10/2-10/6: So I have spent the better part of ten months explaining the fact that even though my skin is white in color, I only receive a small stipend and am in effect a volunteer. All progress on this tidbit of cultural exchange was lost after I took a member of my organization to a Peace Corps training this week. Since PEPFAR has far more money than they know what to do with, PC decided to hold our training at a hotel and conference center akin to that of the Four Seasons. Not only were amenities such as a pool, sauna, beach volleyball and kayaking down the adjacent river some of the many that were offered, they also provided three palatial feasts a day that involved multiple rooms and presented some of the best food I’ve ever had. And if the slightest inkling of hunger happened to creep up on you between the banquets, delicate works of art covered in sugar and fresh fruit were displayed with morning and afternoon tea. Although this decadence was a welcome reprieve from my diet of rice and boiled chicken and my bucket baths where after much internal coercion I jump in shaking like a leaf, I can’t help but think how contrary to the goals of Peace Corps such a lavish training is. It’s also upsetting to realize the likelihood my counterpart believes in my hypocrisy. After insisting for almost a year that I don’t have piles of money I can just FedEx here to solve the world’s problems, rather I have something much better to give, my skills!, I’m now afraid all that work has been lost. What message does it send to rural villagers travelling halfway across the country to see such in-your-face wealth and to know they will soon be back working for $1-$2 a day? Perhaps it’s an opportunity they might never again experience, something they will always treasure, rather than something to be resented. I hope it’s the former.
Regardless of the necessity of such extravagant amenities, the actual training was absolutely wonderful and I would honestly do it again next week if I could. An American staff member of Peace Corps Tanzania came to educate about half of my training class on a new small-scale farming technique proven to increase your yields as much as tenfold.
Nobody likes a handout. Men feel a certain pride in caring for their families, going back to the days of the hunter/gathers. If this role is taken away from them by means of government grants which instead of providing support based on income status, gives money for the amount of children you have. So in a rural village that has a 90% unemployment rate the only way of income is through childbirth. I have never seen a clearer example of a government rewarding bad behavior. So the men who were once occupied all day in the work force now have plenty of time to make bad choices that include but aren’t limited to drinking obscene amounts of alcohol and committing gender-based crime.
I believe in bringing back the honor of the breadwinner; empowering the people of my community to take control of their own lives. I think part of the answer lies in improving their small-scale farming. Though this new technique of double digging for better root growth, re-routing water for drought and flood prevention and crop formation isn’t a miracle cure, it is, though, a start in food security. And with 70% of families in South Africa being food insecure throughout the year, these are skills I could teach that could literally change people’s lives. One of my co-workers told me of a community garden that was started by elderly women in the area. I think that’s the perfect place to start.
10/11: Today I found out that my go go is no longer interested in housing me during a staff meeting in Zulu. This topic was brought up as an issue needing to be addressed as if I was not in the room. As if I hadn’t spent every day of the past eight months with people I considered my second family. The problem was seemingly resolved after a two minute discussion which ended in all three of the Peace Corps housing rules being broken: PCVs cannot stay in the same house as the family, in a township and/or with a co-worker. When this was mentioned, several members of the organization walked out on the meeting in disgust at my demands.
Even though I was well aware of the various issues my go go had with me staying on her compound, mainly that I wasn’t paying rent and that I was staying in the hut where she typically performed her ceremonies, I never actually thought I’d have to move. I’m so heartbroken. I know in my heart of hearts that I couldn’t have possibly given her or Zindle more of my time or energy and I also know that that’s not what she was looking for. I thought our bond was stronger than the lust for money and her intentions purer but after a lifetime of poverty the draw of wealth is infectious. In the end, her disappointment in my lack of delivery was palpable and I can’t help but think I’ve failed her.
In my most busy month to date, I now have to add ‘convince new host family to house me for free for a year and a half’ to my list of things to do. Wish me luck.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Friday, October 1, 2010
9/21: Busi asked me how many new Zulu words I learned last week in her absence as she prepared for a funeral and I answered honestly, 15. “15?! You are lazy! Why are you so lazy?! You must study more!” I almost started crying as I tried to justify my priorities in immersing myself in the workshops for the caregivers. She was unimpressed. “You must try harder.” I continued in vain to try to articulate that, in fact, this organization and this community is all I ever think about, then I go to bed and dream about it but she had already walked away.
9/22: I had my second real contact with an Afrikaaner today and it was hilarious. She came to our new building which was funded by a Dutch church because the other half of our new building is a church as well. She would talk in English and the caregivers would just stare blankly back at her nodding and repeating, "Yes, yes." She then would insert a slow and condescending 'yebo' (yes) every once in a while for cultural integration purposes. I think I laughed for an hour straight watching everyone take turns imitating her afterwards. I then made sure to remind everyone that contrary to appearances, I’m not actually a White person and do not wish to be associated with that mess of a White lady but in fact am Zulu like them. Everyone agreed.
So I was about to slide into bed at my usual 9:00pm deadline when I completely forgot to document the true joy that happened today: my HIV/AIDS and ARVs workshop!! Not only did several more ladies come but Mpostol was just as dynamic of a facilitator as ever. He, once again, was a no-show for our train the trainer day yesterday but I also realized recently that he’s not really on strike in solidarity with the public sector but the Chairperson at my organization stole his monthly stipend…on accident if you can believe it and he can’t afford the bush taxi commute with no money coming in. The theft is a whole other story but the Cliff notes version is that she meant to steal the money for the food parcels we give out monthly to starving families but she didn’t realize that since the public sector was on strike we didn’t get that money and only Mpostol’s stipend was in the bank account, which for some reason is given in six month lump sums. At any rate, he made it today and early enough for me to go over everything I wanted to articulate to him yesterday. Everyone was participating and taking diligent notes…and learning!!! I was a part of the learning process; it was wonderful. My cheeks hurt I was smiling so much in the corner of the room. It was also reassuring to know that since the high majority of these women are HIV positive themselves, they can now better understand what’s happening and what will happen with their bodies in a very non-threatening environment.
9/23: After walking for over an hour uphill to the ‘local’ junior high I realized that the bag of eggs I purchased from a lady three days ago was still in my bag. How did this dawn on me well into my epic journey, you might ask. Well, one of them broke and quickly covered the entire bottom of my bag and started dripping down my leg as I continued to trek up the dirt path. See, I still had a half hour to go and another school to visit after that so I had no time to do a quick bag switcheroo let alone a head to toe Salmonella sanitation. I talked to the principals of both the junior high and high school about Camp GLOW and they were both really excited about it, which of course made me excited as well. Though I have to admit it was difficult to keep a straight face when talking to the principal of the high school, which of course was located on seemingly the opposite side of the earth from the junior high.
Heritage Day is tomorrow and it’s a public holiday where everyone dresses in traditional clothing and celebrates their culture. Well, since schools are closed tomorrow the high school celebrated today. The principal wore a sleeveless skin tight leopard print shirt, huge bedazzled earrings that rested on his shoulders, a rainbow scarf draped gracefully around his neck and pants with colorful patches of fringe going every which way. Next to me was a student wearing a lacy, transparent bra and lots of beads, including a beaded square that was conveniently placed below her waist, and nothing else. This wouldn’t have fazed me in the slightest if it wasn’t for the formality of the school setting. It was quite the contradiction though we proceeded to talk about the importance of girls’ empowerment for almost an hour. Other young girls in nothing but beads and lacy bras also came in and out to give their two cents, definitely a successful meeting.
Post script: Yes, I’m well aware of how thoroughly I’ve documented my absent-mindedness and yes, I’m also looking into investing in a more competent shadow than Zindle, to make sure that when, not if, I forget my own name, they’ll be there to remind me.
9/24: So as mentioned earlier, today is Heritage Day. As the reliable friend that it is, my radio explained to me in detail all the wonderful activities to be had during this special holiday in Durban the lovely beach town and provincial capital. I was convinced. As if I needed another reason to go other than my radio told me to, one of my fellow Peace Corps friends was celebrating his 31st birthday there and invited everyone to join in on the festivities. Angie and I decided to be travel buddies and planned to meet in our shopping town so we could catch the same bush taxi to Durban. Well I got there rather early, due to my false sense of security and wayward decision making facilitating my hitch hiking with random strangers. In my defense, they were clean cut and spoke impeccable English. (Criminals never have good fashion sense let alone are fluent in other languages). Anyway, I held down the fort for us, clearly blocking two spaces in the taxi while I read, “Prodigal Summer” by: Barbara Kingsolver, which is an amazing book by the way. Two hours later, Angie was still MIA and the taxi was almost full. I started obsessively calling her but I couldn’t communicate because I somehow put a hands-free setting on my phone that I was unable to alter. Thus began my shameless stall tactics. First was a mosey to the ATM, followed by a bathroom stop at the swamp of stagnant sewage that is designated for defecation. The taxi driver was not amused and waved me over from 100 yards away. I hurriedly explained my dilemma, far from sympathetic, he quickly had two more passengers filling our spots. I then repeated my routine in the next taxi, marking my territory and Angie’s as I watched the first taxi leave. I tried not to think about how long this new taxi would take to fill up in mid-morning but it eventually did and Angie eventually came. This is Africa after all, everything eventually works out, just maybe a little later than expected. Because of the plague that is large-group indecision, we never got around to the Heritage Day activities but we did go to a delightful Italian restaurant at 8:30pm (my bedtime!) This was followed by an absolutely packed, posh night club where I felt a bit out of place with my ratty hair, head scarf and ankle-length skirt. I tried to act normal, which is not so easy with hairy arm pits and forgotten social skills. The flashing lights made me dizzy and I wished I never agreed to be reminded of how the other half lives.
9/25: My friends and I stayed at a hostel in the high-end district of Durban and chanced upon a charming market with amazing little booths, many of which sold food that looked like art. It was dreary and rainy all day though I kept my bathing suit on just in case. (This subtle hint to the gods went unnoticed). As soon as it became clear that the weather wasn’t going to get better and the market was closing up shop we continued our shopping extravaganza at a different location. Though I didn’t do many of the things I set out to do this weekend in Durban (celebrate Heritage Day, vegetate on the beach) I did get one thing crossed off: have gigantic, gluttonous meal in honor of fellow PCV’s birth. With that said, I’m leaving Durban quite satisfied.
9/26: I left Durban’s sunny, cloudless sky to spend the day baking in a cramped bush taxi with no air circulation. The funny part is there are windows on these bush taxis but as soon as the engine’s turned on, you can hear the click, click, click of them all closing at once. I’m at a loss to the rationale behind this unnecessary suffering but at about hour five I begged someone to open a window just a crack as we wound up and down hills at lightning speed. I eventually stumbled out of the taxi in a mess of heat exhaustion and dehydration and quite literally peeled off my clothes, rang out the sweat, and went to bed.
9/27: Today I woke up with a head cold not helped by the plunge in temperature. I put on my standard three layers on top and bottom to work at my unheated, un-insulated wind tunnel of an organization. It took me quite awhile to question why I dragged my half-dead body to work on a freezing Monday only to vegetate with a mound of tissues and a pounding headache. Was I saving up my sick days to go to an afternoon Cubs game? The light bulb went on so I left so as to not further infect a population with an already weak immune system, not to mention my general sanity. Also of note, I made a genuine search for possible Nyquil purchase anywhere in the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal to be shipped to the hut sending distress calls via smoke signal. I would currently give both pinky toes for one dose of that wonderful drug. What function do pinky toes present anyway; what asset or assistance do they provide? It seems like more than a fair trade for anyone interested in a few extra toes. Will keep you posted on my findings.
9/28: I had one of the most delightful conversations with my sister today, I just couldn’t stop smiling for hours after, it was quite awkward really.
9/29: I’ve talked to several people recently who don’t seem to have the foggiest idea what I’m doing over here in the boondocks. Buzz words like ‘capacity building’ and ‘investing in human capitol’ don’t clarify things? Assuming that’s clear as mud I’ll go ahead and elaborate. So today was my third workshop in a seemingly endless series of workshops to train the in-home hospice care workers at my organization. I developed the curriculum and have attempted to train the know-it-all facilitator to well, facilitate them. Today’s topic was psycho-social support: asking open-ended questions, reflecting feelings, paraphrasing and how to overcome the awkwardness of talking to a terminally-ill client complete with role plays. Also on the docket in this two-fur was memory boxes. I heard about this wonderful idea through our partner organization, Isibindi, but since these two organizations, though housed in the same facility, don’t speak, I added that in. Memory boxes are usually used as a tool for dying parents to continue their legacy to their children. Typical items include letters to their children, photos and important documents that the soon-to-be orphans will not misplace like a birth/death certificate. Unfortunately, the attendance to my lovely workshops has been abhorrent, which is ironic seeing as though all the Caregivers begged me for this. But I continue on, dragging the facilitator in the room by the elbow while explaining, “We could teach someone, something that could completely change their life. What if someone sat here today and took her newfound active listening skills to a client who has no one? Who’s ostracized because of her status and the one person not scared to catch HIV from her is one of these amazing women huddled in the corner scared to go near the over-enthusiastic white girl who’s had three cups of tea before 10:00? It’s possible, right?” Right?
9/30: So today I went into town and I had four large packages waiting for me at the infamous Post Office. One was from my family but the remaining three were filled to the gills with hand-knit teddy bears from the Mother Bear Project. After I eventually got them all to the taxi rank I was using one of them as a seat as someone approached me. This woman, Thembe, came to Zamimpilo half a dozen times asking me for help with a project she was doing for a one year training program to be a nurse or social worker’s assistant. I saw her at the rank and her hands were shaking. I asked her what was wrong and she said that her mother just died that morning. She said that she’s the oldest and that she has so many siblings and they’re all orphans now. It seemed as though things just started to sink in as she sat on one of my make-shift chairs. She didn’t know how they were going to make it. I was shocked to see her crying in public. This went so much against the Zulu culture it almost made me feel uncomfortable, a pseudo-Zulu. I felt so sad for her then. Here she was, one of the few women who make it into one of these programs and was on her way to bigger and better things when the matriarch of her family dies and by cultural obligation she needs to take over. She was so close. Rarely can people even taste the freedom she must have tasted in knowing she might soon get out of poverty. I tried to lift her spirits but she was devastated both for the loss of her mother and for the life she could have lived.
When I got home I was so excited to present my first teddy bear to Zindle, I thought it was only fair, she is an AIDS orphan after all. I could tell she was excited but she didn’t show the amount of emotion I expected. I was a bit disappointed to be honest, it was somewhat anti-climactic. Then I watched for the rest of the afternoon as she dragged that teddy bear everywhere and when she wanted both her hands free she tied it to her back as the women here do with their children. I even caught her nodding her head saying, “Uh-huh, yebo (yes)” on my front stoop while she was having a conversation with her new found friend.
10/1: If I realized I would be hit from all sides with one frustrating thing after another I would have stayed in bed. The list is too long and depressing to mention. Many items on the list stem from the life-long persecution of Black South Africans and subsequent inability to live comfortable lives. This leads many to beg, borrow and steal. Because they grew up with white men and women constantly putting them down, they are very critical of me, perhaps as a sort of sub-conscious revenge. I accept this as a form of collateral damage of their suffering. I trust that I’m doing the best I can and I have faith that they will see that one day too. I think it’s just hard for them to fathom a malungu that doesn’t own a Porshe, they all do in the movies after all. And they assume that I could (and should) channel some of my billions to their need for a car, new house, shoes, cute t-shirt, stipends for the in-home hospice workers etc, etc. Many, most especially my home-stay family, are growing impatient with my ‘façade’ as a Volunteer and are ready to be bankrolled into the next millennia. Little do they know they’ll be waiting awhile; I’m counting my pennies just as much as they are haha.
I have to say that even on days like today where I feel so worn down, there are so many things that I love about this place that I never want to leave. I would just maybe request the ant colony to stop blanketing all my belongings and perhaps the alleviation of the petty theft going on at my org and the apathy towards all projects I implement. Okay, okay it’s not perfect but I still love it. : )
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
9/22: I had my second real contact with an Afrikaaner today and it was hilarious. She came to our new building which was funded by a Dutch church because the other half of our new building is a church as well. She would talk in English and the caregivers would just stare blankly back at her nodding and repeating, "Yes, yes." She then would insert a slow and condescending 'yebo' (yes) every once in a while for cultural integration purposes. I think I laughed for an hour straight watching everyone take turns imitating her afterwards. I then made sure to remind everyone that contrary to appearances, I’m not actually a White person and do not wish to be associated with that mess of a White lady but in fact am Zulu like them. Everyone agreed.
So I was about to slide into bed at my usual 9:00pm deadline when I completely forgot to document the true joy that happened today: my HIV/AIDS and ARVs workshop!! Not only did several more ladies come but Mpostol was just as dynamic of a facilitator as ever. He, once again, was a no-show for our train the trainer day yesterday but I also realized recently that he’s not really on strike in solidarity with the public sector but the Chairperson at my organization stole his monthly stipend…on accident if you can believe it and he can’t afford the bush taxi commute with no money coming in. The theft is a whole other story but the Cliff notes version is that she meant to steal the money for the food parcels we give out monthly to starving families but she didn’t realize that since the public sector was on strike we didn’t get that money and only Mpostol’s stipend was in the bank account, which for some reason is given in six month lump sums. At any rate, he made it today and early enough for me to go over everything I wanted to articulate to him yesterday. Everyone was participating and taking diligent notes…and learning!!! I was a part of the learning process; it was wonderful. My cheeks hurt I was smiling so much in the corner of the room. It was also reassuring to know that since the high majority of these women are HIV positive themselves, they can now better understand what’s happening and what will happen with their bodies in a very non-threatening environment.
9/23: After walking for over an hour uphill to the ‘local’ junior high I realized that the bag of eggs I purchased from a lady three days ago was still in my bag. How did this dawn on me well into my epic journey, you might ask. Well, one of them broke and quickly covered the entire bottom of my bag and started dripping down my leg as I continued to trek up the dirt path. See, I still had a half hour to go and another school to visit after that so I had no time to do a quick bag switcheroo let alone a head to toe Salmonella sanitation. I talked to the principals of both the junior high and high school about Camp GLOW and they were both really excited about it, which of course made me excited as well. Though I have to admit it was difficult to keep a straight face when talking to the principal of the high school, which of course was located on seemingly the opposite side of the earth from the junior high.
Heritage Day is tomorrow and it’s a public holiday where everyone dresses in traditional clothing and celebrates their culture. Well, since schools are closed tomorrow the high school celebrated today. The principal wore a sleeveless skin tight leopard print shirt, huge bedazzled earrings that rested on his shoulders, a rainbow scarf draped gracefully around his neck and pants with colorful patches of fringe going every which way. Next to me was a student wearing a lacy, transparent bra and lots of beads, including a beaded square that was conveniently placed below her waist, and nothing else. This wouldn’t have fazed me in the slightest if it wasn’t for the formality of the school setting. It was quite the contradiction though we proceeded to talk about the importance of girls’ empowerment for almost an hour. Other young girls in nothing but beads and lacy bras also came in and out to give their two cents, definitely a successful meeting.
Post script: Yes, I’m well aware of how thoroughly I’ve documented my absent-mindedness and yes, I’m also looking into investing in a more competent shadow than Zindle, to make sure that when, not if, I forget my own name, they’ll be there to remind me.
9/24: So as mentioned earlier, today is Heritage Day. As the reliable friend that it is, my radio explained to me in detail all the wonderful activities to be had during this special holiday in Durban the lovely beach town and provincial capital. I was convinced. As if I needed another reason to go other than my radio told me to, one of my fellow Peace Corps friends was celebrating his 31st birthday there and invited everyone to join in on the festivities. Angie and I decided to be travel buddies and planned to meet in our shopping town so we could catch the same bush taxi to Durban. Well I got there rather early, due to my false sense of security and wayward decision making facilitating my hitch hiking with random strangers. In my defense, they were clean cut and spoke impeccable English. (Criminals never have good fashion sense let alone are fluent in other languages). Anyway, I held down the fort for us, clearly blocking two spaces in the taxi while I read, “Prodigal Summer” by: Barbara Kingsolver, which is an amazing book by the way. Two hours later, Angie was still MIA and the taxi was almost full. I started obsessively calling her but I couldn’t communicate because I somehow put a hands-free setting on my phone that I was unable to alter. Thus began my shameless stall tactics. First was a mosey to the ATM, followed by a bathroom stop at the swamp of stagnant sewage that is designated for defecation. The taxi driver was not amused and waved me over from 100 yards away. I hurriedly explained my dilemma, far from sympathetic, he quickly had two more passengers filling our spots. I then repeated my routine in the next taxi, marking my territory and Angie’s as I watched the first taxi leave. I tried not to think about how long this new taxi would take to fill up in mid-morning but it eventually did and Angie eventually came. This is Africa after all, everything eventually works out, just maybe a little later than expected. Because of the plague that is large-group indecision, we never got around to the Heritage Day activities but we did go to a delightful Italian restaurant at 8:30pm (my bedtime!) This was followed by an absolutely packed, posh night club where I felt a bit out of place with my ratty hair, head scarf and ankle-length skirt. I tried to act normal, which is not so easy with hairy arm pits and forgotten social skills. The flashing lights made me dizzy and I wished I never agreed to be reminded of how the other half lives.
9/25: My friends and I stayed at a hostel in the high-end district of Durban and chanced upon a charming market with amazing little booths, many of which sold food that looked like art. It was dreary and rainy all day though I kept my bathing suit on just in case. (This subtle hint to the gods went unnoticed). As soon as it became clear that the weather wasn’t going to get better and the market was closing up shop we continued our shopping extravaganza at a different location. Though I didn’t do many of the things I set out to do this weekend in Durban (celebrate Heritage Day, vegetate on the beach) I did get one thing crossed off: have gigantic, gluttonous meal in honor of fellow PCV’s birth. With that said, I’m leaving Durban quite satisfied.
9/26: I left Durban’s sunny, cloudless sky to spend the day baking in a cramped bush taxi with no air circulation. The funny part is there are windows on these bush taxis but as soon as the engine’s turned on, you can hear the click, click, click of them all closing at once. I’m at a loss to the rationale behind this unnecessary suffering but at about hour five I begged someone to open a window just a crack as we wound up and down hills at lightning speed. I eventually stumbled out of the taxi in a mess of heat exhaustion and dehydration and quite literally peeled off my clothes, rang out the sweat, and went to bed.
9/27: Today I woke up with a head cold not helped by the plunge in temperature. I put on my standard three layers on top and bottom to work at my unheated, un-insulated wind tunnel of an organization. It took me quite awhile to question why I dragged my half-dead body to work on a freezing Monday only to vegetate with a mound of tissues and a pounding headache. Was I saving up my sick days to go to an afternoon Cubs game? The light bulb went on so I left so as to not further infect a population with an already weak immune system, not to mention my general sanity. Also of note, I made a genuine search for possible Nyquil purchase anywhere in the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal to be shipped to the hut sending distress calls via smoke signal. I would currently give both pinky toes for one dose of that wonderful drug. What function do pinky toes present anyway; what asset or assistance do they provide? It seems like more than a fair trade for anyone interested in a few extra toes. Will keep you posted on my findings.
9/28: I had one of the most delightful conversations with my sister today, I just couldn’t stop smiling for hours after, it was quite awkward really.
9/29: I’ve talked to several people recently who don’t seem to have the foggiest idea what I’m doing over here in the boondocks. Buzz words like ‘capacity building’ and ‘investing in human capitol’ don’t clarify things? Assuming that’s clear as mud I’ll go ahead and elaborate. So today was my third workshop in a seemingly endless series of workshops to train the in-home hospice care workers at my organization. I developed the curriculum and have attempted to train the know-it-all facilitator to well, facilitate them. Today’s topic was psycho-social support: asking open-ended questions, reflecting feelings, paraphrasing and how to overcome the awkwardness of talking to a terminally-ill client complete with role plays. Also on the docket in this two-fur was memory boxes. I heard about this wonderful idea through our partner organization, Isibindi, but since these two organizations, though housed in the same facility, don’t speak, I added that in. Memory boxes are usually used as a tool for dying parents to continue their legacy to their children. Typical items include letters to their children, photos and important documents that the soon-to-be orphans will not misplace like a birth/death certificate. Unfortunately, the attendance to my lovely workshops has been abhorrent, which is ironic seeing as though all the Caregivers begged me for this. But I continue on, dragging the facilitator in the room by the elbow while explaining, “We could teach someone, something that could completely change their life. What if someone sat here today and took her newfound active listening skills to a client who has no one? Who’s ostracized because of her status and the one person not scared to catch HIV from her is one of these amazing women huddled in the corner scared to go near the over-enthusiastic white girl who’s had three cups of tea before 10:00? It’s possible, right?” Right?
9/30: So today I went into town and I had four large packages waiting for me at the infamous Post Office. One was from my family but the remaining three were filled to the gills with hand-knit teddy bears from the Mother Bear Project. After I eventually got them all to the taxi rank I was using one of them as a seat as someone approached me. This woman, Thembe, came to Zamimpilo half a dozen times asking me for help with a project she was doing for a one year training program to be a nurse or social worker’s assistant. I saw her at the rank and her hands were shaking. I asked her what was wrong and she said that her mother just died that morning. She said that she’s the oldest and that she has so many siblings and they’re all orphans now. It seemed as though things just started to sink in as she sat on one of my make-shift chairs. She didn’t know how they were going to make it. I was shocked to see her crying in public. This went so much against the Zulu culture it almost made me feel uncomfortable, a pseudo-Zulu. I felt so sad for her then. Here she was, one of the few women who make it into one of these programs and was on her way to bigger and better things when the matriarch of her family dies and by cultural obligation she needs to take over. She was so close. Rarely can people even taste the freedom she must have tasted in knowing she might soon get out of poverty. I tried to lift her spirits but she was devastated both for the loss of her mother and for the life she could have lived.
When I got home I was so excited to present my first teddy bear to Zindle, I thought it was only fair, she is an AIDS orphan after all. I could tell she was excited but she didn’t show the amount of emotion I expected. I was a bit disappointed to be honest, it was somewhat anti-climactic. Then I watched for the rest of the afternoon as she dragged that teddy bear everywhere and when she wanted both her hands free she tied it to her back as the women here do with their children. I even caught her nodding her head saying, “Uh-huh, yebo (yes)” on my front stoop while she was having a conversation with her new found friend.
10/1: If I realized I would be hit from all sides with one frustrating thing after another I would have stayed in bed. The list is too long and depressing to mention. Many items on the list stem from the life-long persecution of Black South Africans and subsequent inability to live comfortable lives. This leads many to beg, borrow and steal. Because they grew up with white men and women constantly putting them down, they are very critical of me, perhaps as a sort of sub-conscious revenge. I accept this as a form of collateral damage of their suffering. I trust that I’m doing the best I can and I have faith that they will see that one day too. I think it’s just hard for them to fathom a malungu that doesn’t own a Porshe, they all do in the movies after all. And they assume that I could (and should) channel some of my billions to their need for a car, new house, shoes, cute t-shirt, stipends for the in-home hospice workers etc, etc. Many, most especially my home-stay family, are growing impatient with my ‘façade’ as a Volunteer and are ready to be bankrolled into the next millennia. Little do they know they’ll be waiting awhile; I’m counting my pennies just as much as they are haha.
I have to say that even on days like today where I feel so worn down, there are so many things that I love about this place that I never want to leave. I would just maybe request the ant colony to stop blanketing all my belongings and perhaps the alleviation of the petty theft going on at my org and the apathy towards all projects I implement. Okay, okay it’s not perfect but I still love it. : )
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
Monday, September 20, 2010
9/3: Today is day one of two days devoted to planning Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World). Clearly, it will take more than two days to plan a week long sleep-away camp but it’s a start. Angie and Leah are sleeping over at my place so we can get as much work done as possible. I think I discussed the idea of Camp GLOW earlier but it’s one of Peace Corps’s initiatives for gender and development. The plan is to take 20 female leaders in grades 8-10 from each of our communities and empower them to look past their challenges and embrace another option. The option being presented to them is success, education, family planning and confidence. Self reliance, independence, joy. If you take away every educational opportunity planned during the week you will have what I hope will be an amazing camp experience. I look back on my camp experiences as some of my fondest childhood memories. I would love to bring these young women that feeling of joy and camaraderie too. I think we can do that and much, much more. I want to teach them about their rights to their bodies and their rights to fight back. There’s a whole world out there and lots of scholarships waiting to help you experience it. I was ready with plenty of ideas for potential workshops but we ended up discussing how much (or little) people were willing to put into this project. The tense planning meeting resulted in me doubting how the different personalities and visions of my two best friends and I could ever be meshed into a functional camp. I then realized that not only was it not about me but that any help is important in a project this large. Unfortunately, we never quite got around to the actual camp. We have another sleep over planning session slated for next Friday so I’m hoping that one will be more productive.
9/4: So earlier this week my go go requested her electric cord back. She strung a cord outside from her house to mine which has one plug attached to the end for my electricity. She suggested that I take this down, buy myself another cord, and have a young boy install it. “Very cheap, Lindelwa.” I told her what might be easier is if she tells me how many meters of cord she needs and I go buy her that amount instead of uninstalling and reinstalling my existing electricity. This seemed to satisfy her. A few days later she said she needed my bed. I asked her what I would sleep on and she said it’s not her problem. After going back and forth for quite some time I was able to deduce that the girlfriend of one of her sons that passed away has also just passed. She left a child who will be coming to stay with us so she needs the bed. This would be more than reasonable if there wasn’t already a bed that was unused in my go go’s house. If this wasn’t shocking enough, the following day she said that she needs rent from me as well. In an indirect culture I’ve been trying to see what I did to upset her. This could be her way of telling me she’s angry at me for something completely unrelated to our housing agreement. Ironically, our relationship has been great, which made this whole debacle even more hurtful. Zindle is over at my house every day and does all but sleep here. My go go and I drink tea at my house every day and spend a good amount of time chatting on a daily basis. Is she now just my landlord? I thought I was part of the family. I can buy a new cord, bed and monthly rent but when I asked her why she was doing this she said, “You aren’t a part of the family, I don’t love you.” To make matters worse, last night there was a drunk man at my door who wouldn’t go away. I locked my flimsy door but my burglar gate wasn’t locked because Angie had just come back in. He was shaking the door handle and yelling. I finally called my go go’s cell phone and she said she knows what’s happening. Her window’s open, she’s been watching this whole time. I tried to articulate as clearly as possible that this incident is upsetting and I would like her to help get this man to leave. Not only did she not help me but she was yelling at me for forgetting to lock my burglar bars. She finally did help me but I felt so hurt that I almost had to beg her to do so. She could hear my tone of voice and those of my friends; she knew we were rattled by this. And she stood by and watched it happen? This whole week has made me feel so betrayed by the woman I devoted so much of my time to and who always treated me as one of her own. Later on she made sure I knew how hurt Zindle and her friends were that she couldn’t spend all day yesterday and today with my friends and I. I tried to explain that four five year olds does not make for a conducive work environment. Well, apparently I wasn’t convincing enough because Zindle and her friends banged on my door on 20 minute intervals all day. When my friends left, I was so exhausted by the blatant disregard of my boundaries that the next time the girls banged on my door I spouted off as many angry phrases as I could muster and locked the door. Zindle sat on my front stoop and cried for an hour. After stumbling back into my house in a haze of guilt and sheer weariness I attempted to compile all my Christian music into one playlist which somehow resulted in half of it being deleted in the process. This brings us to my breaking point where I cried until I had no more tears left to shed.
9/5: Today all I wanted to do was hole up in my hut and wallow in my own misery while dreaming of quesadillas and milkshakes but alas I had a coming of age ceremony for a sangoma (witch doctor) to attend so I had to cut my pity party short. This ceremony was in the next village over so I needed to take a short bush taxi ride to get there. I was given the directions from Tshengie to get on the taxi and ask to be taken to the Majola family compound. There find someone to take you to the Mcineka compound. So I was going in pretty blind here. I waited so long for a taxi to arrive that I thought perhaps they’d joined the strike as they’d been threatening to do since its inception so I hitchhiked with people that said they knew where this family lived. Well they didn’t. I sat in the back of a pickup truck for an hour on top of a crate of beer bottles. Though the truck bed was caked in dirt I would have much preferred the floor if it wouldn’t have been so socially unacceptable. After being dropped off in the middle of a market (definitely not the Majola compound) I asked the crowd of people in the taxi heading back to my village if they knew this family’s location before getting in. I felt more confident that I was going to get there this time. Sure enough I was dropped off in the right location. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anyone just roaming around ready to take me from this compound to the Mcinekas’. I then stood on the side of the dirt road in a mixture of confusion and panic for what felt like hours before I saw a few women in the distance who I proceeded to run to with flailing arms as if I was being rescued from a deserted island. After I caught my breath I was able to ask for directions and was assured I could follow them because they were going to the same party. Relieved that I wasn’t going to die alone, my starved body being ravaged by wild dogs, I followed them to what turned out to be quite the experience. As I walked into the compound which was composed of seven or eight mud homes with thatched roofs, several horses, chickens, goats and cows and more people than I could count, I was bombarded with a herd of children. I immediately had three holding each hand and half a dozen stragglers dragging behind me while holding a piece of my skirt. My guides didn’t want anything to do with this bizarre celebrity and quickly made themselves scarce. I was trying to find the one woman I knew amongst the masses and stumbled upon a woman who proceeded to pry my entourage off of me in time to once again, “make me pretty.” As I’ve now come to expect, she poured boiling water over my head then dumped half a bottle of shampoo over it then came an equally scalding rinse session. After that, moisturizer was rubbed through my hair, followed by lots and lots of baby oil. Next came the blow dryer where she combed out my waves to create a ring of frizz. The final touch was a bright pink infant sized elastic headband with a large bow in the front. My audience of bathing women and snotty nosed children loved it. The next step in the beautification process was clothing. This mystery friend of mine dressed me in a child sized shirt that did not quite cover my stomach…at all. She then scurried into yet another room to find a pair of heels that she had never worn. I couldn’t tell if they were too small or if I was just too used to shoes with items such as support, cushion and breathable material. I was then paraded amid the hordes of people to oohs and aahs. I even was able to go into the hut designated for the three patriarchs of the extended family, all of whom are sangomas themselves. I entered with my new friend after taking off my shoes and bending at a 90 degree angle. We were then asked to sit where we faced perpendicular to them in an effort to never make eye contact. I peered my head as far as I dared to try to get a sense of the place. There were shelves filled with traditional medicine and all sorts of herbs and animal hides hanging from the ceiling. As we left I started to think that the woman I’m suppose to meet here either does not actually live here, is sick, or perhaps sacrificed herself to the pack of wild dogs I was envisioning succumbing to earlier.
Next on the docket was the main event. All the sangomas that had been milling about earlier had gathered in a clearing on the compound. We were up high enough that there was nothing but hills and deep ravines in any direction. In essence it felt like we were at the edge of the world.
Each sangoma, both male and female, wore a waist-length beaded headdress, black beaded skirt, white shirt and tin disks around their ankles so they jingled when they danced. They waved horses’ tails as they danced to the drums covered in raw hide while one man sang songs from so deep in his soul I felt I was intruding. The mood turned celebratory as the young woman stepped into the circle. Every young woman has a coming of age ceremony, whether she’s a witch doctor or not. This is a time when a girl becomes a woman and she’s now ready to be married. This isn’t signified by menstruation but rather by the maturity of the individual. The ages of the women in this ceremony are usually 15-19.
Everyone who could safety pinned money onto her headdress while her fellow sangomas danced and sung in a semi-circle around her. This ended when everyone was exhausted, hungry and out of money. Unlike everyone else, I had already been force fed two meals of rice and boiled chicken swimming in oil so I was not looking forward to a third heaping portion. I somehow choked it down with the help of some water of questionable quality and the herd of children that hadn’t left my side since I came. I finally stumbled upon my host who insisted that I sleep there overnight. I didn’t think it was too bad of an idea and when I called my go go to confirm my decision she said she didn’t care what I did and repeated that she doesn’t love me. I suddenly was reminded of our strained relationship and I felt the immediate need to get home and try to make amends. This about face was met with confusion and frustration. I allotted multiple hours for goodbyes, the majority of which I spent convincing my entourage that I made the right decision. At the end of the day, the woman, Bongisile, who befriended me and didn’t leave my side, even while bathing, insisted I keep all the articles of clothing that she let me borrow. This included the infant head band, child sized t-shirt with classy midriff and heels that she’d never worn. I pleaded with her to keep the shoes. I only stopped begging when I realized how hurt she was at my refusal of her gift. I thought this revelation was a bit too late but she quickly recovered once I grudgingly accepted. I left with such a full heart I had all but forgotten the frustrations of the previous week.
9/6: My Peace Corps supervisor gave me pretty sound advice, in my opinion, concerning my housing situation. He suggested that I take myself out of the equation entirely and request that my go go talk to Tshengie directly. This will enable our relationship to remain intact while she hammers out her need for furniture and money. Tshengie visited her today after work. They talked for about an hour, at one point laughing at other points fighting. When I asked for a translation she said she was too tired to talk about it but everything’s fine. When I asked her the following day she elaborated by saying, “don’t worry, everything’s fine.” Gotcha.
9/7: Today it was all hands on deck when we were notified that one of our funders, the Department of Social Development, is requesting proof to back up our statistics. Not only do we make up numbers but the forms are all in English so none of the caregivers have the slightest idea what they’re making up numbers for. Let’s just say reporting is an opportunity for growth for us. I don’t doubt they’re doing the work, well most of them, but their literacy level in their home language, let alone a second language, prevents them from accurately reporting. I proposed the idea of typing the lists that are requested of us so that each month we could just add our new clients and delete the ones who’ve passed away instead of the mad scramble that happens when everyone remembers that, in fact, the end of the month is here again. This was deemed a ridiculous suggestion and everyone went back to organizing their million scrap sheets of paper onto one sheet of paper that after turned in will have to be re-created from scratch the next month…and the next month.
9/8: So as much as I want to be fluent in Zulu, the last thing I want to do after an exhausting day of stumbling through this new language, is to study more Zulu. So I’ve hit a plateau. But today I pushed through and studied all day, much to the entertainment of my co-workers.
9/9: So we’ve been in our new building for a week or so and the concept of indoor plumbing has still eluded my co-workers. I gave a lesson in flush toilets that involved instructing the men to lift the seat up when standing, counting to three as they hold down the lever to flush and how to clean such a foreign object. This was received with only mild interest. I was not expecting a conga line in gratitude for this new knowledge but I was hoping that perhaps some of my suggestions on how to use a flush toilet would be put into practice. The short answer to that is, though the men have thankfully since decided to lift the seat up, other ideas of mine have been disregarded. The idea, for example, to wash their dishes in our new sink has led them to wash the dishes in buckets…in the sink. I was hoping by giving them some tips the two older women who cook hot meals for the orphans and vulnerable children would have a much easier time doing so. But in reality, indoor plumbing has turned out to be scary, intimidating, confusing and not all that it’s cracked up to be. Is bigger, faster and easier always better?
9/10-11: Today started sleepover number two of Camp GLOW planning. Unfortunately, I can’t say this meeting was much more productive. On a positive note, the PCV host cooked a chili that was composed almost solely of American ingredients, which warmed my soul on such a blustery day.
9/12: I locked myself in my room and read almost an entire book in one day; it was amazing!
9/13: I’m heartened by all the progress at the Camp GLOW meeting today. We have a skeleton of the grant done, which was possible by enlisting an agenda with Western-style time limits on each topic. What can I say; it worked. I was designated Project Manager which was particularly special coming from my closest friends. I was also able to release my white knuckle grip on the planning when someone else requested the section of the grant where the majority of the creative liberty could be taken.
9/14: So the trainer for the caregivers’ training did not show up for train the trainer day for our first in a series of workshops slated for completion at the end of the year. Busi, my back up trainer was MIA as well, as were the materials she promised she’d translate. Instead, I decided to peel vegetables and gossip.
9/15: Training went so well today. The caregivers learned about what it means to be a home based carer. Though they could say things like, a caregiver provides palliative care, when pressed for examples or a definition of palliative care nobody knew. Mpostol is also a very charismatic trainer and made sure everyone participated. Though only two out of the thirteen pages of curriculum were accomplished, and about half of the caregivers showed up I was still really excited to see them starting to grasp their role in the fight of HIV/AIDS.
9/16: Today we had a meeting with the church we share our new building with. Members of Zamimpilo feel it’s unnecessary for members of the church to have keys to our doors and offices. (The building has no shared space and was designed to function as two separate entities). They’re concerned that we have parts of computers that if put together properly one could eventually get it to operate (assuming that the thousands of viruses riddling the hard drives were somehow eradicated) and therefore could be at risk of getting stolen. Right now they’re behaving as important looking dust collectors but the consensus is that broken, green screened computers would catch the potential funder’s eye.
The meeting was scheduled for 9:00 so I didn’t peer into our new ‘board room’ which is just an empty room that we drag plastic chairs into when our ‘dining hall’ for the orphans isn’t being used until after 10:00. (The dining hall is also empty save for a few plastic chairs). People started petering in soon after that and we quickly had everyone settled in one room. Naturally, the agreements signed between the two parties last year needed to be copied before the meeting could begin and this was not something that necessarily could/should be done beforehand. So each of the three agreements were taken one by one to get a few copies. It was promptly agreed upon that everyone needed a copy of each document. This back and forth charade took another hour. Next up was the declaration of the need to find an attendance register. A search party was assembled and came back triumphant about 20 minutes later. We then passed around some hymnals, sang a few Psalms and prayed many a prayer. Another attendance register was mandated. It is now three hours past our original start time. Now that everyone was good and tired from all that productivity tea was passed around to all. I had to go to what would invariably be an equally productive meeting at the Department of Agriculture. This was upsetting to everyone as my whiteness gave the meeting more validity. They were just getting started they exclaimed! Well it’s now well into the afternoon and I assured them that I didn’t doubt they would come away from this battle of the minds with an action plan filled with concessions and compromises, sacrifices and small gains. I could tell that the momentum for the meeting had waned as the realization surfaced that it would no longer be possible to shamelessly stare at the malungu for hours on end. I could hear them picking up their things and planning their next meeting as I walked out the door. Onward and upward to the Department of Agriculture. There are a series of entrances to the D of A, all of which lead directly into someone’s personal office. I walked into someone on the phone then when I tried door number 2, I found three people in a meeting. The only person that seemed flustered at this seeming intrusion of privacy was me. One of them walked me to the office I was looking for where I interrupted another meeting with my more important White agenda. I explained that I heard the D of A was giving away free seeds and tools as a part of their One Home One Garden program and that I would like some. I went on to say that I’m going to a training with a co-worker where we’ll learn different gardening techniques and then train the community members. I didn’t get a chance to delve into my color-coded evaluation chart or my assessment tools. He said that though it’s true that the D of A has a large storage room stacked with more crates than he could count with both tools and seeds, my village wasn’t one of the four neediest in the catchment area so he couldn’t give me any supplies. I wouldn’t want to take tools and seeds from the people most in need…would I, he asked me. Well, in fact, if the crates have been sitting there for months, I argued, I wouldn’t be taking anything from anybody. I asked him how long they had been there and if there was a chance we could take a few things if the tools and seeds are going unclaimed? Not possible. Of course not.
I then took a deep breath as I entered the always traumatic Post Office. I had three packages stuffed to the brim with American shoes and toys awaiting my retrieval thanks to my church back home. The postal lady snickered when she asked if I had a car to haul these parcels, knowing full well I didn’t, taking great joy as I carried them one by one on my head to the taxi rank. (It is legitimately easier to carry almost anything on your head). After asking one of the fruit ladies in the market to watch my package; I went to fetch the next one…and back again. Next came arguably the most entertaining part, which would be getting all three boxes on a bush taxi where your knees are already jutting into the seat in front of you. Lucky for me I was sandwiched in between two morbidly obese women. These women composed three Alenas each. So there were seven Alenas and three gigantic boxes on a seat made for maybe two and a half Alenas, no boxes. The door could not be opened from the inside; the driver had to get out to open it. I somehow survived the ride and plopped the boxes onto the side of the road. I didn’t expect my arms to feel like Jell-O but I had been bracing them against near disaster for over an hour now. I then got Mpostol who was not only irritated at getting torn away from his favorite Chuck Norris film but was shocked I was requesting some assistance in the heavy lifting department. I then pleaded, against all cultural norms, for some empathy. He finally agreed and took the lightest one. Happy to be down a third of the work, I made my second trek back to the side of the road with a bounce in my step. I waited to peer into the contents for several more days.
9/17: Today we celebrated the opening of our new building. Before the event started I was concerned I didn’t quite decipher the chicken scratch agenda properly, was there really no singing planned, I asked, quite alarmed. I was quickly assured there would be plenty of singing. In fact, there was about two hours waiting for everyone to arrive fashionably late, six hours of singing and about ten minutes of speeches. I was pleasantly surprised that I knew at least some of the words to all of the songs and correlating hand movements. I not only sang, but sang as loud as my voice would allow inserting as many Hallelujahs as the best of them while joining the conga line soaked in sweat. (We crammed way too many people into our ‘dining hall’ for said party). Leah came because our organizations are partners (in theory) and it was really great to show everyone off. She then pulled me aside and said, “I know how frustrated you get with the bureaucracy and the corruption and the varying work ethic. But the people here love you. You’ve touched people and they adore you.” After she finished her lengthy Kodak moment and I was near tears, I told her that I adore them far more.
9/18: Leah slept over and we watched rom coms all day with as many American delicacies as I could muster. When Zindle joined the party we played Pixar’s Up and she cried during the scene where the couple grows old together, how cute is that?!
9/19: I had several visitors today who needed help with homework or were just looking to chat though I was exhausted after I tried to keep up with a teen for an hour in a half in Zulu after I played some card game with no apparent rules with seven neighbor kids. Next a girl came over looking for help with her assignment. She’s 20 and in 11th grade, which is not only not unique but typical. She gave me her rubric, written in English, which she clearly didn’t understand. She then handed me a job description cut out from a newspaper which was part of the assignment and which she couldn’t read to do homework that was completely over her head. Good thing they extended summer vacation for World Cup and the teachers went on strike for another month, are slated to strike again, with another two weeks of vacation fast approaching.
9/20: Is it gross that despite the fact that I have two separate ant hills inside my hut with the packaging of my food covered in ants I still walk around unfazed with bare feet?
9/4: So earlier this week my go go requested her electric cord back. She strung a cord outside from her house to mine which has one plug attached to the end for my electricity. She suggested that I take this down, buy myself another cord, and have a young boy install it. “Very cheap, Lindelwa.” I told her what might be easier is if she tells me how many meters of cord she needs and I go buy her that amount instead of uninstalling and reinstalling my existing electricity. This seemed to satisfy her. A few days later she said she needed my bed. I asked her what I would sleep on and she said it’s not her problem. After going back and forth for quite some time I was able to deduce that the girlfriend of one of her sons that passed away has also just passed. She left a child who will be coming to stay with us so she needs the bed. This would be more than reasonable if there wasn’t already a bed that was unused in my go go’s house. If this wasn’t shocking enough, the following day she said that she needs rent from me as well. In an indirect culture I’ve been trying to see what I did to upset her. This could be her way of telling me she’s angry at me for something completely unrelated to our housing agreement. Ironically, our relationship has been great, which made this whole debacle even more hurtful. Zindle is over at my house every day and does all but sleep here. My go go and I drink tea at my house every day and spend a good amount of time chatting on a daily basis. Is she now just my landlord? I thought I was part of the family. I can buy a new cord, bed and monthly rent but when I asked her why she was doing this she said, “You aren’t a part of the family, I don’t love you.” To make matters worse, last night there was a drunk man at my door who wouldn’t go away. I locked my flimsy door but my burglar gate wasn’t locked because Angie had just come back in. He was shaking the door handle and yelling. I finally called my go go’s cell phone and she said she knows what’s happening. Her window’s open, she’s been watching this whole time. I tried to articulate as clearly as possible that this incident is upsetting and I would like her to help get this man to leave. Not only did she not help me but she was yelling at me for forgetting to lock my burglar bars. She finally did help me but I felt so hurt that I almost had to beg her to do so. She could hear my tone of voice and those of my friends; she knew we were rattled by this. And she stood by and watched it happen? This whole week has made me feel so betrayed by the woman I devoted so much of my time to and who always treated me as one of her own. Later on she made sure I knew how hurt Zindle and her friends were that she couldn’t spend all day yesterday and today with my friends and I. I tried to explain that four five year olds does not make for a conducive work environment. Well, apparently I wasn’t convincing enough because Zindle and her friends banged on my door on 20 minute intervals all day. When my friends left, I was so exhausted by the blatant disregard of my boundaries that the next time the girls banged on my door I spouted off as many angry phrases as I could muster and locked the door. Zindle sat on my front stoop and cried for an hour. After stumbling back into my house in a haze of guilt and sheer weariness I attempted to compile all my Christian music into one playlist which somehow resulted in half of it being deleted in the process. This brings us to my breaking point where I cried until I had no more tears left to shed.
9/5: Today all I wanted to do was hole up in my hut and wallow in my own misery while dreaming of quesadillas and milkshakes but alas I had a coming of age ceremony for a sangoma (witch doctor) to attend so I had to cut my pity party short. This ceremony was in the next village over so I needed to take a short bush taxi ride to get there. I was given the directions from Tshengie to get on the taxi and ask to be taken to the Majola family compound. There find someone to take you to the Mcineka compound. So I was going in pretty blind here. I waited so long for a taxi to arrive that I thought perhaps they’d joined the strike as they’d been threatening to do since its inception so I hitchhiked with people that said they knew where this family lived. Well they didn’t. I sat in the back of a pickup truck for an hour on top of a crate of beer bottles. Though the truck bed was caked in dirt I would have much preferred the floor if it wouldn’t have been so socially unacceptable. After being dropped off in the middle of a market (definitely not the Majola compound) I asked the crowd of people in the taxi heading back to my village if they knew this family’s location before getting in. I felt more confident that I was going to get there this time. Sure enough I was dropped off in the right location. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anyone just roaming around ready to take me from this compound to the Mcinekas’. I then stood on the side of the dirt road in a mixture of confusion and panic for what felt like hours before I saw a few women in the distance who I proceeded to run to with flailing arms as if I was being rescued from a deserted island. After I caught my breath I was able to ask for directions and was assured I could follow them because they were going to the same party. Relieved that I wasn’t going to die alone, my starved body being ravaged by wild dogs, I followed them to what turned out to be quite the experience. As I walked into the compound which was composed of seven or eight mud homes with thatched roofs, several horses, chickens, goats and cows and more people than I could count, I was bombarded with a herd of children. I immediately had three holding each hand and half a dozen stragglers dragging behind me while holding a piece of my skirt. My guides didn’t want anything to do with this bizarre celebrity and quickly made themselves scarce. I was trying to find the one woman I knew amongst the masses and stumbled upon a woman who proceeded to pry my entourage off of me in time to once again, “make me pretty.” As I’ve now come to expect, she poured boiling water over my head then dumped half a bottle of shampoo over it then came an equally scalding rinse session. After that, moisturizer was rubbed through my hair, followed by lots and lots of baby oil. Next came the blow dryer where she combed out my waves to create a ring of frizz. The final touch was a bright pink infant sized elastic headband with a large bow in the front. My audience of bathing women and snotty nosed children loved it. The next step in the beautification process was clothing. This mystery friend of mine dressed me in a child sized shirt that did not quite cover my stomach…at all. She then scurried into yet another room to find a pair of heels that she had never worn. I couldn’t tell if they were too small or if I was just too used to shoes with items such as support, cushion and breathable material. I was then paraded amid the hordes of people to oohs and aahs. I even was able to go into the hut designated for the three patriarchs of the extended family, all of whom are sangomas themselves. I entered with my new friend after taking off my shoes and bending at a 90 degree angle. We were then asked to sit where we faced perpendicular to them in an effort to never make eye contact. I peered my head as far as I dared to try to get a sense of the place. There were shelves filled with traditional medicine and all sorts of herbs and animal hides hanging from the ceiling. As we left I started to think that the woman I’m suppose to meet here either does not actually live here, is sick, or perhaps sacrificed herself to the pack of wild dogs I was envisioning succumbing to earlier.
Next on the docket was the main event. All the sangomas that had been milling about earlier had gathered in a clearing on the compound. We were up high enough that there was nothing but hills and deep ravines in any direction. In essence it felt like we were at the edge of the world.
Each sangoma, both male and female, wore a waist-length beaded headdress, black beaded skirt, white shirt and tin disks around their ankles so they jingled when they danced. They waved horses’ tails as they danced to the drums covered in raw hide while one man sang songs from so deep in his soul I felt I was intruding. The mood turned celebratory as the young woman stepped into the circle. Every young woman has a coming of age ceremony, whether she’s a witch doctor or not. This is a time when a girl becomes a woman and she’s now ready to be married. This isn’t signified by menstruation but rather by the maturity of the individual. The ages of the women in this ceremony are usually 15-19.
Everyone who could safety pinned money onto her headdress while her fellow sangomas danced and sung in a semi-circle around her. This ended when everyone was exhausted, hungry and out of money. Unlike everyone else, I had already been force fed two meals of rice and boiled chicken swimming in oil so I was not looking forward to a third heaping portion. I somehow choked it down with the help of some water of questionable quality and the herd of children that hadn’t left my side since I came. I finally stumbled upon my host who insisted that I sleep there overnight. I didn’t think it was too bad of an idea and when I called my go go to confirm my decision she said she didn’t care what I did and repeated that she doesn’t love me. I suddenly was reminded of our strained relationship and I felt the immediate need to get home and try to make amends. This about face was met with confusion and frustration. I allotted multiple hours for goodbyes, the majority of which I spent convincing my entourage that I made the right decision. At the end of the day, the woman, Bongisile, who befriended me and didn’t leave my side, even while bathing, insisted I keep all the articles of clothing that she let me borrow. This included the infant head band, child sized t-shirt with classy midriff and heels that she’d never worn. I pleaded with her to keep the shoes. I only stopped begging when I realized how hurt she was at my refusal of her gift. I thought this revelation was a bit too late but she quickly recovered once I grudgingly accepted. I left with such a full heart I had all but forgotten the frustrations of the previous week.
9/6: My Peace Corps supervisor gave me pretty sound advice, in my opinion, concerning my housing situation. He suggested that I take myself out of the equation entirely and request that my go go talk to Tshengie directly. This will enable our relationship to remain intact while she hammers out her need for furniture and money. Tshengie visited her today after work. They talked for about an hour, at one point laughing at other points fighting. When I asked for a translation she said she was too tired to talk about it but everything’s fine. When I asked her the following day she elaborated by saying, “don’t worry, everything’s fine.” Gotcha.
9/7: Today it was all hands on deck when we were notified that one of our funders, the Department of Social Development, is requesting proof to back up our statistics. Not only do we make up numbers but the forms are all in English so none of the caregivers have the slightest idea what they’re making up numbers for. Let’s just say reporting is an opportunity for growth for us. I don’t doubt they’re doing the work, well most of them, but their literacy level in their home language, let alone a second language, prevents them from accurately reporting. I proposed the idea of typing the lists that are requested of us so that each month we could just add our new clients and delete the ones who’ve passed away instead of the mad scramble that happens when everyone remembers that, in fact, the end of the month is here again. This was deemed a ridiculous suggestion and everyone went back to organizing their million scrap sheets of paper onto one sheet of paper that after turned in will have to be re-created from scratch the next month…and the next month.
9/8: So as much as I want to be fluent in Zulu, the last thing I want to do after an exhausting day of stumbling through this new language, is to study more Zulu. So I’ve hit a plateau. But today I pushed through and studied all day, much to the entertainment of my co-workers.
9/9: So we’ve been in our new building for a week or so and the concept of indoor plumbing has still eluded my co-workers. I gave a lesson in flush toilets that involved instructing the men to lift the seat up when standing, counting to three as they hold down the lever to flush and how to clean such a foreign object. This was received with only mild interest. I was not expecting a conga line in gratitude for this new knowledge but I was hoping that perhaps some of my suggestions on how to use a flush toilet would be put into practice. The short answer to that is, though the men have thankfully since decided to lift the seat up, other ideas of mine have been disregarded. The idea, for example, to wash their dishes in our new sink has led them to wash the dishes in buckets…in the sink. I was hoping by giving them some tips the two older women who cook hot meals for the orphans and vulnerable children would have a much easier time doing so. But in reality, indoor plumbing has turned out to be scary, intimidating, confusing and not all that it’s cracked up to be. Is bigger, faster and easier always better?
9/10-11: Today started sleepover number two of Camp GLOW planning. Unfortunately, I can’t say this meeting was much more productive. On a positive note, the PCV host cooked a chili that was composed almost solely of American ingredients, which warmed my soul on such a blustery day.
9/12: I locked myself in my room and read almost an entire book in one day; it was amazing!
9/13: I’m heartened by all the progress at the Camp GLOW meeting today. We have a skeleton of the grant done, which was possible by enlisting an agenda with Western-style time limits on each topic. What can I say; it worked. I was designated Project Manager which was particularly special coming from my closest friends. I was also able to release my white knuckle grip on the planning when someone else requested the section of the grant where the majority of the creative liberty could be taken.
9/14: So the trainer for the caregivers’ training did not show up for train the trainer day for our first in a series of workshops slated for completion at the end of the year. Busi, my back up trainer was MIA as well, as were the materials she promised she’d translate. Instead, I decided to peel vegetables and gossip.
9/15: Training went so well today. The caregivers learned about what it means to be a home based carer. Though they could say things like, a caregiver provides palliative care, when pressed for examples or a definition of palliative care nobody knew. Mpostol is also a very charismatic trainer and made sure everyone participated. Though only two out of the thirteen pages of curriculum were accomplished, and about half of the caregivers showed up I was still really excited to see them starting to grasp their role in the fight of HIV/AIDS.
9/16: Today we had a meeting with the church we share our new building with. Members of Zamimpilo feel it’s unnecessary for members of the church to have keys to our doors and offices. (The building has no shared space and was designed to function as two separate entities). They’re concerned that we have parts of computers that if put together properly one could eventually get it to operate (assuming that the thousands of viruses riddling the hard drives were somehow eradicated) and therefore could be at risk of getting stolen. Right now they’re behaving as important looking dust collectors but the consensus is that broken, green screened computers would catch the potential funder’s eye.
The meeting was scheduled for 9:00 so I didn’t peer into our new ‘board room’ which is just an empty room that we drag plastic chairs into when our ‘dining hall’ for the orphans isn’t being used until after 10:00. (The dining hall is also empty save for a few plastic chairs). People started petering in soon after that and we quickly had everyone settled in one room. Naturally, the agreements signed between the two parties last year needed to be copied before the meeting could begin and this was not something that necessarily could/should be done beforehand. So each of the three agreements were taken one by one to get a few copies. It was promptly agreed upon that everyone needed a copy of each document. This back and forth charade took another hour. Next up was the declaration of the need to find an attendance register. A search party was assembled and came back triumphant about 20 minutes later. We then passed around some hymnals, sang a few Psalms and prayed many a prayer. Another attendance register was mandated. It is now three hours past our original start time. Now that everyone was good and tired from all that productivity tea was passed around to all. I had to go to what would invariably be an equally productive meeting at the Department of Agriculture. This was upsetting to everyone as my whiteness gave the meeting more validity. They were just getting started they exclaimed! Well it’s now well into the afternoon and I assured them that I didn’t doubt they would come away from this battle of the minds with an action plan filled with concessions and compromises, sacrifices and small gains. I could tell that the momentum for the meeting had waned as the realization surfaced that it would no longer be possible to shamelessly stare at the malungu for hours on end. I could hear them picking up their things and planning their next meeting as I walked out the door. Onward and upward to the Department of Agriculture. There are a series of entrances to the D of A, all of which lead directly into someone’s personal office. I walked into someone on the phone then when I tried door number 2, I found three people in a meeting. The only person that seemed flustered at this seeming intrusion of privacy was me. One of them walked me to the office I was looking for where I interrupted another meeting with my more important White agenda. I explained that I heard the D of A was giving away free seeds and tools as a part of their One Home One Garden program and that I would like some. I went on to say that I’m going to a training with a co-worker where we’ll learn different gardening techniques and then train the community members. I didn’t get a chance to delve into my color-coded evaluation chart or my assessment tools. He said that though it’s true that the D of A has a large storage room stacked with more crates than he could count with both tools and seeds, my village wasn’t one of the four neediest in the catchment area so he couldn’t give me any supplies. I wouldn’t want to take tools and seeds from the people most in need…would I, he asked me. Well, in fact, if the crates have been sitting there for months, I argued, I wouldn’t be taking anything from anybody. I asked him how long they had been there and if there was a chance we could take a few things if the tools and seeds are going unclaimed? Not possible. Of course not.
I then took a deep breath as I entered the always traumatic Post Office. I had three packages stuffed to the brim with American shoes and toys awaiting my retrieval thanks to my church back home. The postal lady snickered when she asked if I had a car to haul these parcels, knowing full well I didn’t, taking great joy as I carried them one by one on my head to the taxi rank. (It is legitimately easier to carry almost anything on your head). After asking one of the fruit ladies in the market to watch my package; I went to fetch the next one…and back again. Next came arguably the most entertaining part, which would be getting all three boxes on a bush taxi where your knees are already jutting into the seat in front of you. Lucky for me I was sandwiched in between two morbidly obese women. These women composed three Alenas each. So there were seven Alenas and three gigantic boxes on a seat made for maybe two and a half Alenas, no boxes. The door could not be opened from the inside; the driver had to get out to open it. I somehow survived the ride and plopped the boxes onto the side of the road. I didn’t expect my arms to feel like Jell-O but I had been bracing them against near disaster for over an hour now. I then got Mpostol who was not only irritated at getting torn away from his favorite Chuck Norris film but was shocked I was requesting some assistance in the heavy lifting department. I then pleaded, against all cultural norms, for some empathy. He finally agreed and took the lightest one. Happy to be down a third of the work, I made my second trek back to the side of the road with a bounce in my step. I waited to peer into the contents for several more days.
9/17: Today we celebrated the opening of our new building. Before the event started I was concerned I didn’t quite decipher the chicken scratch agenda properly, was there really no singing planned, I asked, quite alarmed. I was quickly assured there would be plenty of singing. In fact, there was about two hours waiting for everyone to arrive fashionably late, six hours of singing and about ten minutes of speeches. I was pleasantly surprised that I knew at least some of the words to all of the songs and correlating hand movements. I not only sang, but sang as loud as my voice would allow inserting as many Hallelujahs as the best of them while joining the conga line soaked in sweat. (We crammed way too many people into our ‘dining hall’ for said party). Leah came because our organizations are partners (in theory) and it was really great to show everyone off. She then pulled me aside and said, “I know how frustrated you get with the bureaucracy and the corruption and the varying work ethic. But the people here love you. You’ve touched people and they adore you.” After she finished her lengthy Kodak moment and I was near tears, I told her that I adore them far more.
9/18: Leah slept over and we watched rom coms all day with as many American delicacies as I could muster. When Zindle joined the party we played Pixar’s Up and she cried during the scene where the couple grows old together, how cute is that?!
9/19: I had several visitors today who needed help with homework or were just looking to chat though I was exhausted after I tried to keep up with a teen for an hour in a half in Zulu after I played some card game with no apparent rules with seven neighbor kids. Next a girl came over looking for help with her assignment. She’s 20 and in 11th grade, which is not only not unique but typical. She gave me her rubric, written in English, which she clearly didn’t understand. She then handed me a job description cut out from a newspaper which was part of the assignment and which she couldn’t read to do homework that was completely over her head. Good thing they extended summer vacation for World Cup and the teachers went on strike for another month, are slated to strike again, with another two weeks of vacation fast approaching.
9/20: Is it gross that despite the fact that I have two separate ant hills inside my hut with the packaging of my food covered in ants I still walk around unfazed with bare feet?
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
8/23: Today, my supervisor and I and a few other representatives from our organization asked the Inkosi (head chief) for approval of our upcoming building. I don't think Tshengie was anticipating any hesitation because this request for permission came after the plans have been submitted and discussions were had with various contractors. He did, in fact, say no. Well, not no exactly, but he thought our new building would be more accessible to the community in a different location. Again, our meeting was a bit late for suggestions. In a hierarchical culture such as this one, not only should we have moved our building plan but do it without question. This posed a difficult situation because of the sheer implausibility of that happening at this point. So for right now, Tshengie's plan is to pretend he didn't make such a suggestion. A plug-your-ears-while-lalala-ing sort of philosophy if you will. We'll see how that works out. In the meantime, more fires need to be fought on the home front. Our chairperson has been escalating her level of corruption as of late. A take-a-little-off-the-top mentality is not only accepted here but expected. Sindi, on the other hand, started in that respect and things escalated from there. This last week, she took so much meat from the daily feeding scheme for our orphans that we ran out of meat to feed them. We also only had enough fruit for one week out of the month to give them. As soon as everyone realized how this was affecting the children, it was no longer acceptable. After one meeting it was unanimously decided that she needed to step down. The treasurer came crying to Tshengie last week begging to step down as well because of how much pressure she was under to collude with the theft and corruption. Not only has she been stealing from our project since she began her tenure, she also has burned so many bridges with potential funders and partner organizations. With that said, I was absolutely floored that she was asked to step down. (Granted, she will still be a home based care volunteer, she will no longer be the one making decisions and fortunately also no longer the face of our organization). Monitoring and evaluation of staff is something that is not as valued in this culture. The members of this project have all grown up together and enjoy being around each other. It’s not about rewards and punishment. Though because of that, not only have ineffective and toxic employees been able to continue their work, outstanding ones have gone unnoticed. I created several monitoring and evaluation tools that will help gauge that…assuming their interested in knowing the results.
8/24: Operation Jumpstart, which is funding our new building, came today which was a bit stressful, but exciting. They were two and a half hours late, which undoubtedly was to make sure we were aware of how busy and important they are, point taken. Hopefully they will break ground in just a few weeks time and it’s slated for completion in December. I also had an impromptu emergency summit with my Peace Corps besties to discuss back up Christmas plans since it looks like my family isn't going to make it. After some wallowing and more than my fair share of grease was ingested, we came up with the magnificent Christmas plan b that involves us three plus a visiting boyfriend to hike the Drakensburg Mountains. I was panicking because I didn’t know anyone who didn’t already have plans for the holidays but in a wonderful twist of fate both of these lovely ladies are now available for a Christmas extravaganza. Crisis averted. To boost my spirits even higher I received two care packages with a total of no less than twelve magazines, it will take every ounce of self control I have in me to go to work this week haha. Fun fact: I’m currently wearing an American flagged dr. Suess-esque hat, best care package gift ever : )
8/25: I cannot find the little scrap of paper I wrote today’s events on, sorry.
8/26: If you haven’t heard, the entire public sector has been on strike in South Africa for two weeks now. This includes but not limited to doctors, nurses, EMTs, police officers and teachers. All public clinics, hospitals and schools are closed, which means that the matric exam that is taken by all seniors has been pushed back and people on medication for HIV and TB are defaulting on their medication because there is no staff to administer it. Also of note, all departments which are responsible for funding grass roots NGOs like mine are on strike as well. Plenty of others have joined in ‘sympathy strikes,’ which is exactly what Tshengie wanted to do but for an allotted time of two months. When I told her that I imagine this will be resolved in less time (at least I hope so) she said she also wants to strike because the management committee doesn’t listen to her. Making her voice heard in both of these avenues, she explained to me, would take a full two months. I suggested that perhaps a more effective way of making her point is to voice her concerns at the next meeting in a few days time. That proposal was scratched immediately. One member of our organization has decided to go on strike himself. Clearly, this has completely crippled South Afric’s ability to function and can be, quite literally, directly correlated with thousands of deaths. In addition to all those suffering due to a 1.6% pay increase dispute, the real issue here is that I can no longer get my garden income generating activity off the ground because the Department of Agriculture is also on strike (of course they are). Why more attention hasn’t been focused on how the strike has affected American mainly white, affluent Peace Corps Volunteers, is beyond me. This blatant oversight is appalling. Moving on, because of this upsetting disruption in my plan to cure AIDS, I have changed course and have started to develop a curriculum to train the volunteers that do in-home hospice care at my organization. None of them have had any training at all and are so hungry to learn how to better help their community. Seeing as though the very high majority of people I work with are HIV-positive, this information can also directly affect how they live their lives. Tshengie thought the training would be most effective if it was set up as a series of one day workshops. The topics that will be discussed are: what it means to be in home based care, professionalism and effective reporting, HIV/AIDS and ARVs, TB and DOTS, STIs and condoms, psycho-social support and stress, gender-based violence, first aid and palliative care and lastly, forming and facilitating a support group. Because of each of our 14 Volunteers see three to five clients a day, this education has the potential to affect thousands of people.
8/27: I’ve been spending a lot of my free time with my go go lately. Today she tried to convince me that if I stay forever not only will she build me another house but that house will have tiles on the floor. If you never see me again it’s because the prospect of tiling became too tempting. I also finished Fast Food Nation today, which I began out of a need for some Americana and yes I’m aware of the irony. I’m just thankful that KFC, one of my few indulges here, only makes a couple appearances. I couldn’t have my addiction to their avalanche sundae be hampered by things like fair wages, price fixing, maltreatment of animals or the validity that anything they sell is legitimately food at all. Good thing all of that negatively is only associated with McDonalds, phew, my conscience is clear.
8/28: Today, in some sort of symbolic gesture to force me to conform to the ways of the developing world my watch decided to break. I should feel this renewed sense of freedom but really my left wrist feels naked and I’m a bit grouchy about my newfound loss of control. My frown soon turned upside down when I received word on a grant proposal I wrote a few days ago. I heard from a fellow PCV that the Mother Bear Project will send packs of hand-knitted teddy bears to your organization to give to the orphans and vulnerable children in the community. In sharing this great resource, Gail, my PCV friend, brought a few bears to our Peace Corps training a few weeks ago to show off. They even have little tags sewn on that say: made by Mother Bear: ______ and they sign their name. They are so wonderful and they have little outfits and hats and are made in bright cheery colors. I absolutely can’t wait to give them to the children; they’ve probably never seen a teddy bear before. Every child deserves something to snuggle up to; I know they’re going to love them.
8/29: Today my arms felt like jello washing my clothes after I finished scrubbing my impossibly thick, polyester blanket that soaks up water like it’s dying in the desert. At the end of this charade, I was drenched in water the color of mud, I had four buckets in some sort of attempt at a wash/rinse system, created a spectacle as I flung my entire body weight into throwing the blanket over the clothes line, which of course meant it was now covered in dirt and chicken poop and after all that I feel fairly certain that I didn’t even make a dent in its overall cleanliness and might have actually done more damage.
8/30: I’m sure I left work today with more than a few grey hairs. Tshengie wrote two grant proposals for new buildings, assuming she’d only get one. Well she got them both, and this good fortune has turned out to almost be more trouble than it’s worth. My org, Zamimpilo, is technically an umbrella organization for Isibindi, which works out of the same building. This partnership has caused much tension and strife as one of Zamimpilo’s founding members was promoted to Project Manager of Isibindi. Isibindi is funded by PEPFAR so it has a seemingly unlimited budget and is showered with thorough trainings at their hearts desire, proper follow ups by supervisors and an array of t-shirts in a variety of colors. But Zamimpilo has the building and the food and makes sure that no matter how effective the Isibindi machine may be, there are a few things Zamimpilo has that Isibindi doesn’t. The beautiful captains of the football team and cheerleader entourage that compose the unstoppable and enviable Isibindi might have their one last hold out to perfection fall in their favor. They’re vying for the second building that has yet to be built. (The first building is the second half of the church built by the Dutch youth group). Of course, this new building is bigger and better and on a large piece of land that is fit for expansion. The few rooms in the church building, though wonderful and complete with flush toilets, leave much to be desired when compared with Eden a few blocks away. Naturally, I have much loyalty to the rag-tag bunch of scrubby, semi-literate, quasi-productive bunch I work with. I was anticipating a David and Goliath epic sparring, complete with ‘Eye of the Tiger’ playing in the background. I was prepping Tshengie while I punched a pretend speed bag and she seemed a bit, dare I say apathetic, to the building war. I was unfazed. I already rationalized that after decades of internalized oppression, it was engrained in Tshengie to not stand up for herself. Well, lucky for her I’m here to save the day. I mean I was throwing practice punches; I had this one in the bag. So I made my impassioned speech with Tshengie by my side when I burst into English tangents. I was received by cold indifference. Tshengie changed her mind to match the latest person she talked to on the issue. This, of course, drove me crazy because really she should just be listening to me. Because I’m right. Zamimpilo deserved Eden. Final answer. The decision at the end of the day was that both Isibindi and Zamimpilo will move into the church building for three months while the new building is being built.
8/31: I’m not quite sure if the logic behind this temporary three month move involved the church building perhaps feeling lonely on days that weren’t Sunday or if there was a new found need for tangible effort to be made and this was the first thing that popped into their heads. Regardless of the rationale, we did in fact move today. I carried chairs, printers and pots on my head, luckily no longer treated like a fragile flower. You trip and fall; get up the fridge is waiting for you.
9/1: I can’t believe it’s really September. I’ve been here for over seven months and it feels like seven weeks. Today has been incredibly productive. I think the fact that our new building has six rooms as compared to our old one with one, has allowed me to escape into one of the empty rooms and get several uninterrupted hours of work completed before tea must be drunk again. Love it.
8/24: Operation Jumpstart, which is funding our new building, came today which was a bit stressful, but exciting. They were two and a half hours late, which undoubtedly was to make sure we were aware of how busy and important they are, point taken. Hopefully they will break ground in just a few weeks time and it’s slated for completion in December. I also had an impromptu emergency summit with my Peace Corps besties to discuss back up Christmas plans since it looks like my family isn't going to make it. After some wallowing and more than my fair share of grease was ingested, we came up with the magnificent Christmas plan b that involves us three plus a visiting boyfriend to hike the Drakensburg Mountains. I was panicking because I didn’t know anyone who didn’t already have plans for the holidays but in a wonderful twist of fate both of these lovely ladies are now available for a Christmas extravaganza. Crisis averted. To boost my spirits even higher I received two care packages with a total of no less than twelve magazines, it will take every ounce of self control I have in me to go to work this week haha. Fun fact: I’m currently wearing an American flagged dr. Suess-esque hat, best care package gift ever : )
8/25: I cannot find the little scrap of paper I wrote today’s events on, sorry.
8/26: If you haven’t heard, the entire public sector has been on strike in South Africa for two weeks now. This includes but not limited to doctors, nurses, EMTs, police officers and teachers. All public clinics, hospitals and schools are closed, which means that the matric exam that is taken by all seniors has been pushed back and people on medication for HIV and TB are defaulting on their medication because there is no staff to administer it. Also of note, all departments which are responsible for funding grass roots NGOs like mine are on strike as well. Plenty of others have joined in ‘sympathy strikes,’ which is exactly what Tshengie wanted to do but for an allotted time of two months. When I told her that I imagine this will be resolved in less time (at least I hope so) she said she also wants to strike because the management committee doesn’t listen to her. Making her voice heard in both of these avenues, she explained to me, would take a full two months. I suggested that perhaps a more effective way of making her point is to voice her concerns at the next meeting in a few days time. That proposal was scratched immediately. One member of our organization has decided to go on strike himself. Clearly, this has completely crippled South Afric’s ability to function and can be, quite literally, directly correlated with thousands of deaths. In addition to all those suffering due to a 1.6% pay increase dispute, the real issue here is that I can no longer get my garden income generating activity off the ground because the Department of Agriculture is also on strike (of course they are). Why more attention hasn’t been focused on how the strike has affected American mainly white, affluent Peace Corps Volunteers, is beyond me. This blatant oversight is appalling. Moving on, because of this upsetting disruption in my plan to cure AIDS, I have changed course and have started to develop a curriculum to train the volunteers that do in-home hospice care at my organization. None of them have had any training at all and are so hungry to learn how to better help their community. Seeing as though the very high majority of people I work with are HIV-positive, this information can also directly affect how they live their lives. Tshengie thought the training would be most effective if it was set up as a series of one day workshops. The topics that will be discussed are: what it means to be in home based care, professionalism and effective reporting, HIV/AIDS and ARVs, TB and DOTS, STIs and condoms, psycho-social support and stress, gender-based violence, first aid and palliative care and lastly, forming and facilitating a support group. Because of each of our 14 Volunteers see three to five clients a day, this education has the potential to affect thousands of people.
8/27: I’ve been spending a lot of my free time with my go go lately. Today she tried to convince me that if I stay forever not only will she build me another house but that house will have tiles on the floor. If you never see me again it’s because the prospect of tiling became too tempting. I also finished Fast Food Nation today, which I began out of a need for some Americana and yes I’m aware of the irony. I’m just thankful that KFC, one of my few indulges here, only makes a couple appearances. I couldn’t have my addiction to their avalanche sundae be hampered by things like fair wages, price fixing, maltreatment of animals or the validity that anything they sell is legitimately food at all. Good thing all of that negatively is only associated with McDonalds, phew, my conscience is clear.
8/28: Today, in some sort of symbolic gesture to force me to conform to the ways of the developing world my watch decided to break. I should feel this renewed sense of freedom but really my left wrist feels naked and I’m a bit grouchy about my newfound loss of control. My frown soon turned upside down when I received word on a grant proposal I wrote a few days ago. I heard from a fellow PCV that the Mother Bear Project will send packs of hand-knitted teddy bears to your organization to give to the orphans and vulnerable children in the community. In sharing this great resource, Gail, my PCV friend, brought a few bears to our Peace Corps training a few weeks ago to show off. They even have little tags sewn on that say: made by Mother Bear: ______ and they sign their name. They are so wonderful and they have little outfits and hats and are made in bright cheery colors. I absolutely can’t wait to give them to the children; they’ve probably never seen a teddy bear before. Every child deserves something to snuggle up to; I know they’re going to love them.
8/29: Today my arms felt like jello washing my clothes after I finished scrubbing my impossibly thick, polyester blanket that soaks up water like it’s dying in the desert. At the end of this charade, I was drenched in water the color of mud, I had four buckets in some sort of attempt at a wash/rinse system, created a spectacle as I flung my entire body weight into throwing the blanket over the clothes line, which of course meant it was now covered in dirt and chicken poop and after all that I feel fairly certain that I didn’t even make a dent in its overall cleanliness and might have actually done more damage.
8/30: I’m sure I left work today with more than a few grey hairs. Tshengie wrote two grant proposals for new buildings, assuming she’d only get one. Well she got them both, and this good fortune has turned out to almost be more trouble than it’s worth. My org, Zamimpilo, is technically an umbrella organization for Isibindi, which works out of the same building. This partnership has caused much tension and strife as one of Zamimpilo’s founding members was promoted to Project Manager of Isibindi. Isibindi is funded by PEPFAR so it has a seemingly unlimited budget and is showered with thorough trainings at their hearts desire, proper follow ups by supervisors and an array of t-shirts in a variety of colors. But Zamimpilo has the building and the food and makes sure that no matter how effective the Isibindi machine may be, there are a few things Zamimpilo has that Isibindi doesn’t. The beautiful captains of the football team and cheerleader entourage that compose the unstoppable and enviable Isibindi might have their one last hold out to perfection fall in their favor. They’re vying for the second building that has yet to be built. (The first building is the second half of the church built by the Dutch youth group). Of course, this new building is bigger and better and on a large piece of land that is fit for expansion. The few rooms in the church building, though wonderful and complete with flush toilets, leave much to be desired when compared with Eden a few blocks away. Naturally, I have much loyalty to the rag-tag bunch of scrubby, semi-literate, quasi-productive bunch I work with. I was anticipating a David and Goliath epic sparring, complete with ‘Eye of the Tiger’ playing in the background. I was prepping Tshengie while I punched a pretend speed bag and she seemed a bit, dare I say apathetic, to the building war. I was unfazed. I already rationalized that after decades of internalized oppression, it was engrained in Tshengie to not stand up for herself. Well, lucky for her I’m here to save the day. I mean I was throwing practice punches; I had this one in the bag. So I made my impassioned speech with Tshengie by my side when I burst into English tangents. I was received by cold indifference. Tshengie changed her mind to match the latest person she talked to on the issue. This, of course, drove me crazy because really she should just be listening to me. Because I’m right. Zamimpilo deserved Eden. Final answer. The decision at the end of the day was that both Isibindi and Zamimpilo will move into the church building for three months while the new building is being built.
8/31: I’m not quite sure if the logic behind this temporary three month move involved the church building perhaps feeling lonely on days that weren’t Sunday or if there was a new found need for tangible effort to be made and this was the first thing that popped into their heads. Regardless of the rationale, we did in fact move today. I carried chairs, printers and pots on my head, luckily no longer treated like a fragile flower. You trip and fall; get up the fridge is waiting for you.
9/1: I can’t believe it’s really September. I’ve been here for over seven months and it feels like seven weeks. Today has been incredibly productive. I think the fact that our new building has six rooms as compared to our old one with one, has allowed me to escape into one of the empty rooms and get several uninterrupted hours of work completed before tea must be drunk again. Love it.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
I just bought a PO box with a few of my Peace Corps friends to make my postal experience a lot less stressful. If you already used the address I gave you, that's fine, the letters will get to me, but this will be a lot more efficient.
Alena Skeels
PO Box 578
Nqutu 3135
South Africa
Also, I posted some pictures on my Facebook page but due to the absurd amount of time it takes to load each one I'm just going to post them in one spot. So if you're not my Facebook friend, friend me!
Alena Skeels
PO Box 578
Nqutu 3135
South Africa
Also, I posted some pictures on my Facebook page but due to the absurd amount of time it takes to load each one I'm just going to post them in one spot. So if you're not my Facebook friend, friend me!
Monday, August 23, 2010
8/16-8/22
I made the twelve hour journey back to Pretoria this past week to participate in the Volunteer Support Network (VSN) training. VSN matches a mentor from the previous training class with 7-8 mentees who just arrived in country. Peer mentorship has been proven to be an efffective, untintimidating way to bridge the gap between the Peace Corps main office and volunteers new to country. After spending a day training on Tuesday, the new mentors went to meet the new trainees who arrived here a few weeks ago. Because there are so many trainees (52), they are split into three groups, which meant we needed to do our presentation three times. This worked out just swimmingly because I was able to spend eons of time with a very small group of people. One of my critiques of VSN was how unlikely it would be that someone would confide in someone they barely know or met for five minutes. Last week, I was able to spend a solid hour and a half with two or three people each to start building that rapport. It was encouraging to hear about their drive to serve and exciting to hear about some of their fresh ideas. The following day, we had a VSN meeting for all members where we discussed a myriad of topics from alcohol abuse amongst volunteers to the effectiveness of our medical staff to success stories with mentees. All in all, it was a very productive meeting. It, of course, was also wonderful to slip back (so easily) into Western life for another week. I'm happy to report that my transition back to my beautiful village was not only free of wallowing but highly anticipated.
Naturally, I cannot have a week free of a little drama so here ya go. I travelled back to site on Friday after a handful of hours of sleep due to an extensive stay on the dance floor of a bar called Drop Zone in honor of a fellow PCV's birthday. I then spent thirteen hours in a combination of taxis and buses with the common denominator being sheer miscalculation of the breadth of the average Zulu. After catching the last taxi to my village as it was pulling out of the rank I started to prematurely consider my last travel day for awhile a victory. Well, in my exhaustion, I leave my wallet on the taxi (again). And just like before, I start crying, dropping f bombs right and left, flailing my arms, really just creating a scene worthy of any reputable American reality show (of which there are many). It's 7:30pm when I get home so everyone I know is already deep in REM sleep and unable to be contacted. Early the next morning I share my lapse in judgment with my go go and Tshengie. I, of course, had to have my American credit card, a considerable amount of cash and a copy of my passport inside so they immediately sprung into action. I marched right on over to my village's taxi rank in the hopes they would know who drove the last taxi back the night before so I could at least attempt to get some of the contents of my wallet back. They were all huddled over a notebook that seemed to have some documentation on it, none of which apparently was about clocking in or out or time in general really. Then Tshengie called to tell me that one of her friends somehow knew the license plate of the last taxi. This made things much easier for the men huddled around the notebook. After I passed my phone to the chief/taxi manager, he promptly told me that not only does Thulani have my wallet but he has my ID, cards and money as well. Not only that, in fact, he will call me when he's passing my house so I can run out to get it. (This last part was especially wonderful seeing as though I had absolutely no cash to get to my shopping town and my go go also had none to spare). Needless to say I did a victory dance complete with fist pumps, hip swivels and cheers. And yes, this was quite the spectacle for these male twenty somethings. So when Thulani called, I ran out to see what I thought was too good to be true. He said he'd wait while I check to make sure everything was there. On the phone he asked me how much money I had in my wallet. I said I wasn't sure but probably around R300 ($40), he said I had R350. Then when I counted it I had R380. So if I counted my money and I had R300 I would have thought that everything was there. I then give him R50 ($7) as a thank you and he looked at me like I was crazy. I insisted that he take it and he did but he clearly wasn't expecting anything from his altruism. I realize that I wasn't here during apartheid and that there was a lot of crime on both sides and still is but it's appalling how many people, both black and white have warned me about my lack of safety in my village, specifically referring to petty theft. I wonder how many of those people have spent any amount of time in a rural village. I've never felt more a part of a communtiy.
I made the twelve hour journey back to Pretoria this past week to participate in the Volunteer Support Network (VSN) training. VSN matches a mentor from the previous training class with 7-8 mentees who just arrived in country. Peer mentorship has been proven to be an efffective, untintimidating way to bridge the gap between the Peace Corps main office and volunteers new to country. After spending a day training on Tuesday, the new mentors went to meet the new trainees who arrived here a few weeks ago. Because there are so many trainees (52), they are split into three groups, which meant we needed to do our presentation three times. This worked out just swimmingly because I was able to spend eons of time with a very small group of people. One of my critiques of VSN was how unlikely it would be that someone would confide in someone they barely know or met for five minutes. Last week, I was able to spend a solid hour and a half with two or three people each to start building that rapport. It was encouraging to hear about their drive to serve and exciting to hear about some of their fresh ideas. The following day, we had a VSN meeting for all members where we discussed a myriad of topics from alcohol abuse amongst volunteers to the effectiveness of our medical staff to success stories with mentees. All in all, it was a very productive meeting. It, of course, was also wonderful to slip back (so easily) into Western life for another week. I'm happy to report that my transition back to my beautiful village was not only free of wallowing but highly anticipated.
Naturally, I cannot have a week free of a little drama so here ya go. I travelled back to site on Friday after a handful of hours of sleep due to an extensive stay on the dance floor of a bar called Drop Zone in honor of a fellow PCV's birthday. I then spent thirteen hours in a combination of taxis and buses with the common denominator being sheer miscalculation of the breadth of the average Zulu. After catching the last taxi to my village as it was pulling out of the rank I started to prematurely consider my last travel day for awhile a victory. Well, in my exhaustion, I leave my wallet on the taxi (again). And just like before, I start crying, dropping f bombs right and left, flailing my arms, really just creating a scene worthy of any reputable American reality show (of which there are many). It's 7:30pm when I get home so everyone I know is already deep in REM sleep and unable to be contacted. Early the next morning I share my lapse in judgment with my go go and Tshengie. I, of course, had to have my American credit card, a considerable amount of cash and a copy of my passport inside so they immediately sprung into action. I marched right on over to my village's taxi rank in the hopes they would know who drove the last taxi back the night before so I could at least attempt to get some of the contents of my wallet back. They were all huddled over a notebook that seemed to have some documentation on it, none of which apparently was about clocking in or out or time in general really. Then Tshengie called to tell me that one of her friends somehow knew the license plate of the last taxi. This made things much easier for the men huddled around the notebook. After I passed my phone to the chief/taxi manager, he promptly told me that not only does Thulani have my wallet but he has my ID, cards and money as well. Not only that, in fact, he will call me when he's passing my house so I can run out to get it. (This last part was especially wonderful seeing as though I had absolutely no cash to get to my shopping town and my go go also had none to spare). Needless to say I did a victory dance complete with fist pumps, hip swivels and cheers. And yes, this was quite the spectacle for these male twenty somethings. So when Thulani called, I ran out to see what I thought was too good to be true. He said he'd wait while I check to make sure everything was there. On the phone he asked me how much money I had in my wallet. I said I wasn't sure but probably around R300 ($40), he said I had R350. Then when I counted it I had R380. So if I counted my money and I had R300 I would have thought that everything was there. I then give him R50 ($7) as a thank you and he looked at me like I was crazy. I insisted that he take it and he did but he clearly wasn't expecting anything from his altruism. I realize that I wasn't here during apartheid and that there was a lot of crime on both sides and still is but it's appalling how many people, both black and white have warned me about my lack of safety in my village, specifically referring to petty theft. I wonder how many of those people have spent any amount of time in a rural village. I've never felt more a part of a communtiy.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
7/24: I asked my go go to take a picture of me doing my laundry in an attempt to document my daily life and she declined so I hesitantly gave the camera to the preschooler. Little did I know she was a little photo prodigy and was entertained all day by taking pictures up close of chickens and fire wood. To be more specific, she would sneak up behind them so that she would get half the beak and an eyeball, then she'd move at all sorts of angles and lengths to get even more interesting photos. She learned that turning the camera around allowed her to take photos of herself and since the household mirror is a small shard of glass the camera doubled as a very sophisticated looking glass. It filled my heart to see her little wheels turning and hopefully I'll be able to upload some of her masterpieces when I make my way to Pretoria next week.
I just came back from two weeks away from site. This left me little opportunity to scribe my daily anecdotes. Because of this, I will need to back track by memory and/or summarize. Not to worry, I am currently back from my hiatus and ready and willing to continue to allow you to live vicariously through me. : )
7/25: Today Tshengie and I travelled all day to get to the capitol for our Peace Corps training. She was very weary of travelling to the big city. I guess the fear of the unknown is universal. She didn't want to get off the bus (yes the Greyhound monopoly has made its way to Africa) so I got her a snack at a rest stop and when I came back she said, 'friends like you are smaller' (in number). Later, okay maybe ten hours later, we were driving through Jo burg and she asked, 'these buildings are shiny, why?' I then realized how scary this whole experience must be for her.
7/26: My guess at her unease was confirmed today when she called me at dawn, no hello, and said, 'Lindelwa, I'm hungry as a liiiooon.' (The supervisors stayed at a separate (and nicer) guest house. Even though I reminded Tshengie of our short separation several times she had a near panic attack at the bus station). I told her that the guest house probably had a small breakfast for free and to ask someone on staff where it was. She called me back two minutes later to say she couldn't find it and that I needed to come over. I then told her that not only is it not safe for me to travel while it's still dark but in fact she didn't need my help at all. I suggested she ask someone concerning a good place to eat breakfast and for directions to said place. She was very flustered and when I called to check on her progress a few hours later she said she waited for some of the other supervisors to wake up, one of whom found the free breakfast downstairs. Crisis averted.
7/27: Today all the Peace Corps Volunteers presented their potential projects with their supervisors. We did an incredibly witty and entertaining role play though Tshengie backed out of my costume idea minutes before show time...whatever. Even though it sort of dragged on, it was really exciting to hear about other people's projects; it gave me so many different ideas to implement at Zamimpilo.
7/28: Tshengie and I had our first blow out fight today. Similar to when you're in a relationship, this first fight marked the official end to our honeymoon period, though I think we'll be stronger for it later...hopefully. Peace Corps won't reimburse work before it's been completed so she needed to front the money for transport to our training. Since she's the sole bread winner for all 37 or so family members, okay maybe a bit less but definitely multiple moms and quite a few illegitimate children need to be counted along with her six living brothers, she couldn't come up with all the money. I knew that Peace Corps would reimburse me as soon as we reached the training site so I wasn't too concerned about paying up front. I asked her for the money the morning after the supervisors meeting where the money exchange was suppose to take place. This meeting was rescheduled multiple times so I wasn't fazed when she said that they didn't, in fact, receive their money the night before. I asked her if she could ask the coordinator of the training when the new meeting will be and she replied, "sure, I'll do it now now," (yes two nows) which of course means in a few hours if you're lucky. So since I was already standing I mosied on over to her myself to inquire about the change in schedule. Well apparently there wasn't a change in schedule. Kori stormed over to Tshengie, pointed her finger in her face and with steam coming out of her ears she breathed, "give her the money now Tshengie." I swear I saw a little fire ball come out of her mouth as she said that. Quite the ice queen, very impressive. Then Tshengie opened her wallet and gave me the money but she was fuming. She also frequently talks about herself in the third person, as she did on this occassion saying, "Why did you do that?! Don't ever speak for Tshengie! Now Kori's going to think I lied." Now just to clarify, she did lie. And it was no small lie. That money was a third of my monthly stipend so I wasn't being petty. But still I tried to be diplomatic, explaining that perhaps it was just a misunderstanding. Backpedalling, she tried to explain that what she meant to say was that one of her fellow supervisors received more money than her and they should have received the same amount. She was waiting to receive the additional money she was owed. Her being shorted by Peace Corps could have been a quick fix. I welcomed this deflection from the issue at hand. With my phone in hand, I quickly asked for specifics in the hopes of smoothing this over as soon as possible (we are stuck with each other for two years) but Tshengie was not interested in the brush-under-the-rug technique. I usually like to talk a conflict to death but I already created such a cultural snafu by breaking multiple rules concerning hierarchy and indirect speaking I thought I'd cut my losses. Unfortunately, she refused to let me help her, saying, "No don't speak for Tshengie ever again!" "Okay, so I could get you your money but you are choosing not to." "Yes." "Okay so you are making the choice to not get your money?" "Yes." "You do not want my help?" "No." This incident of corruption tainted our dynamic for the rest of the week.
7/29: Today one of our own started to get the help she deserves.
7/30: Today was full of wonderful speakers, my personal favorite being the Director of the Global AIDS Initiative at the CDC. He's an MD who finished his Peace Corps service in Ukraine with his wife a few years ago. I shamelessly grilled him with questions about the effectiveness of PEPFAR funding in the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS. In response he sadly showed a slide that depicted no change in prevention rates from the inception of PEPFAR's annual $600 million HIV budget seven years ago. But as a PEPFAR funded PCV I plan on changing that statistic!
7/31: I visited my home stay family from training today. It was so wonderful to catch up with them and to tell them how happy I was...even if it's in a Zulu village and they're Ndebele haha.
Because of the expense of travelling back and forth to and from the capitol I decided, along with another PCV, to stay in Pretoria in anticipation of a committee meeting we would have a few days later. I was concerned when I checked my Frommer's South Africa book and found a page and a half dedicated to Pretoria. Because of this, I brought just about every hobby that I took with me into this country, on this trip. Little did I know how unnecessary all of my precautions would be. So the other PCV, Andrew, and I headed off in an effort to cross off all three tourist attractions available to us in the city before our meeting was underway.
The art museum's first red flag should have been that it was less than 1 USD to get it. We also could have clearly deduced from its sheer lack of size how underwhelming it might be. But since we're Americans who expect everything in Africa to be under a dollar; we were pretty unfazed by the admission price and I, for one, had forgotten that a structure's brevity could be larger than a three room shack so I was not prepared for what I saw. The museum was three large rooms, one of which was dedicated to international flags in honor of the World Cup and another to what looked to be third grade art projects.
Next up was the Transvaal Museum which is Afrikaans for Natural History Museum. This showed definite signs of promise and the architecture was beautiful. (I made sure to assess the situation this time around, I didn't like getting tricked into thinking I was doing something all cultural when I was really just going through something someone decided to throw together one day and call it a museum in the hopes nobody would notice). Inside this fascinating piece of work were quite a few animals stuffed by a taxodermist including that of a German Shepard which was behind plated glass. Also of note were several diaramas, one of which depicted a cougar gouging out the eyes of a monkey with fake blood to boot, a man milking a stuffed cow with a Yankees hat and fake poop down below and tote bags from San Fransico which were also behind plated glass. There was a room dedicated to geology with a note at the end explaining that all education material was taken from a textbook that both Andrew and I used in our third or fourth grade Science classes.
The Union Building was also tackled on the same day as the stuffed animals were. This place is where the South African Parliament meets. It was absolutely beautiful, with gardens that reminded me of France and old world English architecture. We couldn't go inside because, well, I guess some people are suppose to be working in there...or something. Another enjoyable site was Burger Park which is a relaxing park in the middle of the city with a green house and a fountain and all sorts of things to make you forget you're in Africa.
I wouldn't be doing this week justice if I left out how many times and how much I enjoyed the event of eating at a restaurant. This cannot be mentioned enough and is something that, a week later, I still have not quite recovered from. There was one day, for example, when Andrew ate lunch at no less than four separate restaurants, just because he could. Don't get me wrong, I would be shaming the lovely ladies from my org who cook us rice and boiled chicken every day, if I didn't say there is also a place in my heart for that meal but I think I was starting to forget what any other food tasted like. I don't think there's a restaurant left in Pretoria that I haven't eaten in. It was wonderful. Another wonderful aspect about this first world city is the presence of a movie theater. I watched Inception twice. Yep. Two days in a row. With a large popcorn and a large Coke both times.
Towards the end of the week our other committee members started to dribble in in preparation for our meeting, as did PCVs who were leaving after their two years of service. This made for almost too much Americana to bear. More food. More bars. More friends. I was in America.
I knew coming back to site after being away for two weeks was going to be hard. I tried to prepare myself during my twelve hour journey back to the middle of nowhere to no avail. Some PCVs go back and forth between the first and the third world all the time. Some work in one world and live in the other. I'm so thankful that that is not my life because it would just be too emotionally draining. For me, staying in Pretoria reminded me of everything I left. And staying so long reminded me of how easy my life once was.
I came back to my village and I didn't want to cook on a hot plate or fetch water or sore every muscle in my upper body doing all the laundry I dirtied during my weeks away. I didn't want to pick bugs out of my filtered water and I sure as heck didn't want to lose my posse that I hit the town with every night. But I found myself alone in my hut looking around and the silence was deafening.
I've heard married people say that they wake up and make a conscious decision to love their spouse every day. Sometimes they don't want to, they might have said all of the wrong things the day before, or the week before and unspoken doubts start to rattle your core. What you know to be true. But you made a choice, a commitment and a few bad days, or weeks or months even, can't shake your resolve. Because you know in your heart it's right. The same can be said about my Peace Corps experience. There are days when the idea of being surrounded by a language I can barely understand, with kids hanging from every limb, and very little motivation from my co workers for change can seem insurmountable. When even the thought of serving the men in my organization tea while they watch Kung Fu movies all day makes the skin on the back of my neck crawl. Or working days or weeks on a potential project that when presented only remarks are whether I've managed to find someone to pay my bride price yet. Those days I decide to stay. I stay because great days that bring simple joys far outweigh the draining ones. Because nothing has ever felt so right.
I just came back from two weeks away from site. This left me little opportunity to scribe my daily anecdotes. Because of this, I will need to back track by memory and/or summarize. Not to worry, I am currently back from my hiatus and ready and willing to continue to allow you to live vicariously through me. : )
7/25: Today Tshengie and I travelled all day to get to the capitol for our Peace Corps training. She was very weary of travelling to the big city. I guess the fear of the unknown is universal. She didn't want to get off the bus (yes the Greyhound monopoly has made its way to Africa) so I got her a snack at a rest stop and when I came back she said, 'friends like you are smaller' (in number). Later, okay maybe ten hours later, we were driving through Jo burg and she asked, 'these buildings are shiny, why?' I then realized how scary this whole experience must be for her.
7/26: My guess at her unease was confirmed today when she called me at dawn, no hello, and said, 'Lindelwa, I'm hungry as a liiiooon.' (The supervisors stayed at a separate (and nicer) guest house. Even though I reminded Tshengie of our short separation several times she had a near panic attack at the bus station). I told her that the guest house probably had a small breakfast for free and to ask someone on staff where it was. She called me back two minutes later to say she couldn't find it and that I needed to come over. I then told her that not only is it not safe for me to travel while it's still dark but in fact she didn't need my help at all. I suggested she ask someone concerning a good place to eat breakfast and for directions to said place. She was very flustered and when I called to check on her progress a few hours later she said she waited for some of the other supervisors to wake up, one of whom found the free breakfast downstairs. Crisis averted.
7/27: Today all the Peace Corps Volunteers presented their potential projects with their supervisors. We did an incredibly witty and entertaining role play though Tshengie backed out of my costume idea minutes before show time...whatever. Even though it sort of dragged on, it was really exciting to hear about other people's projects; it gave me so many different ideas to implement at Zamimpilo.
7/28: Tshengie and I had our first blow out fight today. Similar to when you're in a relationship, this first fight marked the official end to our honeymoon period, though I think we'll be stronger for it later...hopefully. Peace Corps won't reimburse work before it's been completed so she needed to front the money for transport to our training. Since she's the sole bread winner for all 37 or so family members, okay maybe a bit less but definitely multiple moms and quite a few illegitimate children need to be counted along with her six living brothers, she couldn't come up with all the money. I knew that Peace Corps would reimburse me as soon as we reached the training site so I wasn't too concerned about paying up front. I asked her for the money the morning after the supervisors meeting where the money exchange was suppose to take place. This meeting was rescheduled multiple times so I wasn't fazed when she said that they didn't, in fact, receive their money the night before. I asked her if she could ask the coordinator of the training when the new meeting will be and she replied, "sure, I'll do it now now," (yes two nows) which of course means in a few hours if you're lucky. So since I was already standing I mosied on over to her myself to inquire about the change in schedule. Well apparently there wasn't a change in schedule. Kori stormed over to Tshengie, pointed her finger in her face and with steam coming out of her ears she breathed, "give her the money now Tshengie." I swear I saw a little fire ball come out of her mouth as she said that. Quite the ice queen, very impressive. Then Tshengie opened her wallet and gave me the money but she was fuming. She also frequently talks about herself in the third person, as she did on this occassion saying, "Why did you do that?! Don't ever speak for Tshengie! Now Kori's going to think I lied." Now just to clarify, she did lie. And it was no small lie. That money was a third of my monthly stipend so I wasn't being petty. But still I tried to be diplomatic, explaining that perhaps it was just a misunderstanding. Backpedalling, she tried to explain that what she meant to say was that one of her fellow supervisors received more money than her and they should have received the same amount. She was waiting to receive the additional money she was owed. Her being shorted by Peace Corps could have been a quick fix. I welcomed this deflection from the issue at hand. With my phone in hand, I quickly asked for specifics in the hopes of smoothing this over as soon as possible (we are stuck with each other for two years) but Tshengie was not interested in the brush-under-the-rug technique. I usually like to talk a conflict to death but I already created such a cultural snafu by breaking multiple rules concerning hierarchy and indirect speaking I thought I'd cut my losses. Unfortunately, she refused to let me help her, saying, "No don't speak for Tshengie ever again!" "Okay, so I could get you your money but you are choosing not to." "Yes." "Okay so you are making the choice to not get your money?" "Yes." "You do not want my help?" "No." This incident of corruption tainted our dynamic for the rest of the week.
7/29: Today one of our own started to get the help she deserves.
7/30: Today was full of wonderful speakers, my personal favorite being the Director of the Global AIDS Initiative at the CDC. He's an MD who finished his Peace Corps service in Ukraine with his wife a few years ago. I shamelessly grilled him with questions about the effectiveness of PEPFAR funding in the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS. In response he sadly showed a slide that depicted no change in prevention rates from the inception of PEPFAR's annual $600 million HIV budget seven years ago. But as a PEPFAR funded PCV I plan on changing that statistic!
7/31: I visited my home stay family from training today. It was so wonderful to catch up with them and to tell them how happy I was...even if it's in a Zulu village and they're Ndebele haha.
Because of the expense of travelling back and forth to and from the capitol I decided, along with another PCV, to stay in Pretoria in anticipation of a committee meeting we would have a few days later. I was concerned when I checked my Frommer's South Africa book and found a page and a half dedicated to Pretoria. Because of this, I brought just about every hobby that I took with me into this country, on this trip. Little did I know how unnecessary all of my precautions would be. So the other PCV, Andrew, and I headed off in an effort to cross off all three tourist attractions available to us in the city before our meeting was underway.
The art museum's first red flag should have been that it was less than 1 USD to get it. We also could have clearly deduced from its sheer lack of size how underwhelming it might be. But since we're Americans who expect everything in Africa to be under a dollar; we were pretty unfazed by the admission price and I, for one, had forgotten that a structure's brevity could be larger than a three room shack so I was not prepared for what I saw. The museum was three large rooms, one of which was dedicated to international flags in honor of the World Cup and another to what looked to be third grade art projects.
Next up was the Transvaal Museum which is Afrikaans for Natural History Museum. This showed definite signs of promise and the architecture was beautiful. (I made sure to assess the situation this time around, I didn't like getting tricked into thinking I was doing something all cultural when I was really just going through something someone decided to throw together one day and call it a museum in the hopes nobody would notice). Inside this fascinating piece of work were quite a few animals stuffed by a taxodermist including that of a German Shepard which was behind plated glass. Also of note were several diaramas, one of which depicted a cougar gouging out the eyes of a monkey with fake blood to boot, a man milking a stuffed cow with a Yankees hat and fake poop down below and tote bags from San Fransico which were also behind plated glass. There was a room dedicated to geology with a note at the end explaining that all education material was taken from a textbook that both Andrew and I used in our third or fourth grade Science classes.
The Union Building was also tackled on the same day as the stuffed animals were. This place is where the South African Parliament meets. It was absolutely beautiful, with gardens that reminded me of France and old world English architecture. We couldn't go inside because, well, I guess some people are suppose to be working in there...or something. Another enjoyable site was Burger Park which is a relaxing park in the middle of the city with a green house and a fountain and all sorts of things to make you forget you're in Africa.
I wouldn't be doing this week justice if I left out how many times and how much I enjoyed the event of eating at a restaurant. This cannot be mentioned enough and is something that, a week later, I still have not quite recovered from. There was one day, for example, when Andrew ate lunch at no less than four separate restaurants, just because he could. Don't get me wrong, I would be shaming the lovely ladies from my org who cook us rice and boiled chicken every day, if I didn't say there is also a place in my heart for that meal but I think I was starting to forget what any other food tasted like. I don't think there's a restaurant left in Pretoria that I haven't eaten in. It was wonderful. Another wonderful aspect about this first world city is the presence of a movie theater. I watched Inception twice. Yep. Two days in a row. With a large popcorn and a large Coke both times.
Towards the end of the week our other committee members started to dribble in in preparation for our meeting, as did PCVs who were leaving after their two years of service. This made for almost too much Americana to bear. More food. More bars. More friends. I was in America.
I knew coming back to site after being away for two weeks was going to be hard. I tried to prepare myself during my twelve hour journey back to the middle of nowhere to no avail. Some PCVs go back and forth between the first and the third world all the time. Some work in one world and live in the other. I'm so thankful that that is not my life because it would just be too emotionally draining. For me, staying in Pretoria reminded me of everything I left. And staying so long reminded me of how easy my life once was.
I came back to my village and I didn't want to cook on a hot plate or fetch water or sore every muscle in my upper body doing all the laundry I dirtied during my weeks away. I didn't want to pick bugs out of my filtered water and I sure as heck didn't want to lose my posse that I hit the town with every night. But I found myself alone in my hut looking around and the silence was deafening.
I've heard married people say that they wake up and make a conscious decision to love their spouse every day. Sometimes they don't want to, they might have said all of the wrong things the day before, or the week before and unspoken doubts start to rattle your core. What you know to be true. But you made a choice, a commitment and a few bad days, or weeks or months even, can't shake your resolve. Because you know in your heart it's right. The same can be said about my Peace Corps experience. There are days when the idea of being surrounded by a language I can barely understand, with kids hanging from every limb, and very little motivation from my co workers for change can seem insurmountable. When even the thought of serving the men in my organization tea while they watch Kung Fu movies all day makes the skin on the back of my neck crawl. Or working days or weeks on a potential project that when presented only remarks are whether I've managed to find someone to pay my bride price yet. Those days I decide to stay. I stay because great days that bring simple joys far outweigh the draining ones. Because nothing has ever felt so right.
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