New Title

The new school year is finally here, and I'm honoring this fresh term with a new title: Librarian! For the next few months, I'm focusing on getting one of my school's library up and running. The PCV who lived in my village before me worked with another PCV to get several hundred books donated to one of my schools.

It's now my job to turn her project into a actually functioning library. I spent the past few days putting together a schedule, which was more time consuming than I thought. I went through the School's time table (school-wide schedule) to see what time the English classes, also known as First Additional Language classes, were taught for each grade at my school.

(side note: my primary schools are grades "K"-7)

I then created a weekly schedule where each grade spends one hour in the library each week. In order to fit all eight grades into one week, I created two library sessions for each day, one the hour before lunch and one the hour after. For the most part, I'll be working with two classes a day, and on some days only one class. The scheduling worked out perfectly b/c now I'll also be able to go to my second-assigned school in the afternoons.

(side note: not sure what I'm going to do there yet...)

I'm happy to start this year off working in the library. I noticed a MASSIVE lack of reading skills with the children, even though the Dept of Education (of Mpumalanga) requires schools to set aside 30 minutes everyday for reading. Not to be Negative Nancy, but I rarely (very very very rarely) saw children reading in the classes I observed for three months. I did, however, notice a child looking intently at a book upside down.

So I figure being a librarian for a few months is a great start! And once the teachers, students, and principal get used to the weekly schedule, I'm hoping the library can function on its own so that I can move onto another project. Then again, that's wishful thinking....

Onto a more interesting part of my weekend. I attended a traditional (VERY traditional) baby ceremony called Phasa ("h" is silent) on Sunday in honor of my host sister's 4 month old baby girl. The ceremony is a time for family and friends to come together and honor the baby, as well as to ask the ancestors to bless the baby with good health. The ceremony marked the baby's 4 month birthday which means her mom (my sister) can carry her outside of the yard. Before this time, she never left the yard. A month before that she never left the house. And then a month before that she never left her room (one of the reasons I didn't know there was a baby in the main house until I was at site for three days).

Anyway, I saw my firs goat slaughter at the ceremony. I was really intrigued/disgusted by the whole process. It took about 45 minutes for two men to kill, skin, gut, and chop the goat's meat(btw...a female goat cost about R600, about $50). The family used the ENTIRE goat during the ceremony. They ate the meat and internal organs, hung some of the intestines out to dry for later use as mhuti (medicine), and used the goat's skin to wrap the baby in for some type of ritualistic act.

(side note: No, I didn't try the goat meat or intestines. I'll try anything once, but this wasn't the time for me to try that meat, it didn't smell appealing AT ALL.....so I chowed down on the fried chicken instead!)

Just to be clear. This was a very very traditional ceremony that is uncommon in most South African homes today. My sister's mother-in-law is a Sangoma (traditional healer) who still practices old customs/beliefs from ancestor worship to animal veneration. It was definitely not your average "Baptize-ish" ceremony; never the less, I was honored to be invited to the ceremony!

till next time....