6 months after I had sworn in to Peace Corps and was posted to my school, I was in the Peace Corps office one friday, and bitching to another volunteer about how there were some things not addressed in training that would have made it so much easier to settle in at my school if I had known about them. The Director happened to be passing by the volunteer lounge just then, and stuck his head in, and said, “Sam, my office.” and went to his office. Uh oh. So I gathered my mail that I had just pulled out of the “B” box, and followed him.

John (the pc country director): Hey Sam, how is it going out at your school?

Me: Pretty good John. I have made friends among the teachers, am enjoying my classes, and it is keeping me out of trouble, why? Have you heard something to the contrary?

John: No, no, I was just wondering. Your school, because it has no water, or electric, and is out in the bush, is considered a “hardship” site.

Me: Well, it took some getting used to, I admit. But I am now used to walking 7km to the muddy “river”, which we would call a crick in Texas, to fetch my water. I can even carry a full 25 liter jug on my head, like the Swazi women. I don’t care about the lack of electric. It stinks of ammonia because of the bat colonies living in the roofs, but after a couple hours, I don’t notice it much. My headmaster is a good guy. I came here to be posted where I was needed, and I feel like I am needed there. I have submitted two grant proposals, to replace the broken windows in the school, and replace the missing classroom doors. I stay busy.

John: Oh, good. So you are planning on staying? We have lost two of your training group to early terminations, because they didn’t like their living situations.

Me: I never even considered ET’ing. I am doing fine.

John: (smiling) Well, I guess that means I won.

Me: You won? What did you win?

John: The pool. After you left training, the staff here started a betting pool, on how long you would last. I had the longest bet. I won $25. The last volunteers posted to Elulakeni, 5 years ago, terminated early because they said the headmaster was a jerk, and the local chief was corrupt, that it was an awful place, and that we should never send other volunteers there again.

Me: How long was your bet?

John: 6 weeks. I had faith in you. And after reading your letter, I felt that you might last for a while. Everybody else bet less than that.

The letter he was referring to, was one I had written while still stateside. After about a year of paperwork going back and forth to Washington DC, asking me details on everything about my life, and they decided to accept me, they sent me a 2 page questionaire, asking a short version of all those forms. I became incensed, and called the recruiter in DC, and asked her what was up? They had every morsel of information possible to learn about me, why the two page synopsis? She said that all those forms were staying in DC, and the 2 page form was for the training director in country, so he would know things about me. I looked it over. It really said nothing about who I really was. So I asked her if I could just write a letter to the training director, telling things about me that mattered. She said sure, as long as I also covered the basic stuff the forms were asking. So I wrote a letter. I had wanted to do Peace Corps for a long time. Ever since at 11 years old, I heard John Kennedy say the “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” I was 39 years old, and had a lot of experience, and wanted the training director to have that info, so that he could find me a post that challenged me, and used what I was bringing to the table. I was passionate in the letter, and told him that I didn’t care how hard the site was, nor what the amenities were, that I was a Boy Scout in my youth, and had lived with a 4th grade teacher for 14 years, and they should send me where I was needed, and could use the many tools that I had at my disposal.

As it turned out, when the training director, and the rest of the big wigs were sitting and deciding where to post my group of trainees, my letter came to light, and they laughed, and said, well, he wants a challenging post, let’s send him to Elulakeni. There was a new headmaster, and he had been calling Peace Corps for 3 years, begging for a woodworking teacher. So that was what they gave me. Tho, evidently, nobody had faith that I would last very long there, in spite of my optimism.

John: So, let’s get to why I called you in here. I overheard you complaining about training leaving out things that would make your transition easier. Do you have something specific in mind, or was that just bitching?

Me: No, not bitching. It is just that I have come across things that I wish training had addressed.

John: Well, you are a teacher. Write me a lesson plan that would allow you to cover those things, and submit it, and if it makes sense to me, we have a new training group due in a month or so, and I will have the training director make time toward the end of the training for you to do a session about those things.

Cool. I went back to my school, and in the evenings I made a list of valuable things a volunteer could use, practical information, from someone actually out in the field. And I whipped it into lesson plan form and submitted it the next time I was in town. A couple weeks later I received a letter in my mailbox, telling me that he liked my plan, and I was slated to teach a session to the trainees, in their 9th week, of 10 weeks training. Very cool.

On the day I was slated to teach my session, I hitched the 4 hours into town, and was walking out the road to the training camp, and I heard, ahead of me, around the bend, two women’s voices singing at the top of their lungs, a song that had the refrain… “I’m a nut, I’m a nut, I’m a nut nut nut.” I came around the bend, and there were two women walking the same direction I was walking, singing and laughing. I knew immediately that they were from the new trainees. Their clothes were new and clean. Their shoes hardly scuffed. And they looked so young and innocent. I caught up to them, and walked the rest of the way to the training camp talking with them. Kathy and Chris. They were kinda nutty, in a good way.

I got to the dining room at the training camp just in time for my session. I had prepared for the session. I had my huge backpack on, with food in it, my dirty clothes, and the ubiquitous papers that needed grading that every PC teacher always had, and pots and pans and my little one burner camp stove tied all over the outside. One of the rides I had caught coming into town, had been a diesel pick up truck, in which I had ridden at the back end of the bed, and become smudged by the diesel exhaust smoke, and I needed a bath.

I walked into the session, and threw my pack down on the table in front. True to their word, the training camp had followed my request, and provided me with two wash basins full of clean water. I greeted the trainees in SiSwati and introduced myself. As I looked out into their clean and young faces, I remembered how completely burnt out I had been in my 9th week of training. Training is very intense. Language lessons every day in a language that was not made like English at all, lessons in culture, geography, government in a Kingdom, and a million things to learn. While living with a group of strangers. It really had worn me out. I was gonna have to work hard to get and keep their attention in the hot afternoon.

First I talked about living at a school where you had to fetch muddy water from a river. I told them that I had learned to never waste the opportunity to utilize clean water, and since I was in town, where there was treated water, I had brought my dirty clothes to wash. And I pulled out the dirty clothes, and while I talked about water strategies, and how to purify muddy water, I washed them. Then I took off my ragged dusty, diesel smudged shorts and t-shirt, and washed them too. I hung them on the windows and chairs by me, to dry. And then washed my hair and face and body, while finishing up about living without running water. I put my shorts and t-shirt back on, knowing that in the heat, they would be dry by the end of my session. Meanwhile I put a pot on the burner, and made a batch of Sams Famous Popcorn, with garlic powder and cinnamon. Yes, it sounds odd, but when I passed it around, nobody was refusing to eat some.

I took out another small pot, and pulled out a bag of rice. It always amazed me that volunteers right out of college had no idea how to make rice. They had no Uncle Bens in Swaziland, just small burlap sacks of rice, with no directions on them. I taught the Sams Never Fail Rice method. 1 cup of rice, 2 cups of water, 4 or 5 cloves, and a sprinkle of cinnamon. Boil it without stirring until the water disappears, and you start to hear the crackling sound of the grains on the bottom, beginning to pop. Then stir and serve. While the rice was cooking, I talked about food, and cooking. There were some volunteers called Peanut Butter volunteers, who because of a lack of cooking confidence, ate a lot of peanut butter on bread, which tho nutritious, was not a balanced diet. While talking, I started cutting up some veggies that I had picked up in the market on the way there. And a small piece of beef, which I cut into small cubes. The rice started crackling, so I stopped talking and had the trainees listen to it, and took it off the stove. I got out my little frying pan, tossed in some oil, and put it on the stove. When it was hot, I threw in the meat and veggies, and some garlic and paprika, and cooked up a panful of Sams Famous Stir Fries. All the time talking about where and how to buy produce and meat, and how to preserve food in a hot climate. When the stir fries were ready, in about 5 minutes, I dumped the rice on a plate, and dumped the stir fries on top, stuck in a fork, and passed it to the trainees to eat.

While they were passing it around and eating, I talked about getting around in the country, and strategies for getting along with your Swazi compatriots at your school, and how to get community people involved in projects for their benefit. I covered the practical things that a volunteer needed, to survive.

The rice and stir fries were gone, and my session time was coming to an end, and so I thanked them, and packed my stuff away, folded up my dry clothes, and took my leave.

That became Sam’s Survival Session, and I taught it to all the training groups that came, for the rest of my tenure there. It was fairly popular with the groups. And I felt like I had put my money where my mouth was, and had done something more than just bitching. Peace Corps, the best paid vacation you could ever have.

Cooking Matters 

Teaching Matters