Still Plugging

Three posts...one day? It's madness!

That, and I just wanted to be sure that my shameless begging/plugging for cash for the libraries of Steenbok is at the top. So if you want to help out with getting 25 boxes of books to three libraries that could really use them, here's the link. It should work and everything.

American Pie

Last week marked three months left of my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and so I’m beginning to shift my focus on to other things. I’ve still got a few projects left at school – my map of course, which is coming along nicely, slowly building our libraries,* one last Likusasa Letfu girl’s camp, and a young author’s faire that I basically knelt down and begged the principal for. It won’t be sustainable, but it will be really fun and cute. Other than those one time things though, I’m mostly just wrapping it all up, writing things down for the next volunteer (well, planning to do that eventually, anyways), and researching the trip I plan to take after COS.

I realized the other day that its been a really long time since I felt homesick. Not a really long time since I desperately wanted to be home, or since I felt out of place, or since I missed my friends and family, but…a long time since there weren’t other things to balance it out. I am overwhelmed by what a great privilege it is, and has been, to live here and to become a part of the scenery, not just a tourist. I love my morning walk to school each day. I love watching the women sweep their yards, hearing the kids call to one another, seeing sunrise over the Lubombo mountains each morning. I love taking the bus through the farms and mountains to town, and listening to everybody on it singing hymns all the way.

The music here is a gift. It is so simple – incredibly simple! Its just voices in four part harmony, learned by ear and sung by people who don’t rehearse or study or bother with the theory. They just sing, and pick it up, and join in. And its some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard. I’ve been to and been in some of the most technically difficult and musically beautiful concerts, and nothing here is diminished in comparison. A woman once asked me, “In America, what do you do when you are feeling something strongly? When you are happy or sad?” I told her I didn’t know. Maybe we smiled, or told a friend, or something like that. “Well here,” she told me, “we sing. That is how we feel our emotions and tell them. We sing.” Its that easy. I can’t explain it properly. I think its something you just have to hear and be inside of to understand. But it literally stops me in my tracks every time. I go out to the tap for a bucket of water, and hear the choir practicing on Saturday evenings, and it’s impossible to just get my water and walk away. I am forced to listen, held in place for the space of a song. A Friday morning on the bus, watching green hills covered in bush and po-po, listening to the voices around me -- it’s one of life’s perfect moments that I doubt can ever be replicated or moved. And I never cease to feel grateful for the privilege to be there, in that perfect moment. I could sing.

*“growing” them, if you will, but I hate that term. I remember having this argument with dad in the seventh grade. I still stand by my claim that it’s a silly buzzword, whose only purpose is to make you sound more important. Growing is an individual process that a thing does on its own. Plants grow. Building is an active thing that you or some other individual participates in. You build something. Its active and participatory. There is work involved, not standing around watching it happen.

Dancing in the Streets

Before I get started, go ahead and glance to your right a little bit. On the computer screen, I mean. You see that little bit under ‘Disclaimer’? The one that mentions nobody and nothing is responsible for the things written here except for me – including the US Government, the South African Government, Amelia Earhart, etc…etc…? Yes. That. It still holds.

So, that said, I’ve been getting some concerned emails and phone calls lately. Ones that usually begin, “Um, Becca I’ve been reading the news about Africa, and…” First, let me say: mad props for overcoming the California public school education we all enjoyed and showing an interest in world events. Second:

I’m Fine

There have been a series of attacks against foreigners and immigrants in South Africa lately. ‘Xenophobic violence’ is the preferred term in the news, though I’ve heard some shriller voices screaming “Ethnic cleansing!! Genocide!!” (Today one lady in the paper compared things here to Hitler’s death camps in Poland, to which I can only respond, “…seriously?”). Nobody seems to be entirely sure what the flashpoint was, but in the past couple of months there have been violent and horrific attacks against immigrants – legal and otherwise – in townships mostly surrounding Johannesburg, though it seems that the wave has begun to grow, and recently as far away as Cape Town there have been attacks as well. It’s not pretty. Mobs will attack an entire family of immigrants from Zimbabwe, Malawi, Nigeria, or wherever else in Africa*, screaming that they are stealing jobs and resources from the South Africans who deserve them. Homes are destroyed, possessions are stolen. People have been set on fire and burnt to death while crowds point and laugh. Neighboring African governments are setting up evacuation points to get their people back home, thousands and tens of thousands have already been bussed out. Humanitarian organizations are setting up “displacement areas” which the South African government is being very, very careful not to call refugee camps. Refugee camps don’t happen in South Africa, you see. This is the country that’s got it together.

On the whole, that’s pretty much true, too. While they are horrific, and I’m in no way downplaying the sheer…evil it takes to destroy another human’s beings life just because they’re different, all of these attacks have been pretty isolated. Mbeki has called out the army, and some places are attempting to declare a state of emergency, but…the country keeps going. My village is full of immigrants from Mozambique, and last I checked nobody was picking up any rocks, pitchforks, or torches. They may be immigrants, but their neighbors and friends first. This is no threat to permanent security or safety or the economy. School keeps happening. Think of it as Hurricane Katrina in the US – or maybe more accurately, the LA riots (or any other riot you prefer). A serious temporary breakdown of conventional order and security, but more or less localized and the country isn’t going anywhere.

What it does seem to reveal – to me at least – is a serious undercurrent of anger in South Africa that needs to be dealt with. People point out that this is the first time since Apartheid that the army has been sent into the townships, and the ANC’s call then was “Make the Townships Ungovernable!” Was there ever a call to make them governable again? When the mission was accomplished and Mandela ran the country and Tutu ran the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, who walked through the townships and helped people to put their anger away? What happened to all the anger, frustration, and hatred that was stirred up (in some cases legitimately, in others less so)? It didn’t just go away. I think that people have been so busy, so desperate, branding the New South Africa, the Rainbow Nation, that some steps have been left behind.

There is so much anger in this country, and it lies under such a thin and stretched-taut skin. Did you know that there are more violent deaths per capita in South Africa than Afghanistan?** People are angry, and legitimately so, I would never say that it is wrong or misplaced – the rug has been yanked out from too many people too many times. A lot of promises have been made and not kept. This country is so beautiful, and so complex – I have never lived in such a complicated place. To think about the contrasts and potentials and tragedies here all swirling around together is enough to make your head explode. It’s difficult to hold it all together inside of you at once. So you pick and choose the pieces you can handle, when you can handle them. But sometimes the pieces you’re so busy not handling are the pieces that are getting ready to explode.

*To re-iterate, Mom, immigrants from AFRICA. Nobody is after Americans. I’M FINE.

**Sorry, Mom. Wasn’t planning to tell you that until November. But: I’M FINE.

Want to Help?

Hey everybody

So remember how I keep talking about libraries and and young author's faires, and how much work it is to create a culture of reading in South Africa? Well, if any of you have ever read that and thought maybe it might be a cool thing to help out a bit, now's your chance.

All three schools have now gotten libraries up and running, but they're small. Not too long ago a wonderful lady agreed to donate thousands of books to our libraries. She got the books together, she got the books boxed up...and then the cost of shipping went through the roof. So we need money to get the books from San Francisco to Steenbok, and we need a little something to pay for customs when they get here.

This Link is for a grant I recently wrote, allowing any and all donations to go through Peace Corps and to therefore be tax deductible. So it's practically free, right?

I'm not asking you the individual for all $3450, even just $5 or $10 will help. Whatever you've got. Look at it one of two ways:
1) You're doing something awesome for children in Africa who would never otherwise have this opportunity. You are in fact being a Good Person. Karma and all that.
2) Over the past two years maybe you've been entertained by stories of my ridiculous life. Bucket bathing is way funnier when its not happening to you. Say thanks with $5 or $50. Or heck, $500. I'm not picky.

In the immortal words of Stan and Kyle, "I mean...come on!"

And Then Mark Twain Said

Recently, like just yesterday, Africa suddenly decided to get cold. I don’t know who is in charge of this decision, or why, but they are very arbitrary about it, and it makes me grumpy. Over the course of just two or three days the weather will go from crushing, unforgiving heat with insane humidity, to explosive rain -- thunder that shakes your house and lightning that blasts across the sky. I always thought it was silly to be afraid of thunder storms before I came here. I mean really, how can they hurt you? I don’t think its silly any more. Thunder storms here make you think that the world is being ripped apart around you, and you can only hope to come out the other end alright. After the rain, the next day will be cool and cloudy, and smell like wet clean grass and mud, and then it can go in one of two directions – either the day will slowly warm up, and the week will begin to get unbearably hot again until the whole process repeats itself, or for no reason I can figure out the day will stay cool, and the temperature will just keep dropping. And then it will stay like that, and there will be a bitter dry cold that cracks your skin and makes you seriously worry about frost-bite of the fingers or nose. Last year I started making myself hard-boiled eggs for breakfast, not so much for the protein as something to put in my pockets on the way to school so that I could keep my hands warm.

So just about yesterday, the weather decided to get cold for the first time this year, and I found myself once again cursing the South African winters. Admittedly, its not as bad as the summer, you can always put another layer on in the winter, but in the summer there’s a point where you really should stop taking things off. What really struck me though, as I huddled under my blanket and shook my fist at Africa (which, as we all know, is supposed to be HOT) was that this is the third time I’d done that. On one hand, this means that really you’d think I would have figured out by now that this happens every year and I should get over it, but on the other – this is my third South African winter. My time here is almost over. I have three months left, and of those maybe this one and a week of next will be productive getting-things-done time. The rest will be packing up, saying goodbye, getting around to those visits and conversations I’ve been meaning to for the last two years – finishing up sorts of things. Its very weird to think about, so mostly I’m not. I know that three months really isn’t that much time, especially considering how fast the last 22 have flown by, but I think I got through that time by making a point of never focusing on the finish line – its much easier to think about tomorrow. Sometimes tomorrow is too hard, and all you can think about is today. So today I’m in town, and I’m researching the trip I’m going to take after I finish up here, and I’m trying to get funding and books for our libraries, and I’m buying a bottle of wine. Today I’m going to worry about today, and tomorrow can worry about itself.

Oooh...shiny

I feel like I might need to get ahold of this at some point in the near future. How useful for three months of travelling through Africa!

Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?

My newest project at school is a giant world map, approximately 15 feet by 8 feet that I am slowly and fairly tediously drawing out by hand. Before you start to wonder, yes, those two things making you go “wait a minute…” are still true. I am still very short (making those top 3 feet a little bit tricky) and I am still a very bad artist. But that’s okay, because where there’s a will for a low brain power yet high “oooh-ahh” factor…there’s a way.

Its done using the grid projection method, which most people experience for about 2 weeks in 6th grade, and then never have to worry about again. Basically, you have a picture. You draw a grid around that picture. Then you draw a much bigger grid somewhere else and transfer the small grid to the big grid box by box by box. In my case, 1,568 boxes over nearly 13 square meters. That’s a lot of boxes. The school staff thought so too, which is why the principal, deputy principal, and a significant portion of the teachers all spent most of their day standing around and watching me draw straight lines. It was apparently so exciting, in fact, that they also called the SGB chairperson, who immediately dropped whatever it was that he was doing to drive over to the school and stand in the crowd, crossing his arms and occasionally commenting on…something. I have never been so popular at school before.

We also spent a lot of time that day trying to find a way for me to draw all of the parts at the very top. Other volunteers have managed alright standing on a chair or a desk, however I had two fairly significant problems with this: 1) I am deathly afraid of heights. Standing on a rickety table on an uneven surface where every step or lean could send me plunging to my death from a horrific distance of 2 feet counts as heights. 2) I am so short that, even standing on that awful table, I could not actually reach the top of my latent map. So I had a problem.

The principal sent over the general worker (janitor) so that we could try and solve the problem together. Unfortunately, the general worker spoke exactly no English, and my hardware vocabulary set isn’t so good in siSwati. It turns out, for example, that the word for ladder is not in fact ‘iLadder’ (a technique that was based, of course, on the ‘el ladder-o’ theory of 8th grade Spanish/linguistics) but ma-steppa. It also turned out, once we made it past the language wall, that his ladder was a 12 foot high monstrosity made out of tied together tree branches that looked like it might come apart if I looked at it funny. Fortunately my siSwati for “There is no way in hell I’m getting near that thing, I will die instantly” has had some practice. (If you ever need it: “Anegke! Ngiyasaba!”) He agreed that it did look a teensy-bit unstable, but then had a really brilliant solution: Why don’t we just send a child up instead? (Perhaps on the theory that there are plenty of them and they are somehow expendable. I don’t know.) This was also not okay with me. I’m such a spoilsport.

Next somebody was sent for another ladder, but unfortunately it happened to be a stepladder roughly 2 inches shorter than the original table. By the end of it I was standing amidst the general worker, the principal, the deputy principal, the SGB chairperson, a teacher who really wanted to help, and somebody’s brother who has a truck and was therefore sent to get the step-stool ladder, waving my arms and trying to explain in two different languages that they shouldn’t worry about it, I’d figure it out, I’d come up with a solution, and while I applauded their commitment and appreciated how much they wanted to give me a hand, it would really be alright if they STOPPED HELPING. They were unconvinced.

In the end, I had to promise to make my very tall neighboring volunteer help me out over the weekend, and that we really truly, for honest, for reals would be okay without every ladder in the village. And then the next day Tom came over and helped me draw the top. I hate being short.

In all, the grid took about two days. Over the next few weeks I plan to transfer my small grid of world map onto my large wall grid of world map, and then magically come up with a map of the world that looks more or less like its supposed it. Then I’m gonna paint it. And then I’ll be remembered at Ekwenzeni Primary School forever – or at least until somebody decides to paint over it.