Renovations

Now its really Summer break, and consequently I have absolutely nothing to do. So I decided that I would renovate my room, which is essentially a glorified garage. The walls are smurf-orgy blue, and the cracks are big enough to allow all my friendly little lizards free access whenever they want in or out. Which I guess is okay since at least they eat the cockroaches. There was also a random bookshelf full of dusty strange old textbooks (some of them, especially the history books from the mid 80's are interesting little pieces of history in their own right) and a huge pile of papers, boxes, and what I can only and accurately describe as crap. So I spent a day dragging the bookshelf from my room into the storage room next to it, and then I organized all of the books on it -- including adding my little collection to the bottom shelves. I even found a couple good short story collections, so that made it all worthwhile. The next day I hauled the random pile of junk into the same spare room, and swept out the literally inches of dirt and junk that had accumulated under it. Fortunately, no spiders. (Or at least no living ones). Thursday was move all the furniture into the middle of the room and scrub down the walls day. Honestly, I gave that up about an hour in when I realized that I was mostly just moving the dirty around more than anything else. I at least got rid of the larger scorch marks and the enormous dirt tracks left over from -- well, I'm not really sure what. Yesterday was patch the huge cracks and buy some paint day, and later this week...new paint will be on the walls.

I'm going to be honest, the workmanship is a lot closer to "man, I hope the landlord gives my my deposit back" then "This sure is great and mom would definitely approve." But...I've never done this before, and anything is better than living in a glorified garage.

Someday I will figure out how to post pictures and do so.

Wish me luck.

PS
Hi Tierrans!

Everybody's Sister Has a Crush on Morgan

Its now officially summer break (though I just can’t bring myself to call any vacation that encompasses Christmas that – I’m sticking with “December Holiday”) which means that there’s not a whole lot going on in any of my schools. Mostly the teachers are just marking exams, filling out schedules (which is apparently pronounced ‘shed-ules’ and is essentially a list of all their learner’s grades) and I am desperately trying to find something – anything! – to do with myself. Last week I went to a Grade R graduation, and today I’m going to another. Last week’s was so adorable that it was nearly pain-inducing, and I’m hoping for similar things today. Its essentially a kindergarten graduation like you would see in the states (I think I vaguely recall having one myself) but everybody gets very into it! 3 or 4 of the teachers wear official graduation gowns, and all of the little kids wear caps and gowns as well. Then they all introduce themselves: “hellomynameissfisoiwanttothankmymommydadmybrothersmysistersandevvvvvvverybodywholovesme.” And there are speeches, recitations, poems, skits, gifts, you name it. I saw that many of the moms were in tears – this is a big deal. My personal favourite was the traditional dances performed by the little girls and little boys in turn. It was too cute, especially the little boys since I think (but am definitely not sure) that the men’s dance mirrors a sort of stylized fight. The little boys had such serious looks on their faces, and they stamped their feet down like they meant business. I was very impressed, and even a little bit jealous that despite everything I know I will have in life that they may never have access to…they still have this. They know where they come from. They have a traditional culture that is still alive and well and, well, kicking.
That’s something that I think is lacking in the US, and that a lot of people are trying to make up for. We’re an immigrant nation, which is wonderful and I think where the large majority of our strength comes from, but immigrants have to grow new roots to replace the ones they’ve left behind. Do I speak a word of Irish, Yiddish, Italian, Russian? No. I don’t really know my family’s history, or what our traditions were, or honestly anything to do with how things were more than 50 years ago except for what I’ve researched myself. I certainly didn’t grow up with this blend of old world and new that seems to be nothing special for all of the people in my village. Where one day they can sit down at a restaurant for a burger and coke, and the next be cooking samp over an open fire. Where learners put on a traditional dance while their mothers ululate with pride, and then turn on some 2Pac and do the latest dance moves that they saw on Jikamajika .
Its something very rare, and it seems like it should be (in my eyes at least) a delicate balance. But to the people around me its not. Its just the way things are. My house is half rondavale (traditional round hut) and half western. We have an electric stove and a solid collection of kettles for cooking over the outside fire. Everybody speaks in a mix of shongon, siswati, and english -- whistles and clicks and "hey, how ya doin'?" Is some of this just me romanticisizing an extreme poverty? Well, yes. But I think its also the recognition of something valuable, and rare, and worth holding on to.

New Address

Since trying to get my mail in Steenbok has mostly been one pain after another, I decided that it was about time to try something different. Therefore I present to you my brand new, mail getting, package recieving, mailing address:

Rebecca Miller
Box 1395
Malelane 1320
South Africa

Its on the side bar too, in case you forget.

eligama jesu hallelujah, amen!

Today I was taking the bus with two of my fellow volunteers. This is not terribly out of the ordinary. And outside of a couple of differences in protocol from busses in the US (for example, here it is okay for somebody to stand in the stairwell talking to the driver with the doors open as the bus whizzes along at 120 km/hour. In the US...not so much). So we're hanging out, doing the sardine thing on the morning commuter to Malelane and slowly everybody starts to sing. Which is also fairly par for the course and pretty neat. Its like being in a musical -- one person busts out in song and before you know it everybody else is singing along. I've wished that would happen in the US any number of times, it really spices things up. So we're driving and we're sardin-ing and we're singing, and life is good, and then the woman who had started to sing stands up. She continues to sing, so maybe she just wanted to stretch her legs, right? The singing dies down, and she calls out, "Hallelujah!" and the whole bus echoes back, "Hallelujah, Amen!" Now there's going to be a sermon. Sweet. This has happened once or twice before, and mostly its fun to see how many words I can pick out and a good way to pass a long bus ride. She greets the bus. Still standard, and then...then she turns to me. Apparently I know this woman, or she knows me.
She points me out to the entire bus, tells them all where I am living, what I am doing, and then proceeds to preach or witness or testify, or whatever the right term is for the next 15-20 minutes. Punctuated frequently by very fervent "Hallelujah!"s. I know at the very least that the first 5 minutes were about me. My assumption was that it was all good, but I don't really speak enough siSwati to be sure. For all I know she was exhorting the entire bus to beware the white devil-woman. But I sort of doubt it. The preaching goes on. Everybody is into it, not too many people are staring -- which is nice. She's swaying, she's yelling, she's stop mentioning my name so maybe I'm in the clear. Finally we get the closing Amen and I hear one more "make Sambo." This might be a reference to me. I'm not sure, there's a lot of Sambos in the area and people never refer to me as make (mother) though it is a polite form of address for a woman when you're using her surname.
The gogo finishes, and we all bow our heads and pray (out loud of course) and then shake the hand of the person sitting next to us. Gogo has a seat, and everybody looks satisfied at a piece of mobile evangelizing well done. I steal a glance at my friend sitting next to me, and feel like I would give anything to be fluent in siSwati not just soon, but 5 minutes ago.