Orangpples

It really is a simple invention that in hindsight seems as obvious as the wheel, but apparently it wasn’t until 1861 that the putting wire mesh over a hole in the wall became common place. While it’s rare to find a house in the United States without window screens, it’s just as rare to find one that does here. Part of this might be due to the type of window used here. I can count on my hands the number of times I’ve seen a Sash Window here. That classic sliding window that I had in every room growing up just doesn’t seem to exist here, and I can’t figure out why. Originally I thought maybe that’s what they used in England and Holland, but no Sash windows were in use in Europe by the mid-17th century.

So if there aren’t sliding windows here, what are there? They are all Casement Windows. And not the type you sometimes see back home with the crank shaft to open them up from behind a window screen. No, these you just slide a latch and push right open. If you can visualize that for a second it means there can’t be any window screen, because you’ve just pushed right through it to open the window. I’ve seen and heard of some usual solutions to this problem. Some volunteers in the group before me used double sided Velcro and an old mosquito net to try to bug proof their room. Every time they wanted to open the window, they’d peel back the mosquito net, unlatch and push out the window, and then reattach the Velcro. Even more elaborate, at a guest house in Kimberly on my recent vacation the had build giant screen cages to go around the open windows! Some volunteers, and most people on my street, go with the the closed window option. But, when it’s over 90 degrees in my room I consider that to much suffering and much prefer to sleep under my mosquito net and feel a slight breeze to sweating it way on top of my sheets.

All this got me thinking about what a screen window or door really represents. Living here without AC or central heating sometimes its hard to remember how in the States a house is a bastion of control and stability against the chaotic elements and seasonal fluctuations outside. My room here is a sauna in the summer and I have to ware a warm hat to sit at my desk in the winter. I am not in control of the inside temperature and must adapt accordingly. A screen on the window is a selective sieve by which we can bring the outside in. It lets the cool breeze and humid air pass right through put keeps the insects out of the pristine home. It represents both our control over our environment and our eagerness to escape the stuffiness we feel at that control. As a kid I always loved sleeping with the window next to my bed open, even on hot summer nights – where I’d put my head right next to the window urning for the smallest breeze – and crisp fall ones – where I’d wrap my self up in a warm blanket and feel the nights chill on my face. Maybe that’s also why I ended up here in the Peace Corps; I didn’t want to be locked up behind a window looking out, but wanted to through that widow right open and experience what ever was on the other side.

Friends are often surprised to see how often I tweet or how frequently I’ll email back home. And in ways I find it amazing how I can know what’s happening in almost real time all over the world from my room, not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Peace Corps. But its a fact of the modern world that communication technology has permeated all aspects and all areas of life throughout the world. However, the internet I get here is most defininetly not the same internet I got back home in Virginia. Yes, technically it’s the same webpage that is served up – well almost there is quite a lot of redirection so www.google.com goes to www.google.co.za and www.amazon.com goes to www.amazon.co.uk and my facebook ads are about South Africa, other than that its all the same – but it’s still not the same internet because the bandwidth is limited both in quantity and quality (speed).

I connect to the internet by tethering my cell phone to my computer, something your not actually allowed to do with most phones back in the States because cell phone companies don’t want you sucking up copious amounts of data. However, here we don’t have unlimited data bundles like back home. I buy a set amount of data and when that is up I have to buy more, or if 2 months goes by and it’s not finished I lose it. Because the pre-paid model is so ubiquitous here it’s really easy to check your remaining balance and thus insure that you don’t unexpectedly run out.

Since every single byte that leaves or comes to my phone counts, I’m meticulous about where all my data goes and keep a close watch on the current usage throughout each session (ifconfig ppp0 | grep byte is by far the most used command on my terminal). There are many ways you can conserve data and I like to think I’ve got it down to an art. The first week I was here I switched over from IMAP to POP email, which means that all of my mail for the last 5 years can be viewed offline where I can read, replay, and compose before connecting my phone and sending email. When I browse not only is all flash off, but pictures as well – thus the internet I see is most definitely not the one you see, even if all the text is the same. With all my hacks to decrease my data usage I can normally get by on just 250MB in one month (that’s 1/3 of a CD) and when I splurge on data I use 500MB in a month. Back home I could go through 500MB in 30min. Below is a graph the data left on my bundle each day from March to June of last year.

As you can see, my day to day use of the internet barely uses any data. With that I can read my email 3 times a day, follow my top 10 favorite blogs, check twitter and facebook, and browse a few other random pages each day. Every now and then there’s some program I want, or someone sends me an email with pictures attached, or (and these are the worst) I get an email from someone pointing to a Youtube video. What I normally do is put the link in a list of things to maybe check online if at the end of the week I didn’t go over my data allotment.

Yes I could just buy 1 or 2 gigabytes of data each month, but then I’d spend all my hours watching Youtube videos and not actually getting out and experiencing the community. Plus to be fair about once every 3 months I get package from my Mom filled with about 4GB of podcasts that range from TWIT, FLOSS and a few others from Leo’s network to NPR’s Speaking of Faith and This American Life all of which make hand washing laundry, 4 hour taxi rides, and long walks much much better. You might think it’s crazy for my Mom to send me podcasts all the way across the ocean when I can download them right from my room. But I did the calculation (see tables below for Vodacom data prices): for me to download 6GB of data it would cost just over half of what I make in a month R 1200 or $160, the average price of a package from Virginia to South Africa containing a few magazines, DVD’s of podcasts, a letter or two and a few other surprises is less than $15, plus the knowledge that my parents put the package together is priceless.

Vodacom Data Bundle Prices

Obviously it pays to buy the larger bundles, and if they can really give me data for R0.20 a megabyte I don’t know how they get away with R2 a megabyte for no bundle. And I know plenty of people who don’t buy bundles, I’ve tried to explain this chart to them but spending R88 at one time sounds more expensive then spending R150 in R2 intervals. Part of the problem is that many people I work with have know concept of what a megabyte is and how much data it represents.

The best metaphor for explaining megabytes is to compare them liters. Just like water takes up space, so to do all the pictures, text, and videos you download or have saved on your computer. A 4MB of data will be twice as much information as 2MB just like 4L of coke is twice as much as 2L. Still a little abstract but at least it gets the concept of data taking up space across.

I’d be interested to know how these prices compare to data costs back home. I never actually used internet on my phone when I was in the States (Peace Corps opens up your world in so many ways!) so I have no idea if pay by the byte/megabyte plans are comparable to these. If I’m not mistaken the iPhone unlimited plan is around $60 which would get you 2GB on this plan. It’s going to be interesting going back home because I’m definitely used to having internet on my phone, but really like the prepaid model since I can control how much I spend – in 2MB chunks if I so please.

During training we would often hear that life in South Africa was unique because of a concept fundamental to its culture: Ubuntu. In Nguni languages (isiZulu, siSwati, isiXhosa, isiNdebele) this is most often expressed through the adage “Umuntu ngaumntu ngabantu” – A person is a person through other persons”. We were told that because of Ubuntu there is a closer sense of community and unity then elsewhere. Ubuntu is commonly explained as similar to the Golden Rule: “Love thy neighbor as they self”. But even if there is some overlap in the core sentiments invoked by both Ubuntu and the Golden Rule, there are also some key differences; which make translating the ideas between cultures difficult. Most importantly, embedded in the Golden Rule is a sense of “I”, and in fact that individualism is found throughout western thought – epitomized by René Descartes “I think, therefore I am”.  While embedded in the idea of Ubuntu is community and unity.

If you followed the link to the Wikipedia article on Ubuntu you saw Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s definition of the Ubuntu philosophy:

A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

As an American living among South African culture it’s often difficult to see the ideas of Ubuntu in daily life here. I’ve often participated in conversations with other volunteers centered around the idea that Ubuntu is dead. Perhaps the only times we are able to see it is at weddings, funerals and cultural events where everyone is invited and often times a cow or two is slaughtered. But these are big important events, when looking for Ubuntu in daily actions it’s elusive at best. Certainly in most aspects of the education system, the political system and the way children are treated and raised it’s nonexistent. Perhaps the the culture norm that bothers me, as well as other volunteers, the most is the casual way trash is discarded wherever one may be. If a sense of community and interconnectedness of all people is so important to the concept of Ubuntu why do people just drop plastic bags as they walk, unwrap a candy and let the wrapper fall to the ground where they stand, and throw coke bottles out the window. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve finished a snack or drink on a taxi and the person next to the window offered to through it out for me! Or the weird looks I get when I’m handed a coke can to through out the window and instead put it in my bag to place in a trash can. As American’s we take all these things to mean that Ubuntu is dead, but I think this sentiment comes our different cultural backgrounds. And every now and then an aspect of Ubuntu that we can relate to our understanding of the Golden Rule seeps through.

This blog post is really about one of those times.

Last week as I was biking to a school my chain locked up on the way down a hill. I’d never seen a bike chain get stuck like this one; somehow 5 chain links had got caught between the smallest and middle gears in the front. I flipped the bike over and tried pulling them out, which only served to get my hands dirty. I next tried to use some near by rocks to hammer the chain outwith out much luck. I’d been working on this for maybe a minute and a half before someone asked what was wrong. When I explained she stopped someone going someone going in the opposite direction and told him what was wrong. He immediately turned around and told me to follow him to his house, which was about a block away. There with the help of a screw drive and hammer we proceeded to unlock the chain (and luckly this hasn’t reoccurred). I thanked him for all his help and was about to jump on the bike and continue to school, but he insisted on taking me back to the sink and having me throughly scrub my hands. I’m pretty sure my attempts to unlock the chain with out real tools would have failed and forced me to walk back home, but thankfully I didn’t have to.

I think this is an important example of why Peace Corps is a 2 year commitment. I can’t help but think a similar situation would have played out if this had happened not after I’d been biking around the township for over a year, but in my first month here. I’m sure someone would have helped me eventually, but I doubt it would have been that fast. Having lived here for the last 15 months I am now part of the community and that has certain benefits. Maybe to much sometimes, because I also can’t help but wonder how fast someone would have stopped to help if it wasn’t “that weird umlungu American that lives in the township” and just your average person on a bike. But I can never know, for I can only experience life here being treated a 23 year old American and never as someone who was born and raised here. But I’d like to think the fact that I’m the only white person living in the township had little to do with the help I got, and that the same would have been extended to anyone.

Wow it’s really been a long time since I’ve written anything here. And you know what, with a few exceptions, that seems to be the a general trend within the Peace Corps community. There are tones of blog posts about the leaving America transition as one contemplates all the unknowns in their next step along life’s journy. During training their might be one or two posts, but in general your so busy, overwhelmed, and scattered brained to find the time (that and the fact that during training there’s very little access to the internets). Then in the first few months at site there’s a consent stream of posts. The volunteer is like a child in a toy store, everything one does is amazing, new, and exciting. You wish you could put on special glasses and pipe video back home as you walk down the street because its all just that cool!

But one thing that makes Peace Corps unique is that by the time that phase has died down and daily life at site begins to feel normal your not packing your bags to go back home, instead you have 20 more months to live here and call this place home. You now know everyone on your street, you have contacts with people all over your village (in my case a township), you become part of the daily ebb and flow of daily life. This means that blog posts become rarer and rarer. And when they do arrive their not about how unique and exotic life here is, but about people, projects and life philosophies.

Over the last 6 months since I last posted there have been many ideas for a post I’ve head and I’d diligently put “write blog post” on my to do list. But then the kids across the street would call me over to play catch, there’d be an amazing sunset and I’d just have to climb up on my roof and watch it, I’d be taken on a trip to a village for the day. It always seems like there is a choice to be made, between going out and living life and being a Peace Corps Volunteer, and sitting in my room chronicling what its like. The computer screen is this magical window into a different world and can so easily suck you in. But when I enter that world I leave behind the world outside my room, and it’s to experience that world that I decided to go on this grand adventure. So, as my twitter feed will attest, instead of blogging I’ve been off living.

But, I’ve decided I need to start blogging again, because there is just way to much on my mind that I’d like to share here. So I’m going to do my very best to do a blog post a day for the next week. That really sounds like a lot, but if your going to jump in the pool you mind as well do it all at once and with great enthusiasm. After a week we’ll see if I keep it up, but I know I have enough to say to fill that up, and by committing to that now, in this post, hopefully I’ll stick to it.

This week I returned to site after my second extended trip through South Africa. Traveling in South Africa is always great fun, partly because there are so many great things to do, great (cheap!) places to stay, and great things to see. The Rainbow Nation’s landscape and geography are even more diverse then its people and there is a bit of anything you could ever want with in it’s boards. This trip was made all the better because I was accompanied by one of my best friends since 9^th grade Christine Brenton. She actually went to UVA as well but we each had separate groups of friends which only occasionally overlapped. So it was great to travel around such a wonderful country and see so many great things with her. She brought her iPhone along on the trip – it’s true, once you get an iPhone there’s no turning back they change how you interact with the world, truly a revolutionary piece of technology – and was able to blog the whole thing from her phone as the trip progressed. You can check her blog out here. Also joining us for most the trip was one of my best Peace Corps friends Steve Gerner.

Since we packed so much into a two week period I think I’ll make the whole trip multiple posts. In this post I’ll give a general overview and talk about beginning of the trip. Below you’ll see a map of our complete trip.

As you can see we traveled a good portion of South Africa. With the exception of Cape Town and Barberton each night we stayed at a new, and often very interesting, place. I never thought South Africa was so big. The CIA fact book states that it’s “slightly less than twice the size of Texas” so maybe I should rephrase that to: I never thought Texas was so big. All together we traveled over 3500km (2100mi) and I spent I little under R6000 ($750), which considering everything we did is extremely awesome and since I’m on a Peace Corps budget extremely necessary. The first leg from Jo’burg to Cape Town was done on a bus. It was supposed to be on the Shosholoza Meyl, but they canceled my reservations 2 hours before I arrived at the station to pick the tickets up (sent them feedback saying they shouldn’t do that during the world cup). As it turned out this was quite fortunate for two reasons.

First, it gave us time to do the Soweto Bike Tour. I bike through a township everyday, although not as large or of as much historical significance as Soweto, and still really loved the tour. It was very well done and I highly recommended and hope to to go on it again with other Peace Corps Volunteers (or if anyone else wants to come visit I’ll do it two more times!). Second, we had a very unforgettable 17 hour bus ride from Jo’burg to Cape Town. SA Roadlink, like most bus companies in South Africa, has large double decker coach buses. Christine and I were lucky enough to sit in the top front and so for the parts of the trip when the windows weren’t foggy (not very often) we got a great view. The bus seemed to stop about every two hours for reasons beyond comprehension, though as veterans of many a long Marching Band bus trip Christine and I coped fine. Starting at around 6:30 am we even got to watch all three Back To The Future’s in reverse order!

We got to Cape Town around 11:30, only 30 min late despite leaving Jo’burg 2 hours late just to give you an idea of the type of driver we had. Cape Town is a beautiful and fun little city with so many things to see that we couldn’t even come close to seeing everything in just 3 days. Some highlights included: our trip out to Cape Point where the rain seemed to always start when we were furthest from our car, normally up some rocky path. And “accidentally” walking half way up Signal Hill in search of a tea house that was only 70 street numbers but about 10 steep blocks from where we started. On the plus side we got to have an amazing tea with some great views of Table Mountain, the city, and the water front. By our last day we’d rented the car we would use for the rest of the trip and decided to do both Table Mountain and Robben Island in one day before driving out of the city to stay further down the coast. Table Mountain was covered in a giant tablecloth of clouds and we could barely see people standing 10 feet in front of us, let alone the city. But when it comes down to it I would much rather have had good views of Table Mountain then good views from the top which is exactly what we got.

I think that’s enough for my first post about this trip. The next one will be about our fast passed journey from Cape Town to Barberton, almost exactly opposite sides of country. I would also like to mention a couple we met in Cape Town staying at the same place we were. They’ve been traveling west around the world from South America through Australia and Asia for the last 8 months and plan to continue up through Africa and Europe. Their blog, which is filled with lots of pictures and longish articles, can be found here. It was quite cool to talk to people who had seen so much in the past year and managed to do such a trip on limited savings. I invited them to come visit me in Barberton if they make it this far in their months stay in South Africa. They say they don’t really plan much before entering a country and figure it all out day by day. The best way to travel in my humble opinion.

I got back yesterday from a week away from site. I spent all of last week with 10 other volunteers preparing for the next group of volunteers – SA20 – to arrive late next month at what Peace Corps calls General Training of Trainers or GTOT. This means I was at the training college in Marapyane were my Pre-Service Training (PST) was held last July. Instead of spending a night in Pretoria to catch the Peace Corps provided transport at 10am I decided to stay with my PST host family before GTOT started. It was great to spend the night with them and see how they were doing. In the morning I made my way vie public transport from their small village to the training college. It was amazing to realize how easy that actually was, but I never once did it during the three months of PST last year.

We put a lot of work into designing the schedule and divided up when we will all return to facilitate sessions at SA20’s PST. SA 20 will be replacing the SA 16 education volunteers leaving over the next few months and will mostly be on the opposite side of the country from me in the North West Province so I’m glade I’ll get a chance to meet them at PST. They will also all be learning Tswana. At our PST people learned 5 of South Africas 9 official languages: Sepdi, Tsonga, SiSwati, iNdebele, and Zulu. With so many languages being learned large group sessions had to always use English and practicing with people not in your language group was basically impossible. Our PST was a microcosm of the linguistic soup that makes up South Africa, but it wasn’t very conducive for learning or cross communication. It will be interesting to see how SA 20’s language training goes.

Sunday also happened to be the start of the FIFA Confederations Cup here in South Africa. There has been lots of build up to this international event in the news media. The Confederations Cup is a test run for the World Cup next year and from what I saw in Pretoria earlier this week I think they’ll be ready. I actually got to go to the USA vs Italy game on Monday night, and although it was 1 – 3 Italy it was very fun. There were plenty of buses between remote parking centers and the stadium and roads were closed around the stadium making it easy to walk there. Wait lines going in weren’t very long at all, though it did take a while to get out. My one complaint would be that there was very little order in the concession and bathroom lines during half time, it was pretty much a free for all mob and you had to force your self to the front to get anything. Never having been to a World Cup game before I’m not sure how much of a chaotic mad house half time concessions are but I think there’s was some room improvement. Maybe putting up queuing lines or something.

Coming back to site always requires a major mental shift. Your going from constantly being around other Americans where conversations that seem normal and not forced to being the only person from your cultural back ground and understanding. But its also nice to be back to the familiar routine, sounds, and feel of my little street in the township. There’s about one and a half weeks left in the school term here before a month long break. I want to try to get the ground work for projects I want to work on next term done in that time. The first week of break I’m planning to do math prep classes for the grade 12 students at a few high schools in this area. In November all South African 12^th graders have to take matriculation tests to pass high school and over the next few months they will all put enormous amounts of energy into studying. I’m hoping to give them some tools that will make their studying easier and more efficient. After that I’m planning to go on a trip from Cape Town through the Eastern and Western Cape with a few other volunteers and a good friend from high school who’s coming to visit. So I also have a lot of work to do planning all the details of that trip.

The total entropy of any isolated thermodynamic system tends to increase over time, approaching a maximum value.

This is a rather depression fundamental truth when extended to its final most absolute conclusion. But for at least the next 6 Billion years or so we don’t have to worry about that fact and therefor actually have much more pressing issues to worry about. But today I wanted to talk about the little localized anomalies to this generalized law otherwise known as human children and how they contribute to a massive increase in entropy through an amazing expenditure of energy.

One definition of entropy is a measure of the disorder and chaos of a system. Energy must be exerted in order for a system to obtain and maintain uniformity and order. Classic examples are a perfectly ordered deck of cards or an ice cube. The chances a shuffled deck of cards that is thrown on the floor and then randomly picked up being in perfect order is much closer to the chance that all the water molecules in my glass will suddenly arranging into the exact formation of ice at room temperature than the chance I’ll get a royal flush. In order to get that perfectly ordered deck or ice cube at room temperature energy must be used because those states are not naturally spontaneous. This means that the deck of cards and ice cube have lower entropy than the puddle of water and shuffled deck.

So what does this have to do with kids. First they are an example of a very low entropy system. What are the chances that the same amount of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, trace metals and other elements that make up a 3 year old randomly combine in just that way to make that unique and precious human being. So astronomically small that if you measure the economic value of all the complex proteins, intricately made cells, and everything else your DNA codes for and produces you could be worth $47 million, on the other hand if you just count just the basic elements and not the amazing way your body has arranged and uses them then your worth about $5. Second kids, and sometimes humanity as a whole though the final jury is still out on that one, tend to expend large amounts of energy not to create order but to create disorder and wreck havoc.

Now for the example from this weekend that provoked this whole train of thought. From somewhere a few of the kids on my street had scavenged the pieces to make a small push go-cart (I hear you saying Trevor, that’s a perfect example of human ingenuity being used to decrease entropy – please bare with me). The main core of the cart was an old discarded push lawnmower. The back axle on this lawnmower had worn through the plastic body and was falling out. I helped the kids fix it by basically sewing the axle in place with metal wire and pushed the kids around for a while. I took several pictures of the fixed axle and the kids playing with the cart.

The next day when I got back from work I found the cart completely demolished. One day of intense play was all it took. Granted the warranty on this car covered maybe its first 2 minuets of use and it wasn’t meant to last forever, but I figured it had more than a day in it. However, think of all it must have seen in its short existence as a children’s entertainment, and surly it was better than all the Teletuby episodes combined. It probable traveled the length of the street hundreds of times during the day. It was fought over, crashed into, sat on, jumped on, jumped over, pushed, pulled and enjoyed by at least 15 kids on the street. The back wheels probably feel of multiple times before it became impossible to hack them back on and then it was probably used more as a sled than a cart for a while. Once that wore the front wheels off dissecting the remainder of the car became much more of a game than strategically trying to build it up again. I know all this because I was once a kid and remember having jousting matches on the sidewalk with our big plastic big wheels, taking them to pieces in the process when I was 8. Here are some pictures of what the cart looks like now.

If you divide up a systems energy into that which does work, useful energy, and that which goes to wast, useless energy – in the context of productivity, advancement and the capitalist dream or just the elusive perpetual motion machine, than one interpretation of entropy is the useless energy. But think how much energy those 15 or so kids used up throughout the course of the day as they slowly and enjoyably destroyed their cart through natural play. Their play most definitely increased the overall entropy of the situation so what if any useful work did all that energy do. I believe it went into molding and shaping their mind and character. Through the course of a days playing they learned a few important lessons, might understand social interactions a little better, saw the value in having a cool play toy and learned what its like when that toy no longer works. Because of this one day they may grow up to be loving, carrying, socially engaged adult citizens. Who can actually judge the true value and worth of child’s play.

Now for a total change of subject on our current theme. As many of you may know my bike was plagued with a terrible case of increasing entropy. At last count the breaks didn’t work, it had no peddles, the gears wouldn’t shift into low gear with out me kicking the shifter while riding, the chain fell off frequently in high gear, and it was to small for me. I’m quite happy to report that I bought a new bike on Sunday. My host uncle owns a truck and took me to the mall in Nelspruit and the bike shop. The guy in the store tried to sell me a really nice bike with disk breaking, locking rear and front shocks and a host of other pretty nice things that also happened to be way out of my price range. I talked him down a few models by explaining I only needed this bike for another 17 months, wasn’t going to ride any races, and would only use the cash I had in the envelope in my backpack. Needles to say I am enjoying the new bike very much and hope to do a nice trip up the back roads in Barberton’s mountains soon. I’ll post about it when I get back, and I’ll probably tweet from the top.

Today I went to help an 8^th grader with his math assignment. He had to use a compass and straight edge to make angle bisectors, perpendicular bisectors, altitudes, and midpoint lines on triangles making inscribed and circumscribed circles. I was excited since I had loved doing this exact same stuff way back in 9^th grade. Unfortunately it turned out to be a much more painful process than I ever could have imagined. We would read the instructions in the book on how to bisect an angle but then when I drew an angle and asked him to bisect it he had no idea where to start. I then demonstrated how to do it; pointing out how each action corresponded to the instruction in the book which he had read and then drew another angle and ask him to bisect it. Still no idea where to start. I would literally have to hold his hand and place the compass in the correct spot and if I didn’t tell him which direction he needed to go, he’d go the wrong way (mysteriously way more than half the time) and have to make an entire circle before getting to the right spot when all that was needed was a small mark in the opposite direction. And after doing three angles like this I expected him to be able to do one on his own. Nope no success. Still no idea where to start, though this time he did understand that he was supposed to draw arcs on the paper and did so at random points along the line.

I don’t want to put to much blame on this one kid for I could go on and on describing similar anecdotes from the last several months. The 12^th grader who had to make chicken scratches for 3×3, the blank stares I got today when asking what the x and y coordinates of a point were (they were (1,0) and the point was on the unit circle and the students were supposed to graph cos(θ)), the total inability to pick any meaning out of word problem unless I explicitly explain it. The level of mathematical literacy is so frustrating below the level of understanding the curriculum requests that it makes me slightly mad just to think about it. I’ve decided to make it my battle for the next 18 months to do my part in helping improve mathematical understanding, intuition, and problem solving at all grade levels. I feel that math is a good thing to pick because you can do it with out any fancy equipment, the critical thinking skills required to solve math problems can be translated to other areas of school as well as life, and math is easy to teach because it has concrete principles that you can fall back on (remember those chicken scratches to multiply). I have lots of great ideas on how to do that, but nothing that is making any progress as of the moment. I hope in the next few months to have something productive started with that regard.

But none of that is what I’ve been thinking about tonight. While I was watching this kid attempt to bisect an angle and find the midpoints of lines I started thinking how the Ancient Greeks could make regular pentagons with just a straight edge and ruler over 2,500 years and yet this kid was struggling with something so much simpler. At the same time, several times while helping him I saw him pull out a cell phone capable of 3G data access. The juxtaposition of those two events really got me thinking that not much about human cognition or intelligence has really changed since the dawning of civilization. The simple key to all the great successes we credit to the human mind is a memory of what came before and the ingenuity to go further. In the 12^th century Bernard of Chartres wrote

We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size

Just think how much the collective human mind has created, invented and discovered in the 9 centuries since that was written. Just think how much its done in the last century alone. Just think how much has happened in my short life time of 22 years. The computer world has a very famous axiom of growth first quantified by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in the mid 1960’s which basically states that the number of transistors that can economically be placed on an integrated circuit grows exponential to time – double approximately every two years to be moore exact. Such exponential growth is only made possible because each generation of integrated circuit stands on the shoulders of the last. And this analogy can be extended to technological change anywhere and at anytime because one change leads to two more changes which lead to four more changes ad infinitum. The whole process is due to the fact that knowledge does not have to be reinvented and each generation sits upon the mighty progress of the last. It is interesting to observe the effects of that cycle being broken as happened in South Africa during the years of Apartheid. How it only takes a few generations of cruelty, hatred and fear for a society to lose its collective conscience and how hard it is to restart the engines of human creativity, inspiration and ingenuity as this countries school system has been trying to do virtually over night.

I think its also important to note that the only thing that has changed in the last 5000 years is the amount of collective knowledge and technological prowess. I doubt the basic intelligence of the average human has changed very much in the last 3000 years. Our capacity to feel and be loved hasn’t grown in the last 2000 years. The desires and needs of a new born infant are still almost the same as they must have been a few million years ago. So while technological change is exponential biological change is relatively constant. This is why technology without foresight and vision is so dangerous. Technology breaks barriers. It shortens time and distance. It is the great instant pill reducing the amount of physical labor necessary to live. But its also blind. The chain saw doesn’t care if it cuts down every tree. The TV doesn’t care if it shows WWE or Sesame Street to a generation of South African kids. The cell phone doesn’t care if its used as the detonating device in a large bomb or to call 911 once the bomb explodes.

We are basically large apes running really fast to change the world but staying in the someplace because we can’t change ourselves.

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

We are like the Red Queen in Through The Looking Glass and the only solution we can think of is to run faster, when maybe the right choice is to slow down and make sure we’re not running in circles. Its easy to change the world with our technology but much much harder to change ourselves so we can use it efficiently, effectively and ethically.

Its interesting the places you mind can go when set out to help an 8^th grade student with maths. Just imagine all the places it can go when you set out to explore the world.

The Umjindi Mumicipality hereby informs you that reticulation has been completed.

This was the beginning of a message that greeted me as I entered the small one room library in the location. Reading further down the announcement I found out that reticulation (what ever that actually is) was completed for Phase 2 and Extensions 15 – 17. This are some of the least developed areas of the location. I’ve been through them only once or twice, but the difference between them and where I live is almost as great as between where I live and Barberton itself. Almost every single house is made of wood planks and you can see in through the cracks. There’s also a vegetable garden in front of most houses and the number of chickens wondering the street is closer to that of a rural village than a township.

I had to wonder how many residents of these areas 1) actually make it all the way up to the library which is in a much different area of the location and 2) how many of them would understand what the message was about. When reading it I had no idea what the word reticulation actually meant except for something I might have found on the GREs. After reading further down the letter and seeing that requests to have water hook ups could now be made I figured it had something to do with water piping. Since I was at the library I went in and found a dictionary to look reticulation up, here’s what I found.

reticulation: to divide, mark, or construct so as to form a network

Ok I can sort of see how that might somehow be the same as connecting really poor houses to the main water supply, but seriously, which ever office bound bureaucrat who picked that word had no idea what their actual audience was like and must have only been trying to impress their boss. I didn’t see a SiSwati translation of the announcement anywhere (I was sort of looking forward to using the SiSwati equivalent of reticulation in random everyday conversations), so I can only hope that there were other means of getting this message to the people that live in this area.

This is the great divide that exists in South Africa right now, and its not a racial one. It’s between those people who can use the word reticulation in the main subject of an official flier about water distribution and those people who cut their own wood to build a small 2 room shack for their families. These two groups coexist with in kilometers of each other but each has very little understanding or the other. For me as a Peace Corps Volunteer it is very interesting to sit somewhere in the middle of the two groups and go back and forth.

Schools started back up this week after a two week hiatus between first and second terms. So much has happened in the last three weeks that it seems like almost half a year ago when I ran the Longtom marathon.

The week after the marathon was the science camp I’d been planning. For about half of the month of February and all the month of March organizing this camp was my main focus. The primary goal of the camp was to excite 7^th and 8^th grade students from around the Circuit about science and math. I invited 72 students from 10 different schools that span Barberton and Emjindin asking each school to nominate the students most interested in science. This was one of the best decisions I made because working with highly motivated curious students made it much easier to introduce concepts like centripetal force, inertia, or density. But most importantly I wanted to make the camp as hands on and interactive as possible to show that science isn’t words in a text book or memorized facts but a way of interacting with the world.

The last two months were a long bumpy road as I attempted to urge the initial idea for the camp into a reality. I went to countless local businesses proposal in hand trying to get some support. I made extensive list of supplies we needed but hadn’t collected any. I’d come up with over 25 lesson ideas and assigned them to other volunteers but still needed 5 more. Planning a project like this is rather like jumping off a cliff with the leap of faith that you can build the parachute on the way down. Its like jumping of a diving board; once you make that initial commitment there’s nothing you can do about it – your going to hit the water. The only option you have is to decide if its going to be a giant belly flop, messy cannonball, smooth dive, or spectacular reverse three-and-a-half somersaults tuck.

It wasn’t until the last two days before the Longtom marathon that I felt the camp might actually be not belly flop. My friend Steve had come to town to help me print over 80 activity books, I’d gone with my supervisor to collect equipment from participating schools, and the circuit office’s drive had driven me around town to buy supplies. But even then I had no idea if any kids would actually show up the next Monday, the first official day of their break.

The camp was scheduled to start at 8am and myself and the four other Peace Corps Volunteers that came into town to help showed up around 7am to start getting ready. Already there were a few small groups of kids waiting around. In the next hour and a half, right through a mild rain, we registered 74 students for the camp. It was a hectic mess of kids and paper, but finally we had everyone in a large circle ready to do some ice breakers before breaking into small groups and starting some science. Through out the week attendance went up and down. Some kids didn’t come back, others brought friends – this is Peace Corps after all, got to have some spontaneity and randomness. In the end, on Friday we passed out 78 certificates so if numbers were all that mattered the camp was definitely a success.

But numbers aren’t all that matter. Quality is often much more important than quality. I mean I’ll give the first person who asks 1,000,000,000,000 Zimbabwean dollars. We wanted to make sure the students had fun and were exposed to advanced concepts in an interesting and engaging ways. And by that measure I’d say the camp was also a success.

As expected there were some lessons that completely flopped (I was really excited about making and using abaci – turns out their not that exciting to 13 and 14 year olds). But the majority of activities were pretty good and some really really great. Here’s a list of some of my favorite.

• Mento’s and Coke – Almost as good as soda bottle rockes and always great fun. Turned this into an experimental design simulation by doing three different experiments with different independent variables.

• Egg Drop – 12 pieces of paper might have been to much though, we had to dig pretty deep to find some groups eggs.

• Surface Tension – I remember putting drops on pennies way back in 6^th grade and thought it would work well on the 10 cent coins here.

• Scale model of the solar system – Did this in 8^th grade and the incredible amount of space between planets has always stuck with me.

There were lots of good activities and I’m starting to think of more so I can hopefully do this again as well as give ideas to other volunteers. If anyone has great science activities that can be done with very minimal equipment please pass them my way.

One of the side effects of working with over 76 teenagers for a week is that I can’t go anywhere in the township now with out people calling out my name (at least it’s my name now and not “Hey Malungu”). Almost every day over the week after the camp I would run into students who attended the camp. They would ask

“We want the camp this week too. Why isn’t it happening again?”

“Because I didn’t plan it” I’d say.

“Well, why didn’t you plan it on Sunday” they’d replay.

That always made me laugh, but I didn’t feel like explain the month and a half of work I’d put into that one week. I’d also get kids who would come up and say they wanted a camp in July “But this time make it a sleep over camp, and have more kids.” I’m really glade they liked it but I’m not sure I can come up with another weeks worth of material, and even if I could I’d have qualms about targeting the same group of kids when there are over 1000 kids at some of these schools and over 40 schools in the Circuit.

I’d love to do another science camp sometime in the next year and a half. That one week was one of the most rewarding of my Peace Corps service so far. Plus I learned so much from doing this one that it should be much easier and much better if I do it again. But for now I have two other big projects I want to focus on that will hopefully reach more students and teachers. I’ll try to share them here over the next few weeks as they develop.