Tuesday, June 7, 2011

A Delinquent Easter Post...

May. 14, 2011

Wow! I last wrote in February and time is flying by so quickly. It doesn’t seem that long to me, but when I look at it on a calendar—4 months. The scary thing to me is that I’ve only got 5 months left until I’ll be doing something new, whatever that may be.

So it hasn’t exactly been business as usual. With less than 6 months to go, I’ve been trying to transition from being the lead on projects to being in a more supportive role and having my friends from the village take the lead. It hasn’t always been happy or easy—I refused to type in the marks for the last term report cards and one teacher didn’t talk to me for two days. Nevertheless, my middle school got their report cards out on time with only one question (a very good one at that) and the primary school wasn’t far behind. This necessitates everyone using the computer so I’m proud of everyone since many are not really comfortable with this technology. I’ll also add that the program that the schools are forced to use by the National Department of Education is very poorly programmed and not intuitive. Nevertheless, we are making progress and I’m confident that the next volunteer who serves in Thutlwane village will not be doing some of these basic things unless they want to.

I’ve put together a project proposal to get funding from a national lottery system for a computer lab. We are waiting for the application approval process to wind it way out, but I’m confident that if there is money available, we will get some of it. I also finished a sports project at the school that saw me working with the owner of a sporting goods store in my shopping town. The family is of Indian descent and I’ve enjoyed talking to them throughout this whole process and learning about another part of South African culture. This country is so varied and yet so similar in so many ways. All that project management and building construction experience has come in handy.

Speaking of building construction...during a severe rain/windstorm, the roof on the local high school was blown completely off. I wondered if it were poor construction or poor maintenance since both are a distinct possibility here. Nothing is really maintained all that well although if something is about to fall down on someone’s head, it is usually quickly repaired. After going to the high school, I’ve decided that it was poor construction to start with. I’m not sure how old the building is, but I think it has been here for quite some time. The kids were initially sharing classrooms with another school, then they brought in some tents set up on the lawn, and then they used an old classroom building for the grade 10 kids that is about another 2km walk farther down the road. Amazingly, the roof has been repaired in what I’d call record time and I think the kids will be back in the schoolrooms in a week or two. And I’ve got to tell you about a little project we did with the local crèche that is like a day care for little kids. There is a group in America called Mother Bear. They hand knit or crochet teddy bears, put a heart on them, and then donate them to kids in Africa. The heart symbolizes awareness for AIDs. I got their information from another volunteer and got bears for the 80 kids that are served by the crèche. My idea was just to hand out bears to kids, tell that they are hand made by people in America and that the heart is to remember people who have gone before us. These are pretty little kids so the concept of AIDS is pretty tough to grasp. By the time the day came around, it was a full community presentation with the chief and everyone. It was still fun, but not really what I had originally talked to the crèche director about. It is funny to me still how big these things become when they would be small in America. It was fun and I underestimated how many grown ups want a bear. Amazing!

I’ve had some really non-routine things to do since I’ve last written as well. During our school break, I attended a Health Symposium that the Peace Corps sponsored. I was asked to co-facilitate the Life Skills workshop and despite having no knowledge of the manual, I worked with some great co-facilitators and we had a fantastic workshop. That just goes to show how easy the Life Skills manual is to use, but I’ll also add that the participants were very willing to be engaged. There is a common belief here in South Africa that people won’t talk about sex or HIV/AIDs, but we worked with a group of Peace Corps Volunteers and their counterparts who were mostly South Africans from the rural areas between the ages of 20 and 40 who were very willing to talk about both. The discussions were fantastic and there really was no desire to cut off the great discussions in order to maintain a schedule.

I should explain that Life Skills are broken down into three areas: Communication Skills, Decision Making Skills, and Personal Relationship Skills. There is something called The Bridge Model that explains the process of having knowledge to lead a successful life without spending too much time in the river of despair. And if we find ourselves in the river, exactly what we need to get out of it. Very often in using the manual to discuss the skills or knowledge necessary, the discussion ends up being about sex and topics related to sex. So we spent a week with volunteers and counterparts working through some of these topics and issues. I must say that it was a lot more fun than most of the workshops that I’ve been to and I enjoyed working with this group of people immensely.

One thing I really enjoyed was seeing a few of the volunteers who are from my class as well as meeting volunteers from groups after us. All the groups of volunteers before my group have left the country that means that our group is the next to leave. Subsequent groups have come into country every 6 months after us. At no time in our service do we actually have all the volunteers from every group together so this was a rare opportunity for me. Plus, as you all know, I’m a very singular person so I don’t interact with others from my group at all really. The last time I saw most of these people was a year and a half ago at a mandatory training session right after our swearing in. The volunteer who was closest to me made a decision to return to America about 13 months into her service; so apart from seeing her, I’ve spent most of my time in South Africa with friends I’ve made here in South Africa. I really enjoyed seeing others from my class and meeting volunteers from other classes, especially the woman with whom I shared a room. We had a fantastic time together and I enjoyed the opportunity to see others without the filter of a stressful training session surrounding us.

One fun thing that I got from another volunteer was the directions to make paper beads which I will in turn use with seed beads to make necklaces. These are really interesting and I’ve seen them in touristy stores and craft oriented stores selling for lots of money. I’ve been busily making paper beads and varnishing them so it is about time to string them into a necklace or three...I didn’t really need another crafty thing to keep me busy, but I enjoy doing them. We’ll see how good they really turn out!

Speaking of my South African friends, I’ve met some people here who have really broadened my understanding of South Africa. As you all know by now, I’m living in the NW province in a predominantly Setswana culture. But, there are a fair number of Afrikaner people living in this area. I was invited to go a church festival in a nearby town by a woman who I know from the area office at school. Church festivals, I can honestly say, are the same the world over. They will have great food, an auction, a kid’s area, and a place where there are handcrafted things that include knitted or crocheted items and jam. I love these festivals as you can see all sorts of things. And this was no exception. I must say that this was the first church festival that I’d been to where there was a shooting range, but I think it would have been quite at home in Texas. The raffle prize was 10 cows and a great looking bull or R40,000 and despite my trick of crinkling my raffle ticket so it stands out in a crowd, I did not win.

I spent the next day with my friends at their home sharing a braai, which is as South African as bar-be-cue is to Texas. We thoroughly enjoyed the day. We went to a local bird sanctuary called Barberspan and we all noted that the water level was incredibly high. It is the middle of May and it is still raining. Usually the rains start in September and stop at the beginning of April. This year, we all complained that the rains were late, not really starting until November, and so far they have yet to stop.

South Africa is undergoing rapid change since instituting democracy in 1994. I didn’t realize the full extent of the changes (and probably still don’t), but knew that there is some land restitution taking place. I knew this policy was a major cause of the Zimbabwean recession, but didn’t realize it was on-going to the extent that it is in South Africa as well. My friends ran a successful working dairy farm when they were told that the land was part of a restitution claim. They could fight the claim, costing thousands and lasting years, or they could move which is what they did. Despite having titles to the land going back 150 years, the claims just said that 151 years ago someone else lived and owned the land. It seems odd to me that there wasn’t much proof required because this was long before apartheid so it isn’t that government took land, but nevertheless, it is incredibly hard to fight. Now the same productive farm lies fallow and unused. I can’t see that the policy of taking a working farm and turning it into fallow land is going to help solve any issues, but I can understand the intent behind it. In the end, I hope it works out better than it has in other countries.

Having said that, South Africa is undergoing local elections in a couple of days and I must say that the process seems quite short-lived when compared with the American election system. I get some American news and hear of all the exploratory committees and such. My thought is that this system of a couple of weeks of campaigning is a better one than the American one of a couple of years of campaigning. At least there is minimal time away from their jobs while campaigning as opposed to what seems like 2 years of not doing their jobs while they campaign. I also don’t have a television here so perhaps I’m not as exposed as others. On the other hand, I didn’t really watch TV in America either so maybe it just is better.

For Easter, we had a week off school so I went with some other Afrikaner friends to the Drakensberg Mountains. I met these ladies in Zambia in December and they were kind enough to invite me to spend some additional time with them on the Easter holiday. I can’t tell you how much fun I had. As you may know, the seasons are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere so I had to keep reminding myself that it is April and not October. The trees are changing colors and the crops are being harvested. Everywhere I look, it feels like September and October. The colors are our fall colors. The air is crisp and cool. I don’t remember feeling this way last year.

The Drakensberg Mountains are the highest point in South Africa and the mountain range straddles the border with Lesotho. They are old mountains like the Appalachians so they are worn smooth. Since it is fall, there is a distinct chill in the air at night especially. Heading out of Pretoria for a weeklong break was interesting, as it seems that all of Gauteng Province was also leaving for the long weekend. The road to the Drakensbergs is also the road to the beach so the traffic was heavy. Ilse’s parents live along the road on a farm where we were dropping the dogs off so that was our first stop. One of the things I love most about South Africa is that families here accept people into them without another thought. They are so warm and welcoming—more so than anywhere else I’ve ever been. It was great to feel that I was a part of another family in another part of the world. I hope that I can take this hospitality with me through the rest of my life as a part of Africa that I can integrate into life.

We spent a night in Clarens. It is a little artsy town similar to Fredericksburg or Greune or that place south of Dripping Springs that I can’t remember the name of. The next day, Saturday, was cold and rainy so what a perfect day to spend going into art galleries and specialty shops. There was a farmer’s market type thing on the village common. We ate pancakes in a sidewalk café. And if I had any more wall space I would have spent a fortune on art. Lucky for me, I don’t.

Then we moved on to our base camp so to speak. We spent the night at a hotel on the mountain. It was pouring rain when we got there, but that just made for a perfect evening spent in a fantastic little bar with a couple glasses of Amarula. Ilse’s family has been going there for years so the guys all knew her from when she was little. Each time one of us got up during the night, we’d look out the window at the mountain just to see if we could see the top. At 3am, I can say for sure it was clear, but there is nothing better than a good sleep with rain on a tin roof.

We got up, ate breakfast, and were lucky enough to see some endangered vultures flying around the hotel. The hotel occasionally puts out bones for the vultures, which is credited with helping the birds make a comeback. The hotel feeds these bones to the vultures on the weekends so what better way to spend Easter Sunday morning than watching some vultures come get their bones before we headed to hike up to Sentinel Peak. Koti got some great pictures of the birds landing and taking their bones.

The morning was overcast, foggy, and spitting rain when we set out with our packs on a 7-hour hike to the top of Sentinel Peak and back. The guidebook says this hike is strenuous, but I think I would have called it moderate. It is mostly a gradual hike upwards with only a couple of places that had me huffing and puffing. The fog cleared up after an hour or so and gave us a spectacular view of the peak. It turned out to be a great day for a hike. Although the views along the hike are breathtaking, the most interesting part of the hike is two sequential chain ladders that one must climb to get to the top. They aren’t short ladders either. And after living in SA for almost two years now, I’m pretty sure that the ladders weren’t designed and erected by a reputable engineering firm. They resemble one of those things that are at game places where you are challenged to get to the top of the rope ladder that twists and turns while you climb.

There are two ladders next to each other. One looks better than the other, but I’ve come to believe that the one that looks less safe is the one to take. They do twist and turn while you climb them and just to make life interesting, they give off little creaks and groans. And I couldn’t help but look down while I was climbing just to sort of dare myself to see if I could. You’ve got to give a little shout up or down before you climb to see if anyone is coming the other direction. And there aren’t any little target splats or crosses to mark less adventurous ends, so off we went. When we got halfway, there was a dog waiting to go down. The guy emptied all his stuff out of his pack, put his yellow lab into his pack, climbed up, and then went back for the rest of the stuff. The dog seemed more sure-footed than the rest of us. All in all, it was great fun and the view from the top was well worth the ladder experience.

At the top, I put a rock on the zen rock pile, we hiked across the mesa to the edge of the peak, had lunch while looking down on the rest of South Africa, and then headed back. The top was boggy and lunch was by a waterfall. We looked down at the place where we would camp that night. Although it was windy, the sun was shining and you could see for miles. I should say here that there is a ranger station at the top now so camping is pretty safe. My friends said that they had camped on the top before and people would hike up in the middle of the night, slit open tents, and then take nice hiking boots or camping gear. Plus, I assume the rangers take the chain ladders up as well so if they were unsafe (or more unsafe than usual) someone would make a report and get them fixed. We did meet people at the bottom of the ladders who were just waiting for their hiking buddies to get back from the top, too afraid to go up themselves.

South Africans take their camping very seriously. Katherine and I have a 4-man tent that we used to take all over the place. It was plenty big enough for 3 or 4 girls and my sister is currently borrowing it for her and my 2 nephews. That is my biggest tent and I’ve got at least 2 smaller ones. I assume the 4-man tent is still plenty big enough for my sister’s family, but it would pale in comparison to the rigs that were at the national campground where we spent 2 nights. These are all tents—no rv behemoths here. But, oh, the choices! Our own humble abode for two nights was a dome tent that is about 1.5 times the size of my 4-man dome tent. Then we had a vestibule that was the same size so we could put our tables, chairs, toothpaste, etc. We took air mattresses, pillows (yes, really), chairs, tables, a refrigerator/cooler thing that I loved, and all kinds of good stuff to use. This is truly camping in style.

The campground itself had a shower and a bathtub, but the thing that I loved the most was a little kitchen area where you could wash up your dishes (6 sinks) with hot water, and a boiling water tap where you could fill your kettle in the morning. Talk about coffee with ease. They had nice dumpsters with recycling—this is big here, really! The sites were beautiful, grassy with trees and a grill area. These were the no electricity sites. Then the trails that they had to walk along were beautifully manicured. All in all, a fantastic place to spend a couple of days.

We got a fantastic local man, Elijah, to guide us to some of the San Rock Art paintings. It was about a 30-minute walk and he was well attuned to my sore muscles from the hike the day before, but I’m so glad we had him. If I had gone myself, I would have missed most of the rock art paintings. There were a bunch of paintings on a sandstone overhang. The sites are numerous in the Drankenbergs, but they are all protected areas so that they aren’t vandalized. He pointed out animals, figures of men and women, and what looked like scenes. He told us how the San people mixed the pigments and indicated how the painted. It was a very interesting hike and I’m so glad that I finally was able to see these paintings. I’ve wanted to see them ever since I first heard about them in Namibia years ago. I thought they were beautiful and it made me think about someone hundreds of years ago and what they must have been doing. Leroy was there!

So I’ve had a mix of things to do in the last 3 months or so. Lots of straddling the first world/third world divides. One thing that really showed me the difference in my two worlds was a recent Facebook posting. I had been working with my grade 7 boys on their homework: STIs. Every teacher and Peace Corps Volunteer knows that STIs are Sexually Transmitted Infections. It is something that we live with constantly and talk about a lot. The kids here often get pregnant in middle school and everyone knows someone who has died of AIDs. Often there are 4 funerals on a Saturday. In another world of which I am also a part, STI is Shallow Trench Isolation, a semiconductor process term. So when I posted that I had been doing STI homework with my Grade 7 boys, a few engineers that I know wondered what I was doing explaining Shallow Trench Isolation and wondered if PBL, Poly Buffered LOCOS, was next. Alas, engineers are not known for their sexual prowess, so imagine their reactions when I explained that the STIs we were studying in school were more along the lines of genital herpes and gonorrhea. And my teachers want to know what PBL is—now how do you explain that except to say that it is a bunch of engineers who are making a joke (even if they were not). Definitely two very different STIs! This dichotomy is what makes life fun, right?

Until the next time...

No comments:

Post a Comment