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.