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.