Under the Marula Trees

Paper Chains

2007-09-06T01:50:00.000-07:00

Well today is the day! At midnight tonight (the second September 6, 2007 ends) I cease to be a Peace Corps Volunteer! For the past three months, leaving Peace Corps and returning home is what I have been looking for. I felt finished with my job here, I wanted it to end. I remember way back in May I had a wonderful idea. Even back then I was dreaming about leaving, and so I made a paper chain. During the advent season of Christmas when I was a kid, we always made paper chains and would tear off a link each night. The chain would get shorter and shorter, indicating the shorter time it was until Christmas arrived. When I first began my paper chain, I had maybe 150 links on it. The chain stretched the entire perimeter of my room, and my host family exclaimed about how pretty my new room decoration was (I did not tell them what it was really for...). Now, I only have one link left.

It is so strange, really. For months I had been looking forward to leaving Buffelshoek and leaving PC. I did enjoy my PC experience, but I was just tired of it. Two years is a long time, and I was ready to go back to the US. But when the time finally came to leave, I was sad. I knew I did not want to stay, but I did not want to leave either. I think I can honestly say that leaving Buffelshoek- my host family, my teachers, the kids I have taught, my fellow PCVs, all the people that I have learned to love in the past two years- was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. For two years, my co workers and host family and my friends in PC were my world. The people I met and interacted with here were my family, and I don't know when or if I will ever see them again. This realization came crashing down on me during my farewell function, pretty much causing me to cry buckets when I said good bye to everyone. I will miss everyone so much.

Despite all of my hardships during Peace Corps- the physical living hardships, the mental hardships and the difficulties I faced at work- I have no regrets. I do not regret neither joining Peace Corps nor accepting the position to work in education in South Africa, because the last two years have been filled with some of the most rewarding experiences in my life. I gained a whole new family while being here, and new friends that I will have forever. Despite all of the things I went through in the past two years, I can say that the hardest thing about Peace Corps was leaving.

So, this is it. I have talked to everyone I need to talk to, have been medically cleared to leave the country (I'm healthier now than when I first arrived!) and my PC ID has been punched, rendering it void. Wow. Who would have thought that it would end? I cannot believe that two years have gone, and this episode of my life is over. But, after this nice sappy post, I am going to end on a positive note! My adventures are not over yet! I am not coming straight back to the United States. Actually, I will not be back in the US until November. Instead, I am packing up my bag and traveling! I am going with my friend Emily, and in the next two months we are hitting Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania. Our goal: see as much as possible in the next two months, climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and be home in time for Thanksgiving! So, stay tuned for more adventures... who know what the next two months will bring?

Changes

2007-09-06T01:18:00.000-07:00

My two years in PC is pretty much at an end, and last week as I was getting ready to leave my site I was astounded about how many changes I have witnessed. My time in Buffelshoek varied between going super fast and agonizingly slow, but somehow the 24 months passed and now I am on the way out. I think the physical village changed the least. There are a few more buildings, a few more water towers, a few more animals, a few less trees but largely the village is the same. The road remain as dusty as when I first arrived; cows, chickens and goats still wander around the houses and in the streets; the mosquitoes are still present and will always be there; we are still hauling our water from the nearest water tap a kilometer away. This largely remain the same.

Changes in School? Well, I must admit that there aren't as many as I would have liked. The teachers still use corporal punishment, but maybe a little less than before I started making a big stint about it. There is a library in one of my schools now, a computer in the other, and a photocopy machine at the third. All of my schools now have boreholes, and the children play with the taps and in the water during break now, when two years ago they had to walk as much as a kilometer to get a drink of water. There are new fences to keep the goats and chickens away, more teachers are making lesson plans and long term plans for their classes, and more teachers are using outcomes based education- and actually enjoying it. Some teachers still do not go to class, and some teachers still do not come to school. I know this will continue-somethings do not change no matter how hard you want them to.

The people have changed the most. I still remember when I first met my host sister Lethabo. She was a bubbly 13-year-old with pigtails and a jumper playing jump rope with our neighbors. Now she is 15, still bubbly but more interested in make-up and music than jump rope. Lerato was 17 when I arrived and was your typical teenager who couldn't care less about school and worried more about her social life than her grades. Now she is more serious- she has buckled down in her studies and is busy planning her life for when she graduates high school next year. My youngest host sister, Leago, was 9 when I first arrived and is now 11. She has remained largely the same, maybe a little taller but still the sweet little girl she always was. My "cousins" Thabang and Tsepho, 14 and 15 respectively when I arrived are now much taller and both are sporting (or trying to sport) mustaches-freaky if you ask me. I have seen 4 babies born into my host family in my two years here- Mmpele, Lithle, Koketso and Tuka and they have grown the most noticeably from the teeny babies I held when they were only a few days old. Now all of them are walking and somewhat talking. My host mother is still the same- maybe a little older but still the same woman who greeted me with open arms two years ago.

Then there is me. I know for certain that I have changed. If I met the person who got on the plane in New York City two years ago today, I would not recognize them. In some ways I am still me, but in other ways I know I have changed forever. Unfortunately I am not as optimistic as I once was, but I thought I was patient before but here I learned what REAL patience is. I am more realistic now and not as naive as I once was. I have grown more introspective and less materialistic. I have a strong appreciation for running water and flush toilets, and I realize how much I took for granted in my life in the US. I know what it's like to live in poverty and I know what its like to be a minority now and also I know what racism really is after having witnessed it for the past two years. Honestly, after everything I have seen and done living in South Africa, I do not know how I will adjust to living in the United States. We will have to see, I guess. I have always had a difficult time with change, but after working in the developing world, I have a better appreciation for it. Change is hard, but it is inevitable, and it is necessary for growth...

Staring Contests

2007-09-04T03:42:00.000-07:00

One of the more annoying things many of us have dealt with since being here in South Africa is the staring aspect. I grew accustomed- actually rather quickly- of being THE minority in my village. Not only was I the only white girl in the village, but I was the only white girl in about a ten mile radius, and the nearest other white people in the area were other volunteers. I understood quickly why people stare, I'm kind of an oddity. Villagers in Buffelshoek and Okkernootboom were not used to seeing white people wandering around the village, let alone having one live with them for two years. I understood all of this when I arrived two years ago. However, I fully expected the novelty and staring to fade away as people got used to me. Yeah, that didn't happen. Two years of living as a resident of Buffelshoek, and still I was called "lehua" (white person) instead of my name, and people still stared.

People did not just stare- they BLATANTLY stared. In the US as a kid I was always taught that staring was rude, so if I did want to get a closer look at someone, I always tried to do it discreetly. Obviously that's just an American cultural thing, because staring can definitely not be considered rude here. Little kids have stared with mouths open, people have stopped conversations to follow me with their eyes and my personal favorite, people standing by the side of the road actually turn their bodies, not just their heads, to stare at me when I walk by. It is rather disconcerting. Normally I just ignore the staring, but then I literally feel the eyes boring into my back as I walk away, and that just gets me annoyed. My friend Amanda has a different method of dealing with staring: she stares back. She assured me that it is actually very refreshing, but obviously I was raised a little too well, because not only does being stared at make me uncomfortable, but staring at others makes me uncomfortable as well. Just a few weeks ago, I was sitting in a function and I noticed this maybe ten-year-old boy staring at me. After ignoring him for a few minutes and realizing that yes, he was still staring, I got annoyed. I was kind of bored, (functions can last hours with nothing but speeches, normally in languages I do not understand), so I decided to try an experiment. As a kid, I was very good at staring contests with my friends, mainly because I am just too stubborn to quit. I decided to try and out stare this boy. I made my face completely blank (no smiling, I was not going to encourage this type of behavior) and turned my eyes on the boy.

So, he had been staring at me for several minutes without me noticing (he thought) so he seemed a bit surprised when he saw me turn and look at him. We stared at each other. Kept staring. Kept staring. Kept staring. He finally looked away. At that point, I decided to keep staring, just to give him a taste of his own medicine. After a few seconds he turned back and noticed I was still staring. He looked down in his lap, then sneaked a peak back. I stared. He looked back at the speaker for a bit. I stared. He fidgeted his fingers. I propped my chin up with my hand and stared. He snuck another peak. I stared. He squirmed in his seat. I stared. He made a pained expression. I stared. He squirmed harder. I stared. Finally, he turned abruptly in his seat so that his back was too me. He avoided looking at me for the entire rest of the function. Yeah, that's right kid. Being stared at isn't fun, is it? It makes you uncomfortable, doesn't it? Maybe you'll think twice before you stare at someone again, won't you? My work there was done. Hah!

Pony-Treking

2007-08-31T03:16:00.000-07:00

Lesotho is famous for its outside activities. Hiking, pony-trekking, caving, rafting... you can do it all in Lesotho! And just because it was winter, it did not mean that I wasn't going to partake in the activities. In fact, the only time I was actually warm in Lesotho was when I went on a three hour hike up the mountains. I was definitely moving faster than normal to keep warm during the hike. It was the only time in the four days I spent in the country that I actually shed my fleece jackets. But, what I really wanted to do in Lesotho was one of the things that Lesotho is really known for: pony trekking.

Pony trekking is a "fancy" word for horse-back riding. I really wanted to go and see some San rock paintings that were over a thousand years old and so decided to kill two birds with one stone and do both of them in one trip. I was given a horse and a guide, and although I have not been riding for like seven years, I think I did all right. Except for the fact that the horse did not like me. He kept trying to turn around and bite my leg. Of course, I should have expected something like that from a horse whose name literally translates to "witch doctor." The ride was really fun despite my irritable horse, and the San paintings were really awesome. I would highly recommend pony trekking if anyone ever visits Lesotho. Just give your horse an interview before you do anything else...

Freezing in Lesotho

2007-08-31T03:00:00.000-07:00

I dropped Allison off at the airport in Jo-burg after an exhausting two weeks of mad touring. I had a wonderful time, but I was tired! I also had a week left of vacation before school re-opened (the strike finally ended, but we were now in the middle of winter break). I could not face going back to the village yet, so I decided to extend my vacation and pop down to Lesotho. I had spent time in Swaziland, Mozambique and of course South Africa, and am planning to hit most of the other countries in Southern Africa after I COS. However, Lesotho was still on my list to visit, and recognizing that this might be my only chance, I decided to sight see for a few days before heading back home.

Lesotho is a mountainous country completely landlocked by South Africa. It was a former British protectorate, and fortunately did not go the route of apartheid like South Africa did, mainly because the population is primarily of the Basotho ethnicity. Lesotho is beautiful, but also very poor compared to South Africa and is still developing. However, it has a very welcoming and laid-back atmosphere, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. When I crossed the border, I headed straight for Malealea, a small village about two hours south of the capital of Maseru. Malealea is a unique place in that it has a lodge and backpackers in the midst of the village, and the lodge works heavily with development of the surrounding areas. A good portion of the proceeds goes to village projects, and the lodge offers many opportunities for employment for the surrounding inhabitants.

Malealea is called "Lesotho in a Nutshell," mostly because it boasts so many of the things that attracts tourists to the country in the first place. The village is situated in the mountains, overlooking a vast valley with the Drakensberg in the distance. The view is gorgeous and the place is serene. I spent my time there relaxing... and also freezing my butt off. It is the Southern Africa winter right now, and Lesotho is nothing but mountains. My blood has thinned remarkably in the past two years and I am a little ashamed to admit it but when the temperature drops below 70 degrees I pull on a fleece... or maybe even two. Lesotho was extremely cold, cold enough for a bit of snow to be on the frozen ground and the streams to partially freeze over. I spent quite a bit of time shivering and making tea or cocoa. And also going around in layers. At one point, I was wearing a pair of tights, two pairs of pants, a thermal undershirt, a t-shirt, a long-sleeve shirt, and two fleece jackets. Not to mention wool socks, a hat and gloves. what made things worse was the people also staying at the lodge. That sentence makes it sound like they were horrible, but actually they were extremely nice and friendly. However, there was this one couple from Norway. While I was sitting around shivering in my five layers, they were prancing about in t-shirts and sandals. Stupid Norwegians.

Kruger... AGAIN

2007-08-30T03:29:00.000-07:00

I am certain that people are tired of me talking about Kruger National Park. I have already spent a great deal of time talking about it, and in fact I am a bit tired of it myself. But, Kruger was the third stop of the Davis Sisters Tour. We left Grahamstown bright and early in the pouring rain and made our way to the Northeast area of the country-the area where I live and spend a great deal of my time. The plan was to spend a little time in the village so that Allison could meet my host family, browse a bit in the surrounding area, then head into Kruger for 3 days so that Allison could get a safari fix. Of course, not everything went according to plan, but even with the shouting match, car trouble, fight with the host family and an angry hyena, we had a good time. The only thing I am really going to say about Kruger was a wonderful and delightful song Allison and I wrote to sum up our Kruger trip. Keep in mind, though, we were both deliriously tired after having been kept up most of the night before in the backpackers by the absolute worst snorer I have ever heard in my life. He sounded like a whistling and snorting pig. A LOUD whistling and snorting pig. It was all I could do to keep from smothering him. Whistling and snorting pig aside, Kruger was excellent and I certainly hope you all enjoy our musical rendition of this stage in our journey. For those of you more musically inclined, our song is sung to the tune of "The Twelve Days of Christmas."

The Three Days in Kruger

In the three days in Kruger, the good park gave to me: A leopard by a tree!
In the three days in Kruger, the good park gave to me: Two wild dogs, and A leopard by a tree!
In the three days in Kruger, the good park gave to me: Three lions, Two wild dogs, and A leopard by a tree!
In the three days in Kruger, the good park gave to me: Four hyenas, Three lions, Two wild dogs, and A leopard by a tree!
In the three days in Kruger, the good park gave to me: Five Warthog Butts! Four hyenas, Three lions, Two wild dogs, and A leopard by a tree!
In the three days in Kruger, the good park gave to me: Six rhinos laying, Five Warthog Butts! Four hyenas, Three lions, Two wild dogs, and A leopard by a tree!
In the three days in Kruger, the good park gave to me: Seven Hippos swimming, Six rhinos laying, Five Warthog Butts! Four hyenas, Three lions, Two wild dogs, and A leopard by a tree!
In the three days in Kruger, the good park gave to me: Eight sables leaping, Seven Hippos swimming, Six rhinos laying, Five Warthog Butts! Four hyenas, Three lions, Two wild dogs, and A leopard by a tree!
In the three days in Kruger, the good park gave to me: Nine giraffes running, Eight sables leaping, Seven Hippos swimming, Six rhinos laying, Five Warthog Butts! Four hyenas, Three lions, Two wild dogs, and A leopard by a tree!
In the three days in Kruger, the good park gave to me: Ten elephants drinking, Nine giraffes running, Eight sables leaping, Seven Hippos swimming, Six rhinos laying, Five Warthog Butts! Four hyenas, Three lions, Two wild dogs, and A leopard by a tree!
In the three days in Kruger, the good park gave to me: Eleven buffalo crossing, ten elephants drinking, Nine giraffes running, Eight sables leaping, Seven Hippos swimming, Six rhinos laying, Five Warthog Butts! Four hyenas, Three lions, Two wild dogs, and A leopard by a tree!
In the three days in Kruger, the good park gave to me: TOO MANY IMPALA, eleven buffalo crossing, ten elephants drinking, Nine giraffes running, Eight sables leaping, Seven Hippos swimming, Six rhinos laying, Five Warthog Butts! Four hyenas, Three lions, Two wild dogs, and A leopard by a tree!

Grahamstown Arts Festival

2007-08-30T03:09:00.000-07:00

The second stop of the Davis Sisters' Grand Tour of South Africa was Grahamstown. Grahamstown is a sleepy, quiet college town in the Eastern Cape. It boasts one of the oldest colleges in South Africa, but its real claim to fame is the Grahamstown Arts Festival. Every year at the end of June and beginning of July, artists from around the world flock to grahamstown for two weeks of music, dancing, drama and art exhibits. The population of the town triples during these weeks as tourists follow the artists, booking accomodations months in advance. The festival is a lively, crowded occassion, but also is incredibly fun. As both Allison and I have artsy tendencies and as I have heard rave reviews from South Africans and other Peace Corps volunteers alike about the festival, we decided to spend a few days in the vicinity of Grahamstown to soak up a little bit of culture.

Grahamstown was absolutely clogged with merry-makers. It reminded me of state fairs in the United States, minus the rides and cotton candy. In relacement were stages for performers, stalls for visual arts and food stands that did not serve the fair staples but instead every type of ethnic and cultural food found all over the world. They were even selling kudu burgers (kudu is a type of South African antelope) that Allison and I decided to indulge in. It was rather good. We spent our time in Grahamstown with several other volunteers, sampling foods, browsing the art stalls, and saw a play, dance show and jazz concert. The festival was full of fun and had its own unique quality that I believe appealed to all who visited it. It certainly appealed to me, and I could have easily spent a week there just to soak up the art from around the world.

Wild Coast Hike

2007-08-30T02:38:00.000-07:00

When Allison came, we had an exhausting two weeks planned. I don't know really how far we travelled, but we literally went from one side of the country to the other using a variety of planes, buses, taxis, and cars. Oh yeah, and out feet. The first plan of our vacation was a hike. When travelling with my parents back in December, we spent a few days on the Wild Coast in the former Transkei. The Wild Coast for me is really a magical place. Rolling hills and mountains plummet down to the Indian Ocean and the hills are dotted with traditional villages. It is peaceful, relaxing and breathtakingly beautiful. Knowing that I wanted to re-visit the area, Allison found a four-day Wild Coast hike along the Indian Ocean. This hike was amazing.

The plan was to take was the organizer called a "leisurely walk" along the ocean. I wonder if this man has ever been on this leisurely walk because it was anything but easy. I am sure that nearly all of us have been to the beach. Walking in the sand along the beach can sometimes get tiring, only because one tends to sink into the sand. Add on your back a 30-pound backpack and on your feet hiking shoes and you might see the problem. The first time I stepped onto the beach with my pack on I sank a good couple of inches into the sand. In the end, I just weaved my way across the beach in a search for hard sand. if anyone was watching from overhead, I am sure that they would ahve thought that I was drunk, as there was absolutely no straight line that I was following! Occasionally the trail led us inland to the rolling hills along the coast. Now, this was more like the hikes I was used to, although I have never had to shimmy my way under barbed wire fences other the other hikes I have been on in South Africa! Now I thought the hill hiking would be the easy part- until we got on top of the hill and realized that the wind had picked up with like 50 mph gales threatening to throw us off the cliff...

I think the most unique encounter Allison and I had on this hike happened on our first day. The first day was easy-only about five or six kilometers to walk, crossing a river on a ferry before we reached our stop for the night. Of course, we did not plan for the irate cattle. Allison and I were not the only ones planning to cross the river on the ferry. next to us were several herdsmen, planning to take across two of the meanest bulls I have ever seen in South Africa. I always thought that the cattle here were very mild mannered and docile. I have never seen a truly violent and dangerous cow until we reached the Kei River and Planned to Cross it. It must have taken a good forty minutes to get these two bulls onto the ferry. The bulls were determined to have nothing to do with the ferry and every time the herdsmen nudged them towards the ramp to the ferry the bulls erupted in a fury-complete with charging, stamping feet, tossing heads, running and braying. It was a bit terrifying. while Allison and I made sure to stand a good distance away, I was worried that eventually one of the bulls would turn our way and suddenly the situation would escalate into a Spanish Running of the Bulls, ending with either Allison or I, or even both of us getting gorged to death on the mean looking horns. Then my parents would have killed me because only a few days earlier my father made me promise to take good care of my sister while she was in Africa. Finally, after much cajoling and urging, the bulls found their way onto the ferry, and the ferry driver ushered Allison and I onto the ferry as well. I was a bit worried sharing such a cramped space with these two enormous and furious bulls, but surprisingly enough as soon as they got on the ferry the bulls calmed down and stood placidly until we reached the other side. Then they both threw a fit again when they realized they needed to leave the ferry. Allison and I left the bulls and cattle herders to their respective jobs and went on our way, remarking about the ridiculousness of the situation.

Poor Tourists

2007-08-30T02:27:00.000-07:00

The public servants strike im my opinion really got out of hand. It was an interesting experience, I must admit though. I've never been in a country where the entire public service section just shuts down compltely, but the fact that it lasted 4 weeks was insane. Checking out of the village and heading in to Pretoria was probably the best decision I've made- especially since I got a little bit of down time before picking up my sister at the airport to begin a whilrwind vacation of South Africa.

Unlike my parents, Allison has vacationed before in developming countries, but she has never been to Africa. It excited me to show her around, especially things that I never got to show my parents. While I loved the vacation with my parents back in December- they were really determined to spoil me, and I was content to let them- it seemed to me a shame that they only really saw the "tourist South Africa." They never got to use public transportation, or eat street food, or even really see what the rural areas and townships were like. With Allison the vacation was different in that we were both poor. There was no way we could afford to rent a car for the entire two weeks she was here, and no way I was shelling out big bucks for more than a backpackers. So, we did things the poor Peace Corps way. While I do enjoy having a bit of luxury in my life-especially after doing without for such a long time- I have found that I actually prefer to travel light and cheap. There is so much character of a country a person can miss if they go the touristy route. While it can get extremely annoying at times, I do enjoy using public transport and sleeping in backpackers and going to cheap route for food, because I get to see more and meet more people than regular tourists do.

Apartheid Museum and Soweto

2007-07-20T06:05:00.000-07:00

The last time I journeyed to Pretoria, I decided to finally go on a tour of the Apartheid Museum and Soweto; things that I have wanted to do since I first arrived to South Africa, but as of yet had not had the chance. After Apartheid ended officially in 1994 with the first multi-party elections that brought Nelson Mandela and the ANC to power, the new government decided that remembering Apartheid was just as important as ending it. History has a very nasty habit of repeating itself, and unless certain events, no matter how horrible they may be, are remembered, they run the risk of reoccurring. The government decided to build a remembrance museum, both to tell the history of apartheid and to honor the men and women who struggled to end it.

The moment a visitor enters the museum, he or she is given a card. On the card is written “white,” “black,” “Coloured,” or “Asian.” These were the four official races under Apartheid and everyone living in South Africa was classified to a race. A person’s race determined their status in life. Everything in South Africa under Apartheid revolved around the color of a person’s skin. Once receiving the card, the visitor proceeds to the true entrance of the museum, two doors, one labeled “White” the other labeled “Non-white.” The visitor enters the museum according to the card they were given at the gate. Through the doors are two identical hallways, only one for the “whites” and the other for the “non-whites.” The hallways are separated by a thick metal and mesh fence. This entrance gives the visitor an impression of what apartheid was like for the people living under it. Eventually the hallways end and the museum continue, telling the story of apartheid chronologically, beginning when white settlers first arrived in South Africa and continuing until the 1990s. The museum is pretty intense, and not geared to be taken lightly or for a quick run-through. A visitor could easily spend all day there because there is so much to read and absorb. Unfortunately, that is where the Apartheid Museum has its main flaw. While I did not mind the reading-intensity of the museum, all of the information in the museum was written in English, and none of the other eleven official languages of South Africa. So many people- South Africans even, will not be able to appreciate the museum for what it is or really learn everything that it has to offer only because the information is so in-depth reading and in complicated English. It really is a sad thing.

After visiting the Apartheid Museum, we continued on the other part of our tour, that is, to Soweto. Soweto is a huge black township outside of Johannesburg, home to Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela and Desmond Tutu. It is the only place in the entire world that has two Nobel Peace Prize winners living on the same street (Mandela and Tutu). It also has 4.5 million residents, the largest hospital in the world and the largest taxi rank as well. Soweto also made history on June 16, 1976 in the struggle for apartheid. School children in Soweto staged a protest against the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in Secondary Schools. Afrikaans is the language of the descendants of white Dutch settlers to South Africa, and many of the youth viewed Afrikaans as the language of their oppressors as the Apartheid government was largely made of Afrikaans men. The youth decided to stage a peaceful demonstration through the Soweto streets to display their anger and dismay at having to be taught in Afrikaans. Not long after their march started, South African army personnel and police officers called in to stop the protest opened fire on the crowd of children. The first boy to die was twelve-year-old Hector Peterson, and dozens of others followed. The Soweto Uprising was one of the key events that made the world aware of what was happening in South Africa and also further encouraged the ANC to step up their protests against the Apartheid government. I enjoyed visiting Soweto probably more than I did visiting the Apartheid museum. As a history buff I like seeing the places where events occurred as well as reading about them. Walking by the schools where most of the children involved in the Soweto Uprising/Massacre attended and seeing the memorial to Hector Peterson at the place he died was powerful in a way different to the Apartheid Museum.

STRIKE!!!!

2007-07-20T06:03:00.000-07:00

One of the more interesting experiences I’ve had in South Africa occurred continuously over the last month or so. Interesting not in the form of exciting- in fact I was bored to the extent where I wanted to bang my head against the wall- but rather interesting in the “wow, that would never happen at home!” sort of way. The experience I am talking about was the huge public servant strike. For about a month prior to the strike the unions and government were in a stalemate. The workers union, COSATU, and all of the unions affiliated to it were demanding a 12% increase in wages for all public servants including nurses, police officers, doctors, court officials, teachers and many others that I have now forgotten. The government balked at the 12% and instead offered 6%. Now, having worked in the schools in SA for two years and seeing just exactly what many of the teachers here consider “work,” I thought that the 6% the government offered was more than reasonable. In fact, it was extremely generous! If I had my way, a number of teachers would have their salaries removed permanently (I mean come on, they think that they can sit in the staff room drinking tea all day without doing their job of teaching the children and still deserve a nice paycheck at the end of the month?) and the money then given to the teachers who really deserve it. But, I do not think that the government would have been interested in listening to my views of the situation, nor any of my teachers for that matter. The negotiations soon became a matter of pride, and then degenerated. Neither side wanted to back down and the unions soon declared a strike if the government did not cave to their wishes. The government stuck to its 6% and a nation-wide public servant strike began on the 1st of June.

In the US, there are occasional strikes- normally by small company employees and the like. The workers strike for a few weeks, but it does not affect the entire country. I have never, ever been in a situation where an entire country goes on strike! And that is what it seemed like. For the four weeks the strike lasted (That’s right, everybody- FOUR WEEKS!) nurses refused to go to work, courts did not operating, and probably about 80% of SAs schools closed or worked with a minimal staff. All three of my schools closed, as were the schools of all of SAs Education PCVs. So, suddenly out of work with an impromptu holiday (and no way of knowing how long it would last) I suddenly had a great deal of time on my hands. I must admit, I really enjoyed not having to go to school. I got to sleep late (well, I cannot sleep past 7:30 anymore, but I did not have to wake up via alarm clock!) and to enjoy a leisure day spent reading, walking, or whatever else suited my fancy. The only problem was that all my host sisters and my host mother (a vice-principal) also had nowhere to go and nothing to do. I love my host sisters, but spending all day with them became too much after day 4. Especially when during the middle of Week One Lethabo started putting one song on repeat on her stereo and letting it play ALL DAY LONG. At the end of Week One I counted, in one day, how many times we listened to it. The 32nd time it played I pulled big sister rank and turned the CD off. That did not go down very well with Lethabo, but I think she would have preferred having the music stop to me murdering her, which I was a hair breadth away from doing. People undergoing torture cannot be responsible for their actions. By the middle of Week Two I ascertained that I was going crazy, and by Week Three I decided to leave the village and head to Pretoria. I had to pick up my sister at the airport at the end of the week, so I decided to start my real vacation a bit early.

By the end of Week Four, everyone was tired of the strike. The news tired of covering the protesting workers, and everyone tired of hearing about them. After four weeks, the workers themselves seemed ready to call it quits- demonstrations every day just get old (and I think they fully realized that striking workers are not paid workers and they were losing a lot of money every day the strike continued). So, the unions and the government finally worked out a deal: all public servants would receive a 7.5% wage increase plus medical and pension benefits. Finally, everyone returned to work. Now, I have to admit that despite the ridiculous extent that the strike was taken, I was pretty impressed by the stubbornness displayed by all players. Honestly, no one expected the strike to last more than a few days, yet everyone stuck to their guns for a month. It was interesting to see, as it was an event that I would never see at home.

Shanglish

2007-06-21T01:49:00.000-07:00

I recently discovered that during our COS (Close of Service) Conference my group would be tested on our language ability. I must admit, I felt a moment of sheer panic. My language ability in Northern Sotho and Shangaan is worse than bad, it is just plain horrendous! I can "hear" some Northern Sotho and Shangaan but answer and speak in English. I mix my African languages with English (using mostly English I must admit) until I have a conversation of what I affectionately call "Shanglish." however, I do not believe PC will be impressed with this ability at all. Now, you would think that after two years I should be more proficient in at least one of my sites two languages, but not so. Then again, I suppose I should not sell myself short. I AM proficient in introducing myself, greeting people, saying where I am going and where I am from, and "It's hot" or "It's cold" depending on the day's weather. Surprisingly, I've managed to get by on that and a handful of vocabulary words. I am afraid that my situation has made me lazy. My host family is fluent in English and my counterparts are as well. Most people in my village address me in English and speak it well. Things would be so much different if no one spoke English and I was forced to learn and not be able to fall back on English in sticky situations.

My situation is also very interesting. I live on the cusp of two culture groups: the Northern Sotho and the Shangaan and interact then with people using two different mother tongues. I normally get the proper greetings right. The tar road splits my site neatly in two, and also acts as the boundary between the two culture groups. I cater my greetings depending on which side of the road I am on. However, this does not always work, and if I use the wrong language the person I am speaking with will definitely let me know. There is a certain pride in the mother tongues here in South Africa. It is certainly understandable considering how the cultures and languages were suppressed under Apartheid. Of course, this pride has its extremes at times. My host mother is Northern Sotho, but one day we were called to my Shangaan school for a meeting. I automatically greeted all of my Shangaan teachers in Shangaan- it was second nature to me by this point in time. When I finished, Mma turned to me crossly and said "You speak Shangaan, but you do not speak Sotho!" I hastened to assure her that this was not the case- I could not speak EITHER language.

Northern Sotho and Shangaan are somewhat difficult to learn, mainly because they belong to an entirely different language group than any other language I have studied; so there are no similarities to be found with English. However, they are also fun languages because they are so literal. I will write some examples. To greet in Sotho, there is a certain order of phrases. It begins:
Dumelang
Answer: Agee
Then: Le Kae?
Answer: Re gona.
This exchange is equivalent to the English Hi, how are you? I'm fine yadda yadda yadda. Yet, literally this can be translated as:
Dumelang: I am greeting you.
Agee: Yes, you are.
Le Kae? Where are you?
Re gona: I am here.
This is one of the best parts about the greetings- I love this stating the obvious and never needing to lie about my state of mind or health! I could be having the absolute shittiest day ever, and yet, when asked "Le Kae?" I can basically answer "Well, I'm here at least." It's great!

I do regret though, that I did not learn more of my adopted languages as it would have made my Peace Corps experience different than what I experience now. Yet, despite this regret, I have gotten along with my Shanglish and my village has accepted this part of me. They also find it very amusing. My first instinct when hearing of our impending language test was to crack down, open my dust covered language books and study; but I decided against this course of action. I am going to enjoy my last three months and not worry about how correctly (or incorrectly as the case may be) my language ability is.

You Are What You Eat?

2007-06-21T01:00:00.000-07:00

When I first heard the term "You are what you eat," I took it rather literally. I spent time fantasizing about what would really happen if a person literally WAS what they ate. The world would be populated with food. I actually imagined a city full of walking Snicker's bars, large cucumbers teaching school, and blocks of cheese driving cars. It was a fun day dream, I must admit. As I grew older and actually began to understand the meaning behind "You are what you eat" I still cling to my childhood dream, but South Africa has taught me to alter the dream somewhat- no longer is a city populated with my favorite foods and the foods are not longer animated. Instead, they are sitting on plates in the kitchen of my Maryland home, patiently waiting for me to return and indulge in them once more.

It may come as a surprise, but incidents involving food are a definite part of the cultural conflicts PCVs face between us and our counterparts. There are so many different tastes between us as Americans and our South African families and friends that there are bound to be clashes. For example, during our training my group all lived with home-stay families. As part of our cultural immersion, we were expected to eat our meals with our families and partake in South African rural cuisine. Many of us lost weight during training. Now, I am not saying all SA traditional food is bad- in fact, some of it is very good. But, there are still some food items that even after two years I still cannot stomach.

Basic South African rural cuisine revolves directly around "pap"- also knows as vuswa, bogobe, porridge, sadza and to some of the guys in my PC group, "God's gift to mankind." Pap is nothing really fancy. It is composed of only two ingredients: mielie (corn) meal and water, but then it is literally beaten as it is cooking to create a very stiff porridge. To eat pap, you break off a piece and roll it around in your hand, creating a ball, dipping it into some sort of gravy, then eating it. There really is not much taste to pap, but for some strange reason, it grows on you. I have a very good relationship with pap-I enjoy eating it very much. However, my fondness of pap ends at a reasonable level... Some of my friends take their pap enjoyment to the point of worshipful obsession. Songs and poems have been written to gush over pap's many wonderful qualities, new recipes are examined critically and exclaimed over, and a cartoon of "Pap-Man" and "Bogobe Boy" kept us all very much entertained during our training. Pap is the staple of South Africa; meaning that pap is on the menu basically every single day in rural homes. My host mother once told me that a "meal without pap is not a meal at all." Running out of mielie meal is synonymous to disaster. A normal South African rural meal consists of a plate of pap, and some side dishes. Now, like I said previously, I have a good relationship with pap... it is the side dishes that I do not have a good relationship with.

Meat, and I use this term loosely, is the first side dish. A normal meat side is chicken or boerworst (sausage). And when I say chicken, I mean the WHOLE chicken. Not just the breast and drumsticks, but the head, neck, thighs, innards and feet can be the side of choice for the meal. Now, I have tried all types of chicken with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The chicken breast, thighs and drumsticks are all good. The neck is not so bad. The head, innards and feet though are just plain unpalatable! The head normally still has eyes when put into the pot, and quite honestly I have a great aversion to eating things that are looking at me. The chicken innards- the intestines, liver, kidneys, stomach- I have tasted and opted to never taste again. The feet- well, I feel that chicken feet deserve some sort of tribute to how incredibly unappealing they are. Imagine a chicken (actually, any bird will do) and now imagine their feet- scaly skin, skinny bones, and claws. That is exactly what a chicken foot looks like when it comes out of the pot and put on a plate to eat. There is absolutely no meat-just skin, bones and claws. The one and only time I had a chicken foot was during training in my very first week. My training host mother put on my plate next to my pap this claw. I poked at it a bit to build up my nerve to actually eat it then took a tiny bite crunched down on a nail, and lost my appetite for the next day.

The vegetables that go with pap are normally all right. The cabbage, butternut, beetroot and salad are all wonderful additions to a pap meal. Normally though, the meal of choice is morogo- wild greens. I always find it amazing how many different types of morogo can be found in and around my village. My host mother always has me sample the morogo that she makes and for the most part I enjoy it- except for guswa. Guswa is morogo cooked with baking soda and I am afraid that I cannot handle it at all. The baking soda makes the morogo slippery so that it had the exact same consistency of mucus. I cannot even keep it on my pap long enough to get it to my mouth! I tend to shy away from it whatever the cost.

I have learned to appreciate food so much more since coming to PC. So many food items that I took for granted in the states I will never do so again- just like I will never take for granted running water, flush toilets and central heating. Occasionally I fall back into my old daydream of "you are what you eat"- but I imagine pap people and walking chicken feet parading through my village. I don't think I would like to turn into South African food items.

Not-Quite-Venda

2007-05-16T04:23:00.000-07:00

Only two weeks into this new term, we had a lovely 5-day weekend due to two national holidays: Freedom Day (April 27, to celebrate the first democratic elections held in SA in 1994) and Workers Day on May 1. Since I didn’t go anywhere during the long school holiday, and due to the fact that I was going stir-crazy in my village, I decided to go on a mini-holiday and visit Emily, a fellow-PCV, who lives in the northern part of SA near the border to Zimbabwe and near to Venda. The Venda region of South Africa is the traditional home of the Venda people. The area is very conservative and traditional and really is a neat place to visit. My area further south is definitely more westernized- most of the people wear western clothing and live in new fashionable houses rather than the traditional homes. But in Venda, it is different. Married women often dress traditionally (including a necklace that has two large white cones attached to the back of the neck) and still bow to the men to show respect. Most of the villages I saw consisted mostly of rondavels (a circular hut with a thatched roof) as well. Instead of a large home, most families that I saw seemed to have a courtyard surrounded by 3 or 4 one-room rondavels that the families slept and lived in. Venda gets the reputation of being traditional, but unfortunately it also gets the reputation of having more witches and witchcraft. Perhaps because traditional beliefs are so strong, but the belief in witches remains stronger in Venda than in other places as well. Occasionally stories are told of witches in Venda kidnapping people and chopping them up to use their body parts as muthi- for casting spells on members of the victims family. For the spells against people to work, witches need the body parts- normally the lips, tongue, or genitals- of an immediate family member (brothers are very popular to use). Unfortunately, I am not making this up. Although rare, it still happens. Of course, Venda is not the only place in SA where witchcraft is still practiced, but it seems to get the bad reputation anyway. Despite all of its reputations, I enjoyed going to Venda. Visiting the region, seeing more rondavels than newer homes and more people dressed in traditional clothing than not was an interesting experience to me.

So, I have talked about Venda, but where does the “Not-Quite-Venda” come in? This is a nick-name that we have for Emily’s site stemming from training. During training, Emily and a few others were placed in the Venda learning group because they would be living in the Vehmbe district, where Venda is. So, for several weeks they learned Tsi-Venda and Venda traditions and culture. That was, at least until Emily went to her site visit and discovered that she lives on the outskirts of Venda, in a Shangaan village where no-one speaks Tsi-Venda or practices Venda culture. When we returned to our training sites and were sharing horror stories of our site visits, Emily told us that she was not ever going to use anything she learned in the Venda language group because she was not living in Venda. So, in order to laugh about it we gave her site the name “Not-Quite-Venda.” She’s so close to Venda, and yet she is so far away. Shame.

Fast Food

2007-05-16T04:21:00.000-07:00

I think that here in South Africa fast food chains and restaurants can be linked to development in that particular area. In the United States every city, town, village and hamlet has a fast-food joint. Not so in South Africa. Here, there seems to be a certain hierarchy as to where fast food places can be found. I tend to avoid fast-food as much as possible-especially the chains. McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Wendy’s- all the burger places where you can guarantee that the food is full of artery-clogging grease I steer clear of. I admit, some fast food isn’t so bad- I happen to like Subway and Dominos; but for those two I either see my food being prepared in front of me and thus can control the contents, or I know that the food is made just for me and hasn’t been sitting in a warmer or pot of grease all day. Anyway, back to SA. The fast-food chains here are a little different. There are McDonalds (which is everywhere in the entire world so I am not surprised) and Kentucky Fried Chicken (which was a little surprising to see at first; but it is more popular than McDonalds). Who would have figured. There are also a range of South African chains- Nando’s, King Pie and Chickin’ Lickin’. Nando’s is really not so bad, King Pie is so rich my stomach cannot handle it (but some of my guy friends can eat 4 of their pies at one sitting) and at Chickin’ Lickin’ I tend to stick with their huge 2 rand (think 30 cents) ice-cream cones.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this entry before I went off on my ever-present tangents, fast-food chains can be linked to development in SA. South African living areas can be classified into rural villages, townships, towns, and cities. Each one of these living areas has their own class of fast-food. When the area gets a new fast-food restaurant, it is safe to bump them up to the next category. I’ll explain further. Rural villages there are no fast-food joints. If you stay in a place where the nearest fast-food restaurant is like 20km away, it is safe to say that you live in a village (Buffelshoek, where I live, has no fast food- it is a village). Townships are mini-towns and during Apartheid were the towns of the black people. If the area you are visiting has only a Chickin’ Lickin’ or a King Pie, it is safe to say it is a township. Towns are larger than townships, have more supermarkets and stores, can have a Chickin’ Lickin’ or King Pie, but they also can have a Nando’s or KFC. If the area has a Nando’s or KFC, it is a town. Finally, the cities. You know you are in a city when there is all of the fast-food chains mentioned above plus a McDonalds. McDonalds really is not found anywhere else other than a city.

Now, why have I spent the past 2 paragraphs talking about fast food? Well, several months ago, my nearest shopping area did some major renovations. Acornhoek was a township- it had both a Chickin’ Lickin and a King Pie. But, a few months ago it also added…. a KFC! Acornhoek can now, in my opinion at least, be labeled a town. A small town to be sure, but a town none-the-less. Only a few weeks ago I met one of my friends at KFC and did something that I had not done since I was 12-years-old: ordered a meal. Much to my surprise, it was not so bad. I guess a little indulgence is not so bad- even if it is artery-clogging and a heart attack waiting to happen.

Long Tom Again

2007-05-16T04:19:00.000-07:00

I think that one of the very first blog entries that I wrote had to do with the Long Tom Marathon last year. As a refresher, the Long Tom is an Ultra (56 km) or Half (21 km) marathon that runs from Sabie to Lydenburg, following the Long Tom Pass: a road that winds through the mountains of Mpumalanga. For the past 3 year, PC SA has been using this marathon as a fund raiser. PCVs run or walk the half-marathon and friends and family from home give donations for us to do so. The money then goes to the Kgwele Le Mollo Fund. Kgwele Le Mollo is raises money to send exceptional but poor rural students to five years of high school at Uplands College in Nelspruit; one of the most prestigious high schools in all of South Africa. Two years ago we sent our first student, and then beginning last January we sent two more. All three students have adjusted and are happy, and are doing very well in their new challenging classes. This year, we plan to send two more students and once again we piggy-backed on the Long Tom Marathon to fundraise. This year was a little different for me though, because I decided to run the marathon.

Now, one thing that you should know about me is that I REALLY dislike running. My sister is the runner in the family, not me! My pure loathing for the sport is not as strong as it once was, but I still do not harbor very kind feelings for it. I walked the marathon last year, but this year I decided to try something new. I figured that if I was going to ask my friends and family to shell out money for this good cause, I might as well do a bit of sacrificing on my part. So, I began training for the marathon (which took place on March 30) back in October. The first few training sessions I was wondering what the hell I was doing… especially since I started my training when summer was just starting, so I was running in +90 degree weather. It really didn’t help when the people in my village would state the obvious and call to me as I was running, “Oh, you are running!” But, I decided to stick to it, grew not to hate running as much, and even started getting up at 5:30AM to do my training, thus avoiding both the heat and the obnoxious questions. Finally, it was race day!

We left for the start of our portion of the trek at 5:30 and got there at 6. Our portion began on the highest peak of the entire course (maybe about 1700 meters) and it was FREEZING! It must have been about 55degrees- a far cry from the 90degrees I was used to running in. As the race didn’t start until 7, we spent an hour huddling together for warmth and jumping up and down to keep our muscles from freezing up. Finally the race started! The first 2 km weren’t bad at all-a gradually sloping downhill. Very nice. Then at 3km we hit our first hill. Not so nice. But, the hill wasn’t so bad, and at the top was our first water station-busy passing out not just water, but chocolates as well. I collected some chocolate at every station, and by 10km I was cursing myself for not brining a bag because I had no more room in my hands for the FREE! chocolate I was accumulating. I digress though. Kilometers 4-6 were not bad, mostly level and gradually downhill. The sun was peaking out of the clouds and I had shed my sweatshirt and was enjoying the scenery, managing to keep a steady pace at about 10km per hour. I was actually enjoying myself as well-much to my surprise. At Km 6 we reached our second hill- barely anything. Km 7 I stopped for a quick bathroom break (they had portable pit-toilets all along the race). Km 9 I hit another hill. This one was torture. It was steep uphill and just kept going! I slowed my running down and now looking back I think I could have walked up that hill faster than I could have run it. The hill finally ended at about Km 11, thank goodness because I desperately needed some water and was wondering what the hell was the matter with me that I decided to run this torture trap. But, that was the last hill and at Km 12, we hit steep downhill running. I love running downhill, and I floored it. I thought I was home-free, no more hills! It was downhill for the next 6 km and I was enjoying myself keeping pace in about 4 minute km. That was until about km 16 when my joints and muscles began to hurt and my adrenalin-rush started to give out. Km 17 started to level off and I slowed down my running to accommodate my aching body. By km 18, only three more to go, I started wanting to die. I was tired and I HURT! I got rather cranky, so it was good that at that time I was running by myself. Km 19 I started chanting a mantra to keep myself moving. At km 20 I changed my mantra from “Keep Moving” to “Almost There” and then… it was all over! I crossed the finish line with a time for 2 hours 18 minutes and spent the next several days nursing my sore muscles and joints. But, I did my part and ran the entire half-marathon. And I am NEVER doing that again!

Talent Show

2007-05-08T06:09:00.001-07:00

On the last day of our camp, Kelsey and I decided to dedicate part of the day to a talent show. We told the girls that everyone had to participate, and they could do whatever they wanted- singing, dancing, dramas, recitation- whatever their hearts desired. What we got was not exactly what we expected. The day of the talent show, the girls actually came prepared and although they were reluctant to participate at first, soon warmed up to the idea and eagerly presented in front of the group. Some of the girls sang, and a few recited poems and readings they had memorized. Then we got into the dramas- and they were the most popular types of performance. Every girl participated in the dramas-some in more than one- in addition to presenting singing and recitation. The skits the girls performed were pretty enjoyable to watch- most of them poking fun at some sort of everyday village life or school that made us laugh. But there was one drama in particular that made Kelsey and I raise our eyebrows in surprise.

The skit started out innocently enough. Two girls were “walking down a street” talking, but then suddenly a “car” (a few chairs with a girl acting as a driver) pulls up and stops next to them. Several girls jumped out of the car and grabbed the two walkers, forcing them into the car. At that moment Kelsey and my mouths drop open.
“Brittany, did they just kidnap them?” Kelsey asked me incredulously. It appeared that they did. But that was not the end of the skit. After “driving” a little bit, the driver hopped out and met up with another girl. The two of them then proceeded to get into a very animate discussion, throwing several numbers around. They finally agreed on a number, and the “kidnapped” children were turned over to this new person.

“OK… they just sold them. They really sold them. What should we do?” Kelsey exclaimed. Both of us were somewhat shocked by what was unfolding in front of us- when we asked the girls to present dramas, this was NOT what we were expecting. At that moment neither of us really knew how to address that skit. What should we say to the girls just finishing? But I remembered what counselors did at Waukeela during talent shows when the performances were bad or silly, and I did what we did there. I began to clap. It was not very enthusiastic and I was still rather disturbed, but at least with the clapping the girls knew that their efforts were appreciated, even if they should have picked a more appropriate topic for their skit. Watching this South African Talent Show was, I admit, rather an interesting learning experience for me.

Return to Camp

2007-05-08T06:05:00.000-07:00

For those of you that don’t know, I spent several summers growing up as first a camper, and then a camp counselor at Waukeela Camp in New Hampshire. I always loved camp because it created such a welcoming, warm and fun environment to be in, and I enjoyed being a counselor (when the kids weren’t brats that is- and there were several brats). Anyway, over the last school holiday in April, I decided to revert to my camping days by having a summer camp for the grade 6 and 7 girls in my key school, and also a nearby school that my nearest volunteer, Kelsey, works at. Kelsey and I decided to hold the camp for five days in the mornings, and at the camp we would play games, do life skills activities and do art projects. One of the things that I have discovered here is that there is an enormous lack of self esteem amongst the children, especially amongst the teenaged girls, in our area. I think this lack of self esteem stems mostly from cultural issues: women are still seen in the rural communities as inferior to men, and the Shangaan and Sotho cultures do not make public affirmations of love. I know my host mother loves my host sisters, but in the nineteen months I have lived in her house, I have never once heard her tell them that she loves them, and hugs are rarely given. Boosting the feeling of self-worth for the girls at my schools has become a special interest of mine and this interest led Kelsey and me to the idea of having a summer camp. We wanted to show these girls that we care about them and we think that they are special. Honestly, now that the camp is over, I think it was one of the most rewarding things that I have done in my service.

Our camp ran for one week, for only about 3 hours a day, but I think everyone present, including Kelsey and me, had a great time. We expected only about thirty girls to show up, but on the first day when we arrived, there were fifty waiting for us. After some mad scrambles for more supplies and some initial panicking on our part, we settled into a routine and even with fifty girls pulled the camp off. We split up the day into three segments, an arts period, a games period, and a life skills period. For arts we did beading, painting, decorating picture frames, and as a special treat we asked for donations of puffy paint from home and bought cloth bags for the kids to decorate (they especially loved that project, but too late we warned them that the paint was not washable so now several items of clothing are permanently scarred from the activity). In our life skills periods, we talked a little about decision making, what makes us special, and trust. I especially enjoyed the trust session because we led the girls on a trust walk. A Trust Walk is when the group is split into pairs. In the pairs, one girl is blindfolded, and the other is not allowed to speak. The group is then led around, and the pairs have to find some way to communicate despite their different disabilities. It was great watching the girls as we led them climbing, crawling and sliding through a number of obstacles. While I enjoyed the arts activities and the life skills, I think I especially enjoyed the games period. For the games, Kelsey and I brainstormed every child’s game that we had played in school and organized the periods to play one or two of these games. Interestingly enough, Red Light Green Light was a hit, as well as Bingo. But what I think surprised us the most was how much the girls loved Musical Chairs. During the game, the girls did not just walk in a circle listening to the music, they danced and sang. Their enthusiasm was so great that many times they did not realize the music was off until several seconds after; and were often diving for chairs even before we turned off the music. My favorite part of the game was the very end, when we had only two girls left: Tumi, to represent Mabon’wana Primary, and Tiyani for Andover Primary School. It seemed that the schools’ honor was at stake, so both were geared up and ready to slug it out. When the music stopped, it looked like Tiyani would grab the seat… that was until Tumi yanked the chair out from under her, managed to fall with it, and then sat on the over-turned chair on the ground, and looked rather pleased with herself. I laughed so hard I almost cried. Spending time with those girls really turned out to be a wonderful way to spend my holiday, and I don’t know who enjoyed the camp more: them or me.

Tom's Function

2007-04-24T05:31:00.000-07:00

I always look forward to school vacations- maybe here in South Africa more so than I did in the US. On school break I don’t have to worry about my schools’ development, and can really just relax or travel. This vacation I decided to stay in the village, but other than being completely bored as I expected to be, the first week I was extremely busy- so much that I was relieved when the second week rolled around and I really did not have anything to do. The vacation started off with a bang as the first day I went to a function giving by my friend and fellow PCV Tom. Tom is my second closest volunteer, living about 15 km away from me in a semi-neighboring village. For the past term he has been working with a youth group he helps with to organize a function promoting HIV/AIDS awareness. In rural South Africa- well, I should just say South Africa, as a whole- HIV/AIDS is devastating. Anywhere between 30-40% of the adult population is infected with the virus, and due to poor education, poor diet and lack of consistent health care in the rural areas the results are catastrophic. My village of Buffelshoek has maybe 7,000 people. If anyone really wanted to see how HIV is affecting my village I would suggest them to walk the perimeter of the village on any given Saturday. Saturday is funeral day, and in walking the perimeter you might see anywhere between one to four funerals. That is every week without fail. So many people are dying, but no one wants to admit why. Everyone says instead that people are dying of “illness.” HIV/AIDS is terrifying to the people living here, mainly due to so many stigmas that are going around. Too few people are educated properly about the virus and how to protect themselves, which only makes things work. That is why I am so impressed with Tom’s function. He put in a lot of work to organize a day that not only educated the people in the community, but also provided support group discussions and VCT (volunteering counselling and testing).

The day of the function I arrived before it began with a group of other PCVs to help set up or do whatever was needed to help Tom out. That turned out to include hanging up posters, organizing trash bins, judging a beauty pageant and passing out condoms. A lot of condoms. The first potential disaster of the day happened when the Department of Health did not show up. They had promised Tom they would send a tent and several nurses to perform the VCT. Yep- never came. If it was I, I would have panicked, but Tom just took it in stride and kept going. Eventually nurses did show up, but I think that they were from surrounding clinics, not the DOH. Other small problems cropped up- the function started later, some of the speakers did not show, and some people did not get food, but at the end of the day the function was a huge success. More than 1,200 people showed up to listen to the speeches, watch the skits and view the entertainment. Dozens of people attended the support groups and education sessions, about 60 people were tested (that is huge-it is incredibly difficult to encourage people to get tested) and thousands of condoms were passed out. By the end of the day, I was tired, and I had not even organized it- I can only imagine how exhausted Tom was. But, the function was a major success…. I am still incredibly impressed with what Tom did to teach his community.

Power Lines

2007-04-24T05:30:00.000-07:00

If anyone really wanted to know what life is like living here in South Africa, I would suggest that you read Power Lines by Jason Carter. Jason (grandson of ex-president Jimmy Carter) was one of the very first PCVs to come to South Africa to work in the education system and served from 1998 to 2000. His site is not 300 km south of mine. I just finished the book during the holiday of nothingness that I was on, and I recognize now in hindsight that I should not have read it. Now, I am not saying it is a bad book. On the contrary, it was a very good book. Jason really captured what life in rural South Africa is like. But maybe he did it a little too well. I mentioned in an earlier blog that I use reading and books as an escape from the monotony and frustrations of life in the village. I really do enjoy being here, but sometimes it gets to be a little too much. When I read, I can go anywhere else. Except when I read Power Lines… then I was right smack dab where I did not want to be: the village.

In his memoirs, Jason describes what life is like as a PCV in detail and while I was reading it, I discovered how much I could relate to his life. Almost everything that has happened to him has happened to me in some way or another (minus getting robbed of absolutely everything I own and meeting Nelson Mandela- I’m still working on the last one). And everything he has experienced, the racism, the leftover fear from apartheid, the race relations, the poverty, the schools, the community, the damn mosquitoes and heat, the taxis… it is all still here and I am experiencing it almost ten years later. Yet, while his writing reminded me of all the things that I want to escape from this life, it also reminded me of the things that I love here- especially the people and the acceptance as a part of the community. So, if anyone really wants to know what life is like here, I suggest that you pick up his book. I try my hardest, but I feel like this blog does not do life here justice. Maybe in a few years I will read it again; perhaps it will give me a new perspective on everything that I remember here.

Computer Woes

2007-04-24T05:29:00.000-07:00

It has come to my attention that I have not updated this blog in quite some time. I really do apologize for that. Lately it seems that I have nothing really interesting to write about. Of course, that is just my opinion… life right now is a bit boring. There is also another reason why I have not updated in a bit… technological woes. I have just come back from our fall break- two and a half weeks where surprisingly enough, I did things. I opted not to go anywhere this vacation to save my money and vacation days. Instead I stayed around the village and worked with the school children. More on that in another entry. Anyway, back to technological woes. Last year I saved up my money and bought a laptop to help me with my work. I had my doubts at the time, but it turned out to be a truly worthwhile purchase. Not only could I type reports and proposals, but it also kept me quite entertained on the days where I was going out of my mind with boredom. I loved that laptop. ‘Loved’ being the key word-you might know where this is going.

Three weeks ago was busy one evening on the laptop, actually typing out blog entries I was planning on updating the very next day. Then, it happened. The computer screen went completely dead, and the entire computer died on me. Really, I had no idea what was going on. I turned it off and on a few times, only to realize the computer was working fine, but the screen was still completely blank. I recognized that this was out of my hands to fix. I spent the next hour or so searching my room for my warranty information that I had put in a very safe place when I bought my computer so that I would not lose it. Of course, I forgot where that place was. When I found it, the second major blow of the night came: my warranty had run out not two weeks previously. I am pretty sure I spent the next several minutes swearing profusely. I decided anyway to try my luck with a computer repair shop… how expensive could fixing a computer be? Yeah, famous last words. The computer guy basically told me not to waste my time. It would actually be cheaper to buy a new computer than to repair the old one. Another few minutes spent swearing. It was the absolute worst timing and rotten luck. My poor dead computer is now sitting in my closet, and I have no idea what to do with it… especially since the people at HP are ignoring my calls about extending my warranty so I figure that there is no chance of it getting fixed. Extremely horrible and rotten luck. So with this new computer woe I am afraid that my blogging will be limited. I know it was limited before, but now it is extremely so. I will do my best!

Where there are no Books

2007-02-27T05:02:00.000-08:00

Last week when I was having a discussion with my host sister Lerato, the conversation turned to the fact that I was leaving in a few months. Teasingly, Lerato asked me what I was going to leave behind for her. Teasing her back, I told her that I would leave her all of my books. Lerato has told me time and again that she hates reading, and so as I anticipated, she made a face.
“Books!” She cried in disgust. “What would I do with books?”

Well, the obvious answer would be to read them, but I declined to say so. Unfortunately, that answer Lerato gave me is a quintessential answer I would receive from a great many people here in my village. I grew up learning to love books and reading. This love tapered off a bit in college, when I was so busy reading school texts I barely read anything for fun. Luckily, Peace Corps has rekindled my love for pleasure reading, and this passion has served me quite well during the past eighteen months. If I did not like to read, I do not know what I would do, because sometimes I feel it is with reading that I keep myself somewhat sane. Here, I read anything I can get my hands on, and as a result, my choices of reading material have become somewhat eclectic. In my PCV life, I have read a mixture of philosophy and adventure, classic and romance, history and biography. I have read a total of 73 books, some as short as only 100 pages, and some as long as War and Peace, which was over 1,000. I have read more classics in the past year than I have in my entire life, and my book requests have become more and more diverse. In fact, when I send lists of books home for my family to send me, I get teased by the titles I ask for. All I can say about that is this; when else in my life am I ever going to read books like The Brothers Karamazov and actually enjoy it? Now that I have loads of free time on my hand and not much to do in that free time, I might as well tackle those books you always intend to read, but never get a chance to.

It really saddens me that here not many people share my love of books and reading. Reading is often thought of as a chore, and more than once I have had people approach me when I am engrossed in a book and comment on how hard I am working. It took me awhile to realize why books are not valued here. It’s because there are no books. Each school I attended growing up had huge libraries and children’s books that taught me to enjoy reading early in life. I lived only a few miles away from a public library, and there were several book stores in close proximity to me. Where I live now, the nearest public library is 50 km away, and the nearest book store is even further. My schools barely have enough text books, never mind children’s books for the children to enjoy. I’ve learned that if you grow up with only textbooks to read, why would you enjoy reading? When I’m bored, I certainly don’t prop open the nearest grammar book I can find! It also made me understand why children here are so far behind in reading skills. By the time they reach grade 3, many of the children here still struggle reading a simple sentence. That is because there are not any books for them to practice reading with. They don’t have books at home, and they don’t have books at school. This makes it very hard to teach the love of reading.

Observing how little reading is valued here inspired me to work on a library project with two of my schools. We have decided to create small school libraries where the children can go and actually find fun books to read. Creating a library is not very easy- I never before realized how difficult it can be. But, we are slowly working out all of the kinks. At one school, we have about two-hundred children’s books that we have collected, and in a few weeks, our library will be ready to open to the children. When I think about the huge school libraries back at home, 200 books really does not seem like a lot. But here, it’s a start… and a good one at that.

Laundry Fun

2007-02-27T04:59:00.000-08:00

Whenever I do my laundry here, I am reminded of how much I took a washer and dryer for granted in the United States. It was so easy at home to do laundry! All I had to do was drag my clothes down the stairs, pop them into the machine, add some soap and then come back an hour later to shove them into the drying machine. Even in college it was easy, though I always grumbled about it then. In college I faced more difficulties: sometimes I had to fight my way into getting a washing machine or a dryer; sometimes I had to wait for the tardy students who did not return on time to take their clothes out of the dryer; and sometimes, due to lack of funds, I had to take my clothes out of the dryer while they were still damp. Those times my room gained a rather unique collection of decorations for the remaining time that it took to dry the clothes. Yet, despite those, ahem, “difficulties,” I never realized just how easy doing laundry in the US was… until I came to South Africa and needed to start doing my laundry by hand.

It took me a long time to get the art of washing laundry by hand down pat. It was just another thing that I had never really done before joining Peace Corps. There are so many little things that go into washing clothes that need to be taken into account. For example, soaking the clothes for awhile before washing them- it took me several weeks to realize that the longer clothes soaked, the easier they were to wash. Soaking clothes overnight really is the way to go- the dirt and stains are pretty much gone by the time I scrub them. Another thing- I never actually realized that apparently there is a right way and a wrong way to scrub clothes. The first load of laundry I did at site brought several spectators in the form of my host sisters. I was happily scrubbing away at my clothes when my host sister Lerato took a seat near me, watching my actions critically. After a few minutes she said “Would you like me to wash you clothes for you?” I smiled at her but said no, I could do it.
Another few minutes passed. Then “PLEASE let me wash your clothes for you.”
That brought me up short, and amused I responded, “Am I really doing this that badly?”
Lerato looked at me seriously and said “Yes, you are.”
So I thus resigned myself to learning the proper way to wash clothes. Funny, I always thought whatever way gets them clean will work, but apparently not. After a little bit, I must have passed the test, for I no longer have people offering to wash my clothes, or cringing as they see me scrub my laundry. Water is another thing. It takes a great deal of water to wash and rinse the clothes- at least 30 to 40 liters. There has been so many times where I plan to wash my clothes only to have to postpone laundry day because there is not enough water to do so. Really annoying.

By far the most annoying thing when washing clothes is the weather. It never made a difference in the US; rain, sun, sleet, snow, wind- I could wash clothes anytime! Here, the weather is everything when doing laundry. Laundry here is really an all day affair. First the clothes have to soak for several hours. The actual scrubbing of the clothes takes another hour-at least. Finally, hanging the clothes to dry and them actually drying can take between five to six hours. At the end of the day the clothes come in and laundry is finished for another week. During winter- the dry season- the weather is not really a problem. The days are almost always sunny and even if they are cloudy the chances of rain are next to nil. The only problem with winter is that because it is colder, the clothes must be hung out by at least 10, or they will not be dry by the time the sun sets at 5. Summer causes a few more problems. Of course, as it is so hot when the sun is out clothes can dry super quickly. But the major problem in summer is the rain. The weather here is rather fickle during the summer. Rain and clouds can move in without a moments notice, and I have often been sent scrambling to take my drying clothes in to protect them from a sporadic shower. It also works both ways. Sometimes a day that promises to be cloudy, cool, and rainy changes abruptly and becomes sunny, hot and clear. Sunday was a day like this.

I was planning to wash my clothes Sunday, but when I woke up it was cloudy and raining. I decided to hold off until another day. But, around 8:30 the sun began to come out, and the conditions were promising for a sunny day- perfect for laundry. So, ignoring a tiny voice in my head warning me that I would be sorry, I set my clothes out to soak. Three hours later I was racing through a torrential downpour to drag my soaking clothes back into the house. It rained until well in the afternoon and I began to worry about the state of my clothes. The detergent here is pretty harsh and I did not know what would happen if it soaked into my clothes for more than 24hours. Luckily, around three the rain stopped and the sky looked to be clearing. Hurriedly, I washed my clothes and hung them up to dry, hoping that at least they would soak up a little sun before I had to take them in during the night. Half an hour later, swearing under my breath I might add, I was running back outside to drag the clothes in as yet another rain shower erupted. It rained until the next afternoon, when finally I was able to hang my clothes up without worrying that they would be rained on. I will most definitely be happy when the dry season arrives. At least then I won’t have to worry about my laundry drying- or not drying.

Men!

2007-02-14T05:32:00.000-08:00

Well, Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. It's not my favorite holiday- really, if you don't have a significant other sometimes it can be downright depressing! Back in Boston, my friends and I would celebrate the holiday by proclaiming 'who needs men?' and then going out to dinner to celebrate on our own. Well, I can't really do that here at site, so I will celebrate my Valentine's Day by writing a special blog entry to bitch about South African men. If some of you are offended by this, I am sorry. I do not mean to offend. South African men in the village do not always make it easy to live if you are a woman. In the past year and a half I have dealt with more harassment, more marriage proposals, and more downright teeth-grinding experiences than I have in my entire life. Some men here must think that they are God's gift to women and thus try to flaunt their suave sexiness with every woman they meet. They try it on me, but I am definitely not impressed. Oh, I am not saying that all South African men are like this. I am good friends with many of my male teachers and many men I meet are very respectful and courteous. But then there are the others who I just want to drop kick- normally it is young men in their late teens or twenties who believe that every woman should get down on the ground and kiss their feet... but not always. I have gotten a few marriage proposals from old, toothless men in their sixties as well. Eish.

I think that the main problem I see with men who try to work their "magic" on me is that they are absolutely clueless! They have no idea how to properly "woo" a woman! Here is an example of a typical conversation I have had with men trying to pick me up:
Enter The Man- picture a man in his early twenties, swaggering up with what he believes is a sexy smile on his face. He attempts to look besotted and handsome. Then he opens his mouth. "Baby, I love you."
Me- not impressed by his declaration of love. Say deadpan: "Really."
Man nods emphatically. "Serious. I love you."
Me, wanting to end this conversation: "I don't believe you. You don't know me."
Man looks shocked: "Yes! Yes I do know you!"
Me, continue in a skeptical manner: "Really. Then what's my name?"
Silence. Conversation ends with me rolling my eyes and walking away.
Man calls after me: "But I do love you! Can I have your phone number?"

As ridiculous and pathetic as this interaction may be, I have a conversation like this at least once a week. Of course, saying "I love you" in South Africa does not have the same connotation that saying "I love you" does in the US. Really, what American man would say "I love you" within the first five minutes of meeting someone? Not very many, I can assure you. In South Africa, "I love you" literally translates to "Let's go have sex!" Nope, I'm not kidding. This is what it really means. Just one of the many, MANY reasons why I am not impressed by the declarations of love I receive. The hilarious thing is, the men seem truly shocked that I refuse their lame advances. In the village, when a woman says no to a man, she clearly doesn't mean "no." She is really just playing hard to get. Eventually she will come around and declare her love back. This is mainly why I tend to ignore men calling out "Baby," "Sweetie," and "I love you!" to me. It can just cause a headache trying to deal with it and have a logical conversation about why the men cannot love you, no you will not give him your phone number, yadda yadda yadda.

The "I love you" is the pick up line men use the most on us PCV women, but it is not the only one. We get much worse ones. Men here really need to work on their material. The pick-up lines are down-right pathetic and at the time of hearing them shocking and insulting. It is a few hours later with the ridiculousness of the situation and the hilarity of the lines hits you. Then most often I laugh. So, to end this tribute to Valentine's Day, I am leaving you readers with a short and recently compiled list by the women PCVs of SA, of the worst pick-up lines we have received since arriving in country. I hope to add more in the future. Most of these lines were delivered within five minutes of meeting the person. I promise, I am not making ANY of these up, the lines have all come out of the mouths of men in this country. I am hoping against hope that some of these lines really are not this bad- maybe something just got lost in translation from the mens' home language. But to any of my male readers out there, please, PLEASE never use any of these lines! Happy Valentine's Day, enjoy.

-"Eish! Karabo (PCV)... no... I need a wife. (Gestures to his pants) Just LOOK at me!"
-"I will divorce my wife and marry you! You need to try the South African ham!"
-"Come, baby. Let's go start a family!"
-"I'm interested in a relationship with you... A sexual relationship."
-"Let's trade. You give me your bicycle. I give you sex."
-"If you ever want a good time, you can show me your vagina."

The Delicate Art of Bucket Bathing

2007-02-14T05:31:00.000-08:00

At times I really really miss running water. I have gotten used to the pit toilet, the hauling water, the washing clothes by hand, but there are times I really would just kill for a flush toilet and a shower. Sigh. I completely envy the PCVs here in SA who do have indoor plumbing. In fact, there are times I really could hate them. But, I do get by. Since I have already talked about pit toilets and running completely out of water because we have to haul it, I decided to dedicate this entry to bucket bathing. Despite what you might think, bucket bathing is really an art. You have only so much water to bathe and rinse with, and it takes a little bit of time to finesse. The first time I faced the bucket bath was my first day of training in Moletjie. I had only been in SA for a week, but during that week it was our "orientation" time so we got nice showers at the compoud we stayed at. My Moletjie host mother loaded me up with a bucket. Filled it with a mixture of hot and cold water until I approved the temperature, handed me a basin, then left me in my room to bathe. I looked at the water, looked at the basin, and thought how in the world am I going to do this? I had never taken a bucket bath before- even in Niger we had showers. Luckily, during our orientation another volunteer who had been in country for almost two years told us the easiest way to take a bucket bath. I followed her instructions, but it did not go very well. By the end, there was more water on the floor then left in the basin. Since that time, I have gotten much better at bucket bathing... not that when I go back home I will give up my shower in favor of the basin.

The one thing that needs to be remembered when taking a bucket bath is start at the top and work your way down. My order is hair, face, body, feet. My feet are always the dirtiest part of me (I only wear closed-toed shoes to go running in), and if I washed them first, I would not have any clean water left to wash the rest of me. That is another thing that needs to be remembered. You only have so much water to bathe. You have to decide how you are going to split it up. How much water to bathe in? How much to rinse with? If you are washing you hair, how much for that alone? I normally bathe with between 5 and 7 liters of water, but I add a couple extra if I am doing my hair. Washing hair using a basin and bucket is probably the most annoying part of the bath. It takes the most time and it monopolizes the water. For washing my hair I add about an extra two or three liters into the bucket, but there have been countless times where I misjudge (or use too much shampoo) and use up much of my bath water. That is always annoying. There are two methods to wash hair in the basin: the dunk or the pour. The dunking method is just what it sounds like; you dunk your head in the basin, get the hair wet, soap it all up, then dunk it again to get the shampoo out. I am not a personal fan of the dunk method. My hair is too long to start with, and once you get your rinse water all shampooy you are basically just dunking your hair into shampoo again. For me, the dunk method never got the shampoo out of my hair. Nope, the pour method is much better. The pour method is what it sounds like also; you take a bit of water and pour it over the hair to get it wet, then you shampoo it up, then pour again to rinse, and keep pouring until all the shampoo is out. The good thing about the pour method is that it gets all the shampoo out. The bad part is that it uses up a hell of a lot of water. The annoyances of washing hair in the bucket bath are basically the reason why I wash my hair every third day (I know, I am such a dirty bird). Once the hair is done, I use the rest of my water to wash my face, body, then I give my feet a real good scrub. One final rinse, and the bucket bath is over. I dump out the water (luckily for me I have a drain leading out into our garden in our bathing room to dump the water. Other PCVs actually have to carry their used bath water out of the house), use my towel to get rid of any excess soap (unfortunately with a bucket bath there will always be a bit of excess soap) and my bathing ritual is done. It may not sound like it, but it is possible to get clean from a bucket bath. I had my doubts when I first started, but now I am a believer, and in fact, I really do not mind the bucket bath. Of course, I still worship showers whenever I get a chance to use them. If there is one thing two year of bucket bathing will teach me, it is never EVER to take a shower for granted again.

Waking Up is Hard to Do

2007-02-14T05:30:00.000-08:00

I think it is pretty accurate to say that waking up in the morning has never, in my entire life, been my favorite pasttime. I am definitely not a morning person, and there is nothing I like better in the mornings than to sleep in, then lounge in bed and relax. I really think that alarm clocks are the work of the devil- instead of waking up naturally, you have to wake up to this horrible beeping that sounds like some sort of dump truck? What idiot thought of that? It sucks! It always bothered me when I was a kid that school started at 7:30 in the morning. That is just cruel, especially for teenagers. In high school, though, I learned very early to maximize my sleep in the morning. I trained myself to dress, eat breakfast and prepare for school in under twenty minutes. Thus I was always able to enjoy and extra ten to twenty minutes of sleep in the morning- and I continued to tell myself that this small amount of extra sleep of course made a difference to how I was feeling the rest of the day. College was even better. Finally I got to plan my own schedule! It was very rare for me to organize a class before 10am, so I got to indulge in my love of sleeping in. Yeah, can't do that here, unfortunately.

Since coming to South Africa, I have been put on a drastically new schedule from the ones I was used to in high school and especially college. Here, the day starts as soon as the sun rises, and I do not think I have slept past eight o'clock since I arrived. In my house, my host mother wakes up at 5, and very soon after, wakes up my host sisters. Really, as soon as my host family is awake, there is no getting back to sleep. It's not that my host family is very loud... all right, it is not that my host family is ALWAYS very loud, it's just that the accoustics in my house are unfortunately very good, so even little noises such as the opening of a door, are completely magnified. And it is not just my host family that wakes me up in the morning: as soon as the sun comes up things become super loud outside. The cowbells start ringing, the chickens start clucking, the roosters crow even louder, and the people start busting around their yards. All of these factors have contributed to my inner alarm clock being set at about 5:30. Almost every day, even on the weekends, I first wake up around 5:30. It has unfortunately become a habit. I always go back to sleep for a little bit more, but I can no longer sleep past 7. It is very, very sad. I make up for this by trying to stay in bed as long as possible. I have once again reverted back to my high school ways of getting ready incredibly fast in the morning. Now I don't even have to leave bed until 6:30, and I will still be ready on time to get to school. I think my getting up at this time on a weekday took awhile for my host mother to adjust to. I remember the first weeks I was here, if she did not see me before 6am (basically every morning), she would knock on my door and call "Brittany, get up! You are going to be late!" Half an hour later I would be all ready for school and sitting on the couch, wondering what I could do for the next forty minutes before I had to leave, and trying very hard not to be bitter at my host mother. Finally one morning, coincidentally a morning where I did not have to be anywhere until 9, my host mother once again tried to wake me up, and I informed her that I had an alarm clock and was capable of getting myself up in the morning. Since I was still in a sleep-induced haze, I don't really recall what I said to her, but I think I might have been a bit snappish because she abruptly stopped trying to wake me up in the morning. Thank goodness.

Now I should be getting a lot of sleep here. As soon as the sun goes down, my activities in the village are limited... hell, even while the sun is up my activities in the village are limited. But as there is really nothing to do at night, I tend to go to bed around nineish. I should be getting about nine hours of sleep a night, but that is never the case. I am always woken up by some sound or another, either in the house or outside of it, so I rarely have an uninterrupted sleep. That all changed when my mother brought my requested earplugs from the US. I love earplugs. They are the best invention EVER. I have had more nights of good sleep in the past night than I have had in the past year. It doesn't stop the difficulties of getting up early, but at least I am more rested when I do have to drag myself out of bed. Bliss.

Marulas

2007-02-14T05:28:00.000-08:00

Last year around this time I began toying with the idea of creating a Blog to share all of my crazy stories as a PCV in South Africa with my family and friends back home. There are only so many things I can write in letters and emails, or tell my family on the phone; so I thought that a blog would be a really nice way to share my more eccentric experiences. Coming up with what to name the blog was a problem. I wanted a nice name, not something oring like "Brittany's Blog from South Africa"- I wanted an original title that really dealt with what I was experiencing or doing here. It was about the same time that the Marula trees started dropping their berries, and it was the marulas that inspired the name for this blog.

Now, after about a year, I suppose it'a as good a time as any to actually explain what a marula is. Marulas are a type of tree endemic to Southern Africa. They don't have any sort of special appearance, and they do not drastically stick out like the baobab and the thorn acacia- trees that are often depicted for a typical African landscape. Although the marula has nothing special about its looks, it has a real cultural significance which insures that no matter how short a village gets on firewood, the marula trees will always be safe from the ax. That the tree is not well known or does not stick out in an African landscape is one of the reasons I like it so much. Marulas are, without a dout, the most numerous wild tree in my village. The fruits of the marula, when they fall from the tree, are a great favorite for both people and animals. I have tasted a marula berry, and depending on the color of the fruit can have a sharp tart flavor, or a mild and sweet flavor. Children love the marula berries, for now they have an unending suppy of dodgeballs that they can lob at one another and play with. Adults collect the berries by the basins, and use the berries to make jams and jellys, and also traditional beer and Amarula Cream (a liquor that is a popular export of South Africa). When the marula berries fall, they begin to ferment on the ground. This can create a bit of a problem for the animals that enjoy the marula berries as well- it has been know for baboons and even elephants to get a bit tipsy after they eat too many berries. Women collect the berries that gather under the trees and place them in airtight containers with water. After a few days, the berries form traditional beer. Now, I've had a sip of it before, and in my opinion this beer was pretty awful, but it is very important culturally. Every market stand around my village now sells liters of marula beer, and as the beer is pretty popular, it goes fast.

Other than the importance of the marula fruits, the tree itself is of great importance as well. It can not be cultivatedlike other trees, so every marula tree grows wild. The bark of the tree has medicinal properties, helping to treat sore stomaches and fevers, and the Venda from northern South Africa believe that if a pregnant woman drinks the bark of the female tree steeped in water, she will give birth to a girl. If she drinks the bark of a male tree, she will give birth to a boy. The tree is also in some areas known as "The Marriage Tree." Some cultures believe that weddings that take place under the marulas will be blessed to be long, prosperous, and very happy. For me, I just like the trees. I like that they are so numerous, but no one really notices them until their fruit is dropping. I like that in some places in my village, it is impossible to walk along the dirt road without having the berries underfoot. I like watching the children play dodgeball with the berries, and the old ladies who carry the huge buckets of berries on their heads- taking them home to make into jams or beer. The marulas in bloom remind me of the everyday activities of the village, the activities that I enjoy and am a part of.

The Many Joys of Meetings

2007-02-14T05:26:00.000-08:00

If attending meetings in South Africa has taught me anything, it is the real value of patience. Meetings here, whether a simple meeting with a staff member to a formal affair can really try every ounce of patience a person has. The pomp and circumstance borders on ridiculousness and sometimes they can go on for so long that I would much rather shoot myself in the foot than continue to sit there. At the meetings it can really be considered a blessing that I cannot understand the language being spoken at many of the meetings. In that case, I can feign interest in the speakers while my mind wanders. If it's in English, well then I'm out of luck because I actually have to pay attention. Of course, not all meetings are like this. Some are really quick affairs- you are in and out in a matter of minutes and thus are saved the hours of drudgery. But it is almost the short meetings that annoy me the most- simply because they have the same amount of ceremony as the long ones.

There is a certain protocol that goes along with meetings in the rural school system of South Africa. Number one: you must always have a Master of Ceremonies. I call the person in charge the MC because that is normally how the person acts. He announces the agenda, announces each person before they speak, call for apologies, the closing, and everything in between. I suppose it is not so different than a big American meeting, but the MC is only the tip of the iceberg to the meeting. Number two: there is always an agenda. Again, not so different than American meetings, but here the agenda must follow a certain protocol. The whole Agenda must be read during each meeting- even if some of the items have alreay been concluded, and in most cases, written somewhere so that everyone can see it. Here is a sample agenda from a meeting:
1. Opening
2. Welcome
3. Apologies
4. Reading of the Agenda (yes, this is actually written on the agenda)
5. Business of the Day
6. Comments
7. Announcements
8. Closing
No matter what, you do not stray from the Agenda... EVER. It is set in stone and the go astray from it insults the MC. A few of my friends were even sharply chastised during a meeting when they wanted to ask questions during the closing. Number three: the business of the day, no matter how long, is only one item on the agenda. It is really hilarious to see an agenda beforehand and realize that while we want to cover four items in the business of the day, the items are numbered such: 5. Business of the Day 5.1 Sports 5.1.1 Sports equipment 5.1.2 Sports Field repairs 5.1.3 Teachers in charge of sports... and so on. I once saw an agenda that went up to 4.1.8. Now, it might just be my opinion, but thats just stupid. Number four (and this is the one that really bugs me): No matter how short the business of the day is, you ALWAYS have to go through everything else on the agenda before getting to it. No quickie meetings where everyone stands around for a few seconds for an important announcement. Oh no, of course not. We must first have the opening prayer. Then the principal must say a few words of welcome. Then the apologies from the people not there. Then the reading of the agenda. Then the short 2-minute announcement to inform the teachers that school will close early for a memorial service. Finally, the closing. All the ceremony for just a tiny blurb. All right, I admit I may be exagerating just a bit, but really, I have been to meetings that are like this- 95% ceremony and then only 5% actual business. Sometimes I think it is an excuse just to miss class.

Sitting through these meetings can be so painful, that whenever I have a meeting with the staff I like to shake things up a bit. In other words, whenever I have control of a meeting, I completely rebel against the protocol, jump straight into the business of the day, ask if anyone has any questions or comments, then adjurn the meeting and send everyone on their merry way. The first time I did this, I must admit I relished the confused looks. I had only one thing to say, and I was not about the waste my time and theres spending half an hour with small talk. Unfortunately I only got to do this outlandish new meeting style a few times. Now, whenever I inform my principals I wish to speak to the staff, they always appoint an MC to take charge and "help" me. Ugh. So, my big meeting rebellion crashed and burned, and now it is back to twiddling my thumbs. But, on the bright side, when I go back to the States and eventually get a real job, I know I can handle whatever meetings it throws at me. Really, can they get much worse?

Coping With Kids

2007-01-25T06:07:00.001-08:00

I think that every PCV in South Africa has coping mechanisms while we stay here. There are many times when we get together and just complain. We complain about the schools, we complain about our host families, we complain about the heat... we just get everything we can think of off of our chests. Despite all of our complaints, I think that almost everyone I know really does enjoy living in South African and working with the schools. I am no different. There are days when I just want to scream at the teachers to get their lazy butts into class and teach, or days when I just want to stay in bed. But despite my bad times, my good times make up for it and I truly do love being in South Africa. Minus the parasite. And the mosquitoes. And being called Lehua (white person). Then again there were plenty of things about Columbia and Boston I did not like. But on those really bad days where all we can think about is going home we all have some sort of coping mechanism. I do not have those days very often, but when I do I turn to chocolate. Probably not the most healthy way to cope with life as a PCV, but considering I have to travel about 10km for the nearest bar of chocolate, I do not get to indulge in this strategy very often. I thus fall back on another coping mechanism- reading, talking with another PCV, hiding in my room. One of my mechanisms is the village children.

I have always liked kids. I don't think I want kids of my own, too much to handle 24/7, but children in small doses are really fun. The villages I work in definitely have their abundance of children. It is the culture here to have many children, and the norm is for families to have four or five. Whenever I explain my immediate family to my co-workers or neighbors, they shake their heads and tell me they are so sorry that I only have one sister. So many kids in the village mean lots of primary schools. In Buffelshoek alone there are five primary schools, each one with between 400 to 700 kids attending (Buffelshoek is a huge village, though). This also means that there are children EVERYWHERE. They are on the sides of the road, in the trees, in the yards, along the river, playing soccer, playing jump rope, yelling, laughing, screaming, waving... One would think that it gets annoying, but I actually enjoy it. Especially since almost every child I see is really sweet. Last year at one of my schools I made friends with the kindergarten class. They were initially scared of me- you know, I'm this weird white woman who comes to school. Then one brave little girl came up to me and said hello, and shook my hand. Now, every time I go to Letsamaile, right after assembly I get to shake the hands of about fifty children; some of them more than once. Sometimes that ritual is the nicest part of my day. The time I spend in the classrooms teaching the students is definitely the most rewarding time I spend at school. The students are so eager to learn and so enthusiastic, I only wish they could give their teachers the same enthusiasm. I cannot walk down the road without every child I meet yelling "Hello, how are you? I am fine!" at me. Today when I went running next to one of my schools, I heard this screaming and saw a group of third and fourth graders running from the yard of a nearby house, waving at me the entire way. Then, they joined me on my run. I had a posse of about ten children all following me. We ran together for about a kilometer, then they waved goodbye and went back home. The children can never fail to get a smile out of me, even on my worst days. The days where nothing goes right and all I want to do is go back home, all it really takes is a smile and wave from a child, a greeting or a handshake, and I remember what I really love about South Africa and why I am here.

...And Counting

2007-01-25T06:07:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago the long holidays ended and we returned back to school for a brand new school year. I must admit that it was a bit difficult to get back into the groove of things, especially concerning this little thing called "work." I spent so much time traveling in our six week break that I was still on vacation mode for the first week and a half. Luckily this feeling disappeared by last Monday, and now I am pumped and ready to go. Sort of. It struck me how different the start of this year was compared to the start of last year. Last year, I was still brand-new naive little volunteer who expected to "save" the entire South African school system. My teachers were going to completely change the entire way they taught, I would abolish corporal punishment and the management of the schools would be perfect. A year later I look back at the volunteer I once was and I can't help but laugh at what an idiot I was. What on earth was I thinking? I have always prided myself on being an optimist. But the last seventeen months have turned me into a cynical realist. Now my goals are much more reasonable. Maybe if one teacher starts to plan their lessons, or a school hits the kids just a little bit less, or the management team has a meeting once a quarter instead of once a year, I think: success! I had some semblance of understanding before I left the US but now I completely realize that change takes time, and two years are short.

It did not always feel so short though. When I first arrived, I felt as if I had all the time in the world. I saw my time here as how many months I have spent in South Africa, and did not dwell on the thought of how much time I had left. Always there was still plenty of time. Until two weeks ago when I went back to school, and it hit me. I have only nine months left. That realization floored me. I started to think, if it took fifteen months to get where I am at now, what will I accomplish before I go home? Nine months may seem like a long time, but it is not! This discovery has completely changed the way I think about my time in South Africa. I am no longer viewing the time as how many months I have been here (I actually just had to spend a few minutes to figure out just how long I have been at site) but how much time I have left. And it is freaking me out. But I'm not the only one it is freaking out. When I arrived at this discovery, I decided that I no longer wanted to spend the majority of my days at school playing Sudoku or reading, waiting (often in vain) for someone to come and request my help. No more time to waste if I am going to get things done! So, I made an announcement to the staff during a meeting and told them that I only had nine months left, then I'm going back to America. It was interesting, and almost an ego booster, to see the looks of shock on their faces. I don't think that they, like me, counted time by how much I had left. Now it was a wake-up call. Surprisingly enough, it worked. Ever since I returned to school I have been relatively busy. Not that there are not times where I sit in the staff room doing Sudoku puzzles, but it is a little less now. It is rather a nice feeling, being "busy." I've almost forgotten what it is like. We'll just have to see what the next nine months bring.

Bug Problem

2007-01-25T06:06:00.000-08:00

Dedicated to my friend Yo Jess who was adamant that I would go to Africa and get a parasite. I blame her.

I recently had a debate with my friend Kelsey about a "bug problem" she insisted I had. I fiercly argued against her. It was our mutual friend Jesse with the weird bug problem. He had a mango worm and got African tick bite fever. But, when Kelsey presented her arguments, I reluctantly agreed with her. I unfortunately do seem to have a bug problem here. Then again, we all do to an extent. We battle with termites and ants, all of us have cockroaches creeping into our lives and homes, we have killed spiders and centipedes the size of our hands (really hairy and fat spiders- they make me shudder just to think about them!) and the more unfortunate of us (yes, me) waged a battle with bed bugs. I have had more than my fair share of bugs. But I have dealt with them. My infestation of cockroaches, I bought cockroach traps. My bed bugs, I bleached my sheets and matress. I chased around a spider with a shoe for ten minutes before I managed to kill it, then took another ten minutes to build up my nerve to actually touch it and put its carcass outside. But my latest bug problem I've had a harder time dealing with. So far I have had super luck with parasites, worms, and ticks: I haven't gotten any. Until about a week after returning from Mozambique when I noticed that I had something growing in my foot.

It started off as just a bite. It looked just like a mosquito bite, except for the fact that it was on the bottom of my foot. It itched, but for a few days just stayed as I bite. In those first few days I spent some time examining it, trying to figure out what to do. I finally decided to ignore it; maybe it would go away. Wishful thinking on my part it turned out, because soon after it began to move. I first noticed the movement at night when I was trying to get to sleep. It felt like a vague tickling feeling, then something actually wiggling under my skin. I was completely grossed out, and spent the weekend watching the progress it made. It spread. From the initial bite area, it moved, creating a squiggly red line under my skin all around the bottom of my foot. And damn, did it itch! It got so bad that it kept me up at night; and the beauty of a parasite is nothing works to stop the itching! Benadryl doesn't work because it is not an allergic reaction, and hydrocordisone doesn't work because it is under the skin. Around three in the morning on a Sunday night I got so upset and so tired of the damn thing that I debated trying my hand at surgery with my nifty new rotary cutter. Luckily that was just the desperation of lack of sleep, and I did not attempt to cut the worm out of my foot, which I'm sure would have caused many more problems for me. When I went to the doctor on Monday, he told me that I had a migrating parasite that I probably picked up from walking along the beach. Here I was thinking that the only place in Africa I could walk barefoot was on the beach! Ruined that illusion. The doctor then went into great detail about what my friend the migrating parasite was doing under my skin and I will spare all of you the details as they completely grossed me out. All I will tell you is EWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!! He gave me some lotion to kill it and I have been completely slathering my foot with it ever since. Luckily, my friend the parasite now seems to be dead, and I certainly hope he will not return EVER. I am no longer as grossed out as I once was, and I am thinking that since I had the parasite thing that all PCVs have to get, maybe that will be it for my bug problems. I really REALLY hope it does not turn into wishful thinking once again.

Monsoon!

2007-01-11T02:27:00.000-08:00

Although Mozambique was a wonderful place to visit and very relaxing for a vacation, it is, of course, not without its faults. Every country in the world has its problems. South Africa has the remnants of apartheid, Niger has its horrible poverty, the US has George W. Bush. Interestingly enough, a lot of Mozambiques' troubles start with "m." Mosquitoes, malaria, mine fields, muggy heat and monsoons. Well, I don't think monsoons really plague Mozambique on a regular basis, but as there was definitely a monsoonish-storm while I was there, I am counting it as one of the problems. It was very odd, for a week the weather had been beautiful. Not a cloud in the sky sunny and hot. All of a sudden, right after midnight on New Year's, a huge storm hit. There had been rain the night before, but New Year's Eve day was still sunny and warm. After this huge storm, though, the weather remained cloudy and cold (relatively cold, at least: you go from 100 degrees to 70 degrees overnight and it feels like winter!). With the storm, rain lashed the ground, creating huge mud puddles and sand quagmires, lightning streaked the sky (bit scary, directly on the beach), thunder boomed, and the wind blew everything everywhere. A few of my friends were camping, and the camp site turned into a mess! Tents that weren't pegged down were blown over, and rain flooded several others. One of my friends actually came and bunked with me in the dorms around four in the morning because her tent had a huge puddle in the middle.

Sleeping in the dorms I actually came out better than did my buddies. But, that does not mean I emerged from the monsoon unscathed. One of the nice things about Tofo was all the buildings made out of thatch. The walls were woven from reeds and the roofs were as well. It made the entire area very picturesque. One of the bad things about Tofo was all the buildings made out of thatch. While pretty, during a hard rain storm with high gales of wind, the thatch does not keep out the water. In the dormitory, our roof and walls leaked in several places, soaking beds, pillows, and belongings. I was in the bottom bunk away from the outside walls, so I did not have to enjoy a damp bed, but many of my roommates did, and man, was there bitching and moaning at two in the morning! Not that I blame them, of course. While I was not under a defined leak, I did unfortunately get wet from this monsoon. Sometime during the night our door decided it did not want to close all the way. The latch broke and no matter how hard we pushed it, it refused to close. Not really a bad thing when the weather is 100 degrees out, but during a rain storm, it is a problem. The wind was blowing directly into our hut, and so every five minutes or so, the door would blow open, allowing wind and rain to sweep into the dorm, before it would blow shut again. It repeated this all during the night, and the bricks and stones we piled against the door around three in the morning were not strong enough to keep the door closed. By the time the sun rose on January 1st, I had probably gotten a total of a half an hour of sleep. The room was a sodden mess, half the beds were dripping, most of my dorm mates had collapsed into an exhausted sleep, and the door kept flying open, bringing in more wind, water and sand. At that point my sleep-deprived brain could not take it anymore, and I began to laugh. The paradise that was Tofo beach had definitely turned into some paradise.

Swimming With Sharks

2007-01-11T02:25:00.000-08:00

When we left Maputo, we headed to the coastal area on the beach of Tofo. The beaches of Mozambique are really its claim to fame, and are where the country gets the majority of its tourist money from. Quite understandable why the beaches are so popular: they are the stereotypical examples of paradise. White sand, turquoise warm Indian Ocean, palm tree-lined... it's actual odd that the beaches are not built up more. Looking the way that they do, one would think that resorts would be falling over themselves to buy up the land. Instead, it is more back-packer country: cheaper places to stay instead of four-star hotels. That's not to say it was not crowded, though! It was peak season on the beach and every place at Tofo had hundreds of people there. The backpackers was no different; I think at least three-hundred people crammed into the space for campers. That is not even counting those, like me, who stayed in the dormitories. I did not get much sleep while I was there. Despite the overcrowded nature of the beach, I thoroughly enjoyed my time. I am not naturally a beach person, so it a big surprise to me that I managed to spend seven days on the beach without losing my mind to boredom. Luckily for me, the Indian Ocean played a large part in keeping me entertained.

In all of the oceans I have swum in (all but the Arctic) the Indian is my favorite. It is warm, but not hot, clear and beautiful. While at the beach I spent a great deal of time playing in the waves and exploring a nearby reef, and unlike the Pacific and Atlantic, the Indian Ocean is not so cold that you have to get out of it every so often to regain the feeling in you feet. I could spend hours in the Indian, and my only worry would be the sun. The ocean around Mozambique is renowned for its snorkling opportunities, especially with whale sharks. Whale sharks are probably the most docile creatures in the ocean. They are a type of shark, but they are plankton eaters and don't seem to have any aggressive tendencies. They even allow swimmers and snorklers to get close, and the swimmers do not even need a cage! Since I wouldn't make it all the way to Vilankulos, prime snorkle territory, my friend Cat and I decided to end 2006 with a New Years' Eve snorkle in open waters with the whale sharks. The boat ride was an exciting experience, and I am happy to say that I still have my sea legs from all the sailing trips I went on as a kid. The waves were huge and riding them on our inflatable boat was like a roller coaster. There were eighteen others with us, and every time a whale shark was spotted it was funny watching all twenty of us trying to get into the water without a big splash. Swimming with the whale sharks was invigorating, to say the least. Our boat always stopped in front of them, so when I looked down into the water the first time, all I saw at first was this huge, broad jaw coming towards me. It really was hard not getting too close. The whale sharks were very patient with us, and did not seem to mind our presence at all. They just kept up their slow meandering swim and let us swim along besides them. Amazing, really. Eventually, though, I think they got tired of being so crowded and dove down deep. But that was after a good long swim. We got to swim with three whale sharks and a manta ray, and another... creature.

The second whale shark we swam with was actually rising in the water instead of diving, a bit odd for their personalities, and we all noticed something white swimming underneath it. I was more interested in the whale shark, so I gave the swimming creature below it a cursory look and dismissed it as some sort of white fish. When we got back on the boat we discussed the mysterious creature, and our guide decided that it probably was a white-tipped reef shark; small creatures that tend to enjoy fish rather than humans. It was the next day that I discovered the creature was not what we all thought it was. The next afternoon I was getting a cold drink at the bar and I ran into a guy who had been sitting next to me on the boat. We exchanged plesantries, then he asked if I remembered the reef shark that we saw. I nodded and laughed, saying I thought it had been a fish. The guy grinned at me and said, "well, we stayed after to really identify it with the guides. It wasn't a reef shark, it was an adolescent great white shark."At that point I'm sure all of the blood drained from my face as I took in the fact that the creature I took to be a fish was actually a man-eating great white shark. All I could think for a moment was Jaws! Jaws! The guy went on and on about how they made this discovery, and at this point I only managed to polite nods, my mind reeling. Obviously I cannot ever go snorkling alone in the open ocean. If I can confuse a great white shark with a fish, I would definitely be in trouble.

Maputo

2007-01-11T02:24:00.000-08:00

For Christmas and New Year I decided not to do what I did last year (mainly just hang out in the village because I was on travel restriction) and went on another vacation, this time to the east to the hot and sunny beaches of Mozambique. Awesome vacation, not only because it was such a laid-back and chill place to go, but because it allowed me to see a that was completely different to South Africa. I went to Swaziland back in July, and while that was a fun experience, the country did not seem all that different from South Africa where economics and culture are concerned. Whereas South Africa has a definite first-world third-world divide, Mozambique is obviously still a third-world country. Mozambique was colonized by the Portuguese, and fought a long and bloody war against its colonizers for freedom. When the Portuguese finally lost the war in 1975 they pulled out almost overnight, leaving the new country with nothing. So, Mozambique is still not as developed as its rich neighbor, South Africa, and even its cities are developing world cities. Maputo was bright, colorful and cheerful, but it was also run-down and some areas were falling apart. Bombed buildings left over from Mozambique's civil war and when apartheid South Africa bombed the country to stop aide to the African National Congress forces are still evident. Not too many are left, but some are still noticeable on the streets. Nevertheless, Maputo was a refreshing stop-over after spending so much time in glitzy Pretoria and Nelspruit. Maputo felt real- it matched with the rest of the country.

We spent our time in Maputo wandering the streets and hitting the huge open-air market where you can buy absolutely everything. They sold fruit, vegetables, meat hacked off a carcass right in front of you, staple foods, cloth and clothing, souvenirs, live chickens, and fresh FRESH fish and crayfish (seriously, they looked like they had just fallen out of the nets). Open markets are the way to go, they are so much more fun than super-markets and the fruits and vegetables sold there look ten times fresher than those found on store shelves. I could have spent all day there, and I am not normally a gung-ho shopper. The street names in Maputo also caused much amusement, for me at least. After the Portuguese left, Mozambique was thrown through a loop, especially after the civil war between government Frelimo forces and opposition Renamo forces began. So, the government looked to the communist world for aid. For a country that now is not currently communist, a lot of the influences have remained- especially with the street names. Driving to our backpackers was interesting on the very first day. I was navigating and after we passed Allende Drive Fran commented about the communist influence on the name. Then she amended, saying "Well, he wasn't really communist I guess." That's when I looked up and added "Yeah, not really. But once we pass Mao Tse Tung avenue we're going to have to turn on Ho Chi Min Street. That's right before Lenin Street." If there was once a communist leader in the world, Maputo had a street named after him. It very much reminded me of Senior Year, IR350, the History of International Relations learning all about the Cold War. It seemed that Mozambique was just another country that got caught in the middle of it.

The Great Davis Trek Part 4: Many Meetings

2007-01-11T02:22:00.000-08:00

So our last great adventure on our family vacation was after Kruger, when I took my parents back to Buffelshoek to meet my host family and finally see my site. The preparation for this last trip was very amusing, at least to me, as I wondered whether my mom and dad would give themselves ulcers over the worry that they would embarass me, themselves, or commit some sort of social faux pas that would permanently get me kicked out of my village. I found their worries rather endearing, and although I did not really show it, fairly hilarious. I was not worried about the upcoming meeting; I thought it would be very interesting to see my two families finally meet. I also did not have the worries that my parents had: over the past year I have most certainly committed plenty of social taboos, yet I am still here. But, to soothe their worries, I gave a class the night before on what to do and what not to do in the village, complete with greetings, table manners, a list of my host family members' names, and also the secret South African handshake (not so secret, everyone here does it). Both of them did fairly well... they remembered the table manners and the hand shake at least, but I must say the greetings and the memorization of my various host family members' names did not go over very well. They did remember how to say hello, though, and I will give them leniency on the names, considering half of the people I live with names' start with "Le" (Lekina, Lerato, Lethabo, Leago...). In the end, they did not embarass me too much (just kidding, not at all) and the final meeting went very well.

Honestly, I do not know who was more nervous, my parents or my host mother. Throughout the visit, both sides were holding little side bar conversations with me: "is it all right if we serve your parents mangoes?" "will your host mother mind if we go for a walk?" "do your parents want to rest now?" I was pretty amused. I felt like the meeting was some sort of formal state affair where if both sides are not placated a huge war will break out (minus the hostility, of course), and not just a friendly little visit as part of a holiday. Everyone was just nervous and after a little bit, seemed to finally relax, for that I am extremely greatful. The rest of the visit went well- good food, good conversation, a nice rain storm, a power outage, and an exchanging of gifts was enjoyed by all. My parents on their part, seemed to love to meet my host family, ane kept thanking my host mother for taking such good care of me (that, I admit, was insulting. I'm 23-years-old for crying out loud! I may share my home with my host family and I love them to pieces, but I take care of myself! Every time my parents thanked my host mother for "taking care of me" I felt like some sort of swaddled infant, eish!). My host family on their part raved for days after the visit about how nice and generous my parents were, and how my parents were not how they expected them to be; yet when I tried to get them to tell me what they were expecting, I did not get an answer. Mysterious.

For me the visit was both nice and a bit funny. Nice because it went so well, but not funny as in humerous, but funny as in interesting. It was funny to me that my parents finally saw the place and meet the people I have been telling them about for over a year. My Peace Corps life is so different than my American life that I tend to view the two with a permanent barrier between them. Suddenly though, my American life in the form of my parents was walking around my nearest town, seeing my schools, walking along the village lanes, seeing what life is like with the power continually turning off, and eating an African meal my host family prepared. My two lives meshed and mixed really for the first time, which for me was a very interesting experience.

The Great Davis Trek Part 3: Killing Kruger

2006-12-26T11:05:00.000-08:00

Over the last weekend, our last big stop was Kruger Park. I've written about Kruger here before, but I must say we had a lot more luck this time than I did the last time I was there. It was a bit different this time because my parents and I stayed inside the park gates instead of entering the park each morning and staying outside. It made a great deal of difference when it comes to driving around and seeing animals! We also came to a very important conclusion: The Davis' on their own do much better finding animals than by taking organized tours run by the park! The days that we drove around on our own we saw all of the Big Five: elephants, rhinos, buffalo, lions AND leopards... two leopards to be exact! Practically unheard of! So, finally, I saw some felines in Kruger. Nice to know that not all of the animals in the park are herbivores. A few hints when you are in Kruger looking for cats: Number 1, start EARLY! While my parents might have grumbled about being a slave driver by getting them up at four in the morning, we got in 13 hours of animal viewing each day that rewarded us with seven lions and two leopards. They aren't complaining so much now. Number 2: you don't have to look for cats yourself; the best strategy is to look for 2 things, a big pile-up of cars and vultures. The first time we saw a leopard, he was busy eating something he had recently caught in a tree. We would have never seen him if there wasn't about thirty cars parked all around him. The second leopard (absolutely massive cat) it was the same thing: about twenty cars surrounding him, but also added to the mix about thirty vultures hovering around, waiting for the cat to let his guard down so that they could get to his dinner. The strategy obviouly works!

Well, last time I wrote about Kruger I wrote about the elephants and the bastard monkey that stole my sandwich. Both are still there, and I'm certain the monkeys all remembered me and were smirking the entire time I was there. Despite the monkeys, though, Kruger is still quite a nice place to visit, and I discovered this time the joys of organized tours. Our first tour was a walking trip through the park. My idea, and my parents were nice enough to endulge me. For three hours in the morning, two trained and armed (was a bit worrisome when both of them began loading up their rifles, I wondered what I had gotten us into) guides lead us on walking trails. So, we spent abut three hours on foot in the park, a nice treat because normally the park has extremely strict rules about not getting out of vehicles (makes perfect sense, also, considering all the lions, leopards, elephants and other big things walking around that could quite easily kill or maim someone). While we did not see any big game on the tail (I was not really expecting to) I really enjoyed the walk, because it gave me a feel of what Kruger beyond the roads is like. It doesn't look it, but it is dense. There is so much to the park beyond the animals, and our guides gave us a sense of the plants, birds and even insects in Kruger.
The second tour, the night drive we went on was not exactly all I was hoping for. Of course, you always win some and lose some on drives like this, it always ends up luck. Also, the drive was the day after we saw all of the Big Five, so I believe I would have been hard to please anyway. I think I might have enjoyed the drive more if we did not have all the damn birders with us. Now, I have nothing against birders. One of my good friends is a birder. But, on a tour where one of the highlights is being able to see lions, leopards, hyena, jakals and wild dogs because they are all nocturnal, people who scream for every single feathered creature are not appreciated. There were these three REALLY annoying boys sitting in the front of the vehicle, and stopped us for every bird. And I mean every bird! Before long they had resorted my father and me to making rather sarcastic comments- it was pretty good that the noise meant no one else could hear us: I get my warped sense of humor and my sarcasm from my dad, and the two of us together can be pretty harsh. I don't think that anyone else would have appreciated us; including my mother. So one billion birds, a few elephants and the back of a lion's tail later, Dad and I came to the conclusion that organized tours are highly unnecessary. It's always the luck of the draws to see anything in Kruger.

The Great Davis Trek Part 2: Flitting Along the Coast

2006-12-26T11:03:00.000-08:00

Our visit in Cape Town was the time when we were the most stationery in the entire two weeks my parents visited. Once we left the city, we never spent more than one night in the same place (until we reached Kruger) and we began driving.... A LOT! The plan was to drive along the coast all the way from Cape Town to my village, near the border to Mozambique. Those of you scrambling for a map right now, and even those of you who are not I will make it very simple to you: it is a LONG way. But, to avoid the monotony of everyday car life (although some parts were rather exciting, like driving on the right side of the road into on-coming traffic, and thinking that you are about to die) the plan was to see something exciting every day. While I vaguely knew of our plan beforehand, I did not know how intense our schedule was until my mom got off the plane and handed me a copy... at which point my jaw dropped and I wondered how we would survive. But, somehow survive we did!

Leaving Cape Town, we hugged the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, stopping briefly in the wine country for lovely cheese and wine (I take my parents' word for it- I don't drink, so stopping there was more for their benefit than mine) before staying in Hermanus. Hermanus is a famous place because of its whales. Every September, humpback and other whales migrate to Hermanus' bay from Antarctica to breed and give birth to their calves. And every September, the whale populate in the bay (which really isn't that large) increases to as many as 180, all hanging out just off shore. That fact alone makes Hermanus a whale-watching paradise, because one can just watch the whales frolicking while standing on the shore. By the time we reached Hermanus, most of the whales had started back on their trip to Antarctica, but we were rewarded with the sight of a cow and calf, not 100 meters off shore, as they apparently decided to head back a little bit later.

After Hermanus, we rounded the Cape (the real one) and followed the Garden Route. And we started the route with a bang, considering we took back roads to get there and ended up at a place where the road was split in the middle by a river. We were about to head back when we noticed the ferry: the last human-pulled ferry in South Africa. That was absolutely amazing- two men literally pulled our car across the river using nothing but the power of their muscles. THAT was a remarkable experience. Now, the Garden Route is supposedly one of the nicer areas in South Africa, but I am afraid I was not too impressed with it. Other than Tsitsikamma National Park I found it a bit boring. Sure it was pretty, but there wasn't anything there that was really INTERESTING or caught my fancy. Then again, I think I might be hard to please. Of course, we could have managed to skip over the interesting areas of the Garden Route, but ah well. You win some, you lose some. After the Garden Route, we headed into Transkei- the Wild Coast and cultural heartland of the Xhosa people. Now this was probably the most gorgeous landscape of the entire trip. The Transkei is without a doubt picturesque. It is made up of rolling mountains with tiny villages spread out throughout the entire thing. It is very much rural, and very peaceful with its traditional rondavels and farmland, with cows, goats and sheep having free range (don't think my parents liked that so much, especially when they would graze very close to the road). I think what touched me so much about the Wild Coast was the simplicity and peace it radiated- two things that I love about my village so much. It just seemed to have such a slow-paced and quiet existence; exactly the kind of life I have grown used to here.

After leaving the Wild Coast we headed into KwaZulu-Natal, homeland of the Zulus. We decided to get off the beaten trace, and have a cultural experience, and thus ended up in "Shakaland," a museum of sorts with a traditional Zulu village. In Shakaland we enjoyed poking around the bee-hive huts and seeing a replica of the village, and we also got an excellent show of traditional dancing and singing. It was nice to get away from the tourist crowds and enjoy watching the show. Durban was our final big city we visited. Nothing too special about it, except for the beach! Apparently Durban has some of the nicest beaches in the world, and I am pleased to say that I have now swum in the Indian Ocean! That makes three oceans down- the Atlantic, Pacific, and the Indian- and only one more to go! But, to be honest, I do not have much desire to get hypothermia by swimming in the Arctic. Our final stop along the coast before we headed in-land was St. Lucia, north of Durban and rather close to the southern border of Mozambique. The St. Lucia wet-lands are pretty famous- a World Heritage Site and general tourist trap. Nevertheless, they were pretty cool. The wetlands themselves house a great number of water birds, and also a great number of hippos and crocodiles. While on a boat tour of the wetlands, we viewed a crocodile- huge monster of a thing!- that was 138 years old. I'm not sure I'd want to live that long, especially if all I could do all day was swim, fish, and sun myself. Not very exciting, if you ask me. The hippos were pretty cool also. I had never been so close to a hippo before, and those things are really MASSIVE! No wonder they are the leading cause of human deaths by animals in the world. Eish!

Well, our trip from one side of the country to the either via the coast was intense, if fun. It is amazing to me that I have lived here a year, but in the two weeks my parents were in South Africa they saw as much of the country as I now have. Now my only task is to go back to some of these places to actually see them in depth, not just the surface.

The Great Davis Trek Part 1: Dragging the Parents Up Table Mountain

2006-12-26T11:00:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been awhile since I updated, and many apologies for that, but it's all because about three weeks ago, my parents showed up in my little nook of the world for a Davis family crash course in seeing as much of South Africa as we possibly could in two weeks. I have currently been recovering from this "vacation" for the past four days. It was absolutely exhausting, but also incredibly fun. And, as far as family vacations go, this one was probably the most positive one I've had with my parents in years. There was none of the screaming, crying, eye-gouging or temper-tantrums that one normally associates with such a long family vacation, so that alone equals, in my opinion, a pretty successful holiday. Considering I'm still on speaking terms with both my mom and dad also adds to the success of this trip. But, enough musings from me about how well (to all of our surprise) our vacation went, and now onto what we saw and did!
Our first stop on our Great Trek was Cape Town. After traveling for 48 hours to reach Jo-burg, I met the parental units at the airport and we all caught a flight to Cape Town, arriving in the early evening. I had my first real taste of sheer terror playing navigator in the front seat of the carwhile my poor, tired, jet-lagged father got to drive on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road. I am still amazed that we are all alive- and our car survived in tact. Unfortunately, the very first day in Cape Town was nothing but rain-very cold rain, might I add. I must admit I was a little embarassed: for weeks I had been instructing my parents to only bring the lightest clothing with them (South Africa is HOT in the summer) and then here we are in Cape Town all shivering in our jackets and sweat shirts. Eish. Anyway, despite the rain, Cape Town is a beautiful city. The city itself is stuck between the the ocean on one side and the mountains on the other, and towering over it is the impressive visage of Table Mountain (or Table Rock, as my dad continually and mistakenly called it). We spent our days in Cape Town exploring the city center and water front, checking out the Cape Town Castle, driving down to the Cape of Good Hope, and finally, climbing Table Mountain.

The most interesting of the activities that we participated in while visiting Cape Town was probably (for me at least) visiting the Cape of Good Hope and climbing Table Mountain. The rain had blissfully stopped for those days, and so we had excellent visibility and spectacular views. The Cape of Good Hope (although I wanted to see it as well) was really a trip for my dad. As a sailor, he insisted that he could not leave South Africa without seeing the most famous navigational point in the world- where the Atlantic and Indian Ocean meet. Interestingly enough, the Cape of Good Hope is not actually where the two oceans meet- that's further south at Cape Agulhas (but shhh, don't tell anyone: it's a secret!) but somehow the Cape of Good Hope has maintained its status as the mythological southern most point of Africa, and thus claims much more attention than Cape Agulhas. We climbed all over the cape, saw the African penguins (cute little guys-go figure, tropical penguins) and in a state of excitement, my dad pulled out his Maryland Yacht Club flag, and had me take pictures of him holding it, grinning broadly, at Cape Point, so that he could prove that the Maryland Yacht Club rounded the cape (it makes no difference whatsoever that it was in a car and not a boat!). I pretended not to know him until we left.

Our last full day in Cape Town dawned clear and bright, so we decided to tackle Table Mountain. Much to my parents' chagrin, I insisted that we wuld not take the short-cut up the mountain via the cable cars (those are for lazy people! Davis' are not lazy!) but instead take one of the hiking trails. I am so glad that we did- and I think that my parents are finally ready to admit that they are glas also- for while the hike was difficult, it offerered wonderful views of Cape Town. So, we plodded up the two-mile trail (really not that far, but some areas it was literally vertical) and I ended up dragging the parents along behind me. For not having hiked for so long, they did surprisingly well- not even really complaining when I momentarily forgot I was carrying all the water and skipped a good half hour ahead- but I figured out my mom's trick. My mother is a horticulturalist, and so Table Mountain, with its Fynbos (the only place in the entire world where certain plants thrive) was her dream, and she stopped every few minutes to take pictures (she probably took about 400 pictures on the trip, and I'm certain about 300 of them are of plants). But taking pictures was only a ploy- it was really to give her a breather without telling the rest of us she was tired. Very sneaky, Mom. We did finally make it to the top, and the view was well worth the hike.

While Cape Town is a beautiful city and I did enjoy my time there, I am afraid that I have mixed feelings about it. I'll freely admit that it was not my favorite place we visited, only because I spent my entire time there trying to figure the city out. Cape Town was settled in the 17th century by the Dutch and in the past three hundred years developed into a very European, very white community. It has remained such to this day. When I got off the plane at the airport I was shocked, because I did not feel like I was in Africa anymore, but in Europe. The entire city had an incredible European feel that confused me completely. I am used to the third-world/first-world divide that South Africa unfortunately has, but Cape Town is excessive in this regard and just weirded me out. Where was I? I am still trying to figure out just what my feelings of the city are. Despite my conflicted feelings, Cape Town IS a lovely place. It has its own charm and its own history that makes it unique, and I think, despite what I feel about it, I will have to re-visit it at some point in the next year.

Teenagers are Teenagers... Everywhere

2006-12-01T01:15:00.001-08:00

I have just discovered something that transcends culture lines. That is the dreaded disease of teenage-ism. I was quite happy to leave my teen years behind, even if it did mean I am becoming very old. But being a teenager is so ick! Mood-swings, teenage-angst, high school (suppress shudder). Not something that I would like to go through again. But, when I moved in with my host family, that meant a slight return to my teenage years in the forms of my two host sisters, Lerato-18, and Lethabo-14. Now, I love these girls to pieces, but there are some times where I can quite cheerfully gag them! But they have taught me something very important: teenagers suffer from teenage-ism no matter where they live on the globe!

Let's start with the noise. I was a pretty quiet teenager (in my opinion). I didn't play loud music at all hours of the day and night, I didn't talk on the phone too loudly, and while I did partake in the classic yelling at the parents, for the most part I was quiet. But I think that might make me an odd-ball in the world of teenagers. Lerato and Lethabo are in no possible way quiet. As soon as they wake up in the morning to the time they go to bed, if they are in the house then there is no peace and quiet. There is constant yelling (and not even arguments- often one is in the kitchen and the other is in the den, and they hold a yelling conversation), singing, and freakishly loud music. The music is what sometimes gets to me. Unfortunately, our house has very good acoustics. I can hear everything that is going on, even if I am at the opposite end of the house. Of course, I could hear the music anyway; it's cranked up to the highest possible volume. The times that the house is quiet and the girls are home, I wonder if they aren't feeling well- it is a novelty.

And then there are boys. I remember the first bonding session I had with Lerato was talking about boys. She was telling me about the cute boys in her grade and about her current boyfriend, and then she spent a good twenty minutes looking at my photo album and gushing over the pictures of my guy friends. While Lethabo has not gotten into a boy-crazy stage yet, I expect it is not too far away. One day about two months ago I was visiting a private school to set up a teacher exchange with one of my village schools, and I got a ride back to my house with one of their workers. The worker was a really nice guy from Australia working at the school while taking a year off between high school and university. He needed to use the toilet, so I let him into the family compound and after he was through we chatted for a moment in front of my house. Suddenly the door bursts open, and out comes Lerato and Lethabo, both smiling broadly. Completely ignoring me, they both turned their attention to Justin and definitely turned on the charm as they proceeded to engage him in conversation. I just stood there with my mouth open. Neither one of my host sisters are shy, but it did take them about two days to initiate conversations with ME when I first moved in. And there my little sisters were, flirting with the guy they met a moment earlier. I would have laughed, but I did not want to embarass them.

Finally there is the phone. I remember in high school how some evenings I would spend hours on the phone talking with my friends. Luckily calling people is cheap in the US. It is not so cheap here, but that does not stop my host sisters! Around August, my host mother decided to put in a land line to our home. Before we were using only cell phones, but making calls is super expensive on cell phones, so my host mother decided to try to cut back on costs by putting in a land line. Lerato and Lethabo were excited as well, as they no longer had to rely on buying airtime to call their friends. (I still rely on my cell. The trick is to only make calls in an emergency. Text messages are really the way to go!). Well, just two days ago, it finally hit me how alike teenagers are, despite growing up in different cultures. I had entered the room to speak with my host mother and noticed her looking pretty upset. Then I noticed what was in her hands: the phone bill.

"Brittany! Look at this!" she cried, putting the bill in my hands. "The girls spent 1,500 rand on the phone!" At that, my mouth dropped open. R1,500 is almost as much as I receive from Peace Corps per month! It is roughly about $200, but in South Africa, that is A LOT of money. I was pretty much shocked, and I agreed with my host mother. She had a right to be angry! Eish! Then I looked over at Lethabo, who was listening in on our conversation. She had the exact same contrite, sheepish look on her face that I know I had on mine whenever I did something stupid as a teen. Well, at that point I realized that there are somethings that transcend the culture line- classic teenaged behavior is one of them.

Wining and Dining with the Ambassador

2006-11-24T00:02:00.000-08:00

Happy Belated Thanksgiving everyone! I hope everyone had a wonderful time with family and friends, with lots of turkey and pie and all the good Thanksgiving food! This entry is dedicated to my new favorite person in South Africa: the American Ambassador to South Africa. About three months ago, Bush appointed a new ambassador to South Africa, Ambassador Bost, and around this time all of the PCVs in the country received an invitation to join the Ambassador and his wife for a Thanksgiving feast at his residence in Pretoria. For my group, especially, this was nice. Last year we were still on travel restriction for Thanksgiving, and so that Thursday I know I spent a somewhat miserable time alone in my village. I decided NOT AGAIN, and RSVPed to go to the ambassador's. Most everyone else in my group did as well.

May I just say right now that the Ambassador's residence is beautiful! He lives in this really nice estate/compound on a hill overlooking Pretoria, with gorgeous rooms and a very well manicured garden. Not a maize stalk in sight! From the moment we arrived, he and his wife made us feel completely welcome. The very first thing that he said to us was "Welcome, it's great to have you here. The bar is right over there." That would be an open bar. He seems to know Peace Corps volunteers very well! Things just went uphill from there. He was a great guy, and tried so hard to give all of us a traditional American Thanksgiving. He oversaw the chef's meal, and he even had flown in from the US Butterball Turkeys and Heavenly Hams, and imported Vermont syrup for home-made pecan pies! He seemed determined to spoil all of us, and he very well succeeded! Yesterday's Thanksgiving was my first real American meal in fifteen months, and the best meal I have had in over a year. I stuffed myself silly. I indulged in two full plates of food, and then went back to get three pieces of pie (hey, of course I did! There was a selection of homemade pecan, pumpkin, and apple pie! I couldn't NOT take a piece of each). I am writing this entry a full twenty hours after the meal, and I am still full. Last night when we returned to our backpackers', we couldn't do more than just sit and digest.

After the meal, it seemed like the day could not get any better. But then it did. We were sitting, finishing off our pie, when the music went on. We have quite a few dancers in our group, and noticing this, the Ambassador then invited us into his huge living/entertainment area (when I say entertainment, I mean the place probably used when dignitaries from South Africa and other countries come to visit. It reminded me of the Oval Office!) and encouraged us to dance. So, we had a dance party! Quite soon, this turned into line dancing and the absolute best part was, the Ambassador and his wife soon joined in! I spent my Thanksgiving dancing with the Ambassador!

All good things come to an end, though, and soon it was time for us Peace Corps to depart, and leave the Ambassador in peace. But we were all extremely touched by his generosity. Not only did the Ambassador open his home (and bar) and welcome eighty crazy Peace Corps volunteers into his home with open arms, he also tried his hardest to give us a Thanksgiving that would remind us of home. It was definitely the best holiday that I have spent thus far in South Africa. And so, I would like to end this entry simple by saying: Thank you Ambassador Bost, YOU ARE AWESOME!

Return to Transport

2006-11-22T05:31:00.000-08:00

I know that a few weeks ago I dedicated an entire blog entry to the subject of Transportation, but now I feel that I really must return to it in lieu of an interesting experience I had just last week with public transportation. I feel that it really sums up the entire concept, so sit back and listen to a rather ludicrous and interesting experience:

Last weekend was my friend Amanda's birthday, and she invited me to attend a small birthday party at her site. I had never been to her site before, and I thought that it would be a nice experience to not only help Amanda celebrate, but also to see another village. She lives outside of Tzaneen, which is only about 100km (a trip I have made that usually takes between 1 and 1.5 hours) from where I live, so I thought I could easily swing by for a night, and take off back to my site the next day. Luckily for me (so I thought) there was a direct taxi I could get from Acornhoek straight to Tzaneen, so not only would it be a fun trip, but a very easy one as well! On Saturday morning around 9 I arrived at the taxi rank. The taxi to Tzaneen had only one other person in it, but as it is a pretty common route, I hopped in, thinking that in less than an hour we would get going. Five hours later, we were still waiting. There's the unfortunate "leave when full" policy... and the taxi did not fill up until 2:30. Now, you might be thinking, why did she wait so long? There were other, less direct routes to Tzaneen, and after two hours, realizing that I was late and also that the taxi would take another several hours before it got full, I prepared to hop right back out and take another form of transport. That was when I ran into my next dilema. The second I got into the taxi the que marshal (taxi rank leader) asked me to pay and write my name down on the list of passengers. I thought it was a bit odd that he asked to do this right away (normally it is done when the taxi is almost full) but shrugged it off and paid my fare. When I told the que marshal that I wanted to take another taxi, and therefore needed my money back, he shook his head.
"Don't worry, ma'am," he said. "We are leaving just now."

I should translate what "just now" means: it means anywhere in the future, from five minutes to ten hours. "Now now" actually means "at that moment." A little later I asked again, and got the same response. That's when I realized that I was not getting out of the taxi. The guy was not prepared to give me my money back, so I had to sit back and wait.

But, my five hours was not without entertainment, during that time, the que marshal asked me for my cell phone, saying that since I was white, of course I could pay for another one (I ignored him, and decided it would do no good to say I probably made less money per month than he did) and then I noticed him in cahoots with another passenger. The other passenger had a camera phone, and the two were whispering with each other, throwing a periodic glance in my direction. Then the que marshal came over near the outside of the window I was sitting next to. He was a few feet away, but angled himself oddly, and then I noticed that the passenger with the camera phone held it up, and then I also realized that the que marshal was getting a picture taken with me, without asking for permission. Seriously pissed off, I slid as far as I could away from the window right before the picture was taken. Listening to their uproarious laughter, I got even more pissed off and just gritted my teeth.

Around 2:15 we only had one more passenger to go. That was when the que marshal did an absolute no-no in the land of taxis. He asked the passengers to all chip in and make a "donation" and pay for the last empty seat. Now, there is a certain etiquette in dealing with taxis and passengers. Each person pays the amount one seat costs, unless they offer to pay for an empty seat. To ask for the passengers to pay more is wrong. And that is when the screaming began. I was almost certain that the passengers would riot against the que marshal. Many of them had been waiting just as long as I had, and we were all tired, cranky and now furious. Luckily for the marshal, another passenger wanting to go to Tzaneen arrived just as the angry yelling was beginning to die down.

So, we were finally on our way. After a lovely 5 and a half hours of waiting, we were off! But it was not long after we started driving that I noticed that we were traveling awfully slowly. Normally, I am terrified because taxis drive to fast, but I swear we were only going like 60km an hour, if that. That is practically unheard of. So, we plodded along at a snail's pace, and I was wondering if we would even get to Tzaneen that day. And then, not an hour on the road, we made a stop. This was another thing unheard of: the trip from Acornhoek to Tzaneen is non-stop. And then the passengers were getting off, and going into the nearby gas station to buy drinks and snacks. I was livid. By my calculations, we were only half an hour away from Tzaneen (little did I know we were actually still an hour away), and people could not wait? The driver also disappeared for about 20 minutes, but he finally came back and we were back on the road.

By this time, Amanda is sending me rather frantic sms', she was concerned that we would not get to her village. I, for some odd reason, was still oddly opptimistic. I told here we were nearly there (I did not know that that was a blatant lie) and joked that the only thing that could go wrong now was if the taxi broke down.

I should not have tempted fate.

Not 10km outside of Tzaneen (and at 4:30 I was wondering why the hell an hour trip was taking more than two) the people in the front of the taxi began yelling, and suddenly the taxi driver jerked to the side of the road. Those in the front two seats leapt out of the taxi, and the driver quickly pulled up the seats to reveal a steaming engine (in some of the older taxis, the engine extends to under the seats). Then the trip clicks. I suddenly understood that the reason why we moved at such a snail's pace and why we made a twenty-minute pit stop was because the driver was afraid the engine would overheat. And it looked just then like it was. I almost panicked then. I began making plans as to what would happen if Amanda and I missed the last taxi to her village, and even began wondering if I would ever make it to Tzaneen. If the taxi just stopped there in the middle of no-where, I was toast, plain and simple. But the driver did not panic. He got a jug of water out from the back, and poured it over the engine. After waiting another fifteen minutes, he judged it safe to finish our drive to Tzaneen. We pulled into Tzaneen about 5:15, three hours after leaving Acronhoek, and eight hours since I tried to start my journey, where Amanda and I luckily caught the very last taxi of the day to her village.

So, to sum up my experience I will once again say that public transport in South Africa is unpredictably, if anything. And I have learned my lesson. The direct route is not always the best route, and I will never take a direct taxi from Acornhoek to Tzaneen ever again.

Ignorance IS Bliss

2006-11-13T01:28:00.000-08:00

(Warning: This entry is particularly Long Winded and talks a lot about politics and current affairs. I apologize if I bore you, so be forewarned)

Last week one of my teachers asked me about the elections in the US. That brought up an interesting response from me.... my initial reaction was to think "what elections?" It took me a minute to remember, "aw, THOSE elections." What the US has been talking about for months, will the Democrats retake Congress? (HAHA, take THAT Bush!) I think it's pretty safe to say that the majority of PCVs are in the dark about current affairs. We live very isolated lives with not the greatest sources of information: the daily newspaper in my area is the Daily Sun, and I once read an article, but never finished it because I was laughing too hard. Let's just say it is no New York Times. First of all, the Daily Sun's writers have a certain affiliation for exclamation points. Second, it is not so much a newspaper as a tabloid. So, the only news I get is from the scattered magazines from the Peace Corps office and my family (normally old news by the time it reaches me, but I'm not complaining), the Daily Sun, and the few rare days with the BBC on my short wave radio is not just static. I really have no idea what is going on in the world. When I first arrived in South Africa and was going through training, the lack of knowledge about the state of the world drove me crazy. We had just come from a country where everywhere you turn there's a headline about global or national affairs but suddenly we decended into Moletjie, our training village, and all our ties to the outside world were severed. Durring training we got no magazines, no newspapers, and my short wave radio was packed in my second bag, being stored at the Peace Corps office until I went to site. And I HATED it! I hated not knowing what was going on! I have an International Relations degree, I like knowing what's happening in the world.

When I arrived at site, it was with a sigh of relief because I once again had access to information from the outside world. My family had a TV so I could watch the nightly news if I wanted (not CNN but really, beggars can't be choosers). I had access to my shortwave radio, and could pick up the BBC and soon, packages from home and our monthly mailing from the Peace Corps office in Pretoria brought a plethora of Newsweek and Time Magazine. It wasn't the same as being back home, but it was something. Slowly though, over the course of the year, knowing about the outside world did not become so important. I really don't know why, but as I became more content and accustomed to my village and living in South Africa, I grew more content NOT knowing what was going on in the world. I still read the magazines I got, and listened to my radio, but it was not with the same fervor as twelve months ago. Then about two months ago it happened. I became fed up with the outside world. It had been building up for weeks, I think: many of the articles I read and the news I heard just disgusted me. I was tired of the scandals, the name calling, the senseless violence, and the pettiness that the stories talked about. Finally, I shut all my magazines and radio in my closet, and stopped watching the nightly news. I imposed a news embargo on myself. For several weeks I simply did not care what was going on in the world outside of my village.

Interestingly enough, I was perfectly content not knowing the state of the world. I know, some International Relations graduate I turned out to be, but if I did not know what was going on, I could pretend that the entire world was in a state of peace. It was a really nice feeling. No more was I worrying about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the possiblity of war with Iran. I wasn't thinking about North Korea or Iraq, and no more did I hear the idiotic things Bush was doing (ok, my logical mind knew that he was still doing them daily, but now since I did not have to read about them I did not cringe every time and wonder how badly his decisions would reflect upon me, an American living abroad). In the weeks that my embargo lasted, I discovered that ignorance really is bliss... for awhile at least. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending how you want to look at it), my embargo did not last forever. Slowly, as I heard bits and pieces about current events from my teachers and other PCVs, my interest was piqued and I began wondering just what had I missed? My strike against all things relating to news ended officially last week, with the last few days before the US election. It was my teachers, really, who encouraged this end, because they began asking questions about what the election would mean for the United States and for Bush's policies. As I explained our government and how the country as divided between the Republicans and Democrats, I grew more and more interested in what was going on back home, until last Tuesday and Wednesday I was in a state of agitation. While the South African news had talked about the elections for days beforehand, they did not mention the results. Once when I really needed it, the BBC was in static. Finally, I sent my Dad a text message begging for information (by the way, thanks Dad!) and he complied, telling me the results. And I was greatly relieved. Well, this entire episode taught me something: ignorance really is bliss, but only for awhile and it is not for everyone. For me, while I enjoyed my state of ignorance overall, I much prefer knowing about what is going on in the world, even if it does mean shaking my head in disgust or ducking in embarassment.

Wild Kingdom

2006-11-08T02:01:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I think that my schools are less than schools and more of zoos. And it is not because the kids act like animals half the time. We seem to collect a certain amout of wildlife on our school grounds, and have amusing times trying to shoo them out. First of all are the bugs. Every one of my schools are infested with bugs to a certain amount; ranging from dung beetles and ants lazing about in the school yard to entire classrooms being eaten alive by termites, or infested with cockroaches. Ugh, cockroaches seem to be eveywhere in this country! Then there are the birds. They are the most tame creatures around the school yard. They make nests in the eaves of the roof, or in the rafters, but seem to keep to themselves. Bats as well, but they are more unnerving. Especially when you are in a classroom observing, and suddenly you hear this chittering noises from the ceiling, and you wonder if one is going to swoop down and want to drink your blood (ok, so I know bats don't do that, but seeing them fly around at night, I can't help but think dracula and vampires). But the chittering can also be rats, not that that is any better whatsoever. It has taken me a long time to stop becoming squeamish to the fact that the majority of the buildings in my village are homes to rats. Luckily, my house has thus far not had any unwanted rat tenants, but all of my schools house a varying number of them. They are worse than cockroaches. Ick. Finally there are the farm animals that mosey their way in during the day when the school gates are open. Chickens scratch contentedly at the yard, and goats meander their way around the building, looking for scraps to eat. And sometimes the goats even meander their way into the classrooms, and we have to chase them out. I actually had to shoo a goat out of the staff room as it wandered in during a meeting. Entertaining, to say the least. But with all the bugs, birds, bats, rats, chickens and goats, we have never before faced a snake in the classrooms, until last Monday.

Before I go into that story, may I just say that everyone here is absolutely terrified of snakes. I don't like them very much myself, but I learned that if you don't bother snakes, they won't bother you; even if they are the most venomous ones in Africa. And South Africa has a few of those: the black and green mamba, the broomslang, the puff adder, the African cobra... just to name a few. But my dislike of snakes is nothing compared to the downright fear most everyone I have met here seems to share. It seems to be some sort of disease: if you see a snake, KILL KILL KILL it before it can kill you! Nevermind it may be a harmless garden snake, it is clearly deadly and must be disposed of! So, when I saw a snake slithering out of the third grade classroom afterschool on Monday, I decided to keep my mouth shut as to where it came from exactly. If anyone knew that it came from inside the class, no one would ever go into that class again (just last week Lethabo saw a snake in the vicinity of our pit toilet, and my host mother forbid anyone to go near it for days. Finally I decided enugh was enough and scouted around the toilet, and decided that the snake had vacated the premises. Luckily also. I was getting tired of going to the neighbor's to use theirs). Now this snake looked perfectly harmless. It was just slithering around the courtyard, minding its own business, and hopefully looking for rats to eat. I decided to leave it alone, but a few girls who were cleaning one of the classrooms nearby saw it, and suddenly, the air was filled with screams. Before I knew it, all of them had run away and returned, each bearing a long stick. At that point I said farewell to the snake, because I knew it was not going to live another minute, but then the principal walked over to see what was going on. He regarded the snake for a moment, then looked at me.
"You know, Reamogetswe," he said. "I don't think we should kill it."

Well, that caught me off guard. Not kill a snake? Was I suddenly transported out of South Africa? But he continued, and explained that last year a few workers from Kruger Park had come to talk to the kids about wildlife and invasive species. They had mentioned that snakes are good for the environment, and eat rats and other pests. I nodded my head and agreed, and we convinced the girls not to bludgeon the snake to death, but rather to use the sticks to toss the snake into the bushes. Mission accomplished, the snake was free to live another day, and maybe it would consent to eat some of our other pests that putter around the school. A few less rats would be very nice.

Flood?

2006-11-08T01:59:00.000-08:00

South Africa has an interesting set of seasons. Oh, they are named summer, spring, winter, fall like in the US, but really, I think that those names are not the best to explain them. For starters, it is increasingly difficult for me to say it is summer in the middle of November, and for it to be 100 degrees in January. Just as difficult is the July where temperatures get down to 50 degrees, and I am shivering in a fleece and wool all day long. Too weird. Really, for me, I would much prefer to lable these seasons as freakishly hot and wet, hot and wetish, cold and dry, and not so hot and dry. Yep, that basically sums up the seasons we have here! Right now we have just started the freakishly hot and wet season. And when I say freakishly hot, I mean freakishly hot. Last year around this time I recorded the temperature to be 117degrees in the sun one day. Luckily, so far this year we have only made it to 98; and I really hope that is the highest we will get! Even with temperatures around 100, with no air conditioning or fans to alleviate the heat the only thing you really can do is sit under the trees in the shade and sweat. All energy is sucked away and the only other time I have ever felt so lethargic was in Niger during the hot season. But, that is where the rain really helps things a lot. The freakishly hot and wet season can be broken down even further into about three to four day intervals. Day one is cool (in the 80s) and rainy. Day two is warm (low 90s) and humid. Day three to four is freakishly hot (high 90s and low 100s) and dry. Then the cycle begins all over again with a good rain. The rainy days are a wonderful relief!

Around October and November, I have noticed that my village always waits for the rain with a mixed degree of eagerness and worry. Eagerness because it has been six months since the last rain fall and we are all choking on dust. Worry because what will happen if the rain is late or not enough? The planting season does not start until the rain comes, so if the rain is late the crops will be late. I cannot count how many times in the past few months where I talked to my host mother about the rain and she just shakes her head mournfully.
"It doesn't want to rain," she sighs every time (regardless if we had a light rain shower earlier in the day or not). "We are suffering for water."

But last Sunday I think really eased all the worries about the rain, or so I thought at the time. I was alone in the house with just my host sister, Lerato, all the others away at an all day church function (definitely not going to that!), when I noticed that it was getting windy outside. The next thing I heard was a crash of thunder I was sure was going to break all the windows in the house, and then the rain started pouring down. Followed by lightning. Followed by hail. Followed by flooding. It seriously poured, hailed and stormed for hours. We closed up all the windows and doors, but it did not stop the water. Soon, both the kitchen and garage were flooded as the water seeped in through the cracks in and under the door. We tried to mop it up, but more water kept coming in so finally we just barricaded the kitchen and stuffed towels under the door leading to the rest of the house until the rain stopped. About four hours later, just about the time I was contemplating the story about Noah and the flood, the rain ceased, and we managed to mop up the water from the house.

Rain like that definitly left its mark on the village. The dried out water holes are now filled to the brim with water, our dirt roads are in need of repair from all the erosion, and mud and puddles are still found everywhere, despite how it is now three days after the storm. Now we know for certain that the rainy season is here to stay, and people are out beginning to plow their fields. I mentioned this to my host mother yesterday, saying that the storm seemed to do a lot of good. But she just shook her head mounrfully.
"Hard rain like that is no good," she sighed. "We are suffering."
Sigh... Sometimes you just can't win.

Happy Halloween!!!

2006-10-27T03:57:00.000-07:00

I'm sure I have mentioned before that it is always fun to see other volunteers. I have gotten really close to the ones in my area, but when all 43 of us education volunteers come together, we normally have a huge blow-out party, basically because it can be months on end before we are all together again. This past week was one of those times. SA14 has passed our half-way mark, and so now with only a year left, we must head off for some major reflection time and idea sharing: also know as MST (mid-serving training), or a week staying at a lovely four star hotel in the middle of nowhere complete with a pool, tennis courts, showers and putt-putt golf... well, I for one thouroughly enjoyed the entire week. I'm not sure how much reflection I did put into the training sessions, but I must admit I do feel rejuvenated and reenergized- very nice considering I've been in a work slump for quite some time. As last night was the last time that we would all be together before scattering all over the country once more, we decided that we needed to do something special. We decided on a Halloween Party.

Halloween seems to be a non-existent holiday here... at least in the villages. Last year, I was too uncomfortable to even mention Halloween, or what it entails, simply because witches and spirits are a very real concept to my friends and neighbors. Most of the people do believe that witches exist and cause mischeif and mayhem at night. They, of course, are the reasons why you shouldn't go outside at night and should keep the windows closed. Ghosts and spirits... well, let me tell you that I have seen people "possessed" by spirits. It is actually very unnerving. So, telling my host family and my schools about a holiday that celebrates ghosts, witches, zombies, vampires.... it just did not seem like it would go over very well. Actually, I am certain I would have lost any respect I earned in the village and be seen as a pagan necrophiliac and dragged to the nearest exorcist. Shame, too. Halloween can be so much fun, and I actually miss it. I think that I was not alone with feeling this way, as the idea of a Halloween party caught instant interest, and soon we were all buzzing over sms as to what we could be. Because the party was to be a costume party, of course.

Here is another problem. We don't really have any access to costume stores, so we must get a little bit creative. Most of the fun last night was just seeing what whacky costumes people came up with using what they had on hand. I thought that I would share the highlights. Dressing up as other PCVs was very popular, and actually very easy. All you have to do is sneak into someone elses' room, and steal some clothes. This led to some of the guys dressing in drag. They got some pretty odd looks from other hotel patrons. Heidi and Mike dressed up as bogobe and a mopani worm (staple foods here). Bogobe is made of white corn meal, so Heidi wrapped herself up in a white sheet, and as bogobe is very lumpy, stuck pillows interspersed throughout. Mopani worms are actually worms, short, fat, black creatures that taste like dirt. Mike dressed in black, fixed his shirt like a straight jacket, and then wrapped his hair in a trash bag. Wriggling on the floor he looked quite convincing. Kelsey, using a shower cap and a plastic bag, went as a jelly fish. Amanda wrapped herself in a sheet and went as a Roman. Meagan went as a Peace Corpse (actually written on one of our "Reserved" tables in the dining hall. Pretty funny, as everyone in SA thinks the organization is actually pronounced Peace Corpse). Seth and Eric dressed up as the King and Earl of Burl- crowns made of tin foil, capes made from sheets, and tights (gotten who knows where). By far the absolute best was Omar. Omar has, or rather HAD, this thick, long, curly black hair. He was planning on cutting it all off, but none of us realized what he was planning to do with it before it was shaved. He cut his hair into the world's most pronounced mullet, shaved off his beard until he had a moustache, donned a sleeveless t-shirt and pair of cutoffs, drew tattoos on his arms, and went as a Red-Neck. The scariest thing was how convincing he looked. It was absolutely terrifying. What is even more terrifying is that he has decided to keep the mullet and moustache until Sunday, and is now walking around the streets of Pretoria looking like that (Suppressed shudder). If that isn't scary, I don't know what is.

The Interesting Concept of Transportation in South Africa

2006-10-23T00:58:00.000-07:00

So, this entry is dedicated to a topic very near and dear to my heart... well, not really I guess, but I think it is high time I wrote about what exactly the transportation system is like here. Like I mentioned in an earlier blog, PCVs in South Africa are not allowed to drive cars, so we must use other means to get around. This can mean a variety of things, from walking, to biking, to taking taxis, buses, and if necessary hitch hike. Not that I EVER hitch hike....NEVER. Ahem. But, one of the nice things about not being able to drive is that about 90% of the village doesn't ever have a car, so everyone is in the same boat. We are ALL at the mercies of public transportation. I think also, that most of the public transportation is not so bad. Buses are rather nice, actually, and taxis, if not so nice, at least get you where you want to go with relatively little hassle (so long as you don't have a lot of luggage). I enjoy walking and biking from place to place in the village, and I get to provide the villagers with quite a bit of entertainment because most of them have have never seen a woman (let alone a white woman) on a bicycle. I have never taken a train in South Africa, but I hear that so long as you take first or second class, it is nice. However, third class is a different story, because that is where all the tsotsis (thugs) hang out. If you were to take third class, on a best case scenario, you would only be mugged. On a worst case scenario, you would be killed then mugged. It is pretty much a no-brainer to avoid third class as much as possible.

I think I will spend a little time on taxis, as that is my main way to travel in South Africa. I have a feeling that the word "taxi" might conjure up images of an urban street where you stand out on a curb and wave you hand, and a nice, pretty yellow cab pulls over and takes you exactly where you need to go. Erm, not exactly the case here. Instead, picture a fifteen-passenger van. Now cram twenty-three people into it. Lose the dashboard so that you can see the engine directly. Take off the door handles so that the only way the door closes is if you weld a dead bolt to it and keep it locked (no guarantees that the door will actually stay closed, though, just cross your fingers). Add rust everywhere. Because there is no dashboard, there is no place to put the key, so the engine must be hotwired whenever you want to use it. Add a chicken or two among the passengers. Remove a few windows and replace the panes with plastic. Got a good picture? Yep! That's a taxi! Despite being a junk yard on wheels, taxis really aren't that bad. I suppose the main thing you must remember if wanting to take one is to leave EARLY. To get from point alpha to point beta will always take longer than you think it will. And it's not as if the drivers are particularly slow, on the contrary, they are the fastest drivers on Earth. And here I was thinking not much could be worse than Boston drivers, but that shows how little I know. Once you reach a tar road in a taxi, you can be assured that no matter the speed limit, you will be driving at at least 100km an hour... and that is if you have a slow driver. This is absolutely terrifying the first taxi ride. The first time I took a taxi in South Africa, I had been in the country for only about 2 weeks and was still a young and naive trainee. As soon as I departed the taxi, I am pretty certain that I kissed the ground and thanked God I was still alive. Did I mention that I am an agnostic? Yeah, that's how terrifying it is. But the real reason why public transport takes so long is the waiting. Most taxis have a "leave when full" policy. That can be anywhere between five minutes and three hours. You just never know.

The taxis here drive on certain routes, so they are kind of like buses in the States. Each village has theire very own series of taxis and, in my village at least, they drive a circuit, picking up passengers and depositing them in town. At town, you can proceed to the taxi rank. This is almost like a bus station. Each taxi route has their own little "terminal" and you can make transfers to get where you need to go. And once you get into the taxi rank, everyone looks after you. Each rank has its own "keeper" that knows every taxi and where it is going, and will make sure that you get to the right one. If you are nice and polite to the drivers, they look after you as well. It is actually very important that the taxi drivers for your village know you. I've had a few drivers actaually tell men off who were harassing me, and one driver picked me up (even though I had no money to pay) when I was walking home and the sun was just going down. He told me he did not want me walking alone as it was getting dark, and proceeded to escort me to my home. It pays to be polite and friendly to the drivers! The entire taxi system is actually pretty ingenious. One of the things I am thinking about introducing when I get back home is a similar system in the suburbs. Like a rural village, if you don't have a car in the suburbs you are stuck. I think an effective public transport system in the US could be quite beneficial for the population as a whole; especially with gas prices as they are. Of course, I think I would get nicer vehicles... but just a thought. Taking a run-down-sure-it-is-going-to-fall-apart-before-you-get-to-your-destination-taxi is all part of the adventure. And I assure you, every taxi ride here is an adventure.

The Great Mess

2006-10-19T05:36:00.000-07:00

If the last entry was entitled The Great Drought, I cannot think of a more fitting title for this one than the Great Mess. For that is what the activity turned into, a quagmire of 70 grubby 5th graders, mountains of newspaper, lakes of paste, and me: wondering what exactly was I thinking. It all started when one of my teachers asked me to teach a demo lesson in her technology class. So when I was leafing through the textbook wondering what did I even know about technology I stumbled upon a lesson on molds. There was a lot of boring information about how to build things from molds, but one of the examples caught my eye. Papier Mache. Brilliant! I thought. What a great hands on approach to learning technology. I always loved it as a kid, and when I did the activity as a camp counselor the campers loved it. But I conveniently forgot something: numbers. When I taught papier mache at camp it was to no more than 10 kids at a time and even then I had a hard time making sure everyone and everything wasn't caked in paste by the end.
Here I would be faced with teaching 35 kids. But I was excited, and the teacher and I quickly made arrangements for the lesson. Surprisingly enough in the first grade 5 class the lesson went very smoothly. The class enjoyed it very much and scenes of chaos did not erupt. But then I made another mistake. I forgot that kids talk. Rapidly, word went around the school about the strange, fun and messy project going on in grade five, and when I arrived in the 2nd grade 5 class I was met with 35 very excited kids.
I was happy to see that, however, because it really is rare here to see children excited about school. At first the class went very smoothly. The children were gleefully slapping newspaper and paste on their molds, and the teacher, Sarah, and I were watching in fond amusement. It was when Sarah was called out of the room when I noticed something odd. The children seemed to be multiplying. I thought I was imagining at first, but soon I knew that somehow more kids were sneaking in and joining the mess.
I don't know how they did it. I watched the door, but they still found ways in. I noticed a grade 5 learner I taught the day before cheerfully making another bowl next to three kids I was certain belonged in grade 6. And in the corner were two kids half the size of everyone else who looked like the 1st graders I saw that morning. Before I knew it, the class had doubled in size, and at least 70 kids were happily playing.
Picture this scene if you will: 70 kids crammed into a room the size of a two-car garage, none speaking English, with a teacher who doesn't really speak Sotho, the only person with any authority gone who knows where, paste covering the desks, chairs, floor, hands, clothes, faces, hair; and newspaper covering everything. You know what that picture is called? CHAOS. I almost called an end to the entire project but then I noticed that through the chaos, the smiles, the laughter and the fun.
Kids here don't often have fun at school, either. So, even though I knew the kids were taking advantage of the entire situation, like the sucker I am I let them have their fun. I am fairly certain that that classroom will never be the same.

The Great Drought

2006-10-17T06:41:00.001-07:00

Well I was going to dedicate this entry to the wonders of South African public transportation,
but due to recent developments, I decided to instead write about water. Quite a change I know, but I have realized in my time here how much I took water for granted in the states. Whenever I wanted something to drink I could just go to the kitchen or bathroom and find this interesting contraption called the tap. All you had to do was turn the funny little metal knobs and WONDERS upon WONDERS! Water comes out!
I will cherish the miracles of indoor plumbing for the rest of my life. In my village the availability of water is not so simple. Sometimes it is downright precarious. Indoor plumbing? Hell no! Instead the nearest tap with potable water is about a kilometer from my home. So we have to haul our water. In fact-Hauling water is a major chore for about 90 percent of the village. Not a day goes by when I don't see people with wheelbarrows full of empty 25l containers trudging towards the communal tap.
Of course those are the days when the municipality doesn't decide to randomly shut off the entire village's supply of water, which has happened quite a few times since I've been here. Needless to say, having an endless supply of water is quite uncommon. And running out of water can be scary. This is what happened last night. I was just about to wash my dinner dishes when my host sister Lerato came into the kitchen looking quite chipper.
'No one can have a bath tonight.' she informed me smiling. I raised my eyebrows.
'Why not?' I questioned. Her smile grew wider.
'There's no water! We ran out and it's too late to get more!' I must admit that right then I had to resist the urge to panic. The words 'no water' in rural South Africa on a day more than 90 degrees is just plain terrifying. Already I envisioned dying of thirst. But, as Lerato was looking much too cheerful for someone who was about to succumb to dehydration, so I decided she was teasing me. Our situation surely couldn't be that bad.
I decided then to investigate. 300 liter drum? Empty. 100 liter barrel? Dry. 25 liter containers? Nada. So Lerato was not exaggerating and I began to panic for real. I was thirsty, damnit! I wondered what we would do without water until tomorrow. Then I noticed the bucket. I swear a beacon of light was emerging from it. It had water! So the only water for a nine person household was the very last three liters. 3 liters is not exactly a lot. That darn metric system. Everything has to be small. So then I did what any semi-sane person would do. I began to ration it. So, nine people, three under one year old, so actually 6 people, about half a liter each. Half a liter is about three cups, and I still had to wash dishes, wash my hair, brush my teeth, take a bath, and drink something before I passed out. So next step: prioritizing. Set aside 1 cup to drink. 2 left. Washing the hair was the first to go. I'll wear a bandana, no prob. Dishes? Leave em til tomorrow. Teeth? Tough call. In the states I might have let it slide, but for some reason SA has left me pretty paranoid about my teeth. It might be due to the fact that while the nearest dentist was in town, the nearest dentist i actually trust to come within ten feet of my teeth is 6 hours away. Ok, half cup for teeth. 1.5 cups left. Bath. Another tough call. But as I said, the day had been in the mid 90s, and I was hot, sweaty and I am fairly certain smelly. Ok, bath was unavoidable.
And so that left me with yet another priceless and unforgettable Peace Corps experience: taking a bath with 1.5 cups of water, and somehow actually getting clean from it. I am actually still in a bit of awe from that experience. I never would have thought it possible. Just another amazing learning experience out here in the bush. (Please note: we went to haul water today. We are no longer in danger of dying truly gruesome and horrific deaths from thirst.)

Lovely Pretoria

2006-09-22T01:22:00.000-07:00

One of the nicer things about being in PC South Africa is the fact that the first world is very close to us. In my village I have no running water, I use a pit toilet, and suffer through the dust and heat, but unlike many other PCVs around the world I can hop on a bus for about 6 hours and arrive in a city that is so completely like the US I could swear I'm back in Boston (except substitute the Boston accents for SeSotho and Afrikaans). Of course, this also creates for a huge transition every time we come to Pretoria. While it is one of the nicer things about being in South Africa, it is also one of the more difficult problems PCVs face here. In other countries, you have the village, and the capital city is actually not all that different from the village. Niamey, Niger was like that. We were living in a city, but it did not feel like a real city. Pretoria definitely is. Thus, a lot of volunteers have trouble adapting to village life, because they know that so close is a place that is almost exactly like home, and so visit it a lot. Luckily, I am far enough away from Pretoria and any other big city that I do not feel the urge to visit every weekend, and I am not frivolous enough with my money (ok, I'm dead cheap) to do so; so coming to Pretoria is a real treat for me. It is wonderful to come to a place where there are restaurants, where I can take hot showers, I can use free internet, and also see the smaller luxuries like paved roads, sidewalks, and grass.
I think one of the reasons I like coming to Pretoria is that random stuff can happen. For example, I am here in the city for a few days for my mid-service medical exam, and because Pretoria is a hub for travel around the rest of the country, I have seen like 20 other volunteers, many of whom I have not seen for about 6 months. We all stay in the same area, so often times we see each other at the backpackers, Peace Corps office, and even by running smack dab into each other on the street. Along with random meetings of others, random entertainment takes place as well. The week I was here, my friend Jillian discovered a free film festival at one of the malls-all European films with sub-titles, but it was free damnit! Who cares where the movies are from? So in the past 3 days I have seen five different films, without spending ant money at all! Like that would ever happen in the village! Finally, just weird things can happen that make great stories. Kelsey and I were walking to the mall one afternoon, and we noticed a man walking towards us holding a pigeon in one hand. I was looking at the pigeon, trying to figure out if it was alive or not (definitely did not look so good, its eyes were open, but it was rather limp and scruffy looking). The guy noticed me looking at it, so he stopped us and began speaking rapidly in Afrikaans (a quick note: it is a common belief in South Africa that all white people speak Afrikaans- it does not matter where you come from, you speak Afrikaans. I have been in my village for a year and still my neighbors and family do not believe me when I say that I don't speak Afrikaans) and started waving the dead pigeon around. We had no idea what was going on, until the guy started offering us the dead pigeon and naming prices. Kelsey and I realized that the guy was trying to sell us this pigeon... at least we think so. Actually, I am still rather confused about the entire situation; but he DID try to give us the pigeon, until we firmly stated that we did not want it. What on earth would I do with a dead pigeon? A dead chicken, maybe. I know how to pluck those and cut them up into pieces... and I suppose that a pigeon would not be all that different; probably tastes similar also. But I don't think that I want to eat it. But, it just goes to show, rather random things happen in Pretoria- making it a very amusing place to visit.

Flee! Part 5

2006-09-13T00:23:00.001-07:00

Thank goodness that kelsey and i are good friends, because i'm certain another night of the twins screaming would have driven me insane. I really needed sleep! And
It is also a good thing that we both follow the PCV rule number 1: NEVER piss off your nearest volunteer, you never know when you might need to be a refugee for the night.

Flee! Part 4

2006-09-13T00:23:00.000-07:00

I'm certain they think i'm some sort of monster. But, that's not really hard to understand as i'm probably the first white person they've gotten close to. So, to make it easier for them and our ears, i try not to get so close. But no matter where you are in the house you can hear them. Unfortunately our accoustics are very good. And as they like to cry all night, after three weeks of little sleep, i fled to stay with Kelsey, my nearest volunteer.

Flee! Part 3

2006-09-13T00:13:00.000-07:00

But considering that's only for about 5 minutes a day, they really aren't that cute. These two love to cry, i don't understand it! They eat a little bit then cry, sleep a little bit, then cry, crawl a little bit, then cry. Cry cry cry. How is it that their tear ducts haven't completely dried out yet? It's a miracle that they haven't drowned. But the only source of humor that these kids provide is that they are terrified of me. They scream when i get too close.

Flee! Part 2

2006-09-12T23:48:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was one where i just needed to flee. I really do like my village, but lately my home has been over crowded with not one, not two, but THREE babies under the age of one. If staying with these babies has done anything for me, it has strengthened my assertations that i am never having children. The 2 month old, my host brother's daughter, isn't bad. But it's the Terrible Twins, my host sister's kids that make me want to scream. They are nine months old and are cute when they aren't crying.

Flee! Part 1

2006-09-12T23:33:00.000-07:00

One of the nice things about my area is that there are a good number of other pcvs around. You never know when life in the village might get to be a little too much, and the need to get out and see another volunteer takes hold.
Even if it is only for an afternoon, talking to someone who knows what you are going through can do wonders for keeping your sanity. And then there are times when you just need to leave the village completely for a free weekend (we get one of those a month).

The Miracles of Technology Part 4

2006-09-08T00:39:00.000-07:00

But of course there are problems to this new development. For starters you might have noticed that this entry is in parts. Typing on a phone only allows as many characters
as a regular text message. So, everything I type now is going to be
in installments. Basically all my entries and emails will be like really long sms', which I just find plain amusing. Apologies for the annoyance, but at least I can update more often and send out more emails. For an easy access to internet, I will take what I can get.

The Miracles of Technology Part 3

2006-09-08T00:20:00.001-07:00

I've forgotten what a pain in the ass dial modems are. And so as I tried to get my internet connection hooked up, my blogging and email took a back seat as I really could not bring myself to go to a cafe when I was so close to internet myself. But last night I had an epiphany. Perhaps I was expecting too much. Why couldn't I send emails and update my blog from the phone? And so here is the first update not from a computer but from my cell phone! Will the wonders of technology ever cease?

The Miracles of Technology Part 2

2006-09-08T00:20:00.000-07:00

So, I could be sitting in my house with no running water, chickens and goats running through the yard and a pretty dismal pit toilet and surf the net. It is definitely an odd blend. Now, when I bought the phone I learned that I could hook it to a computer and voila! A real internet connection. And
using the internet through a cell phone is ten times cheaper than going to an internet cafe, so I decided to try it. 2 months and hours of frustration later I am still not there.

The miracles of technology Part 1

2006-09-07T23:42:00.000-07:00

Well, I am afraid that I have been very neglectful of my blog for the past month or so. I don't really have a reason, but I do have an excuse. I blame my neglect on technology. Interesting excuse, right? Why would the wonders of technology keep me from updating? Well, soon after the last vacation I went on I went on a shopping spree and bought a cell phone with internet connection. Amazing contraption.
It uses the phone networks to connect, so as long as i have reception I can connect to the internet.

Thieving Monkeys!

2006-07-20T05:20:00.000-07:00

7/14/2006

Monkeys in South Africa are literally everywhere you turn. I know that I felt excited when I first saw a vervet, the most widespread kind, it was so cute and mischievous looking... but that was before I had my run in with a vervet in Kruger, and realized that no, this monkey was not a cute creature, but a conniving little thief! Well, ok, that might be going a bit too far, but still, there is more to these animals that there innocent demeanor implies.
It's unfortunate, but monkeys are a big problem in South Africa. There is a huge population of both vervet monkeys and baboons, and I cannot count the number of times that I have been in a taxi and see them hanging out by the side of the road- even a busy "highway." They are virtually everywhere! I must admit that it is pretty cool to look out the window in a developed area and see a monkey hanging out in a tree nearby. But I do not think that many South Africans share my point of view. These animals are such a big problem basically because they have gotten so tame around humans. I'm afraid that tourists bear the most responsibility for this- they see a cute little monkey and think it is hungry- so they give it some food. Oh no no no no! Such a bad move! I remember when I used to go sailing with my family in the summers, and we always brought some bread to feed the ducks. Well, the ducks soon got used to being fed by humans all the time and would flock from boat to boat searching for free hand outs. It is the same with the baboons and vervets here, except much worse because while the ducks only have webbed feet and wings, monkeys have hands- and they are freakishly smart! Around the suburbs and Cape Town, the monkeys have developed quite a keen taste for people food, and have started sneaking in to get at the garbage cans around the towns. But that is not all. Baboons can get rather aggressive, and they do not seem to be content to stick with the garbage. There are squares in Cape Town with warning signs, telling people that if there are baboons about do no walk around with food in their hands because the baboons would actually chase them for it. The story does not end there, though. This next bit I find hilarious, even though it is not really funny. I have heard a story that in Cape Town, baboons even have figured out a way to break into people's houses. They lift their babies through open windows, and the babies run inside either stealing food, or actually unlocking the doors and letting in their larger companions! This was something I had a huge difficulty believing- how ludicrous does it sound! But I actually found articles online that confirm the stories that I heard. Once the baboons are inside, the head straight for the refrigerator, and soon, a complete monkey bash is under way. If the owners of the house hear the ruckus and go to investigate, they could find like ten baboons feasting on the ice cream that the family might be saving for a special occasion. And under no circumstances should the owner break up the monkey party! Baboons get mighty angry if their fun is disturbed and can get pretty violent as well. But anyway, I digress... as usual.
So, back to Kruger Park. Amanda and I had spent the morning driving around and searching for animals when we decided that it was time for a much needed lunch break. We headed to Berg-en-Daal Camp and went to the picnic area to rest for a bit and enjoy our lunch in leisure. We noticed right away that there were a ton of vervet monkeys around, watching the other picnickers, but still keeping a distance away. Amanda and I settled down on a bench with out bag of food between us, and I pulled out some bread to make a sandwich. I set the bread on my lap to use as a table, and turned away for a split second to pull out our jar of peanut butter. Suddenly, something that feels like tiny hands scrape across my leg, and not knowing what it was, I screamed. Looking down, I notice my bread is gone! Then I notice a small vervet sitting in the tree next to the bench, what was to be my lunch gripped in his hand, and thoroughly enjoying himself. I swear, he just looked at me and if monkeys could talk, I am certain he would start heckling- he definitely was smirking! It took quite some time for me to come to grips with the fact that a monkey actually stole my lunch right from my lap, and then I was a mix of both anger and amusement. It goes to show, do not be deceived by their innocent and cut faces, inside all vervets (and baboons) are the sneakiest of creatures, and are just busy plotting how to steal your lunch.

Searching for Wildlife

2006-07-20T05:18:00.000-07:00

7/10/2006

African national parks are truly amazing places. Trapped away from the hustle and bustle of human life, entering a park is like suddenly being enveloped into a whole new world. Gone are the sights and sound of modernity, and all that is left is dense savannah filled with exotic trees, sharp thorn bushes, the calls of birds and insects and wild animals camouflaged so well by their surroundings- ones that most Americans only get to see in zoos. Kruger National Park of South Africa is only one such games parks that are rapidly springing up in a land where tourists eager to see the “Big 5” make up a lot of the income for these developing countries. The park, about the same size of Israel, is the largest game park in South Africa, spanning along the border of South Africa and Mozambique. It is home to hundreds of species of mammals and birds, including the ever so popular “Big 5”- elephants, African buffalo, rhinos, lions, and leopards. The two days Amanda and I spent in Kruger were full to the brim of wild life, and also fighting the other tourists for space on the roads to see these animals. While we did not see any lions or leopards, or any other big predators for that matter, we did see elephants, rhinos, buffalo, zebras, giraffes, wildebeest, warthogs, hippos, crocodiles, hyenas, jackals, and tons and tons of DLTs (Deer-Like-Things). In fact, I am pretty certain that the impala, a type of antelope, and the elephant are plotting to take over Kruger, they are so numerous! It seemed everywhere we turned there was another herd of impala, just calmly eating, eating, pausing briefly to look at us pass by, then going back to eating. It came to the point that we grew so tired of seeing impala that we began saying “We don’t want to see another impala unless there is a lion eating it!”
The elephants, though not as numerous as the impala, nevertheless were plentiful as well. In our two days there, we saw several herds of elephants, and the total number we must have seen was near to one-hundred. But, that is not uncommon now in Kruger Park. While I like the park very much, I know in my heart of hearts that it is not a natural wilderness. The animal numbers are carefully observed, and as it is a huge tourist spot, more animals the better! So, man-made watering holes were built to supplement the ones that go dry in the rainy season, ensuring that the animals never go thirsty, but also disrupting the delicate balance of nature. Elephants have no real predator except for humans, and in a protected environment with even nature controlled, the population of elephants has sky-rocketed in the past ten years. Now, officials claim that there are 10,000 too many elephants in Kruger than the park can effectively maintain. The big problem with the over-population of elephants is the amount of food and water they need in a day. So many elephants in Kruger results in the disappearance of much vegetation and water that other species depend on, effectively shrinking populations of other herbivores while their own expands. Now the government is thinking of plans to re-create an effective balance. But unfortunately, that means either packing up and moving 10,000 elephants or killing 10,000 elephants. Neither of these seems to the government to be a good option. Moving 10,000 elephants? Where would they move to? Can you imagine capturing 10,000 elephants, putting them on trucks, and driving them hundreds of miles to other parks? What a headache that would be! The other option is culling (controlled killing) of the animals, and that could cause even more trouble. This option is what South Africa used to do to control the animal population ten years ago, but the protest from environmental groups became so widespread that the government agreed to stop. It was then that the elephant population got out of control. Now, faced with such a huge environmental problem occurring in Kruger, the government is cautiously edging towards the option once more, but not before it has invited eighteen months of “talks” with environmental groups and animal activist. Unfortunately, this is a lose-lose situation for the government. If they go ahead with the culling they will piss off the international community for cruelly killing 10,000 members of a threatened specie, and therefore wrecking the environment. If they allow things to go on, the elephant number will rise and continue to damage trees and other wildlife, and therefore wrecking the environment. There is no easy decision.

Why Peace Corps Volunteers are not Allowed to Drive...

2006-07-20T05:07:00.000-07:00

7/10/2006

Winter has descended upon South Africa and it is finally time for the nice long three-week winter holidays! Some of you might be wondering, wait, vacation? Again? Didn’t you just come back from vacation? Ah, the joys of year-round school! While no long ten-week vacation during the summer we get lots of shorter vacations about every eight to ten weeks. And as much as I like being a volunteer, those vacations sure do look very good after ten weeks of village life! While last vacations found me tramping through the wilds of Middle Earth in a very off-the-beaten-track holiday, this time around my friend Amanda and I decided to do something completely touristy and rent a car, roam around Kruger National Park for a few days, and then head off to Swaziland- another tourist trap! And from the very first day our vacation became a wild adventure with more than one event doubling us over with laughter (it could have been the sugar high we had from basically living off of marshmallows, peanut butter, hot chocolate, and nutella… but we were on vacation! You’re not supposed to eat healthy on vacation!). But our adventures first began with the rental car.
As Peace Corps volunteers living in foreign countries and thus bound to those countries’ laws, there are lots of things that can potentially get us in trouble. One of those things is driving as there have been numerous car crashes that have killed volunteers in the past, and even a few volunteers convicted of man-slaughter when involved in accidents. So, to protect us volunteers, Peace Corps has enacted a rule that while on duty we are not allowed to drive. I don’t really mind it so much- I can pretty much get anywhere I want to go on foot, by bicycle or with public transport and South African drivers are SCARY- but it is nice on vacations when, at our own risk, of course, we are allowed to rent and drive cars as soon as we go on leave. As Amanda and I are probably the cheapest volunteers ever, we opted not to go on a guided safari of Kruger, but instead to rent a car- much cheaper and easier to see what we wanted in the park. Of course, there was a lot of added stress as well. We are poor volunteers, and the thought of damaging the rental and having to pay for anything made us shudder. And so, when not even an hour after we picked up the car we backed into a mealie (corn) bag and somehow managed to dent the bumper, we both nearly hyperventilated. Luckily we managed to pop the bumper back into place, and the rental people never knew the difference. That was our first driving lesson in South Africa: Never run over a bag of mealies- they are like moose. You may hit a moose and total your car while the moose walks away uninjured. Likewise, you may hit a bag of mealies and dent your car, and the mealie bag will lay there uninjured. Other lessons soon followed the first: red lights in South Africa do not necessarily mean stop, one-way roads do not always mean they are really one-way, and oh yes, lots of traffic cops are corrupt and once they see a tourist driving a rental car, feel it is an easy way to make some quick cash.
Well, perhaps the last thing on the list was our first lesson about driving in South Africa, as it occurred before we even picked up our rental car. Amanda and I bummed a ride off of our friends Jillian and Meagan, who were taking a road trip to the Eastern Cape and agreed to drop us off in Nelspruit on the way. Jillian was at the wheel of their snazzy stick-shift car (now that was impressive, managing a stick-shift on the wrong side of the car while remembering to drive on the wrong side of the road. Amanda and I were not that daring, we rented an automatic) when we were pulled over by a traffic cop. The cop said that we were speeding (I don’t think we were, but who knows) but the second he saw Jillian’s license and realized we were from the US; his eyes lit up. I know he was thinking “Oooh! Stupid Americans! Maybe I can make a quick buck out of them!”
“Do you have the money to pay the fine now?” he asked. “Because all tourists must pay when they are pulled over.”
There was a pause as all of us in the car were thinking: should we just go and buy you a goat now? Or should we deposit the money directly into your bank account? Because we all knew there was no way that the government or whoever collects fines in South Africa would ever see that money. It was the most ridiculous attempt to get a bribe I have ever heard. Now I do not pay people to be assholes. That pretty much sums up my whole policy on bribes. Unfortunately tourists probably do believe these things and pay without checking first, as the thought of going to an African jail might be too much, so the traffic cop probably thought we would fall into the trap. Oh no. That was not going to happen.
“Well, I just rented the car this morning, and I am not certain what the rental policy is if we get pulled over,” Jillian said. She whipped out her cell phone. “Let me call them real quick.”
Might I add that this was a complete bluff as a few days previously a rat had chewed through the cord of Jillian’s cell phone charger and thus her phone battery was dead (yes that did actually happen, we do deal with rats on a regular basis). But, suddenly, there was no problem! The traffic cop just smiled at us told us that it was no big deal, and waved us on our way. We laughed about the lame attempt for a bribe for the next few kilometers, and Meagan pretty much summed it up by saying, “You know, I would have respected him a lot more if he had just flat out asked for a bribe.”
So, lessons learned about driving in South Africa: mealie bags are hazards, other drivers are hazards, we as American drivers are hazards, and traffic cops are hazards. Yes, I pretty much understand now why Peace Corps Volunteers are not allowed to drive.

Unraveling the Family Tree

2006-06-24T01:35:00.000-07:00

6/18/2006

So, last night after I arrived home from the wedding, I discovered that my host mother was having a family gathering. It is not unusual for family to stop by and say hello- in the house in back of ours lives one of my aunts, a cousin, and her two children, and three houses down live another aunt, her children, and my grandmother. But, this was a special family gathering as it had relatives who came from Johannesburg to visit for the long weekend (Friday was Youth Day- a public holiday). Being away, I missed the family arrival, so my host mother took it upon herself to introduce me to the people I did not know. One of the women she introduced as her sister.
“Oh hello,” I responded to the woman. “And how are you related?”
That response suddenly struck me as odd, but it is one that I have gotten used to saying. Many of you might be thinking, ‘well, your host mother just told you that she was her sister, stupid!’ But there are many different types of “sisters” in a South African family. In fact, my host mother has more that fifty of them, many of whom I have yet to meet. And those of you thinking about polygamy: nope that’s not the answer. My Rakgolo (grandfather) only had one wife, and they only had five children: my host mother, her brother, and then her three younger sisters. So where did the other forty-seven sisters come in? Let’s return to Anthropology 101 and learn about the exciting world of African kinship!
When I first took anthropology in university, we spent a lot of time learning about the different descent groups: patrilineal, matrilineal, etc. It was a rather confusing unit, and I am afraid that I did not understand everything about these peculiar kinship groups. Now that I am living it, I do understand a little bit more… but have been pretty confused for the past ten months. Let’s start with a hypothetical family. We’ll have a mom, dad, and six children, three boys, three girls. Ok, now all of these six children get married and have kids of their own. Well, in American culture, we would say that the kids of these original children will have five aunts or uncles. Not in Sotho culture! These kids would have five mothers, fathers, aunts or uncles. Let’s look at the girls. Say that the middle daughter has a child, and has a younger sister and an older one. Her child would then have three mothers: its real mother, its younger mother- the younger sister- or “mmane” (literally translated to little mother) and an older mother- the older sister- or “mamagolo” (literally translated to big mother). So, the kid has three mothers. But, instead of having four fathers (the biological father and the three brothers of the mother) the kid would have three uncles. Ok, the girls are sorted out; now let’s look at the boys! So the middle brother has a kid. This kid would have three fathers- its real father “tate,” its older father “ramogolo” (the older brother to the biological father, the name literally translates to big father) and its younger father “rangwane” ( the younger brother to the biological father). But, the child would have three aunts, the sisters to its biological father. So, to recap: an uncle is only the brother of your biological mother, and aunt is only the sister of you biological father. Any sister of your mother is your mother as well, and any brother of you father is your father as well. Confused yet? Just wait! It gets better!
So, we have defined mother, father, aunt and uncle… now let’s look at the term sister and brother. Looking back at our family, the children of the original six brothers and sisters would all be cousins, right? Wrong! Instead, it is a jumble of brothers, sisters, and cousins. This is a bit easier to explain… sort of. Well, so the child of the middle sister has three mothers, right? So it makes sense that the children of those mothers are all the kids’ brothers and sisters. And that’s how it works. Quick example: like I said, my host mother has three younger sisters, my mmanes (bommane if I want to be linguistically accurate) so all of their children are also my host brothers and sisters. But, with the brother of my host mother (my uncle) all of his children would just be my cousins. Now, let’s return to the boys of our hypothetical family. So, the middle brother has a child, and the child has three fathers. All of the children of those fathers would then become its brothers and sisters. But, its three aunts’ children would all be cousins. Another example: in the US my dad has two brothers, one older, one younger. So I would have three fathers. My cousin Perry, the son of my rangwane, would be my brother and my other cousin Catherine, the daughter of my ramogolo, would be my sister. Whew! The most confusing part though, is when we get to the third, fourth, fifth etc., generations. I still have not figured this out yet. My host cousin, Ellen (well, as she is the daughter of my mmane, she’s actually my sister) has two children, Thabang and Mavu. Now, I am completely confused as to how they are related to me. Are they my niece and nephew? Cousins? What? (Hell, I’m not even sure what they’re title would be in the states: second cousins? First-cousins-once-removed?) My host sister, Lethabo, though, just refers to them as her brother and sister. So, as far as I can figure it, following the separate lineage of the men and women in the family, everyone finally gets so confused that everyone else just becomes a brother or a sister. That makes it so much easier, and avoids a lot of headaches. So, that’s the story of South African kinship, and explains why my host mother has a million brothers and sisters- even if some of them turn up to be fifth cousins thrice removed or whatever… Yep. Definitely a headache.

Nighttime Paranoia

2006-06-24T01:31:00.000-07:00

6/13/2006

I don’t know what it is about the dark, but it tends to make my imagination run out of control. All I have to do is turn out the lights, and suddenly my mind is going on full blast and no matter how hard I try I cannot turn it off. Perhaps that explains why I am a major insomniac… anyway, far be it for me to speak for the entire human race, but I think it is safe to say that most people feel this way. When darkness surrounds us, objects that were so clear in the light take on grotesque or obscured appearances. And then there are the night sounds. Growing up in Maryland, I fell asleep easily to the sounds there- the quiet hum of crickets at nighttime, the occasional roar of a car going down the nearby road, and as I grew older, the steady pounding of my sister running on the treadmill at all hours of the night (she’s an insomniac too!). When I went to school in Boston, I had a whole new wave of night sounds to get used to, but after a few weeks I did so, and fell asleep to the sounds of drunken college students on the street, occasional sirens running down Commonwealth Avenue, and the rumbling and ringing of the T until it finally shut down at midnight. Now in Africa, I have a whole new range of night sounds to get used to, and even after ten months I have still not gotten used to some. Now I can sleep through the chanting of the ZCC church on the hill behind me as they hold all-night vigils, and I can sleep through the barking dogs in the houses next to us. I can even sleep through the crowing of roosters (I don’t know who it was who stated that roosters crow at dawn, but it is a myth… no scratch that, it is not a myth, it is a downright lie! Let me tell you, roosters do not just crow at dawn, they crow whenever they damn well please! It can be in the middle of the afternoon, dusk, or, if it suits their fancy, the middle of the night. And once one rooster starts to crow, it suddenly becomes a competition of masculinity, because every other rooster within hearing range crows also until there is an entire chorus).
Well, I digress- as usual. You might be looking at the title and be wondering, “Ok, where is the paranoia?” Well, as I said previously, night changes the face of objects, people, and even sounds, and can allow some imaginations run wild. That in itself can lead to wild dreams that cause anyone to wake up with a sense of paranoia. In PC South Africa, though, we have something that makes it worse: Mefloquin. As South Africa is a target for malaria, all PCVs have to take anti-malarial prophylaxis. Mefloquin is one of these medications, but its side effects include anxiety, nightmares, and acute paranoia. I had to take mefloquin once before, in Niger, and I promise you, it is not something that I would like to repeat. I still remember waking up to absolutely wild nightmares that ranged from riding a runaway camel through Boston Commons, to dreaming that Satan was sitting at the foot of my bed, watching me. So, I was very relieved when PC decided to put me on another type of prophylaxis, Doxycycline, a med that did not have these wonderful side effects. However, there have been mefloquin-induced paranoid stories from other PCVs, including a search and destroy mission that lasted for three hours against an invasion of cockroaches and the absolute certainty that bugs were crawling over another throughout the night. Despite the fact that I am not taking mefloquin, I still have paranoid imaginings, but only at nighttime. During the day, I am as sane as I possibly can be, but at night, well, let’s just say that sometimes it can get bad.
Last night was a perfect example of such a paranoid episode. I was woken up by some noise outside my window at about one in the morning. It was absolutely silent in the house, so I heard the sound of rustling and fumbling outside quite clearly. Instantly I was on alert, and lying rigid in my bed, allowed my imagination to start. Now, if I had taken a deep breath and thought clearly, I would have probably come to the logical conclusion that it was a stray goat or dog outside- they come into our yard on a regular basis. But, as I believe logic disappears from the mind the second the sun goes down, of course the very first thing I thought of was that there was an ax murderer outside, and he was trying to get in my window. This in itself is ridiculous, because I have steel burglar bars welded into the window frame- it is impossible for any human to crawl through (not the most comforting thought when you think of it as a fire hazard, but oh well). However, as it was pitch black in my room, the dark played up my fears and the thought that the bars would protect me did not comfort me in the least. I just turned my train of thought to the fact that the thug outside could shoot me with the AK-47 he clearly had if he wanted to. For several minutes I lay as still as a stone, too afraid to move and too afraid to peek out the window to see what it was (because he would shoot me if I dared look!). After a moment, I heard the rustling move towards my host mothers’ car parked directly behind my window. I then knew that the thug had decided not to try and get into my room, but to steal my host mothers’ car! While I was relieved that I would not die, I did not want to just sit and let the thief get away, either. I was preparing myself to scream when the noise abruptly stopped. Puzzled, I lay still for a moment, and then a creaking sound emerged. I steeled my nerves to peak outside, and there the culprit was- a small white bird barely the size of my hand and currently using the clothesline outside as a swing. Eventually I managed to fall back asleep, but it was not until this morning when I felt some shame and embarrassment with the entire episode- then hilarity replaced the embarrassment. I got all worked up because of a bird. Amused, I texted the story to one of my friends, and her response: “That just reminded me to take my mefloquin.”

Burning Down the Kitchen

2006-06-06T06:02:00.000-07:00

6/2/2006

I have discovered since joining Peace Corps that there are certain hobbies one can take up to pass the time and help keep the boredom at bay. For me, I have become very fond of cooking. In fact, one of my favorite times of day is dinner preparation time. I think that my host family enjoys my dinner preparation time also, because usually I am making something they have never had before, and are amazed that it can actually make a meal. In fact, I often have an audience when I cook. One of my possessions that I cherish above all others is the Peace Corps Cookbook (yes, yes, I’m pathetic). Let me tell you, that thing is AMAZING! It has some wonderful recipes and excellent ideas to throw together a scrumptious meal of only a few ingredients. I don’t think that I am the only one who cherishes it, either. SA-14 was as a whole highly disappointed that we did not receive it during our training, so when at In-Service-Training five months later PC Medical Staff announced that they had the cookbooks for us, there was a mad rush to obtain them. It is a very good thing that the Med Staff had enough, because I am very certain that if they did not a riot or brawl would have begun.
So, for the past five months or so, I have highly enjoyed experimenting with the cookbook recipes. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t, and sometimes, like today, they get me into trouble. I decided this morning to try out a donut recipe in the cookbook. Kelsey, my closest volunteer, tried them a few weeks ago and raved about them, so I decided to get up extra early to whip up a batch before heading off to school. It was only after I mixed up the batter that I discovered that our stove had broken sometime during the night. No matter, I thought, we had a paraffin stove. That should be easy enough to use. Now, I must admit: I am pretty clumsy with this mini stove as I am not accustomed to using it, but after a few minutes, I managed to fill it with paraffin, but was unsuccessful in lighting it. My fourteen-year-old host sister Lethabo came in then, saw my ridiculous attempts, and said (in a bit of a patronizing way that seems to come naturally to her when she sees her silly American sister acting particularly stupid), “No, Brittany, not like that. Here, let me show you.”
She then lifted the stove off the ground and turned it at an angle. Before I could warn her paraffin spilt out of the stove and poured onto our nice, clean kitchen floor. Both of us just kind of stared at this huge paraffin puddle slowly expanding to the door of the living room, and Lethabo basically summed up what we are both thinking by stating, “Oh shit.” As a teenager, Lethabo’s favorite music includes several American rap songs, so she has a rather extensive knowledge of English swear words. One of her favorite sayings when something goes wrong (or when my host mother is out of earshot) is “oh shit” (or with her accent more like “oh shet”- sounds kind of Minnesotan) I think that right then we were both very thankful for the fact that my host mother was in Johannesburg for the weekend. Lethabo, however, is a very mercurial girl and nothing ever fazes her for long. Seemingly seconds after she was staring at the floor in dismay, she waved her hand over the mess and said, “Don’t worry, Lerato (my other host sister) will clean it up.”
As Lerato was still snoring away in bed, I highly doubted that this would happen, so I told Lethabo that I would mop up the paraffin. As her transport for school was at the front gate, Lethabo quickly lit the stove for me, and went skipping out the door. As I believed at the time that the puddle of paraffin on the floor was nothing to worry about, I put the oil on to heat and began to mop it up. Yeah, well, I soon discovered that paraffin is an absolute pain in the ass to mop up, mostly because it does not mix with water (of course) and it does not absorb well. I did my best, but as the oil was hot, I told myself I would finish cleaning up when the donuts were finished. I began to fry the dough, and when a few donuts were ready, I (stupidly) turned my back to the stove to roll them in cinnamon and sugar. While my back was turned, I heard some funny noises coming from the stove. I turned around, and right as I did the entire metal base of the stove burst into flames. I still do not know how it happened, but I was struck dumb for a moment as I stared at the fire. All I was thinking was, “the stove is on fire. Oh shit the stove is on fire. What do I do?” Then a new, more serious, thought struck me: “OH MY GOD THE FLOOR IS COVERED WITH PARAFFIN!!!!” It occurred to me then just how easy it would be for the flames to jump from the stove and onto the floor- and I was pretty sure that my host mother would never forgive me if I burned down her house.
So, I was galvanized into action, and desperately tried to look for someway to put out the fire. My first idea was water, but thankfully, that was squashed as quickly as I thought of it. I next thought to smother the fire, and realized that I had a bag of flour handy. I began throwing huge handfuls onto the stove, caking it with what soon became a thick paste that was near impossible to clean up. For good measure, I decided to throw flour on the floor surrounding the stove as well. Right as the fire burned out, leaving a horrendous mess of burning and smelling flour all over the stove and the kitchen, Lerato walks into the kitchen. She looked around at the paraffin on the floor, the stove caked in a flour-paraffin paste and me, looking pretty sheepish, and asked “Brittany, what are you doing?”
I am not my sharpest at 6:15 in the morning, and I responded with the very first thing that came to my mind. “I’m cooking!” I retorted. Lerato just stared at me for a moment, shook her head and walked out the door to the pit toilet. I can only imagine what she was thinking, and I began banging my head against the wall for being so idiotic. The moral to this story is: I should buy a hotplate, as cooking donuts on a paraffin stove is a recipe for disaster. (When I related this story to a bunch of my friends later, the very first thing that my friend Tom asked after I described my harrowing escape from the flaming jaws of death was “What happened to the donuts?” In case you are wondering, in the desperate attempt to put out the flames, many of the donuts either burned, or simply did not turn out. Very sad.)

Names

2006-06-06T06:00:00.000-07:00

5/30/2006

South African names are very interesting. A lot of them are very pretty sounding, a lot of them I cannot pronounce for the life of me- bringing on gales of laughter by the people around me when I try- and some of them just cause me to furrow my brow and wonder what was wrong with the parents when they chose that name. But, I think the adjective that best describes the names here is “interesting.” I suppose the most interesting thing about the names is that they are so literal. A lot of common names back in the States come from root words and from languages that have changed so much during the thousands of years they were spoken that the meanings of these names lose their literalness. For example, let’s take my name: Brittany. Unfortunately “Brittany” has the most boring meaning ever- it means “from Britain.” I have no clue from what language it is from, but I am pretty certain that I cannot just go and say “Brittany” in this language and everyone will immediately think I am talking about something “from Britain” instead of a name. But here where I live, almost all of the names have a literal meaning in the vernacular and it is VERY easy to confuse these names with their meaning.
I am not certain that I am explaining this well, so let’s give an example. One of my host sisters is named Lethabo. She is an awesome girl, sweet, full of life and absolutely hilarious. Now, “Lethabo” literally translates in Northern Sotho to “happiness.” Basically, if you wanted to say “I have happiness” in Northern Sotho, it would be “Ke na le lethabo.” So, Lethabo’s name would be equivalent to someone in the States having the name “Happiness.” Nearly all of the Northern Sotho names I have come across have a literal translation: Mpho would be “Gift” in the US, Lerato “Love,” Leago “Neighborliness.” Thus Northern Sotho names and the language itself get confusing sometimes, especially for someone who is still a novice at the language like me. I cannot count the number of times when I have been at meetings and hear my name “Reamogetswe”, meaning “welcome.” I lift up my head, certain someone is speaking to me, only to find out that the Chairperson is just welcoming everyone.
As remarkable- and confusing- as the Northern Sotho names, what is even more interesting is when the parents here decide to give their children the English translation of the Sotho names. Perhaps it is just compelling to me as I am not used to people being named “Gift,” “Appreciate,” “Competence,” or “Promotion”; but since being here I have meet people with all of these names, and many more that get even more amusing and out of the ordinary. It has become common when PCVs get together that we share the more unusual names that we have heard. We have a running joke that the kids received some of the names because it was the very first thing their parents said when they were born. This would explain some of the nicer ones like Gift, or Blessing (if the parent was truly happy when the child was born) and some of the more obscure ones such as “Good Enough,” “Mistake,” and my new personal favorite “Don’t Cry.” I swear I am not making these up! All of these names have actual people they belong to! Now come to think of it, it is not the nicest joke, but it is the only way we can explain some of the names we hear. But, today during school I heard a name that no matter how much I think of it, I cannot explain it. I was helping a teacher do a class read aloud, and she was calling on the students one by one to take their turns reading. When she called out “Meatball” I turned and looked at her, confused. Where did this come from? But then a little girl from the second row piped up and began reading. Then I am certain my mouth dropped. Why would anyone choose THAT for a name for their child? What were they thinking? I could not think of any explanation for that- ahem- name. So there’s only thing I can conclude: the parents are obviously insane.

Corrupt Mail

2006-06-06T05:59:00.000-07:00

5/18/2006

So, today I discovered something: there are just some things in a PCV’s life that should not be messed with. While I’ve been here in South Africa, I have learned to deal with a variety of situations, and even in the most maddening of times I have managed to keep my temper and hold my tongue. In fact, I have not raised my voice in anger for nine months- quite a record for me. Now, this is no surprise to my friends and family back home, but I like to argue. That might be an understatement, actually. I enjoy a good banter in fun, and like to hold arguments about ridiculous things. Being here, I feel that I have lost my touch. There is hardly anyone who I can banter with who does not get worried that I am upset or angry- and trying to be culturally sensitive, I try very hard not to show my anger even if I am seething inside. Today though, I discovered that there is one thing I cannot handle without getting obviously angry: people screwing with my mail.
I normally try not to speak for anyone else, but I think it is pretty safe to say that getting mail is very important to us PCVs. For me, checking my mailbox is one of the highlights of my trips to town, and all of the letters I receive I read at least five times the day I receive them. Now, this is not a blatant plea for mail- ok, it is not JUST a blatant plea for mail- all I’m trying to explain is that getting news- any news- from home is pretty special and exciting. For me, mail has actually risen to the point of sacredness. Mail is sacred; I am not ashamed to admit that. It was the Post Office screwing with my mail that actually caused me to lose my temper for the first time since leaving the US. Today I took my weekly trip to town, and joy! There was a package slip in my mailbox, so automatically I was in a good mood. I greeted the workers per usual and handed over my slip for them to get my package out of the back, and waited. And waited. Finally the guy came back and said, “I cannot find this package- have you already picked it up?”
Now I remember every single package I receive, and I had not gotten a slip for a few months, so I replied, “No, this was the first day the package slip was there.”
So, he went back and tried to find the package again and once more came back empty handed.
“Someone must have picked it up, because it is not here,” he said. That was when my blood pressure rose. I am the only one with keys to my mailbox, there is no possible way anyone else could have collected it. I told him this, and I must admit my voice was rising at this time. The man then changed tactics.
“Well, perhaps we sent it back then,” he said. That was the wrong thing to say.
“You sent it back!!!!” By this point my voice is definitely raised because I’m getting pretty pissed. It definitely felt that he was feeding me some lame excuses. The man began to get a little nervous and added, “Well you see, this is the second slip, and if you do not collect a package in a month we send it back.”
“I NEVER GOT A FIRST SLIP!” Yep, livid now. If I had received a slip within the past month I would definitely know it. The guy then left to get his supervisor- I guess he did not want to deal with an angry American. The supervisor was no help either- he told me the exact same thing- trying to insist someone must have picked it up, then trying to tell me it was the second slip in my mailbox and since I did not collect the package they sent it back. He got the exact same response from me. I am a bit ashamed to admit now that I actually yelled at the post office workers- but they misplaced my mail, damnit! As I said before, mail is sacred. Finally I left, seething but with the promise of the supervisor that they will keep looking for the package. I’m not holding my breath. They lost the package to begin with and then tried to cover their tracks, rather poorly also. So, after blustering around for a few hours in a horrendous mood, and now calm, I have come to a conclusion: I can handle a lot while I’m here. I can pee in a bucket, I can handle being called “white person” all the time, I can handle the boredom and the ineffectiveness of school, but I cannot handle someone messing with my mail. Misplace my mail and the kid gloves definitely come off.

Living on the Border

2006-06-06T05:56:00.000-07:00

5/14/2006

Everyday when I ride my bike or walk to school, I spent a great deal of time greeting the people I come across on the road. Greetings are incredibly important etiquette in rural South Africa- theoretically you should say hello to everyone you meet. Now before coming to Africa, I never did this- if I greeted everyone on the streets of Boston while running to class I am certain the only response I would get would be confused and suspicious looks. Interestingly enough I have come to really enjoy this interaction. The responses I get are friendly- most of the time- and enthusiastic and can really turn a mediocre day into a somewhat better one. So, it is “Dumelang” all the way to school. However, on the days that I go to Mabon’wana Primary School, I get to cross a tar road located about a mile from my home. As soon as I cross that tar road, my greetings automatically switch from “dumelang” to “avuxeni,” because that tar road is the unofficial boundary between the Sepedi people and the Shangaan or Tsonga people, and so the language changes as well.
My site is an interesting one. I work primarily in two villages: Buffelshoek and Okkernootboom; located directly across the tar road from each other. Buffelshoek is where I live, and is where two of my schools are located. Okkernootboom is where my last school is located. Buffelshoek is Sepedi, and Okkernootboom is Shangaan. The change is astounding. When I travel through Buffelshoek, I hear nothing but Sepedi, and see the cultural aspects of the Sepedi people. But as soon as I cross that road, BOOM! I am in Shangaan territory where seTsonga is the spoken language and Shangaan culture is evident. Even more interesting, at first glance, the two villages seem to have nothing to do with each other. The people on each side of the tar road remained on their respective side, and interacted with their respective villages. While now after seven months of living here I realize that is not true, when I first arrived at site, the impression I got from these villages was that they were like two separate countries, and going across that tar road was like going across a land border. Slowly I have pieced together the history of the area, and have learned that surprisingly, this was once the case.
I live in an area that was once a Bantustan, or Homeland. During Apartheid, the white South African government pushed the majority black population onto small, destitute areas of land to keep them away from the white minority. For a long time, the black areas were mixed, especially around large cities where much of the black population worked as laborers. In the black areas, you could find Zulu, Shangaan, Sepedi, Xhosa, Tswana, and many more groups living peacefully side by side. In 1948, the white National Party came into power, and the heyday of Grand Apartheid began. With this party came the Homelands Act. The idea behind the Homelands was to create theoretical self-sufficient, self-governing tribal states where each ethnic group in South Africa could live separately from the whites, and also from different ethnic groups (and yet the black population of South Africa made up a vast majority of the workforce. If the Bantustans succeeded white South Africa would be economically crippled. So, on paper the Bantustans would be self-sufficient and self-governing, but the apartheid government ensured that they would be economically dependent on South Africa. What emerged were puppet governments in some of the Bantustans, and mass protest and refusal to accept the policy in the others). While there were many reasons why the Bantustans were created, one was due to the beginnings of the struggle. While the African National Congress (a political party that worked for creating equal rights and an integrated South Africa) had been working for freedom since 1910, it was after 1948 when more strikes, protests, and riots against the racist government began. The NP government realized that the black population was uniting against them, ignoring cultural differences to fight for the common good. How do you stop something like that? Simple. Divide and Conquer- used for hundreds of years as a method of colonial submission of native ethnic groups. Divide the population along ethnic lines. Play up cultural differences. Turn the population against each other instead of against the government. Just like that, the mixed black communities that had been living peacefully together for decades were torn apart, and the different ethnic groups ordered to move to their respective Bantustans. My area is a classic example of this. In the course of a few weeks, a Shangaan and Sepedi mixed area was forcefully segregated, and a political boundary was created between the two groups- the old boundary was my tar road that I cross several times a week. On one side of the border was the Bantustan of Leboa, where the Sepedi people lived. The other was Gazankulu, the Bantustan reserved for the Shangaan.
So, for nearly twenty-five years this border between the two territories existed, and sometimes I feel that in the minds of the older populations in these two villages, it still exists, even if the official boundary disappeared 12 years ago. Unfortunately, this “divide and conquer” rule of the government had an effect on my community. Over the years, the relationship between the Shangaans and the Sepedi people in my area grew sour, until one day it culminated into an all out “war.” My host mother has lived in the Buffelshoek area her whole life, and told me about this “war.” In 1984, she was teaching class in a school located close to the border. Suddenly, she heard a cacophony of shouting and screaming coming from the direction of the tar road. Gangs of Sepedi and Shangaan youths had begun fighting each other- rather violently with stones and clubs- on the border of the two territories. No one really knows why this fighting began, but according to my host mother, for the next two weeks everyone in both villages lived in fear. The riots grew so bad at night that the families in the villages would sleep in the bush, as far away from the tar road as possible. Finally, the government got involved and put an end to the fighting- but not before ten people were killed and scores more were injured. Luckily, the area calmed down, and when the border and Homelands were eradicated in 1994, the two areas lived peacefully side by side once more. I feel though that this division has hurt the community deeply, and while the people here live in peace and quiet, there are still some bad feelings from those two weeks in 1984. It is little things that I notice mostly where I still feel that the two areas are separate countries. There was a time in my Shangaan school when the teachers made comments about how the Sepedi are so violent, and do I really enjoy living with such people? When I first got to site, I told my principals my African name, given to me during training. My name, “Tiyiselani,” means “patience or perseverance,” and it is Shangaan. One of my Sepedi principals’ insisted on giving me a Sepedi name as well: “Reamogetswe,” meaning “welcome.” The biggest controversy was when I first arrived at site. My first host family was a fifteen-year-old boy…and that was it. No adults, no supervision, no nothing. The first night I spent there he threw a party with about twenty other high-schoolers, and I put my foot down and said no way. I want another family. I was living in Okkernootboom, and my principals moved me to Buffelshoek, to a family that I absolutely adore. I only learned about it months later, but this move created a huge controversy. The School Government Board at my Shangaan school was furious about my move, and accused one of my Sepedi principals of moving me because he wanted me in a Sepedi area instead of a Shangaan area. When they heard the real reason for the move, they dropped the argument instantly, but when I heard about this after-the-fact, I was stunned. What at the time was a simple move not a mile away symbolized much, much more to my community.
They call South Africa a “Rainbow Nation” because so many ethnic groups live side by side peacefully. I can’t help but think of the rainbows I used to draw in Kindergarten. All of my rainbows were meticulous- every color had its own area and there was no overlapping. Sometimes, I can’t help but compare those rainbows I drew to South African society I see: each ethnic group has its own area and there is no overlapping. Now, for the majority of communities in South Africa, I realize that the metaphor I just illustrated is bogus. There IS overlapping and blending, and a lot of it; and there is no animosity when it occurs. But in some areas and in politics the rainbow of ethnic and race divisions are still evident. My opinion on this: let’s forget the rainbow in a traditional sense. It can still be a rainbow nation where all of the ethnic groups and races coexist, but let’s erase the still-evident borders between these groups, and create a rainbow that is mixed, full of overlapping and blended colors. Bad feelings and a long history of pain and suffering takes time to heal, but when I was leaving Mabon’wana today and crossed the tar road, I saw a sight that made me smile. Students from Mabon’wana and students from Makgahlishe, one of my Sepedi schools, were playing a soccer match by the side of the road. The teams were mixed Shangaan and Sepedi, and the students were using Shangaan and Sepedi interchangeably. Seeing that made me realize that South Africa can heal, and can become a nation of a blended rainbow.

Letsamaile

2006-06-06T05:54:00.000-07:00

5/8/2006

Chairs have arrived!!! After years (according to my teachers) of the children sitting on meal bags on the floor, we finally have enough chairs for every student at Letsamaile Primary School. It was a very exciting day for everyone- and I think I might have been more excited than my teachers. Perhaps I am more proud than anything. Letsamaile is one of the three schools that I work with, and out of all three it is the most functional. The teachers are dedicated and motivated, and often get upset if they have to miss class for meetings or functions- almost a novelty it seems amongst rural government schools. There is no corporal punishment at the school (big step there!) and the teachers actually seem to enjoy teaching. Of course, the school is not without its problems: the lower grades are absurdly over crowded with plus seventy students per teacher, classroom management is not the best, and the method of teaching is still “chalk and talk.” Yet, despite these problems, Letsamaile is a really good school. There is a positive feeling from both the teachers and the students, and it makes the teaching and learning atmosphere enjoyable.
I must admit, when I first arrived at site, Letsamaile was not my favorite school. In fact, it was my least favorite. I’m afraid I nick-named it the “Ornament School” because for the first several months I went there, I felt like a wall ornament. The teachers enjoyed having me at school- I think it was the prestige of having an American volunteer working there- and were nice and friendly, but they did not use me. They did not ask me for help, or to teach demonstration lessons, or even share their goals for the school. What I deemed lack of interest, I believe now was a feeling of confusion. Unfortunately, the third week after my arrival at site, the principal at Letsamaile had a stroke, and as of last month was granted an early retirement. Because the South African laws of education dictate that only schools more than 400 students (we just passed 400 this year) hire a vice principal or Head of Department (senior staff member), the school was left with virtually no official leadership. But instead of allowing the school to fall apart, the teachers impressively pulled themselves together, and kept the school functioning as normal. Since then, Letsamaile became the school I most admire, but I was still freakishly bored when I went there. This all changed one rainy morning in March. I was sitting in the staff room doing… who knows what, but I bet it was something trivial… and one of the teachers hurried in. This teacher, Judith, is an incredibly funny and vibrant person. I always enjoyed sitting in her classroom, because her interaction with the kids was so fun to watch. Last year, she was teaching first grade, but this year she moved to subject teaching in grades 4 and 5. She said to me “Reamogetswe (my Northern Sotho name) will you come and teach my class long division? I never learned it!”
So, like that, I was introduced to the world of demonstration teaching. I discovered that I really enjoy teaching (I don’t think I actually want to become a teacher though, I think the noise would very quickly drive me insane), and suddenly I had an “in” with the teachers- like magic many began asking me to do demonstration lessons in their classrooms, and even for help with planning and classroom management. Just as suddenly, I began enjoying going to Letsamaile. I grew closer to the teachers and learned more about them and I grew closer with the children. I learned what goals the teachers had for the school, and how they hoped to achieve these goals. Letsamaile became “our” school instead of “their” school; “our” accomplishments instead of “their” accomplishments. So when the chairs arrived I suppose it was no real surprise to me that I felt so excited and proud. I had nothing to do with getting the chairs- the teachers alone budgeted the school funds and ordered the furniture- but I still felt a sense of accomplishment. Most of all I was extremely happy that the teachers took the initiative to make our school better.

On Doing Nothing

2006-04-30T09:34:00.004-07:00

April 28, 2006

I think that one of the hardest things about being a Peace Corps Volunteer is getting used to boredom. There are weeks here in South Africa where I am incredibly busy, and every afternoon I have somewhere to be or something to do. But those weeks of productivity are often followed by the more dreaded weeks of nothingness. All South African PCVs seem to have the same story- weeks of events up the wazoo, then a dry spell, where letters home and books read increase. When I joined PC, I expected an adventure, and it has been an adventure for the most part. Our official job as PCVs is, in a nutshell: a) to learn about other cultures and ways of life; b) to teach people from other countries more about Americans and American culture; and c) to help with developmental or community projects to help enhance the quality of life for our counterparts. Yet in between doing these three things, there is a whole lot of nothing. And this nothing is not what I defined nothing as in the United States. There doing "nothing" consisted of playing around on my computer, flipping through the channels of the TV, reading, or hanging out with friends. Here in South Africa, doing nothing really means doing NOTHING. And while I felt like I was really good at doing nothing in the United States, here in South Africa I suck at it.
I suppose while I seem busy during the day, I end up doing a lot of trivial things. I get up at 6AM (I know... me who loves to sleep late gets up at 6 every weekday, and no later than 7:30 on the weekends. What is the world coming to?) and get ready for school, which to get there on time I have to be out the door no later than 7. I ride my bicycle or walk to school, and then spend the next six hours with the teachers. If I am really lucky, maybe I will have a few teachers who ask me for help, ask me to teach a demonstration lesson, or simply want to sit and chat. Then the days are productive, and I leave school feeling happy that I was useful that day. Then there are the days where I end up sitting in the staff room, being visible and available if anyone needed help, but I pretty much twiddle my thumbs and try not to go insane. That is one of the most maddening parts of my job. The teachers need to come to me for help, I cannot force myself upon them or they will end up being resentful. It was one of the things that was stressed during our training- we cannot FORCE people to change, our teachers have to want to change for real improvement in the schools to occur. While completely understandable, this clause unfortunately leaves us PCVs with long days of boredom if no one in our schools actually asks for help. These days have happened to me quite a bit. The school day ends at 1:30 PM, and unless I do a workshop for the teachers (I have done a few, during my productive weeks), everyone scatters to go home. That leaves me to go home as well, and no matter how long I drag out that bike ride, I am back no later than 2:30. Some afternoons I am busy; some days I have to go to town, others I visit our local clinic that has recently started a youth group, and some days I have to prepare things for school. Then there are the days where I do not have anything real to do. I normally go to bed at 9 (yes, and I've also become an old lady as well. What has PC done to me), which means that upon my return home from school, I have between 6.5 and 7 hours looming before me.
There are a lot of things I do to avoid just sitting and being bored. I read a lot, I write in my journal and I write letters, I go for long walks around my village, and I crochet or sew. Unfortunately, there are only so many times a person can do these things before it gets old. After that there really is nothing to do, and I cannot handle it. I get absolutely twitchy and fidgety, and feel like I am losing my mind... but maybe I am, I don't know. A few weeks ago we had an Emergency evacuation exercise where the volunteers in my area had to consolidate in our nearest city, Nelspruit. There, I got to talking with a PCV who had already done two years in the Ukraine. She talked a lot about the things she did there to keep sane, and then the things she does here. She also claimed that for some reason or another, it is much more difficult in South Africa to avoid doing nothing. Since we have been at site, she has crocheted two plastic rugs, read dozens of books and in a last ditch attempt to remain busy, began watching the Soap operas on TV. She decided that this is ok so far, but if she ever begins to watch the WWE (fake wrestling that is one of the most popular things here to watch- I once tried to explain to my host sisters that it was not real, but they did not believe me) then she knows it is time for her to go home. For a time in the beginning, when I got bored doing all of my normal activities, I began to watch mindless TV with my host sisters. For awhile there, I am ashamed to admit it, I watched Passions, a show my host sisters love, but as far television shows go, it is the absolute worst. However, it was something to do. Yet after a few weeks of watching, I realized that if I continued on this destructive path, I really would go insane- that or my IQ would drop drastically. So, I broke away, and tried to find other things to do. Right now I am in a slow point of activities. We have just come back from Fall Break, and it takes awhile to get things back and running again after the holidays. So, that means a lot of boredom. Just this morning, I tried to read a book, but got so antsy; I could not get into it. I went outside, but did not feel like going for a walk, so I just sat and stared at a column of ants moving a dead worm or caterpillar or something for 15 minutes. I then had an epiphany: this is what it is to really do nothing. Not moving for a quarter of an hour and being entertained by insects. The absolutely terrifying thing: I was perfectly content doing so. So perhaps I am adjusting to doing nothing- I have a year and a half of service more, I'm certain I will do a lot of it. But then again, maybe I am just going insane. After eight months in Peace Corps, who can really tell?

Getting Lost in the African Bush

2006-04-30T09:34:00.003-07:00

4/21/2006

I spent my last entry raving about the Fanie Botha trail and the beauty of the Klein Drakensberg- and while this is still true I feel that I should comment a bit further on the trail itself. The Fanie Botha starts outside of Sabie and twines its way through a jumble of pine plantations, mountains, and forests. In some areas the trail drops drastically 400 meters, and then climbs just as drastically 700 meters- much to the chagrin of exhausted hikers. One of the more interesting things about the trail is that for such a gorgeous and fun hike, it is very poorly maintained. It is not the sleeping huts that are so poor- on the contrary, they are well taken care of with flower gardens, running water, and flush toilets (amazing that I had to go hiking in the African bush to have a toilet that flushed). But the trail itself is another story. The first few days were not so bad, but the last two ended up being the most ambiguously marked trails ever. The Fanie Botha is marked by white paint splotches, looking somewhat like foot prints. Of course, these foot prints are not the very best markers. We came across lichen on rocks that looked so similar to the foot prints that we ended up following them and getting off the trail. In a particularly hilarious moment, we stumbled across a logging forest- each and every tree carefully marked with a patch of white paint to indicate its coming doom, and our trail markings lost somewhere in the middle. The very last day we even walked into a crossroad, complete with five white footprints on the ground-each one pointing in a separate direction. Now, with such a marked trail, it is logical to assume that hikers would get lost-and we did. Multiple times. In a few cases we ended up half a kilometer or more off the path- unknowingly heading into thorn bushes, or in our hindsight imaginations, some leopard den (while hiking with my family in Alaska taught me how to scare away bears on the trail- talk loudly and make a lot of noise- and how to deal with bears you might meet- DON'T RUN!- Peace Corps neglected to tell us during training what to do if we happen to come across the path of a leopard, lion, or another African big cat. Thinking back, I feel like this would be very good advice to know. But I suppose PC doesn't expect us to go traipsing off into the bush). While hiking, my group had several tiny moments of getting lost- bushwhacking through grasses taller than our heads, walking right past the trail to end up in a shanty town, and not seeing the sign for the new path of the trail as it was hidden behind a tree- but fortunately only one major incident of serious direction miscalculation. One of our group was hiking ahead and managed to get off the trail and hopelessly lost on the side of a mountain in a thick forest. Luckily, he has a good head on his shoulders and instead of panicking, continued down the mountain to find the MacMac River that ran through the valley. Following the river upstream, he managed to reconnect with the hiking trail and emerging triumphant from the forest to greet the rest of our group sitting by the side of the river and contemplating our choices and chances of finding our lost companion.
The week we were hiking we were not the only ones on the trail. The first few days were we joined by a family of three, and for five of the six days we hiked alongside of a group of rowdy South African teenaged boys. The boys were on school holiday-like the rest of us- and although pretty immature and loud (well, they were only sixteen, so it was natural) they were all right kids. Except for the fact that they let one of their members- who had never been hiking before- get seriously lost, then proceeded to leave him behind. On one part of the trail there is a good 2-3 kilometers of a grass forest. The grass was taller than ourselves, and unless hikers really watched their feet and the trail anyone could get lost very quickly. This is what happened to the boy. Their group was supposed to be hiking in groups of two, but as he was a slow hiker, his partner left him behind. He then proceeded to get off the trail, and when he realized that he was lost, panicked. The poor boy was certain that he would die in the forest, and no one would find him; and with that thought in his mind began to run. This is not a very easy thing to do when carrying a heavy pack, and very soon, he found himself tangled in a thorn bush. Now, if he took a few breaths and managed to calm down, he might have been able to free himself from the thorns. But, in his frantic efforts to free himself he only made the situation worse, and began screaming for help. When lost and alone in the woods, it is a good idea to make a lot of noise and bring attention to yourself- but apparently the way he was screaming made it sound like he was hurt, or being eaten by a leopard. And at that moment, a few of our group of hikers came along the trail and heard his frantic screams for help. Alarmed, they followed the sounds of his calls until they came to the outskirts of the thicket he was caught in. They could still not see him, but in calling to him and his answers ("Help me, I can't move!") it sounded as if he was seriously injured. So, one of our group entered the thicket, prepared to see a compound fracture, a severed limb, or worse, but instead found a terrified kid tangled up in the thorns. They managed to untangle him, and calm him down, just as the rest of the kids' group finally came looking for him. While it did seem as if his hiking group felt a little guilty about leaving him behind, it did not take them long (much to our annoyance) to start ribbing him about getting lost. It was not the kids’ fault that he got lost and he was a good sport about the teasing but I still think he felt a bit embarrassed by the whole situation. Apparently, a South African getting lost in the African bush and having to be saved by a group of clueless Americans is just plain wrong.

Walking Through Middle Earth

2006-04-30T09:34:00.002-07:00

4/19/2006

I never realized how lucky I was to get a site in the Bohlabela district of Limpopo Province. Bohlabela is located in the southeast of Limpopo, a tiny area squished between Kruger National Park and the northernmost part of Mpumalanga Province. The district is the most densely populated rural area in South Africa, and the schools are overflowing with more than a million school children. When I first visited my site, it did not look any different than our training area- lots and lots of brown expanse. But then the rainy season came, and the entire area blossomed into a sea of green, turning a drab land into a gorgeous exotic area. As I grew more confident on public transport and traveled around the area more, I discovered more and more of the beauty of Bohlabela. While I live in the Lowveld, aka the lowlands, from my front yard I can see the outline of the Klein Drakensberg Mountains, not fifteen kilometers away. Visiting friends to the south of my site takes a taxi ride through the twisting and turning mountain roads, allowing us riders a breathtaking view of the mountains tumbling abruptly into the low, flatlands.
It was the beauty of my area that prompted me to spend my first official South African vacation not hanging out on the beach in Cape Town, or skydiving in Durban as others chose to do, but instead to travel only 1 hour from my site into the heart of the Klein Drakensberg to tackle the Fanie Botha Hiking Trail. The Fanie Botha runs from Sabie to Graskop in Mpumalanga Province, and through its 70-some kilometers, the trail takes hikers through mountains, valleys, exotic forests, and meadows. And throughout all of the kilometers, I felt as if I was hiking through JRR Tolkeins Lord of the Rings (Tolkein is in fact South African. The crazy scenery that he imagined for his books is actually based upon the Drakensberg Mountains in Kwa-Zulu Natal and the Eastern Cape. It is actually a bit disappointing that Peter Jackson decided to film in New Zealand instead of South Africa). The scenery was so reminiscent of the movies that scarcely an hour went by when the other LOTR fans, like myself (ok, call us nerds) commented on, "Look! There's the Forbidden Pool!" "That looks exactly like Fangorn Forest," or "We're definitely passing through Rohan now." I suppose it helped that during a particularly rainy day all of us were mysteriously transformed into wizards and hobbits when we donned our flowing ponchos and rain jackets to keep dry- two in our group even bought carved walking sticks that became wizard staffs. The hike inspired us so much that on Easter Sunday we rented the three LOTRs movies and proceeded to watch them all in succession (those of you amazed that we could spend 9 hours sitting on our butts in front of a TV, be reminded of 2 things: one, it is not very often that we are in close proximity to a video rental place or a VCR/DVD player to play movies on; and two, six days of hiking seriously butchered our feet and muscles, so that many of us could not move even if we wanted to). So, for six days I joined 12 other Peace Corps volunteers on this trail, which ranged from easy ("we're here already? That was nothing!") to hard ("I'm going to die!!!"), and truthfully, I could never have asked for a better vacation. Hiking the trail was an absolute blast, even when it included fording streams and getting our hiking boots- and ourselves- soaked, climbing sheer mountain sides and despairing over the fact that the top was no where in site, dealing with blisters upon blisters upon blisters, getting stuck in a spectacular rain and hail storm, and climbing over fallen trees in the middle of the path. Not only did I get to share an amazing experience with amazing people, but I grew to appreciate even more the gorgeous area in which I live.

Longtom Marathon

2006-04-30T09:34:00.001-07:00

April 8, 2006

It is interesting that my first participation in a marathon of any kind happened as a PCV in South Africa. It is interesting because first, running and I do not mix. I know some people love to run- they say it is soothing and a good stress relief. Unfortunately I am not one of these people. I have tried to pick up running in the past, multiple times. But I just cannot get into it. In fact, I have a good deal of animosity towards running. We are not friends. Second, the Longtom Marathon is no ordinary marathon, and indeed not the first one I would choose for myself. The Longtom is a race of 56km from Sabie to Lydenburg in Mpumalanga, South Africa. That in itself is not out of the ordinary- sounds like a regular marathon, right? Well, here is the clincher: Sabie is 1000 meters above sea level, and Lydenburg is 1220 meters above sea level. Still doesn't sound too impressive? Well, through the course of the marathon, the runners end up running up and down mountain sides, the highest point on the entire trail being Mauchsberg, 2160 meters tall- or for all my American buddies about 6500 ft. While us PCVs only ran the half marathon, 21km of nearly all downhill, that alone was tough. By the end, the majority of us were so sore we could not walk, only waddle. And we did the easy part of the marathon, and the majority of us only walked! It absolutely floored me to see the runners of the real marathon breeze in after three hours of demanding uphill running. Some were not even breathing hard and looked as if they started the race ten minutes previously. It was absolutely astounding.
Our participation in the marathon was not a spur of the moment thing. The Longtom is an annual event, but just last year PC South Africa decided to piggy-back on the marathon to create our own foundation- the Kgwale le Mollo (www.kgwalelemollo.org). The KLM was created by two of our former education volunteers, who wanted to give rural children an opportunity to attend five years of exceptional secondary schooling at Uplands College in Nelspruit (rated as one of the best private high schools in all of South Africa). Unfortunately, rural schools in South Africa are not the models of education. They have many circumstances working against them, mainly poor communities, the after effects of Apartheid-era Bantu education, and a general sense of apathy. While the government of SA is attempting to rectify this problem, the solutions are slow, few and far between. It will be many years before the rural schools become outstanding schools several have the potential to be. But for the children that attend these schools now, they get shafted with poor education. The pass rate for many of these schools is embarrassingly low, and motivation amongst the students to excel in school is next to non-existent. Yet, there are some students who, despite the circumstances of their living environment, do have the motivation and desire to learn. The KLM hopes to give these children a chance of an excellent education, an education that due to their circumstances would otherwise elude them.
So, using the Longtom, PCVs in SA raised money donations from friends and family back home in the United States to create a scholarship for these children to attend Uplands. 2005 was PC SAs first participation in the marathon, and through the generous contributions, raised enough money to send our first student to Uplands College. Refilwe began school this January, after being chosen from hundreds of applicants, and has become an amazing success story. She has adjusted to Uplands incredibly well, has become popular with her peers and teachers, and is excelling in her studies. This year, PC once again participated in the marathon, in the hopes to send our next student to Nelspruit. Recently we learned that if we raise enough money for one student, a South African business will donate enough money to pay for the entire education of a third student- so perhaps next January if we are lucky, the KLM will send two students on their way to extraordinary education instead of just one. If anyone would like to contribute (every little bit helps, but no pressure) donations are still being accepted through May 21st, 2006. All of the money donated will be used to give a South African child a real chance at life.

On Pit Toilets

2006-04-30T09:34:00.000-07:00

April 7, 2006

Upon our arrival in South Africa, we were told by current PCVs about all kinds of different experiences we would share. One of the things they insisted upon was that we would speak about our experiences with bodily functions and toilets more than anything else. Still running on my high of finally arriving in South Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I refused to believe them. We were 88 bright, intelligent, and versatile people about to begin a fantastic adventure together. Surely we could find a number of things to talk about other than bodily functions. Now, eight months later, I realize with amusement just how right those PCVs in our training were. No matter how many times the volunteers in my group meet up to hang out together, the talk ultimately turns to our experiences with pit toilets, with our "buckets," and unfortunately, our bouts with runny stomachs (the polite South African way to describe the shits).
Before I go any further, perhaps I better describe in more detail the "pit toilet," every PCV's enemy or friend, depending on the situation. South African pit toilets can be classified into two groups, the absolutely crummy and the semi-decent. There is no such thing as a good pit toilet. In fact, a "good pit toilet" is an oxymoron. Even in the nicest pit toilets, there is one thing you cannot get around: you are still peeing in a pit. That said, South African pit toilets can be classified further as either being a "long drop" or a "short drop." The difference between the two is that with a long drop you are relatively safe- the hole is deep enough that you will be in no danger of being splashed by the contents that are being put into the toilet. With a short drop, you better get used to doing your business quickly, because you actually need to move out of the way to avoid having your business splash back on you. My apologies for stating the obvious, but the long drop pit toilets are far superior to the short drops. In fact, if your pit toilet is a short drop, it is automatically classified as an absolutely crummy pit toilet. It can have a door, fly tape, and even a toilet seat, but that drop is the clinch. Semi-decent pit toilets are surprisingly not too hard to find. Or, perhaps my standards are not too high. For me, any toilet that is a long drop, has a door, and has a minimum of flies is a semi-decent pit toilet. Crummy pit toilets include those with a short drop, no door, falling walls, a cesspool of flies, no toilet seat, or in the worst case scenario, all of the above. Now, some in my group have tried to beautify their pit toilets. They have added curtains, fly paper, flower-printed toilet seats, air freshener, and hand sanitizer to make the pit toilet experience more enjoyable. Me, I am not that ambitious: a pit toilet is a pit toilet is a pit toilet. Period. I prefer to go in, do my business as quickly as possible, and get out.
Having described the pit toilet, there is one more thing I must describe: the pee bucket, otherwise known as the chamber pot. When this was first described to us, I was certain this was some sort of cruel joke that the old PCVs play on us newbies. I mean, really, a chamber pot? Unfortunately, we all soon realized that no, it was not a joke, but a daily reality. While every rural household has a pit toilet somewhere on its compound, it is taboo here to visit the pit toilets after dark. The reasons for this taboo vary from rats, to snakes, to tarantulas, to witches who fly around on loaves of bread and snatch away people who are outside at night. No matter what the reason, unless it is an emergency, once it is completely dark there is no visiting the friendly pit toilet. Instead, each member of the household is given a bucket to do their business in. I must admit, the idea completely grossed me out. And in a cruel irony, the very first night I stayed with my host family I woke in the middle of the night needing to go. For several minutes I stared at the bucket, sitting innocuously in the corner of the room, but I could not handle the thought of actually using it. So, I decided to take my chances with the witches, the rats, and the tarantulas and sneak out to the pit toilet. So, I fumbled in the dark for my shoes and my flashlight, and then managed to unlock the door, before stumbling into the dark. The walk to our pit toilet from the back door is normally thirty seconds to a minute, depending on the need. However, in my bleary, sleep-induced state, that walk took nearly five. I almost fell into our garbage pit, got off the trail and bushwhacked my way through waist-high weeds, stumbled through mud and sand, was attacked my mosquitoes, all before reaching the door to the toilet. Then the real fun began. After shining my light around the room to ascertain that there were no scorpions or tarantulas around, it took me a good five minutes to build up my courage to sit on the toilet. The pit was completely dark, and for all I knew there could be a black mamba or something sitting just inside waiting for the stupid American to come out and use the toilet after dark. Finally, I held my breath, did my business, and got out. After going through the same ordeal with mosquitoes, mud, and weeds getting back to the house, I finally stumbled back into my room a good fifteen minutes after I left. I was covered in bites, burrs and seeds were sticking to my pajamas, and my feet were covered in mud. And, I was wide awake. It was then I realized the real reason people do not visit the pit toilet after dark: it is a hassle. After that, I sucked it up and used the bucket. Surprisingly, once you get used to the idea of having a chamber pot in the room, it is not that gross. And it is so handy!
Surprisingly enough after eight months of living in South Africa, I grew attached to our family pit toilet. Ours was a semi-decent one, with a toilet seat, a minimum of flies, doors, and a sturdy frame-or so I thought. While I still live for the times I get to go into the "big city" that has flushing toilets and running water, I did not mind so much using our pit toilet. Compared to some of the other pit toilets I had seen and used, it was pretty good. Then, the rainy season came. One day after a pretty big rainstorm, my host mother approached me and warned me not to use the pit toilet anymore. Confused, I asked why, and she explained that she was afraid that the rain would cause it to collapse. She claimed it was already sinking, and if I needed to use the toilet, I should go next door and use theirs. I am ashamed to admit it, but I wrote off her worries as ridiculous. My host mother is a wonderful woman, but has a tendency to worry about small and silly things. I just assumed this was one of them. Of course, for the next few days whenever I used the toilet, I would step carefully and send surreptitious glances at the walls and frame, making sure it would not sink in on me. Now that would be the most embarrassing way to die- just sitting innocently on the pit toilet when the entire thing collapsed and sank, drowning you in a pile of... well, you get the picture. But after several weeks of nothing happening, I forgot my host mother's worries, and life went on as usual. One day, I arrived back to my site after a week of IST (In-Service Training). My host sister Lethabo met me at the door to the yard to help me with my bags, and we chatted as we went to the back door of the house. As soon as we turned the corner, I stopped dead in shock. Our pit toilet was gone! In its place was a huge pile of rubble and a gaping hole. Lethabo must have seen the shocked look on my face, because she said nonchalantly, "Oh, our pit toilet fell down."
"How?" I finally gasped, still in shock. Lethabo shrugged.
"The rain," she said. Obviously this wasn't a big deal to her, and she continued on to the house. After a few minutes of shocked staring, I finally followed her. I no longer write off all of my host mother’s worries, and long for the day when we build another semi-decent pit toilet, especially every time I use the crummy pit toilet next door. Until then, perhaps I will become better friends with my bucket.