Coda
“…That the battle between good and evil is perennial, that the purpose of the good life is not to win the battle, but to wage it unceasingly.” – Alan Paton, Towards The Mountain
We do the best we can.
The pernicious nature of our lives as Peace Corps Volunteers is that we live in the same environment as the rest of our village, but we are always, acutely, aware of what’s outside it. We know the potential; we live the failure. We think about the things we’ve lost and always are we reminded that they never had them to begin with. If only someone had told us it would be like this.
Part of what’s so difficult is that even the most levelheaded has an idealistic conception of what development work details. And then we step off the plane and into the village and the reality is so drastically different. We don’t expect the people we want to help to resist. We’re surprised at their frustration with us, disheartened by their blithe acceptance of the status quo, and defeated by the morass of culture through which we inevitably wade. The pro forma declarations of cooperation nettle, the deficits of trust sting.
One volunteer related a story. She was on the phone with a close friend back home. He told her, “Since you’ve gotten there, you drink more, smoke more, and are just a little bit meaner.” We’ve gone from yoga and hiking to cursing and sleeping. It’s funny, until it’s not. Volunteers take drugs, take chances, gorge on hope. Some days we don’t go outside, except to empty our waste buckets and refill on water. It is a rake’s progress.
When we finally make it back out of the hut, reset and ready for round whatever, inevitably drawn to the lodestone of service for which we applied, we find our work woefully undone: library books lost or reshelved improperly; teachers doing everything by hand as the computer sits idly by; learners doing their multiplication tables with dashes on paper; the NGO apparently nonfunctional without us. And then there are the rancorous looks, the ones that accuse a supercilious spirit.
And now, well, we have to figure out a way to extricate ourselves from this thing fraught with discontent and still, somehow, joyful and exotic and immense. Look now, far past the apogee of our service, banking into the end, what we have to show for it. At the end of two years, as we prepare to depart, to return somewhere, what long-lasting change have we effected? What of our resiliency has endured?
I’m a big proponent of the philosopher John Rawls’ social theory The Veil of Ignorance, which says that for a democratic society to function successfully, and in doing so allocate resources, rights, and responsibilities equitably, all interested parties must be denied knowledge of their own social standing and natural ability (the tool for doing so is said veil). In such a manner, cooperation is achieved by invalidating all considerations morally irrelevant.
Let’s drop the veil on our Peace Corps personalities for a moment and leave alone that reflexive urge to tally our service. The HIV/AIDS prevalence rate for South Africans over the age of two hovers around 18% right now. The rate of new infections has stabilized, but approximately 500,000 are still infected annually. Only 29% of male youths can correctly identify ways to prevent sexual transmission as well as reject misconceptions about its transmission. For girls and young women, that’s lower. In schools, learners continue to fail English, Maths, and Science-related courses in vast swaths, even as they’re passed onto higher grades as teachers struggle to lighten their own burden. We’ve all borne witness to the (still) staggeringly high use of corporal punishment. And as unemployment climbs and the education system is overhauled yet again, public schools will continue to attract those least qualified to teach and further dissuade them from giving a damn.
Now lift the veil. Social inequality and HIV/AIDS in South Africa is not an abstraction, and part of our journey is demystifying the mythology: they are people, not numbers; it’s a country, not a continent. And in this country, poverty is not a bilious aspiration, no matter how many grants are given out. Death is not desired, despite the behavior. What is beyond our own ken, what we cannot possibly ever comprehend, is the impact we have when we’re not even trying. The second and third goals of Peace Corps are not frivolous jokes; they are vital cornerstones of the program. Our efforts count, but more so our relationships.
Loving something and letting it go, as its said, takes strength. Fellow 22s, something I never said too much: I’m proud of us. We’ve done good. We earned our Peace Corps moniker, workshop after conference, village after vacation, training after tragedy. You leave a legacy that will last long after you depart this place, no matter what you think, and that’s important. More important is that we tried.
Accepting failure isn’t simply about acknowledging it though. If only. No, that parochial notion doesn’t hold water here. There is something in the process of owning it, a reckoning, which demands the inherent and pivotal step of self-reflection. And it is there that we actually grow from our loss. While intention may be the ugly stepsister to action, bereft of ambition and ideals, we slowly lose ourselves in a bleakness of spirit. And we can do better than that.
I signed up for the Peace Corps because I wanted to believe I’m selfless, but I stayed because I am selfish. I stayed in Peace Corps South Africa because I couldn’t bring myself to leave, despite the overwhelming ineffectiveness. I stayed because a spark cracked, a signal flared, and suddenly I felt a connection. I understood how precious it is, and how little everything else matters. What am I still doing here? I’m learning how to be selfish. It ebbs and flows, so I keep running to it. I need to be strained.
We create our tiny worlds around us, saturated with second-hand information easily available, and travel is the only way to bust them open, to instead live a life drawn taught by personal experience. It is so fleeting, our time here, that to spend it any way but in vigorous pursuit of the unknown, however you define it, seems to me to be a waste. And in the end, as I look back on these two years, in service of all 29 of them, I am reminded of these artless words, written by William Allen White nearly a century ago, but forever anointed upon my soul:
“Or is there somewhere, in the stuff that holds humanity together, some force, some conservation of spiritual energy, that saves the core of every noble hope, and gathers all men’s visions some day, some way, into the reality of progress? I do not know. But I have seen the world move, under some, maybe mystic, influence, far enough to have the right to ask that question.”
Be good to each other.
Barriers
“You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.” —Charles Bukowski
The Lebombo Mountains stop most things from leaving this place. On a particularly lovely day, like today, when the sun drags sashes of gold across the sky, it’s impossible not to notice it. Roaring out of Malelane on the N4, as you crest the mottled-green hills rolling into the central Nkomazi valley, the horizon begins to shift before you and suddenly the sky-blue infinity is beaten back by a low, roiling barrier of seething dirt.
Though short in height, the Lebombobergs snake out endlessly to the North and South, forming a formidable geographic demarcation between South Africa and Mozambique. During the summer months, the violently black thunderheads hammer against them most nights before spitefully dropping their payloads on the valley below and gaining passage.
They don’t call this region the Lowveld because of a few rainstorms, though. Those mountains trap people. They block progress, halt modernization, and slow the gradual improvement in quality of life needed so badly here. The Lebombos crush the lifting of anachronistic cultural norms and suck entire villages into cycles of poverty, ignorance, and disease. If war is the devil’s answer to human progress, then these wicked peaks are the Lowveld’s.
After a time, they leave their low perch on the outskirts of town and make their way into the dusty streets. Everywhere you look barriers calcify. They seduce young men and women into dangerous, limiting stereotypes and discourage critical thought. As if intimidated by the approaching cordillera, information technology halts in Malelane, afraid to venture nearer. Ancient prejudices fester and swell in the absence of fresh thought or experience, infecting new generations in this socio-economic Petri dish. Aids is rampant; teen and pre-teen pregnancy commonplace; nutrition an afterthought. The Lebombos pervade Steenbok.
Established as a trust in 1954 by the Apartheid government’s Group Areas Act, it’s no wonder the community originally centered around the rich farmlands of Komatipoort was relocated here. Kilometers away from the closest river (of which there are half a dozen in the region alone) and hemmed in on three sides by national boundaries, the Lebombobergs finally embody the absolute domination of the people of Steenbok so desired by the former government.
I hate those mountains. Every morning, I run alongside them, feeling joy vibrate inside me as the rising sun surmounts those peaks and then surges high above. If it can rise above them, an inanimate object with no will, incapable of truculent obstinacy, then so can I. And so can the people of Steenbok. We can outrun them.
Yesterday, a young man, maybe sixteen, spontaneously joined me on my daily 12km attempt to outrun the Lebombos. We jogged alongside each other in silence for an hour. As we returned to the village and made plans to meet again tomorrow, I thought of my favorite Bukowski quote and smiled quietly. Then I ran on.
[Editor’s note: I’ll be tackling the Longtom Marathon this March as a way of raising funds for the KLM Foundation. Please consider supporting me and this excellent cause. Thank you.]
The Enemy of An Education
Scenic of one of my two primary schools.
In Steenbok, without a doubt, the biggest obstacle the children face is poverty. Debilitating, all-encompassing, abject poverty. It undermines every aspect of their lives, limiting their potential and stunting their development. And we’re not speaking strictly physically. At the two primary schools where I teach, somewhere along the lines of 60% of the student population are orphans. And that’s an informal, rough estimate based upon myriad factors. Sixty percent. Sixty. Thanks to HIV/AIDS, staggeringly high unemployment, TB, and an array of smaller factors, those children either live alone, with a parent that appears for one weekend a month (to drop off some groceries and ideally leave money), or an exceedingly old Gogo (that, in reality, they care for; not vice versa). There is no moral, emotional, or intellectual support at home. No one to help with homework. No one making dinner or breakfast. No one to wash a cut or sew a torn shirt. And the average student at both schools is no older than 13 or 14. Tops. The majority, obviously, are younger. The enemy of an education is an empty home.
Above you see the exterior of one of my two primary schools. The brick structures provides a deceptively solid facade to interiors that are literally falling apart. Ceilings in several rooms of all three wings have collapsed. Rare is the window without a missing or partially shattered pane. Last week, the temperature was oppressively hot (over 100F), and there are no fans. Children were literally sleeping at their (shared) desks during class. And not one teacher was upset – how could they be? It was difficult to breathe inside, but because of a lack of shade outside we remained indoors. The enemy of an education is a crumbling school.
Then there’s the feeding scheme. The government provides “lunch” to all primary schools; it’s called a feeding scheme. It’s brilliant, as I’m sure it’s one big reason many of the students show up. Of course, for those students who have their only meal of the day then, it’s not only life-giving but enabling. The enemy of an education is an empty stomach and a tired brain.
Now, let’s not forget all the small things that encourage and support a child throughout their day… clean bathrooms, laundered clothes, access to pencils and pens and paper, access to books and the internet (and general outside knowledge) – you get the point. The decks are stacked ridiculously high here.
The enemy of an education is poverty.
South Africadventures 