Indaba Indaba

Always Coming Home

2011-08-01T23:38:00.000-07:00

First of all, I have a joke to share. It begins as follows:

“So, a lawyer, a missionary, and a grad student spend the night in an airport coffee shop…”

I leave the punch line to your own ingenuity and/or imagination.

Second of all, I have recently gained some key insights into the day to day functioning of the OR Tambo airport in Johannesburg. I will now share that information with you in more or less chronological order of importance:

1. There are two stores that sell wine by the bottle, however the cheaper place stops selling at 8pm, so if you find yourself in need of 3 people’s worth of cheap red wine and coke some evening…plan ahead.

2. Nobody cares if you crack open your very own bottle of wine in the middle of the food court. If you ask nicely, you can even get a nearby bartender to lend you a corkscrew.

3. The people at the food court in charge of the comfortable orange chairs will start trying to take them away from you around 11pm or so. However, whoever it is that is in charge of the less comfortable but still perfectly serviceable blue picnic tables could give a damn.

4. The people at Mugg and Bean will not only let you sleep on their booth benches, not only let you build a little table fort to as minimize exposure, and not only pour rum into pretty much anything you ask them to…they will also send some trainee to “the shop” (?) at 11:30 in order to organize you some banana toffee waffles at midnight.

5. I’m pretty sure the airport heater gets turned off at night.

6. Airport staffers enjoy doing whatever it is they do on a night shift while listening to a mix tape of what appears to be house music overlaying gospel overlaying …screaming babies?

7. The Mugg and Bean waiter will let you know when the boss is coming with a cheery “Kusile!” and “Good morning!” at 4:45am sharp.

…only 15 hours (or is it 39?) to go.

Jesus loves MARPs

2011-07-31T23:21:00.000-07:00

Right now, I'm sitting in my hotel room just across from the OR Tambo airport. I wasn't planning to spend the evening in a hotel room, but it turns out that sometimes flying standby has just as many drawbacks as perks. There's only one flight a day from Jo'burg to Atlanta. I'll try again tonight -- wish me luck.

There's something about the empty neutral space of a hotel room that I secretly like. They always feel like a transitional space to me. Liminal (I like that word). I like the way a faceless conglomerate tries to anticipate what an individual person would want. I like owning a flat screen TV and a whole fake-fancy studio apartment of my own for a night. I like the liminal ownership of the situation.

I could have made it on the first try had I left Saturday, but instead we had an amazing going away party that night. There was this moment, at the end of the evening, when one of our guests looked at another, and declared that they were going to stand together and advocate for themselves. That they would refuse to be ignored and would work together to make sure they were seen and heard. I have never witnessed history before, and I think Saturday night I did. Just there, in my living room. Over cupcakes I had spent the morning baking. I had goosebumps. That moment alone was worth 10,000 missed flights and 10,000 neutral hotel rooms. It was powerful.

Of course, I would also like getting on an airplane back to America tonight. My favorite part of travelling, every single time, is when the customs person in Atlanta flips through my passport, looks up, and says "welcome home." I like being welcomed home.

Margaret Mead

2011-07-18T07:22:00.000-07:00

Last week, I took some time from my crucial schedule of life saving meetings and interminable office time spent under life sucking florescent lights to get an up close look at the HIV health systems in the country. Not on purpose, entirely, I didn't plan it, but a friend asked for a favor and I wanted to do something that felt tangible.

My friend had told me about a separate friend of hers who is very ill. This friend needed to get a refill on her ARVs, but the refill had to be done at a clinic that was far away, and the woman was too sick to get them herself. My friend had already filled the prescription once on her behalf, but had been told by the clinic staff that next time the actual patient would need to fill her own prescription. I offered to give the woman a lift to the clinic. For some reason I thought this would be no big deal. The friend stays in the town where I work, and the clinic is in the town where I live. I'd just give everybody a ride on my way out of town, right?

I don't know why I still think things work this way. I should know better by now.

Thursday afternoon my friend came and met me at my office. We went to the woman's home. She was extremely weak, it took three family members helped her get into my car. I would have been able to pull up closer, but somebody had parked their truck in the driveway leading up to the woman's house and was busy washing it one 2 liter soda bottle at a time, so I just had to stop my car in traffic, throw my hazards on, and really regret that I couldn't park any closer.

When we arrived at the clinic my friend and I helped the lady out of the car and into the waiting room. The clinic was well lit, well ventilated, and not too busy. There probably are some hellish visions of overcrowded, over stressed HIV hospital facilities out there, but this wasn't it. There were only a few people in line ahead of us. One woman was dropped off at the door, escorted in by a husband, and cut the whole line, but that was the most egregious part of the process. After about 20-30 minutes, our friend was taken in to see the nurse. My friend had asked me to stay and ask the nurse if her friend could be transferred to a clinic in Mbabane, much closer to where they stay. She felt that the nurses would be more likely to listen to me than to her or her friend. I agreed, because as distasteful as the fact is -- she was probably right.

We went inside, and the nurses looked at the woman's refill book and refilled her ARVs. When I asked if she could be transferred to the clinic that was much closer to the woman's house, the nurses explained that only doctors could transfer patients, and the doctor would not be in until the next day, so the woman should come back again then. I strongly considered pointing out all of the USAID signs all over the place and dropping a good old, "my tax dollars pay your bla bla bla" but while there's a time and place for vaguely jerk like American assertiveness, there's never a time for stupid. The nurse and I went back and forth for a few minutes. I was taking huge, grievous, gargantuan advantage of my accent and my skin color and my wealth, and we both knew it. But on the other hand...if all that privilege can be useful to somebody, shouldn't it? Or does taking advantage of those things somehow reinforce some...thing that is a big part of the problem with the system in the first place? I don't know. But my friend had asked me to do it, so I did.

It was very clear that the woman needed to see a doctor immediately, but getting to the clinic had already been a huge effort for her, going back there again on the next day just wasn't an option. I come from this perspective, and this place, where I think that if you just walk into a health care facility everything will be fine. Because thats how it was when I was a kid. When you're sick, you find somebody to make you better. Walk through the right door and somebody will fix you up. I'm not stupid, I know how untrue that is in Africa, and America, and pretty much everywhere else too, but some part of me in the back of my head just kept mumbling that now that she was here, and in front of not one but two nurses...shouldn't everything be ok? Couldn't they fix this somehow? And the rest of me thought, no...of course not. And what did I expect them to do about it anyways?

Finally, after a prolonged telephone conversation with the government doctor in the right clinic (during which the phrase "You get here at nine ish??!! I'm not waiting around for whenever nine-ish happens," might have occurred, and forever cemented the public health nurse's love for me) it was agreed that we would take the woman to the VCT clinic near her house immediately to see a doctor, that the visiting doctor (who was planning to show up the next day at nineish) would sign her over to the closer clinic in absentia the next day, and I would bring the file up there myself once he (presumably he) had done that. Complicated.

After we agreed on this, we brought the friend back to my car, and drove her back to the city. The VCT clinic where we were going is actually two separate buildings on the government hospital compound. One is for testing, and one is for ART patients. Imagine what this means if you are going to get your medication. Just by walking towards that door, the door where only HIV+ patients go in, you have to announce to everybody one of the most private, intimate facts about yourself. When you walk through that door, you tell everyone around you that there is a virus living inside you that the King just called a terrorist. And you have to do it to pick up the medication that helps you survive. Some people -- a lot of people -- aren't completely sure that that bargain is worthwhile to them.

We took the woman inside, and the first person we saw took one look at her and at the three of us it took to get her the 15 feet from the parking lot to the clinic, and directed her to the emergency room. This is literally a room for emergency patients with the word "sick" written on red construction paper and taped to the door with medical tape. Its just that, the room for emergency patients. I find something about this darkly funny. We were met by a very nice British (I think) doctor, and didn't have to wait terribly long before being seen by one doctor, and another one. While we sat and waited for the doctors to examine her, my friend told me about how she would go from house to house in their community, visiting people who were sick with HIV, encouraging others to test, and generally trying to offer all of the support she can. Not because anybody asks her to, certainly not because anybody pays her to, but just because she feels she needs to. I told her that I think God will bless her for that, and that if anybody deserves to go straight to heaven, it is her. I said it partially because I think it was something she needed to hear, and partially because that I meant it. I meant it in translation, if that makes sense, but I really meant it. She is one of those astounding, quiet people who will never win an award, never meet the president, never be celebrated by international news media or maybe even told thank you by more than the few people who think of it, but who keeps doing something phenomenal and selfless and important anyways. Because its right, and because...she wants to. What do you say in the face of that, besides, "God will bless you."

Finally, after around 45 minutes from the time we got there, our friend was wheeled out of the emergency room and admitted to the hospital.

We followed the attendant to the hospital, and were told to meet her in a particular ward, while my friend checked her in. The most visible item on window to the reception office is a sign in English and siSwati. The sign explains that corpses will only be released to family members who have fully payed their hospital and mortuary fees, and have the receipt to prove it.

We found our friend in a bed next to a window and spent some time talking with her until the ward nurse came over. The nurse was wearing a face mask and was extremely warm and cheerful. As we left, I smiled and told the nurse that this woman was my friend and extremely important to me, so could she please make sure to take extra good care of her? The nurse laughed and told me that she couldn't because that would be unfair -- she had to take extremely good care of everybody. Finally we agreed that she should take extra good care of everyone there so that our friend could get extra good care too. I knew exactly what I was doing, I was taking advantage of a crap system again. I was making a point of showing that I was behind this woman and that I cared, even if we only knew one another for the space of an afternoon. It kind of makes me feel a little bit...sick to know that this is a thing I would even try. At least in Swaziland I was taking advantage of wealth, and not race. Like exploiting class divisions is somehow better than exploiting race divisions. I don't know.

We left, and the the friend said goodbye. I keep meaning to go back and visit her, and I keep...not. Mostly, I think I don't want to go and be told that she's gone.

Nothing in the process was particularly egregious in terms of health care accessibility or services. Supplies were never too short, we never had to wait an inordinately long time, nobody was particularly rude. But I think at least some of the last two points had to do with the fact that I was there with these two women at every step of the process as a sort of silent (only once not so silent) advocate. All in all it was about 4.5 hours from the time we left the offices to the time we left the friend at the hospital. Getting all of those things done in just one day -- or any of them at all -- without access to private transportation would have been impossible.

Maria and I had a long conversation afterwards, about health and human rights, and social justice, and whats fair and whats right and why we're in this field in the first place. She pointed out that at no point was there a failure of human rights, and thats true. But justice? Is that story just? Is it right? We were not playing on a level field there. The deck was stacked. Insert other game metaphor here.

I know, I'm a slacker

2011-07-03T04:16:00.000-07:00

I think I was much better at making blog posts when I was a PCV than now when I'm actually working. (Sorry mom) Why is this? I think in Peace Corps I just inherently had better/funnier stories. I think also, now that I'm working-working, its a little bit less appropriate for me to (gently) poke fun at what I do every day, since most of that takes place in fairly legitimate offices. Plus, while my job is FANTASTIC, and I love just about every second of it, its really not a good one to discuss in a public forum. Feel free to email me in private if you're really that curious about what I do.

Oh, also, the blog stuffexpataidworkerslike.com does a WAY better job of summarizing my daily life than I ever could. So I leave a lot of it to them.

As of today, I have 29 days left in my favorite tiny mountain kingdom. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it will be nice to be back in the states. I miss my family and friends. At Erin and Roy's wedding I realized just how much I miss a lot of really wonderful people who I went to school with and how much I want to do a better job of staying in touch with them. I miss the variety of America, and some days I miss being invisible. But... (sorry again mom, there's a "but") I've been emailing back and forth with a friend of mine who did her own stint away from the US for a while. She said, "aren't you excited to move back to America for good?!" And I thought..."Wait? For good? Who said anything about for good? I'm moving back to America for now." I felt the reverberations of a distant, mini panic attack. I've lived in southern Africa on and off for over three years now. I've been a college graduate (an "adult" if you will) for six years. I'm just as good at being a grown-up here as I am at being a grown-up in America. Maybe better. I love what I do here. I love the variety and the absurdity and the slight-to-major challenge that comes with getting just about anything done here. I like it here.

Three vivid memories, or memories of phrases, stick with me from my very first week in Peace Corps, my first week in South Africa. I remember sitting on the bus leaving the Jo'burg airport, trying not to start crying hysterically, and thinking over and over, "I'm 10,000 miles from everyone I love and everyone who loves me." Over and over again. I couldn't get that sentence to leave my head. And then, we got to our first training site, and we spent a week listening to bull roarers and singing coming from an Ndebele initiation school in the hills behind us, and I wrote my parents a letter. I told them, "I'm falling in love with this place, and I never expected that to happen." Which is corny and kind of cliché, but was also true. And I remember sitting in my freezing rondavale, with the other PCVs who would really soon become the people whom I loved and the people who loved me. I re-read Stardust, the illustrated version, and I hit the part where Tristran Thorn gets ready to walk across the wall and into Faerie, and "he knew if he turned back now, nobody would think any less of him" and he went anyways. It was the perfect sentence in the perfect paragraph in the perfect time. About walking into the unknown but knowing it was right.

And here I am now, four years later. I'm still 10,000 miles away from so many people whom I love, but now I love being in this place too. I have people who I care about here, too. I love walking into the unknown every day.

I'm looking forward to new challenges in America, and being with so close to so many people who matter to me. But I also am already planning how to come back here again just as quick as I can. So in 29 short days, I'm coming back to America.

For now.

Everything is always 80%. But I don't care!

2011-04-13T23:55:00.000-07:00

"I'd love the eggs benedict please. Oh -- and fruit! Do you have any fruit I could have on the side?"

"We have hashbrowns."

"Um...fruit?"

"Hashbrowns are potato."

"I think I'll just have the eggs benedict."

Durban

2011-04-13T23:52:00.000-07:00

I've got my computer open... free wifi is running... the coffee doesn't suck...

This might be one of the top 10 best days ever.

Just call me Safey McSaferson.

2011-04-12T05:33:00.000-07:00

This is happening.

And this.

But...I'm fine. I promise. I've also checked in with friends at the University, and they're okay too.

I plan to spend my evening eating margarita cupcakes and playing trivial pursuit in my (safe, safe) house. This is a fascinating historical moment to experience, however I don't think this blog is an appropriate place to explore that moment. If you happen to be interested, feel free to email me.

It's Official

2011-03-31T04:07:00.000-07:00

Not an idiot. Nor dump. Whatever dump is.

Pitstop

2011-03-29T06:19:00.000-07:00

I'm back from Sabie now, and sitting in "my" office at the Ministry of Health. (The door is still labeled with nothing but STI[!] in big red letters, and I am still 12 and that still makes me laugh).

Yesterday I came back from Sabie via Steenbok, which is in absolutely no way the shortest possible route, but I wanted to stop in and say hello. When I got there, the family was away at the clinic, so I spent some time hanging out with a group of kids/youth/young adults who were on their way to a soccer match in Naas. About 35 of men and women were milling around the bus stop by the house, chatting one another up, and implying that they were all about to fit themselves into two pick-up trucks and then race down the pot hole littered road to town. I said there was no way they'd ever fit everybody. I was totally wrong. If you have never seen 35 more or less grown adults hop into the back of a couple of pick-up trucks and drive off to the next town, swerving around pot holes, blowing vuvuzelas, and cheering at every other car the see. Well. I recommend the site to you.

It was late-ish when I got into Steenbok, because I'd been coming down from Sabie that afternoon. Going to Steenbok added an extra 2.5 hours to my drive home, but I think it was worthwhile. One of the really nice things about working out here in Swaziland is the chance to see my host family again. When I left in 2008 I promised I'd try and come back, sure, but I don't think any of us believed that it would ever happen. I think we all assumed that our intersection would be more of a brief and singular one than something we'd have the chance to take up again. I feel genuinely lucky that I have a home I can go and visit in SA. No matter how awkward those home visits still are, or how out of the way that home is. Lucky, lucky, lucky me to have a place that had such a profound impact on my life only a two podcast drive away.

Final Score

2011-03-27T10:23:00.000-07:00

You all: $640. The fifth highest amount raised for the whole event!

Me (/my butt): Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow.

Half Marathon Update

2011-03-23T05:43:00.000-07:00

Wow. Thank you thank you to those of you who have raises over $500 for KLM so far! It is an amazing amount of money that really is going to make a huge difference to a kid in Mpumalanga. For those of you who are still considering donating, and may have a few dollars to spare (an unexpected tax return or other recent lucky break perhaps?), the race isn't until the 26th so there is still plenty of time to share! Five dollars is an awesome contribution -- $10 is amazing. Or might I suggest...$13.10?

Photographic update with me looking sweaty as hell to follow on Monday morning.

Photo Essay

2011-03-14T12:03:00.000-07:00

Last month we went to one of the royal kraals for the beginning of marula season. Translation: we hung out in one of the king's palaces/cattle pens while all the gogos rolled up with the first of the season's marula beer. Marula is the stuff amarula is made out of. Marula beer does not taste like amarula. People come from all over the country in their traditional get up and hang out in a cattle pen drinking home brew beer out of old oil canisters until the king shows up, commands them to sing and dance, and then tells them to get drunk.

It is strangely reminiscent of a renaissance faire.

Casey was the star of the show. Everybody wanted to hand him drinks out of old oil drums. We were commanded to take this photo.

Eventually, the gogos all paraded from the palace to the show ground. We were also commanded to take pictures of that. So we did.

Beer and grilled meat in a crowded dirt lot -- somehow this felt like a lot of my college experience.

After that weekend, we decided that we needed to spend more of our weekends having fun. So we went to Kosi Bay, which is a world heritage site on the Indian Ocean, just a teensy bit south of the Mozambique border. It was about 6 hours from Mbabane, and at a certain point the road stops being paved and starts being...kind of just a lot of potholes. Punctuated by cows. But then its fine, because it turns into sand.

But the sand turns into a view that looks like this. Kosi Bay is a series of lakes leading up to an ocean. Those little fences in the water are fish traps. The tide comes in, the fish get trapped, and then people can just go and scoop them up. Its genius. And it looks really awesome.

So beautiful. This is one of the lakes with beautiful green mountain and neat fishing traps.

It takes a 45 minute drive in a 4x4 to get to the beach proper. My little car was not going to do that, but we had the chance to bump on down there in an old school land rover and hung out for hours. We had to wade through a series of tide pools holding our picnic supplies above the water line. It was kind of like Oregon trail...but in a beautiful series of Indian Ocean inlets. And nobody's oxen drowned.

Then we braai'ed (barbecued) and toasted s'mores. I'd like to point out that I built that fire. Go me.

Bye Kosi Bay! Go little Rav4 Go!

[Eish!]

I plan on being tired

2011-02-16T23:02:00.001-08:00

At the end of March, I am planning to run a half marathon.

Wait...sorry thats not right. Let me fix that sentence.

At the end of March, I am planning to ~~run~~ walk an entirely downhill half marathon over the course of four hours.

Much more accurate.

The Longtom half marathon is something that Peace Corps South Africa has been doing for about five years now. Its up in Sabie, which is beautiful, and I'm really excited that I'll be in this part of the world at the right time to participate. Also about the idea of even attempting my first organized athletic...thingy that isn't yoga.

The other really great thing about the Longtom is that it is a fundraiser for the KLM organization, which was set up by some PCVs from SA11 (I was SA15. I've just heard the un-holy rumor that they're now up to SA23.) KLM pays a complete 5 year scholarship for one rural Mpumalanga student a year to attend a fantastic private secondary school. Most of the kids are from the areas where my friends and I lived in Peace Corps, and it really is a life changing thing. The Longtom organizers ask that everybody who participates fundraise at least $100. So as you can see...I am now passing that information along to all 3 of you who read this.

Here is the information from this year's organizers:

Each year the Longtom Marathon Fundraiser provides two-thirds of the cost of the five year education for one learner at Uplands College. KLM relies heavily on the funds raised through the Longtom Marathon Fundraiser and needs the continuing support of PCVs to carry on their important work. Volunteers participating in the marathon are expected to fundraise a minimum of US$100 for the KLM foundation, but don't worry, that can be spread out over 4, 10 or even 20 donations. Each $5 donation helps out! Although $100 is the minimum requirement we expect that many of you will go above and beyond that. To encourage you to do so, the Longtom Committee has also identified target fundraising goals which are:

· $100 - base

· $250 - bronze

· $500 - silver

· $750 - gold

Here's how you can donate:

1. Go to the KLM foundation website http://www.klm-foundation.org

2. Click on the Donate photo in the upper left corner.

3. This opens up a secure https connection for people to donate.

4. In the Longtom Marathon field put "Rebecca Fielding-Miller" so they know the donation was made in my name. (In fact, feel free to put "Rebecca Fielding-Miller, MSPH")

$5 would be fantastic, $25 would be even better. I never do this, but this is one of those times where I can honestly vouch for the organization. I know this area, I know these kids, and I know that going to Uplands College really will change a kid's life. Plus...13.1 miles. Thats really far! Even if it is all downhill.

www.klm-foundation.org

At some point during that sojourn

2011-02-14T03:46:00.000-08:00

Somebody in Johannesburg managed to get ahold of my credit card information and steal about $3500. God knows how, as you can clearly see from the timeline that I had 0 extra minutes for the purchase of anything.

This may mark my official retirement from public transport in Africa.

I'm Not Leaving

2011-02-09T05:33:00.000-08:00

   The first thing I need to say is that I now work in an office that sits behind a door which is clearly (and sparsely) labeled "STI" in big red letters. There are also numerous posters and pamphlets on how to recognize syphilis (hint: your downstairs is in an advanced stage of "OMG...what is that?") and what to do if you have TB. (Take your meds. Everyday. Try to avoid coughing on friendly neighborhood peace corps volunteers whose only mistake was to share a kombi with you on one fateful day...)

   The above visual markers are a sign that I have begun my transition from random grad student researcher to person-with-actual-job-dom. I think I like this state, I've never experienced it before. For one thing, it comes with a salary which I find awfully novel and exciting. For another it kind of makes me feel like all those late night hyperventilations over biostats and car trips to Trader Joes whose sole purpose was to memorize/procrastinate on memorizing all the different classes of ARVs might actually have paid off. Who knew?

   I will be enjoying this salaried state of existence for another 6 months here in good old Swaziland. (Sorry mom. At least its not the DRC!) After that...more grad school. I decided that what I really, really want out of life is a PhD. And to spend 3-4 more years being broke and living in a classroom/committee setting. But it turns out I really like research, and if I want to keep doing research, then I'd better get a degree that says I'm good at it. Besides...how awesome does Dr. Fielding-Miller sound? Pretty good, right?

Brief Sojourn to America

2011-02-02T14:47:00.000-08:00

I am in the US for all of six days for some grad school considerations and family time. To get here, I decided to take public transport from Mbabane to the Jo'burg airport since a) I had meetings in the morning and the nice van left at 7am, and b) it is cheap and so am I. I also thought it would be entertaining to keep track of what the process entailed, so I kept notes. Which I will now present to you.

10:30am, Monday: Meeting starts, 90 minutes late
11:45am -- Meeting ends. My ride ditches me and sends me with a different lady to go to an atm for needed cash.
12:00 -- I find the different lady who is to drive me to the atm for cash. We find said atm. She takes me back to the meeting hall instead of the taxi rank.
12:15pm -- random toothless man we wave down on the side of the road drives me to the taxi rank. The previous kombi (minibus) left 10 minutes previous. I am promised we will leave by 2.
2:20pm. Switch kombis, but still at the taxi rank.
2:30 -- Kombi leaves Mbabane. I am told I will switch again at the border.
2:45pm -- Arrive at the border. Stamping and queuing.
3:00pm -- Get in new kombi. Forced to airless back.
3:15pm -- Leave for Jo'burg
6:20pm -- Forced to switch kombis again at large mall in Jo'burg. I lose my shit with the driver.
6:30pm -- Switch kombis again in the middle of freeway. Old man loses his shit in a mixture of zulu and sotho because I am white.
6:45pm -- kicked out of kombi to travel last half mile on foot. Begin sobbing. Almost run over.
7:05pm -- South African Airlines begins trying to figure out what the hell a buddy pass is.
8:20pm -- Flight leaves. I am in business class. Success!!

If you have ever wanted to visit Africa...

2011-01-02T05:03:00.001-08:00

Delta is currently having a pretty good sale. $990 round trip from DC or NY to Jo'burg or Capetown. Now is the time, people!!

That was fun

2010-12-31T05:40:00.000-08:00

I just came back from possibly the most epic vacation of my life (assuming three months sleeping in a tent on the ground does not count as a vacation and is instead in some separate category all together). Three days on Safari in Kruger, a night in good old Swaziland, and a week in Mozambique where I got to go DIVING in TOFO and it was REALLY REALLY GOOD.

Also...Maputo has lots of gelato, real espresso, and chocolate croissants. I am deeply in favor of every single thing that has happened to me in the last 13 days, with the possible exception of spending 8 hours of my life in a bus packed with 35 adults and between 6 and 8 breastfeeding infants. (They weren't always breast feeding though, sometimes their mom's would intersperse the breast milk with orange fanta. Thats healthy.)

I have an insane amount of pictures, but I also have an insanely slow internet connection. I promise to actually put some thoughts together and post those relatively soon though. I know I say that a lot, but this time I mean it.

Also...I wish I was still drinking espresso and eating chocolate croissants in Maputo. Next to a giant cement sculpture of an iguanadon. Like you do.

Or hanging out with lions.

Bonus Round

2010-12-16T02:41:00.000-08:00

I spent the morning sitting on my couch, listening to "This American Life," drinking coffee, and watching these monkeys hang out in a papaya tree in the yard. Not too shabby.

In Which I Gain A Mailing Address

2010-12-16T01:30:00.000-08:00

Turns out it was much easier to do than I was previously told. So...feel free to shower me with gifts. Or maybe just a post card or two:

Rebecca Miller
PO Box D379
The Gables, H126
Swaziland

(A note or two on there clarifying that you really do mean Swaziland and Switzerland wouldn't hurt. Wouldn't it be great if I was kidding about that?)

Creepy Crawlies

2010-12-14T01:52:00.000-08:00

But not Boris the Spider.

I like to take pictures. Three of my favorite things are graffiti, bizarre signage (so many opportunities around here...) and some of the interesting critters with which I share my habitat. I absolutely have to post some of the amazing examples of that middle category in the near future, but I've also acquired some pretty good examples of the third lately. Which obviously I feel a need to share.

The elusive rainbow colored lizard. I have been trying to get a photograph of one of these guys since Peace Corps. I see them around some times, but infrequently enough that its always a little bit exciting. They're pretty, and fast...and may or may not have some sort of association with lightning. I'm still figuring that one out.

This dog's name is Sinkwa. Which means bread. Sinkwa is very ugly and very cute at the same time. She has some sort of neurological disorder and spends most of her time walking around in circles. Obviously she belongs to a Swaziland PCV.

I think this is a very small swarm of very bright green locusts. But I have no idea what a regular swarm of locusts looks like, or really even what a single locust looks like, so I could definitely be wrong about that.

A tiny little bright yellow slug. S/he lives on my windowpane from time to time.

A centipede? Millipede? What the hell is this thing? Whatever it is, there are a few too many of them in my house and they are a little bit too big for me to be comfortable with. I mean....squishing one would have way too much...byproduct. This one lives on my curtains. Obviously my solution to this was to buy new curtains.

Tingane-Kwane

2010-12-10T02:13:00.000-08:00

Which means...stories. Or folktales. Or children's stories. Not to be confused with tindzaba, which are also stories, but stories that are true-ish, or explain something, or are possibly a report and/or meeting. Also, tingane-kwane almost always contain a song as part of the story, but those songs have their own word that I haven't quite figured out.

Anyways, I've been interviewing and transcribing like a fiend lately. More interviewing than transcribing really. Turns out I hate transcribing. I'm just going to pay my research assistants to do it while I lay on a beach in Mozambique. I think this is what it feel like to be half a step up from the absolute bottom of the food chain.

One of the most popular characters that keeps coming up in these stories is a guy/girl named Ncjane. (Incidentally, SiSwati is a really complicated language that doesn't always designate gender, and animal words tend to be genderless so...a lot of these stories may or may not be gender neutral? Which is completely fascinating in a country where gender is such a defining aspect of every part of your life).

Ncjane is a trickster. S/he is like coyote, or Anansi. He just goes around screwing with people and demonstrating all around cleverness. Sometimes ncjane is a jackal, but more often s/he is a rabbit.

As told by my informants:

Ncjane, the Elephant, and the Hippos

“Ncjane was taken as a very clever animal. So she went to an elephant. And then she said to the elephant, ”Big as you are I can pull you down to the river” And then the elephant said, “Who, you? A tiny thing like this?” Ncjane said, “I can do it!” And then he went to a damn of hippos. He came to a hippo, a big hippo. He said, “I can pull you out of this!” And they said, “What, you!?” “I’ll show you!” So he got a very strong rope, gave it to the elephant. And to that one he said, I’ll be in the pool myself so that I can pull you. And then, he gave it to the hippo and said “because I want to pull you out!” So…these two big animals had to pull and pull!

That story, they are trying to show that...don’t think, because you are big you can think bigger than a small thing.”

The above is hysterical in person, I promise. As is this one:

Ncjane and the Lion’s Den

Now this story, it goes like this:

“There was this animal, the lion. The strongest animal in the woodlands. Now, because it was kind of going out and hunting for food, and at the end of they day was always coming up with nothing, then it said to itself, “I’m going to stay inside my cave and pretend to be sick. And I’m going to scream for help. Each and every hour scream for help. So that when an animal comes inside…I mean, it will ask outside ‘what is happening? What is happening?’ I will say, ‘come in my friend, and help me.” And when the animal comes inside, he pounces on that animal and eats him. Such that it went on that way, it caught several several unsuspicious animals. Until that time that that animal he talked about –Ncjane! Ncjane he came. And he said, “How. Why are you crying so loud? What is wrong with you?” [The lion] said, “Ah…I am very sick. I urgently need your help my friend. If you could only come in.” And then Ncjane said, “No. I want so much to come in and help you. But when I look down I can see some of the feet of animals going in. But I don’t see them coming out! So I’m afraid I won’t be able to help.”

The Humidity is Making My Ice Cream Melt

2010-12-05T07:08:00.000-08:00

Swaziland, in addition to holding the record highest HIV, TB, and possibly moonshine consumed per capita, also has the highest amount of lightning strikes in the world. I think I mentioned that its the rainy season now, which usually lasts from about November/December through early February, and this tiny little country is more than living up to its statistics.

The storms here are wild. In South Africa I thought they were something, but here I feel like I've moved up to a whole new level. Like I've moved into a house that doesn't have a metal roof and so might not be immediately singled out for a lightning strike and so the weather gods decided we need to kick it up a notch. (bam).

There's a good storm starting up right now, as I write. I'm sitting at Mantenga Lodge, which is basically my office, and staring up at execution rock while the thunder gets ready to really make a statement. I've been chatting with a pair of Austrians one table over about their vacation through South Africa and Swaziland, and on the inherent 'awesomeness' of the house brownie. (Its certainly awesomely large.)

I like sitting here and watching the storm. The thunder is a constant rumble, there's never much of a break between rolls, and it feels like its coming from all around us. Intermittently there are flashes of lightning from behind the clouds and around execution rock. You always know when a storm is coming here. The air gets so thick -- mere humidity doesn't even begin to describe it. I think a few years ago I wrote about how it would twist and press and wring itself into such a tight, full feeling that there was nothing it could do next but explode. Here that still holds. It presses itself onto your skin, invades your lungs and your hair and your living room. You have to push through it to walk up a hill or out of a building. It gets hot, too. Miserably, horribly hot. While I admit that I am a giant whiner when it comes to any temperature below 65 degrees or above 85, I think its still too hot for any rational person to be happy with. I carry my lime green umbrella around with me everywhere. In the insane heat it gives me a little bit of shade, and when the intense rain inevitably follows, well...then it protects me from that too.

Now the storm is really going. The lightning flashes are getting more distinct. When they get really close they become so clearly laid out that you can almost see each little tendril of electricity shooting out in search of anything it can find to make contact with. It is cinematic. The lightning comes in a spectrum of yellow, green, purple, and orange tints, all on top of the same almost sickly shade that I can only describe as what electricity looks like straight. Or maybe its just my eyes that create that impression, like they need the color for a chaser after such a powerful shot of straight light.

After the thunder and lightning have made their points for a while, the rain gets started. And it can start fast. Today it looks like the most of the downpour might end up somewhere else, but on days when it does decide to come down on top of you -- look out. The rain will slam down with a crazy intensity for about 20 or 25 minutes, and then let up and vacillate between proper rain and a mild drizzle for the next 24 hours. Like it took so much effort to get out there, and put so much work into the initial downpour, it doesn't want to just walk away afterwards. I can respect that.

Now it looks like we're back to the light drizzle phase. Looking out at the mountain again, its become disgustingly beautiful here. The sun has begun to shine through the clouds, but there are wisps of cloud and fog drifting around the peak of Execution Rock. (The Austrian tourists, having finished their awesome brownies, are having a photography fest. Good call, Austrian tourists). The mountains are full of granite outcrops and slopes, and those have all transformed into impromptu waterfalls. Which the sun is intermittently shining onto and highlighting one after the other. The thunder is still coming and going, but it seems as if for the moment the storm has decided to direct itself elsewhere.

Birthday Requests

2010-11-23T00:43:00.000-08:00

Ok, Ok. I'm sorry sorry sorry that I haven't updated at all recently. I've moved. Again. I now live in a place called Ezulwini, which translates to "The Valley of Heaven" and it is really beautiful here. Why have I moved yet again? Suffice to say that I really, really, strongly and adamantly recommend never staying at Veki's Guest House or doing business with it's horrible owner. What an awful experience. Can I jump up and down and wave my arms around for google to pick that up? How does that algorithm work?

Hey! Hey! Google! Over here! Veki's Guest House Veki's Guest House Veki's Guest House. SO. BAD. Avoid at all costs.

There, that will work, right?

Fortunately, while that was a fairly heinous experience, I am now living in the valley of heaven, and it is insanely beautiful out here. And rainy. But its all that rain that makes it so green and so beautiful. Here are some pictures of the area around me:

My front yard. This is the view I get to look at every day.

The shop down the road. If only it really were a coffeehouse, but thats ok -- there's about 15 more all in walking distance! Oh coffee, how I love you.

Monkeys! They dig through trash. These are not the specific ones in my specific yard, but the principle is the same.

More showing off of the gorgeous views from my house. Of the gorgeous, um, construction site.

Execution rock. Which, in the old days, the would throw you off of if accused of witch craft. Obviously this is also my backyard. Also, I plan to avoid being accused of witch craft while out here. Thats a long drop.

For geographic comparison

2010-11-04T07:42:00.001-07:00

This is where I live

Jezebel writes gooder than I do

2010-10-31T12:15:00.000-07:00

"Having a man or group of men talk about your body while you're just trying to go about your business is not just annoying—it sends the message that you don't have the right to be left alone, which makes the streets feel less safe."

I like it when I come across a sentence that articulates perfectly something I've been trying to sort out in my own head for ages. As much as I love living here, and most of the time loved living in South Africa, and had the time of my life travelling after peace corps -- the incessant cat calling and attention is maybe the absolute worst part about being a woman here. And it makes you feel like a jerk, because nobody is actually harming you or threatening harm (at least. not overtly). I think I need to think this through a little bit more, so I'll come back to it. But in the meantime:

Read more: http://jezebel.com/5677765/can-a-city-effectively-ban-catcalls#ixzz13xuQI1al

(the article is about NYC, not Africa, but whatevs)

Descriptions

2010-10-28T23:58:00.000-07:00

A while back I said I didn’t want to really get into describing Swaziland and Mbabane because anything I said would almost certainly be wrong. That’s probably still true today, but I’ve been here for two months now and I’m willing to take a stab at it.

First of all, Swaziland is beautiful. I feel I have some authority to say this, being born and raised in one of the most beautiful (if also most boring) places on the planet to start with.

The part of the country that I’m living in is nothing but mountains – I think I already mentioned that this place is like living in an MC Escher painting, where everything is uphill from everything else. Which is a pain when you’re on foot, but it also means that you’re constantly looking down into a valley, or up at some gorgeous hilly vista. Right now it’s the beginning of the rainy season, too. So all of those valleys are green and lush, and the mountains are beginning to be covered in wild flowers. The dirt is red – somebody told me that the insane amount of iron and other minerals in the ground means that Swaziland has more lightning strikes than any other place on earth. The red dirt and green bush together make for color so vivid it seems a little bit like you’re looking at a matte painting instead of an actual landscape, and in the late afternoon, when the light hits just right, you can look down over pasturelands or valleys and watch the shadows of clouds roll across all that color. In the middle of the morning, when it just starts to get warm, I like to walk down the road and smell the humidity and steam coming off the banana trees, and look down the red dirt roads with the bright green weeds and tiny purple flowers along the side as they meander off into the residential parts of the back of the city.

A little river runs through most of the city, and while studying public health has ruined me a little bit, and all I can think when I see it is “mmm…giardia and bilharzi…gotta get me some of that!” I still like living in a place where an actual river runs through town and splits the shopping center in half. No matter how polluted, tiny, and possibly disease laden.

Swazi people are very friendly – to the point where some Americans might consider their friendliness to be circling back around to rudeness. The phrase ‘none of your business’ is not a Swazi concept. Who you are, where you are going, and what you’re up to in the country is the business of anybody who wants to know it and a totally normal conversation to have walking to town or sitting in a kombi. This is the way it was in South Africa too, of course, but I feel like there’s a slightly different flavor to it here. In Steenbok I was fascinating because I am ~~American~~ white. I often felt like the fascination and questions I got in South Africa, especially rural South Africa, had more to do with the genuine curiosity of novelty. People weren’t really enquiring into a person so much as a strange phenomenon. Here, the questions are almost identical (if less fervent), but it has more to do with the fact that I stand out and am therefore…slightly more obvious to start up a conversation with. But this is a big city, with lots of NGO workers and ex-pats and Swazis of European descent, and I feel like my skin color is slightly less of a big deal.

In some ways though, I miss the experience of living in a village. Again, you can pry my shower and internet out of my cold, dead hands, but this feeling of living in an ex-pat bubble is so strange. In Steenbok I felt like my very existence was like a lightning rod for the absurd. All I had to do was walk out the front door and something hilarious/awkward/disconcerting was basically guaranteed to happen. And that felt real. It was grinding to constantly be on show, and exhausting to never be able to show people that I was feeling sad, or angry, or frustrated (maybe that sounds strange and I could have, but at the time it never felt like an option), but it was strangely honest in a way too that I haven’t been able to replicate living in Mbabane. In Steenbok, I was a part of something. I was owned, or at least known. In my own way – even if it was different than everybody else’s – I belonged there. And I felt like I had earned that. Don’t get me wrong, I think this study is amazing and I’m working hard and don’t think I’m wasting anybody’s time out here – but I’m not sure what I’m earning right now.

More narratives for HIV prevention

2010-10-28T23:23:00.000-07:00

Kenyan video game developers have partnered with Warner Brothers, PEPFAR, and "a behavioral change expert" to make a video game about HIV. The part where they also use it to collect information on current attitudes and behavior towards HIV and safe sex is a little bit problematic if they haven't made it very clear to people that their answers are being tabulated and what not. But still, pretty cool.

Apples and Bananas

2010-10-27T23:26:00.001-07:00

“In view of the importance of the study, and the fact that the study is in accordance with ethical and scientific standards, the committee therefore grants you authority to conduct the study in Swaziland.”

I have been granted authority. Boom.

My essential follow up question to this is: Does dropping banana bread off at the Ministry of Health count as a bribe? What if I only dropped it off after I get my letter? Because step two is approval through Johns Hopkins (hopefully this will take under two months – probably more like 3-5 days). I’m willing to overnight some banana bread, if that’s what it takes. I was really hoping to start interviewing people by this weekend, but it looks like that’s not going to happen. I’m strongly considering hopping on a 25 hour bus and going to Cape Town to drink some wine instead.

I don't want a pickle

2010-10-20T05:11:00.000-07:00

First, I should probably mention that when I said I would be here until February, what I actually meant was July. Sometimes I confuse those months. I want to make very certain that 2010/2011 remains as winter free as possible. I think I'm still traumatized by snowpocalypse. (aka snowmageddon, aka snOMG, aka Snowtorious BIG).

Second, you want to talk about culturally relevant narrative forms making a difference to HIV in southern Africa? I present to you porn with condoms. In SeSotho.

Third, I have my very own internet connection again. Yay!! It very much happened on Swazi time, which means I had to spend two days sitting in my apartment and getting hung up on by Swazi telecom employees, while being told that the person would be there to install it "soon" and so I should be sure not to leave the apartment so as not to miss him. Obviously it was not fully set up until about 6pm on the day after they told me that it would certainly be set up by. And then there was a giant thunderstorm and the connection went out almost immediately following but...you know. I have internet.

Still no letter from the ethics committee saying that I can interview people ("I'm sure by the end of the week" = "I hope you've got plenty of Glee reruns to keep you busy.") but on some level I'm sure its good for me to be adjusting to Swazi time. Probably. Unless I pull all my hair out and come back to Baltimore just in time for my scalp to be horribly frost bitten by whatever god awful thing winter decides to throw at me in revenge for skipping out on him for a year.

While sitting around on Swazi time with the internet installation dude, waiting for somebody from the internet installation office to call him back with a password I needed to access the internet (because why in the world should he be expected to have one of those in advance? I mean, he only drives around all day setting up internet connections all of which need a password) I got to talking about my project with said internet installation dude. Well, that and why I wasn't interested in cheating on my (fully imaginary) stateside boyfriend with him. But I found stories more interesting.

I told him the story of Rumplestiltskin. People. Have you listened to that story lately? Or told it? It is damn weird. We are a strange, strange society that we tell our children these things. In return, he told me a story about jackal and lion. And so, I present to you my very first (fully non-usable for my project) Swazi folktale:

So. This story is about jackal and lion. Jackal is a big white dog and lion is very scary but also very stupid. Jackal and lion were talking, and lion was complaining that he was very, very hungry. After going around for a bit, they spot some prey animals. Lion knows that if they go right up to them they will run away, so he tells jackal to go up and pretend to be their friend so that they will stick around. Jackal approaches the prey animals, lets say they're Steenboks. He says that he and Lion want to come and talk to them, but that they shouldn't be afraid of Lion. Lion is actually Jackal's servant. The Steenbok are understandably skeptical of this. Jackal says that to prove it, he will go and get Lion, and come back with Lion carrying him on his back, proving that Lion is Jackal's servant. The Steenbok agree, and Jackal goes back to explain the deal to Lion. Lion is less than excited about this idea, but he is still very hungry. So Jackal climbs up onto Lion's back and they parade up to the group of Steenbok. Then everybody laughs at Lion for making an idiot out of himself, and all the prey animals run away anyways.

Draw your own conclusions.

Drips

2010-10-08T06:01:00.000-07:00

Walking through the Swazi Plaza, enjoying my caramel ice cream cone, I met a man who informed me that he was a travelling monk who had been wandering around the world for the last 14 years. He asked me for directions to the nearest Game (a store similar to Target), sold me a new age book on the spirituality of yoga for 1 lilangeni (20 cents), and told me I had a spontaneous spirit. ("spontaneous spirit" may or may not have translated as "low cut shirt").

I call that a successful Friday.

Note to self...

2010-10-07T02:59:00.000-07:00

Swaziland has not quite discovered .pptx and .docx yet. Plan for this in the future.

(Which means I wrote a blog entry, but the computer I am currently using is pretty darn sure that it does not exist. Oh wait... Boom. Google docs ftw):

It is so strange to make this switch from a peace corps volunteer living in a village, walking to school and greeting all the old ladies every day – ok, being laughed at by all the old ladies every day, more accurately – to living in what is essentially the ex-pat dorm in the capital city, complaining that my shower has too much water pressure and gets too hot.       Yesterday I was sitting around and talking with some PCVs* and RPCVs.** (This place is actually lousy with RPCVs, I don’t know why. I guess it’s nice to know I’m not the only one who can’t stay away.) We were talking about how out of touch the foreigners and the ex-pats we would run into during our service could be. The ones who work in the city and roll up briefly to clinics, schools, and orphanages for brief pre-announced site visits, and think they know exactly what’s going on. In a white SUV, of course. I remember writing my personal statement for grad school about something along those lines. There is an image that sticks in my head from when I was travelling in Malawi.   A woman was begging in the road, she would go up to each car waiting at the stoplight and hold her hand out for change. Some people gave her money and some people didn’t. There was a white SUV in the line of traffic that belonged to some NGO or other – African Hope or some other generic name like that. The driver saw the woman, and the woman saw the driver and I just kept watching both of them. Finally, as the woman got to the white SUV the driver just…rolled the window up and looked away. And I thought – that’s the problem. The problem is looking away, or refusing to see in the first place.
      But I’m starting to think it’s not as cut and dried as it used to be in my head. It becomes so easy to get disconnected here. Even in a country that takes all of four hours to drive across, with barely a million people in it, it is so easy to feel like I really have no idea what’s going on outside of my capital city ex-pat bubble. It’s not that I only hang out with Americans, I don’t. I walk around the city every day, I talk with my research assistants from the University, and the ladies at the guest house, and random people that I meet in town or taking a kombi somewhere. The thing is though, that’s all in Mbabane and Manzini, the two biggest cities in the country. It would be like saying I knew anything about rural Nkomazi after living and talking to people in Pretoria for all of a month. There is no connection there. So I’m wondering – how do I make that connection? How do I get out of this bubble?
      Don’t get me wrong, I really like living in an apartment and sitting around with friends making pink and purple green tea cupcakes covered in sprinkles and watching Project Runway. This beats spending the evening sitting in my hut in Steenbok and staring at the ceiling by a few million miles. But I also miss sitting on my stoop (/cinder block) in Steenbok and waving at people at sunset, and being laughed at by old ladies on my way to school in the morning. I don’t think I have an easy answer or summary to the way I feel about what I’m doing now. I like it. I know how important it is for me to have a social network of some sort, and so I like the place where I’m staying. I love the feeling of independence that comes with living and working in Africa again, and so I like having random conversations with people on the bus or the ladies at the guest house. I’m so excited for when I finally get ethical approval (next week?) and can begin interviewing people in the rural areas in earnest about something that I find completely fascinating. But this disconnect…this gap between what is really happening and my experience of a place is harder to negotiate than I would have thought.

*Peace Corps Volunteers
**Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. Even if they refuse to remain returned.

Wardrobe Malfunction

2010-09-30T01:29:00.000-07:00

I am moving across the street to my new flat tomorrow (YAY!), which means that I am once again packing up all my clothes into tiny little rolls and cramming them into my gigantic traveling pack. Which in turn means that I'm a little bit low on accessible clothing today. So, I'm wearing a skirt that I haven't worn in a few days (it comes right about to my knees, which is a little shorter than I'm comfortable with on a kombi or walking up hill on a windy day). The makes* at the guest house were very excited by this. Apparently, I've been wearing 'trousers' (the same two pairs of jeans) a little too often for their taste.

"Ah! Rebecca! Today you look so nice! Today you are a she, not a he!"

I think I should probably go clothes shopping asap.

*mah-gay. Mothers and/or women. Bomake is the plural, if you want to be grammatically correct in SiSwati about it.

Photographic Evidence

2010-09-28T01:42:00.000-07:00

I feel like this bookshelf says a lot about my next few months. I think I'm in need of some more trashy novels.

The taxi rank in Manzini.

Me and Latoya -- two years later. Aren't we cute?

They finally finished the garage -- can't you tell?

Dance Monkey, Dance!

2010-09-27T07:44:00.001-07:00

Ministry of Health meeting: accomplished. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been – once it was actually established that they hadn’t switched the meeting to the week before without telling me and that I’d have to wait until November before making my case. (There was a deeply unpleasant 36 hours earlier in the week in which that was nearly true).

I’m not saying I particularly want to repeat the experience any time soon or anything, but I didn’t feel out of my league or like maybe I was about to be unceremoniously kicked out of Swaziland. Also, nobody threw stuff at me and yelled “Dance monkey! Dance!” Which I consider success any day of the week. They want some changes, but nothing terribly drastic. Hopefully me and my awesome research assistants can start interviewing people within two weeks. Hooray! Hooray!

Right now I am in the waiting phase – waiting for final IRB approval, waiting on another potential project to sort itself out, waiting on the move to my new apartment. (Which should happen Friday. Theoretically. Probably. Hopefully.) This waiting phase is how I justified spending most of today in bed watching America’s Next Top Model (the one with the short girls!) and yelling “Ty-ty, you so crazy!” every time she talked about how letting girls who are 5’6 ½” rather than 5’8 model is revolutionizing beauty. Sorry Tyra, they’re still stick thin blonde girls. That particular revolution is a non-starter. My teachers in Steenbok would also point out the high degree of ‘portability’ inherent in a tiny blonde girl who is both a size 0 and 5’4. To this day I don’t know what it means to be “portable,” but based on my experience watching television and travelling around this week, it seems to be a physical trait that both rural South Africa teachers and Sports Illustrated value. So…that must mean something? I wonder if the fact that I am highly transient also counts as being highly portable and therefore ups my sex-appeal? Probably not.

Saturday morning I had a three hour meeting with a gentleman who will be helping me out a lot as an informant in my research project. It wasn’t an actual interview – I can’t do those yet – but more of a chat to establish things. I spent the whole time in fear that he would say something really, really interesting and I wouldn’t be able to use it. Science gives you weird priorities. As I just gave my research assistants an elongated lecture on the importance of confidentiality and privacy and so on, I actually don’t want to write all that much about what we talked about. Suffice to say though, this gentleman is completely fascinating. He and a driver picked me up in town and drove to his homestead. On the way he told me the history of the Swazi military, the University of Swaziland, and the first high school in Swaziland (all of which he was fairly instrumental in starting up) and then pointed out a few trees and other landmarks under which King Mswati II (the current king’s grandfather) and Sobhuza (the king’s father) used to sit or otherwise grace with their presence. So…that was pretty awesome. He also mentioned “that anthropologist lady who came through a few years back. I spoke with her here…she was also from California.” By “that anthropologist lady” he meant a woman named Hilda Kuper*, who wrote essentially the only Swazi ethnography anybody has ever bothered to write, and which people are still citing. (Mostly because it is, in fact, the only comprehensive thing anybody ever wrote, even if that writing happened in the mid-1960s and one or two things have changed a bit since). I’m excited to go back and talk to him for an ‘official’ interview. I have no doubt that it’s going to be a completely fascinating conversation.

*Because Lithuanian Jews by way of southern California really like doing ethnography in Swaziland. This is by far my favorite coincidence of the day.

Distinctive Writing Styles FTW

2010-09-21T08:41:00.001-07:00

Um…I’ve already said this to everyone I think, but in case you were still worried: I’m not in London, I’ve never been to London – though I hear it is a very nice city. I haven’t been mugged -- at gun point or otherwise -- and wiring $1,900 to a random Nigerian bank account is not going to do me any good. If you really like, I have my very own US bank account that you are welcome to donate to, but I’d be just as happy with a link to a youtube video of a monkey riding a turtle while wearing a cowboy hat. Or something equally awesome.

I have to say, it makes me deeply happy that about 90% of the people I talked to in the wake of my brief flirtation with email disaster said something along the lines of, “Oh…I knew it wasn’t Becca. She would never use so many comma splices.” And people say that Comparative Literature is a useless undergrad major.

Donkey Jive, Redux

2010-09-21T08:40:00.001-07:00

Yesterday -- while my email account was busy being hacked by Nigerian princes intent on terrifying my family members, supervisors, professors, and ministry of health contacts, ensuring that my mother never lets me leave the country again once I get myself back to the US – I was getting my butt back to Steenbok. (Mimic that syntax, random Nigerian hacker. I dare you.)

I left Mbabane at 6:30 in the morning, and made it to Steenbok at 11am. It was absolutely bizarre to be back on a taxi, driving through Tonga, Kamhlushwa, Naas, past Dludluma, seeing the signs to Malelane and Komatipoort. It was more disorienting by far than anything I’ve done yet since I got back. The time I spent in Steenbok seems so encapsulated in a way. These two years had such a discrete before and after. I am still friends with lots and lots of PCVs, I call Latoya occasionally, but that experience was so distinct. Its like a snowglobe, where I can look inside and shake things up but certainly never climb back inside. Or maybe its more like those little pill capsules, the ones where you can see the powder inside, and the little clear bit on the outside will dissolve in water eventually. Or stick to your hands if you handle them too much, which is why you’re not supposed to handle them too much. That’s what it felt like on the taxi in to Steenbok. Was this something I could go back to? Those two years – they are the most separate two years of my life. There is no bleed through. The person that I was, and the things that I did (in a good way) were so utterly of a piece with the place where they happened. I could not have been that person and done those things in any other place than Steenbok, and it has shaped nearly all the choices that I made since. I felt like I was rolling those little pills around in my hand, trying to play with what was inside, slowly eroding the barrier that kept then separate from now.

I shouldn’t have worried. Its true, of course. My time being a PCV and living in the village was totally contained and delineated in a way that few other experiences could ever be. And the phrase “you can’t go home again” kept rolling around in my head. Here’s the thing I learned though, and the thing I keep learning – people are people and they keep on doing their thing. Just because all I know about Steenbok are two particular years, that’s no reason to think that it really did just stay so separate.

I walked into my key school, and waved at the first teacher I saw. Teachers came pouring out of the office and we were hugging and laughing and grabbing each other like we just couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. I am much slimmer now. Many people mentioned it. One of the best moments was walking into Bonga’s classroom. I stuck my head in, and all I hear is “NOMVUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!” and there’s 6^th grader streaking towards me for one of the best hugs of my life. We went together to find my host mother, and Izora. Izora is…a person now! Not the loud fat dirty baby I fell in love with, but an absolutely adorable first grader with the cutest smile and absolutely no teeth from eating too many sweets. I asked her, “Do you remember me?” She did. It felt so good to hug her again.

I walked to another school, and there we repeated the process. The hugs, the exclamations, (the commenting that I’ve lost some weight and “now you look like a young lady!” WTF? What did I look like before?) I could only stay for a couple of hours, since it was going to be another 5 hour process back to Mbabane, but I swore up and down to come back. I got to see Latoya, only for a few minutes, she had to go and write an exam. She showed me pictures from her matric dance (prom) that they had held the week before. She looked beautiful, of coruse.

I know that right now I’m romanticizing my experience a little bit. It was a weird, fast, awkward, visit. I forgot that I did in fact live way the hell out in the boonies, and that I also lived in one of the warmer and dustier places that people can comfortably live without air conditioning. Assuming you vastly expand the definition of the word ‘comfort.’ I’m going back in a few weeks – with a rental car. I want to stay a little longer, so that I have the chance to sit down and drink tea and actually visit with people, not just drop in with a bang and a “hi! Bye!! I’ll be back!” All in all though, not such a bad start.

Coming and Going

2010-09-17T10:26:00.000-07:00

I did my first round of training on ‘qualitative methods and ethical considerations’ with my research assistants today. I am fairly certain that if you had asked me a year ago if I would be able to feel confident putting on a training for a group of Swazi university students on qualitative research methods (and also finding those students in the first place) in the relatively near future, I would have said: “What in the world is qualitative research?”

My relative newness to the field notwithstanding, I think it went pretty well. I have a good feeling about them, they’re a sharp bunch (lucky me), who seem genuinely interested in learning about new ways of doing research. I like teaching, in general, and I like watching the evolution of understanding that happens even over the course of a few hours. As we spent a lot of time on informed consent and fairness to the participant, I won’t actually go into much more detail than that. After all, even if your respondent is happy speaking to you, is it fair to report out what they had to say if they didn’t know you were going to be telling other people when you spoke? (Did you follow that syntax? Good. The correct answer is ‘no.’)

I make my presentation to the Ministry of Health one week from today. I have very little idea what to expect, hopefully it will go pretty well. Keep your fingers crossed next Friday that I perform my 15 minute song and dance in a way that Ceasar finds entertaining. Otherwise it’s being fed to the lions of “oh-shit-whats-my-plan-B?!” for me. I’d really like to try and avoid that.

I keep trying to find a day to go out to Steenbok. I really, really want to. Just thinking about it makes me smile. But it seems like every day I make a plan (I love that phrase, btw. Very Swazi) every time I make a plan to head out there, something comes up for that day. I need to see an apartment, or have a meeting, or prep for a training. Now its looking like Tuesday. I so badly want to go soon. I want to see Izora and not let go of her for the whole time I’m there. I want to hear from Latoya and see Jabu and her baby. I want to give so many of my teachers the biggest hugs. There are so many people who were my community and my family for so long. Now that I’m settled in, every day that I think about just being three hours away from them and not getting to see them makes me a little bit crazier. Tuesday. Absolutely. I am clearing my schedule.

Living Arrangements

2010-09-12T12:28:00.000-07:00

It seems that living in a city isn't nearly as interesting as living in a village or backpacking halfway (okay, maybe a quarter of the way) across Africa. Well, from a perspective of "here's a story about something absurd that happened to me yesterday and also 5 minutes ago" it's not as interesting, but Mbabane does have marginally more to do than Steenbok and for that I should probably stop pining for absurdity and be grateful.

Last week I spent about four days down in Durban at the University, eating a lot of curry, hanging out with a good friend, meeting the staff with who I'm vaguely affiliated (they're all completely lovely) and having quite a few really helpful conversations with people who have been doing this a lot longer than I have. I gave a brief presentation on what I'm doing out here, which was attended by 'the media' -- in the form of a very nice gentleman from the University newsletter. He took photos. Apparently I am a famous US researcher.

I've spent the rest of my time attempting to get myself situated -- finding university students who are interested in working with me as research assistants (my offer of payment: "On the days we go out to the field, I promise to take care of transport and feed you. Also, you get a certificate." I figure this is about equivalent to what I get to come out here, so it's fair), figuring out where, exactly the Ministry of Health has relocated itself to (the offices over the abandoned gas station, obviously), and generally sorting out my next six months in Mbabane. I want to spend some time describing Mbabane, and the bit of Swaziland that I've gotten to see so far, but I know from experience that I'll probably get it horribly wrong and only be embarrassed about my assumptions three months from now. So maybe I'll stick to the physical for now, and see what else I can figure out about this place later.

Mbabane is a good city -- I like it. I'd rather live here than Pretoria, or Dar es Salaam, or Nelspruit for example. It's exceedingly small, in the way you'd sort of expect the capital of one of the smallest and most rural countries in southern Africa to be. Everything somehow manages to be uphill from everything else, a trick that I'm still not certain how the city planners managed to pull off but is definitely true. I live a 10 minute walk from the town center going (thats the downhill part) and maybe 15 or 20 minutes coming back (which would be the severely uphill part). "Town," such as it is, is glorious. There's a grocery store in which I can by quinoa -- quinoa, people!!! A few western-type restaurants (that means they sell coffee that approaches decency), a few fast food places, a couple of internet cafes, and lots and lots of shops where you can basically buy whatever you need. Sure, it still shuts down on Sundays and after 6pm, but mostly I feel like pretty much anything I need is just down the hill. I'm still adjusting to this idea.

Fifteen minutes in the other direction is my gym (I know...a gym!) that is just as nice as the gym I went to in the US. It features circuit training, spinning classes (the major ex-pat social event on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, as far as I can tell), a restaurant with wi-fi and -- as happened a few nights ago -- occasional fire walking seminars. You don't have to tell me about the absurdity of this, I already know.

In between me and town and me and the gym is this strange mix of University and NGO outposts (Baylor, Columbia, and UNFP to name a few, and I know JHPIEGO is lurking around here somewhere), middle-income type homes (middle income for Swaziland), kombis driving by, men and women in bright yellow vests selling airtime, and shockingly little livestock. I can't remember the last time I saw a goat or a chicken wandering around in the road. It's sort of freaking me out.

Overall, it seems like the city is partially geared towards the general administration of the country -- government offices, people in suits, places for the running of errands -- parts of it exist almost entirely for the benefit of NGO workers, and parts of it are just your average city in which people are attempting to live and get things done and dodge everyone else who has come in for the day or the year. All in all -- not bad. Certainly not all that exciting, but not a bad place to hang out and shoot the breeze. Which was pretty much my entire goal in the first place. Success.

Background

2010-09-03T00:25:00.000-07:00

(aka: “Wait…you’re doing what where?”

I have -- as careful readers may have noticed -- recently moved to Swaziland after a two year sojourn in the US which – as even more careful readers may have noticed – itself followed a two year and change sojourn in South Africa. Why, you may ask (my mother has repeatedly asked herself, I imagine), have I gone back to the world of bucket baths and marriage proposals for six months and abandoned the world of Lush cosmetics and convenient roof-top gyms?

First of all, I have a shower this time. This is a key fact, and maybe one of the most important things I learned about myself in Peace Corps: I really, really like showers. I may be back in southern Africa, but I’m staying in a very nice guest house and shortly moving to a REALLY nice apartment in the capital city (Mbabane). Bucket baths and chamber pots will happen only in moments of extreme extremity. I will still be taking “local transport” (kombis and busses), because kombis make you tough. Bucket baths may make you tough too, but I repeat: F that noise, I like showers.

That out of the way, let’s get back to the point. What the hell am I doing here?

For the second half of my master’s program I need to do a practicum. This means I need to go hang out ‘in the field’ for at least 3 months in order to prove that I actually do like the idea of international health and community based what-not, and that I have possibly even learned something about international health and community based what-not in the preceding 9 months of coursework. At the end of this process I hand over a 30 – 50 page essay about how educated I have become, and JHSPH cashes my check and coughs up my MHS degree.

Most people are very smart and find a suitable international organization that places them in a suitable international internship, at which they possibly have a defined job and tasks to accomplish, and frequently somebody besides them makes at least one or two of the arrangements. (I'm not saying this is easy, I'm just saying it is the usual route). I am not this smart. I am doing an independent research project here in Swaziland that I spent about 8 months doing a lot of fast talking and application writing to get some funding for. Two organizations, the Center for Global Health at Johns Hopkins, and the Health Economics and AIDS Research Department (HEARD) at the University of KwaZulu Natal, decided to bet that I’m maybe not a total idiot and are curious to see what I come up with out here. Which is as follows:

I am here to study traditional stories and songs. The idea is that stories and songs (“oral traditions / literature”) are one of the primary transmitters of cultural values in a society. Stories are one of the first things that you hear as a child, and they are a large part of how a culture explains and transmits itself. Stories, fables, myths, fairy tales, and all the rest, speak to people on a different level (I think) and as such are a really good way to access what is important and valued in a society. The idea is two-fold:

1) See what values and ideals are being transmitted in traditional Swazi stories in order to get an idea what cultural values and ideals may be affecting the spread of HIV in this country. What is the perspective on gender roles? On polygamy, relationships, the necessity of having many children, what it means to be sick and who is responsible for preventing illness/making you better? I think that stories and songs are a really interesting way to access these ideas.

2) What is the role and structure of these stories in current Swazi society? Can they – or something similar – be adapted to a curriculum of some sort that would teach prevention or harm reduction or care or whatever else? Do they still have enough weight to be useful (I think so) and are they a medium that people will recognize and respond to better than billboards and radio ads? (I hope so).

So that’s the plan. We’ll see how it works out.

Ngifikile

2010-08-27T00:57:00.000-07:00

Today, I find myself back in Pretoria. Two years almost to the day after I left. I like the symmetry of that. I have a distinct memory in my head of going downtown with Tessia just a few days after getting back from Peace Corps, stepping off a curb and getting slapped with something akin to vertigo. It was the bizarre sense that nothing had changed and the last two years had barely happened. Like a tesseract*, where you can fold space from one point to another and just skip over all the stuff in the middle. I feel like I’ve just hopped off another tesseract, from the point where I left this city two years ago and back to it today.

That said, holy damn, is Atlanta to Johannesburg long flight. But you know what makes it better? Business class!! (Who’s got two thumbs and the best aunt ever? This girl.) Sometimes flying standby can be a little nerve racking, but sometimes there are bonuses.

Here is all you need to know about flying business class: A ‘light snack’ is composed of chilled grilled shrimp salad, fresh fruit, and cookie dough cheesecake; you can LIE DOWN to sleep; and the chairs are massage chairs. Please, allow me to repeat: Your seat is a massage seat. You push a little button and the back of your airplane chair makes vague gyration-like motions intended in some way to mimic those of a masseuse.

As the plane landed, and I looked out the window at Jo’burg rushing up under us, all I could think was: “ohgodohshitholycrapohmanohgod”. But much less coherent than that.

Once I got off the plane I immediately spent the length of Terminal A all the way down to Customs and Passport Check rapidly cycling through a need to hyperventilate, cry, and throw up. I generally stuck with hyperventilate, because the other two seemed messy.

It occurred to me that this is practically too good to be true. I am going to one of my favorite places, to talk to people about my favorite thing, for a cause that’s deeply important to me, in a way that is – quite honestly – really really fun. And other people are paying for it! And I’m going to get a master’s degree out of it! Its just too good to be true. I think thats where a lot of my panic has been coming from the last few days – how is this not too good to be true? Why in god’s name are other people paying me AND giving me a degree to do something that quite frankly seems like the most awesome thing ever? Don’t get me wrong, I know that many many times this will be a giant pain in the ass, but still…good lord is this cool.

Thank goodness for the deeply fantastic seating, as the transportation I was so proud of myself for arranging ahead of time promptly failed to materialize as soon as I got off the plane. I got my bags just fine, wandered through customs just fine, and then…no convenient pickup. Just lots of other taxis offering to take me where I wanted to go for two to three times the rate. Not unfair prices, but still lots more than I was interested in paying. After a good 30-45 minutes wandering up and down the airport looking for my ride (did I mention thank god for the fact that I’d actually slept and eaten on the plane?) a lady at the South African tourism desk kindly looked up the number for the place where I was staying, but did not offer to let me use her phone. So I found a pay phone, found somebody else to get me change, called the backpackers where I’m staying right now and was told, “oh shit! We forgot to send the driver!” Did I mention how exceedingly thankful I was that I’d gotten some sleep last night on the plane? Fortunately there are several billion taxi drivers who are all exceedingly willing to give hapless tourists/researchers/morons like me a ride wherever they like (for a price) and the backpacker’s manager had kindly offered to make up the difference in the price they would charge me and the price that I had originally been told I would pay. So I found myself the very first non-official and vaguely underground ‘driver’ that I could (not on purpose, it just sort of happened) hopped into his car, and was off to Pretoria. (Mom, Dad, it was still safe. He worked at the airport, was an actual driver, was chatting with the ladies at the info/tourism booth and they were fine with it. He just didn’t happen to be one of the official OR Tambo taxi drivers).

Driving back into Pretoria was…the overused image that comes to mind is that of slipping on an old piece of clothing you’d forgotten about. Which is not perfect because its overused, to start with, but also because its not quite right. More like borrowing something from a friend for a second time after a long interval. Like a hat or a piece of jewelry you remember you wore to a club that one time and would love to try again. It was so familiar, yet still didn’t fit quite right because it never did in the first place. But in a good way.

My driver stopped to ask directions and answer his cellphone once or twice, and each time I was ecstatic that I could still understand the conversation in IsiZulu. They were not exactly grammatically complex conversations (“which way is Hatfield?” “That way. Go straight for a long time.”) but still. Still!

Tomorrow morning I’ll have a cell phone (yesssss) and figure out how exactly I’ll be getting from Pretoria to Mbabane. I’ll also get to spend some time with Lexi and hopefully a PCV or three.

YAY

*A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle. Go read it.

Quick shout out

2010-07-12T07:09:00.000-07:00

I'm leaving for Vienna tonight, to spend some time interning at the international AIDS conference. I will try and write a note or two while I'm there, but I might just be busy working. I had a moment yesterday though, that I've been mulling over since and wanted to try and articulate.

At the mall, a lady asked me if I wanted to sign up for some mailing letter, or something, so that I could continue to receive the company's excellent product. I said no thanks because I was just visiting, and she asked me where my home town was -- where was I going back to? And I realized that that was actually kind of a tricky question at the moment. Its not Baltimore anymore, its not Mbabane yet, it may or may not eventually be DC. I told the lady it was complicated and laughed, and moved on. Then I got to thinking, its not like this is the first or the last time in my life that that question has thrown me a little bit. Where do you live? Good question. When I was travelling and would have to mark my hometown on a border crossing form of some sort, it always seemed odd to write down a place where I hadn't lived in seven years. And then I thought some more -- of course it will always be Ventura.

The point is, the fact that it doesn't bother me for that question to occasionally be a bit confusing, but that I also have the security of knowing there will always be answer, well...thanks mom and dad. I'm going to head off and start doing ridiculous things for ridiculous stories again, but I could never do all this wandering if I didn't know for sure that there was something so strong right behind me.

The sequel...

2010-05-09T14:31:00.000-07:00

Its been 18 months since I left. And in 3 more? I'm heading back.

Stories, songs, inane observations, and related verbal rambling to follow soon.

Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, aka*

2008-11-07T12:28:00.000-08:00

On the 28th, after a little bit of doubt, I made it to Atlanta from Paris. On Hallowe'en (somebody's new year) I found myself back in Ventura California after slightly over 27 months away. (Plenty of photos of all that, plus previous travelling are up at Snapfish.) I will now attempt to become a productive member of society in a country that -- lucky for me -- seems to suddenly be brand new for all of us. The last couple of years have been a great adventure and a great joy, but as I am no longer wandering South Africa (no matter how much I wish I was) that means that it is time for this blog to make an end. Until the next time I hop on a plane of course. But, in anticipation of that moment, I will just say PEACE OUT! And leave you with the lyrics of the great Paul Simon:

A man walks down the street
It's a street in a strange world
Maybe it's the Third World
Maybe it's his first time around
He doesn't speak the language
He holds no currency
He is a foreign man
He is surrounded by the sound
The sound
Cattle in the marketplace
Scatterlings and orphanages
He looks around, around
He sees angels in the architecture
Spinning in infinity
He says Amen! and Hallelujah!

*The End

Zanzibar for Obama

2008-10-20T05:05:00.000-07:00

Since the last time I wrote, I've embarked on a 40-hour train ride (in which I learned the kiSwahili phrases for both "My name is not Mzungu!" and "No, thank you." Useful.), briefly peaked at Lake Victoria (fishy), took a 15 hour landrover ride across the Serengeti and Ngorogoro conservation area (Big. And dusty), spent a day chilling in a Masai village, and managed a brief but eminently satisfying view of Mt. Kilimanjaro, snows and all. Wow. It's outrageous just to read that sentence, isn't it? Sometimes I take a second to reflect on all the places I've been, and people I've met in the last couple of months, and I find myself simply flabbergasted. It is unbelievable that I have had the good luck to experience a trip like this, and I try to spend at least a minute or two each day feeling greatful for it. To be fair, this is usually not the minute when some street-vendor or other has started up with a combination of 'flirting' and selling me something I don't want. Occasionally he will throw in a reference to how fat I am and how attractive African men find this. At this point I usually throw the concept of cultural-sensitivity out and respond exactly as I please:
"Big mama! How are you today! Nice t-shirts, good price!" (while puffing out his cheeks and miming a big stomach. Or, occasionally, making eating motions. My favorite.)
"Hey, Fuck you! I'm great, no thanks." I talk fast and say it all with a big smile. You can get away with anything with a big smile. I doubt they even hear me.

A lot of this has been going on recently, since a few days after my brief view of Mt. Kilimanjaro (how much longer is the snow there supposed to last, anyways?) I made my way to Zanzibar. Which is FANTASTIC. I hesitate to label any place I've been as a favorite, I feel like everything should be evaluated in its own time and place and context and, I've loved almost everywhere. But despite the almost obscene amount of tourists wandering the island, and the obscenely irritating number of shops, street-vendors, and people generally trying to make a buck that the tourists have generated, Zanzibar -- and Stone Town, where I am now -- is still amazing. Zanzibar is the center of a swirl of every culture, language, religion, and individual quirk that has ever seemingly wandered across the African continent. Hindu temples and shops, Omani mosques, a Portugese fort, remnants of hundreds of different southern, central, and African tribes -- come as either willing traders or as slaves to be sold in the last slave market in Africa -- all shape the place and the language and the food and the smells. I just don't have words for it.
And its hard to mind the tourists in that case, because in a place where cultures and people from across the world have ebbed and flowed for over 1,000 years, it makes perfect sense that toddlers now shout "Ciao!" as well as "Jambo!," that restaurants ease Swahili food for European mouths, and the sheer amount of energy and infrastructure that goes into, well...international trade, I suppose you could say. (Even put into this context, however, the man who has been trying to sell me bootleg swahili reggae CDs for the past 3 days still irritates the living crap out of me). So I love it. Zanzibar is the home of intersections, of contrasts, of blending and bending and history and modern crap. The last slave market in Africa is now the home of "Zanzibar for Obama!" election headquarters.

Stop Stealing My Chacos!!!!

2008-10-01T01:15:00.000-07:00

The other day I got caught in a rainstorm blown in by an errant and early monsoon. I ran to the nearest open building, which happened to be a restaurant, and sat drinking chai massala (spiced tea) in Dar es Salaam on a Sunday afternoon during Ramadan. The day before that I took a 13 hour bus from Mbeya to Dar, and as the bus wound through a game reserve I saw herds of giraffe, zebra, kudu, and impala meandering along the side of the road. Even a small cluster of baby elephants lazing in the shade of a Baobab tree. From the window of a bus!

Sometimes, I take a second to think about all of the people and places and sights that I have been lucky enough to come across in the last 5 weeks, and I simply can't believe it. I am blown away that I have this opportunity, that I am walking in a place which, while hopefully it won't be a once in a lifetime visit, is certainly a once in a lifetime experience. I love this place, the different people and the different countries, and the different land, and I plan to spend a good deal more time here in the not-too-distant future, but that in no way detracts from the uniqueness of what I'm doing now. No stepping in the same river -- or the same daladala -- twice, and all that. To reduce it all down to the most basic summary: Its pretty badass that I get two months to wander through Africa all on my lonesome. I try very hard not to lose that perspective, even when busses take hours to fill, or trains break down for TWENTY FIVE HOURS, or people constantly try to sell me something or hustle me, or just otherwise part me from my cash. Its all part of the deal, and part of the story. While at times I do get so frustrated and exhausted of everything that I just want to scream and cry and break things, well, that sort of part of the package. If I wanted a no-hassle, no-fun vacation I would have signed up for club med. This is real. Whatever real is.

Today is Eid, the end of Ramadan, which matters in Dar es Salaam. Dar is a mix of seemingly everybody who has ever wandered across the African continent. Maasai in traditional wraps are hired as security guards at shops and cheap tourist hotels, which in turn are located across the road from massive mosques and hindu temples. People wander the streets in any traditional outfit you can think of, and the streets smell like fried samosas, sweets from the Taj Mahal Confectionary shop, spiced tea, live chicken, rotting garbage, bananas, coconut, coriander, and wet pavement from the last rain to blast through. I am undecided on if I like the place or not. When I first got here, all I could think was that it was so BIG. I was vaguely reminded of sketchier parts of Hollywood, but with a lot more mosques. Big, and busy too. Cars zoom up and down the streets, people are everywhere, the place is littered with shops and stands and carts and people people people. After wandering from laid-back Malawian village to village, its all a little overwhelming. In fact, it all reminded me a bit of the feeling of going into Pretoria's biggest mall two days before Christmas, after having spent three months straight in Steenbok. Just...too much.

Now I've been here for a few days though, and I'm slightly better adjusted. Hopefully this afternoon I'll begin moving on to Mwanza, on the shores of lake Victoria. I was supposed to do this yesterday, but...thats where the 25 hour train delay comes in. All part of the fun, right?

Sing Us A Song

2008-09-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

I have finally managed to slow down a bit and stop jumping from place to place. After the marathon that was Botswana-Zambia, and even the first couple of days in Malawi, I feel like I am finally starting to relax and take things at a travellers place, without always worrying about the next place I'm going to and how important it is that I get there now now. On the one hand, this is very relaxing, but on the other it gives me much more of a vacation feeling which for some reason I feel like I am not -- nor should I be -- on. I can't explain this, maybe I feel like I'm supposed to be communing with Africa and not spending my days laying on hammocks and watching the lake swish back and forth. Thats what tourists do. I am not a tourist. I am a peace corps volunteer, and we do thinks a little different from that generic backpacker-on-holiday set. Except now I'm not. I'm just one more unemployed girl watching the lake swish back and forth while drinking beer in a hammock. Which is, of course, not the worst thing in the world to be by a long shot.

Recently a lot of that hammock-lounging has been taking place on Likoma Island, in the middle of Lake Malawi. Likoma is, as you would hope a small tropical island in the middle of a large Rift Valley Lake would be, very beautiful and very laid back. There are two roads on the island, and maybe twice as many cars (the fancy resort's land rover, the Unicef truck, the ambulance, and the German guy's green jeep). The sunsets are also up to standard, and so I won't bother to describe them, I'll just allow you to consult all of the postcard sunset imagery in your head. Besides being an (unemployed) bum, on Likoma I spent four days learning to SCUBA dive, and have decided that I am totally in love. Diving is like nothing else, you become completely a part of the water around you, as much as the fish and the rocks and the light that floats down in tendrils and waves. Its amazing to swim 3 inches above the sandy bottom of a lake, and know that the surface is 18 meters (thats 54 feet) above your head. Plus, the gasses and pressures and whatnot involved made my freshly burnt arm break out in little bubble-wrap like nodes. Icky and fun, what a great sport!

Unfortunately, I got those sunburnt arms from one of the most GOD AWFUL boating experiences of my entire life. Likoma, like I said, is an island in the middle of one of the world's largest freshwater lakes. So of course, you can only reach it by boat (or plane, but like I can afford a private plane flight). The boat of choice coming from the Malawian main land is the Ilala Ferry, a huge old steam boat thats been chugging up and down the lake for half a century. Most people rave about the thing. They have fantastic experiences, meet cool people, spend their time admiring the Mozambican and Malawian shores while drinking beer and generally having a good time. I, of course, happened to hop on during one of the worst storms of the year. Which really confused me, since there was no rain or clouds or even swells (though, in retrospect the ones I were estimating at 2-3 feet were probably a lot closer to seven, with occasionally bursts up into 9 or 10 if they were feeling particulary energetic.) There was just wind. Lots and lots of wind, which in turn made the boat rock and pitch continually, so that everything slid back and forth on the deck and most people had to give up and crawl to where they wanted to get. This still might have been fun (at no point did it feel dangerous -- just very rolly) had I not spent most of my time leaning over the side, trying not to lean over the side, or racing for the side, instead of just watching it all happen. So I was a little distracted and forgot the sunblock. (Mostly I was more angry than sick. Well, maybe almost as angry as sick. There was a lot of sick. BUT, I am not the one who gets sea-sick. I've been on boats my whole life! Don't the sea gods know this? I decided the problem was that we were on a lake and not an ocean. Stupid lake.)

Now, however, both my island and my lake times are up. Today I'm in a beautiful little place called in Nkhata Bay, staying at possibly one of the world's most social backpackers. So mostly I'm just hanging out and making friends before making the final run up to Tanzania. I like the place (Mayoka Village, should you ever find yourself here) for many reasons, but a major one is that they are heavily involved in the community around them, they don't set themselves apart. So last night a local church choir came to sing before dinner in the hopes of raising money for a new church roof. I like that this is something the owners would agree to, and something the church felt comfortable requesting. So the choir came up -- four ladies, two men, and a guy in back playing a keyboard with all the backbeats and synth settings he could muster. And the choir rocked out, and the ladies sang and dance, and the pastor/baritone held up his arms and called out 'Hallelujah!' whenever he felt the music required it, and the tourist audience sat quietly and attentively and applauded very nicely when it was over. And I laughed, because it was such a classic combining (I won't say clash, there was nothing violent) of cultures. Everybody played by their rules and wanted to be at their absolute best, and the rules were totally different on both sides. So the choir kept singing, and then of course the kitchen staff, and the barmen, and all the locals in the place got up and started singing and dancing too (because those are, of course, the proper rules to play by. There's no divide in African music, no performance space and audience space, no creator/reciever. Its all just music, and you're all inside of it) and the tourists thought to themselves 'oh, how charming' or maybe 'oh, how rude!' and I thought 'Rock on,' but I'm still too much of a chicken to get up and play even when I know the right rules. Until the next song, when the inevitable of course happened and the choir and other people up front starting pulling up the tourists to join -- starting with the girls in the front, of course -- and the tourists thought 'oh, how daring and how local we are!' and I'm sure the Malawians just laughed, or wondered what it was that glued those white butts to their wicker seats. Finally it ended like it should, with many people from many places up and dancing -- though still with a clear front and back to the room. Here is where people sing and dance, here is where we sit and admire people singing and dancing -- and a hat was passed around, and people gave money for the new church roof. I liked it. There was such an honest effort on both sides to come across that gap, or at least take an open eyed look. Nobody made it entirely to the other side of course, but it was a solid and friendly attempt. Which is all you can really ask, isn't it?

Evidence

2008-09-08T07:38:00.000-07:00

Today I'm in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, after saying my goodbyes to Zambia. The border crossing was memorable mostly for the sheer number of times you have to change modes of transportation to travel less than 100 kilometers.

First there is the shared taxi from the Zambian border town. Apparently there used to be mini busses a year or two ago, but they were done away with since they weren't filling fast enough. Instead, little toyotas patrol back and forth from the border, leaving town when they fill up, shuttling people over, and then stuffing themselves full again before shuttling back. When I say little toyotas, I mean approximately 1998 camrys, not land rovers, and by full I mean at least 6 full grown adults -- not counting the driver. Four cram into the backseat, which isn't so bad, but then two more stuff themselves into the front passenger before the driver will even think of taking off. And in my ride, at least, I was not the biggest of these people. A feat I don't think I've seen attempted since college -- Picnic Day, usually -- and never without the influence, procurement, or escape from the consequences of, alcohol involved. (With adults in a sedan, at any rate, I can't even remember the record for the Chia car in high school, but I know it was a solid 2 digit number at the least).

Eventually we made it, though, and the driver kindly dropped me off exactly at the border post -- not before he and about 17 of his friends had even more kindly 'helped' me to exchange all my Zambian Kwacha for the Malawian brand. But the price was fair, and forex's are a pain, so even that wasn't so bad. I got myself stamped out of Zambia -- where the exit and security procedures include waving down the customs officer from his chat with the cold drink lady, having him stamp your passport without much inquisitiveness, and then being pointed in the direction of a large ledger book, where you are instructed to write down your name, country of origin, and mode of transport, for purposes that elude me, and probably the customs officer as well. What, if anything, is ever done with this book is a mystery to me, but I've learned its never a good idea to argue with the man holding the large rubber stamp, so I filled in the book and off I went. The same process essentially applies in Malawi, including the over-full toyota sedans and the men desperate to exchange cash. But finally I made it onto a bus heading to Lilongwe and into Malawi proper.

To be honest, I came prepared to love Malawi -- its talked up so much, "the lake of stars" "the warm heart of Africa"... -- so perhaps I was already a little biased, but certainly not dissapointed. I've been here two full days, and only to the capital, and so far I'm already in love. On the way in we passed three weddings (a pleasant departure from the funerals that always seem to line the sides of the road in South Africa), and two men walking down the road in traditional Chewa dress. I don't know why, but it still made me happy. The man next to me in the taxi took it upon himself to be my personal tour guide, pointing out "this one, it's Chewa culture! Of course!!" whenever we passed anything remotely Chewa-related, and punctuating everything with a huge laugh.

Today and yesterday I spent my time wandering old town Lilongwe, tomorrow I'll do the same, except with more purpose in mind. On friday I'm off to Likoma island, and will attempt to learn to Scuba dive, so money and sunblock will be the goals of the day.

Like a Hundred Million Hotdogs

2008-09-04T00:11:00.000-07:00

Today I am in Lusaka after almost two weeks on the road. I got here via Botswana and Victoria Falls (sadly, the Zambian side only, I opted against a brief foray into Zimbabwe as a gift to you, mom) and tomorrow I start making my way into Malawi.

Northern Botswana is every image you have in your head about Africa, all distilled into one half of one country. Its full of huge expanses of bush and forests, crap roads, occasional small towns that are nothing much more than a couple of gas stations and a lady selling oranges, and rich tourists flying into remote $600 a night bush lodges on chartered planes to enjoy personal butlers and the chance to shoot/photograph something. Elephants, ostriches, giraffe, and all sorts of other animals wander the highways. A truck driver showed me the massive dent a buffalo made in the passenger-door one morning at 5am, a security guard at a campsite/lodge in the middle of nowhere (that I accessed by foot and not charter plane, by the way) told me stories of having to chase elephants out of the swimming pool with nothing more than a strobing flashlight (apparently elephants hate strobes, they run away from them instantly. So should you ever find yourself in the bush facing down an elephant... you're welcome.) I personally saw the ostriches and a giraffe just hanging out by the side of the road, not all that interested in the busload full of pointing Batswana -- and me.
Baobab trees also line the roads, and there's something really amazing and beautiful about those trees. I can't explain it, but there's a reason that they carry with them such a strong image of "the real Africa" (for whatever that phrase is worth) and are so iconic in so many people's imagination. They are, of course, enormous. As tall as a 3 or 4 story building, as big around as many houses I've seen, but their is also something vaguely silly about them. They're upside down trees, with their roots reaching up and who knows what going into the ground. But they are beautiful, and preposessing in a regal sort of way. They are old, old trees, that have seen a lot come and go over the centuries. If none of it bothered them, its hard to see a reason for you to get upset about what happened just an hour ago.

After Botswana I made my way into Zambia, across one of the tiniest borders in the world. The Botswana/Zambia border consists of about 25 feet of the Zambezi river, across which ferries that can hold all of 3 trucks and 40 people chug back and forth continually. Why the can't just build a bridge is a mystery to me -- the river can't be more than 30 feet across, and the lines of semis waiting for their turn on the ferry stretches at least the equivelant in miles -- but all the same, if you're on foot its pretty fun to cross borders on a ferry.
Crossing from Botswana to Zambia reminds me, in retrospect, of the crossing from South Africa into Mozambique -- calm to chaos, logic (as far as these things go) to anarchy. There is no line in the Zambian customs office (as much as there's ever a line anywhere in southern Africa) just a bunch of people shoving passports and 'temporary documents' at the customs officer, who stamped everything in site without much concern for the huge hordes of people, or the actual identity or nationality of the paper in front of him.
From the border I caught a public taxi with a driver who had decided to hang the days catch outside the window, and then drive at what couldn't have been over 70k/hour the whole 60k to Livingstone and so everything I own now reeks of dead Zambezi fish. On the plus side, he did drop me off exactly at the front door of where I was going -- after consulting 3 police officers, two other passengers, 5 ladies selling more dead fish at an open air market, and the guy who kept telling him he knew the exact address not once.

So, finally the next day I made it to Victoria Falls. Which is outstanding. I don't really have the words to describe it, its just the biggest thing you've ever seen, a cliff hundreds of feet long and that drops down sheer hundreds of feet down. Kayakers paddling around below you look like toys, and as the water falls over the cliff it hits with an unbelievable impact that -- in the rainy season -- can throw up plumes that can be seen as far as 2k away. I was reminded, watching the falls smash into the gorge below (and that is the word, the water falls so far that it literally smashes into the river underneath it) of nothing more than a sack of cement hitting the ground from 20 feet up, and throwing up dust all around it. And thats all water. Victoria Falls was originally known as Mosi Oa Tunya, the smoke that thunders, before Livingstone re-christened it, and the water is thrown up so far it looks like smoke, and hits so hard you can only be reminded of thunder. In the words of Eddie Izzard, we're going to have to take 'awesome' back (from who? from people like me, most of the time, unfortunately) because you can't just say that Victoria Falls, Mosi oa Tunya, is really really cool. It's awesome, in the original sense of the word.

Homeward Bound

2008-08-24T02:36:00.000-07:00

(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.

Home in the Land of the Homelands

2008-08-14T00:27:00.000-07:00

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.

Extensions

2008-07-21T02:19:00.000-07:00

Well, now my fingers are much warmer. Possibly because we recently got a new administrative block (building) at my key school. With that came several heating/air-conditioning units. With those came remote controls to regulate the ambient temperature. With that particular piece of modern convenience, of course, came the losing of said remote controls within five minutes of setting the clerk’s office at 32 degrees Celsius (aka, 90 degrees Fahrenheit). So my fingers are plenty warm now. Also I think I might pass out of heat stroke at any point in the next 15-20 minutes. But such are the sacrifices I’m willing to make to keep you happy, mom.

Girls camp, then: Likusasa Letfu, Part Two* was fantastic. Last year we had 25 girls for four days. This year we had 30 girls for six. We talked about self-esteem, good decision making skills, gender roles (one of my personal favorites) what love really means, and what we expect out of relationships, and of course a whole lot of HIV/AIDS education and discussion. One of my favorite parts, just like last year, was our I Can’t Funeral. Everybody wrote down things they couldn’t do, or thought they couldn’t do (“I can’t speak siSwati, I can’t draw to save my life, I can’t…” You get the idea.) Yunus, another volunteer, then made a fantastic coffin for I Can’t, and we all filed into the ampitheater of the place where we were staying to have a full two and a half hour funeral for I Can’t. Sure in America you would just have the kids write a few things, dump them in a shoe box, and then bury it, taking maybe 20 or 30 minutes, but this is South Africa. That’s now how it works. So we headed into the ampitheater. We sang, we danced, we gave speeches. One teacher, Beatrice, had been so inspired by last year’s funeral that she specifically made a preacher’s outfit, just so that she could be the pastor at this year’s event. In which case, of course, we had a sermon, too. Something about God telling Abraham to go out of his country. I’m not entirely certain how that relates to the death of I Can’t (or rather, none of the reasons that occurred to me seemed to be addressed in our sermon) but mostly that’s probably beside the point. Afterwards, everybody filed past the coffin, stuffing their list of I Can’ts in one by one while singing and doing a sort of conga line. Then we all headed to our bonfire, where there were only one or two more speeches, followed by the ceremonial tossing of the coffin (/bran flakes box) into the fire and of course some more singing. It was wonderful to be a part of, and to see how excited all of the teachers and girls were. To see ownership happening, in other words. After the funeral we all sat around the bonfire for an hour or two, telling jokes and stories and generally just having a good time.*

All in all, it was a great week, and much less stressful that I thought, probably for both external and internal reasons. Last year I was pretty much the only person doing everything, and I was certain that it was all a matter of life and death, too. The schedule had to be followed precisely, everything had to happen just so, and if not then clearly everything else would go straight to hell. Partially that was my fault though: I was the only one who had a clear idea of what exactly I wanted to happen, so I was the one with the burden of making everything go. Also, I’m American, and that mindset just seems to create its own stress. This year, all but one teacher who was there had been there last year, too. Everybody knew the game plan, everybody was in 100% (well, at least 70%. But C’s get degrees, right?). Plus I’m just a lot better at letting things go after two years in Africa. All of that is wonderful, obviously, and sustainable, and great, and better for my long-term health, but… one thing I realized is that without the certain sense that everything around you is going to come crashing down at any second, its much less elating when it goes really well. Everything that happened this year was just as fantastic as the year before, but without the potential of a massive crash and burn, the safe landing just seems a little less exciting. Not that I’m complaining, just making a point. We also had a lot of really great conversations about how to keep things going, how we can extend the program throughout the year, and how financing and planning will happen when I go. Teachers were really taking ownership, especially one lady who essentially ran everything but the lessons this year. It was wonderful to see her sense of empowerment, and watch her change from last year to this. Likusasa Letfu really became her project, and the communities, not just a good idea I happened to have and then conscripted a lot of other people into.

But let me wrap this up, because I know things are getting long. Here’s what I think the point of camp really is, beyond arguing what boys can do and girls can do, and the benefits of using condoms or knowing your status: Girls in this community, and in a lot of communities, are incredibly disempowered. Especially smart girls. The ‘clever’ girl, who speaks up a lot, who gets the answers right and gets them right in excellent English, who knows what she wants her future to be, that girl has a problem. It happens in America, of course (I’m pretty sure I once lost a tail-light on the chia car as a thank-you for setting an economics test curve too high in high school.) But in South Africa this idea of evil Ubuntu that I’ve talked about before begins to come into play. The idea that rising too high is disrespectful to those you’ve left behind, so they try to pull you back down. And its not just the learners who will do it. Even teachers, if they feel a student – especially a smart girl – is getting beyond her place or asking too many questions, will try to pull her back down. It’s not a friendly landscape out there. But now, now there are 30 girls from this year, and 25 girls from the year before that who know that there are other people who think like them. They had a week to make friends with the other smart girls, a week to be just as outspoken and contradictory as they wanted, where speaking out and being clever was encouraged by everyone around them and everyone around them was doing the same. I don’t think that the importance of that support group can be underestimated. To know you’re not alone? That’s huge. To know that when other people try to pull you down, you’ll have friends who are up there with you, encouraging you to keep flying. I’m not going to claim that that happened with every kid who attended, or even with all of them. But I do think that it happened with more than a few, and that that’s where things will start to make a difference. I hope.

*A joke that was specifically translated for my benefit: “A South African and an American decide to go out to lunch at a restaurant together. The South African orders chicken and the American gets a sandwich. As the meal progresses, the American watches the South African annihilate both the chicken, and then the chicken bones, leaving only a tiny pile of the least digestible parts [I watch this happen every day. It’s amazing.]. The American looks at the tiny pile of what’s left with astonishment and asks: ‘In South Africa, if people eat the bones, what do dogs eat?’ The South African thinks for awhile and responds: ‘Sandwiches.’” Hilarity around the campfire ensues. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions, but just add that I’ve certainly never seen a dog in this country eat anything remotely resembling a sandwich.

Hamba Kahle, I Can't!

2008-07-14T00:32:00.000-07:00

Well, I apologize that its been so long since I wrote anything. First I didn't have much to say, and then too many things happened to have time to write about it all. Typical, I guess. I'm still going to cut this short though, because winter has hit Nkomazi, and quite frankly my fingers are too cold to type anything much with any degree of accuracy for any decent length of time.

First of all then: Lots and lots of photos are up at Snapfish. So if a picture is worth a thousand words, then I should be in the clear. There are shots of Lesotho, Steenbok, Likusasa Letfu camp -- which just finished last week -- and family members in Steenbok being adorable. Enjoy. (And try to guess which one I'm going to turn into a tattoo...)

Second -- Camp!! Last week, from Sunday to Friday was the second annual Likusasa Letfu girl's empowerment and HIV education camp. (It's a long title, I know, but we had a lot to talk about). Everything went amazingly well, and was much less stressful than last year. It was really a pleasure to see my teacher's begin to take a leading, in-charge sort of role this year, instead of sort of being in the background like last year. We talked a lot about how we could keep things going throughout the year, as well as how to carry on next year even when I'm gone. I'm really happy.

Third -- a wedding! I promise to write more about this later too, because it was really interesting, but the very first thing I did the day after spending a week at camp was get right by up and go to a wedding with some of my teachers and friends from the village. It was great, we all got into taxis and drove to the next village over, where guests and community members and everybody else inbetween poured into a huge community hall for an african-western hybrid wedding, all to the beat of jesus/techno/house/choral-pop. I'll write more next week when I come to town and my fingers are thawed, because I just can't do it justice now -- but it was all great. Myself, one of my favorite teachers, and a couple of other ladies snuck over to the bar, where they saw me drink alcohol for the first time. ("How!! Nomvula!! You are drinking a beer!"), and then we headed to Naas for a beer and Cheese Puff run, followed by aimless driving around yelling at people we saw out the windows. No lie.

Its been a fantastic couple of weeks. And in just four more -- I'm all through! I can't even fathom it right now, but July 25th is my farewell function and by August 15th I'll have left Steenbok for the last time. Frostbite is inducing brevity, and so all I can say to that is: Wow.

In Other Words

2008-06-23T02:01:00.000-07:00

This is a good article that from Slate about the xenophobic violence that occurred in and around Jo'burg and Cape Town a while back. It's interesting, I don't know what the coverage was in America, but I get the sense that it provides a different perspective. And anything has to be more coherent than my rambling*.

*Mom: I'm STILL FINE**.
**But I'm not going to Greece.

I Hear its Warm in California

2008-06-22T01:21:00.001-07:00

I currently have the cold from hell, its been stalking me for at least the last 10 days, and while it makes me feel like kind of a baby for complaining -- its a cold for goodness sakes! -- the darn thing keeps trying to drag me down to a point thats just getting irritating. Fortunately, I happen to be in Pretoria right now, and PCSA has one of the best medical officers anybody could ever ask for. Not only did she stop by the backpackers where I'm staying to see me on a Saturday, she brought a small pharmacy, lots of sympathy, and even a bottle of orange juice. Amazing. So I spent all day sleeping, drugged myself out on anti-histamines and decongestants, and today feel a million times better. Die cold, die!!

I also spent a lot of time watching television, because, well, I was in Pretoria and I could. Something that for some reason has never occurred to me before, but finally did as I spent 4 hours on the couch, vegging out to Mythbusters and the Daily Show, was how much television here is in English. It never seemed too weird to me, after all I conduct most of my daily conversations in the language, almost everybody speaks it at least a little, and english is the only language tv has ever been in for me anyways, but here...it's really nobody's first language. People speak english, they learn it, business and government and school and lots of important things are conducted in it, but its still a foreign thing, it has to find its way through a filter, be translated and co-opted before whatever concept that is being relayed can be owned.

Okay, maybe that sounds a little silly, the concept of a lingua franca has been around pretty much since there have been languages, I can only assume. Maybe its not such a big deal. But it still seems odd to me that virtually 99% of life in the public sphere is conducted in a language that belongs to nobody, that there are always so many translations and shiftings happening in the simplest conversation. The word for English in my village, or rather the slang word, though its the one that everybody uses, is something along the phonetic lines of "Sloo" -- white person. Swazis speak siswati, zulus speak isizulu, white people speak...'white people.' And everybody who wants to get along, they must learn 'sloo' too. The word for Afrikaans is different, as is the word for an Afrikaaner. But the word thats usually applied to British/English speaking white people is derived quite literally from the color white, so thats more of the default, and english becomes the language of the white people.

I honestly don't know what that means, or why it seems to have grabbed my attention so much. Something about everything in the country happening in translation..from afrikaans, siswati, sepedi, nothing is original. Nothing is completely owned, its all coming from 'out there', happening on somebody else's terms, with somebody else's design. The way a language is built says a lot about how a culture thinks, so how odd must it be to have somebody else's thoughts in your mouth? Not that I think its bad that English is used so much. I love the English language, I love how it morphs and adapts and takes so many words from so many places. I love its flexibility and nuance and that you can find 100 different words for the same thing, but they all mean something just a shade different, they all have just a slightly different history behind them. And it is an international language, and it is important for people to know it. But my family and teachers have learned that just like "Mhlungu akusilo ligami lami!" ("White person is not my name!") I hate it when I hear English called Sloo. The learners must be taught in 'white person', 'white person' is the most important language in the world. We must speak 'white' because its an important meeting. That drives me crazy, for all of the obvious reasons.The 'proper' word, the one I prefer, is Singlisi. Which if you say it out loud sounds pretty much like English -- just in translation.

Father's Day

2008-06-16T00:27:00.001-07:00

So here's a cheesy story I like that I bet you've heard before:

There's a little boy walking down a beach, and the beach is covered in starfish, thousands of them, as far as the eye can see. The boy is picking them up, one at a time, and throwing them back into the ocean so that they don't dry out and die. A man comes along and starts laughing at the kid, "Why are you doing this? Look around! There's way too many starfish for one person to save. You will never be able to make a difference." The little boy just picks up another starfish, throws it in the water and says, "I made a difference to that one."

My dad once told me that that story makes him think of me, and it is literally the best thing another human being has even said to me.

Dad, it makes me think of you too. You inspire me constantly, from 400 miles away or 10,000. Happy Father's Day.

Hang Tough Napoleon

2008-06-06T00:25:00.000-07:00

Well. I forgot to write up a blog entry this week, I was too busy map-painting. But what I do have for you is...pictures! From Steenbok, and also my trip to Lesotho a few months ago that was very pretty.

My map!! We've been practicing our geography all week. Also, my hands and arms are blue.

The beginnings of a school library at Gebhundlovu Primary.

Me and my horse in Lesotho. The horse was hungry. I was sunburnt.

A National Geographic worthy shot in Lesotho. These are two of the kids who hung out with us in the mountain village where we stayed overnight.

Sunrise and a Marula tree in Steenbok.

Still Plugging

2008-05-31T00:55:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-31T00:54:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-31T00:52:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-05-23T23:55:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-23T00:51:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-08T23:34:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-05-08T23:28:00.000-07:00

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.

I Read a Lot of Terry Pratchett

2008-04-26T00:43:00.001-07:00

Today’s best quote: “This policy document is like the bible – it has all the answers.” And then my agnostic, insubordination-loving brain started to go: “grrr-argh-ahhh…Plooey!!!”

Immediately followed up by: “You know, if a woman sleeps with more than two men, she is a harlot.” In reference to a fairly intense discussion of what exactly the bible means when it refers to harlotry. The parts of my brain that hadn’t exploded after the initial comment -- the crazy feminist parts -- those promptly went “POP!” too. Now I’ve got nothing left.

Fortunately, these last few days have been all about the arts, and so I’ve been enjoying myself enormously. One of my favorite learners is a girl named Zanele. She’s bright, inquisitive, and speaks near-perfect English. She lived in Johannesburg before moving out here to live with her grandmother and has already skipped one grade, with the school considering skipping her again. Last term I asked the principal if I could pull her out of class during English and work with her in a sort of one-on-one GATE program. I’ve never taught GATE before (I’ve never taught much of anything before) so it turned into a very student-driven sort of thing. Zanele set whatever topic she was interested in, I would try to dig up as many resources and facts as I could find, and we would discuss it all until she was satisfied and decided to move onto something else. The only thing I really set in stone was that I wanted her to ask as many questions as possible. She was not allowed to read and regurgitate the information. She had to come with new questions about it – or anything else that struck her fancy – each time we met. So far we’ve discussed world history, astronomy, volcanoes, and Plato. At the end of last term, she told me that she would like to talk about Shakespeare when I came back. And my poor, literature-deprived, recently exploded brain said, “Hooray!!”
Yesterday, then, I spent a lot of time talking about Shakespeare with Zanele. We talked about the language he used (still English, but “deep” English – a play on “deep” SiSwati, which is the official formal sort of language that they use in Swaziland, and that we certainly don’t use here.) and why people still care about his plays 400 years later. Then we started on Much Ado About Nothing, because everybody reads Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet is a little over the top for a 12 year old, and as awesome as Rosalind is in As You Like It, the constant character gender-bending might get a little confusing. The Taming of the Shrew was not even up for discussion, might I add. Plus, I think I may be able to track down a copy of the movie Much Ado About Nothing, in which Kenneth Brannagh is a little bit ridiculous, but the story comes across pretty well*. Anyway, we started discussing the play. We read through the beginning of the first scene together, and then I spent a few hours summarizing the first two acts for her – a sort of home made Cliff Notes.
The other thing I did yesterday was make a whole lot of learning aides. Alphabets, number lines, vowels, and individual desk name-tags for each learner, including a little decorative alphabet. Because I didn’t want to waste the school’s ink, I printed each of them out in black and white, and then spent most of my day coloring them in. It was like kindergarten. I got to have a coloring day. A Shakespeare and coloring day. All while a Dolly Parton’s Greatest Hits CD serenaded the office over and over again.
Yesterday was a Shakespeare-coloring-Dolly Parton sort of day. Today is shaping up to be a Shakespeare/Chaucer-coloring-Dolly Parton sort of day. Just what I needed to regenerate those brain cells. This is my nine to five.

*I majored in literature. Can you tell?

Walk the Line

2008-04-26T00:41:00.000-07:00

Being a Peace Corps Volunteer grants a sort of flexible identity. “Us and Them”—this concept of ‘the other’ what was so fashionable when I was in school – becomes a little bit slippery. There is one clear us -- other volunteers, especially those in your group, though not necessarily excluding those of other years or other countries -- and that is stronger than almost anything else, though it’s not completely inviolable. But the questions start to come when I wonder who, exactly, ‘them’ is – and what are we to others, an ‘us’ or a ‘them.’ (Stick with me, here.)

It is our job to be flexible, to be sinuous and a little bit tricky. We are told to integrate into a village, to learn the language and the customs, to take a new name and do our best at the laughably impossible task of blending in. So we do. I’ve learned SiSwati, kind of. I work hard to make friends and to gain the friendship of those around me. I only use my right hand or both hands to give and take things. And it’s worked, kind of. One of my proudest moments here was when a teacher said to me, “Ay Nomvula! UmSwati, really!” (“Nomvula, you are really a Swazi!”). I’m still weird, sure. I still talk English funny and have those darn blue eyes and blonde hair, but I’m an understood weird. I’m not just *the* other, I’m *our* other. Close enough, I’ll take it.

So I can walk in the village. I am a part of things, even if briefly, and in a way I become a part of us. But then I leave, and there are other places I can walk – by virtue of my language, my education, my nationality, my gender, my upbringing, and an ugly fact in this country is by virtue of my skin color too – that my friends or teachers in the village can’t. Nomvula and Becca aren’t entirely the same person, 98% overlap maybe, but not 100%. I can walk into a resort hotel or nice restaurant and know the rules and be accepted, because that’s where rich Americans go. I can go to the Afrikaan pub in Malelane, because while I may not be quite ‘us’ there, I’m certainly not ‘them’. With some friends, over a year ago, I found myself in a township outside Pretoria, a place where I almost certainly would have been in deep trouble were it not for our guide vouching for us – instead we became ‘us’ and spent the evening drinking beer and arguing about Generations. Last month a friend and I met the wife of the Irish Ambassador to Lesotho. She offered us a three hour ride to town (“I knew you guys were Peace Corps as soon as I saw you. I love Peace Corps!) and we spent the time chatting as equals about Africa, Dublin, America, and all the rest of it. As a volunteer, I feel like we have so many opportunities to switch that it does two things: At once it obliterates any sense of ‘us’ or ‘them,’ because when you are granted the ability to walk through walls it becomes more difficult to pay attention to them. But at the same time the only people experiencing this sensation of walking through worlds, of belonging everywhere and nowhere, are other PCVs. And so while everybody may find some way to accept me, and I them, its as if the line becomes even more starkly drawn between the only us I ever really use, and the rest.

We work – well, maybe I should stop talking for other volunteers – I work in one of the poorest areas of one of the most schizophrenic countries in the world. On one side of the divide is this conservative rural village, where culture and tradition are still the trump card, where there is extreme poverty and child-headed households, and no running water, and some of the most beautiful and heartfelt music I’ve ever heard. On the other side is a country that could be Europe, western and wealthy and occasionally even cosmopolitan. These two sides, they don’t understand each other so well. I came home one day after a braai to tell my shocked family, “did you know Afrikaaners eat pap too?” “They do??!!”

We can, I can, walk that line and see both sides. Becca and Nomvula, the part that walks in both and tries to balance perfectly on the fulcrum. I go to grade 7 functions at my school, and celebrations at the US Ambassador’s house. I send my reports to the Lubombo Circuit Manager and Congress. It is odd, exceedingly extremely odd, to live on that pivot point and have access to so many worlds. I am not a tourist in a human zoo, I live here. I am not an awe-struck kid, I grew up with this.

PS

2008-04-17T04:26:00.001-07:00

Happy Picnic Day!! I can't wait for '09.

The Real Africa

2008-04-17T03:48:00.000-07:00

I've just gotten back from a fantastic three week vacation all over the place, it was very refreshing and probably one of the best holidays I've had here. We went pony-trekking in Lesotho, which was phenomenal. Two days, six hours of riding a day -- I've never had my butt so sore in my life, but it was totally worthwhile. Lesotho is very mountain-y, and a lot of the time the trail was nothing but incredibly steep switchbacks, anywhere from 8 to 36 inches wide, covered in scree and perfectly round smooth rocks, with a 300 foot drop off a cliff right on the other side of it all. But the view certainly is beautiful from that drop-off. Occasionally it would be so steep that the guide, Mpho, would tell us, "If you guys are nervous, you can get off and walk down the trail," "Um...do you think we should walk?" [Pause. Pause. Mpho eyes nervous horses as they refuse to get within 15 feet of descent. Pause]. "If you guys want...you can get off and walk down the trail." We got off and walked. That night we stayed in an incredibly rural village, a little bit past the middle of nowhere, where our horses decided that they were tired of nothing but grass, grass, grass all the time and wanted some delicious mealies instead. Unfortunately, this delayed our departure in the morning a bit, since the owner of the mealie field was exceedingly pissed when he found out. Somebody had to run for the chief, who then had to negotiate a settlement between the field owner and our guides, which of course took several hours. Had I not spent the last 20 months in Africa, it might have been a fun and authentic addition to out trip. As it was, we were just irritated. TIA. After Lesotho we headed on to the mountains and the beach successively and had yet again a fantastic time. All in all, a great vacation.
One phrase I did keep hearing -- and that I have been hearing, and even use myself -- is "the real Africa." As in, "well, the Wild Coast is beautiful, but its not the real Africa." "Cape Town is a cool city, but its not the Real Africa." "Come on our tour and see the Real Africa!" What does that mean? What is the Real Africa? There is a universally understood sense of what you mean when you use this phrase: The Real Africa is somewhere poor, somewhere rural, somewhere black. It's somewhere where you can still see women carrying things on their head, and watch handicrafts get made, and see people walking everywhere and depending on subsistence farming. Why is that the Real Africa anymore than Pretoria or the wild coast or anywhere else? Why is it that the preconceptions of Africa become our definition of what is real? The realest, most scraped-to-the-bone place I've ever been in South Africa was a township about 10k from Pretoria. But nobody would ever consider it the "Real Africa."

brief hiatus

2008-04-04T00:02:00.000-07:00

I am on vacation. I needed it very badly. Lots of very fun things have been happening, and I will write about them in a week or two.

Yay.

Now What?

2008-03-15T03:02:00.000-07:00

I have come to the decision, finally that Africa does not, in fact, look like the central valley, or San Francisco, or the Great Plains, or Santa Paula, or anywhere else. South Africa looks like…like itself, and that’s the only analogy I’m willing to give.

When you first come here, of course, and see brown hills rolling away to the horizon, or acre after acre of avocados, oranges, and mangos, or the very western shop-lined streets in Cape Town, its easy enough to compare this landscape with what you’ve seen before. Hills with cows on them are hills with cows on them, after all, and maybe the biggest geographical distinction the 5* and the N-4 is that on the N-4 you’ll occasionally see a Zebra, while on the 5 you have to roll up your windows as you pass the horrible Harris Ranch slaughterhouse that is the last sight (and smell) that that steak you ate last night probably ever had. I’m happier with the Zebra, personally.

But as I see more and longer, I’ve begun to accept what I’m seeing for what it is, and not for what I bring with me. Hills with cows on them are not just hills with cows on them, the 5 is not the N-4. And as I begin to see that, I begin to wonder how I could ever have thought anything else. The hills here don’t simply go to the horizon, beyond which there is probably another town or another freeway, instead they just keep going. I remember the first time I made that drive from Los Angeles to Sacramento, I was simply shocked that there could be so much land so undeveloped. Where were the houses? The strip malls? The constant movement and drone and mark of people? There were the truck-stops, but where did the people who worked in them *live*? Now of course, I realize that there’s nothing at all undeveloped about the central valley, and that the hum and buzz is always there. There is nothing limitless or unbounded. Its just a little chunk of the state that happens to have a lot of farms instead of a lot of houses, but it is of course surrounded.

Here it’s very different, and that’s why I say now that I can no longer even imagine comparing the rolling hills of Mpumulanga with any others I’ve ever seen. Here there is no limit, there is no boundary. There is not a sense that just over the horizon there are probably towns, and people, and farms, and roads. There’s just a sense that there are…more hills. More Africa.

People talk about the enormity of Africa, and on the whole I think its mostly a cliché that people parrot because….well, that’s one of the things that’s true about Africa, isn’t it? Its very big, and very poor, very corrupt, and the people there all have malaria, or AIDS, or interesting diseases caused by malnutrition that cause swollen bellies or skeletal limbs. That is the vision we bring to Africa, and so that is how we see. But how can you go and really see a place, if you’ve already decided what it looks like?

It’s true, Africa is big. But it is big on its own terms, not on mine. The hills of Mpumulanga are the hills of Mpumulanga, not of Fresno or Ventura. Stellenbosch is Stellenbosch, not Santa Maria. South Africa is always and only itself, and I’m starting to be able to see.

*That’s right. THE 5. Bring it.

Pink Floyd

2008-03-10T05:13:00.000-07:00

Once again I'm in Pretoria -- now on my way back to site, rather than away -- and I can happily report that nothing has been stolen from me this weekend. And really, if I only get robbed once in two years, and its only a pair of shoes (no matter how much I loved them!) and I wasn't even mugged -- well, I'm pretty okay with that. People get robbed, its just the way South Africa works, so I'm mostly over it and still feeling happy. (Though the blisters all over my toes from my new shoes are still a little bitter).

Unfortunately, of course, one of the drawbacks of spending a week at training for a new group of volunteers is that I've been doing nothing all that exciting, and so have no witty, insightful, or in anyway clever story to write up (making the base assumption that any of my posts ever are). I'm sorry to say that last week was pleasant, unexciting, and about as productive as I had expected (re: not very, but the expectations started low). Shame.

All I want to say then, is this: Last week I was angry, and upset, and exhausted. This week I am happy, optimistic, and looking forward to maybe even getting a few things done. Next week...who knows. So is life in South Africa.

But hey, in two weeks -- I'm going pony trekking in Lesotho! Who can be sad on a pony?

Dance Class

2008-03-02T04:14:00.000-08:00

There are lots and lots of photos (by which I mean about 20) that I just put up at Snapfish. I also have a lot of really neat videos that I took of a Grade 7 dance presentation, but I have yet to figure out how to post those. But I'll sort it out eventually. I'm sorry thats all I've really got for this week, and last week to come to think of it, but honestly I'm just tired. Emotionally, physically, I just feel exhausted all the time. All I want to do is sleep.

Do you know, two nights ago somebody stole my shoes? My shoes! And the only pair I had with me at the time, too. The only pair I ever wear, and you can't get Chacos in South Africa, either. I was staying in a dorm room at my favorite Pretoria backpackers, and somebody managed to break in, sneak into the room, and grab my shoes. He was bending over my backpack, too, beginning to rifle through things, when fortunately another guy who was staying there woke up and started shouting at him. The robber took off without my camera or cell phone, or wallet, or anything super valuable but -- I really loved those shoes! My poor Chacos. And it scares me, that somebody was so close to my bed at night -- so close to me at night -- and I didn't even wake up.

It just gets so exhausting, to always have to be on your guard. To always be looking over your shoulder, and worrying, and making back-up plans. I hate that I can't hear somebody running behind me without going into instant defense mode. I hate how its just always acceptable for people to stop me on the street and try to get something from me. Why is it okay to ask me for 2 rand, (for 4 rand 60? wtf?) for a sweet, for a drink, for "just something momm-ee...just something" to give me a lewd proposal, marriage or otherwise? I just don't have the patience anymore, or the energy. I understand the poverty, don't I? I live in it, I see it everyday. I don't...I want to say I don't hate the people who stop me on the street, but maybe instead I should say I don't misunderstand them. Yes, I know where you're coming from. Yes, I know the system has destroyed you. I can pity you, and empathize, and resolve to try just that much harder where I am. But I think sometimes its the sheer amount of energy it takes to remind myself of that. To not say "oh, these people..." to always be reminding myself that of course there's a reason. (Obviously, of course, there's a reason. Nobody just decides to live on a street corner because it seems like fun).

It is exhausting to live here. It will finish you. I am exhausted.

Domo Arigoto, Mr. Roboto

2008-02-16T00:47:00.000-08:00

Monday was a linguistic trainwreck. The kind you just can’t look away from. There is a new Salvation Army pastor in the village, originally from Mozambique. He wants to learn English. One of my teachers, who is very active in the church, volunteered me. Sure, why not?

I walk up to the house, which is right behind the church and built by (of course) the donations of Salvation Army churches in America. So now you know where the $5 you paid for that awesome Halloween costume last year went.

I walk in. “Sanibonani!” I say. “Yebo.” He replies. We are polite in siSwati. I turn to his wife. “Ninjani?” (how are you?) “Si…khona??” she replies. How odd. She sounds suspiciously like me in her confusion. “Oh, she is also from Mozambique, she is just learning siSwati.” Her husband tells me. “Oh, I’m sorry! Avuxeni!” I am both contrite and proud of myself for remembering correct greeting in xiTsonga. (Later, a teacher tells me that I did not in fact remember the correct greeting in xiTsonga. Avuxeni means good morning. It was currently 2:30 in the afternoon.). Once again, Mrs. Pastor shrugs her shoulders and shakes her head. “No,” her husband tells me again, “we are from Mozambique. Portugese only.” I am a moron.

So we progress to the lesson. “What do you want to learn?” I ask naively. (The condition in which I ask most of my questions, come to think of it)

“English.”

“Oh, okay, well, we can do that. But we need a place to start. So what parts of English do you want to focus on? Conversations? Sermons? Travel? Reading? Writing? We need a starting point. So what part of English do you want to learn the most.”

“No, just English. All of it.”

“Oh…kay…” Of course, as you can see he essentially already speaks English. Not perfectly, not smoothly, but functionally. So where do I start? We dance around a bit, we try to find a good starting point, a good teaching method, some way be can both leave this interview feeling like something has happened. The longer this goes on, the more doubtful that outcome begins to look. I have decided in my head that really what he mostly needs is practice with a native speaker, so why don’t we just hang out and chat for an hour a week or so. The blank, open notebooks and pencils hovering in the hands of he and his wife tell me that this is not their preferred approach.

So we abandon that approach for a bit, and he offers to teach me some Portugese. I can now say “Boa Tardi” and “Bom Dia” (good afternoon, good day) with reasonable accuracy. Five minutes later I forget how to say “I am thirsty” within 30 seconds of him telling me. I am still a moron.

Somehow, during all this mess, we discover that we have both taken a decent amount of French in high school. We switch to French. I begin mixing my siSwati and French, because its been about two and a half years at this point since my last French conversation. We say goodbye, and make plans to meet up again the next day, when I promise to have something actually prepared.

“A demain!” I say.
“A demain!” He replies.
“Abrigado!” calls his wife.
“Bye!”

Thirty minutes. Five languages. I start laughing hysterically, and don’t stop until I make it home.

Locutius

2008-02-07T22:34:00.000-08:00

The powers that be have recently set each school in our circuit, or region, or province, or…something, a task. The school has to decide on the best teacher and learner of 2007, so that those who are chosen can go to an awards ceremony and serve as an encouragement to those around them, etc...
At the school I’m at this week, we were apparently given all of 18 hours notice to get this done. The principal held a brief after-school meeting on Wednesday to let the educators know and give them a chance to think things over, then on Thursday morning they had to decide. It got a little ugly.
In America, of course, the situation might be handled delicately, but the idea of picking a ‘best’ for the year would make sense, and be seen as a fairly run of the mill thing to do. It’s not virtual blasphemy to acknowledge different levels of skills, and that some teachers might be way, way better than others. That’s just how it is. Some people are really good at their jobs – better than other people in fact. Lets acknowledge and reward them for it.
Here…not so much. Here the most common use of the term Ph.D comes not when we’re discussing relative educational levels, but instead the acronym: Pull Her/Him Down. Which means that it doesn’t do to try and rise above those around you, because those around you will only get mad and try to drag you back down. Or say, “fine – you do all the work then if you’re the best.” It’s a very South African thing, with any number of dimensions. The idea that the collective is more important than the group, of course, plays a big part. Ubuntu’s evil twin. It seems to me that its almost rude to rise too far above the rest, its disrespectful. Like saying that you’re better than them. Being the best – or rather, being the stand-out best – is like giving the finger to everyone else around you. So you can imagine some of the dismay when the educators were asked to choose just one of a collective to be singled out as the best. They were deeply uncomfortable with the idea, and both the Principal and Deputy Principal had to keep reassuring them with, “no, no, we know that we are all the best teachers. We are all good. But we just have to choose somebody to go to this function. Just one name to go to the function. But we are all still the best.” Of course, everybody sitting in the room knew it was a lie. Quite a few probably could have pointed out the lady who honestly is the best teacher in the school, because last year we had a teacher of the month award and she got it. But they just couldn’t bring themselves to do it. They suggested drawing names out of a hat, they suggested going by who does the most extracurriculars, they even suggested having the principals or myself just choose (I declined. I’m not stupid. I know what disaster would ensue for me if I chose just one, even though the choice was so obvious to me I wanted to pull my hair out). In the end, they chose one of the favorites of the staff, not the best teacher, far far from it, and the principal knows it too, but a nice outgoing guy who adds to – surprise – the group dynamic.

Of course, now you may be wondering: but what about the Mercedes? Is Babe that out of touch with the community, or is that entry or this one full of it? Well here’s how I see it: I think that a certain amount of mobility within the community is perfectly acceptable. Babe’s not the only one with a Mercedes (though he’s certainly the one with the poopiest*), and therefore the Mercedes is acceptable. It falls within the acknowledged range of success and status in the village. Some people, who do well and have good jobs and a fairly high status in the community, those people have the material goods to show it off. And even if they don’t have all those things, they can still attempt to mimic them with the physical status symbols. The Mercedes falls within the acceptable collective status/success continuum. Saying you’re the best – or better than everybody else – does not.
Or maybe not. Maybe this is what it is: The Mercedes is a tangible status symbol. Big houses, satellite TV, an American hanging out at your house and school, the enormous entertainment system – all of these are tangible, we could even say commercial or material symbols. Materialism on that level is a relatively new thing in this culture. I can practically guarantee you that nobody in Steenbok drove a Mercedes prior to 1994. Because they are new, the rules haven’t been made yet.
Or maybe not. Maybe its this: The tangible, material symbols are proclaiming status not only amongst the smaller group – one school, one family, one village – but within an entire society. I said, I can practically guarantee you that nobody in Steenbok drove a Mercedes prior to 1994. So could there be a certain sense of pride to see that car go up and down the road? Does it become not just “his” Mercedes, but instead “our” Mercedes? Does the big house with the satellite TV in fact not show up the neighbors, but instead instill in them a sense of pride that now they too can live in a neighborhood with big houses and satellite TV (even if the house isn’t theirs). Maybe the acquisition of things that were previously unavailable to the group – even if they are only being acquired by an individual member – serve as a sense of pride to the whole group. Now they can do that too.

The third option seems the most likely to me. But more than anything else all the possibilities and interpretations just serve to remind me that I’m still only an observer here – and probably not all that good of an observer. I’ve been in Africa nearly 19 months with not that many left to go, and I’m still just making my best guess. It is entirely possible, and even likely, that all of the above is complete bull pucky. If I showed it to somebody who stayed here, they would probably just laugh their heads off and point out all the places where I was wrong.

But after over a year and a half in Africa – I’m okay with that too.

^3

2008-02-01T01:08:00.001-08:00

And finally, there are lots and lots of new pictures up at snapfish, if anybody is interested in looking at them.

Why I'm Rooting for Barack

2008-02-01T00:47:00.000-08:00

"...I will speak...as someone whose grandmother lives in a hut without indoor plumbing in a Kenyan village devestated by HIV/AIDS." Is this an outstandingly ludicrous political statement that you kind of just have to laugh at? Sure. But hey, I live in that village too, so I'm sold.

Also, what the US really needs is a first Gogo to keep things in line. Nobody messes with a Gogo.

I Wish I Was...

2008-02-01T00:45:00.000-08:00

(Apologies to the immediate Miller family – especially Mira – who have already read this. But I liked it, and wanted to expand).

Today, a grade 3 teacher walked into the school office and asked me to help her with something. “Awesome!” I thought to myself. “I would love to help you!” I said to her. She then explained that she was having some trouble disciplining her learners – “I’m too soft with them you see, they just think I’m their friend.” Could I maybe help her come up with some ways to improve discipline? Well sure. Let’s sit down and plan. But no wait – there’s more. “You see, whenever I leave my classroom – like now when I came to talk to you – they are just running up and down and making noise. How can I keep them quiet?” A year and a half ago, I would have been circumspect and non-confrontational about maybe, you know, just as a thought, things might be better if she was in her class instead of with me. (“well…lets go to your class and see what we can do.”) Six months ago I would have suggested, with a sense of abject and defeated cynicism, that she at least give them some work to do if she doesn’t ever plan on being there. Today, I have essentially 6 months of school to go, and I said. “Oh! I know! I have the perfect solution for you – its really easy! Do you want to hear it?!” “Yes, please.” “Stay in your class! Problem solved.” The teacher then began laughing at shaking her head at my ridiculous solution, and then left the room still laughing and has yet to ask me about it again – since obviously by giving such an absurd answer, I was just joking and never meant to help her in the first place. This response has not changed at all over the last 18 months, nor do I imagine it will in the next 6. It’s just one of many things that make me miss America – and be more than happy to be heading back in not too long.

Quite often, in fact, I find myself becoming a lot or a little homesick. What I never knew, before I came here, is that homesickness has its levels and degrees, and in the past year and a half I think I’ve experienced many (though probably not all) of them. There’s the raw, ripping, grief-like feeling of being 10,000 miles away from everyone you love and all those who love you; the sudden sucker-punch of dislocation just when you thought things were fine; the sense of isolation and frustration that comes from sitting in the middle of a conversation that you can’t understand – and probably wouldn’t even if it was in your own language. Most of all though, there is the constant and low-grade sense of alienation, of disconnect or misconnect. Its as if even while I sit and move in the middle of things – take the taxi, go to the store, walk down the street, chat with a friend – some part of something is not quite genuine, is not entirely supposed to be there, and I just can’t quite get to the heart of things, behind the scenery and the script to the reality. I am, constantly, out of place. That *is my place, to be the alien, the mascot, the obvious one. Its one of the reasons that going to Pretoria and walking through the campus is such an escape. I am escaping into the invisible, to a place where I am unseen, and therefore normal. To a place where -- to those around me even more than myself -- I could be at home.

Which of course is completely normal, I think. It is grinding, the constant process of being the alien, the mascot. Smiling and greeting, being stared at, and always always always standing out. To the point that on my worse days I can only hope that there will be enough of me left after all this grinding to last seven more months. Home, after all, isn’t the place where everybody knows your name (and that could probably be a mixed blessing in a bar, too) – because I’ve got that now, and Celebrity and Home are two very, very different things. Home, I think, is the place where you know everybody else’s name, and more than that you know that you belong to it, and it belongs to you more than any other place in the world. (“Its not so very difficult to own something.” in the words of Neil Gaiman, “You just have to know that it’s yours, and then be willing to give it up.”).

Steenbok does not belong to me, and I do not belong to it. We are visitors to one another, brief – if powerful – moments in one another’s existence. That’s not ownership, or belonging, so its not home.

Will as many people ever know who I am in Davis, in Ventura, in wherever I end up eventually? Will I have as big an impact there, or will the place shape me in the same way, with the same sharp and fleeting collision? No, probably not. But they were, it will be, mine, in the same way and for the same reason that Africa never could and never will be. I have no right to claim a place here, that’s what it is. Just like you can see a place for the first time and think “Home.” “Mine.” I think in the same way you can know that a place, a person, whatever, isn’t meant to be yours.
I remember in one of my very first letters home I wrote something along the lines of, “I can feel myself falling in love with Africa, and that surprises me.” It’s still true, of course. I still love this place. I love the feeling of coming home (a place can of course be home, even if it’s not Home) through the bush, watching the sun set to my right. I love that the other day one of my teachers called me “skoni,” which means ‘sister-in-law’ (no I haven’t married anybody! It’s also a term of endearment). I love this place, but I don’t own it, and it doesn’t own me. We maintain our distance from each other, and on some level we both know that it will not last. The place where we are coming from is not the same – and neither is our destination, even if the road parallels for a bit. Which is why a suggestion as simple and obvious to me as a teacher staying in her classroom, instead seems to that teacher the funniest thing she’s heard all day.

RIP

2008-01-18T06:21:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was an excellent day. In the morning I met with the Principal and head teachers at one of my schools to discuss our ideas for the coming year – by which we all meant my last 7 months in Steenbok (!). We discussed mainly two ideas at great length – a possible career fair for the 6th and 7th graders, and the creation of a school-wide vision for the coming years.
The impetus for the career fair is simple – you ask kids what they want to be when they grow up and they pull seemingly random (yet standard) answers out of a hat. “I want to be a teacher, a doctor, an engineer…” Which are all great of course, but then you ask them how they plan to do it and the answer is once again standard: “I don’t know.” They don’t know what’s really out there, what subjects they need to study, what school they have to go to, how to get a scholarship, or even to fill out a basic job application or create a resume. So yesterday afternoon, two teachers and I sat down to brainstorm every career we could think of in the area. We came up with over 50 in less than an hour, and realized it would be a little bit difficult to have them all get up and talk one by one for only one day. Then another plan began to take shape: We’re going to hold a career week, instead.
The first day will feature a speaker who will describe various job opportunities and possibilities in the area along with – well, I’m not really sure what she’s going to talk about, but she’s a local something or other and the teachers thought it would be a good idea to have her come and kick off the whole thing. That same day we’ll give the kids one of those ridiculous interest/skill inventories that’s supposed to tell you if you’ll make a better architect or taxi driver. (I know they’re absurd and label-y and probably not all that useful anyways, but I have a feeling the kids have literally NO IDEA what angle to begin looking from, so at least we can give them a starting point.) We’ll also give them a time table and summary of the various speakers who are coming over the next week to take home to their parents. The idea here is two-fold: One, trigger parental discussions about the child’s possible future; and two, invite anybody in the community who wants to come. We’re going to make this open to anybody who’s interested in stopping by and learning about possible careers. In a community with 70% unemployment, I think we may get a visitor or two. Over the next few days, we’ll have hopefully lots and lots of people from different jobs and places coming to talk to our kids and tell them how to get where they’re going in different sessions throughout the day. The speakers will be put in a certain classroom at a certain time, and the kids can decide whom they want to go listen to.
I know this all sounds pretty complicated, but what’s really cool is how simple it actually is. Invite people to come talk to the kids at a certain place and time, tell the parents about it, invite any community members who are interested. The other amazing thing is that its not just me setting things up. This is truly a group effort – in fact the teachers are the ones who came up with pretty much all of the careers, the plan for a week-long event, and the logistics of it all. I think that’s really cool, and I also think its something I probably couldn’t have done in the beginning. Finally, after a year and a half at site, we’ve started to reach this point of planning together, working together, not just me trying to drag people along. I love that. Too bad I’ve now only got effectively 6 months left to enjoy it. Its honestly enough to make me think about extending for a third year…except that I really, really can’t wait to get back to showers. And microbrews.

We also talked about the idea of creating a school vision, which was actually an extension of a conversation we’d had back in November, that was initiated not by me, but by sever of the deputy principals. I want to help each school create a school vision of quite literally what they want to see when they look out the office door. What do they want their school to look like? Where do they want it to go? And how should we get there.* We came up with a long, ridiculous process, but its one that I think is really suited to the school and will work. We’re going to ask everybody in the school – everybody – what they want to see. From Grade R to Grade 7, teachers, SMT, general workers, the SGB, and parents. Then we’re going to sit down in what I can only assume will be a series of mind-numbing, hair-pulling (for me) meetings, and try to find common ground among all of those different desires (though I’m betting most of them will be pretty close). The result will be our school’s vision, and we can start planning how to get there. Sure it seems a little bit bulky and not terribly efficient, but I think it will work. Once again, the great thing is that we’re not doing things my way, we’re doing them our way.

Those were the two big collaborative efforts of the day, but it was the two smaller personal ones from which I got to take a pretty big feeling of personal satisfaction.

I’ve started teaching world history to one little girl in grade 6 during her normal English period. She spent most of her school time in Joburg, and consequently already speaks English better than pretty much anybody else in the village (possibly including me). Spending her time reciting, “The ball is on the table. The boy sees the ball. The boy is playing with the ball.” is one of the more useless things I can think of, so her teacher and the principal agreed to let me pull her out during English class when I’m around so that we can work on something together instead. And when I asked, she wanted to learn history. So now the two of us our learning World History. Which I’ve definitely never taught, in addition to never having taught anybody one on one. So this should be fun. But she’s smart, and asks good questions, and together we’ll figure it out.

All of the above is pretty good of course -- career fairs, school visions, world history -- however I’ve definitely been saving the best, the thing that gets me the most excited and of which I am the most proud, for last.
Izora has *not only* mastered the main tune of the alphabet song, *not only* does she mostly get and average of 14-16 of the letters in there when she’s singing it, *not only* has the concept of signing various letters while she does it, BUT: As of yesterday she’s mastered A-C on their own. She can point to them and name them without any help from me. And just like that, this 3 year old is suddenly ahead of half the kids in grade 3. What a smart kid.

*In other words: ‘Quo Vadius.’ Man was Sports Night a good show.

All Tuckered Out

2008-01-07T04:06:00.000-08:00

I have more thoughts percolating in my head, but they've yet to make themselves into a coherent post, so it will just be a little bit longer until that goes up. Today is, I guess, my last day of vacation (or my last day before going back to site at least) and after a few days of decompressing in Pretoria I will be more than glad to get back. I have a lot of plans and projects for my last two terms at school, and I can't wait to see just how many we can pull off before August 21st. In the meantime:

Me and Bhutazwa at Amazing Grace on Christmas Day. I may have to smuggle him home at the end of service. (Also, if anybody could explain to me how to rotate pictures on blogger I'd be very happy).

Mom goes on Safari*.

Dad goes on Safari too.

Hippos! What you can't see is the 27 car pileup (plus one very impatient minivan) as everybody tried to get up and down a rail-less one lane cement bridge to the main rest area/lunch stop while simultaneously trying to get as many yawning hippo photos as possible.

And giraffes. Which are very tall. And also very funny looking.

Lions. A whole pride of them came right up to our safari truck (yes, safari truck. With real tourists and everything. I preferred to think of it as a different aspect of wildlife spotting).

An elephant hanging out in Kruger. We saw lots of these. They don't seem to worry about people too much.

Dad looking deeply concerned next to the crocodile ("flatdog") warning sign in Swaziland. We saw a wildebeest body dissapear in less than 2 days.

Mom cooking in my kitchen in Steenbok. We made delicious spaghetti for my family. We thought it was delicious, at least.

Mom and Dad on a hike in Swaziland. Aww.

There were also some very precarious bridges on the way. Fortunately there were not too many crocodiles at this particular bend in the river. (I would also like to know how to rotate this one.)

Dad is king of the mountatin.

New Years dinner in Cape Town, yay! Note the all-tequlia margaritas on the table, and the fact that I wasn't given fair warning in the look on my face.

Long Street in Cape Town on New Year's eve. Its like Mardi Gras, but with more Afrikaans.

An African Jackass penguin. Really. They live in Cape Town on the beach and swim in the Indian Ocean all day. I think this pretty clearly proves that these are the smartest penguins in existence. None of that freezing their tails off March of the Penguin BS for these guys.

All in all, it was a long, tiring, and very satisfying trip.

The parents should theoretically be posting all the rest on snapfish sometime in the near future. When they wake up from their naps.

*Random trivia fact for the day: 'safari' apparently translates to 'walk' in Swahili (which is not siswati, for those of you who may have been confused). This is why you have to go in the biggest, and most petrol intensive vehicle that you can find.

Family Vacation

2008-01-04T00:12:00.000-08:00

I need some time to process the last couple of weeks before I post any sort of substantitive blog entry. But in brief, mom and dad came out and we had a really amazing time -- Kruger, Amazing Grace, Steenbok, Swaziland, and Cape town -- all in less than two weeks! It was really great. Here are some photos to prove it:

At the Amazing Grace Children's Center in Malelane, passing out christmas gifts. I think mom bought out at least three different dollar store toy sections.

By "passing out gifts" of course what I actually mean is "putting the box on the ground and letting the riot happen." The kids were actually very very good about sharing everything and playing with all the toys together. No thrown elbows or body checks in sight, just a bunch of really happy kids on christmas.

Where we all live!

Wild dogs in Kruger! We saw these on a night drive. They're incredibly rare, we were very lucky.

Two More (okay, 2.5)

2007-12-20T03:06:00.000-08:00

Okay, these are my final comments on camp/life in general for now:

Should any of you like to knit, and be looking for a cool project, I can now highly reccomend mother bear. I've seen the faces of the kids when they get their bears -- they were passed out at breakfast on the last day of camp, while some counselors spontaneously began to sing Christmas carols -- and it was just one more moment at camp where suddenly the room was full of happy, crying, singing people. Awesome.

My computer has what I'm going to euphemistically call the chicken pox (and will studiously avoid call "being dead") so while I have tons and tons of photos of camp and thanksgiving and lots of fun things like that -- well, it may take a while until they make it online. Dammit.

And finally, Camp Sizanani has a website at www.worldcamps.org if you want to see pictures of camp activites in general, even if I myself do not happen to be in them.

In Which I Become Mariah Carey

2007-12-20T02:33:00.000-08:00

I just got back from two weeks at a girls camp in the Northwest province (a girls camp which I blessedly was not in charge of, but only helping out at, I might add). Its an amazing program called Camp Sizanani ("Helping Each Other" in Zulu) that takes kids from Soweto, the big famous and extremely poor township outside of Jo'burg, and brings them to essentially summer camp for two weeks. They do Sports, Arts and Crafts, Theater, Adventure, Swimming, and -- crucially -- Lifeskills. The whole camp is designed around lifeskills, actually, with each activity being specifically focused on increasing self-esteem, communication, empowerment, and all the good stuff like that. So of all the above activites, imagine Becca goes to camp to help out, what would I obviously be doing?

If you answered swimming, you were too right (and blindly guessing). I originally went with the intention of doing Lifeskills, I mean thats my 'thing' right? However, it turns out that one of the major and unexpected skill deficits of the South African camp counselors was the ability to swim. Nobody knew how to swim, yet counselors were needed to teach swimming. A conundrum. And there I was. Suddenly in the pool four hours a day for nine straight days when I thought I'd be teaching all about gender roles and HIV instead.

It was amazingly fun. About 98% of the girls had never been in a pool, never been in a large body of water of any sort before, and to see them progress from outright terror to enthusiastic swimmers was such a blast. One girl, of whom I was particularly proud, told me that a number of years ago she'd spent four days in the hospital after nearly drowning in a swimming pool. But she got in the water, even though I could see how scared she was, and by the end of the nine days she was splashing around indistinguishable from the rest of the kids. Thats bravery.

I was also in charge, along with two other girls (one another PCV, one a South African) or a cabin of 14 13-14 year old girls. Oh my god, what an age. I was reminded why teaching middle school is considered a punishment in the states. It was a little bit funny, though, to watch them vascillate between being the little girls they had just been, who only wanted to have fun, and the adults whom they were pretty sure they should be -- and much too cool for any of that fun stuff. You could see the battle in their eyes, and it was hard to get too mad at them for anything. In fact, they were all incredibly sweet girls (even the ones who pretended not to be) and I think we all surprised ourselves on the last day with how much we were going to miss one another.

The whole experience, in fact, is hard to summarize except for by describing the last day. On average, in a moment to moment sort of way, it was herding girls from one place to another, teaching lessons, eating bad food, attempting to enforce lights out, solving arguments, attempting to wake them up again in the morning, and generally two weeks of exhaustion. That was moment to moment though, that was the surface. I think on the last day we all sort of realized what we had created in the meantime. During those moments, or inbetween, something really cool had happened.

The closing ceremony of Camp Sizanani is a lot of singing and speaches and poetry around a campfire, followed by a bridge or tunnel of camp counselors which all the girls walk through, stopping one by one for a hug and special message from each adult they'd interacted with over the past 9 days. Not only was there not a single dry eye anywhere, I don't believe there was a single person who wasn't a sobbing mess that night, especially including me. It was amazing. Girls talked about what a life changing experience they'd gone through, about what they'd learned and the bonds they'd made with the other counselors. They mentioned how they'd love to come back and be counselors themselves next year (and quite a few actually do), and generally affirmed Camp Sizanani as one of the best things that had ever happened to them. It was really beautiful.

One of the images that I'm left with, the one that sort of expresses camp to me, happened towards the end of our time in the pool. We'd progressed beyond kicking and putting our faces in the water (well, most of us) and had moved on to actual moving-our-arms, kicking-our-legs real live swimming. I had the girls swim to me one at a time, always backing up just a little bit, but always right in front of them where they could see me. My constant litany was "its okay, I'm right here, I'm not going to let anything bad happen to you, you're safe." and I think I said it more than was necessary, because to be able to promise that to a child here is a luxury I won't often have again. So I said it a lot, and I think it was comforting for all of us, and especially healing for me. But we swam out, or rather I walked back and the girl swam to me, until finally I stopped with my back against the rope that demarcate the shallow and the beginning-to-be-deep ends. Then I would stop the girl, and hold her up, and point back to where we had come from -- about 15 feet. "Look! You just swam that whole way, all by yourself, you swam that far! Aren't you proud of yourself?" And inevitably the girl would turn around and her face would break out into a look of awe. In the process of getting there, I don't think she'd realized where she'd been going. And all of a sudden, she'd really accomplished something. Something that a week ago had seemed almost impossible. That one look, when she looked back and saw just how far she'd come, thats Camp Sizanani for me, and something that I think is going to stay with me as one of the highlights of Peace Corps.

Like the Pantages, But Not at All

2007-12-20T02:03:00.000-08:00

One of the first things we did at camp, by which I mean within 30 minutes of picking up the kids in Jo'burg, was go and see the Lion King. I don't mean we rented the movie and popped some popcorn -- or even projected it onto a convenient wall after dark. I mean 1800 children, their families, the camp counselors and directors, and four extremely happy Peace Corps Volunteers went to a local performing arts center where Disney had essentially donated the entire 1pm matinee of the South African production of the Lion King musical to Global Camps. This was not what I expected when I signed up for camp, but boy was I happy about it.
I'd seen the Lion King before, years ago in LA (for somebody's birthday, as I recall), and I'd remembered it being pretty awesome. So-so music (especially the weird fillers not written by Elton John) but AMAZING costumes. The Lion King is all about the visuals, the unbelievable puppets and characters and scenes that the artists have created. Thats what I remembered. Of course, the major difference between when I saw it with Tess and when I saw it two weeks ago were the 1800 children from Soweto who had never seen anything like this before in their lives. That and the fact that we were seeing it actually in Africa gave it an incredible depth. Here they tweak the languages of the songs quite a bit, which is fun. A lot of the original music was written in Swahili -- the parts that weren't in English, of course. Here they've instead switched a lot of the Swahili for Zulu, and also managed to fit in I believe all 11 official language plus Khoisan, a language which consists almost entirely of clicks and whistles which very few people speak anymore. The kids loved it.
In fact, the kids loved all of it, and while getting to see the Lion King was a wonderful experience on its own, getting to see the Lion King with all those kids is probably going to be my hands down best musical theater-esque experience ever. They were literally leaning forward on the edge of their seats, applauding, laughing, pointing, yelling, clapping and occasionally even singing along. (Hakuna Matata, especially, was a hit. Though according to the little girl next to me who apparently did in fact speak Swahili: "It means no problems not no worries." How can I not love seeing the Lion King in Africa?) When the performers came out for the final curtain call, the kids went wild screaming and applauding for all their favorites -- all except for the man who played Scar, who got perhaps the longest and loudest "Boooo!" I've ever heard. The poor guy. Once I stopped laughing I felt a little bad for him.

That Was Unexpected

2007-11-15T05:23:00.000-08:00

On tuesday of this week I did what I had initially planned to be a short workshop/lesson about HIV for my teachers at Bhambatha primary. I honestly had no idea how it would go, but I had a couple of main vague goals in mind: 1) teachers need to be educated just like everybody else; 2) people in the community respect teachers, so whatever the teachers are saying had better be accurate; and 3) free captive audience.
I initially planned to take about an hour, and stole what seemed like a good amount of basic activities from resources peace corps had given us (I could have made up my own, I suppose, but why reinvent the wheel?). I had no idea how much my teachers already knew, how receptive they would be, or if they would even want to be there at all. We ended school at 11 to start -- normally I would have protested, but its the end of the year and they're not really doing much -- and I prepared myself for blank stares and high amounts of resistance. Which is about what I got for the first 10 minutes, until things took a turn for the amazing.
What started out as a planned 1 hour workshop turned into a 3 hour conversation and lesson about HIV. Basic facts, how to stay safe, prevalent myths, social causes, the science behind it, what teachers as community members can do, and...most crucial of all...testing. At the end all of my teachers seemed so positive that I asked them how willing they were to test. If I called the local home based care organization and asked them to come to the school, would teachers test? I got some startled looks, some nervous headshakes. After all, agreeing on the importance of testing in theory is one thing, and not too hard. Actually getting tested yourself, in a county where 1/4 are infected and the stigma and shame are so deep-rooted no one will even call AIDS by its name...well, thats a different deal. But then, the principal said "Yes! We are educators, we are community leaders, we must test!" and the deputy principal agreed, and then another teacher, and another. They told me that if they made the call, they would go.
I was astounded. And I made the call.

Today three people from Thembalethu Home Based Care came to my school to test any teachers or staff that were willing. I was prepared with candy and certificates of bravery for anybody who was willing. I was expecting maybe the 3 or 4 that had committed to step up, maybe 1 or 2 more. Instead virtually every adult in the school got tested.

Almost every adult!! 20 out of 25!! In a place where most people believe that its just better not to know because the stress will kill you. A friend of mine couldn't talk hers into it even with the potential of a R5000 raffle payoff. I just can't convey how truly astounding it was that this many people got tested. Even the testers were shocked.

I am so proud of my teachers. The certificates I made them say "...for demonstrating outstanding BRAVERY and LEADERSHIP in learning their status" and thats exactly what they did.

Briefly

2007-11-08T07:30:00.000-08:00

From a Swazi Volunteer:

"You will not see tangible, measurable results in 2 years anywhere close to what you hope or expect. The saying that "what takes a day in USA takes a week in Africa, what takes a week in USA takes a month in Africa, what takes a month in USA takes 1 year in Africa" is close to true for reasons that you have no control over. So after your first month on the job, when you are still in USA mode, write down what you would like to achieve in 2 months time. This now becomes your 2 year work goal. NOTE: You can achieve more than this if you move into "take charge mode" but not through a capacity building approach. Also, in 2 years, you will probably not move out of USA mode."

When I read this, I first started to laugh very hard. Then for a brief second I thought I might cry. Then I just laughed some more. Its a pretty good summation.

Its Not Just Me

2007-11-05T07:15:00.000-08:00

An unexpected consequence seems to be coming out of my family's attempts at renovating. In the storage room -- now the porch -- there was a bookshelf, you can actually see it in one of the photos below I think. Obviously as soon as I got home last month and saw my surprise I brought all of my books inside (where they now happily live in more cardboard boxes than I would have expected), however my host family never bothered. Consequently, there is now a bookshelf full of all sorts of random things (disentegrating siswati bibles, old text books, ANC policy documents...) just gazing out onto the street. Nothing good, or I would have saved it, but still lots of books just sitting there.
This week I've had at least two sets of visitors that I know of -- primary grade kids come to sort through this apparent treasure trove. I assume that many more have stopped by when I haven't noticed or haven't been around. They're not looking for anything in particular, they're just awed and a little excited at the prospect of so many books waiting out for them -- free to touch or read or page through without any adult discouragement or intervention. Its like watching birds come to a birdfeeder. Unfortunately at the moment the birdfeeder is full of nutrasweet rather than anything actually nutritious, and I don't want to leave any of my very very small stock of picture books out for fear of damage. But it makes me happy to see, and it gives me hope for the library we're building at Ekwenzeni and the one I think will be forthcoming too at Bhambatha if the renovations ever happen. Kids want to read. They want those books. If we build it, they will come.

Thats kind of reassuring, isn't it?

More pictures...

2007-11-03T02:28:00.000-07:00

because I do not win at blogger.

All our pumpkins, lined up in a row.

My butternut-o-lantern guards the house at night.

Bonga strikes poses with her gorgeous face paint and lovelier pumpkin. (Its me...can you tell?)

More Pictures!

2007-11-03T02:15:00.000-07:00

Bubble blowing on the front lawn. Best dollar store purchase ever.

Everybody strikes a pose with their pumpkins and friends. Latoya and Azora look on a little confused.

Sarah demonstrates the art of perfect pumpkin carving.

Masks in grade 3! Seriously, how cute are they?

"Trickatricka!!" Siswati for trick or treat. Here we're trick or treating for stickers, because hopping 65 9 year olds up on sugar is not a good way to start the day.

A grade 3 boy acts out his grandfather costume. His teachers and friends and I were all cracking up.

Ups and Downs

2007-11-02T08:18:00.000-07:00

About a week and a half ago, as an exercise at our mid-service training, we were asked to graph our relative morale from month to month since we had gotten here. Mine seemed to be generally fairly high, though just like everybody else's its gone into a bit of a decline the last few months (like I told Omar, who has just finished his two years and is now off travelling: "Its not exciting and frustrating any more, its just frustrating!" "Yeah, thats pretty normal for right about now."). But like I said, on the whole I rate the last 15 months pretty highly. I attribute this to two things: 1) I really am having fun, and am generally fairly optimistic; and 2) I opted to focus on the best parts of each month rather than the worst. Had we been asked to graph things bi-weekly, or even weekly, there would have been a whole lot more down and things would have been a whole lot more bipolar. This week is an excellent example.

First, the ugly:
Monday and tuesday I once again braved the corporal punishment workshop. I've discussed my thoughts on corporal punishment already, but here I've taken the stance that if its not obvious its probably not that bad, so I don't want to get into it. However, the principal asked me to, so I did.
The first day bordered on disastrous. My teachers argued that the governemnt and department of education were in fact in the wrong, since both Jesus and the Bible advocate beating children (the first time I heard this argument I tried countering: "but didn't Jesus say suffer the little children? and turning the other cheek? Jesus never hit anybody, did he?" I've since learned that this is an entirely worthless strategy, so now I just go with a simple "I don't know. But it is still the law.") By the end of the day I'm pretty sure that I had just convinced them even more of the importance of beating their children. "But Nomvula, of course you are shocked by the extreme levels of violence in South Africa, its because you're from a different culture." Right about there I quit. Not a lot of counterarguments to that one, are there?
The second day was better. We talked about all the different ways teachers could keep discipline without sticks or paddles or any of that. Positive reinforcement, stickers, being in your class (...), all the strategies that we never have to think twice about because we grew up with them, but that are completely foreign to my teachers. It was good! It was great! They were engaged, they asked questions, they agreed that they could and would use all the strategies. They even came up with a few of their own and discussed them. Afterwards quite a few -- including the principal and deputy principal -- came up and thanked me for such a helpful workshop, and promised to do their best.
Success!!
Until today. When I walked into the staff room and saw one of the HODs (department heads) beating the crap out of a learner with a cane until the learner was crouched on the ground, crying and yelling and holding his hands up to protect himself. The childs crime? Hitting another learner. Yup, that beating will definitely teach him that beating people is wrong. (I did pull the HOD aside to speak with him, after initially storming out of the room. We discussed why he did at and what else he could have done...ironically, one discipline technique I highlighted in my workshop.)

Fortunately, this same week I've been spending the large majority of my time with two of my favorite teachers in the village. They are hands down the best of the 60 I work with. They care about the kids, teach the whole time, use a variety of activities and methods, actually plan their lessons, integrate reading and writing...I could go on and on. I love these women. Monday I brought in Swimmy to share with the kids. I figured that I would entertain myself by doing a readaloud, and maybe model it to the teachers as well. I showed Maria -- one of the teachers -- the book, and she immediately grabbed it out of my hands in excitement. Two hours later, there stands Maria, stealing my lesson and doing a phenomenal reading of Swimmy to 65 3rd graders. She stopped to ask questions, translated, had them act out swimming, talked about adjectives...it was wonderful. The kids were enthralled. I wanted to hug her. The next day, as a follow up activity, she had them summarize it in siswati (I suggested that she also ask them to extend the story "...what do you think swimmy and his friends do next?" but apparently that was a little much for kids who aren't even used to repeating in their own words, let alone making up their own things to talk about. Baby steps.)
On Wednesday I also taught what they deemed a "lesson", and I deemed "goofing around because its a holiday" about Halloween. I explained the concept of jack-o-lanterns...the looks on their faces were priceless. Think about the concept of pumpkin carving for a second, its pretty weird. So we drew our own jack-o-lanterns, and then I had them put on masks that they had made for homework and go trick-or-treating for stickers. Apparently the siswati for "trick or treat" is "Trickatricka!!" and I consider that a perfectly valid cultural adaptation. Then we talked a bit about their masks, and I had all of them write poems in English and Siswati about who they were. It was great. I don't claim educational value, but I did get some excellent photos.
After school, Tom, Sarah, myself, and any respective siblings we could find (or steal in Sarah's case) decided to get together for some pumpkin carving. Because you can't have a real halloween without jack-o-lanterns, can you? Unfortunately, what with being in the wrong hemisphere and all, South Africa is a little low on pumpkins at the moment. So we opted for carving butternut-o-lanterns, which worked equally well. Soon a small pack of grade 5 boys wandered over to see what ridiculous thing the crowd of white people was doing. Fortunately Sarah had brought face paint, and I just happened to have some bubbles with me (stickers, bubbles, shiny beads -- the peace corps volunteers essential kit). Soon we had a full on halloween carnival happening!! Here's Tom carving and arranging the lanterns, there's a couple of toddlers running around chasing bubbles, here's a boy with clown face paint. It was awesome. Tomorrow, I'll post pictures.

Photos

2007-10-20T02:24:00.000-07:00

So here you have the roadside view of what my house now looks like. (There are some before shots at snapfish if you want to compare.) I've decided that I'm just going to look at is as haveing a really big, nice patio. Maybe plant some flowers in the giant dirt pile in front.

And here a lovely shot of the next door kraal (cattle pen) and some neighborhood kids who were begging me to "shoot me! shoot me!" while I took the first photo.

The Mercedes

2007-10-12T06:29:00.000-07:00

Let me reiterate, before I post this, that my blog is just mine and has nothing to do with the US Government's opinion, Peace Corp's opinion, anybody in South Africa's opinion, etc... I can't even guarantee that my opinion today will be the same as tomorrow. You may have noticed, in fact, that all my entries tend to be fairly upbeat. This is partially because I like to think of myself as an optimistic (albeit intensley sarcastic) person, and partially because peace corps volunteers getting too candid has a tendency to spark international incidences.

So. The Mercedes.

The family I live with isn't really poor by village standards. There is enough food on the table, enough clothes for all four kids, television, two working parents, etc... They're doing okay. However, my host-father is a local counsellor, and he apparently felt that without a car, he just wasn't living up to the title. So despite the fact that they do occasionally run out of electricity, that they have four children to feed, that I get hit up for money (and/or told about just how 'bankrupt' he is -- code for asking for money) more than I am comfortable with, despite all this, he bought a car. And not just any car, oh no, the counsellor can't be seen in just any car, he needs a Mercedes. Forget that he has children to feed, forget that they barely have enough money now, he needs a Mercedes Benz. (And then there's that other tiny detail: the lack of a driver's license. But no big deal, apparently).

It makes me angry, but not because a mercedes is a mark of western consumerism bla bla bla. He's a grown man, he can spend his money on whatever he wants and I really don't think there's any particular moral judgement to be made. If you want a mercedes instead of...I don't know...a set of the great works of western literature...why should one be a more moral choice than the other? Its not. I don't think that spending money on status symbols is inherently good or bad (though on an emotional level I may find it silly, but haven't I done the same thing? Or didn't I when I had the cash?) No, it makes me mad because its a choice that doesn't just affect him - he has children! There are four girls living in that house who now have less food to eat and less light to study by because their father needed to show off.* Our power has been going out fairly consistently now because they can't afford electricity anymore. My host-mom hit me up for R60 the other day for food (normally I avoid loaning them money, I don't really have that much to loan and I hate being seen as a walking wallet. But what could I do? I love the girls and the thought of them going hungry when I have money is repugnant). I'm pretty sure they wash the car more than the baby (usually with insanely loud and awful music right next to my house), and then there's the little matter of my room being half-demolished for a garage. So I hate the mercedes, a lot. Every time I lose another carton of milk because the powers been off too long, and everytime I see him driving up and down the road honking at people when he should be at work I just start to hate it a little more. I refuse to ride in it, because the thought of the American status symbol hopping into the German status symbol to be shown off around town makes me physically ill.

Does all of this sound a little petty? Maybe it is, maybe hating the car is a way of channelling who knows what other stresses and frustrations that I have to deal with every day all into one convenient package. But I think that its just the embodiment of an idea that I see over and over again here: that the look of a thing is more important than its substance. If a learner has really nice handwriting, but gets the answers wrong, the teacher will praise him or her above everybody else. Conversely, getting the right answer but being too sloppy makes it wrong. Secretaries spend hours on borders, tables, graphics, layouts, because thats all everybody cares about in a document -- the content is secondary. The important thing about a meeting is that you have an agenda and a secretary, not that you have important content and get a lot done. And if a family has a mercedes, they're succesful -- even if the power is off for days at a time. Its all about the look, and never about the big picture.

*The fact that this, and corporal punishment, are the two things that I have refused to concede cultural moral relativism on is interesting, isn't it? They both involve adult's relationships with children. Does this in fact reveal a cultural bias in me? The view that childhood is somehow sacred or inviolate (thanks Victorians)? Or does it mean that moral/cultural relationships between adults are just that -- relationships between two consenting adults of relatively equal power and status -- while children don't get much say in whats happening to them, which makes things less fair? I'm going to go with the second one.

wtf?

2007-10-01T21:06:00.000-07:00

The other day I got home after a long, long time away from site – training, Pretoria, swearing-in for the new volunteers, Limpopo, Sabie (geez!) – all excited to see my family again after 3 weeks, start making some delicious spaghetti, and show off my sweet digs to Erica. Unfortunately, instead of all that I got a little bit of a shock as the taxi pulled up in front of my house.

My host family recently bought a car (which is a whole different entry), and decided that they needed a garage for it. Before I left, my host mother pointed to my house and mentioned that they were planning to expand onto it to make said garage. My interpretation of this, aided by her hand gestures and pointing, was that my home would go from two cozy rooms (one that I use exclusively as a sort of studio apartment, and one that we share for storage) to three, with a third room being added on for the car. You’d think, by now, I’d have learned about the perils of assumption in South Africa – I mean, since probably 98%of my assumptions turn out to be wrong, why do I even trust them at all anymore? But, well, I haven’t.

Can you see where this is going?

So I get home, and now instead of home I have one studio apartment-esque space to live in (to reiterate mom: yes, I still have four intact walls and a door) and…one three walled catastrophe that looks like a mix of a movie set and a construction site. The taxi stopped, and we were all staring at what was once the inside of my house. I was a little surprised. Three hours later my family got home from whatever important business they had, and explained to me that there had been some sort of ‘mistake.’ I’m not entirely clear on this, but it seems like the original intent was for three rooms and then…an error was made? “Oops, knocked a gigantic hole in your wall by accident, well, we’ll just keep ripping it out now.” Who makes mistakes like that? More likely, I’m thinking, is that its cheaper to extend one room a few feet for a car than it is to construct an entirely new one.

I’m a bit pissed/surprised/irritated, but I’m willing to call that normal. I mean really, how difficult would it have been to call me with a “by the way, we’re knocking down a wall tomorrow. Heads up.” I kept a lot of books and school supplies in there, and they were apparently just sitting out for anybody to take them for at least a couple of days before I got home. Nothing got taken though, for once I guess the utter local apathy towards books and literacy has worked out in my favor. I guess the local tsotsis don’t see a lot of value in smuggling over to Maputo and then selling the complete works of John Donne and Shakespeare. A canonical western literature black market on the streets of Mozambique seems unlikely, though I’m not saying I wouldn’t stop by.

Geez.

Visible/Invisible

2007-09-21T01:04:00.000-07:00

I've been back from SA-16 training for about a week and have been spending my time in Pretoria, more or less awaiting the Tenth Anniversary Swearing-In Celebration(party/shindig/do) that, in typical peace corps fashion, was a bit less exciting than all it was talked up to be. I was promised Nelson Mandela and the Clintons! (okay, true I was promised via 8th person rumour, but still). Oh well. There were still swings and free food (in the words of the American Ambassador to South Africa "...one thing I have learned in hosting you guys is that volunteers can eat their own body weight.") and I got all dressed up for the first time since...well, my own swearing in one year ago today (!). We all looked very formal and elegant, not bad for those used to washing in buckets.

During my week here I've been spending a lot of time walking around the city, people-watching, and generally experiencing the vast difference between third world rural life, and first world city life. I'll be very honest: Unlike a lot of what I see each day, it gives me hope. I love seeing all the different people out together, walking together, playing tennis together. I love walking through the University of Pretoria campus and seeing how non-white it is. Is it 87% African and completely aligned with the demographics of the country? Good lord, of course not. But neither is it the all white continuation of the economic and educational disparity that everyday in my village. People are going to University; the cycle is slowly, slowly, slowly dissolving. And I think that thats even more remarkable when you consider that the students at a University now would have been the very first generation since apartheid, born in it's death throes. What will things be like in 20 years? Or 50? In three generations?

I think that one of the things many of us Volunteers tend to forget is that we do live in...not the worst of the worst, but perhaps the most desperate for help. It wouldn't do much good to send Volunteers to places that were getting their acts together on their own, would it? And so our perception of the system might be slightly skewed -- there are good things happening too. Thats not to say for a second that rural education here is anywhere near what it needs to be. I don't know whats going to happen to this generation of children in my village, I don't know if we are anything but a band-aid for this generation of teachers. But what about rural education in America? How good is that? Admittedly there are places like the Esparto district, where I subbed for a bit, or the many incredibly dedicated and fantastic teachers of Santa Paula (hi guys! hi mom!), but then there's also Gustine (hi Kasey!), the inner cities, and on. American education certainly isn't getting it all right, but there are a whole lot of things that are going pretty well. In the same way, there are a whole lot of things going wrong with education in this country, but there are also the occasional things going right (if you can afford it).

melange

2007-09-09T04:29:00.000-07:00

Today I am going to training for the SA-16 Volunteers in Rustenburg (Zeerust? Somewhere far away.) I'll be there for a week talking to the incoming volunteers about integrating into their village and how to become a part of their community. My first thought on this when peace corps told me was "Wow, that would be a good thing to have at training...I wonder how one does it?" So I asked my teachers and my sisters. Latoya's advice: "Um. Patience. I think just lots of patience." Latoya sounds like Peace Corps. One of my teacher's advice: "Well, they should try and get involved in activities and groups in the community, to really meet a lot of people." At that point, I got a little concerned, "wait, Maria, I haven't joined any groups or activities, what am I doing wrong?" "Oh, well. We don't have any in Steenbok. We just have funerals."

There you go

2007-08-29T08:53:00.000-07:00

Today I learned that, in siswati, the word for "why" and the word for "story" are the same. How completely perfect.

Binary

2007-08-29T08:40:00.000-07:00

Last week, on wednesday, I sat in the classroom of one of my favorite teachers (at my least favorite school) and found myself starting to cry. It was just one of those days, where my sheer inability to change anything got to me -- the excusess, the apathy, the fact that I was watching the exact same scenarios play out that I have been for a year with no appreciable change or improvement. Except maybe for the fact that now I just rationalize what I see more.

Today, on wednesday, I again sat in the classroom of another of my favorite teachers (at my favorite school) and again I started crying. This time though, I was watching one of the teachers who had put together Likusasa Letfu conduct a session on gender roles with every grade 6 and 7 girl in the school as part of the weekly club that they planned back at camp. In front stood the four girls who had attended, helping out Violet (the teacher), leading discussions, and generally showing off all they'd got. I've never been more proud of anybody in my life, I don't think.

I'm pretty sure I have a great job.

More Photos

2007-08-20T09:07:00.000-07:00

There are new pictures up on the snapfish site from mine and Roy's vacation, including some shots of my village and house. And lots of animals from Kruger, too. Enjoy!

No Excuses

2007-08-20T08:48:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been teaching grade 6 and 7 English after hours at one of my schools. I really enjoy it, partially because I like working with the kids, and partially because it helps me feel productive. I'm operating on the exact opposite of most South African teaching methodology, that is very little lecturing from me, and a whole lot of activity from the kids. (Well, as little lecturing as possible from me. I still love to talk more than practically anything else out there). I figure that since my siswati would be a whole lot better if I actually practiced it, whats going to improve their english much more than just practicing it as much as possible? I figure that I'm providing facilitated practice with a native speaker, as a supplement to their regular classes, which honestly aren't all that bad. Mostly.

Anyway, all of that is nice, in an "I'm being productive in the Peace Corps" sort of way, but honestly who cares about that? Here's the good part:

Today in grade 7 we were doing some writing, so I thought I'd bring in some music to listen to while they worked. After class some girls stuck around to hang out with the exciting and seemingly newly accessible American. (In fact, I think I'm slowly beginning to drift away from 'exciting white lady' and closer to 'exciting really weird lady.' Whatever, I'll take it). They told me that they'd like to dance a bit, so I bust out some Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, a little Bon Jovi, and then...then I hit upon the Flogging Molly.

Today I instigated a Flogging Molly moshpit in a grade 7 South African classroom. Life is good.

#50

2007-08-05T09:23:00.000-07:00

So the other day I almost got a puppy -- his name would have been Max -- but then I didn't. Now his name is Bobby.

I wasn't (and still am not) planning to get a puppy, understand. A few of my friends have, and while I am very jealous of them and their pet-having fun, I also feel like I am very, very bad at taking care of things when left to my own devices (witness: Sigmund the Beta). Plus I'm leaving in a year (!), and what would I do with it then? So I know, puppy = bad idea.

However. When I showed up to school one cold, windy morning I started hearing the saddest yelps ever the moment I walked in the front gate. They were coming from a tiny little puppy of the standard village mutt variety. He couldn't have been more than 8 weeks old, his eyes were barely open and I could hold him in one hand, and he was just crying and crying. He was cold, he was sad, and children were yelling and poking at him. What was I supposed to do? I found him a box and brought him into the office. (While the clerks made jokes about my new 'child'). Then I decided that he might just be lost and have a home to go to, so I brought him and his box back outside, along with a jar of water and some of my lunch later in the day, on the theory that if he wanted to go home he could, and if he didn't have a home, well...

I spent my whole morning chasing mean children away from 'the' puppy, as in my mind he slowly morphed into 'my' puppy. I started planning how I would take care of him, how soon I could get him to a vet, who I could get to puppy-sit when I went on vacation, all that. In other words, over the course of just 5 hours I went from "pets = DOOM" to "I have a puppy!"

So imagine my shock and desolation, then, when I walked out of the office at about noon to check on my puppy -- and he was gone! Box and all! I immediately dropped what I was working on (a very challenging and productive game of solitaire, I believe) and went on a puppy-finding mission. After much diligent reconaissance work, ("What are you looking for, Nomvula?" "My puppy!" "Oh...he's over there.") I discovered that one of the Grade 1 teachers had decided that since he was outside, he was fair game, and she'd been wanting a dog for a while. I was very sad at the loss of my potential puppy, but she would of course be able to take care of him much longer (if not better!) than I will. So it is all for the best. I suppose. I made her promise to take good care of him, and to give him a good name. (Bobby. Not bad. I guess.)

The end? Not quite. The next day, the puppy's (original) owner called the school and demanded his dog back.

And that was how I almost had a puppy.

Also, remember this post: http://slainteafrica.blogspot.com/2006/12/renovations.html ? Yeah. I finally got around to the painting party. All I need now is a rug, it will really tie the whole room together.

12 down

2007-08-02T09:33:00.000-07:00

Today and yesterday I did the (in)famous corporal punishment workshop with 8 of my foundation phase teachers. I say infamous because it's something that nearly every volunteer does at some point or another, but that doesn't exactly mean its all that succesful. But its sort of like the pit toilet and the mocking and the muggings. Sort of a rite of passage. (No, I have not been mugged. Though many would add to that: "yet")

So, we do the workshop. And I ask them to come up with 2 types of positive reinforcement that they could use in their classroom. My favorite answer, by far:

"Well, instead of yelling: 'Hey Stupid! Stop making noise over there!' we could use their name. Then they will feel proud that we know what their name is."

Yes friends, its been one whole year in the peace corps well spent.

(Also, Molly Weasley is my new hero.)