10 April 2016: My life improves. Good vibes abound. / PC policy clustermess

                Right now, I’m sitting on half a cinderblock in front of my house as Bo lays in my shadow, kind of on top of my feet, and is chewing on what I’m guessing is a sheep bone. Adorableness.

                Well, it’s been a week and a half since I got back to my village, and things are going quite well. I’m not going crazy, mostly because before (when I would normally be going crazy in my village by now), I had absolutely nothing here to keep me busy or to look forward to. School’s been better; I’ve been hanging out and just talking with the form Cs more, which instantly puts me in a good mood. I think I ‘ve gotten the hang of controlling the noise level in my classes, which is quite good.

But the best news is that I held the first meeting of the girls’ club, which we’re calling “Banana Ba Matla” which translates to Girls are Strong/Girl Power. It’s with the 10 form C girls that I teach. The purpose of this club is to promote female empowerment and assertiveness, then to teach basic self-defense moves. I started them off with teaching about the difference between passive and assertive body language, then followed with some simple phrases to fend off a creep. I wanted this to be a joint effort between me and the girls, so I suggested some English phrases, then they helped me translate them into Sesotho. Then, the girls practiced dealing with me as I pretended to be a creepy dude and got all up in their faces. They were awesome- even the shy ones. I felt so energized by their enthusiasm! Great stuff.

One day this past week, I brought my camera to school at Jen’s request for photos of students for the alternatives to corporal punishment pamphlet. Some of the form Cs posed for photos like they were happily studying together or just sitting and raising their hands as if they were answering a question in class. We just wanted to represent some happy, non-beaten students for the pamphlet. There was a PC Life Skills workshop this past weekend, and Jen said that her session on alternatives to corporal punishment went really well. I couldn’t go, because it was a PC workshop and I’m not about that life anymore, but she emphasized that I was a big part in helping her with the pamphlet and the session she presented.

I went back to PCC, the orphanage, to teach English yesterday, which went well, especially when we put away the workbook and I just started asking them simple questions that they had to answer aloud. I have a group of grade 6s and 7s who I do more advanced drills with, and then I have a group of 2^nd to 4^th graders who are still doing phonics and learning to read.

I’ve been spending all my waking (and some sleeping) hours watching Friends. It’s so weird; since I go through about a season a day (this is real life, people), it’s amazing how fast 1) their hair grows, and 2) their relationships start, progress, and end.

And lastly, the latest PC BS “du jour,” as Colleen put it, is that until the end of the month, our country director is giving amnesty to people who come clean with extra, unreported vacation days they tacked on to their trips. If they confess now and some issue comes up in the future, they won’t be penalized. But that email was extremely cryptic and it was not clear what message they were trying to send to the PCVs. It was screaming, “Read between the lines, people!” I wasn’t really mad at PC before, but now I’m starting to be because they’re kind of inhumanely dragging people around in these mind games, making them guess at reading staff members ’minds about what exactly will happen to them for any given situation. PC policy has just turned so unpredictable and no one knows what to make of it or what to expect.  After randomly separating so many people in my group, no one knows if their next move will have the same consequence. People were demanding that something be done to change the policies, and this is what they come up with. I think it’s a really bad compromise, as it doesn’t even solve the main issue at hand, which is people with completely unreported vacation (not just extra days tacked onto an already reported vacation). I feel like they’ve totally lost control, and this is their scrambling attempt to pretend like they have some grasp on their own program. They’re saying that this month of amnesty is the only time where honesty is the right policy. All other times, if you’re honest about breaking policy, you’ll get punished. The system is fundamentally flawed. Truthfully, now I’m sure in my relief to be out. I am glad I can continue to work in my same capacity and use the connections I’ve already made while a PCV, and at the same time stand aside, away from this utter nonsense that has become PC policy. I have more to rant about on this topic, but I’ll spare y’all.