To continue on with lessons learned…the camp certainly turned out to be a few more. The teachers and myself had only two weeks to pull off the camp and to get all preparations done. Not much time at all. Things seemed to be going pretty well. The invitations to schools and teachers were all out and accounted for. We had made a budget for what we needed, gotten transport and had decided on the days we would go food shopping and get ourselves to the bank to withdraw the money needed for this event.
Things were going pretty well and depending on whom you speak to…the whole event went very well.
It started on Fri, Jan 28th and was going until Sun, Jan 30th. 8 schools total participated including mine. We had 30 youth participating, 2 out of school youth from my village and then 24 of my PACT Club members attended and were Peer Facilitators. So, overall we were in charge of about 64 youth and then when you add in the teachers from all the schools and guests from different Ministries and Organizations in Botswana… we had about 90 people in my tiny village of Metsibotlhoko.
The 7 other schools arrived on Friday afternoon where on arrival they decorated name tags for themselves (which let me just say stickers are amazing to kids here) and then just played football (soccer) and table tennis which we had two sets at the schools in storage so I took them out. Table tennis was a huge hit…kids here don’t get to play with kits or sets from a box…they make wire cars from scraps they find in the trash and make soccer balls out of many plastic bags. So, just those few things were a very big deal to them. They played for hours until dinner. Then we had a camp fire and the two other Peace Corps Volunteers that came to help me and facilitate a session each, were there for all of us to explain the magic of S’mores and all the kids got to make them. S’mores is a very American thing. I guess that makes sense…maybe…but I had no idea that no one knows. My friends in Europe don’t know either. Its American I guess… The kids were extremely excited to have chocolate and marshmallows and cookies. It was a nice surprise for them. A few of the boys from my school made the fire. Its second nature to them, they did it in total darkness and made the biggest bon fire I’ve ever seen. Kinda made me nervous but they had fun and spent the whole time telling me about how they do ancestral dances at the fire and wait for the purple smoke to come because that signifies something…not sure what exactly. They made the fire and while it was blazing, one of the boys from my school who might I add was conducting the camp fire in the pitch black night wearing sunglasses that he had found from my garbage that broke almost a year ago that he found an has kept and fixed ever since and then declared to everyone that we should all say a prayer for me. I was really confused and asked him why we were praying for me. He said they were going to pray for me that I don’t leave Metsi and that I get them more S’mores…the kids got priorities. It was sweet…kinda weird…but sweet.
I got home around 11pm after everything finished. Went to bed by 12pm and woke up at 5am to get back to school to start preparing breakfast with the teachers and sorting out all details for the day. The teachers from my school were all in charge of cooking for the event and kind of designated themselves for that which was fine with me and I appreciate there hard work on the cooking. However, the entire even from start to finish to even most of the preparations beforehand…were all done by me. It was personally very disappointing for me. The idea of this project being sustainable is slim to none and its hard to really let that sink in. I have to accept that I have done all I can and worked as hard as possible to make sure everything has been successful, which the actual grant itself is very successful. Its just that my expectations didn’t live up to reality…which that’s usually the case in life so its ok. Its sad really that when it comes down to it is in a way because of the success that things that people have lost their motivation. Ever since our school and staff has gotten so much praise for the grant and our being ranked this year 3rd out of 89 primary schools in the region people have all gotten very swollen heads and full of themselves…losing sight of what this is really all about…the kids. When there is no sight there is no work and this is just being more and more proven the more praise we get. It’s a catch 22. I want us to be successful but the culture hasn’t taught anyone how to deal with positive reinforcement so the more successful we get the more pointless it becomes as far as the teachers go. Its sad really.
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