WorldView Magazine - Fall 2009 - (Page 37)

Book Locker SEVEN DUSTY NOTEbOOKS Sometimes a little escapism keeps you balanced by Emily Arsenault he cockroach emerged from behind a portrait of Pope John Paul II and the Bishop of Botswana, then skittered up the mud-brick wall to the tin roof, where it disappeared. That and a complimentary copy of Newsweek was our evening’s entertainment. Maybe we did need that TV after all. It was our second day in this dusty South African village, midway between the Kalahari Desert and the original de Beers diamond mine. Earlier that day, our supervising principal had taken my husband Ross and me on a whirlwind tour in his old yellow Toyota, making formal introductions with school administrators and village leaders. We smiled politely, shook hands, and showed off our minimal Setswana skills. And at each stop our principal, T SIT Graduate Institute Sebe, asked everyone if they had a spare television we could borrow. The village had been electrified only a few years before, and people still loved the novelty of TV. Sebe couldn’t bear the thought of his American guests living without one. Yet at each stop we objected (“Don’t worry about us . . . we didn’t come to South Africa to watch TV”). After our fourth refusal, Sebe grudgingly conceded, as long as we promised to come over and watch his on occasion. Yet over the next few weeks, we began to wonder if our high-minded attitude was a mistake. There was definitely going to be a lot of downtime. How were we going to fill it? By the five-month mark, we had settled into our assignments and the general pace of village life. Still without a TV to enliven those quiet nights, Ross and I started a competition. We would both write novels—his would be sci-fi, mine a mystery—and see who could finish first. We wrote an hour a day together—usually at sunset. Sitting on our stoop, we would scribble in notepads as our host uncle nudged the family goats into the kraal for the night, and our host mother, Kgopoloeng, blasted her gospel music from her house next door. At first, Ross’ novel went far better than mine. Soon he had produced a couple of chapters and developed a swagger, anticipating champagne corks popping at New York publishing parties upon our return to the US. Meanwhile, I was still considering possible Master’s degrees for Global Social Change On our Vermont campus or low-residency Six dynamic fields $10,000 RPCV scholarships NEW: Fall 2009 in the Sultanate of Oman Master of Global Management www.sit.edu/graduate WorldView  http://www.sit.edu/graduate http://www.sit.edu/graduate

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of WorldView Magazine - Fall 2009

WorldView Magazine - Fall 2009
Contents
President's Letter
Your Turn
Are You Connected Yet? Join Africa Rural Connect
Group News Highlights
Why Investment in Health Is Critical Now
New Hope and Lessons from Rwanda
Turning a Blind Eye
A Question of Capacity
CN U HLP ME? I HAVE A ??
When Water and Sanitation Are a Priority
Could “Peace Care” Lessen the Global Burden of Disease?
One, Two, Three
Translating International Health to Health Care at Home
Turning Tragedy to Opportunity
Costa Rica: Finding My Religion
St. Lucia: Learning about Hunger
Seven Dusty Notebooks
Peace Corps Service 2.0
The Peace Corps Community Making a Difference
Community News
Advertiser Index

WorldView Magazine - Fall 2009

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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/worldview/spring08
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