Grassroot Soccer: What it is, why it's dope and the BIG question it answered for me

Moments of utter clarity are infrequent, truly rare gems in this life; when a path towards a relationship/job/journey crystalizes in the minds eye and becomes clear and sure. What follows is the story of my realization that I wanted to be sex educator for teenagers.

I’m sitting on a small wooden bench in the grade 1 classroom at my school. Twelve teenage girls and my two amazing counterparts, teachers at my school who are doing the majority of the facilitating, are sitting on benches like mine in a circle. The wind is blowing fiercely, and much needed raindrops are splattering the tin roof and the land outside. Despite the deafening pounding of rain on a tin roof, the girls are rapt with attention in a way they would never be during an English lesson in similar circumstances. Their Skillz Girl Diaries

 are opened to the page with diagrams and descriptions about what exactly is happening when we women folk bleed every month, 

and I’m describing it as they follow along, followed closely by a Sesotho translation from one of my counterparts.

These girls range in age from 12-16, and to my knowledge they’ve all started their periods. They have lots of responsibilities that most twelve year olds in the states couldn’t fathom having to do every day, like walking up and down mountains and over hills to fetch large buckets of water on their heads like it’s nothing. They’re all accustomed to death, and by necessity are, in some ways, more like adults than the children they are.

And yet, from the way they’re holding onto my words and grin shyly when I say words like “ovaries” and “vagina”, it’s clear that this is the first time someone has talked to them in such a straightforward way about their bodies. And in other practices, about their own self-worth, about what exactly it means to be in a healthy relationship, about birth control and protecting themselves from HIV and about how to advocate for themselves and embody the power they have. Really, about what the hell it is to be a girl in this world, in their world.

They’re sharp as tacks. Once they felt comfortable enough to speak, the insightful and articulate things that started pouring out of them made me fill up with pride and wonder. It’s just that few people have ever asked them to share what they think and feel about these things. To ask questions, to discuss, to probe. And now that it’s day four, their new knowledge and confidence is really starting to take hold, and it’s beautiful.

To top it off, they get to play soccer, which is kind of a perfect analogy to many of the lessons covered in the life skills sessions: changing gender norms and expectations, healthy communication in relationships and the importance of a support system in order to reach our goals.

Makholene killin' it

My whole being is tingling with joy.  

…written on day four of the six day Grassroot Soccer camp I just completed with the grade seven girls at my school, the ones who just graduated and will be moving on to high school come January. I’m ecstatic about this program, and I can’t wait to do it with the girls and boys when the new school year starts up.

And really, for life.

moments of tenderness during an energizer

They sure are some Genius Ladies (the team name they picked for themselves). 

demonstrating how to say "No!" during a skit at their graduation

Lebo showing them how to track their menstrual cycles.

The girls and my main counterpart, 'M'e Eugenia

Khotso.

Small thoughts n' things

What does it feel like to have a body that can be crushed to pieces so easily? (in regards to my ant roommates)

While reading a book on my porch one evening, legs propped up on the broken-backed chair in front of me as usual, a baby goat suddenly walks up to me out of nowhere, as if I was its final destination, and comes close enough to briefly nuzzle it’s nose against my leg. I make some goat sounds, it makes some goat sounds, and then just as suddenly, it leaves.

Teaching is definitely one of those jobs that brings out the very best and the very worst in you.

What the fuck am I even doing here?

Felt so maternal one Thursday night when I refused Tsepang, the eternal insomniac, the use of my external hard drive to watch movies on a school night, after explaining to him the things our bodies do when we sleep and why we need it. And even more so the next morning when he told me he listened to me and felt better.

(when only five grade 6 students (out of 31) got a 50% or more on the final exam) It’s only been a year Grace. That’s not enough time to affect students pass rates/English comprehension rates that profoundly.

The next time a complete stranger abandons what they’re doing to excitedly run up, hug me and walk with me wherever I’m going, I’m going to act 100 times as excited as they are. See if it weirds them out!

A great start to my day:

1)     Nice strong cup o’ coffee

2)     Raisins in my oatmeal

3)     Sunshine

4)     A pre-school poop (not to be confused with preschool poop. OVER those)

5)     When the neighbor kiddos are out on my walk to school (“’M’E MPHO! BYE BYEEEE!)

I kind of hate the English language.

Big laughs this week from the s&!@ I’ve said (also seen, heard and done) in Lesotho whatsapp group: “Is there a better feeling in the world than when a Mosotho is intently staring at you so long that they walk smack into a pole? I really don’t think so.”

Distracted from thoughts of the drought and water while looking out at the crunchy brown grass on a taxi by an ntate (old man) rockin’ out to “call me maybe” blasting on the radio.

Here’s a weird thought: this time next year I’ll be finished Peace Corps.

Patience reserves are waning. Sweat dripping endlessly. Summer’s here in Lesotho. Just get me to the 11^th ya’ll.

Things that have been making me happy

Choose to wallow in nothing but gratitude.

these guys, even though they disrupt class to NO end

reuniting with my host fam from training 

my heart

they grow up so quick

Fam! (minus bo-ntate, because they're too cool for photos)

celebrating halloween with this lady.

(while apologies of a thug plays)

and these people

Peace Corpse

Bringing this grade 7 student to the first national spelling bee in Lesotho!

all the participants

The amazing organizers

She's just as cool as she looks

her classmates were waiting for us at the bus stop, and started yelling excitedly and congratulating her immediately.

Love and Peace. 

PCV's Anonymous

I wrote this piece for the writing exchange, a group of us who write anything we want on a chosen topic and submit each month. The prompt was: write about your experience in Lesotho as a peace corps volunteer.

My name is Grace, and I’m a Peace Corps volunteer.

I live in a round thatched roof house without running water or electricity. Every morning I gaze at the intricacies of my roofing for at least two minutes before getting out of bed, and (most) every evening I use two medium sized blue plastic basins to wash the dishes that have accumulated throughout the day.

I could tell you about what I teach or what kinds of projects I’m working on or how far I need to walk to pump my water, but none of those things really describe how strange it can be to sit back and observe my position as if I were one of the people in my village.

I, and we, are in the unique position of complaining about things, often deep-rooted cultural things, about a place that we came to live in by choice. It really doesn’t make sense, how easy it is to whine about the things that we consider annoying or weird or stupid. No one forced us to come here. It’s helpful to sit back and try to observe myself through an outsider’s lens.

I have many personalities here.

I am Grace Harman, the Peace Corps Volunteer. I get up early in the mornings to teach the ridiculous intricacies of the present perfect tense and how to correctly use a condom to middle-schoolers. I go to bed early, soon after I finish eating dinner, so that I can get up and be fresh-faced and do it again. Sometimes I get to stay in hotels with other Americans for days at a time and use a hot shower and flushing toilets and be fed copious amounts of meat at every meal, during which we revel in the opportunity to speak in much faster, more slang-ridden English than we get to use in our villages.

I am also Madame Mpho Khalane, the American who teaches English and Life Skills at St. Denis Primary School. The one who has you get up and do weird things with your body while saying words, in an effort to help you understand new concepts. The white one. The fat one, you say. The one who talked to you about vaginas openly for the first time and whom you make laugh when you insist on saying the word at random intervals during unrelated English lessons.

I am also ausi Mpho, the American. The white one. The one who loudly sings along to Beyoncé while doing her washing on Sundays while the rest of us slowly walk to church in our seshoeshoe and large hats. The one who makes you giggle when she greets you loudly in Sesotho, and gives you a strange look when you stare at her pumping water, even though you just stopped to look because you didn’t know white people could do such things.

--------

And so I’ll text my friend about how annoying it is to be stared at like that, even now, when I’ve lived in my village for nine months now, and I think people should be used to me by now. I’m not the first volunteer to live here, shouldn’t the circus have left by now? Can it really be that I’m still so fascinating?

Yes, it can.

Last week I walked to school with one of the third grade girls, whom I don’t teach, and she stared up at me for the entire fifteen-minute walk. “What does she see?” I wondered, as I pretended not to notice. “What is she thinking? What does she think I’m going to do?”

It helps to remind myself of how strange it is, objectively, to be an American living in a rural village in Lesotho for two years. No matter how many thousands of people have done the same thing all around the world, or how normal it seems when we’re all together or when talking to certain circles of people at home. It’s still a weird role to play. When I’m in my village, I’m self-conscious of my actions in a way that feels second nature now. I know I’m always being observed, and I’ve learned to take part in it.

The only thing to do is

Let go.

Relax.

Exhale.

Smile.

And laugh.

winds a blowin'

One of the best things about being one of these strange PCV's is getting to hang out with this weirdo every day.

Ausi Lebo. Love. 

When lesson planning becomes a photo shoot

The Dustbowl, or, Lessons Learned from Weather

The dust is everywhere: In my nostrils and eyes and ears and in between my toes. It gets under my door and into my house, making it seem as if I didn’t thoroughly clean the house the week before I left for South Africa. The wind blows as if a storm is coming, yet it’s not raining nearly as frequently or as hard as we would all like and need. Frequently, lightning will light up the sky beyond while only a drizzle or nothing at all falls from the sky. It’s as if the rest of the world wants to storm, but the skies just won’t allow it.

Yesterday and today it finally stormed, and already my skin doesn’t feel as dry.

This is how the weather was when I came to Lesotho a year ago, and while most things about living here don’t surprise me anymore, the dramatics of the weather here almost always astound me. The sun beats down and makes me squint my eyes and think of New Mexican summers visiting the fam. The wind blows so strongly that from a distance it looks like the dust is a low hanging cloud ready to release drops at any moment, but when walking in the midst of it forces you to cover your eyes so the particles don’t get in and make them burn like hell. Most days begin awash in bright, fresh light. Most of them end in awe-inspiring multi-colored sunsets that quickly give way to a sky blanketed in stars. The sky always makes me feel delightfully, refreshingly, small and insignificant.

The weather here is like an outdoor traveling theater troupe, ready to strike and surprise and mystify at any moment.

I wonder what it is exactly that makes me feel so exposed to the elements here. Though it’s significantly more humid in Philly, there are definitely four seasons the same as here, with extremely cold days and boiling hot ones and days full of fresh breeze and rain and wind. Was it the concrete that shielded me before? The tall buildings? The indoor plumbing?  The fans and the air conditioners and the indoor heating systems? Probably all of it.

It’s new for me, this intimate awareness of the land and the weather.  It’s teaching me things too-how the clouds look different when rain is really coming and when they’re just putting on a mask, trying to fool you. How to adjust my daily habits based on the outside world: I didn’t do dishes in the morning in the winter because it was too cold to go outside that early to dump the dishwater on my garden. How much I took water for granted at home.

By now, I’m used to thinking about how to ration my resources on a daily basis-baking less bread and cooking less soup uses less gas, and water that gets used for one thing is almost always reused or simultaneously used for another: washing my hands over my dish basin allows me to soak the dirty dishes in one go, and dirty dish water immediately goes towards watering my (ailing) garden. These things don’t feel very difficult anymore, they just are what they are.

But sometimes, I’ll wake up from a dream where all I did was sit in front of the washing machine while it washed my clothes for me, turned on a faucet anywhere and just watched water come gushing out and cooked a meal without thinking once about how much gas I was using and when I would need to replace the tank next.

Life will be easier in a year, no doubt about it. And I’ll appreciate modern amenities more than ever.

I only hope I don’t end up taking them for granted.

Khotso. 

It's been a year, ya'll.

A Year in the Mountain Kingdom

Well, I’ve been here a year. If I were a baby I would be eating solid food, crawling around eagerly, babbling away in my own language and starting to learn to walk (can you tell I worked in a pre-school?).

I’ve imagined how I would feel around this time throughout my first few months here, made predictions for what I would be dealing with and made lists of personal and professional goals that I hoped to achieve by this marker.

The irony, of course, is that I hardly remember any of them. I realized months ago that very few noticeable changes can be made in a year of teaching, so I probably threw those lists away. And most of the personal goals I made (50 pushups?  No thanks) have dissipated as well. As with all things worth our time, the most profound lessons learned and changes within me and in my school are things that I never actively pursued, but that found me instead. Here are a few of them:

1.   I don’t rush, ever. I used to get to places early on the regular, and nearly always left my house when I planned to. I remember having days where I did like six different things, often in different parts of the city. Thinking about that now makes me cringe and laugh. Call it what you will- settling in, cultural adjustment or just realizing that taking the time to enjoy and fully experience whatever I happen to be doing makes me happier and, ironically, makes the time pass more quickly.

2.   I’m realistic. It takes time to understand just how long new things take to sink in. I started the year planning to cover two topics in one week because there are so many things my students could possibly be tested on and so little they understood (and no, the people who teach the concepts don’t create the exams. What an idea!) Now I’m better at the balancing act of teaching to the test and teaching for comprehension. If I had come to the Peace Corps with plans for doing all kinds of projects or believing that my presence would make a truly PROFOUND difference, I would probably be pretty down (who was it that said the thing about expectations being disappointments waiting to happen?) As it is, I’m just more realistic, and always figuring out ways to do what I do better.

3.   Happiness is a choice. It’s a hard concept to get, because we are used to basing our happiness on outside circumstances. It’s also a hard one to embody, but being here has totally affirmed this truth for me. I wake up every morning and choose to be happy, which means that I let go of hard things more easily and am able to be more present with whatever is going on. It’s not about what’s on the outside-my skin has become worse, I’ve gained a little weight and I’m certainly not my cleanest. My clothes are usually dirty and they are all falling apart, little by little. All this, and I’m happier in a deeper and more profound way than I’ve ever been.

4.   Life happens. Lots of sad and hard and wonderful things have happened to people I love while I’ve been here, thousands of miles away with only a small screen to take it in from. Weddings and deaths and accidents and new jobs and new boyfriends and girlfriends and racist police brutality. Coming to the year mark has made me feel more self-confident and assured than ever, but also to feel farther away than ever from the people I hold dear. It’s a good reminder that life happens no matter where in the world we happen to be. Control is an illusion.

5.   It’s the little things. I notice and appreciate the small gifts that life gives every day, now more than ever: Realizing that a particular student is so much more confident and outspoken than she was at the beginning of the year, a new plant in my garden pushing it’s head up through the dirt, a letter in the mail (seriously, it’s like Christmas every time), a short conversation with someone in my village, spontaneous singing with my teachers, “beat-boxing” in the school office with one of my grade six boys, a cool breeze after a day of pure heat, talking to my grade six girls about the importance of self respect while sitting in the sun. There are a lot of hard things about being here, but if I focused on those I'd probably be depressed. I’d rather soak up the quirky, spontaneous, beautiful things that Lesotho imparts on me every day. After all, I only have a year left!

All love from Lesotho-see you next December!

At which time, I'll appreciate getting to consume my favorites more than ever.

first blueberries in a year!

Mama Jude's visit!

During my spring break from school, and for the week after, I was lucky enough to have Mama Jude come visit me.

We spent the first week traveling along the Eastern Cape of South Africa, which was startlingly lush and green compared to the brown dust of Lesotho as of late. We saw animals, beautiful beaches, and stayed in beautiful hotels (although these days, a working shower is pretty much all it takes to impress me). This was also the site of the violent Xhosa wars, in which the Xhosa people had their land forcibly stolen from them, and it was intense passing these dazzling green farms where the black South Africans go to work for the white ones, the same as it's been for centuries, regardless of Apartheid being abolished. Seeing farmers walking to and from their work in the fields is a sight I'm very used to in Lesotho. The difference is, of course, that they're working for themselves, on their own land. The feeling is lighter. 

Scroll down for BEAUTY. 

I highly recommend Gibela Backpackers in Durban

Paintings of South African products. 

Night time view from Lodge at the Beach, Port St. Johns

There's a reason it's called the Wild Coast

window to the sky

In her element

Daytime view

This is Abbey

One of the best beaches ever

SHELLS

It's just like my house in Lesotho, if my house had electricity, running water, and THE BEST SHOWER

Don't be such a kudu 

Love you.