(slowly)
As of yesterday morning, I am no longer a Peace Corps Volunteer. I have officially COSed, and therefore am officially no longer the US governments problem if I do something stupid. Which is probably comforting for all of us. I was going to have some long, summing up "wow, Peace Corps sure was great"post, but I just read the one I made a couple of weeks ago, and I can't really think of a better summary than that intense feeling of awe and gratitude. So I'll leave it. And besides, as I've been saying goodbye to almost every person who has kept me going in the last two years, I've decided that its not really the goodbyes or the last nights out, or the summing up that counts, its all the stuff that came before it. So lets not worry about the end of PC, because it was everything up until the end that matters.
About two weeks ago I took Jabu and Latoya to the big mall in Nelspruit to say goodbye. We got all dressed up and went to Spur (a 'wild west' steak house) and then to see Batman. Neither of them had ever been to a movie theater before, and I really wanted to do something special as a way of saying goodbye. Those two were my best friends, and I'm really going to miss them a lot. The thought of never seeing them again, not seeing the type of people that they will grow up to be, makes me so sad that I've justdecided not to think about it. I did write down addresses (of course!) and give them mine -- I also gave Latoya a couple of pre-stamped envelopes with my address already on it, so in theory all they have to do is put some words in an envelope and drop the envelope through a slot. That is at least a little comforting.
This morning I have been wandering Gabarone, in Botswana. This is the first step on my 10 week amble across southern and eastern Africa. Gabarone is an interesting city, very laid back, very calm, though that could be because I've been doing all my wandering on a sunday morning. Probably its a little more hopping monday through friday. But the people are nice and the houses don't look like maximum security prisons (pretoria -- I'm looking at you), which is a definite bonus. Tomorrow morning I move on to a city called Ghanzi in the middle of the Kalahari. I'm excited.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Home in the Land of the Homelands
As my time run outs, I find that my words seem to be as well. Two weeks ago I had my farewell function for my schools, and next Thursday (well, today by the time I get a chance to post this, I suppose) I will have left Steenbok forever and ever. And I don’t know what to say. Well, that’s not true. Of course I’m still me and the words never run out, but writing about leaving just makes everything so much more real and so I keep finding excuses not to. But two weeks to go is no time to quit, so I’ll do my best.
My farewell function was…well it was just as ridiculous as I ever could have dreamed. There were speeches and poems and dance performances by various learners who had been co-opted into entertaining the crowd. A couple of girls read poems that they had written, and my schools presented me with a full “Swazi” outfit and jewelry (and by Swazi they meant covered in lots and lots of beads. Its not traditional, but it is pretty cool). I gave a speech thanking everybody, we had a big meal and headed home. The whole thing was really touching, I couldn’t believe the effort so many people had gone through just to say goodbye to me. (A very Peace Corps sort of moment: walking to the function – the first time, before they made me walk back so that I could be picked up in style 2 hours later – I saw kids of all ages running around at 9am on a Friday when they should have been in class. Why no school? Because it had been shut down for the day to say thanks to me for all the work I’d done trying to help improve school! Oh well.)
Two weeks later, of course, I’m still here, and I keep running into people in the street who seem a little shocked by the fact. “Usahlala ekhaya?” “Utomuka nini?” (You’re still here? When are you leaving?) seems to be the standard refrain from every gogo I meet. They’re not being mean, we just spent 6 hours saying farewell, and then I didn’t go. It’s weird. I hate saying goodbye, and this extended three week process is very close to excruciating. It’s like tearing the world’s most epic band-aid off one hair at a time. I’ve been trying to keep myself busy, mostly by painting another world map at my key school – this one very tiny – and slowly giving away most of everything that I own. This has to be done incrementally, since if I start giving away too much at once it turns into a feeding frenzy and I have to beat off teachers and children with sticks. Recently though I was told that everything I own “even the spoons” must go to my host family. Really I don’t want to give them anything at all – except for the girls, of course – because generally they’re just not good people*. They don’t take care of things, or people, and I know they won’t value or take care of the things I give them. Which isn’t to say it won’t start an enormous amount of dispute and bad feeling if I don’t. But the passive-aggressive in me (or maybe just the part of me that has learned to pick its battles) says: ‘Fine, less work for me to do, then.’ I’ll pack my bag, clean the room, and they can sort through it all for me.
I think I sound bitter, but maybe a better word would be melancholy. I’ve spent two years in Steenbok, and its been an amazing transformative experience for me. I’m not really sure how to say goodbye, or how to summarize two years in a few sentences. It’s been…outstanding. Literally not a day has gone by when I haven’t felt an enormous sense of gratitude and privilege for the opportunity I’ve been given, for the people I’ve worked with, and the children who have been willing to play with me and teach me about their world. For the music and the language and the sunsets. Yesterday I took the bus home from Malelane. It took an uncommon turn into an out of the way village and we bumped down a dirt and sand road at what couldn’t have been more than 15 miles an hour. There was dust blowing up from both sides of the bus, cows ambling through the veld, kids running home from school, dancing in front of their houses, arguing with their friends on the footpaths that wound through the houses. I saw a gogo walking down the road with a walking stick that reached up to her shoulder and an old wrap and t-shirt she must have bought at the Naas market. The river was off to the left, and beyond that fields and fields full of mealies, po-po, cabbage, onion, tomato, sugar cane. And beyond that the Lubombo mountains that have hemmed me in and provided backdrop and border. It was nothing, it was an ordinary day in an ordinary village not far from my home. And all I could think was, “I am the luckiest girl alive.”
*Comforting, in its way, I suppose, to know that petty and selfish people extend across all cultures. No one country has the monopoly on jerk.
My farewell function was…well it was just as ridiculous as I ever could have dreamed. There were speeches and poems and dance performances by various learners who had been co-opted into entertaining the crowd. A couple of girls read poems that they had written, and my schools presented me with a full “Swazi” outfit and jewelry (and by Swazi they meant covered in lots and lots of beads. Its not traditional, but it is pretty cool). I gave a speech thanking everybody, we had a big meal and headed home. The whole thing was really touching, I couldn’t believe the effort so many people had gone through just to say goodbye to me. (A very Peace Corps sort of moment: walking to the function – the first time, before they made me walk back so that I could be picked up in style 2 hours later – I saw kids of all ages running around at 9am on a Friday when they should have been in class. Why no school? Because it had been shut down for the day to say thanks to me for all the work I’d done trying to help improve school! Oh well.)
Two weeks later, of course, I’m still here, and I keep running into people in the street who seem a little shocked by the fact. “Usahlala ekhaya?” “Utomuka nini?” (You’re still here? When are you leaving?) seems to be the standard refrain from every gogo I meet. They’re not being mean, we just spent 6 hours saying farewell, and then I didn’t go. It’s weird. I hate saying goodbye, and this extended three week process is very close to excruciating. It’s like tearing the world’s most epic band-aid off one hair at a time. I’ve been trying to keep myself busy, mostly by painting another world map at my key school – this one very tiny – and slowly giving away most of everything that I own. This has to be done incrementally, since if I start giving away too much at once it turns into a feeding frenzy and I have to beat off teachers and children with sticks. Recently though I was told that everything I own “even the spoons” must go to my host family. Really I don’t want to give them anything at all – except for the girls, of course – because generally they’re just not good people*. They don’t take care of things, or people, and I know they won’t value or take care of the things I give them. Which isn’t to say it won’t start an enormous amount of dispute and bad feeling if I don’t. But the passive-aggressive in me (or maybe just the part of me that has learned to pick its battles) says: ‘Fine, less work for me to do, then.’ I’ll pack my bag, clean the room, and they can sort through it all for me.
I think I sound bitter, but maybe a better word would be melancholy. I’ve spent two years in Steenbok, and its been an amazing transformative experience for me. I’m not really sure how to say goodbye, or how to summarize two years in a few sentences. It’s been…outstanding. Literally not a day has gone by when I haven’t felt an enormous sense of gratitude and privilege for the opportunity I’ve been given, for the people I’ve worked with, and the children who have been willing to play with me and teach me about their world. For the music and the language and the sunsets. Yesterday I took the bus home from Malelane. It took an uncommon turn into an out of the way village and we bumped down a dirt and sand road at what couldn’t have been more than 15 miles an hour. There was dust blowing up from both sides of the bus, cows ambling through the veld, kids running home from school, dancing in front of their houses, arguing with their friends on the footpaths that wound through the houses. I saw a gogo walking down the road with a walking stick that reached up to her shoulder and an old wrap and t-shirt she must have bought at the Naas market. The river was off to the left, and beyond that fields and fields full of mealies, po-po, cabbage, onion, tomato, sugar cane. And beyond that the Lubombo mountains that have hemmed me in and provided backdrop and border. It was nothing, it was an ordinary day in an ordinary village not far from my home. And all I could think was, “I am the luckiest girl alive.”
*Comforting, in its way, I suppose, to know that petty and selfish people extend across all cultures. No one country has the monopoly on jerk.
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