Jonathan Field - Maker of Random Stuff

My first day at a school without Alan and Donna! I’m excited, they’re excited. Working with the kids, things have a tendancy towards chaos (in this country they obey the laws of thermodynamics). I am anxious to see how it goes. Alan drops by at 7:15 and gives me a couple of replacement computers and two more stools to complete the room.

I make some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for Zenzo and myself, and I head over to pick him up. I’m about five minutes late, and he is, as always, waiting by the garage. He hops in and asks if I can got pick up some papers that his sister needs on the other side of Sibongile. I decline, pointing out that we’re running late. He says it’s no problem.

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Shower, yogurt, grapenuts… what a way to start a day. Alan comes by at 7:30 with Zenzo, who hops in my car. We’re all full in two cars with people and computers. We’re heading to the Ncome school today. You might be able to guess at the pronounciation if you’ve been paying particularly close attention. We’ll take it in two steps: start with NO-may. That’s easy enough. Now you just have to add in the *tsk* sound by snapping your tongue at the same time as the “N”. That’s what the letter “c” stands for there. Does that make sense? Good… you’re on your way to speaking Zulu.

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I wake up at 6:00, to the sound of my new little cell phone, just like I’m supposed to. I remembered to reset the clock after swapping in the SIM chip last night. I take a nice shower and make myself a bit of breakfast before I drive over to pick up Zenzo. It is chilly and the car is covered in dew.

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I was supposed to get up at 7:30 AM, but my new little cell phone lost the time. I have to pull the battery out to get the SIM card when using my modem, and I guess that does it. So I got a call from Alan at 8:00 saying they were pulling up outside. No time for a shower or breakfast, I jumped up and ran out the door. Well, I did get dressed first. I may have to buy another SIM card so I don’t run into this again.

The car is packed full with little machines. Alan and Donna are in the front, and I hop in the back with Zenzo and the equipment. It is very cozy. I hope Zenzo doesn’t notice that I didn’t shower.

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Despite having eaten a ton yesterday, I woke up in the early morning with a growling stomach. I find it worth noting this again, as I’ve noticed it before: the day I ate the most was the day I ended up hungriest. I felt much better and more full on small portions of bean and rice salad. I think we don’t understand nutrition all that well yet, at least in the American mainstream. My stomach growls and growls, but I manage to fall asleep again.

I’ve been here a week. I wake up in Evan’s place at around 9:30. I take my time getting up; I log in for a bit and catch up on mail. I don’t have any more breakfast supplies, but I figure I’ll be fine and I head off to Thalani High School at around 10:30. This is neat because it’s the first time I’ve driven through Sibongile by myself. I pass the stop sign that scares off most whites. And I must restate that I don’t feel this area is dangerous.

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Ideas that occur to me Sunday morning in bed as I drift in and out of sleep:

Teaching delayed gratification to people through some type of game: an allowance that goes up the longer you don’t use it; i.e. week one you get a dollar, week two you get two dollars, week three you get three dollars, etc. but if you use the money at all, it goes back to one dollar per week and climbs slowly again. Can delayed gratification be taught in areas with a high death rate? Is there a natural counter effect at work here?

To help businesses break past the risk of employing people in this area, perhaps a credit report type thing: a central tracking system for employees and complaints against them. This lowers risk for the employer and raises the cost of theft and insubordination for the employees. If the risk is low enough for the business and the cost is high enough for the employees, perhaps things would improve? But is this a “scarlet letter” kind of thing? Maybe purge records after three years?

I’m trying to apply my limited understanding of game theory to think how one could build an environment where people would naturally rise to do things that would improve the community. I have this basic faith that things can flourish by creating the right conditions. What are those conditions?

Then I get up, around 10:00, shower, breakfast, and log on.

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Slow start… forgot to disable the alarm, and my cell still went off at 8:30 even though the phone itself turned off! Tried to sleep, but couldn’t. Hung in bed until almost 10. Then I did a couple hours of catching up and tying loose ends with email and posting to livejournal.

Didn’t really get up until noon. Nice.

I called Donna on the cell phone; Alan and her were working at Thalani. He came over to pick me up. We drove straight there in we went in. Thalani again, is the first school they worked with, and one that they have some ongoing trouble with. Last Wednesday we worked with the staff computers, today they’re in the lab.

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I wake up at 9:00 to the alarm. I’m more tired than I want to be, so I remind myself to catch up on sleep tonight. I drag myself over to breakfast, the same yogurt mixture I had yesterday. I am pleased with it, and it keeps me full for a good while.

Alan comes over to pick me up in the car. I can see him approaching the gate through the kitchen window, so just before he touches the buzzer I click the gate remote and the door opens for him. He looks a little surprised.

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The alarm goes off earlier than I’d like… at 8:30AM. I slept soundly, but I’m still tired and so I make a slow start of it. When I do get up it’s too late to take a shower, so I just dress up, make a quick bite of yogurt with jam and grapenuts. I have the little backpackers house to myself, though a young black lady is cleaning up the kitchen as I come in.

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I’ve decided i should post a couple of pictures of the things I’ve described. I’m a bit shy with the picture taking, so there’s not much. I’ve gone back and added them to the posts, Day one now has six photo links and so does day two! You can go back and hunt them down if you’d like to see. I am no professional photographer like my wife

Also, I figured out a bit belatedly that those comments “welcoming” me to South Africa from some unknown person where just spam. I’ve deleted them. Glad to be considered for it, though!