring me pictures of their experience, which they did. I was proud of what they came up with, and it was interesting to hear them process the experience. They primarily talked about how difficult the kids were to manage, how angry many of them seemed, and how cruel they were to each other. They also found some of them to be very distant, detached, and withdrawn, including the little boy above.


We talked about why this might be the case and what it might mean.











They also talked about how sneaky the kids were to get what they wanted, like extra snacks. I proposed that they consider this might be a coping mechanism, developed as a survival skill to get their own needs met in the midst of the chaotic environment of having 200 other kids around competing for what is available.

It seems in terms of material things, they are provided for to a satisfactory degree. The government here has a reasonably effective process for registering orphans and making sure they can stay in school and such. The lucky ones have sponsors who send money to care for them, and those kids get put in the better schools and seem to be getting a decent education. My students commented that the kids seemed intelligent despite their environment.

Where this system falls short, from my persective, is in meeting the kids social and emotional needs. Not that they are not trying, but there is just no way to help kids develop a healthy sense of attachment, which is really the cornerstone of healthy development, and no sense of social competence. A person probably does have to get somewhat manipulative in order to get your needs met. That kind of skill will help them survive in the short term, but they will pay a heavy price for it later. I am not sure what the answer is, but there are SO many kids like this who really need us to figure out an answer.




The picture below stands out to me. The students said that the older girl at first told them she worked for the orphanage, which the students found hard to believe because of how young she seemed.

They later found out that she is actually one of the orphans herself, but has taken on the role of caretaker of some of the younger ones. I am not clear if this is an official position or simply a self-appointed one. In either case, it seems like she has been able to maintain a degree of empathy and connectedness to others, and found a sense of purpose. Perhaps she will make it.

Ft Wayne meets Ft Wayne in South Africa

Since before we came, we have been following a blog called "African Daylight" that is by a couple, Brandon and Rachel, who are serving in the Peace Corps in South Africa. They are nearing the end (in December) of more than 2 years in Africa. Brandon grew up in Ft. Wayne, and they both went to school at Taylor. So, during our recent school break, we took our longest road trip yet to pay them a visit. This was a 5 hour trip (one hour of which was the very cumbersome border crossing process). But, it was well worth it. Brandon and Rachel (who we had never met except through the blogosphere) are great people doing great things there. The experience of interacting with the kids in this very poor village was a good way for the kids to see a part of Africa that is starkly different from the game drives and such (although we did see some warthogs on the side of the road along the way). And... Ted and Brandon were able to swap stories about their glory days in Wildcat Baseball.

The village (see the name on the sign below), is about 1200 people or so, and was just down one long strip of very bumpy, dirt road. Ted says the Google Earth coordinates are: 23 degrees 16' 57.89" S, 28 degrees 00' 21.73" E.



If you look at a map of S.A., the nearest town you may see is Ellisras - almost an hour away, which is where we spent the night. Brandon and Rachel live in a tiny out-building of a village lady and her two granddaughters (side photo is their bedroom/living/office/storage area). They work in the village school, running after-school programs and supporting the work of the teachers. I won't be able to do their work justice here; I encourage you to check out their blog to read about all the work they have done:


http://www.africandaylight.blogspot.com/


They also have an Oct 5th post about our visit and many more photos of us and the kids in their village in their 'Gallery of Photos'. Look in the upper left part of their page. While you are there, check out the aprons shown on the website. They are made in the village by some of the teachers in a program organized by Rachel to help fund the girls' after school programs.

When we went for a walk around the village, Rachel told the kids that they were the first white kids the village children had ever seen, and that Hope's hair would be the first blonde hair they had seen. Sure enough, as we started to walk, we soon had a large crowd of kids, some as young as two I think, following us around. They were hesitant at first, but by the end of the walk they were holding hands with our kids, running, chasing, having a blast. It was a very neat experience. They all wanted their pictures taken, and then wanted to see the pictures.



There is no running water in the village, but there have recently been some new bore holes installed nearby. What would a Nitza family blog be without a good picture of our children by some water-related device? Ted note: this is a 'standpipe'. Several standpipes serve the village and are all connected by underground piping to a nearby borehole (groundwater well). In America, standpipes are instead large (thousands of gallons), storage tanks shaped like a cylindar standing tall. These village standpipes are simple faucets that generally serve a surrounding 6-8 homes. If you need water in your home for any reason, you need to grab a bucket/pail/jug and walk to the standpipe. Imagine how much more you could do if you didn't have to spend time fetching safe water to drink? Back to Amy:

You may be weary of reading about how dirty my children get here, but Trey absolutely set a record this time. The dirt there was much more red than in Botswana, so it showed up in an almost alarming way. Rachel commented that he was truly the dirtiest kid she had ever seen, but on reflection she realized the dirt just probably showed up more on his white skin.


We have seen people using donkey carts in several places in Botswana. (In Hope's unit of inquiry on "transport" at school, she had to make some form of transport out of clay, and she chose to make a donkey cart, which I thought was awesome. She did a great job with it). However, this was the first time we had seem them in use really close up. This man drove by while we were on our walk:

There were some heartbreaking moments to this experience. Rachel took an informal survey of her students and found that 40% of them live without their parents for various reasons. The family right next door to Rachel and Brandon is just three children. No adults whatsoever. The parents live and work in Pretoria (about a 4-5 hour drive from this village), and come home once in while to bring some money. I am generally pretty open-minded and can accept a wide variety of life choices, but I have to say I struggle with this one. I am sure the parents have their reasons for doing so, and I can not begin to put myself in their position. They must have some very difficult choices to make. However, I simply can not get myself to imagine what circumstances would make me leave my children at home to raise each other. It brings me to tears thinking about it, and about those three children. Of course, there are lots and lots of kids living like that for various reasons in Africa, but largely because they have lost their parents to AIDS. In the literature they are referred to as OVCs (orphans and other vulnerable children). But meeting them and walking around the village with them brings it home so painfully. I gave the little boy a juice box and opened it for him. It was the most motherly gesture I could come up with.

There are, of course, organizations that support OVCs. Some of them do great work, others keep the money for themselves and give the kids virtually nothing. If you have the opportunity to donate to a trustworthy organization that supports OVCs in Africa, please do so.

Monkey!!!!!

Ted post: We had a visitor to our flat last week.



It was about 9am and we were getting ready to go on with our day. School was out (Botswana Independance Day) and we were planning errands and other shopping to get ready for the arrival of Amy's mom.

We imagine the Vervet Monkey came from the nearby riverbed. We have noticed a monkey along the roadway nearby the past couple of days. Otherwise, our neighborhood is very urban and it is hard to imagine the monkey surviving long.

It began its visit by raiding our mulberry tree. Eden and Hope enjoy picking several berries a day and so do the birds. Our monkey visitor started by sitting in the tree for several minute and taking all the good ones. Then it saw the apples and oranges on the ledge. It scampered across our backyard (over the Aloe Veras we planted) and up to the ledge. It quickly tossed aside the oranges and spent the rest of the time eating apples. We all watched from the backdoor until he left. Here are our other thoughts:

Amy thought its backhair looked like a nice shawl.
Ted wanted to know if it could do the dishes.
Eden feared the monkey would eat the puppies (8) next door.
Hope was amazed at the length of the tail (see below picture).
Trey waved hi.

We also have some video and we hope to post that footage later.

Happy Botswana Independance Day (October 1). Botswana turned 44 years old.