Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Longtom Marathon: Please Help Me Support the KLM Foundation

So after being here in South Africa for nearly a year, it seems that I may have gone a bit crazy. I have decided that a good way to spend some of my time over the next two months will be to train to run a 56km ultra-marathon at the end of March.

The ultra I'll be running is the Longtom Marathon, which is set for March 27. It starts in the small tourist town of Sabie in Mpumalanga Province, not too far from Kruger Park. From Sabie, which is 1000m above sea level, the course winds its way up Longtom Pass, topping out at 2150m, before going back down to the town of Lydenburg. With an 1150m elevation gain over the first 35km, it's become known as the 'Everest' of ultra-marathons. Many Peace Corps volunteers will be taking part, probably over 70 of us, so it's going to be a lot of fun to get together with them for the weekend and run up and over the beautiful Drakensberg escarpment.

In addition to having a good time though, the main reason for taking part is to support the KLM foundation. Their website is: www.klm-foundation.org; please check it out. I won't go into all the details of what they do since you can read that on the site, but I'll just say that the organization was founded by two PCVs (Peace Corps volunteers) who served here in South Africa a few years ago. They decided to use the Longtom marathon as a fundraiser; they fund a worthy, needy child to attend an excellent independent high school in Mpumalanga called Uplands College. That's why I am so excited about helping them to raise funds; what better way to help this country than to educate a future leader? And the child they choose is very carefully selected, going through a four-tier application process. The seven children who have been chosen so far are excelling in all respects. I hope after reading about KLM you will find yourself as supportive as I am of their work.

While I've been involved in many projects here as a Volunteer in South Africa, this is one I'm particularly excited about, and one for which I am asking your support. My goal is to get a gold medal (in fundraising, that is, for the run I'll be going slow and steady!), and your donation will help me reach that goal. Please give what you can; any amount is appreciated. Even if you can only give $10 or $20, it is much needed. (Of course, larger donations will be accepted and appreciated!) And it is tax-deductible. So please go to the KLM website to make a donation. Just click on the 'donate' photo. Make sure to put my name in the white box where it asks for the Longtom runner you want to sponsor.

The online donation is preferable, but if you need to mail in a check, please make it payable to "Kgwale Le Mollo (US)" and send it to:

KLM Foundation (US)
c/o Bowen Hsu
461 So. Bonita Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91107

Please make sure to include a note that your donation is on my behalf.

Thanks so much for your support, and especially for supporting the child who is chosen next year to attend Uplands College!

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Looking Back and Ahead

The New Year is a time when many people reflect on the year gone by and make resolutions to rectify the mistakes of the past in the year to come. At the start of this new year, I’ve been doing more than my fair share of each.

The year 2009 proved to be among the most challenging years of my life. While I’ve always been one prone to moments of introspection on the direction my life is taking, never before has soul-searching been a daily ritual. Being isolated from family and friends, living where even the few who understand your language differ so much in terms of life experiences and culture as to make empathy a near-impossibility (in either direction), means that one is often alone even in a room full of people.

For someone accustomed to succeeding, to at least some degree, in virtually every major academic and professional undertaking, repeated failure will almost unfailingly trigger thoughts of self-doubt and questions about whether one has chosen the right path. To say that I’ve failed on numerous occasions as a Peace Corps Volunteer is not to say that I have not accomplished anything of worth. I am quite proud of having helped my organization to obtain new books and computers for the library, to have introduced new productive farming techniques to dozens of people, and to have led a rock climbing and abseiling trip that, for many of the sixteen participating orphans and vulnerable youth, was one of the most exciting experiences of their young lives. Yet in the areas I’ve invested the most effort—conducting a community-wide needs survey, setting up a comprehensive data collection and evaluation system, launching a major agricultural income-generating project, scaling up the small community library into a well-connected information resource center—I’ve seen the least progress.

And while I would love to say that I’ve diagnosed the reasons underlying the disappointments from the past year and have pinpointed a fail-proof strategy to make 2010 a productive year, I’d be lying. I certainly have some ideas regarding how to become a more effective Volunteer in the months to come, but I cannot be assured that they’ll be much better than the dozens of other ideas I’ve already tried. If I’ve learned anything during my 11 months of Peace Corps service in South Africa, it’s to not confuse hope with expectations of success. Thus, while there are signs of more promising things to come, including some major organizational changes at Fanang Diatla and evidence of enthusiasm for new projects, I know that finding an appropriate role for my involvement will be neither straightforward nor effortless. All I can do is try, and hope.

---

In addition to trying to improve my efforts for Goal 1 of the Peace Corps (building the capacity of host country nationals to meet development goals), I’ve also pledged as one of my New Year’s resolutions to post more frequently on my blog (part of Peace Corps’ Goal 3: to share our experiences in foreign lands with those back home).

So expect to see more frequent posts in the near future. You can also follow my regular updates on facebook if you're so inclined.

And, of course, Happy New Year!

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Children of the Dawn Go Rock Climbing



As evidenced by my long hiatus from posting, I've been keeping myself quite busy these past few months. Two of the projects I've been working on include writing the content for Fanang Diatla Self-Help Project's new website (designed pro bono by Crafty Arrow Designs) and organizing a rock climbing trip for some of Ga-Mathabatha's Children of the Dawn. The former is still a work-in-progress (please feel free to send me any feedback if you are so inclined), but the latter went off without a hitch this past weekend in one of my favorite places in South Africa: Waterval Boven.

On the blog portion of Fanang Diatla's website, I've posted a trip report from the weekend, including some photos. I've also uploaded many more photos to a Picasa album here. Enjoy!

Monday, September 14, 2009

Light at the End of the Tunnel?

Passing through a 400m train tunnel in Waterval Boven en route to some classic rock climbing over Labor Day weekend set me to pondering whether I might be finally starting to emerge from my own proverbial tunnel that is my first five months of Peace Corps service here in South Africa. As evidenced by the tone of my last major post, I was alarmed that the prevailing trend in my satisfaction with my service pointed steadily downward.

I arrived at site full of hope, overjoyed at being placed with a well-functioning organization with managers and staff who seemed enthusiastic about working together with me to improve the organization's efforts in strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation, microfinance, and enterprise development. I also had the support of a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer who had been working with my organization for more than a year-and-a-half. During the time before he returned home to the US to prepare for graduate school, we formed a close friendship, and I was quite grateful for how he balanced giving me the space I needed to establish my own role while also providing me with helpful guidance and advice whenever I asked.

Well before my co-PCV's departure, my day-to-day experiences were disabusing me of my initial impression that I would be able to accomplish much in a short period of time. Despite my counterparts' seeming eagerness to jointly undertake many of the projects we discussed in our early meetings, other events and priorities consistently intervened. Last-minute requests for reports or surprise visits from importunate funders. Unexpected trips to town. 'Swine flu' outbreaks. Problems with stipend payments.

Before long, over four months had passed, and I was still trying to work with my counterparts to organize a community needs survey--a project I had proposed and done substantial leg-work on during my first month. Particularly discouraging with regard to this project was how a similar request by a major funder to organize four disparate focus groups for one of their research projects was carried out in a matter of days. At that point, it seemed to me that the only way I would be able to accomplish anything would be to show up with a sack full of one-million rand--not too likely a scenario nor one in accordance with the Peace Corps principles of relying primarily on local resources.

During the few weeks prior to my Peace Corps In-Service Training (IST)starting on the last day of August, I noticed a few signs that a few of the many seeds I had planted in the previous months might be taking root. Our community librarian excitedly recounted to me how she had successfully implemented some of the activities aimed at stimulating interest in reading among children that she had learned at a library conference in Polokwane. Our Project Coordinator, after months of hesitancy in engaging with me due to a substantial language barrier, came to me to discuss how to develop a monitoring and evaluation tool. The municipal representative from the Department of Agriculture expressed interest in meeting about providing assistance to develop our food security garden into a productive farm. Although no single incident would alone have restored much hope in the future of my service, these small moments and others lifted my spirits enough for me to depart for our IST absent any dread of my eventual return.

A week of training in the company of friends I had last seen months before, both Americans and South Africans, sandwiched between two weekends of rock climbing restored my state of mind to a level of peace and contentment I had not experienced since my early days at site. During a personal health session late in our week of training, we were warned that the times after trainings are often characterized by plunging mental well-being among Volunteers, due to PCVs reforming and relying on the supportive friendships that we used to sustain ourselves during Pre-Service Training, only to lose them again after several days together. Thus far, thanks to some of my projects continuing to show signs of promise and my excitement at getting to see my girlfriend for the first time since the beginning of February (not necessarily in that order!), I have been able to stave off post-IST blues.

Although I am looking forward to my upcoming holiday for primarily for obvious reasons, I am also quite interested to see how things may or may not change in my absence. I think every Volunteer hopes that one’s efforts will result in long-term benefits for the Volunteer’s community. A multi-week holiday gives one a glimpse of what interventions are most likely to persist after the close of one’s service. Already, I’m intensely curious to see which of the small initiatives I’ve undertaken with various counterparts thus far will survive my absence and which will be taken in directions I would not have anticipated. With luck, I’m hoping my temporary absence will provide some clues as to where my time will be best spent upon my return. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

RIP, Dear Senator

For all his faults, the poor, the disabled, the uninsured, single mothers, and oppressed minorities of the US lost one of their most dedicated and unarguably their most effective champion last night. I just hope we can do his memory justice by finally realizing his dream of universal health care that he spent his last forty years fighting for. In spite of the long shadows cast by his elder brothers, Ted Kennedy's innumerable achievements fighting for those marginalized by society during his 46 years in the Senate have no equal. Rest in peace, Senator Kennedy. We'll do our best to make sure the dream shall never die.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

The 'Tough' Part

On the agency’s website and in its recruiting materials, Peace Corps service is often touted as “the toughest job you’ll ever love”. And if you speak with a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) upon her arrival home in the US, odds are good that her portrayal of her service will not be too far afield from the official tagline. Speak to someone in the first six months or year into his service, however, and odds are good that the ‘tough’ part of the tagline will heavily outweigh the ‘love’ part. To my surprise, I have failed to defy those odds.

Before embarking on this chapter in my life, I (like, I would guess, most other Americans familiar with the work of the Peace Corps) envisioned the ‘tough’ part of life in the Peace Corps as learning to live without all of the many comforts most Americans have come to take for granted: electricity, running water, grocery stores, reliable personal transportation, air-conditioning, television, refrigeration, etc. Add to that vague notions of having to learn a new language, being isolated from family and friends back home, and adapting to unfamiliar cultural norms (Am I supposed to take off my shoes when I enter someone’s home? Am I supposed to make eye contact with people?), and you probably have a decent representation of the tough part of Peace Corps service in the public consciousness.

As I shared many of these preconceptions of Peace Corps service, I believed that I was particularly well suited to thrive as a Peace Corps Volunteer. As an ‘outdoor enthusiast’, I’ve long known that I have the ability to adapt to living with few creature comforts for sustained periods of time. As a long-time rock climber and runner, I’ve long known that I have a natural propensity to endure long periods of pain and misery to achieve distant goals (being a public policy graduate student certainly qualifies here as well). I’ve rarely had trouble meeting people and making new friends when placed in situations where I know no one. My prior work in politics and government and the time I spent volunteering for various organizations demonstrated a strong ethic of public service. I’d traveled to places as diverse as Costa Rica, Peru, and Bangladesh and, other than getting pick-pocketed within three hours of my first foreign trip (excluding a day or two each in Toronto and Juarez), I’d found traveling abroad to be immensely enjoyable and rewarding. What other qualities could one need to be an effective, fulfilled Peace Corps Volunteer?

In two words: Patience and Persistence. The kind of patience and persistence required to be a successful Volunteer are altogether different than what one typically conceives. By patience, I don’t mean an ability to tolerate waiting. Being tolerant of having to wait more than we’re accustomed to in the US is one of the challenges of Peace Corps that I anticipated. Although I cannot say that I enjoy waiting four hours for a khumbie to fill up for a trip that should take one hour, I’ve certainly been forced to make peace with waiting. The Patience I’ve struggled with most (and it is definitely patience with a capital ‘P’) is being at peace with the knowledge that I could be substantially more effective and more productive elsewhere. My principal motivation for entering Peace Corps was to ‘make a difference’ in the lives of those less fortunate than myself. How does one sustain one’s motivation for Peace Corps service while simultaneously holding the belief that one left behind a career and a set of volunteer activities that almost certainly made a greater difference in the lives of those less fortunate than oneself? Should such motivation even be sustained? For how long? Those are among the many questions I’ve found myself wrestling with for months.

One obvious solution to resolving my dilemma would be to simply find ways to become more effective and productive in my work. This is where Persistence comes into play. At least two or three times each week, I walk into work with a new plan to address some of the myriad causes I perceive to be limiting my effectiveness as a Volunteer. With rare exception, I walk home that evening with my plans thwarted (yet again), my self-confidence dashed and motivation to try again the next day at a perilously low level. As one of my ‘veteran’ Volunteer colleagues here in Limpopo puts it, to survive as a Volunteer, you have to somehow sustain the enthusiasm to start new projects knowing full well that pretty much any project you start is almost sure to fail to generate long-term benefits and, in some cases, may even cause long-term harm. At first I thought he was exaggerating; now I’m not so sure.

If you’ve read this far, you may be asking yourself why I’m still here. In a word: Hope. (How about that for triteness?) I hope that, one of these days, I’m going to have learned enough from all of my many, many failures that I’ll actually be able to get a non-fundraising project off the ground. One of the problems with hope is that holding on too long can lead to regret if the object of hope is never fulfilled. In the absence of progress on ‘making a difference’ over the next few months, judging whether I’ve crossed the fine line separating Persistence and unrealistic hope is likely to be one of my biggest challenges. If I’m lucky, there’ll be no need to make that judgment.


General Update:

In one week, the group of Volunteers with whom I arrived here in South Africa nearly seven months ago (i.e. SA-19) will participate in a full week of training back at our pre-service training site in Mpumalanga Province. It should be a great opportunity to reconnect with a lot of friends I have not seen in the five months since we graduated from trainees to volunteers.

Not long thereafter, I’ll have my first visitor from home! My girlfriend and I will be touring South Africa for several weeks. I couldn’t be more excited!

PS – Thanks to those of you who sent me Happy Birthday wishes over the weekend!

Monday, August 3, 2009

First SA Vacation - Climbing in Eastern Cape

In lieu of a full blog post (for the moment, at least), I would like to direct your attention to my newest Picasa photo album from the 2009 Petzl Rock & Road. From July 17-25, I participated as a guest in South Africa's premier rock climbing competition. The competition brought together most of South Africa's top-ranked sport climbers for a week-long competition at four venues across the Eastern Cape province. Perhaps the competition's biggest attraction was the addition of an international guest climber: Adam Ondra, the world's top-ranked sport climber on 8a.nu.

The week proved to be a lot of fun, and I intend to write more about it in my next blog post. In the mean time, enjoy the photos I've posted, and check out the Petzl Rock and Road website for another perspective on the week (only the most recent updates are on the first page; you'll have to go back a few pages to start at the first day).