My Day

6:00 Alarm goes off. 10 more minutes…

6:30 Eek! Time to get up.

6:35 Second Day Oatmeal is gross. This is because I always forget and put milk in the whole batch the first day. The peanut butter seems to be mitigating the taste, though. Thanks for the tip, Peace Corps cookbook!

6:40 Must. Drink. All. Tea. Before. Leaving. Caffeine good.

6:55 Is there anything else I need to do that could possibly make my clothes dirty? No? Time to get dressed.

7:00 Out to get a taxi.

7:05 Taxi already! My lucky day.

7:40 Arrive at rank. Need to go to Spar to buy tea things for training today.

7:45 Okay, we cannot possibly need 6 boxes of creamer for this week alone. Can we? Well, I should get everything on the list just in case…I’m going to need a bigger basket.

7:50 Cart acquired. Well, there are only two rolls of toilet paper on the list. We can definitely go through that in a week. So it must just before the week.

7:55 Checkout.

8:00 These bags are really heavy. I am so screwed.

8:05 I hate the new queue marshal. Next time he says that, I should yell at him. I’m only going to talk to the nice, female queue marshal. She always has my back.

8:10 No! I’m going to the college!
Driver: Well, you need to ask to go to the college.
I know! I did ask! I asked at the rank! (I guess she didn’t have my back today. Grumble.)
The driver makes a swift U-turn and drops me off at the college.

8:15 I may not still be alive by the time I get to the office. 30 pounds worth of tea stuff in plastic bags…I’m getting interesting blisters on my hands.

8:20. Still alive! Why is all of our exhibition toy equipment (made from paper mache and cardboard) out on the lawn?

8:25 Ah. Because the classroom is flooded.

8:30 Are there really no trainees here yet? I think that’s a record. Oh, no, they’re just all in the non-flooded classroom.

8:50 Class starts! Only twenty minutes late, too. Singing.

9:00 Argh, need to go make more application form copies. Let’s see, there are about thirty people here…will forty-five be enough?

9:05 Forty-five was exactly enough. For this moment. I should go make another twenty copies.

9:10 Nobody else arrived? Great! Emma’s walking them through the form…it’s like in high school, taking the SAT, where the script says that you can’t go on until the proctor has explained what each and every blank means.

9:30 More people. Good thing I made twenty more. Let’s see…there are only five copies left, and it’s only an hour after class was supposed to start…are more people coming? Yes. Let’s go make twenty more.

9:40 The flooded class is cleaned out. We can go back in. First item on the agenda: creating ground rules and expectations.

9:50 You’re supposed to /pass/ the attendance register after signing it, not just sit and stare at it.

10:30 Introductions, while I get the tea things ready.

11:00 Tea time. Hmm, between the two classes we are going through creamer awfully quickly…maybe the estimate was right…

11:05 A trainee comes up to me and tells me and greets me. She has a small child. Hello, and hello you sweet little small child. She tells me the crèche is closed. Um…okay… I’m not reacting how she wants. She tells me again (still in Tsonga) that the crèche is closed. Am I missing something here? Pfala is closed, right? She says in Enlish, “Creche. Closed.” Oh…I get it…she’s apologizing for having a small child here and explaining that the crèche is closed today. Right, there’s a world out there where it’s not acceptable to bring your baby to work.

11:30 Class resumes, and the actual program begins. I had prepared to do this bit, but Elisa jumps in. Well, that’s fine, less pressure on me.

12:00 Elisa has decided that we need a singing break. Okay.

12:05 We need another singing break already?!

12:30 Elisa says, “Over to you, Sesi Tsakani.” Um…what? Oh, I’m presenting on this bit? Well…I guess I can do that. (for more on this, see the upcoming post, “How Conducting Trainings in South Africa is Like High School Debate.”)

1:00 Lunch. Which is traditionally when I run around making more photocopies.

1:05 Making tea for everyone. Carrying insanely heavy tea things has made me feel very proprietary about the tea provision. I pour some for myself. This is the muddiest tea I have every made, and it is delightful. It is also lukewarm, which the trainees will not stand for, so I heat up water.

1:10 Refill creamer and sugar. We’re going to go through a fair amount of cream this week but nowhere near the 10 kg of sugar Free had me pick up.

1:15 Photocopying. The photocopier and I are good friends

1:25 Talk to Free. He asks why I have forgotten the toilet paper. I say I haven’t, I put it in the bathroom. All of it? Yes… A dawning realization sets in. Oh, when you said two packets, you meant two large packs of ten rolls each…not two rolls. That makes sense.

1:30 Ooh, I have mail! Thanks Mom!

1:35 Bank of America is going to start charging an account maintenance fee?! Not cool. Not cool at all. I could buy 230 oranges with those $6!

1:35-2:00 Stewing over BoA while talking with Elisa, who is admiring my pen. This pen, which Mom brought for me last month, is probably the only conspicuously expensive thing I use in public (well, at least since I lost all my pairs of prescription sunglasses). Camera and computer and imported fruit all hide in my room.

2:30 Class resumes. With a song, of course. It’s interesting to have lyrics memorized that I don’t understand.

2:35 Class prayer for three drop-in centre carers we knew who died in a car accident last week.

2:40 Um…where did Elisa go? Okay, class, get in your small groups and draw an organogramme! (I hope Elisa gets back before you finish…)

2:45 Elisa returns. Yay!

3:00 All the tea I’ve been swilling is starting to kick in. I feel energetic. Is there work I can do? Why don’t I write a letter to BoA asking them to waive my account maintenance fee as I am doing good works in far-off countries for very little money?

3:20 How do we always end on time despite starting late? Because I pad the schedule. We sing to close.

3:30 Everyone leaves. Elisa tells me that she found out that the room was flooded this morning because someone had left a sink on outside all night. (The college frequently has no water, which is how I suppose the sink got left on unnoticed.)

3:40 All the trainers go outside to stare accusingly at the sink. I’m trying to clean the room so we can go.

3:50 Staring over, we bring in our example toys, most of which are thankfully intact.

4:15 Can I go now?

4:20 Waiting for the taxi.

4:25 Taxi! Swiftest taxi day ever.

5:00 In town, switching taxis. Squashed in the back.

5:25 What, no one in front of me got off before me? This never happens. Everyone gets out so that I can disembark.

5:30 Home. Where is everyone? Masingita is in Malamulele at a training course, Kokwana Selina is…I don’t know where. Church? The younger members are staying with other family.

5:35 Food is good. I should eat. Hmm…I could cook something, or eat leftovers. What leftovers do I have? Half a bowl of fried rice, two-day old oatmeal, and some cookie dough. Cookie dough it is.

5:40 I already knew that trying to make cookies in the skillet doesn’t work. Why do I persist?

5:45 Still energetic. Blogging!

*All time codes are estimates.

Breaking the Little Red Taxi Curse

I take four taxis every time I go in to our office, two to get there and two to get back. My commute is usually about two and a bit hours round trip. I am something of an expert at this route: I have down cold the times that I should leave home or the office to minimize waiting time, exactly when to start digging through my bag for the taxi fare, who to tell when about where I'm getting off...etc.

There is a definite hierarchy between kinds of taxis. In my area, there is a rough divide between the quantums, which are more bus-like, and the older taxis. The quantums are more spacious, more comfortable, and newer; I can stand upright in them, and their seats have head rests. There is also a functional aisle between the seats. The older ones are shorter, have fold-out seats, and are often in varying states of disrepair.

There is one particular taxi that goes from Giyani to Mapayeni, or from town to my village, that is substantially worse than the others. Instead of having four rows behind the driver which seat three people each (or four in the back row), it has three rows which are supposed to seat four people each even though it is the same size as the ones that seat three. I'm pretty sure that the back row isn't bolted down as it should be and most of the seat linings have disappeared. It is also the only red taxi that runs this route, so I can recognize it from some distance away. So can everyone else. Consequently, this taxi takes forever to fill, since no one wants to get in it. Since I stand out too, I rarely get the option; the queue marshall just ushers me on.

Before this month, I'd probably only ridden in this taxi three or four times over ten months. Riding in it isn't actually so bad, but waiting for it to fill--especially if you're squashed in the back row in intense heat--is murder.

For the last week, ending yesterday, every day on the way home the little red taxi (fondly referred to by me as the "crap taxi") was waiting to fill. Last Wednesday I got there around three and it had only two people in it; those two people actually abandoned the taxi and so after ten minutes there were actually fewer people than we had started with. It took an hour to fill. The next day I showed up at four and it was half full, and filled up in a normal amount of time. This week, the first day I showed up at four thirty, and there was the little red taxi again. Quite a streak, eh?

Then, yesterday, I was there at five, sure that I was late enough in the day to avoid the little red taxi. But--there it was! So I climbed in with a resigned sigh.

Around five thirty we hit the road. Halfway to my village, an ambiguous but very disconcerting scraping sound seemed to be coming from the undercarriage. We stopped. The driver got out to inspect, shrugged, and climbed back in. We started off again.

A few minutes later--more scraping. It sounded eerily like a corpse trying to escape from its grave. We stopped for good this time.

In America, this would have been cause for some outrage. But, TIA--this is Africa. Resigned good humor with a certain amount of repressed laughter seemed to be the response of the day, which both I and a girl a little younger than me who I had been talking to in the taxi seemed inclined to. After all: it had been a long day already and I was exhausted, so of course this would be the day the taxi broke down.

This was followed by a dawning excitement. The little red taxi broke down! Maybe it would never drive again!

A few minutes later we transferred over to another passing taxi--a quantum! There were a few hiccups (the two drivers were actually arguing about how much the one had to pay the other. Come on, guys. We want to go home; and I was actually standing up, which was fine except that I couldn't see to figure out where I needed to get off), but I was home before dark.

And today? The little red taxi curse is broken. A normal taxi with four rows and a bolted down backseat. Not a quantum, but we can't have everything.