A Day In the Life..

Molweni Abafundi,

I have decided to start a short group of posts entitled "A Day in the Life of" so you can get a feel of what daily life is like in PE. I will be doing a post everyday for each day of the week. I brought my journal along with me during the day, so what you read might be the start of the day or somewhere near the middle. Its more story based than anything else. I hope you enjoy:)

RCT-(Randomized Control Trial) Day 1 Wednesday

It's another hot day today, about 23 degrees Celsius and we (Muriel, Chika, and another coach, whose name alludes me) are standing outside of a classroom waiting for break to finish so we can start an intervention. It is a very interesting predicament that I find myself. I am surrounded by a plethora of people: coaches, students, teachers, and janitors, however I am unable to understand anything that anyone is saying. Everyone is speaking in Xhosa, and the small amount that I have learned gives me no assistance to keep up with the hectic pace at which normal conversation flows. I will listen intently to conversations to try and pick up what is going on purely based on emotion. I can see that whats being said is either jovial or serious based on the faces filled with smiles and laughter or blank stares, but as far as content I am completely lost. With all the work that I have done with children with developmental disorders and children with autism I have always wondered what it would be like to live in their mind for a day or just understand their perception of the world. This experience today may have given me a small snapshot of what that feeling might be like.

I just finished the first focus group with the 5 girls who were chosen randomly from the classroom. The reason for the focus group is to give us the point of view of the curriculum from the students. We want to see how well the program is working, what is not working, how the students are interacting with the coaches, and what the students are comprehending. All of the girls were very shy, I'm not sure if it was because a microphone was present (we record the focus group so we can file in the computer later) or because an umlungu (white person) was in the room. One girl was so nervous she refused to speak! the state of the classroom is also completely different from any classroom I have been in before. There is one electric outlet, which is halfway pulled out, there are empty bags of chips on the floor, and the walls are littered with graffiti of previous student's names and phrases. 3 girls in the classroom are using chairs that only have 3 legs, so throughout the class they have to balance their weight to make sure that the chair doesn't tip over.  To top it off, when the girls left the room the front door fell over and crashed because it was off its hinges. The door was so heavy I needed help putting it back in place. What was even crazier was no one was really shocked by the incident. I had the feeling that this wasn't the first time the front door had fallen over!
Sneak peak for tomorrow's post: I am on the side of the N2 by myself, my car, and.....my flat tire