Tuesday, September 29, 2009

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.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Getting Closer to My Final Assignment!!

Language is coming along, but I still can only pick up words here and there in conversations. For example, if I know that the subject is food, I can pick out words every now and again, but not the whole conversation. I took a taxi by myself yesterday to the village that is two over from mine and managed just fine. Others went into a near shopping town, but I thought it would defeat the purpose to go with 20 other Americans. How do you know if you understand the language and can manage on a taxi if you don’t do it yourself? So I did it and it was fine. We are definitely covering conversational Setswana and I think the rules are even more confusing than in English. I guess in reality, that isn’t true, but for every rule, there is an immediate exception. It can be frustrating, but fun too. I’m sure I’ll get it and from what current volunteers say, it is all about what you put into it. You can get by in English mostly, but what fun is that.

Our days are still incredibly full. I don’t know if they do this to wear you out or to keep the younger folks from being homesick. Either way, our days are scheduled from sun up to sun down and we generally only have Sundays free. Needless to say, anytime we need to make up any session, it is done on Sunday. One consequence of this is that at least 2/3 of our group has fallen sick. There is a 24 hour flu bug going around that seems quite nasty (especially if you are vomiting in a bucket in your bedroom and the loo is a pit out back and it is the middle of the night). The other is a nasty cold. So the stress of having our days full, shots at least weekly to build immunity to all sorts of diseases (rabies, meningitis, hepatitis, etc.), and then exposure to new viruses is taking a toll on the group. Luckily, so far I have not been sick. Let’s hear it for flu shots! I’m keeping my fingers crossed and trying to get a lot of rest. We also finally got our medical kits this week so there are all sorts of things in there to combat some of the common sicknesses and that helps.

Cross-cultural lessons are interesting. They cover everything from public transportation to marriage and sexuality. There are still such things as arranged marriages here and the groom must pay for a bride (4 cows or the equivalent thereof in money is the cheapest). Marriages are arranged by the bride and groom’s relatives, usually the aunts and uncles. People often live together without marriage because the groom can’t afford to pay what the relatives have determined the girl is worth. However, if someone else comes along and offers to pay that amount, then the relatives can essentially sell the girl to the new fellow. The discussion, specifically around this and gender roles, tends to be heated with Americans asking a lot of questions and most of the women finding it very hard to abide. I can think of a man paying a price to marry a woman, but not to her family (ie, a diamond ring is such a thing in effect) and for the woman to really have no say in matters is hard to swallow. I am asked quite a lot about being single and childless and in this culture, there is no one to ‘take care of me when I’m old’. It doesn’t matter if I can care for myself really. There is also no real stigma attached to men having multiple women or women having children at a young age and/or being unmarried while they do this. Yet, HIV/AIDS is rampant and discussions around that topic is still not common. Some of my PC colleagues taught a class to middle school boys and girls about puberty and the changes that happen then. The teacher (grade 5, I think) couldn’t even say vagina and penis so she was very grateful to have Americans teach it. I think in the end the entire 5th grade was made to go through this class. Girls here often are sexually active at 14 (on average!) so it is something they definitely need to know.

We went last weekend to the Apartheid museum in Johannesburg. It is in Soweto and was changed a lot since the last time I was there. They have updated the museum to include a lot of interactive exhibits and some movies. There was also a special exhibit on Nelson Mandela that I found fascinating. Of course, we were allowed two hours to go through the whole thing. Anyone who knows me well knows that two hours is about a tenth of the time I actually needed so it was frustrating. It was made even more so considering that the reason we were to spend two hours there was that we could spend two additional hours at a mall. Once again, anyone who knows me knows that two hours at a mall is about two hours too long. Nevertheless, Karen, Jonelle, Marsha and I had a lovely lunch at a Thai restaurant in the mall. We then found a book store and browsed through there until it was essentially time to go.

I made a batch of white bread yesterday. Baking is quite a bit different here than at home. There is no such thing as whole wheat flour or spices such as rosemary or basil. At least I have not yet found anything like that. We had a new grocery store open this week (it was the talk of the town), and although there are quite a few things that are great, there are still no spices other than curry. I haven’t attempted anything like chocolate chip cookies yet, but in looking around, there are possibilities for these things. Spaghetti was interesting. The closest thing to canned tomato sauce is something very like ketchup. We found something like sausage that we took out of the casing and tried to brown. It never actually turned brown even though we cooked the hell out of it. They must put some kind of seasoning in there that keeps it red in color even though it is cooked. So, those things combined with some onion constituted our ‘spaghetti sauce’. Spaghetti noodles are normal as is macaroni. Everyone in my section of town was over to try American spaghetti such as it was. To think what I could have accomplished with some garlic, basil, and oregano! One of the trainers commented that they couldn’t understand the American fascination with peanut butter, but I think it has more to do with the fact that it is recognizable protein that goes well with bread and jam.

I’ve had my family convinced that we do not need to slaughter a chicken on my behalf. When you see these chicken parts in the grocery store, the majority of the things sold are feet, necks, and innards…I think all the breasts and thighs must get sent to America because I’m pretty sure we aren’t eating them here. Speaking of chickens, the last two weekends, we’ve gotten baby chicks. The first group was 10 of which there are 3 left as of this morning.. The second group is out this morning and it looks like there are 8 or 9 of them. They don’t come close enough to count, but are awfully cute. Some of them have committed suicide in the water bowl, but the goal is to have more of them around. I guess we will see how many make it.

The kids in the neighborhood are all great. The group has expanded now to about 15 of them. We’ve had the Austin book and the maps out to see where I live. We also watched the Texas video yesterday. It was fun. The kids range in age from about 3 or 4 to about 15. They LOVE to play LCR, a game my aunt showed me on a cruise last year. If I had half an idea of how they’d love this game, I would have brought about 10 of them. As it is, I brought 2 so I think I’ll get some sent from home…(Lisa/Tina, they are about $5 at the Learning Express store by the Container Store—send two or three more please along with some dried rosemary and basil in a small, small sealed package.)

I am going to use the video at the high school for our cultural lesson this Tuesday. Speaking of the high school, I taught my first class last Wednesday. It was a business skills class of about 45 11th grade students. The class went very well, I thought. We worked on pie charts, bar graphs, tables, and Gantt charts. There was a lot of interaction and a good Q&A afterward where we spoke about cultural differences. I was asked about HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, crime, my business life, my personal life, urban vs. rural areas in USA, you name it. It was fun and I’m looking forward to this week’s cultural lesson specifically.

I’ve got a language test this Monday so I’ll stop here now and start studying for that. It is 1:30 in the afternoon, I’ve got clothes out drying on the line, and I hear bogobe being cooked in the kitchen by my host father. It is a beautiful, hot day (winter really, but it is hot so it feels like summer) and I’ve already been out with our language groups to do a community map this morning. I wrote some letters home this morning and I can already tell two years is not going to be long enough..

Sept. 10, 2009

On Friday, Aug. 28th we got our permanent site assignments. It was a very exciting day as it meant that the anticipation was very nearly over! I’ve been assigned to Thutlwane (say Too claw ney and you’ll be close—the tlw sound is a like a very breathy cl sound and the w sort of carries over into the ney sound). It is in the Northwest province and is between Mafikeng and Vryburg, near the Botswana border. Before we head there for a week, we spent Saturday in Pretoria at the Voortrekker museum.

The Voortrekker museum is nice. It traces the history of the Afrikaaners as they migrated from the southern cape area up into the middle of South Africa, near to Pretoria. The dress, trek itself, wars with native people, wagons, and so much more about the journey was so like the pioneer movement west in the U.S. They had some absolutely fabulous tapestries and needlework there that the women did as they felt that the museum itself showed a lot of it from the male point of view and left out the contributions of the women. The tapestries were beautifully done in needlepoint—they were large and I figured it took them about 10 years to stitch them! There were also some embroidered scenes that were done on dyed cloth that I thought were stunning. The use of different threads, materials, etc brought out the depth of the works. I’ll include some pictures of these.

My host mother, Mma Ratswana, picked me up from Pretoria and I was able to spend the rest of the weekend with her and the kids there. It was great to finally meet my last host sister, Rebone. She is beautiful and we are going to exchange some recipes. I hope I can visit some when I’ve got some time off during the two years. Everyone stays in Pretoria mostly so they can attend college and work.

Monday morning we were off to a resort in Rustenburg for the supervisor’s workshop.. We arrived after about a 3-hour drive to Sparkling Waters resort. The afternoon was spent at the pool and in the Jacuzzi. There was a spa playing the normal soothing spa music and the half hour spent in the Jacuzzi was sooooo relaxing. Sitting around that afternoon Zita said the thing that just seems to fit South Africa so well. She remarked that all this was so “bipolar”. Just that morning there were quite a number of us peeing in a bucket or a pit toilet, taking a bath in a bucket, sleeping with no a/c or heat, boiling water to drink…and that afternoon we were sitting in the lap of luxury. It seems that everything in the rural areas is just as I described while everything in Pretoria or Jo-berg or any city/tourist area is so 1st world. The differences are striking and just emphasize the problems. Your emotions get slammed from one end of the spectrum to the other all in one day. It sometimes feels very surreal.

We met our supervisors that evening. My two principals are Mr. Mphumela and Mr. Mohulatsi. One teaches at the primary school and one at the middle school (principals in at least rural SA also teach.) They are fabulous and seem like very good friends with the neighboring principals. Coincidentally, Sonja is placed in schools about 15 km from mine and she is also from Austin. She worked at Samsung for 3 years prior to joining the Peace Corps. Rachelle and Autumn are also within an hour of us, give or take to the north. Karen and Emily are about an hour and a half to the south, again give or take. Marcia and Jonelle are about 3 or 4 hours away to the west in the Northern Cape province.

After the supervisor’s workshop, our principals drove us to our sites. I took as much as I could with the expectation that I would leave it all there and have less to transport in 10 days when I go back. We will need all our living stuff then as well as books and food. Seems like a lot of stuff for two years, but I guess we will see.

Thutlwane is another 3-hour drive from the resort site. We went straight to my new host family. I’m living with the chief and his wife. I will eventually have my own little house (pictures enclosed),
but there were some men living there when I visited because they were building a new Vodacom tower. They should be gone when I return on the 17th and I can then move in and start making it my home. Meanwhile I stayed in another room off the second house. I can’t quite figure out who lives there yet, but there was a previous volunteer in the area so I get called “Refilwe” a lot. I’m proud to be called that as she was obviously well loved in this area and did an incredible job for being there just over a year. She is known far and wide—even in Sonja’s village at least 15 km away. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to her for laying down all the groundwork in the area and I hope to build on her successes. For example, I can’t thank her enough for establishing a great relationship with the chief and his wife. They are the perfect hosts and gave me plenty of space. In addition, she left a cat so it is nice to have an animal again. (The chief told me, “That is Refilwe’s cat. She took it to the doctor and made it so it can’t have babies. And she put a belt on its neck. Where is that belt?”)

The area is gently rolling hills (or maybe it is just bumpy flat ground…) with trees and a lot of farmland. It looks to me just like pretty much anywhere in middle America. We’ve got sheep, turkeys, chickens, the cat, and a dog. There are cattle that someone else farms for us and I’m not sure what else. People tend to get around the village using donkey carts and then there are donkeys just roaming around. I’m sure they belong to someone, but I can get quite a bit of entertainment watching the donkeys!

The schools are great, especially the primary school. There is a large garden with beets, carrots, onion, and spinach. I’d like to add tomatoes, cabbage, broccoli, and some melons. The primary school has a lot of trees and flowers that the learners water. There are about 12 or 13 teachers for 320 learners and about 12 or 13 classrooms. There is a feeding program where the kids get fruit, biscuits, and a hot meal at lunch. I don’t think it begins to alleviate the malnutrition, but at least it is something that the kids can count on daily. There are a couple of computers and when I say the next thing, I can already hear the laughter. I am considered the computer expert for both schools…ok, it is a good thing that I know some/all of your phone numbers! If you get a call at 2am, it is an emergency of sorts so please answer.

The middle schools are less well funded because the province is trying to decide the fate of these schools. There is some thought to just having primary school and secondary school so they would split the learners back up and put them back into the schools at either end. The middle school has another 270 or so learners with 10 or 11 teachers. The buildings are dilapidated and there aren’t enough desks, chairs, books, or really resources of any kind. And yet, the teachers and learners plow through despite a mountain of obstacles and I can’t believe the level of interest in learning. I’ve had kids chase me down after school when I’m walking home and ask me to help them with math on the weekend…what American kid would do this?

They also walk about 30 minutes or more to get to school. Most seem to have electricity, but no one I’ve seen yet has water inside the house. Some have taps outside in their yards, but others use a community tap for water and haul it. Wheelbarrows are a household tool here. I’ve seen women carrying water in very large jugs on top of their heads and I’m tempted to create some of those hippo water cart systems (google it). There are so many projects to do that it is hard to figure out where to start and I’ll have to find a way to say to no to some of them. There is a staggering number of HIV/AIDS patients in the community. In the 7 weeks I’ve been here, at least 10 funerals of just family type relations have died—generally just of illness when I ask. I think the official figure is something like 5.7M people of 48M have AIDS. Anyway, there are projects galore.

I was in the village for 5 days and just loved it. I spent my time getting familiar with my surroundings and the people. I’ve had one woman already ask me if she could do my laundry. I’ll probably take her up on her proposal as I’m pretty sure I don’t do a great job of it myself. It will depend on the amount I can negotiate. You use a bucket and go from there. Needless to say, ironing isn’t high on my agenda either, but a professional demeanor seems to be the norm in most of SA. Women do wear pants, but not often and they are generally nice. It just seems too hard to wash jeans frankly.

To get back to Marapyane from Thutlwane, I left on foot at 6:30am. I have to walk about 20 minutes to get to the closest paved road (that is called a tar road here). I think it is about 2km. From there, I stand on the side of the road and catch a taxi using some interesting local hand signals. You must know the local ones wherever you are going, but just asking works fine. The taxi either goes to the nearest local town which is called Setlagole (this one is on a map if you look) or the nearest big town called Mafikeng. Setlagole doesn’t seem that big to me, but I haven’t really explored it. Mafikeng or Vryburg is where I’d go to shop. Mafikeng takes about an hour by taxi. Taxis are whole experience and story in themselves, but I hope to not die in one. Then I would switch taxis and get into one that is going to Pretoria. Taxis don’t leave until they are full so you wait and sometimes wait some more. It takes about 5 hours to get to Pretoria and then I would switch taxis again for one that is going to Marapyane. That takes about another 3 hours after it fills up. All in all, it took us 11 or 12 hours to get home and I must say that the PC rule of not traveling after dark seems impossible to follow some of the time.



The teachers among you would love these kids. The ones in my neighborhood are so fun to be with and they help me so much with language. We play games most nights and have discussions about what happened at school, what they liked and why, what they didn’t like and why…you name it. They are all so great and I wish I could take them all with me! They are currently helping me with the national anthem so I’m sure I’ll learn it soon. Children here responded in a huge way to ANY positive reinforcement. I give hugs, have them sit on my lap, play with them, talk with them and tell them how great they are. They come running when I start down the lane and we have group hugs. I can’t believe how great they are. Lisa, Penny, Lisa, Carlynn, Sue, and, and, and would be SOOOO encouraged to see it. I think of you all every day when I’m with them all and think that THIS is why you all have done this all those years.

So I head to my village next week after our swearing in ceremony on Thursday. I’m excited to be going and will write more about Thutlwane when I can. My phone number is 027 76 3822 438 and there is a 7 hour difference between Thutlwane and Austin. Give me a call when you are feeling flush and can’t think what to spend your money on!