Class wins Peace Corps contest to call South Africa

Mary Montenaro's class at Spencerport's Taylor Elementary School will be making a very long-distance call on March 3 - to South Africa. Students won the call in a national competition sponsored by the Peace Corps. This year, the class has participated in the Peace Corps' World Wise Classroom project, which matches up Peace Corps volunteers abroad with American classrooms. In December, the Peace Corps invited these classes to submit entries for the free call contest.

The students will call Christie Fullager, a Peace Corps volunteer from Penn Yan. Fullager visited the class in 2003 prior to her departure and since then, she has corresponded with the students about her experiences in South Africa working with rural and remote schools and with AIDS awareness projects.

"Christie's experiences have been truly eye-openers for us," Montenaro wrote in her contest entry. "We were so impressed when she described her students' first bus ride ever and how she lived for three weeks without electricity."

Fullager has lived with local families, experiencing the everyday life of local citizens, from the poverty and the devastation caused by AIDS to the warmth of the people and the breath-taking beauty. She has written to the students about having classes with as many as 80 students in one room and her awe at seeing wild animals. Each letter also has included Zulu language words for the students to study.

In turn, Montenaro's students have donated stickers and pencils for Fullager to use as class prizes and inflatable globes so the students can understand where the United States is located, a daunting task since most of her students have never traveled more than a couple of miles from home. Her mother, Margie Long, visited the class in November, bringing with her a scrapbook of photos from South Africa.

The class is planning to write a song for Fullager and has been writing a book with details about her South African experiences. They can't wait to tell her about it.