Reflections on Malls

In South Africa, I spend far more time in malls socially than I ever did in America. I don't really go to the mall in Giyani, either, mainly because it's small and the grocery store I shop at isn't in it. But whenever I'm in a city, or even in another town in Limpopo, the mall seems to be the first stop. Partly, the malls are more all-encompassing than the malls in San Antonio. They have, besides the usual stores and restaurants, grocery stores and movie theaters. If I want to buy food, I have to go to the mall. Movies are cheap here, so watching movies is a common past time for PCVs who have to pass through Pretoria and have an afternoon to kill (I have seen five movies in the last month! Five!). That also requires a visit to the mall. Hatfild Mall has a Lebanese restaurant and an frozen yogurt place, both popular stops, and a few coffee shops. Plus, frankly, there's not a whole lot to do in Pretoria when you return time and again.

In Durban, on the other hand, we had a free day before taking the night bus back to Gauteng before GTOT and it was more or less unanimously decided that we should go to the mall for the day. I was in favor of it, and enjoyed myself in the mall. But Durban has plenty to do besides malls: the beach, the markets, the museums, the Marine World, etc. Partly, we were tired from our week at LST and just wanted to zone out (we saw a movie at the mall). Partly, half the group had just been to Durban for vacation and the other half were going to be coming back soon. But really, if we had wanted to, there would have been something else to do in the city.

Malls, most PCVs who frequent them will acknowledge, aren't even that exciting. There's not much to do after you've reached the point where all the movies playing are so bad that you actually refuse to see them, after you've eaten three enormous meals, and after you've browsed through things you can't afford and don't want to buy, possibly running through your list of things you can't buy in your shopping town while at the grocery store. I think that we keep returning because they're comforting to be in. They remind us of home, even though very few of us ever went to malls much at home. They offer us anonymity and relative safety to wander, which doesn't really happen where most of us live. They're full of mindless activities, which is a relief for those of us who spend too much time thinking serious thoughts and need to get out of our heads. Yes, we could go look at important historical monuments and museums after traveling all day before our meeting tomorrow. Or, we could go see James Bond blow things up and then get ice cream.

Five Weeks in one Backpack: Update

I am in the PC office between journeys. LST was really productive, we learned a lot about running life skills groups for youth in our communities. There were speakers from the CDC giving general background, as well as more experienced volunteers running mock sessions with us to discuss and practice faciliation skills and techniques. There was time to reconnect with volunteers I hadn't seen since IST in July, a beach, and a cheese plate at every meal. Great week overall.

GTOT was another productive week. We turned previously-arrived at learning objectives into a schedule of events for SA 19's pre-service training, and created lesson plans for all of the sessions they'll be having. There were also role-playing days where the language and cultural facilitators practiced their lessons, with the volunteers acting as students. We were some very troublesome pupils, far more disruptive than most trainees usually are, but I think that the new LCFs came away from the sessions much more aware of how difficult teaching Americans can be. I'll be going to PST in early March to facilitate a few sessions. Unfortunately, Tsonga, my target language, isn't being taught this time around, so I won't get to help out with language classes, nor will my LCF be back.

The most exciting part of GTOT was of course the fact that the water was off for the last three or four days we were there. Now, PC brought in barrels of water for us to use, but no water in an environment designed for indoor plumbing is a lot different from no water in a village with pit latrines. We grumbled, though mainly in an amused way. There was much discussion of bowel movements, but also something of an epiphany: GTOT was held at the same place that SA 19's training will be held, though PC has sworn up and down that the water issue will be resolved by then. What if we hadn't had running water our first few days in Mokopane? We would have been very unhappy indeed. After over ten months in rural South Africa, it's a problem to work around, but fundamentally not a big deal, and a source of humor more than anything else.

The title of this post is inspired by the fact that all of the things I took on this trip originally fit into one backpack. This is the same backpack I used in high school for my textbooks. Since I'm traveling between many of these places on public taxis, it's really the only reasonable way to pack. I plan to do a lot of laundry this month. However, the amount I have with me has already expanded frighteningly. Not only did we receive many, many manuals during LST, I went shopping in Durban and Pretoria, and picked up books at the PC library. I'm going to have to start shedding possessions soon.

World AIDS Day

World AIDS Day is actually December 1st, which I think is Monday, but I'm not going to be around then. Fortunately, my village celebrated it today instead, so I got to go to an HIV Awareness event at our local clinic. It went as all South African events of this sort went: about ten people gave "short" speeches of anywhere from ten to twenty minutes, with a keynote address at the end just about the time everyone has fallen asleep. I think this happens because it's important to make sure that everyone who is important to the community gets his or her turn at the podium, but it really is not fun for the audience. Between each speaker there's some entertainment to break up the monotony, usually traditional dancing and maybe some HIV-related dramas. This particular campaign actually had some great breathers, mainly because they recruited a bunch of old women to sing traditional Tsonga dances and then, just when you think you're going to die of dehydration mixed with boredom, they played soccer! None of them really knew how to, but they also knew that that was the funny part, so they hammed it up.

After the soccer thing, I had been there about two hours (not counting the fact that it started an hour late), and I really was pretty badly dehydrated so I thought that maybe I could sneak out and go home. My host mom was organizing the event, but I felt that she would forgive me. However, on my way to freedom, I was ambushed and kidnapped by another of the women organizing the event, who works at the clinic, and forced to stay for the rest. However, we did take a break to go inside to a room with a fan and I found a tap at which I got some water, so death was delayed a few hours. This woman also made me pose in pictures with her after the event, which is awkward--it always makes me feel like one of those actors at Disneyland whose sole job is to wander around and pose as Cinderella or Mickey Mouse in photos. Including eating, the whole thing took a little over four hours.

The event was reasonably well attended by older members of the community, but there were very few youth there, other than the kids recruited to put on the HIV/AIDS dramas. It's good that the community has this sort of event, and that the chief and other prominent people attend it, but it's unfortunate that so few of the people who could benefit most from it attend.

There was of course much food afterwards, and on our way out Masingita and I grabbed a few extra cans of cold drink. She's decided that we should start bribing the girls not to cry. I guess if I'm seen as the bearer of cold drink, it will make me less scary to them. I'm not sure how well it worked. The past few weeks, Xihluki and Simeko have switched m.o.'s: now Xihluki is cautiously excited to see me, and Simeko bursts into hysterical tears. Maybe it's just a phase. Anyway, they got cold drink, but it may take another dosage before we see any effects.

Tomorrow I'm off to LST in Durban. After that, GTOT (General Training of Trainers) in Marapyane. After that, vacation. Don't expect too much in the way of updates until January. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Turkey Day Without Turkey

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner this afternoon with some volunteers in the area, though strangely enough, the grocery stores were not overflowing with turkey and we had to settle for chicken instead. Squash was, however, abundant. There was also no football. No turkey, no football, very little cooking, no leftovers, and I didn't have to fly anywhere. In other words: Best. Thanksgiving. Ever.

They did manage to provide a token jar, baby-food sized, of cranberry sauce. Since cranberry sauce is, we decided, to Thanksgiving as fruitcake is to Christmas, this was about the right portion size.

I hope that everyone is enjoying the holiday.

A Few Short Entries

Goat Update

Sunday, I was sitting outside when I noticed a couple of animals in
our yard out of the corner of my eye, wagging their tails and
scratching themselves. I thought, "When did we get dogs?" Then I
looked closer and realized they were the goats.

Spring Is Here

And the world is green. It has been slowly becoming greener for the
past few weeks, but I didn't really notice this gradual increase until
this weekend, when I came back from a couple nights out of town.
Suddenly the once brownish landscape was verdant and beautiful, the
mountains in the distance cloaked in mist during rainy mornings.

The flip side of this is that all of the pretty foliage is covering
all of my mental landmarks. Reminiscent of my anxiety about getting
lost when I first moved here, my first few taxi rides since the
greenness began in earnest have all featured me looking anxiously out
the window for the latter half of the journey, looking for the
architectural cues that will tell me that I live nearby and should get
off the taxi.

Mail Moratorium

In early December, I will be traveling to some trainings for Peace
Corps. After that, my NGO, through which I receive my mail, will be
closed from mid-December to mid-January for the holiday break. I will
spend part of that time traveling. Since mail that languishes in the
post office for too long tends to disappear, it's probably a good idea
not to send me anything. Thanks!

Diversity Blog

Hey everyone. Diversity Committee started a blog about, well, diversity in Peace Corps South Africa. Check it out. We're still getting it started, but there's the introduction and a link to AJ's blog there now.

http://meltingpotintherainbownation.blogspot.com

If you're a PCV reading this, consider writing something. Please? The more the merrier.

Books About South Africa

I know that my blog makes for some fascinating reading, but, should you need something to fill the lonely days between posts, here is the rundown of a few books I’ve read about South Africa. Most have apartheid as a major theme; even though apartheid is over, its effects still linger, and its shadow over modern South African history still long and dark enough to make understanding apartheid important to understanding where South Africa is now, and where it will go from here.

A History of South Africa, by Leonard Thompson: This book covers the length and breadth of recorded South African history, from before colonization by Europeans to post-apartheid. And yet it’s only 300 pages! As such, it can be a little confusing, packed with unelaborated-upon references to events and people that make a lot more sense if you’re already acquainted with South African history.

Kaffir Boy, by Mark Mathabane: Mathabane is a journalist who emigrated to America to attend college and wrote this book, about his childhood experiences, while the apartheid regime still reigned. He lived in Alexandra, a black township that is part of Jo’burg, and chronicles the atrocities that he, his family, and his neighbors were subjected to by the ruling white minority and how he eventually escaped it.

My Traitor’s Heat, by Rian Malan: An incredible soul-searching account of apartheid from a liberal Afrikaner’s perspective, this could be read almost as a companion piece to Kaffir Boy. Malan is also a journalist who emigrates to America, though he returns to South Africa to write this book; it explores not only the atrocities of apartheid, but also the hypocrisy of white liberals, the complexities of various contemporary political movements in South Africa, and his own life and family history. This book, too, was written before the end of apartheid.

Cry, The Beloved Country, by Alan Paton: Maybe the classic novel of apartheid South Africa. It’s about a black man who travels from the country into the city looking for a family remember and then returning—it’s not the plot which is important, though certainly each event is telling, but instead the description of life, hardship, and love, revealed in dozens of narrative moments, as it exists for the characters.

Long Walk to Freedom, by Nelson Mandela: His autobiography, much of which was written while he was imprisoned at Robben Island. A moving portrait that also illuminates a lot of what was going on behind the scenes during the growth of the ANC and why apartheid fell when it did. A very enjoyable read.

Rain

Winter is over, spring is here. Since spring started out with deathly hot days that I had hoped wouldn't come around until high summer, I was seriously considering spending the entire October-March season lying in a cool bucket bath eating custard and fruit, scratching my mosquito bites. Fortunately, the rain has come; selfishly, I am most excited about this because it means that it is cool and overcast most days--the rain comes mainly at night, keeping the mosquitos away.

The rain has other effects. It means that drought is less likely (the rain came late this year), so no more five day stretches without water like two weeks ago! And our mango trees have a chance to flourish.

Less expected effects include the fact that the goats seek shelter in our pit toilet. I don't blame them, since their kraal (paddock) isn't roofed and the pit toilet is very nice and watertight (cement rather than corrugated tin), but it definitely took me aback when I went to use the bathroom a couple of days ago and had to chase the goats out first. Now I'm used to it. Fortunately, the toilet seats are covered so that wandering goats and chickens don't fall in (it's a 10 foot drop, any goat that goes down isn't coming back up).

Also less expected, though eminently predictable, is the amount of mud I have managed to track in EVEN THOUGH I TAKE OFF MY SHOES AT THE DOOR. I don't know where the mud comes from. Maybe the bottom of the laundry bucket? I'm daunted by the prospect of cleaning it. However, it's a small price to pay for not coming home dehydrated every day.

Election Anecdote

This didn't happen to me, it happened to another volunteer yesterday, but it's funny, and I think it says a lot about how South Africa's racial history impacts its perception of the rest of the world.

South African: Ah, I'm sorry about your election.
(white) PCV: Why are you sorry?
South African: Well, you lost.
PCV: No no, we won.
South African: !

In a country where much voting and party-building happens on primarily racial lines, I suppose it's not surprising that many South Africans assume that racial struggles are taking place in the same manner in America; for many, it's inconceivable that so many white people would vote for a black man. Needless to say, most South Africans adore Obama, and for them, his victory isn't a victory against Bush or for Hope (or whatever you think the election was about), but a victory for blacks worldwide of the same character as the end of apartheid.

(Of course, if Obama were South African instead of American, he wouldn't be considered black but colored.)

I am still alive, I swear

More computer issues, so I'm still playing catch up.  I'll post when I can, sorry about the long gaps.  In the meantime...

 

A few weeks ago, I had a meeting with representatives from several recently established drop-in centres, including some from the DIC I visited a few months ago.  The meeting was to talk about whether they would be interested in a training programme if Khanimamba offered one; the drop-in centres we are targeting are under-funded, staffed by volunteers who usually have little experience, and generally held together with both hands, so we are hoping that the sort of training we have offered to crèches will now be helpful to drop-in centres.

 

My supervisor warned me the week before the meeting that I shouldn't expect too many people to show up for the first meeting, and that anyone who does show up may very well be several hours late.  Since this is a fairly common experience for everyone who tries to start something new in South Africa, I considered myself forewarned and not too expectant about attendance of the first meeting.  Much to my surprise, even though I had come into the office well before the meeting to get some things ready, some attendees had beat me there, and most of the people who ended up attending were there half an hour before we were scheduled to start.  We had nearly twenty people from eight different drop-in centres, and no one showed up more than fifteen minutes after our starting time (we actually started on time, or maybe five minutes late but that's on time even in America).  Twenty is a great number to start with since it's nearly the maximum number we would ideally like to have in a training class.

 

The meeting was, on the whole, productive.  Probably the best thing that happened was that we got a lot of data about the centres that showed up—things like when they were founded, how many employees they have, if they're registered with the government, receiving funding, etc. that we can put in our files, plus updated contact information for them.  We tried to get them to do a couple of "exercises" in small groups that took a lot longer than they should have and didn't really get people thinking creatively, but since most of the small group work I have done with South Africans was like pulling teeth I wasn't too surprised. 

 

My supervisor wanted me to run the meeting since the trainer I would be working with on this programme wasn't here (she was at a family funeral) and they needed to get used to working with me, despite the fact that many of the trainers don't speak English very well and my Xitsonga is not good enough to sustain what ended up being a three or four hour meeting.  I gave it a shot, but eventually it became clear that I wasn't explaining the idea of having a training programme very well and my supervisor thankfully jumped in.  She did a great job of explaining what we had in mind and it seemed as though most people were interested.  Hopefully things will continue to come together and we will start actually offering the trainings in the New Year.

Part 3

This past week, my mom’s oldest son and his daughter, Jablila, have been staying with us, which makes me very happy. Now, I love Simeko and Xihluki, the two little girls who live with us full-time, but they cannot decide if they love me or not. While I have on occasion had fun playing with them, the latest pattern seems to be that they will stand in the yard yelling for me (whether I am home or not, I am told) but, when I at last appear, burst into tears. I think the calling for me is instigated by the younger one, Simeko, who is not actually that afraid of me, and the crying is instigated by Xihluki, who is.

Jablila, however, is about six and most definitely not afraid of me. Moreover, along with her come a couple of her friends who are also not afraid of me. They’re shy sometimes, but there’s no bursting into tears. They prefer instead to hold my hand while we walk, play with my hair, sing and dance for me, or even just sit near me staring, all of which I find infinitely preferable to the crying vagaries of the younger girls and makes for a generally brighter, less stressful time at home.

Jablila won several trophies recently at school, one for Xitsonga recitation and the other for song and dance. Jablila is shy enough that she didn’t want to perform them for me with any ceremony, but she still wanted me to see her dance. So, she would start doing the march that went along with the song so that I could see it out of the corner of my eye, but if I looked at her directly she would usually stop. Eventually, in this manner, I got to appreciate the bulk of the marching dance she had won the trophy for. Her only-slightly-less-shy friend was, in the meanwhile, spinning around in his chair reciting every song, rhyme, or hymn he could remember learning at his crèche.

Under their good example, Xihluki at last stopped crying

Part 2

2.  Last week, there was a party in my village for women who completed the circumcision school.  Now, I didn't get quite as thorough an explanation of the women's school as I got of the men's in July, but I gather that they are quite different.  For one thing, the women's school only lasts a week.  For another, the women appear to be generally older than the boys who participate in the men's circumcision school—one of my acquaintances who completed it this year must be at least in her late twenties of early thirties, and none of the women being celebrated at the party seemed particularly young.  Finally, I don't think that the women actually get circumcised; at least, they all seemed very happy and active at the party.

 

I wasn't actually sure what the party was for while I was there, and given the general explanation only as I was leaving.  I came home on Saturday in the early afternoon from doing some grocery shopping, and there were a bunch of people sitting quietly in our yard and some more in one of the buildings.  I couldn't find anybody in my family, but my mom had called me while I was in town to make sure that I was coming back that day.  Since I had told my sister that I was going into town that morning and I always let the family know if I'm going to be away overnight, I was really worried by this phone call—I thought that maybe someone we knew had died this week and I was missing their funeral or something else equally grave.  The number of people sitting relatively quietly around our yard didn't make me any less worried.

 

Eventually my mom got back home—someone had explained to me that she was at Mavis's and would be returning—and she didn't seem too upset or worried, and after we had all eaten a comparatively elaborate meal (not just vuswa and huku!*) we all migrated to the party, which was very clearly a celebration of something.  In addition to the dancing and the skirts that happen at all celebrations, there was a ritual for the women being celebrated where they are covered with clothes, blankets, and headscarves.  The party went on for hours, people eventually coming back to our house to continue talking even after the main event was over.  Even though it wasn't too late, my mom was exhausted from the day and falling asleep in her chair, but she couldn't go to bed until all of the guests left; eventually, they took the hint.

 

*vuswa=pap; huku=chicken

Hello Again

Sorry about the long delay between posts.  South African electricity disagrees with my power cords, so I had a bit of a wait while waiting for the newest one to arrive. 

 

So.  Making up for lost time.

 

1.  Three weekends ago I went to Tzaneen, a township about an hour or so away from Giyani, with a couple of other volunteers to visit Cordelia, my language teacher from pre-service training.  Now, Lonely Planet, ever generous in most of its descriptions and always ready to find delight in even the most boring subjects, basically describes Limpopo as a "barren wasteland."  (I'm summarizing here, I'm not going to pull out my book for an exact quotation.)  While I think the Giyani area is incredibly beautiful, after the dry/winter season where not much is growing and comparing it to the rather more lush vistas of KZN, I was ready to admit that perhaps they weren't speaking entirely out of their hats—though compared to the Bela Bela area, where SA 18 did their training, Giyani is still paradise.  Tzaneen, however, is surrounded by orchards and is intensely green even now, enough so to make even an otherwise cramped and uncomfortable taxi journey pleasant.  Once in town, we indulged in the pleasures of a larger, more diverse town than Giyani: we explored the mall.  I bought pens, we ate Indian food.  It's a good thing we didn't go to Woolworth's, or otherwise I probably would have gone broke buying cheeses.

 

Cordelia lives in a village outside the town, and we stayed the night at her house.  We met her family, all of whom were incredibly welcoming and excited to have us their.  They had purchased an enormous quantity of food for a braai (barbeque), and we, the Americans, were placed in charge of the grill.  We made the mistake of putting the meat on while the fire was too hot, so the first batch of chicken taken off was an exercise in living dangerously—not only was John's hand in danger of being burned off every time he tried to flip a piece of chicken, but the chicken was seriously undercooked (we had the sense to put it back on for a second cooking after the fire had died down some, so no one ended up with salmonella, at least as far as I know).

 

That evening, as happens every time there is a large gathering in South Africa, Cordelia's family sang and danced in celebration of our visit.  A large contingent of neighborhood children appeared and arranged themselves into a choir to serenade us.  We were told that we should sing something as well, but unfortunately our imagination failed us and our self-consciousness at performing further constrained us, so we demurred as politely as we could.  Cordelia helpfully explained that in America, people are too embarrassed to sing and dance like this; this is probably not true of all Americans, but it is certainly true of the three of us.  We were given a reprieve, but told that when we return in November, we must come with something to sing.

FAQ

Questions South Africans ask about America.

1. How long did it take you to get to South Africa?
2. How much did plane tickets cost?
3. Do you eat pap in America?
4. Do you eat pap here?
5. Have you tried the mopani worms?
6. Have you ever seen a goat before moving to South Africa?
7. Is there much crime in America?
8. There’s no poverty in America, is there?
9. Do you support Barack Obama?
10. Are there rural areas like this in America?
11. Do you have your driver’s license?
12. What kind of driver’s license?
13. Do they speak Afrikaans in America?

All of my answers are met with great exclamation or hysterical laughter (the latter usually follows all food-related questions).

It’s an odd list, I know, but then, the average American probably has just as strange ideas about South Africa.

The Yard Smells Like Cow Manure

Back during training, before I had internet access, my primary hobby was reading ahead in "Everyday Tsonga," one of our grammar manuals. In one of the later lessons, one of the vocabulary words was "ku sindza." This means, "to smear mudfloors with cowdung." I thought, "Uh huh. Okay, not going to learn that word."

I went on site visit. By the end I realized, "Hmm...these agricultural and cowdung-related terms might be useful after all."

Today, there was much sindza-ing at home. The yard, as perhaps you noticed in earlier pictures, is made of hard dirt. This is not the kind of thing you can allow to take care of itself. Every morning my sister sweeps the dirt off the dirt floor, and every once in a while it has to be re-paved. I missed much of the process since I was at work, but I gather that basically it involves taking cow manure and spreading it into a thin layer on the ground, then smoothing it out with a stone or other tool, and then letting the sun dry it out. Mainly I witnessed this last bit.

The process for a fairly large yard was completed in a day, thanks to the help of our neighbors. My mom, Masingita, has occasionally gone to help other friends in the neighborhood with the same process. It's a nice network, being able to rely on other members of the community to help you out when you need it, because they know you'll do the same for them.

New Blood

SA 18 just finished their site visits this weekend, and will be
swearing in as volunteers in about two weeks. About five of them are
slated to be in the Giyani area, three of them fairly near the town
and two of them further away, about halfway between Tzaneen and
Giyani. One couple, Pam and Dan, will actually be housed at Giyani
College, which is where my organization rents its office space.

I'm looking forward to having some fresh faces nearby, and wish them
the best of luck in their last few days of training. I hope that
they will come to love Giyani as much as I do.

You Know You’re a Peace Corps Volunteer in South Africa When…

1. Walking around holding a roll of toilet paper seems like a completely normal thing to do.
2. You have unlimited internet access but no water for half the week.
3. Sitting under a mango tree watching the goats graze counts as a productive day.
4. You stop looking at your watch, even though you wear it every day.
5. You start buying bras with the primary criterion of their functionality as phone and cash holders.
6. You stare when you see a white person you don’t know.
7. The length of time it takes you to walk to the tar road is wholly dependent on how many people happen to be in their yards along the way.
8. Knee-length hemlines are shocking but toplessness is not.
9. Taking home a bag of 50 avocados on public transportation doesn’t strike you as problematic or inconvenient—even if you also have two weeks’ groceries and an overnight bag with you.
10. 2 weeks, 3 provinces, and 3 changes of clothes in a small backpack seems about right.
11. Seeing a movie in a theater is a good bargain, buying a book is an unthinkable expense.
12. $15 is an extortionate price for delivery Indian food.
13. $4 is an extortionate price for a cocktail.
14. You have come to realize that the monkeys in the parks play roughly the same role as squirrels in America, but persist in taking pictures of them anyway.
15. You are considered the preeminent expert on professional wrestling despite being able to count your WWE viewing sessions on one hand.
16. There is a rooster you would like to kill, if only he weren’t dangerously close to your size.
17. You have thwarted a guard dog by scratching it behind the ears.
18. You are outraged whenever the fare for a 30-minute taxi ride goes up 30 cents USD.
19. You are not outraged whenever your 30-minute taxi ride takes 2 hours.
20. You can identify an otherwise unmarked stretch of road by the pattern of potholes.
21. You have had extended and positive conversations about the bouquet of a $3 bottle of wine.
22. One of the more exciting parts of returning home is finding out what species of insect has decided to invade your Brita filter this time.
23. When buying clothes, you think, “How hard would this be to wash in a bucket?”
24. You have come to expect two weeks vacation every three months.
25. The fact that Pepto Bismol turns vomit black is a standard and essential element of your knowledge base.
26. Showering every day seems like a decadent vacation.
27. Though cognizant of being the worst dressed person in your village, you don’t care.
28. You live in an almost constant state of existential angst about whether or not you are driving on the wrong side of the road, no matter which side you happen to be on.
29. You double up on words beyond the standard “sharp sharp” and “now now,” so that such phrases as “soon soon,” “fast fast,” “long long,” and “hot hot” are part and parcel of your everyday vocabulary.
30. If you had to choose between whether you would rather lose your passport or your plug adapter, you really might choose the passport.

Vacation Pictures

My photos from vacation are up here:

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/Jade.Lamb/KosiBay

Also, Becky, who I went on vacation with, has put her photos from our trip up here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/reford/StLuciaKosiBayMozambique

Beautiful, Beautiful Beaches

I just had my first official vacation since beginning my PC odyssey. I went with four friends to St. Lucia's Estuary and Kosi Bay for a week and had my first Indian Ocean experience. St. Lucia's is a World Heritage Site, and its estuary hosts hippopatami, which I saw in abundance, and crocodiles, which I saw only one of thanks to the windy August weather. In addition, we went to both the St. Lucia's beach (more hippos!) and the Cape Vidal beach (so, so windy). We should have been able to see whales on the Cape Vidal beach, but I think that the wind kept them offshore. To get to the Cape Vidal beach, we had to drive through a game park, where South African wildlife roamed freely. The highlight were the rhinos, my first SA encounter with one of the big five.

After St. Lucia's we headed north to Kosi Bay, a very non-developed, non-touristy area. The signs to our backpackers (Thobeka, which is a great place and one I recommend heartily to anyone doing this route) had been stolen, so we had to drive a few kilometers down a dirt road without much idea of which turns we should take, causing some amount of worry that we had made a horrible mistake in choosing this site to visit. However, when at last we arrived (convinced it must be late because it was so dark even though it was only about 6), we got a warm welcome at the beautiful backpackers and a host of activities to be arranged. The first day there we were driven along a gorgeous route to an estuary where we punted across the Blackwater Lake and got to see some amazing raffia palm trees. That afternoon we went snorkeling in Kosi Bay--another windy but beautiful beach. The next day we were taken into Moz for the day and had some amazing seafood while overlooking a breathtaking view of lush green hills and sandy roads, which fortunately involved another incredible scenic drive through the open air over rolling untarred roads.

Finally we drove down along the coast of KZN to return the car to Durban, from which I took a bus to Pretoria and then a taxi home. The drive was stunning, and every hour or so the scenery would change. Limpopo is beautiful in a harsh way, but KZN is intensely green and lush even in winter. Dotted by tree farms and sugar cane fields, even staying in the car the whole time, the journey was magnificent. Durban itself yielded little interesting on this trip, as my hours there were too short and I was burdened by my luggage, but I spent the afternoon with a fellow traveler returning to Limpopo overlooking the beach and the evening waiting at the bus station. I arrived back last night, exhausted and dirty but fully convinced that I have had a wonderful vacation and ready to plan my next.

Pictures will be up on Picasa soon, and when other people post theirs, I will direct you to their collections as well.

American Diversity

Sorry for the long absence. I have been traveling for the last two weeks, first to Pre-Service Training for SA 18 (ie, the group of Peace Corps Volunteers who arrived last month) to help run a diversity workshop and sit in on the Tsonga classes, then to Pretoria for a Diversity Committee meeting, and then for a wonderful trip down to St. Lucia's Estuary and Kosi Bay. I have lots to tell, and promise to make up for my few weeks' silence over the next few days.

I forget if I mentioned that I am now on PCSA's Diversity Committee, a group dedicated to negotiating and supporting the diverse experiences of Peace Corps Volunteers in South Africa. Doesn't that sound nice? In practice, it means aiding with Peace Corps trainings, currently pre-service training and in-service training (which I underwent a month and a half ago). We conduct workshops and panels, the number usually determined by the amount of time that PC is able to set aside for us. For SA 18's PST, we conducted a South African Diversity Panel, where South Africans of different ethnic backgrounds spoke about their experiences, primarily under apartheid, and an American Diversity workshop, which is what I was present for.

The South African panel held while I was a trainee was a really special experience. As a PCV, it is easy to identify only with the black South African experience in impoverished, rural villages. This is an important part of the country's history and culture, but it is not the whole picture of the country's vibrant and complicated legacy. There are four main ethnic groups in South Africa: black (encompassing all different African ethnic groups), colored (mixed black and white), Indian (a legacy of migrant labor in the 19th century; Mahatma Gandhi is an important SA historical figure), and white (further subdivided into the historically unharmonious English and Afrikaans populations). Under apartheid and to a lesser extent under current social conventions, these four groups were strictly separated and divided into a rough caste system. Hearing from people who had lived under the different strictures of the different groupings was an important part of understanding the divides that still permeate South Africa.

The American Diversity workshop held for SA 18 encompassed three activities, each designed to make the trainees more aware of the different experiences among their group, and how they can help each other to be supportive allies in negotiating the never-easy experience of being a PCV. The first activity we held was intended to spark discussions amongst the trainees about how the privileges they had in the US varied amongst different members of their group, and how in turn those privileges changed and varied upon arrival in South Africa. The second activity was Common Ground, a fun activity that emphasizes the similarities as well as differences amongst the trainees. Finally we did an ally-building activity that used gender roles as its model, which was intended to make male volunteers better conscious of how they can be supportive of and sensitive to the unique challgenges that the female volunteers in the group will face as volunteers; the model can also be cross-applied to other social dichotomies.

PCVs are often spoken to as if they are all young, white, single women. This is because over 65% are female, over 80% white and young, and correspondingly few are married couples. Still, to do so is counterproductive to the strengthening of ties between PCVs, and between PCVs and PC staff. Heightening awareness of the fact that not all PCVs are the same PCV is essential to a supportive and inclusive environment--and certainly, these demographics will never change if those volunteers who are not in keeping with the stereotypical PCV feel excluded.

I hope that the activity gave the trainees something to think about, though overall it was not quite as well organized as we would have like for a number of reasons that we should be able to better handle with SA 19. Helping out with Tsonga was a lot less stressful, and I was glad both to see Cordelia, who was my language trainer, and to meet the group that may potentially be stationed in the Giyani area.

On Saturday was the quarterly Diversity Committee meeting, which was productive but probably fairly boring for all of you. One thing we discussed was the creation of a diversity blog for PCSA, as a forum to discuss the multitude of experiences PCVs have in this country, varying based both on their backgrounds and the variations in the communities they are placed in. We are still sorting out the preliminaries, including getting approval from PC, but I will let you know when/if the blog goes up.

Taxis

I think I often vaguely allude to the taxis, but have never fully explained how they work. Taxis are a pretty awesome phenomenon, and I am given to understand that they work on a similar pattern (though hardly identical) throughout much of Africa.

The taxis are the equivalent of public transportation and are the standard way for people to get from the village to town. The system uses vans that are supposed to seat fifteen, though in practice can seat many more—though South Africa tends to be stricter than many other countries about enforcing the fifteen people rule. Since people often take enormous suitcases, their groceries for the next month, boxes of bread or snacks to sell in the village tuck shops, or other sundry items, even with only fifteen official passengers (not including the children sitting in laps or strapped to their mothers’ backs), the taxis can sometimes be a little to crowded for comfort, especially on a hot day.

Guidebooks call the taxis “minibus taxis” to distinguish them from the private taxis you can get in large towns or the cities (not in Giyani, however). The private taxis I have taken have been frankly horrible: expensive, slow, and prone to getting lost. The public taxi drivers, on the other hand, know exactly where everything is, can juggle change while swerving to avoid both potholes and other cars, and operate their route with supreme efficiency. They drive along one route like a bus, picking up passengers who hail them and letting off passengers when they yell out. At a particular point in the journey, everyone will hand forward their fare, one row at a time, and some combination of the driver and other passengers will make change. Unlike a bus, however, the taxis will wait at the ranks—both in town and in the villages—until they have a full load to go, so they keep to no regular schedule. My commute takes anywhere from forty minutes to two hours, doorstep to doorstep.

The taxis are used pretty much exclusively by black South Africans; other than Peace Corps volunteers, I have only seen one white person on a taxi in my six months in the country. White South Africans express shock when you tell them that you take the taxis, since they tend to believe them to be unsafe. Indeed, my presence on the taxi—as in most places I go in Giyani—tends to cause comment. However, the taxis (despite the occasional unpleasant incident) are incredibly safe, and one of the things I love most about South Africa.

On the taxi, you are part of a community. There is an enormous amount of trust and assumption that the rules will be followed when everyone passes their fare up front to the driver, and if you get shorted on change or the driver misses your stop, the other passengers on the taxi will stand up for you and make sure that you’re taken care of. If somebody harasses me, the kokwanas on the taxi scare them off.

On the taxi from town to work, I rarely see people I know and often have the frustrations and triumphs of first interactions, and I expect that I will continue to feel like a newcomer on these taxis for months to come. On the taxi from my village to town, on the other hand, I am an old hand; all the drivers know me, passengers greet me by name, and the queue marshal at the rank never fails to usher me directly on to the correct taxi when he thinks I am heading towards to with too much hesitation. I don’t even need to call out when I want to get off, since the drivers already know where to slow down, and if they forget, the other passengers remind them.

Annoyed

The plans to visit drop-in centres to talk about the training programme and curriculum ideas have been canceled. Actually, they have been moved back a week. This is unfortunate because when we made these plans two weeks ago, I planned my non-Khanimamba schedule accordingly and commited to help run the diversity workshop at pre-service training for the next group of PCVs that week. So, I have nothing to do this coming week. The week after I will shlep to training via Pretoria, back to site for two days to cram as many DIC visits in as possible, then back to Pretoria for Diversity Committee training (assuming that's still happening, which is always a crapshoot).

So. That's that. I guess I will spend next week doing village things, which I haven't gotten to do a lot of since IST.

On the upside, I am going to Venda this weekend to visit another volunteer and verify whether all my guidebooks are justified in gushing about how "mystical" and "mysterious" the region is. It is supposed to be very lush, though Lonely Planet really could have used an editor who had read some Edward Said for that section. Hmm...I should probably go charge my camera battery...

What I Have Been Doing

I haven't been updating much this past week because I've been busy doing boring things. A week ago I finally got to have a good, long conversation with my supervisor about what I'll be doing, and we've decided that I'm going to organize a training program for the people who work at DICs (drop-in centres). Since then, I've been doing some research and writing some grants, and this will more or less continue through this week. Next week I'm supposed to go visit a bunch more of the drop-in centres.

Today when I got home I watched my kokwana cook pap. Pap is the staple food in South Africa, and is sometimes called maize porridge (pap is the Afrikaans word for it). It's incredibly dense and incredibly bland, and you use it to scoop up sauce, meat, or whatever. I mainly cook for myself so I don't eat it very much, but I have acquired a taste for it and figured out the best ways to eat it when in social situations where it's unavoidable. There is definitely good pap and bad pap, but even bad pap improves if you mash each bite in your hand for a while before eating eat.

I've only watched pap being cooked a handful of times, so I still find it mildly fascinating to watch. You start by putting a blend of the maize flour and water into boiling water, stir it for a while, let it thicken, add some more, stir, let it thicken, add more flour, beat it in repeatedly (this is the hard part!), add more diluted flour, beat it more...and eventually you have pap.

For my part, I am eating curry right now. With rice.

Goats!

While I was away at IST, our goats gave birth to baby goats. To be more exact, three of our goats were pregnant, and we now have seven of the most precious, adorable baby goats in the world.

The goat who was a baby when I first arrived is now an adolescent, and like an adolescent, is scruffy, awkward, has balls to big for his body, and likes to cause trouble. The two toddler girls in our family were getting ready to have their morning tea, but the younger one managed somehow to disappear for a moment right before it was served and reappeared with grey dust all over her hands and face, looking extremely bewildered. Her tea and bread were placed on the mat next o her sister's, but while her sister dug in she was taken off the be cleaned. Well, of course, the adolescent goat thought this was too good to resist and came up with every intention of enjoying the tea in the girl's lieu. The usual "Sa!" and "Tch!"'s didn't seem to have much effect, so eventually my sister had to go get my kokwana's walking stick from against the wall and chase the poor goat all the way back to the kraal before he gave up on turning back towards the tea.

Later that day, we let the goats out of the yard for their afternoon of wandering around the village to forage for food. They're supposed to do this on the roads and in the vacant fields. However, one of our neighbors had left their gate ajar. The goats sussed this out with surprisingly little delay, and made a mad dash around the corner for their yard, which grows temptingly green grass (remember, it's winter here—most of the grass is pretty yellow right now). All of our dozen or so goats were standing in that yard milling around. We had to send somebody to go chase them out before they completely tore up the grass.

Day Three of My Coughing Marathon

I have been cooped up for the last two days, going on three, with a disgusting hacking cough. Seriously, every time I cough I sound like the bile monster. Yesterday my family tried to get me to go to the clinic, but being me, I opted for suffering instead. Actually, it's not that bad, it's just a bit annoying and makes me unfit to be around other people.

Fortunately I bought 7kg of oranges on Monday, so I have enough vitamin C to see me through the week. It's the end of orange season, though, so the oranges are not as heavenly as the last enormous bag I bought, so I've been making orange juice. It's sticky and a lot of effort, but it's a good way to stay hydrated when our water is off--which it was for the last four days. It came back on this morning. I celebrated with a hot bath and now I am drinking almost-hot water with lemon juice, possibly the most pathetic drink known to humankind but it seems to be helping more than tea. Hopefully tomorrow I will feel well enough to do laundry.

If anyone would like to send me entertaining e-mails, consider this a pathetic plea for them. I can only spend so much of the day reading the enormous quantities of books I got from the Peace Corps library in Pretoria and doing crossword puzzles (I think I have lost my crossword skills. This is highly disappointing. Maybe the focus on them this week will revive my mastery).

Coming soon: a goat update, with pictures.

Down From the Mount

Every few years in some rural areas in South Africa, the circumcision
schools, also known as the mountain schools, are held for teenage
boys and girls and last about a month. They're held separately for
each gender, and their exact curriculum is a closely guarded secret.
The gist, though, is that boys are taught how to be men, girls are
taught how to be women, and they are put through harsh trials that
ensure that they are ready for the harshness of life. I have heard
all kinds of rumors—ranging from the food they eat to the wild sexual
and sacrificial rituals they partake in—but it's hard to gauge what
is true and what isn't. Keep in mind that it is winter here, even
though it is not particularly freezing in my part, and enduring the
cold seems to be an important part of the trials. The men get
circumcised, as the name implies.

Yesterday the men came down from the school, bodies painted red and
wearing red cloths wrapped around their waists. There were a few
less than a dozen from our village, when in the past you might expect
fifty or a hundred to partake. They all walked with their heads
down, stepping in time with walking sticks, and as they passed
through the village the kokwanas who saw them kalakala'ed (I don't
know what to call it in English—stick out your tongue, move it up and
down, scream, and you'll get the noise).

The nduna (a local sub-chief) held a braai in honor of their return.
Some of the village women, including my sister, brought out their
traditional skirts and took the opportunity to dance. The
traditional skirts have two gathered layers of cloth, the first thick
skirt very short and ending just past the hips and the other skirt,
the same thickness, going down to the knees. People wear them,
though more often the toga-like cloths that are supposed to be worn
over them, around on normal occasions relatively frequently, but the
skirts are especially created to dance in—you can imagine how
extraordinary the two-layered skirts look when they start to move.
Some of the skirts had a red stripe down the back, adding to the effect.

As always in the village, I hung out primarily with the middle-aged
women, and my sister and I left after we had eaten, so I was only at
the braai for a couple of hours. The men from the school, too, could
be seen walking back from it in their straight line only a little
while after we left. However, we live in the lot adjoining the
braai, so I could hear the music playing long into the night.

Home Sweet Home

After two weeks away from Mapayeni and Giyani, it's remarkable to come home again. I suspect that in my absence, a number of people have magically learned my name, because I can't walk anywhere along my familiar routes without everyone smiling and greeting me by name. It's true that my neighbors and the taxi drivers have known who I am for a while now, but it seems like that number has multiplied fivefold, from kids riding their bikes down the tar road to the kokwanas (grandmothers) with a month's worth of groceries at the taxi rank. It is a refreshing change from Polokwane and Pretoria. I hope that this results in getting things done and projects moving, although I suspect that I am in for a slow week or two: my NGO is on half-staff for the next two weeks as people go on rotating vacations, and the schools don't open up again for a week.

IST was moderately productive and hugely refreshing. I ate so much that I don't think I'll be able to consume anything for the rest of the month, unless perhaps the grocery store has eggplant when I go there on the way home today in which case I will make eggplant curry (ETA: there was eggplant, and so there is eggplant curry). Seriously, there were restaurants in Polokwane, and even more in Pretoria, plus the hotel fed us. I had my first bagel, first saag paneer, first real coffee, first falafel, etc. in five months. The grocery stores in Polokwane have non-disgusting cheese!

At IST, we had a few lectures of questionable worth, a few helpful presentations, some time with our supervisors to do a project-planning exercise, some language review, a field trip to a successful DIC, many many tea breaks with little toasted cheese sandwiches, and plenty of time to catch up with the other volunteers in SA 17. Of everything, I found it most helpful to sit down with my supervisor for a little while, though I will still need to track her down sometime this week to talk about some things that we didn't cover during the two days she was there in order to more definitively figure out what I will be doing with my time here, how often I really need to come into the office, how we can improve our communication, etc.

It was also great to catch up with the other volunteers. Everyone's experiences seem to have a common base, with a lot of variation around the edges; there are volunteers working with corrupt organizations or in remarkably dangerous areas who have since been moved, volunteers whose organizations have yet to even register as NPO's, volunteers who have already gotten projects going and volunteers who are so far away from their offices that they can hardly ever go in; there are volunteers who have never felt more at home. Everyone feels some frustration and some helplessness, but miracle of miracles, no one has gone home yet; we still have all thirty of the volunteers that were sworn in three months ago, a feat almost unheard of in South Africa's Peace Corps program. Despite everything, we are happy enough to stay, or at least too stubborn to go quite yet.

I capped IST at the ambassador's Fourth of July celebration in Pretoria. It was unremarkable except for the face painting, which may technically have been there for the embassy kids but of which I nonetheless took full advantage. I was the coolest tiger ever, and as soon as I track down one of the pictures other people took, I will show you just how amazing and ferocious I was.

IST

I'm leaving today for in-service training, and will be away from my
laptop (but probably not e-mail) for the next two weeks. IST will be
held in Polokwane, and I'm looking forward to going to get a break
from constantly standing out and constant culture shock, plus seeing
all the other volunteers I went through training with. And I guess
I'm supposed to be a learning a few things, too, though that's really
ambiguous.

These past three months seem at once endless and incredibly short.
I've started a lot of things and have a lot of ideas, but have been
frustrated by many other factors: lack of understanding why I'm here,
both on my part and others', difficulty moving things along, getting
people to follow through with things they've told me to do. At the
same time, I've had some pretty incredible experiences, especially
whenever I get a chance to meet and interact with youth here.

That last paragraph was so typically Peace Corps. Prepare for another.

The thing most often mentioned by other volunteers was not to have
any expectations, and I though I'd purged myself of them before
coming to site, but alas, it was not so. Some things I'd been
prepared to laugh off and take in stride, like my strange tea habits
or children touching my hair and even waiting hours for a scheduled
appointment to start, but others, like actually getting to work in a
field that has to do with HIV/AIDS, have taken me by surprise.
Hopefully the next three months will be easier, though that's another
expectation too.

After IST, I'm planning on going to Pretoria for the Fourth of July
bbq at the embassy. I'll return to Mapayeni the following day.
Happy Fourth of July, everybody!

DIC Redux

Last Thursday, I went to visit another drop-in center that my NGO
helped get started. This one, Ntlakuso Drop-In Center, is located in
an extremely rural village outside Giyani. It was started about a
year ago and received official non-profit status this past March. It
feeds and cares for nearly fifty orphans and vulnerable children
after the school day is over, and is financially supported only by a
handful of small donations from people in the village, which is used
to buy food for the OVCs.

I was able to meet the carers and talk to them at length, though it
was a somewhat difficult process as none of them speak--or at least
were willing to speak to me in--English, so we had to get by with my
very basic Tsonga. Fortunately there was a very nice man named
Leonard there who happened to be at the creche whose space the DIC
uses doing monitoring that day, and he helped translate back and
forth when we needed. I conducted a SWOT analysis of the DIC with
the carers (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats),
though I don't think they really understood the concept. Getting a
discussion going was a bit like pulling teeth--partly it was the
language barrier, but also I think that there is not much tradition
of a free exchange of ideas, and that hurts. But we did it, and they
were happy to have me visiting.

I'll be returning next Wednesday when the DIC is actually operating--
I was there too early in the day, all the kids were still at school
then. Hopefully that will allow me to actually meet the OVCs and see
the carers in action. In addition, I told the carers that I'd work
with them to get food donations from local grocery stores in hopes
that they can start directing their budget to alternative uses.

Still more pictures

I found these on the computer at work today, my supervisor took them a
few months ago when I first visited Giyani and Mapayeni. The first is
of me meeting the local nduna (kind of a sub-chief) with my host
sister Masingita, and the second is me meeting the nurses who work at
the clinic in Mapayeni. She took a few more, but these were the only
ones that aren't too washed out or too blurry.

Jonathan, you should be happy--there are other people in these pictures.

I'm supposed to visit some more drop-in centers tomorrow, hopefully
that will happen!

More Pictures Up

A few pictures of our yard here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Jade.Lamb/Giyani

Edward Homu High School

I went, as promised, to the high school today. It was an interesting
experience, full, as is typical of Peace Corps, of surprises, both
frustrating and uplifting.

I was supposed to meet initially with the principal, but she had to
leave before I arrived so I began with speaking to the deputy
principal, who is a bit of a blowhard. According to him, the big
thing I could help with to improve the school was to build
administrative offices, and maybe help refurbish the classrooms. And
his church would like a well. Every time I tried to bring up HIV/AIDS
or the learners in the school, we kept going back to the well.

However, after speaking to him, I got to talk with another administrator about the teenage pregnancy rate (high). She mentioned the stereotype of girls wanting the government grants that go along with single motherhood, but interestingly, she thought that social pressure, particularly from parents and the initiation ceremonies, played a larger role. The principal also arrived in time for me to meet her. After introductions (I think she was predisposed to like me since I defied her expectations and was able to pronounce her name, which I unfortunately now forget), we had the following exchange:

Her: Ah, you are a woman. I did not know that.

Me: Yup, I am.

Her: Ah, that is good. Women, they do their best to achieve what
they say they are going to, and they succeed.

Me: And men don't?

Her: (shakes head): No.

Considering her deputy principal, I can see where she's coming from. She thinks the high dropout rate has a lot to do with parental involvement, ie the lack thereof.

I then went to observe a couple of classes. The classes were crowded,
with perhaps seventy people in the eight grade room I was in. The
second class I watched was grade twelve, and by then there were only
twenty-five learners. After the first class, I went into about a
dozen (no exaggeration) classes looking for one with a teacher so that
I could actually watch a class rather than babysit one, and found no
one; between understaffing and teachers out sick, less than half the
classes were staffed.

I was surprised at how poor the English of most of the learners was. The curriculum is supposed to be taught in English because the national test, matric, is administered in English. However, as I discussed with one of the teachers after school was out for the day, English in the classes is very poor, much poorer than it was in the Bakenburg schools (also village schools) I visited during training. Even the smartest kid in the world won't be able to matric is he or she doesn't understand the language the test is given in.

The teacher I was talking to also wanted to know about schools in the US: he was surprised to learn that some of them have even worse problems than they do in South Africa--dilapidated schools, no teachers, no enthusiasm, poor language, skills, high dropout and teen pregnancy rates, plus violence and drugs--and that there's poverty in the US.


Whatever problems the schools have, there is at least one that none of the faculty mentioned today. Teachers are much quicker to condemn students than to praise them, and often worry more about the facilities than the curriculum. Many teachers are shuffled around classes and never get to know their pupils because of staffing shortages, and many much interest in the subject they teach or passion for their profession. High school is boring enough under the best of circumstances; indifferent teachers and poor prospects are an unfortunate combination.

I know there are exceptions, and some of the teachers I spoke to
after the day was over seemed to have different attitudes, and I've
only been at the school half a day; I'm sure that the picture will
become more complicated as time goes on. I'm going back tomorrow.

I walked back with a guy named Chester in Grade 12, who seems both
smart and ambitious; his English is much better than the average, he
wants to know if I'm going to come talk to the school about studying
for their futures, and he wants to be a mechanical engineer. Talking
to him was an uplifting end to a sometimes frustrating day.

Life & Laundry

I have been spending more time in the village, less time at the office
these past couple of weeks. My visits have included a couple to the
clinic, a couple to the creche, and one to the elementary school, with
another excursion to the high school on the agenda for next week
(though you can never count on the agenda). Most of my visits have
been more along the "I'm accompanying Masingita (my sister) while she
runs errands" vein, but I'm hoping to make them more me-centric (as
in, "so what do you do and can I help?" and less "I'll just smile and
nod while you talk to Masingita"). Everything happens at a very slow
pace, which can be frustrating and discouraging. However, I would
rather have them happen slowly in the village than at the office, so
this is an improvement.

Today instead of wandering around, I did laundry. Obviously it's by
hand, since we have no indoor plumbing. A few thoughts:

1. I have been doing my laundry indoors since arriving at site
because I learned during training that if I do it outdoors, people
will watch, laugh, and criticize. Fair enough, but sometimes I need
to not be the obvious target for laughter/criticism. Today I did it
outside because outside I can use the hose instead of hauling buckets
of water inside. Sure enough, I was doing something wrong. *sigh*

2. I really should not have brought any white clothing to SA.

3. The goats, despite having their own water bucket to drink out of,
decided that my water bucket looked way too appealing to resist.
People chase animals away shouting "Sa!" around here, so after waving
my scrub brush intimidatingly failed to have much effect, I "Sa!"ed my
first goat this morning.

Training Pictures Up!

It only took me a week, but at last I have loaded (most of) the photos
I took during the training. After discovering how long it takes to
load one, I culled a bunch of the more redundant scenery pictures.
You can view them here:

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/Jade.Lamb/TrainingPictures

Eventually I will post some more pictures from my permanent site, but
right now none of them are interesting enough/I am sufficiently
traumatized by uploading the first batch that it willl be at least a
week before I start.

Picture

I am in the process of updating my Picasa album with pictures from
training, but for now, here is a picture of the building I am living
in. The white square building is my room, the blue-green rondeval is
one of the three other rondevals on my family's property. It's sad
that it's not a rondeval, but it's pretty nice. Sorry it looks so
dilapidated, it had just finished raining when I took the pictures.
More to follow!

Violence Against Immigrants

In case you haven’t seen it in the news, here’s a link:

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-safrica-violence.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

South Africa has a fairly large immigrant population, since it’s a relatively wealthy nation in a poor region, and tumult in Zimbabwe has only exacerbated the number of refugees coming in. A couple of villages over from where I’m living, there’s a lot of Mozambiquean immigrants clustered together; though the violence thus far seems to be limited to cities, the immigrant population certainly isn’t. Though the area I’m living in isn’t exactly highly developed, the immigrant communities are notably poorer and more haphazardly constructed.

I was talking to a man who lives in Johannesburg yesterday who was near to some of the violence. Two points seemed to stand out in what he said. First, he insisted that the people who are participating are usually good people. People seem to be acting out against scapegoats for economic circumstances—unemployment is really high in South Africa, and a lot of people in the villages go to Jo’burg or other cities to find work, often in nearby mines. The people who move to the cities tend to be men, leaving the villages largely run by women. Second, he felt that it was noteworthy that the government wasn’t involved in the attacks. I suppose that popularly instigated violence is a step up from the government-sanctioned violence that was prevalent under apartheid. Hopefully the government’s response to the violence will help to make the riots short-lived, though the underlying causes will indubitably take much longer. South Africa, much like the U.S., will remain a draw for immigrants for a long time, and economic conditions in South Africa will be slow to improve.

At least there’s one currency weaker than the dollar.

Note: I wrote this yesterday but had trouble posting it.

Oh, and I'm fine, not near any of the incidents at all.

Tsonga Encounters

I am very proud of myself. I had a successful interaction with my supervisor and one of our trainers in Tsonga today that encompassed more than whether or not I would like tea, if I was tired, or the weather. I showed my supervisor, Queen, the webpage I have been working on for our NGO, and managed to explain most of the content in Tsonga with only a few random English words to fill in the gaps. True, this is made easier by the fact that a lot of technical terms—including all the computer terms and the names of the training courses—are the said in English even by Tsonga speakers, but I’m still very pleased. As is she, since as a byproduct of the webpage I had to organize all the photos that were haphazardly on a dozen different CDs.

The thing about language study in South Africa is that most people speak English passably well because the school system is conducted in English. In addition, because SA has eleven official languages that are regionally distributed, people who conduct business cross-regionally often have to communicate in English, even though it might be the second language of both. Hence most people, other than the very old, speak English significantly better than I speak Tsonga.

The unfortunate byproduct is that most people either don’t want to speak Tsonga with me, or else assume that if I know a little Tsonga I am fluent and thus that I will understand them when they start spouting off at about the same speed our taxi is going. My sister and supervisor sometimes explain to people that I’m learning Tsonga but need them to speak slowly, but I think slow is a relative concept. The former is more frustrating than the latter. People often continue to ask me questions in English even when I answer in Tsonga, totally ignoring my effort. It’s depressing to think all my hard work during training has gone for this.

There are other annoying language-related things I could rant about, but I will refrain.

As a consequence, I very much appreciate the few people I know who make an effort to speak with me in very slow Tsonga. They put up with my slow speaking and are patient enough to repeat themselves rather than just switch languages. My supervisor, my sister, and the trainers at Khanimamba have all been very helpful this way. Whenever I manage to speak to someone in Tsonga beyond the usual greetings or such, I feel like I’m accomplishing something, even if it’s not going to change the world. It’s very uplifting.

Drop-In Center

Nothing really noteworthy has happened since the last time I posted, but I feel like if I don't keep posting every few days, the notability requirement for posting will climb to precipitous heights.

I have spent the last week going in to the office and hanging out there, drinking tea, reading, and doing a very little bit of work. As I membentioned in my last post, on Monday I got to go for the first time to see one of the community projects my NGO works with, an OVC drop-in center. OVC stands for orphans and vulnerable children, many of whom become OVCs due to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Here, orphan is defined differently than from in the US; orphans have at least one dead parent, not necessarily two. Because family networks are so large and strong in South Africa, most orphans still live with family members, though often the OVCs that use the drop-in centers are from poorer families and need the support of the center to give the OVC a safe, supervised, and stable environment for a few hours.

Drop-in centers are similar to afterschool programs. Usually, children under 18 come there before and after school to do their homework and play, though none of the drop-in centers here are as organized in terms of scheduled activities as the afterschool programs I went to as a child. The most important function of the drop-in centers is that they provide a meal to children who might not otherwise get one at home. For some drop-in centers, this is a difficult enough task that they have no resources to organize something more ambitious.

I only got to visit the drop-in center my organization works with for about half an hour. It took me so long to get there (two taxis) that they were winding down for the day by the time I got there. Still, I'm glad that I got to meet the staff and see the kids, although there wasn't as much interaction as I would have liked. Most of the students that I saw seemed to be at the older end of the scale, teenagers rather than small children, which is nice since I see so many little kids at the creches (like preschools) my NGO works with. I have been to a lot of creches in the past month. Little kids can be very uplifting to be around, but at the same time, the fact that my NGO is so involved in early childhood development--something I have basically no interest or experience in--can have a dampening effect on my enthusiasm. So, it goes up and down.

Hello/Avuxeni

Hello, internet. How I've missed you.

I have been in South Africa a little over three months now, and they have been such eventful, stressful, and wonderful times that...I am going to completely skip over the first two of them (training). I was sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer about a month ago, and have since been living in Mapayeni, a village near the township of Giyani, which is in the Northeastern-most part of South Africa, near Kruger National Park. I have also been renamed: I am now Tsakani Ngobeni. Tsakani, as I have been told countless times this past month, means happiness in Xitsonga, the language spoken in Giyani. It is a fairly common name around here, although I suspect that I am still pronouncing it incorrectly. When I introduce myself, people usually either start laughing or else demand to know my real name (which no one can pronounce). The same thing usually happens when I tell them I am living in Mapayeni, or when I try to speak Tsonga. I get laughed at a lot these days. I suppose it is pretty funny.

I am living with a wonderful family in Mapayeni. My sister, Masingita, chaperones me around and has been introducing me to the village slowly. Unfortunately, I usually get back to the village around 5:30 or 6, right before dark, so my time in the village has been limited to weekends. I will try to upload pictures of Mapayeni and my home eventually, but for now let me just note that we have goats and mango trees. There is a baby goat who I have to take a picture of while he is still cute and small.

I will be working with Khanimamba, an NGO in Giyani that does in-service training programs. So far they mainly seem to be involved in early childhood development, or training preschool teachers, but they also have programs for business management, vegetable garden development, and some other things that I am not too clear on yet. They also have several "community projects," one of which, an OVC drop-in center, I got to visit briefly yesterday. I am hoping to work more closely with the community projects as time goes on; for now, I have observed some training but spend a lot of time in the office trying to figure out how to build my organization's capacity. It's not exactly what I expected when I joined Peace Corps, but if there's one thing that was browbeaten into us during training, nothing is ever really what you expect in Peace Corps. However, my supervisor is amazing, and I am cautiously optimistic.

ps-Avuxeni literally means "Good Morning," but people say it all day long.