Ryan Cooper

Back in the days of yore a couple South African Peace Corps Volunteers founded and organization called KLM with the idea of creating a scholarship fund for a poor South African child to attend Uplands College, one of the best secondary schools here, and they use the Longtom Marathon as a fundraising opportunity to keep their organization in the black.  The idea is to have PCVs run in the marathon and scrounge up at least $100 each. This is actually the second time I'll be doing this one.  Last year I had a strategy (if you can call it that) based around humor rather than the traditional earnest cajoling (see this post , which I still think is pretty funny).  It's fair to say that was a total failure.  I was going to trowel out some treacly guilt-inducing story, but my heart's not in it right now.  I'll work up some solid hectoring later on.  Anyways, what you do is go to the KLM website , click donate, and put my name in the Longtom Marathon field.  ...

Today it got even lonelier as the girl who minds the store left to take care of her sick child (I had no idea she even had a kid). My host sister went to buy some stock for the store, so I agreed to watch over things until she got back. Though I was the only person actually from my family around, it wasn't too boring as I was selling a great deal of electricity, airtime, sweets, and single cigarettes. My kids from school hung around a lot, as there's not a lot to do, but as they tend to fight constantly I usually kicked them out (wonder if that's got anything to do with the corporal punishment? Nah, couldn't be). My Setswana is getting better and better, but honestly I still struggle with a simple conversation. I think that I'm close to a tipping point, where I will be able to understand most conversations, and thus will get better faster and faster. I think the main problem with the (utterly half-assed) language training during training is that it didn't ...

Noah again brings Teh Funny : His strategy is wildly inappropriate, salting the chicken is many steps down the line. All I can think to say to this misguided, salt wasting youth is "you're doing it wrong" but perhaps "you're creepy and stop tormenting that chicken" would do better. Additionally I would hope that this salt company respects its customers more than to think we can easily be tricked into salting the animals while they are still alive in an effort to increase salt usage and therefore profits. Check it out. One of the great things about blogging is if you're bored or feeling uncreative you can just link to something that's interesting (or, less lazily, use someone else's post as a springboard for your own). And that's a great thing to do! After all, the stuff is online for free, and websites generally love traffic. Everybody wins.

Here's a PBS program on the recent history of South Africa. I can't watch is, as it isn't licensed outside the US, but my sister says it's pretty good. Might be worth checking out, but I think it's only available for the next couple days.

This afternoon I went on the longest run I've ever done in my life (as far as I can remember, anyway). An hour and a half, which by my calculations puts it at approximately ten miles nonstop (yeah, I'm a wuss, I know). It was also one of the easiest runs I've done--I put on some tunes (Daft Punk's Homework ) and the miles melted away. For awhile there it felt like I was floating; my mind drifted off, and I sort of forgot what I was doing. That's a violent change from my usual experience with running, which is better called a slog: painful, boring, and high-impact. On the way out for my run, I cross the bridge, but coming back into the village I usually take one of the side roads, which just crosses the riverbed. Because of the rain last night, it was still running, and fairly heavily at that. I didn't want to go around, so I took off my shoes and waded across. It was deeper than I thought, about knee-deep and fast in the middle (I'd revise my estimate...

This article from the New York Times is about the new bus system in Gauteng and the troubles they're running into there: South Africa has erased apartheid from its statute books, but the racist schemes of white minority rule remain engraved on the landscape in an extreme form of residential segregation. Millions of blacks still live in townships far from centers of commerce and employment. Those with jobs, like Mrs. Hanong, must endure commutes that devour their time and meager incomes, while legions of jobless people are isolated from opportunity. The new Bus Rapid Transit systems planned for South Africa’s major cities in recent years have promised to ease those hardships by providing fast, affordable, dignified travel on bus lanes cleared of other vehicles.

My friend Noah has a powerful experience : The next sequence happened in about half a second. I saw a bright light out of the corner of my eye where my outlet and surge protector are and then I was on the ground. I shouted or at least my brain was shouting and I was paralyzed on the floor still in the sitting position both arms out in the air. Go read.

My friend Noah brings Teh Funny : While the actual washing part I don't find particularly appealing, I do like the air drying. I find it satisfying to hang up wet clothes knowing that in a little time they will be nice and dry. It is not so much the drying part that is satisfying but the notion that I want something to be done and the way I make it happen is to leave it outside and then it gets done without me doing anything. Additionally, there is something about wind and sun dried clothes that makes the clothes a little nicer, someone needs to spend a lifetime researching what that is and then put it in a bottle or teach it to a dryer. Billion dollar idea! Go read.

On South Africa and rape: see here , here , and here .

I set up email posting, which means I can post quickly and easily with my phone! Now even my most random and ill-considered thoughts can be put down to haunt me during my Senate confirmation hearing.

  Goats are my favorite animals at my house, I think. Cows are too large and alien, chickens are too damn loud and shit everywhere, and the dogs bark and jump on me. The baby kids do make a noise (what do you call that?) during they day, an eerily human kind of wailing, but it's not nearly as loud as a rooster and they sleep at night. Still, more than once I've walked out my door to see who had left their baby in the road only to find a lonely kid broadcasting its location to goatdom. The other day I was sitting outside and reading, and half-watching the animals swirl around me in the hopes that I would drop something savory. One of the smaller goats (a couple months old, I'd guess) was trying for a one of the low walls that lie around our compound, about waist-high. Goats are fairly nimble, but this one was just a bit too small to make the leap. Finally he backed away, got up a head of steam, and made a running leap. He made the wall, but carried a bit too much mome...

It means electricity in Setswana, and it keeps going out. There was a cacophonous lightning storm last night, and with that and the wind, it's been going out almost every day. So if you don't get many updates from me for a time that's probably why.

  Today I learned that 90% of the eighth grade thinks that the sun goes around the earth, and I spent a good hour trying to convince them otherwise. They stared at me, sullenly uncomprehending, like I was speaking Greek, and impolitely to boot. More and more I am realizing the preposterousness of the South African education system. Yesterday I went to the neighboring village to check out the high school and see how it goes. I watched Andy (another PCV) teach a couple classes (quite well, I might add). Then we went to check out the various classes, to see how many teachers there were in class. It was then that I got a first glimpse of the matric test, the test that the entire 12th grade must take. It’s brutally, absurdly hard. Most of the math was stuff I hadn’t seen in years, tricky algebra and second-year calculus. There’s a fat dollop of organic chemistry that I didn’t see until sophomore year in college, and a lot of college physics as well. If I could describe it in Ame...

  My neighbors over in the next village have a blog, you should check it out! It's on the blogroll. They had a recent post about the water tower at the college where we had training. Well, I've got a picture of the very ladder he had to climb up, so I thought I'd share. Go read!

  A few weeks back one of the house dogs had a litter. They're starting to get adventurous, and they're awfully tempting to play with, but they have to have terrible fleas. Still, there's always something interesting going on, even if it's just the animals.

  Today I attended a graduation for the grade 12 at the neighboring village. Style means something slightly different to these characters than in my own personal dictionary. I had some more thoughts, but I think it shall have to gestate for a day or two before I can get them down.

Check it out. Right from my backyard.

This is a pretty good view of the riverbed that I spend so much time on. This point (which is atypically steep) takes me about an hour's brisk walking to reach. Quite the spot though, nice place to sit and think.

Life in my village is settling down to a bit of a routine—I go to school every day, and today I started teaching “for real.” The Peace Corps has a schedule that they want me to follow for the next few months, but it seems to me that their program is ill-suited to my village. There is not much need to get acquainted with the school if there is hardly any teaching for any of the classes. So I’m fumbling through some basic stuff for maths and science for 7th and 8th grade mostly, as 9th grade will apparently be taking tests for the next two months straight. I’m a lousy teacher at this point, but I figure the bottom is a good place to start. I thought we had it bad in the States as far as tests, but this is a whole new level of crazy. If I understand correctly, in 9th and 12th grade you spend literally half the year taking one massive test. I think that speaks for itself. Basic multiplication/division is still not very solid for any of the classes. That might be the first thing that...

This is going to be a continuing series, but I'd like to start out with just a little positive thinking.   1) I've got a very nice pit toilet. You can see it there in the back; I think it's a government pre-fab job because there are identical ones all over my village. I didn't learn my good fortune until I talked with some of the other volunteers who are staying nearby who speak of their toilets as an abomination. When I told them sometimes I would take a book with me if I knew it was going to take some time they stared at me in horror--though truly, it barely smells, and there are hardly any flies. 2) The riverbed. It makes for some really nice walking, twisty and interesting, and as long as you like. Last time I went I got greedy, went too far, and was in the stumbling dark when I finally got back. 3) The school's physical resources. There are many books (they don't use them, of course, but it's a start), and two (!) very nice copy machines that I...