So There's These Two Pies Chilling in an Oven

Partially because I am lazy, and partially because I always wished that people would, on the myriad Peace Corps blogs I myself used to read before landing here, today let me describe to you a typical day in the life of Nomvula (whom absolutely nobody calls Becca). Also let me provide the caveat that to label any of my days here with words like "typical" or "routine" is sort of a vast stretch of anything resembling the truth, one that I assume can only make the gods laugh. But hey, you know, who doesn’t like a good joke?

At 5am my alarm goes off, at just the time I conscientiously set it last night. I immediately turn it off and go back to sleep.
5:07am – alarm goes off again
5:14am – and again
5:21am – and again.
5:28 – and one more time. This time I actually get up. I would just throw the stupid thing across the room, but my alarm happens to also be my cellphone, which I love because it keeps me in contact with the outside world.
I roll out of bed, put some sandals on, unroll some toilet paper, and head for the outhouse. Hopefully I get there early enough that the goats haven’t already started hanging out in it for the day.

After wandering back to my room, I plug in my electric kettle to the outlet that I assume is going to horribly electricute me at some point in the very near future. It hasn’t yet though, score. While the water heats up, I get the clothes I plan to wear today together (the sniff test has never been so gloriously useful as when laundry involves 2 hours of scrubbing in a bucket under a hot sun). I roll them up in my towel along with my fabulous Dr. Bronners. When the water gets hot I pour just enough into my watering can (yes, watering can). I then trek everything out to the enormous water tank next to the main house, fill the watering can up, and head for the outdoor "shower." Said shower actually consists of a cement stall where I can dump water out of my watering can and onto myself, but it still beats a bucket bath. It works surprisingly well. The only trick is to get there early enough that the adjacent outhouse hasn’t started to smell too bad. I dress in the shower and head back to my room.

I usually leave for my schools somewhere in the neighborhood of 6:30, and once there…who knows. I may be observing classes, chatting with teachers, re-typing obtuse department of education documents, putting on a workshop, trying to put together a school newspaper, or just writing in my journal and plotting how, exactly, I’m going to manage to take over the world from this tiny village. It varies, really.

School gets out about 2, unless I’m mean and keep my teachers late for a workshop (this makes them grumpy, so I try to avoid it). I head home, where I now have approximately 5 hours to kill until bed. I read (a LOT), or talk to my sisters, or write, or sms other volunteers until I think I have thumb sprain. I go for walks or head to the post office. I really should work in regular siSwati tutoring sessions, but I sort of suck and haven’t yet. Occasionally I’ve been known to knit (one hat, one sock, and 2.5 phone cozies down. It’s the one sock that’s really the pain).
I make some dinner in my sweet kitchen (hotplate on a TV stand next to a mini-fridge). Currently I’ve been eating a lot of beans and rice and cereal. Maybe I’ll read some more, maybe use my phone to check my email. When we had a TV I would watch Generations religiously every night at 8:00pm (South Africa’s favorite polyglot soap opera. Its awesome). And by 9pm…I’m in bed.

Exciting, no?

Of course all of this ignores the possibility that somewhere in there I might also meet the President at a Memorial dedication, or find myself giving an ad hoc inspirational speech to a group of graduating grade 7 learners, or chatting about the biblical ramifications of corporal punishment with the local pastor, or making friends with a bus driver, or discovering that at some point in the near future I will probably be expected to eat a grasshopper, or making kushe with my family, or hanging out with a random gogo on a mat next to a mud hut, or having an intense debate about the value of the women’s movement to South Africa (that I did NOT initiate, but had no problem giving my opinion in), or…

The possibilities are endless.

Also:
Happy Birthday Hortensia!
Emily I got your package and I'm so excited to have your address.
Kelsey kicks ass, AND:
My baby brother just got accepted to Chico State. Hooray Robbie!!