My host brother, Mamakgeme

                My host brother in the village of Seleteng is, simply put, a character.  The tales that I have related to fellow volunteers keep increasing in number.  I finally have realized that some of these tales cannot remain exclusively oral and I must document some of his more memorable idiosyncrasies.

 

His name is Mamakgeme and for anyone interested his name is pronounced something like “Mama Hemm Ay” except there is supposed to be a throaty-phlegmy rumble with the “h” in “hem” (think of Fat Albert saying “Hey, hey, hey”).    His two “Christian” names are Conrad and Joy but I don’t know anyone who refers to him using either of those and he doesn’t like them to be used so I stick with Mamakgeme.  Much more unique anyway.  Mamakgeme is 30 years old and married with a 20 month old son.  He moved back home to Seleteng from Johannesburg when his wife, Karabo, was pregnant with their son Bahumi.  Currently he is helping his mother run the Drop-In Center for orphaned and vulnerable children here in village of Seleteng while Karabo finishes some computer studies in the relatively nearby city of Polokwane.  He has a university degree (in what, I’m not quite sure) and has worked in the private industry in the city and plans to return to Jo’berg within the year with Karabo and Bahumi.  Mamakgeme speaks English quite well.  In fact, I would say that there is no difficulty understanding his spoken English though it is clear that it is his 2^nd language (A fact that is readily apparent in his written English) and he has a pronounced accent which makes the stories below often a bit more entertaining (especially the snake/camera tale below).  He is a somewhat large man who often sports a moustache and shaved head.   I have heard him described by another volunteer as “that handsome son of Mae’s at your house with a gentle face.”  Mamakgeme is a truly generous, patient, intelligent, and amusing friend and one of my very favorite people in South Africa.  He also happens to be quite eccentric.

The first time I remember thinking Mamakgeme was a bit, unusual, was following the ‘family coming-together’ ceremony which occurred around October of 2008 (the blog entry entitled “Scotch & Goat” explains that event in slightly more detail).  When we walked home from the ceremony late in the afternoon, we passed a large aloe plant growing next to the dirt road.  He stopped and said “ooh, what a nice specimen.  I will come back this evening and collect some leaves.”  I asked him for what and he said “for medicine.  I am a medicine man, man.”  Sure enough, later that evening after dinner, I was helping Jerminah wash dishes in the kitchen and in pops Mamakgeme with a silver pail from which two large “leaves” (spiky stalks) of aloe plant protruded.  He set the pail down and grabbed a small spoon.  I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he tilted the pail and fiddled the spoon between the stalks of aloe.  “Now the moment of truth” he announced as he held the spoon up to his mouth.  He swallowed the spoon’s juices and made one of the most wretched faces I ever recall having seen.  His eyes squinted shut and his entire face puckered inward.  I laughed in a bit of amazement.  He said “that stuff tastes horrible!”  He then added, “But ahh, it’s full of antioxidants.”  Rather than be repulsed as I later realized I should have been, I found myself intrigued.  I asked him if I could have a spoonful of the green goo.  “Yes, of course” he said and promptly produced a liquid helping for me.  I gave him a look that intended to relate that I was aware I was doing something regretful (so as to somehow rationalize my undertaking in the ‘medicine’) and swallowed the goop.  Instantly, the bitter metallic awfulness seized my mouth.  I squirmed and my mouth writhed.  “Oh my God!  I think that is the worst thing I have ever tried!”  (I actually thought, and still think, it was.  Or at least in the top 3).  I ran out of the kitchen and grabbed my water bottle and rinsed.  Then I brushed my teeth.  Then I took a Listerine strip.  Then I took a 2^nd Listerine strip.  The bitterness was still there.  From the kitchen I could hear Mamakgeme laughing.

Continuing on the “medicine man” tip, Mamakgeme has, upon several occasions, announced his desire to run a homemade herbal/medicine business.  He boils roots, leaves, seeds, brine, fruit peels, fruit rinds, bark, and eggs making various teas and potions.  (Some of these are, admittedly, quite tasty).  He enjoys relating how someone in the village once suffered from something akin to appendicitis which was not relieved following a visit to a town doctor and the city hospital.  Mamakgeme made him a concoction of god-knows-what and the man felt better within an hour and the pain never recurred.  Other than this isolated incident, I am not familiar with the success rate of his creations.  He is fascinated with the multi-vitamins and fiber pills that I brought from the states.  One afternoon he asked me about how Google makes money on the Internet.  I explained the ad-revenues, company payments for top search returns based on key words, Google directed click counts, etc.  He then asked if he were to start an online business selling his “medicines” could he pay Google to have his company come up when people typed in different ailments.  I tried to explain the intricacies, expenses, and difficulties associated with said venture without directly tearing down his ambitions.  After announcing that if his yet-to-be-created “company” were to find the cure for HIV/AIDS, his yet-to-be-created website would surely receive a lot of hits from Google, he suddenly had an epiphany and said “I bet I could make money on the Internet from porn.”  I stopped and looked at him a bit stunned.  With Karabo, his wife, sitting next to him he went on to ask “does anyone make money on the Internet from porn?”  He was smiling as he asked me but was entirely serious.  I stammered and said “sure.”  He then said “I bet a lot of people would pay for that stuff.”  For the sake of conversation, I tried to sustain just a hint of seriousness in the midst of what I felt was an increasingly and alarmingly ridiculous discussion and said “they sure would, but there is a lot of free porn too.”  His only response was “I would like to start a business and make money online.”  He then added “not necessarily with porn.”  Much to my surprise and perhaps due to conditioning, Karabo never looked up from the paper she was reading during the entire course of our conversation.  She must be simply accustomed to his exceedingly whimsical ponderings.   

During a much-anticipated and meticulously planned ceremony honoring the community elderly at the aforementioned Drop In Center this past October, a snake rudely interrupted the proceedings.  Or rather, the children attending the event allowed the snake to interrupt the proceedings.  The snake was minding its own business hanging from a nearby tree when it was spotted by a young ceremony-attendee.  Quickly, the children (as well as a few younger adults) flocked over to the tree with an intrigued glee.  A mamba!  A crowd nearing 50 or so eventually convened around the tree and I decided that I myself would go visit the tree as its not often I get to see an African snake in the wild.  As I walked over, I noticed that an adventurous (and rather mischievous) adolescent boy had momentarily “captured” the snake on a stick.  The snake was writhing around on the stick as the boy held the stick out in front of him.  (Of course it was the snake that was doing the entertaining but the boy clearly loved the attention coming his way).  As I approached and heads turned with a few muddled chants of “lekgowa” (white person), the snake-curling young lad turned the stick toward me and stuck it out in an attempt to either scare me or make the onlookers more entertained (or both).  I smiled and simply watched.  After I finished viewing the snake I decided to return to my seat to watch the remainder of the ceremony.  Once I had reached my seat, I noticed that Mamakgeme was strutting over to the snake-ogling crowd.  I say strutting because he was clearly walking in stride.  He looked as though he was on a defined mission.  He would later tell me that the crowd was taking too much attention away from the planned ceremony and therefore must b e “attended to.”  As he strutted, his shoulders dipped alternately.  Immediately upon reaching the crowd, he stuck out his hand for the boy to give him the stick with the snake.  The boy acquiesced both disappointedly and immediately as if he had been caught by a school principal.  Mamakgeme then walked to the fence surrounding the Drop In Center and launched the snake over the fence.  As its body coiled in the air Mamakgeme calmly laid down the stick and turned toward his seat.  I don’t believe he had spoken a word during his entire mission of ousting the snake.  The other volunteers and I had watched the entire series of events transpire and when Mamakgeme passed us, he looked over at us and winked.  He actually winked.  And didn’t break his stride.  One of the other volunteers was so entertained with Mamakgeme’s actions that she motioned for him to come over to us.  He walked over and asked to look at my camera to see the pictures I had taken thus far of the event (he is infinitely intrigued with the camera).  He then encouraged us to come together for a photograph which we did.  As we cheesed it up for the camera, Mamakgeme uninhibitedly announced, “Say shit.”  We all laughed and smiles were easy.  Clearly much more effective than “cheese.”

Of course there are other tales and the little ones are fun too.  For instance, Mamakgeme is oddly obsessed with both Phil Collins and Abba.  I have awoken to him blasting “Take a Chance on Me” for himself, his family, and the surrounding neighborhood.  He has, more than once, told me that “Phil Collins is the bomb” and if I were to hear his album, ‘But Seriously,’ it “would rock my world so much that I wouldn’t believe it.  Especially the guitars on it. ”  And of course, there are the little one-liners such as “Andrew, I’m nude man!” (In response to my seeing him naked as he inexplicitly stood with the door wide open in the middle of the day), or “this grass smells like malted barley.  Like a good beer.  But these days I prefer a dry red wine over beer” or “do you eat pig’s heads in the United States?  Ooh, they are a delicacy here.”  He once wondered if the US Embassy “scans your stomach when you enter to tell you whether you had bacon for breakfast.”

 

As I reflect on the fun I have had with Mamakgeme understanding some of the South African culture and answering his endless curiosities about American culture, I am assured that the tales will continue.  For those volunteers who have been lucky enough to spend any amount of time with Mamakgeme, they share in my enthusiasm for his quirkiness.  A quirkiness which would be powerless and dull if it was not paired with a warmth, curiosity, and friendliness that is incredibly refreshing.   Mamakgeme is definitely a person who possesses a personality accurately described as indelible.    

 

Watching Obama from South Africa. On TV.

 

I was informed mid-morning that Obama’s speech would be covered by the network television station, SABC here in South Africa.  (As an aside, the reason that I found out had to do with a friend’s coworker being upset that his ‘soapies’ would not be airing).  Personally, it was an opportune time for the inauguration speech being that I am spending this week in Seleteng (one of the two villages where I live) and in Seleteng there is a chance I can have access to a television.  (In the other village where I stay, Phoshiri, I have yet to see a TV which is not at all surprising considering electricity is less than 18 months old there).

The coverage was supposed to start at 6 pm here (11am in the eastern states).  Upon seeing my host mother Gillian (her Christian name) this afternoon, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that she was as excited as I about watching the inauguration.  As I finished up some things in my room a few minutes prior to 6, Gillian came by my door somewhat flustered telling me that her TV set was not working and no picture was coming through.  This has happened before and though one of the neighborhood boys seems to be able to fix it with relative ease, the apparent simple solution continued to evade me as I jiggled wires behind the set in vain.  Gillian watched me briefly and then took my arm and said “come now, let’s go.  We will watch at Lolo’s.”  With that, we left the house and walked down the dirt roads to where her daughter-in-law stays. 

Grateful and a bit baffled to be able to not only have a backup venue in the rural village where I could watch this historical US inauguration but also to have a steward as intent as I, it took me a few minutes to adjust to the uniqueness of the situation.  About the time soon-to-be former-President Bush ambled down the aisle solo, I realized fully that I was watching the new US President take office with two older South African women to whom English is a first language of neither.  As I glanced over at them, faces plastered with grins, I felt a sense of pride as an American.  And this, I must somewhat shamefully admit, is not a feeling I could pinpoint having had too often during my first quarter century. 

And entertained was I after fielding Gillian and Lolo’s questions – which they delivered with such a genuine curiosity: “Was (the woman who was) Diane Feinstein Hillary Clinton? Who is Obama’s wife?  Where are Obama’s Children?  What is that waterway behind the first group of people?  Is it winter in Washington?  Is Obama a lawyer?  Was Bush a soldier?  What was Bush before he was a President then?  How did they get all those people on that lawn?  Or is it an outdoor stadium?” 

As the song “Air and Other Simple Gifts” (at least, I think that was the title) performed by Yo Yo Ma and company came to a finish, Gillian literally stood up clapping vigorously and proclaiming “I love music.”  As Obama walked to the podium, she said “so dignified in that coat.”  And as the news narrator for SABC said that a recent poll found that the majority of Americans think Bush has been the worst President ever, Gillian laughed.  She actually laughed.  So did Lolo.  (And to that I must mention: gathering humor from a 2^nd language is a skill of which the difficulty I have lately grown very appreciative).

As Obama spoke, Gillian and Lolo exchanged observations in their native tongue of Sepedi.  And I listened more intently to Obama than I anticipated I would listen to an inauguration speech (come to think of it – that seems to happen rather frequently with me upon hearing his speeches).  A magnanimous speech indeed, I was left again with that newly minted feeling of being proud of being an American. 

Nearly immediately upon the speech’s conclusion, Gillian turned to me and asked “did he talk about HIV and AIDS?”  The question caught me a bit off guard and I answered “no.  Well not directly but he did talk about health care.”  Gillian said “ahh, but he cares about it.  He cares about it.”

Several times during the evening, the two women said that the crowds reminded them of Mandela taking office in South Africa following apartheid in 1994.  Although they did not understand all of Obama’s speech or accompanying commentary (as I didn’t understand nearly all of their accompanying commentary), they were quite visibly excited.  Upon thanking Gillian for inviting me to accompany her to watch the inauguration, she said that “I couldn’t have missed it.”  I told her that I was a bit surprised that it aired on the regular, non-cable TV station and she said “Why is that?  Oh, America has done so many great things for South Africa.  It is very important to show.”

And then I felt that strangely novel nudge of being proud to be an American once more.      

 

All at once: summer, christmas, vacation.

                Christmas.  It occurs in December. 

Summer.  It occurs during the months of June, July, & August but only if you live in the northern hemisphere.

For the first time in my life, the Christmas I experienced coincided with summer.  Sure I have experienced Christmas in warm places but never during summer.  And this synchronization of two previously binary events was more pronounced being that it occurred during the school’s ‘summer break;’ A time previously marked by freedom, swimming pools, and mischief and appropriately enshrined through Alice Cooper’s yelling “school’s out for summer.” 

Vacation.  I just returned from mine.  Vacations generally are pleasurable events.  Recent vacations, at least from my experience, have typically been marked by discovery of something new – a chance to see new places and live outside the environment of the everyday.  The best vacations for me have provided a unique opportunity to spike the everyday routine.  I can remember certain years of my life by the vacations I took during those years.

Although vacation while serving in Peace Corps was unequivocally pleasurable, it differed from any vacation I have previously taken.  For starters, it was the longest vacation I have taken in my adult life.  Furthermore, I didn’t feel like I was vacationing from anything.  While certainly, the opportunity to see areas of South Africa, Mozambique, & Swaziland qualify as getting out to new areas, the contrast of leaving something everyday and routine was not present prior to this vacation.  I realized that I am still experiencing something new and seemingly unordinary everyday so to leave that freshness only to travel further to new areas and new experiences definitely provided the backdrop for a unique vacation.

I traveled with 7 of my friends who are all South Africa Peace Corps Volunteers.  We all work in the rural public schools so we are allotted some time off for ‘summer break’ as the schools close for the majority of December and half of January.  The trip was months in planning.   We had perused backpacker guides (backpackers are basically hostels) and mapped our route & activities.  We all wanted to see as much as we could in the 2-3 weeks of traveling but we were constrained by the fact that we were all spending saved money since our Peace Corps ‘salary’ is around $250 a month.  We decided that we would cram 4 people into each of 2 small rented cars with all of our luggage and tents.  Oh yes.  Very early on we decided that we would camp as often as possible in an effort to save money (and sleep outside!).  It costs around $5-$8 a night to camp at the various backpackers whereas dorm rooms would typically cost $10-$15 a night.  The difference would add up over the course of ~20 nights.  The cars were both VW’s running on manual transmission.  In South Africa, it is exponentially cheaper to rent a manual transmission automobile rather than an automatic.  This is fine but it should be noted that everything about driving here is reversed.  Not only does driving occur on the opposite side of the road, but the drivers’ seat (and hence the stick shift itself) is reversed.  Therefore, the left hand went from a state of non-use by US auto standards to the main player in the South African automobile.

As one would imagine, the trip was insanely hilarious, exhausting, exhilarating, refreshing, intense, and truly memorable.  In short, I had one of the best times of my life.  If you pack 8 20-somethings who met only 5 months prior into 2 small cars to drive around 3 African countries camping out and visiting collectively entirely new and exciting places, you are bound to have some wicked crazy adventures.  We did.  Undoubtedly a healthy portion of the hilarity and novelty are intertwined within the jokes and interpersonal chemistries of those involved.  The warm feeling of inclusiveness that arises from inside jokes, shared novel experiences, and chance occurrences is not surprising and constitutes the totality of the experience.  If anything though, the desire to share experiences with other people who share your background & culture is indicative of Peace Corps and it certainly manifested itself during our trip.

Over the course of ~20 days, we zip-lined over a gaping canyon, caved by candle, white-water rafted without the raft (“canyoning”), devoured incredibly fresh fish straight from the Indian ocean, ate mangoes straight from the tree above the tent, bought African beadwork, glasswork, clothing, and art, swam in the turquoise Indian ocean off the Mozambique coast, karaoke’d to MC Hammer in front of a South African audience, read while reclining in numerous hammocks, cooked out (braai) over an open fire, lost a hubcap, drank copious amounts of African beer, bloody maries, martini’s, and margaritas, camped out on a Swazi game reserve among giraffes, zebras, and lions, drove unauthorized through the game reserve in the VW, went to a reptile house and held a python, fried the car CD player with overuse of the Shins, saw wild hippos on Christmas day, exchanged rare gifts with each other, had fresh brewed beer with Zulu men, saw Batman in an Imax, broke and fixed my Osman’s luggage bag twice, went to the largest mall in the Southern hemisphere, drank the freshest lime milkshake ever, took a boogie board out to combat the rocky ocean, walked an aerial forest boardwalk, climbed the world’s highest indoor rock climbing wall, donned fedoras and danced like mad to bring in the new year, drank Tobasco sauce straight from the bottle, swam naked in rock pools, and played more charades than I have ever cumulatively attempted in my life.                           

One night while sitting atop the “sun-worshipping” deck at a backpackers south of Durban, we had a discussion about what we wanted to be/do when we were older.  Although I have never and do not have a clear answer to this question, it occurred to me that so far, I am doing exactly what I want to be doing.  I couldn’t then and cannot now think of anything I would rather be doing than serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  Life in the villages has thus far been eye-opening and incredibly rewarding.  By volunteering through Peace Corps, I have now been fortunate enough to take one of the most unique and memorable vacations of my life.

So Christmas was enjoyed in summer for the first time in my life.  I loved it. 

 

Christmas Morning

 

Cold Drink

 

Soda.  Pop.  Cola.   There is no debate here in South Africa about what to call it.  It’s “cold drink.”  Even if it is not cold.  If it fizzes and it’s sweet – it’s “cold drink.”  “Do you want cold drink?”   “Let me buy you cold drink.”  It’s not even “a” cold drink.  It’s an adjective and a noun.  And it’s loved here.  Dearly.  They sell it pretty much everywhere.  All of the neighborhood spaza’s, taxi ranks, and food stands.  And it comes in a lovely original 1 liter inked glass bottle.  No labels to peel.  It generally costs 11 rand (about $1.10) and you get 2 rand back when you return the glass bottle.  The glass bottle and the returning of said bottle has quite a nice feel to it.   Kinda like the ‘50’s – walk to the neighborhood shop, return a bottle and buy a fresh soda (err – cold drink) to share amongst friends.  It’s always shared.

                One day last week I was walking down the dirt road on which I live in one of the small villages in which I live.  A group of school children were yelling and running in the dirt as I approached.  “Annnddrrooow.”  They laughed when they saw me and I expectedly became the focus of attention for just being me.  (A fact of rural South African life that I both love and simply cannot get used to).  This day, however, their interest in me faded a bit quicker than normal.  No “where are you going?  Where are you coming from?”  The children were much too preoccupied on this particular day to concern themselves with the American.  Why?  Cold Drink.

                Someone had bought the group of children a cold drink of orange Fanta.  As I walked past them with my backpack on smiling, I realized that they had whipped up some sort of competitive childhood game.  An innovative one too.  One of the boys had placed the nearly-full Fanta in the dirt road and was standing next to it.  About 30 yards away, 10 or so other children lined up behind a line drawn in the dirt.  They looked like they were about to race and indeed that is just what they would be doing. 

The boy next to the Fanta yelled “Kitima!” (Run!) and the group of 10 children took off blazing fast.  I stopped my walk and simply watched.  One boy’s eyes were as wide and round as golf balls.  He was sprinting.  Mad fast.  And those big eyes were fixed on the open bottle of Fanta.  As he reached the cold drink his body swooped down in a small cloud of dust and he snatched the glass liter bottle in stride paying zero attention to the sand going into the top of the bottle.  He continued to run past the marker where the cold drink had sat and tilted the bottle bottoms-up and gulped the orange syrupy goodness as fast as he could.  The other children continued in pursuit.  As he arched his back to avoid being tagged (while still cradling the bottom-up drink), I realized that the cold drink was both the game and the prize.  When another boy finally tagged him near the fence, he laughed and the ½-filled liter of Fanta returned to its original resting place.  The boy who had enjoyed the cold drink stood proud as the others returned to the starting line.  He would lead the next race.  They were taking turns and loving it and I was changing my mind about how bad soda (err – cold drink) was for young children. 

A rainy night kombi ride through the South African brush

 

The town of Phoshiri where the Peace Corps assigned me to live is only reachable by bus.  There are no paved roads in or to the village.  The kombis (South Africa taxis) don’t run to the village and it’s not reachable by foot as it sits away through the bush on the side of a mountain over a river and 12 kilometers from the nearest ‘town.’

                My first three months in South Africa, it never rained.  Not once.  I have never gone so long in my life without seeing rain.  (Actually I’m not sure that that is entirely factual but it definitely seems plausible).  Lately however, rain has been a daily occurrence here.  Last Friday I got to experience what a lot of rain does to the transport situation of a tiny village reachable only by bus and only over unpaved roads.  As I waited for the 2 pm bus to Phoshiri in the town of Seleteng on Friday afternoon, it began to rain.  I waited under a small tree with about five other people all waiting for the bus.  I had struck up a conversation with a young girl from the secondary school whose English was nearly impeccable and whose friendliness was engaging.  She was on the way to visit her grandparents in Phoshiri for the weekend.  She asked if I wanted to run across the street to the small spaza where we could wait under the shelter for the already-late bus.  I happily obliged and off we ran.  At the time I didn’t realize that I would be spending the next 5 hours with this girl, Dineo, but looking back I should have realized that it was unlikely that we would reach Phoshiri any time soon.  I had heard stories of the people in the village being stranded for weeks when it rained because the river levels surge and the ground saturates.  To this end I had been told to stock up on food since there is virtually nowhere to buy food in Phoshiri but until this point I had not taken the advice seriously because the rain has been little and infrequent. 

                Sure enough, the 2 o’clock bus never arrived and the rain continued.  After talking with Dineo about her family, my family, South Africa, America, School, Teenage Pregnancy, Barack Obama, public drunkenness (we had an encounter with two stumbling drunken men in the spaza), school principals, the history of Seleteng, mangoes, and politeness, the rain stopped.  It was now just after 3.  Clearly the bus was not coming.  The next scheduled bus would arrive at 5.  We found some chairs from the kind woman at the Sephatlo stand and continued our conversation.  When it reached 5 o’clock, we decided to head back to the bus stop.  When we approached the bus stop we were told that the bus had stopped in the nearby town after getting stuck in the mud.  This was amusing to me but a bit disconcerting to Dineo who rolled her eyes and looked rather frustrated.

As our luck would have though, A kombi pulled up near to the bus stop.  It was packed with people and either recognizing me or Dineo it stopped and asked if we were going to Phoshiri.  Of course we were but Dineo said that the kombi looked full and indeed it did appear to be at (or over) capacity.  Furthermore, kombis never run to Phoshiri so the entire concept seemed a bit unusual.  But we were stranded at this point and our options were few. 

This is when the real part of the adventure began.  As I made my way over people (literally) with suitcase in hand to the cleared-out space in the very back right corner of the kombi (all while giving the Sepedi greetings), the rain started again.  I crunched into the corner behind Dineo and the kombi rattled off.

                Now I know the route from Seleteng to Phoshiri as I’ve ridden the bus dozens of times over the past two months.  However, the kombi was taking a distinctly different route.  I asked Dineo what was going on and she shrugged and said that she supposed that we were picking up more people.  The kombi stopped several times on the trip but they weren’t regular stops to let people off or pick up people as the bus would have done.  They were turn-off-the-engine, driver-is-having-a-cigarette, WTF-are-we doing stops.  Moreover, nobody was getting off the kombi but more people were continually cramming in.  The kombi had a sign that said it was authorized to take 16 passengers but I counted 19 (plus the driver) as the rain continued to fall. The man next to me unzipped his bag and pulled out a Smirnoff Ice bottle.  His friends laughed and said something in Sepedi which I did not understand but his reply included “tonya” meaning cold and so I figured out that he was realizing that we would not be going anywhere soon and he wanted to enjoy his beverage while it was still cold. 

                Occasionally Dineo would turn around to me and explain what was going on for which I was grateful.  During one of the driver’s smoke breaks, it occurred to me that had she not been on the kombi, I would have been bewildered with exactly what it is I was getting myself into.  I would have had no idea if we were still going toward Phoshiri or if I would be sleeping on the kombi overnight.  She explained that since it was Friday evening and the bus was not running (because it was stuck), they had organized a taxi to go to Phoshiri to take all of the weekly workers back to their homes for the weekend.  During our longest engine-off stop, she explained that our driver had gotten word on his cell phone that a woman who lives in Phoshiri was on her way from Cheunesport and we were to wait for her since we were her only possible means of transport to Phoshiri (kombis run from Cheunesport to Seleteng).  I found this simultaneously to be both wonderfully heartwarming and ridiculously inefficient.  All of these people were waiting cramped on this kombi in the rain waiting for one person while it rained more and night approached.  The more I thought about this, the more incredible it seemed.  Here we were on a dirt road covered with pools of standing water in the rain at night waiting for a 20^th passenger who was coming within an hour.  It definitely was not for the money as the entire trip was to cost 8 rand (about 80 cents). 

                The Northern-Sutu chatter increased and laughter broke out.  The driver finally got into the taxi and turned the engine without Ms. 20^th passenger aboard.  I asked Dineo what was going on and she said that word got out that the 20^th passenger for whom we were waiting had lied and was actually in Polokwane which was considerably further than Cheunesport.  So much for the heartwarming part of the waiting – a lie is a lie – we were off.  As we drove off, Dineo said “I hope we don’t get stuck.”  I knew that this was actually quite likely as the roads were saturated and the rain continued to fall (not to mention the fact that the bus had already gotten stuck).  Furthermore, night had descended and obviously there were no street lights.  It was then that I realized that power was out in the entire village.  As we left the final houses comprising Seleteng and headed into the brush that separates Phoshiri from the rest of civilization, the magnitude of the adventure I was embarking on started to sink in.  I looked around at the 18 other passengers whose heads were bobbing with every bump in the road.  The Smirnoff was gone but the man next to me showed no signs of it as he sat in somber silence.  The driver turned on the common club music and the remaining voices drowned out.

I laughed.  I had to.  This was a pretty absurd ride.  My suitcase on my lap riding in the back right corner of a packed taxi at night in the rain heading into the brush of a remote South African village.  Definitely never could have imagined this situation six months ago.

                Then the taxi sputtered.  I pressed my face against the window and looked out.  We had become entrenched in a puddle.  Dineo glanced at me with a bewildered look.  Without speaking, her eyes said “of course we’re stuck.  You didn’t actually think we’d make it did you?”

                The driver continually turned the engine and tried to propel the machine forward but it was seemingly futile.  He would go in reverse just to get the momentum to move forward but the water was too much.  It was dark now and I my imagination was alive with just what was going to happen out in the middle of the South African brush in the rain at night in a stranded kombi with 18 strangers (well 17 as Dineo and I had become quite good friends over the previous 4 hours).  The driver then opened his door and I was presuming that he would be checking the tires and I was hoping that he wouldn’t be requesting that we all exit the kombi.  Instead, however, he inserted a metal rod into the pool of water and pressed down forcefully.  He was using the rod like an oar or a pole vault and as he pushed it into the soft mud under the tire he cranked the engine.  Hard.  The tires rotated quickly and we lunged forward as he slammed his door shut.  He had done it!  We were out!  Initially I was surprised but then realized that I shouldn’t be.  I mean – 5 minutes earlier I was imaging standing behind the kombi in the pool of water pushing the car so was it really surprising that the driver had used a make-shift javelin to hoist us out of the water?  Dineo’s eyebrows were raised as she turned to me.  She wore a small smile but she wore it with caution.  Clearly we were not home yet.

                As the kombi bumbled on down the dryer sections of the muddy road, I noticed it beginning to gain speed.  I then remembered the small river that we would have to cross to enter into Phoshiri.  The driver was gunning the engine so we would have enough momentum to make it across the river!  For the first time in the trip, I felt a sense of fear.  Surely he couldn’t be taking a kombi carrying 19 passengers across a flowing river.  Could he?  I tried to look between the passengers’ heads and out the front of the kombi to see the approaching river.  The roller coaster feeling had set in and I felt like we were about to spin out.  The driver was continuing to increase the speed.  That is when I noticed two cars parked on the side of the road with their headlights on.  They had pulled over at the river because they were clearly not going to attempt to cross flowing water at this time of night.  Would we pull over too?

                I tapped Dineo and said “really?  He’s really going to try this?!”  I saw the water flowing as the kombi descended down the small slope and into the water.  Luckily, the only stretch of pavement from Seleteng to Phoshiri occurs under this river.  Someone paved this crossing for, I presume, situations such as these.  The kombi slowed immediately upon reaching the water.  I gripped my suitcase and looked out the window.  The tires were nearly entirely submerged.  The driver revved the engine and the kombi teetered laboriously through the water.  Although it struggled it never stopped moving.

                When we ascended the other side and climbed onto the dirt roads of Phoshiri, I looked at Dineo and said “this is incredible.”  She looked at me and said “I know.  You will have many more rides like this.”  

A global art project

I recently heard about an opportunity to involve the children of the two schools where I work in a unique art project.  Basically, I snail-mail 30 pieces of original artwork from the students (they are referred to as learners here) to an office based out of Boston.  The office collects these pieces and then they will send me 30 pieces of artwork from the same age group from students all over the world.  This is a wonderful opportunity for several reasons.

                First a brief background:  One of the major problems facing the schools is parental support.  Since a good number of the parents of the learners live away for months at a time to work in the major cities, they are not actively involved in their children’s daily lives.  Often this leaves the children in their grandmother’s care and the grandmothers very often have not received much (if any) formal education themselves and have a difficult time seeing the value in education since it takes the children away from daily chores.  Furthermore, many of the learners live with their teenage mothers who themselves dropped out of school and are not always supportive of their children academically (Teenage Pregnancy is an enormous problem here).  And finally, AIDS is such a large problem here than many children are simply left orphaned and do not have the direct support necessary at home.  I have never previously appreciated the link between parental support and scholastic achievement as much as I do now.  Indeed, it is not surprising that the dozen or so highest achieving learners are the ones with an actively supportive familial support net.

So in summary, the learners here often times do not have anything to feel ‘proud’ about in the classroom.  The lack of role models is apparent and it is difficult to be motivated to succeed in school without either a clear role model or even a clear link between high academic achievement and future opportunity. 

Although indeed small, my hope is that this art project is one way for the learners to feel proud of their own work while also appreciating the world outside of the rural South African classroom.  Since the project limits me to 30 submissions initially, I will have to select the 30 best pieces of art submitted and this is further limited currently to 15 from each of the two schools where I work. 

This past week, I explained the project to two 6^th grade classes (one at each school).  At the school in Seleteng (Matsobane Primary School), this class has 71 learners in one room!  Some of the children seemed rather excited and this was very encouraging for me.  I explained to them that if their artwork is selected, I will take their picture and they will have the opportunity to write some information about themselves to accompany their artwork.  (The fact that they will have their picture taken was exciting for them as well).  Their artwork will then be displayed in some classroom somewhere in the world.  At the tiny school in Phoshiri (Mokgapaneng Primary School), I selected one piece of artwork that a young girl, Moklego, made earlier this year.  I had the learners help me construct a map of the village of Phoshiri since maps of the village simply do not exist.  As an assignment for Peace Corps, I had to construct my own map as well but I wanted to see what the learners could show me on their maps that I would potentially overlook.  I picked Moklego’s map to submit and took a picture of her with her map and that picture is below. 

The info about the project is here:  http://www.oneworldclassrooms.org/

I will be turning in the artwork at the end of February.  I went ahead and explained the project now though because the school year ends here in a couple of weeks and I wanted to give the students the opportunity to work on their pieces over the break.  (It’s summer here so it is their end-of-the-year Schools-out-for-summer break).  My plan is to post the artwork that we receive and conduct an accompanying lesson in geography in March.  I also plan to scan a few of the pieces and put them up on this site early next year.

Sepedi as a first language

 

I live in two different villages in South Africa.  In one village, Phoshiri, I have to speak Sepedi in order to effectively communicate.  English is not common there.  In the other village, Seleteng, I can effectively communicate my needs in English and generally have them understood.  My host brother in Seleteng, Mamagkeme, speaks English fluently though it is not his first language.  He speaks English to me and Sepedi to his South African family and friends.  Tonight as he was getting ready to retire to bed for the evening, I muttered a simple phrase to him in English; A phrase that has become so common to my Sepedi vernacular that it is routine.  “Ke tlo go bona gosasa.”  <K klo ho bone ahh ho sah sah>.  “I will see you tomorrow.”  I phrase that I have spoken in Sepedi nearly daily during my four months here.  As I said it to Mamakgeme tonight in English, I immediately realized that it seemed foreign to me.  Like a second language.  It struck me as more natural to say “Ke tlo go bona gosasa.”  So much that I had to re-think the English in my head once it was uttered aloud.  It struck me as unusual to be speaking this phrase in English yet have it seem more comfortable in Sepedi.  And the fact that it was unusual was a bit strange. 

But it was a strangeness I found comforting. 

The Peace Corps Swearing-In Speech

I was quite honored to give this speech at our swearing-in ceremony on September 12th.  I wrote it in English but read it aloud in Sepedi.  I thought about posting the Sepedi version but this one is more suitable for the blog…

As we gather for our swearing-in, I am struck that we have, collectively, reached the end of a beginning.  No more will we all meet daily here at the college with the novelty of South Africa still fresh during every lunch break, every taxi ride and every new conversation.  When we return to meet as a group in the coming months, South Africa will feel even more like the home in which we live and less like the land to which we adjust.  When we wake, we will feel less like we are away from home and more like we are at home. 

Indeed, it is truly a unique opportunity to be able to serve one’s home country while living in and learning from another.  Personally, through these first two months, it has become increasingly clear to me that each of us needs the warmth, opportunities and acceptance of South Africa much more than South Africa needs us.  By accepting our invitation to serve we have each left  those at home who are often curious but more often worried.  Often proud but not as often jealous.  And although it is perhaps left as an artifact of the distant past, each and every one of us as volunteers has worked exceedingly hard to be sitting here today.  For some of us, the day we swear in as a Peace Corps volunteer has been over a year coming.  And certainly this is true for those of you in the Peace Corps staff who have worked to make sure that we are here.  Through the long application, the securing of references, the medical clearance, the insane overseas flight and the two months of learning and patience, we are here today feeling accomplished.  And yet we have barely begun.

 While I know that expectations were never encouraged prior to our arriving here in South Africa, I feel quite comfortable in saying that we each now have a better understanding of what to expect in the months and years to come.  I myself have repeatedly tried to avoid expectations up until this point.  However, upon reflection, I have realized that perhaps there is a benefit for us to indulge in expectations now.  Indeed, if our language teachers, training coordinators, drivers, and staff here at Marapyane are indicative of the people with whom we will be working with in the next two years, we can expect to feel welcomed, supported, and loved.  And if the interactions and experiences we have shared with each other here in Marapyane continue to resurface within the challenges and opportunities of our next two years, than we can and should embrace the expectation that the coming years will be two of the most interesting and rewarding years we shall live.

 

Scotch & Live Goat

I went to a coming-together ceremony for one of my 2 host families recently.  It was an event where all extended family members (quite a large number of people) get together for a day to dance, talk, eat, and generally just rejoice.  It was on a Sunday.  There was a goat involved.  The family decided that a goat should be slaughtered for the ceremony.  They wanted me to help with this.  I was all for it.

So we leave at 5:45 in the morning to go pick a live goat from a nearby man’s farm.  When we get to the farm, I notice a canister of Glen Fiddich Scotch sitting on the fence post!  Now -this is really out of place.  In the middle of rural South Africa on a farm surrounded by mountains and baboons, wading among a field of live goats lies a bottle of fancy scotch sitting out.  Ummm.

So I ask my host brother, Mamakgeme, about it and he laughs and says that they use the canister for target practice with their guns.  Then he turns to me and says “that’s a nice scotch.”

 And the goat?  The meat was good.  The intestines and “the big artery from the heart” were not.  But I ate it all and I helped hold the squirming beast as Mamakgeme laboriously cut its neck with a dull knife better suited  for spreading butter than killing.

This post serves as a sort of summary of some of my overall experiences during my first 2.5 months in South Africa

            This post is quite long and serves as a sort of summary of some of my overall experiences during my first 2.5 months in South Africa.  I wrote it at the beginning of October so undoubtedly it will date rather quickly.  This was actually a letter that I mailed home to some friends and family so it may not be new to you.  If you are in South Africa reading this, this should be pretty boring.  If you are not in South Africa reading this, it may be pretty boring as well ;).  I think it serves the purpose of providing a summary though.

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Hello!  I hope this letter finds you all well.  I decided to write a general letter just to share a brief history of what has ensued since I left Cincinnati back in mid-July.  Now that I have been living in my permanent village for about 3 weeks, I wanted to write to give an update on what has been going on.  I apologize for the somewhat impersonal nature of this letter, but I also assure you that I am sending it to you because you have written me or because I feel that you may somehow be interested in what is going on here in my life.  For that, I am greatly appreciative and thanks for taking the time to read this.    These first two months in South Africa have been incredible and bewildering.  A bit of insanity, some new emotions, and a whole lot of hectic days have occurred since I left back in July.  Also, please excuse me if the letter seems to jump around a bit.  I found it a bit difficult to convey everything in a flowing manner J

 

After spending three nights in Washington DC (near Georgetown) in a nice hotel and getting to know the other volunteers in our group, we headed out on our 18 hour flight.  Luckily, I was able to sleep through almost the entire flight.  We spent the first two months of our time in South Africa in a small village called Marapyane which is in the Mpumalanga Province.  The village was about a 2 hour drive north of Pretoria (the ‘official’ capital city of South Africa) or nearly 3 hours north of Johannesburg.  For the first week, we stayed in a dormitory setting at a “College of Education.”  This was essentially an old educational center where teachers go for a week or two of workshops and seminars to improve their teaching skills.  The facility has fallen into quite a bit of disrepair and decay over the years as it is no longer commonly used.  The dormitories were definitely modest by American standards but it was a good way to ease into our lives here as they did have running water (though it was mostly cold) and flushing toilets (though no toilet paper).  It was during this week that we met our language instructors and got to know each other a bit better (there are, well were, 44 volunteers in our group; 39 are still here).

                After one week, we were each assigned to a host family in the surrounding village of Marapyane.  I lived with a couple who did not have any children in the house.  This is rare in South Africa as most families live with their children even after the children have aged into early adulthood.  I was happy about this because the home was rather calm and that is what I needed to help settle into the new living condition.  The couple that I lived with in Marapyane was named the Mahkafolas.  They were extremely nice to me and a lot of fun as they didn’t take things too seriously and they laughed frequently (both at me and with me).  Their home was somewhat primitive without running water or ‘modern’ appliances such as a fridge but they were very welcoming to me which more than made up for the shift in my surroundings. 

                During these first two months we had daily sessions of training for language, cultural, medical, and safety matters.  We were broken into 8 language groups learning 5 different languages (South Africa has 11 official languages).  I was assigned to one of three groups learning Northern Sutu which is commonly referred to as “Sepedi.”  My language teacher was a native speaker from Limpopo Province (where Sepedi is the dominant language).  Her name was Thato.  She was a young woman who had not previously taught with Peace Corps (a lot of the teachers had prior teaching experience through the Peace Corps) so she was definitely amused by the group of Americans!

                These two months of training involved a good deal of getting used to the culture and lifestyle changes as well as a lot of intense language studying.  Most of the families did not have transport means but one of my friends’ families did have a car and spoke English rather well.  They wanted us to enjoy ourselves in South Africa so they took it upon themselves to take us to several places during the weekends including a carnival in Pretoria and a casino in the Northwest Province.  Indeed, I felt very lucky to know them as I had some unique experiences that I would otherwise have not had.  The village where I lived for the first two months was rather densely populated but there was only one paved road (the main road through town).  The rest of the roads were dirt roads and the shops were small “sephazas” which are basically shack-like buildings on people’s own property that sell small items such as fruits, veggies, bread, eggs, etc.  There was a sephaza less than a block from my house that sold avocados for 2 rand which is about 30 cents.  They were fresh and delicious.  I became a regular customer for all of the other trainees (since avocados were only sold at select sephazas) and the owner of this sephaza started giving me free avocados because of the regular business.

                About halfway through the training, the Peace Corps staff decided to treat us to a fun day to break up the work.  We took a Saturday and went to a game reserve.  It was great fun as we got to ride on a safari vehicle through the brush and saw zebras, impalas, and even a giraffe.

                During the last week of training, we had an oral language assessment with certified language testers.  If we ‘failed’ the test, we would be required to have a tutor and re-take the test again during our next formal training week which occurs in mid-January.  To pass the test, you had to score Intermediate Low or better.  I did well and scored Advanced Low.  As a result I was nominated to write and read a speech in Sepedi during the formal “swearing-in” ceremony.  This was quite an honor as all of the South African Peace Corps staff was present as well as all of the language instructors and our future school supervisors.  The US ambassador from the embassy in Pretoria even came!  There was a reporter for a newspaper present and he met with me following the speech to obtain a copy of the speech and get approval from the Peace Corps Director to publish a story about the Peace Corps in the newspaper. 

                Immediately following this swearing-in ceremony, we were all shipped to our respective permanent sites where we will be living for two years.  I was sent to Limpopo Province which is the northernmost province in South Africa.  I am about 45 miles southeast of the city of Polokwane which apparently is the fastest growing city in South Africa.  Officially the city has around 350,000 residents but the surrounding areas are not counted so the realistic number is quite a bit larger.  There are no buildings over 4 stories tall and the city is not too scenic from what I’ve seen thus far but it does have most of what I would need as far as shopping so that is definitely convenient.  They are also in the process of building a rather large stadium in the city to host some of the World Cup soccer matches in 2010.  There is an airport in Polokwane as well but currently planes only fly to Johannesburg.  The city sits just south of the Tropic of Capricorn so as you can imagine it is rather warm.

                Although this city is relatively nearby, I was assigned to work in the rural sections that seem like another world (all volunteers work in the impoverished areas of South Africa and not in the cities).  Hence the paradoxical nature of South Africa is ever-present.  The proximity of first-world conditions and third-world conditions is rather stunning.  The villages where I have been assigned are quite rural, remote, and poor.  One of the villages where I was assigned to work is called Phoshiri.  It is a village of about 400 people and has a 95% unemployment rate.  There are no tarred roads in the town or even on the way to town.  The only public vehicle that comes to the village is a bus that comes and leaves the town twice a day during the week, once a day on Saturday, and not at all on Sunday.  This is rather rare as most of the villages (even the remote ones) are serviced by taxis.  I use the term ‘taxi’ loosely though as the taxis are referred to as kumbi’s here and are vans that seat 16 people and only leave from ‘taxi ranks.’  You can’t really hail a taxi on the side of the road (it’s difficult if you are able) and you can’t request a taxi to take you somewhere specific.  They follow prescribed paths or routes and only leave the ranks once they are full (I have sat on these kumbis for well over an hour waiting for it to fill with people).  Although Polokwane is relatively close, I generally have to allow myself at least two hours to get to town because of the kumbi situation. 

One thing that did surprise me (pleasantly) is the widespread availability of electricity throughout South Africa.  The village of Phoshiri where I live just received electrical service last year.  The fact that Phoshiri did not receive electricity until 2007 is often met with surprise when it is told to other South Africans (even throughout rural villages).  Since electricity is so ‘new’ in Phoshiri though, a good number of the houses are not equipped for electrical service yet.  Luckily my home stay in Phoshiri does have electricity (to my knowledge only one Peace Corps volunteer in South Africa is without electricity at all) though blackouts are very common as I have come to realize.  There is no running water in the homes of Phoshiri.  There is a reservoir and a communal tap for the neighborhood so the residents go (often on donkey carts) to fill up large drums of water for use around the house. 

Another pleasant surprise is the widespread reception of cell phone service.  Reception occurs everywhere throughout South Africa!  I have not had one dropped call.  There are very few phone lines in rural South Africa, but cell phone towers are ever-present.  It is interesting, but the technology of phone lines never reached the homes in rural South Africa (there are public phone ‘buildings’ in some of the villages where residents could go to make calls – like a large phone booth) and now adding land-lines is an afterthought.  Resultantly, most residents moved from having no phone service at all to having cell phone reception everywhere.

                I have the rather unique situation of having two ‘home’ sites.  As far as I am aware (and as I have been told), I am the only Peace Corps volunteer in South Africa who has been assigned two different living sites.  This is because of the distance between the two schools where I work and the difficulty of transportation to and from the village of Phoshiri.  My two supervisors (the principals of the two schools to which I have been assigned) arranged a home stay for me in both of the villages where I will be working.  One of the villages is the aforementioned Phoshiri, the other village is called Seleteng.  The two homestays happen to be quite different.  In Phoshiri, I stay in a room that is not attached to the home of my ‘host’ family.  It is small room with corrugated sheet iron for a roof (very common here) that sits on the side of a mountain.  It gets very hot in the room as the roof is very low and the iron soaks up the sun without any shade to block the heat.  Daily it has been over 93 degrees in my room (I have a thermometer) and there is, of course, no air conditioning here (if I had to pick one thing I miss most about life in the US, it would be air conditioning – and yes – I’m serious).  My host parents in Phoshiri speak very little English and have had very little formal education.  They are very kind to me and make me feel welcome but communication is difficult most of the time thus far (though I am working on it daily:)).  Most of the village of Phoshiri speaks very little English and the remoteness of the village is ever-present.

                The village of Seleteng is similar in some ways (no tarred roads, rural setting, etc), but there is a taxi rank there and several small stores.  The family with whom I stay in Seleteng, however, is quite different than the family with whom I stay in Phoshiri.  The family in Seleteng speaks English rather fluently.  All of the members have a university education and all are employed.  The house is also different as there is running water (cold only), a driveway with cars, tile ceilings, and a computer inside the house (extremely rare for rural South Africa).  The mother of the house, Gillian, is very well known in the village.  She manages 5 drop-in centers including the main branch in Seleteng (the other 4 branch centers are satellite locations).  The drop-in center supports orphaned and vulnerable children in Seleteng and the nearby areas.  She used to be both a teacher as well as the Deputy Principal at the school where I have been assigned in Seleteng.  Her husband died in an accident about 15 years ago and she has never remarried.  She has 5 children aged 25-37.  (One daughter and 4 sons).  Her 2^nd youngest son, Mamakgeme, lives at home with his wife and their 2-year old son.  The other children live nearby though one is a lawyer who stays in Johannesburg during the week.  She also has hired a family friend from Mpumalanga to help with the dishes, cooking, and cleaning in return for a place to stay and food.  Gillian made it clear to me from the first day that I should refer to her as Mmae which means “Mom.”  She refers to me as her son and is extremely welcoming to me.  She wakes at 5AM everyday and is active all day with community events and organizing fund-raisers and proposals for the Drop-in center.  She loves to garden and the yard actually has green grass (again – extremely rare for rural South Africa) as well as guava, mango, orange, lemon, palm, and papaya trees in her yard.  When I stay at her house, I eat and interact with the family regularly.  Although I have to live out of a suitcase when I am in Seleteng (I stay in a ‘guest room’ that is not attached to the main house and I do not have the key when I am away in Phoshiri), I love the opportunity to live in two different villages and two very different situations.  One is very rural, remote, and impoverished whereas one is relatively more modern with more amenities.

                Work-wise, I will be working with two different primary schools – one in Phoshiri and one in Seleteng.  My principals are very hard-working and very kind.  I apparently got very lucky with my supervisors as some of the other volunteers have less-than-accommodating supervisors.  Additionally, my supervisors have had previous experience with Peace Corps as there was a volunteer who lived in Phoshiri and worked with them from 2006-2008.  She just completed her service in July and left me a bunch of nice food and good notes about life in the village.  In the schools, I will be helping the teachers with English lessons and helping with computer skills (the small school in Phoshiri just bought their first computer after I arrived).  Our Peace Corps group is focused on helping the teachers continue to adjust to Outcome-based education which was first instituted in the rural schools following the demise of apartheid.  Most of the teachers in the rural schools attended schooling under the apartheid system and are not as familiar with skills such as critical thinking or imaginative creativity.  Thus – we are there to help in the transition of different teaching methods.

I also will be working in the community.  There is a poultry project in Phoshiri that the last Peace Corps volunteer helped start.  Since the people of Phoshiri have nowhere to buy fruits, veggies, meat, or dairy, my supervisor had an idea to start a poultry project.  The last volunteer did some research and applied for grants.  After the grants came through, the Dept of Agriculture came to Phoshiri in 2007 and helped construct a building that houses 100 chickens on the school property.  The building was constructed to standards most conducive to egg-laying and the chickens have been laying eggs regularly since the project began. These eggs are then sold to the members of the community very cheaply.  Previously, all of the residents had to wait for (and pay for) the infrequent bus to go to town to buy eggs and other fresh foods.  The money that has been made from the egg project thus far has gone to start a small vegetable garden at the school as well. These fresh vegetables are then sold to the members of the community as well.  My supervisor has expressed an interest in having me help expand the project.  One area where he thinks that we should focus is on the feed.  Since commercial feed is very expensive, he has suggested that I research different ways to feed the chickens.  One idea is starting a wormery (the worms would be fed to the chickens).  The community is very much behind this project and a group of women actually sleep at the school on the weekends to help with security.

                In addition to the school work and the poultry project – I will likely be working with Gillian at the Drop-In Center in Seleteng.  I anticipate helping with writing grant applications as well as helping the children with their homework after school.

 

                For the next ~3 months, I am actually still completing training.  The Peace Corps has given all of the volunteers weekly assignments to complete in an effort to help us get acclimated to the workings of our villages.  We are not supposed to be working directly on our projects until this last leg of training has been completed.  In mid January of 2009, all of the volunteers will reconvene at the educational center in Marapyane again for 2 weeks at which time we will have more sessions and review what we have learned.  We also have to turn in a portfolio of our assignment work during the first three months at site.  After that training program, I hope (and expect) to have a much better understanding of what it is that I will actually be doing on a daily basis as it is still quite nebulous.  The projects and activities that I mentioned above are all just tentative at this point as I am still in training but hopefully some ideas will continue to coalesce as the months move forward.

               

Animals are everywhere though they are not usually the exciting ones that you may think of when you conjure up Africa in your mind.  A lot of donkeys, goats, sheep, cows, and chickens mostly.  They roam freely everywhere.  In fact, my family in Phoshiri owns all of the animals listed above except the donkeys.  I have seen baboons within a kilometer of my house and monkeys on the side of the road but otherwise there are not too many ‘exotic’ animals roaming freely near me.  There are however, insects.  Roaches, spiders, mosquitos, fruit flies, regular flies, and scorpions are some of the more common ones.  As far as food – I eat pretty boring stuff when I am in Phoshiri since I have to cook for myself.  A lot of peanut butter, bread, oatmeal, and canned veggies.  I have, however, eaten more oranges since arriving in South Africa then I think I had cumulatively in my life in the US.  While in Seleteng, we eat a lot of pap which is a South African staple food and is basically a bland corn-meal type porridge thing.  There is also a lot of beet roots and spinach served.  I have experimented with foods since being here and have tried chicken feet (they are adored here), fresh goat meat (I went to a goat-slaughtering ceremony), fresh goat intestines (won’t do that again), mopani worms (apparently they are healthy) and fresh aloe straight from the plant.  Oh and I think that guavas picked from the tree are my new favorite fruit.  I took a walk today into the middle of nowhere and did not see any sign of human life for over an hour.  It was wonderful to get out into the wilderness out here!

 

                As the cliché goes, ‘so far so good.’  I have to say that things have been, for the most part, pretty wonderful thus far.  The change in accommodations has been challenging at times but nothing to which I have not been able to adjust.  I have been enjoying the more laid back and less stressful living environment of South Africa and I have had a lot of time to reflect and enjoy myself.  The experience has definitely been unique thus far and rather difficult at times.  Daily life is much different than the life I was used to in the US. 

Anyway I hope to be productive and happy for the next two years here and I will try my best to see that both of those goals are met.  However, I am accepting that things happen rather unexpectedly here.  So much so that I have learned to embrace the unexpected and really take things day by day.  Thanks to all of you for your support and love and thanks for reading this! 

 

More Soon.  With Love,

 

-A