IST #1

IST is one of the thousands of Peace Corps acronyms that one needs to memorize in order to participate in "Peace Corps Speak." IST= in-service training. There are several held periodically after PST and "lock down." We have one day left of our first IST. We are outside a teeny-tiny little town exactly 30 k from Botswana. The area is gorgeous, heavily vegetated with sheer rocky cliffs all around. It's beautiful! What's more exciting is our 'hotel' has a tin roof and (get this) there are baboons EVERYWHERE here. They come down the cliffs and run across the roof of the hotel which makes a very loud, thunder-like noise. They also have taken to sneaking into people's rooms and stealing their things like mangos etc. One volunteer had a loaf of bread in his bag. He came in his room just in time to see the baboons steal his entire bag. He followed them up the mountain area and found his bag, emptied. He also had some wart medicine in his bag that the baboons had opened, left the instructions and taken the medicine. What was so incredible was that the baboons didn't tear the box but actually opened it properly! Unbelievably cool!!!

There are also several hyrax all over the place (I don't know how to spell that). They're so awesome.

Anyway.

IST has been awesome because we have been able to see everyone but it has been incredibly boring at the same time. One week of 8-5 sessions (most of which are redundant and poorly delivered) is exhausting. I do have something very exciting to report however, hence the main reason of this blog.

A man who works for USAID came to deliver a presentation about USAID's "Project Citizen." It focuses on making village members active participants in democracy. It is a program for youth (aged 14-20+) where they are facilitated in making public policy changes in their communities (with permission from the chief, of course). This is a short explanation of a fascinating project that made me more excited than anything else I've seen thus far in South Africa!

The facilitator then spoke about a project we have in America called 'We the People' where people teach classes about the American constitution and government structure. He lamented his sadness that there wasn't a similar program instituted in South Africa. This got me thinking....

So very few of SAs youth take any ownership in their communities (they are former reservations mind you) and they take even less ownership in their government. Most cannot name more than the President and know nothing about the structure or function. I went up to the presenter after the presentation and asked him if anyone was working on replicating the "We the People" project at this time. He said no. I told him about my degrees and about the research I'd done in school and said if there's ever anyone who you hire to start working on that project to keep me in mind as an assistant researcher/writer. He got pretty excited and said, "Well, why don't you do it?"

AHHHH!

I of course said yes. He took me aside and gave me all the materials and a copy of the SA constitution (plus some reference books and contacts at a local university who could assist me in my research) and said "get to work!"

WOO-HOO!

I am incredibly excited to get started on this truly new project. I told my APCD about it and I will likely be presenting my findings at the next training for PCVs.

I believe South Africa really has a chance to become a stable democracy but with the current political situation turning in a very scary direction I feel that these next few years will really determine the course this country will take long term. The original members of the ANC (Mandela and his crew) are getting older and the new generation is much less tolerant of whites. I feel that now is the time to empower the people to understanding how democracy works and what they can do to get their voices heard. As Peace Corps remains apolitical it will be a challenge for me to present the facts in an unbiased manner, as such I'll be needed many peer reviewers! If anyone is interested or feels they could contribute in any way - let me know! I will need it.

This is a huge undertaking, but I'm excited about it. I feel it combines my skills with the needs of South Africans better than any other project I've started/thought about thus far. Plus, it'll be a lot of fun!

I'll post my findings here as they progress.

Thanks for all the love and support as always! We return to our site on Monday (we're about 10 hours away, so it promises to be another long, long day of travel on a khumbi...bla). The good thing is, I'm excited to be going 'home!' Very good sign!