Home Sweet Home

I am settled now at my permanent site, Thutlwane village. I have been here a week and am making new friends as time allows. The closest volunteer to me lives about 30km away. Our two primary schools do a lot together so I expect we will see a lot of each other. It is nice to have someone so close although it isn’t easy for us to meet as both villages are not on the main road, hers in fact is off the main road by about 15 km while mine is only 2-3km off it. Transportation is generally the problem in meeting, but it can be done with planning. Interestingly, Sonja is from Austin, is an electrical engineer, worked in high tech, and was raised in Pennsylvania as well. I enjoy her company and am looking forward to working with her the next two years.

Thutlwane is a very rural area. There are farms all around—it looks a lot like Texas or anywhere in middle North America. You see grain silos and rail lines crisscrossing the country to transport the products. In the village itself, there are all kinds of animals wandering about. In fact, cows on the highways are a major cause of road accidents (SA leads the world in traffic deaths). There are horses, cows, pigs, sheep, goats, donkeys, turkeys, and everyone owns chickens. We’ve also got a dog and a cat.

My friend, Cyndi, likes roosters, but in fact I’ve determined that she likes them because she doesn’t have any of them. Roosters crow all night long, not just in the morning. They wander around crowing and practice what looks a lot like chicken rape. In short, they aren’t very nice birds and I’m glad I decided last year that she wouldn’t be getting any more chicken decorations from me as she has enough. I’m going to make her a recording of roosters, play it loudly outside her window all night, and then she how much she likes them. Baby chickens and baby turkeys are cute though, just like babies everywhere.

I live in a yard that is owned by the chief and his wife. They are lovely people and often host people at their home. Many, many people havestayed here over the years and the more I hear and talk to people, the more I find that they are the most generous people around. So far, Mma has allowed me to borrow just about anything that I need so I’m gradually setting up my house.

I have one room that is about the size of a big bedroom in the states—not quite the size of my master bedroom, but about 2/3 of that size. I have a bed, a wardrobe, and a desk with chair. I have a set of shelves that I use for food and kitchen utensils and a small table that I use to cook or prepare food and water. There is electricity, but no running water or plumbing. I haul water from a tap in our yard, but most people in the community haul it from a community tap. I admire some of these women who can put a 25-liter (about 5 gallons) pail full of water on top of their head and walk home this way from the tap. I can barely lift it up let alone balance it on my head. I wonder what that does for core body strength…

I filter and boil water before I use it so some planning is necessary. Of course, I don’t have to filter water that I’m using for bathing or dishes, but getting a system is essential. I’ll buy some bleach when I’m in town next time so I can treat the water that way too. People here drink a lot of hot tea so that is one way to flavor it. I use a bucket to bathe in and it is a lot like a sponge bath at home. When you haul water, you don’t waste much. I wash my hair about once every 3 or 4 days, but bathe every morning or evening depending on how late I’m running. Obviously chores take about 3 times longer to do here than they do in the U.S. so I’m running late pretty often. I get up at 6 and try to leave for school about 7:20. I’m generally back home by 3 or 4 so there is time in the afternoons to prepare things for the next day.

Diet is good here. I eat a lot of fruit and vegetables. There are apples, oranges, and bananas pretty readily. Then there are tomatoes, beets, carrots, butternut squash, and cabbage in abundance (still winter vegetables). Baked beans are a pretty common sight too. People here eat something called Pap or bogobe. It is basically grits that are very thick and not flavored with butter, sugar, or salt—just water and corn meal. They also eat a lot of bread and meat. I generally stick to fruits and vegetables, sometimes pap and rarely meat. Mostly the meat is chicken or beef, but there are all sorts of other choices occasionally like pork, goat, buffalo, etc. So far, I’ve only seen boneless, skinless chicken breasts once in Woolworths. Woolworths, believe it or not, is the Whole Foods of SA, but they also sell clothes and the normal stuff you used to see in Woolworths. There is Coke and Fanta Grape or Orange, Sprite, something called Ginger Beer that isn’t bad, and Iron Brew. There is also KFC. For protein I usually eat peanut butter, eggs, beans, or chicken. People generally do not eat cheese here, but there is milk and yogurt. The yogurt is low fat, but the milk is usually full cream. There is generally no alcohol especially for women. Men drink beer or a homemade brew that is really not very good (tastes like yeast in water with a big kick). So the food is good. It is high on carbs and I’d say the choice many people make is low on nutrition, but the option exists to eat healthier.

In my case, I think I’ve lost about 15 pounds since I’ve been here. Combine no sugar and no alcohol with eating vegetables and fruit and walk everywhere often with about 20 pounds of stuff and none of my clothes fit. Although I haven’t been stricken with flu or worse, others have and that also resulted in not being able to keep anything down or in so some of the guys have dropped weight rapidly. Some people have gained weight, but I’m not sure how. Of course, I had it to spare so maybe that’s the reason. When/if I’m in a bigger town, I generally eat things like burgers and fries, get some chocolate, and have a glass of wine and some ice cream so it isn’t as if this stuff is not available. It is, just not very often. Weight Watchers could go broke here unless they focused on good nutrition instead. We’ll see if it comes back over time…let’s hope not.

My two schools are just finishing up third term so there is a 10-day break. Schools are in session the entire year with month long breaks in June/July and December/January. There are 10-day breaks between terms in March and September. So my first week at work was generally spent setting up forms in Excel for marks, attendance, feeding program reports, etc. I’m setting up computer classes for some next week so that the teachers can get a better understanding of why I chose the methods that I chose. The initial work seems to have been done in Word when it is really all spreadsheet work. Word is just what is known and Excel, as much as I used to gripe about it, is really powerful for spreadsheet work vs. a table in Word. So training is required and then we will be ready to go. I know you are all laughing when you think of me as a computer expert, but look out…you know I can do it when I have to! I just don’t like it and it takes a while in some cases.

Sonja and I attended a conference in Vryburg last week. The schools have just elected their new governing boards so this was a workshop to orient the new members to their new duties. The governing boards are made up of parents, teachers, non-teaching staff, and the principal. They have budget and finance responsibility for the schools, have a strong say in the staff, and have quite a lot of power if they are well formed and organized. They are responsible for getting quite a lot done at the schools…a bit like PTA, but with real power to hire/fire and set budgets. It was very eye opening for me. The guest speaker, as well as most people I’ve met so far, could give the preachers in America a run for their money with respect to religion. They all know the bible backwards and forwards and although this fellow was a good speaker, time ran short after two days and my opinion was that the attendees didn’t need a preacher as much as they needed a mentor with respect to their jobs on the governing board. At least 3 hours, maybe more, of the 2-day conference was spent preaching about the lord. It was frustrating for me, but that is the way things are done here in SA. Praying comes before riding in the bus, starting the conference, lunch, retiring for the night, etc.

I had the opportunity to have lunch with the Peace Corps country director and the U.S. Ambassador to South Africa last week. Although I have met the country director now on several occasions, this was the first real opportunity I had to engage her in conversation. The ambassador, Donald Gips, was charming and invited me (and some others) to the embassy the next time we are in Pretoria. I, for one, don’t relish going to Pretoria really for any reason because it takes all day to get there and it really is just another big city with all that goes along with big cities, but I did say I would take him up on his offer as he has a flush toilet and a shower. Little did I know that he also has a pool and there may be a pool party in our future. Our SA20 group swearing in ceremony was his first official duty as ambassador. He arrived here in SA three weeks ago and is getting settled. He would like to expand the U.S. high technology network to include South Africa and I would love to help in that endeavor once my service in Thutlwane is finished. I did say that I didn’t think 2 years was long enough so he is forewarned that it may be a little longer than 2 years.