Anne's and Liz and Clive's

Shortly before swearing-in we visited our sites for a few days to meet our orgs and to get to know a little about where we would be spending the next two years of our lives. We were supposed to return Sunday, but, due to the lack of Sunday taxi service in my village, I was forced to return to Tzaneen on Saturday. As was my friend Sean. So, new to the area, we had no idea where to stay and called our APCD (Associate Peace Corps Director - our main PC contact/supervisor), Kori, for suggestions. She in turn called Ted, a volunteer in Tzaneen, who put us in contact with Anne, friend of a friend. All Sean and I knew was that we were going to spend the night at a house sympathetic to our cause. Lo and behold, it was this house:















Anne (Zimbabwean) and her husband Alan (Kenyan), both white, had owned a farm in Zimbabwe, but were forced to leave by Mugabe, who has been taking land from white farmers for years now. They then moved so SA and purchased farmland north of Tzaneen. After apartheid, the SA begin reclaiming land, some of which happened to include Anne and Alan's new farm. So the new SA gov't. purchased it from them, and Anne became a banana tissue analyst (sounds ridiculous, but apparently it is big business here in Citrus and Musa country). I think Alan may have retired early. Unfortunately, these land reclamation deals, while a necessary step toward building a post-apartheid SA, were done without much planning or foresight and many of the farms taken or purchased, including Anne and Alan's, still lay fallow.

The two of them were brilliantly welcoming and treated us like their own children. For dinner they served roast leg of lamb encrusted in rosemary and some very tasty wine. Seeing as how I had spent the last four days drinking water out of a trash can (it is was what my temporary homestay gave me as a container), my ducts became awash with joy.

Another Tzaneen-based couple, Liz and Clive, family friends of a PCV south of me, have also put us up from time to time, and also treat us like members of the family while we are there. Liz (American, started hitch-hiking down Africa in the '70s and ended up here) works in Swaziland and Clive (British, unsure about his hitching history) is a citrus consultant. They have one son, Christopher, who is 15.

These photos do little justice to their house, but are better than nothing. So you don't think PC is a walk of cake, it on very rare occasion (twice now) that I stay here. By and large, I poop in a hole, live in my compact concrete room, and eat chicken feet for lunch - not that I would change a single thing about my village or homestay. The occasional reprieve, however, is generally welcome.

Pregnant with Peace Corps

nine months in country, eh? where has the time gone? well, to cold drink and castle, and good times and frustrating times and lonely times, and nights drinking tea and listening to the late night prayer-songs from the zcc (pr. zet see see) church waft over the field, and days spent outside in the shade to get away from the blazing inferno that is limpopo, and days, so many days, spent in linguistic and cultural confusion, and evenings spent sitting on in the courtyard listening to my family talking non-stop in their beautiful language, and, i hope, to moderate success as peace corps volunteer.

My village

Some pictures from my village. I've been hesitant to wander around with my camera because, well, I hate looking like the white tourist. I should get over it, I know, especially as it has been 7 months - I'll try to take and post more soon.

For now:




The yard of Phindile, the OVC supervisor at the org. Those are mealie (corn) stalks in the background. Most yards have a good plot of them.


A yard and street on the eastern side of the village.


Aubrey, the matric (grade 12) student who lives in the room next to me.




On our way to the dam.


Ramotshinyadi dam - about 2km from my house. People come here to fetch water, do laundry, fish for catfish (I'm pricing poles today), and swim. Even though there is a large and scary looking crocodile who lives here. I stumbled across him while walking around the far side of the water. Huge. Don't worry, though, according to my co-worker, "he is a very dumb crocodile." Safety first.


I am indeed wearing a T-rex shirt. People have very genuinely asked me if we have them in the U.S. If only, I tell them, if only.


The path back to my house.

Projects and the like

A bit about my organization and projects. Fair warning, I rambled on this one.

Ramotshinyadi HIV/AIDS Youth Guide was started by Fhatuwani (the director and my supervisor) in 2001 as a youth-based organization. Since then it has grown significantly and currently provides services to many households in nine different villages.

Our main services are:
Home-Based Care [HBC] -where our forty-six carers visit needy families in their homes to provide case management, counseling, and health referrals.
HIV Prevention – we plan and carry out large-scale HIV Counseling and Testing [HCT] campaigns in our villages and provide HIV prevention talks at various venues.
Orphans and Vulnerable Children [OVC] services – we run a drop-in center at the organization's office where over 200 OVCs are given two meals per day (before and after school), educational support, and a safe place to play with their friends.

We have seven full-time staff members at the main office, and the forty-six carers in our village and the eight others. The office gets extremely busy when everyone is back at the end of the month for reporting. The carers love to give me grief about my lack of Sesotho and XiTsonga. I would give them grief back, but I don't speak SeSotho or XiTsonga well enough. Hmm.

At present, the org is five pre-fab trailers arranged in a square (one, my computer lab trailer, is tucked away behind another) with a courtyard in the middle for waiting clients and eating/playing kids. Soon, though, construction on our permanent facility will be done. It will have eight offices and a large hall for the kids, meetings, dogs playing poker, whatever. The walls are up and the guys are almost done putting up the wood framework for the roof. So far as has been explained to me, all that is left is to slap some tin on the wooden framework and put in electrics. When I first arrive the foundation was still being poured. Not bad for four marginally trained kids (they are between 18 and 22) who live in tents next to the site.

As time moves slowly here, it has taken some time to get programs up and running. But things are starting to move along.

I set up a seven-computer lab at the drop-in center for orphans and vulnerable children that I am using to teach typing, MS Office Programs, and educational math software to the kids and some community members. Currently have four different two-hour classes each week. Today a co-worker, Phindile, the OVC supervisor, told me that the semi-younger (Grades 5-8) kids want in, so I may be adding one or two more. Woof. And here I thought Peace Corps would be a horribly paid two-year vacation.

I also just got a weekly HIV wellness class and support group going at the local clinic with the help (and translation skills) of a co-worker, Kaizer, our HIV Prevention manager. People on ARV treatment come once a month on their specific week on Thursdays, so we have a different group each week of the month. The program will reach 80-90 HIV+ community members each month. Today we had 25 people show up and we managed to get a really good conversation going about HIV and pregnancy and serodiscordant couples (where one partner is infected and the other isn't). The group members are really interested and suggested about fifteen different topics to discuss at later meetings. Time to get going on making powerpoints and developing a curriculum! We are hoping, once the kinks are worked out, to expand to four or five different clinics in nearby villages.

As there will be four different groups, I pitched the idea of naming each one to the group today, thinking that they would come up with something like "Word of Life" or "Health and Wellness" (in Sotho, of course), as seems to happen with support groups here. Instead I got, "Well, since we meet the first week of the month, why don't we call ourselves 'Group 1'." Can't wait to make group t-shirts! Ah well, it will be easier to remember which one is which this way.

I also just purchased (grants take forever and it only costs $14 for 100 planks) a ton of planks and will start construction of book shelves (if only I still had my Jesus beard!) for the community library next week. We had books donated (about 8 large boxes) by Books for Africa through the Peace Corps office and have another 20lbs coming in a month or three from BookAid, an organization in Connecticut. Really excited to open it up.

Also going to use some of the wood to build myself a table, bookshelf, and shelving for my clothes. Living with just a bed and two plastic chairs makes things a bit difficult.

I'm also working on planning a male-focused HIV Counseling and Testing (HCT) campaign in conjunction with a soccer tournament. There is a field right next to the org, and there have been a few hundred people at previous tournaments. Getting men to test is extremely difficult due to stigma and 'strong man' cultural norms, so I figured disguising it as a soccer thing might get better results.

I am still plugging away at the Primary school computer lab, but those things are so riddled with viruses that it will be a few months before I anything will be operational. Something to work towards, at least. And when it is done I can start training Alphus, the Grade 7 & 8 Sotho teacher, who is extremely interested in computers, on how to run classes. He will hopefully continue any classes I start after I am gone. Hopefully.

A few other Peace Corps volunteers and I are busy planning a week-long girls empowerment camp for 50 young girls. The camp, based of the Girls Lead Our World (GLOW) model, will encourage young women to become active citizens by building their self-esteem and confidence, increasing their self-awareness, and developing their skills in goal setting, assertiveness, and career and life planning. It will also be a constant dance party and a ton of fun.

I'm also working with seven local 20-somethings who currently run the small organic garden next to the org. They were given 30 hectares (~74 acres) by the tribal authority to create a larger organic farm. Once we get estimates for digging a bore hole (water is a huge, huge problem here) and basic start up costs, I am going to write a grant for them. Then we dig. We obviously won't start with all 30 hectares, but the hope is to start with one, raise money by selling produce in Ramotshinyadi and nearby villages, and then expand. Rinse and repeat. We are also going to try to link up with some grocery stores in Tzaneen. Hopefully one of them will want locally-grown organic produce from a non-profit community organization. Hopefully.

I've also made contact with Global Vision 2020. They are an international NGO that provides training and supplies for - you guessed it - vision correction. Access to optometrists is non-existent in the village, and many people suffer from poor vision. The awesome part of GV2020 is that they have latched onto self-refraction technology. Self-refraction lenses are self-adjustable, so once need for corrective lenses is established, the wearer can be trained on how to adjust them and effectively cut out the need for expensive and, again, non-existent optometry. Go here for more info on the org and self-refraction lenses: http://www.gv2020.org/about.htm.

I've put in an application for my org and the clinic next door to act as distributors (our staff would be trained on giving basic eye tests and training people on how to self-adjust the lenses). If the application is accepted, we could begin testing the OVCs and nearby community members once the training is completed. In particular, access to glasses has been shown as a significant, and, for you economists, cost-effective means of improving education outcomes. Seeing the board helps kids read good.

Well, that's about where I am now. Not sure if all the projects will pan out, but I have about a million ideas to take their places, so I'm sure I'll stay busy.

How many Peace Corps Volunteers does it take to screw in a light bulb? Wait, you have electricity? Zing.

Also, it is really hard for me to access this thingy in my village, which is why posts are a bit rare and why I have a hard time responding to comments. Sorry. I do appreciate them, though.

Apologies for the lack of posts. Things have been busy. I'll have some more photos up soon. In the mean time, funerals:

Two stories from funerals that I have attended here.

The first was for one of my organization's home-based carers, Nurse (a surprisingly common name here), who had been with the org since 2002. She was a fantastic lady and it was a huge loss to lose her.

Generally, memorial services are held on Friday and the actual funeral on Saturday. Early Friday morning my co-worker picked me up and we headed to the graveyard. I was told to wear work clothes and given no other information. I learned, on showing up, that as machinery is expensive to rent generally the men dig the grave. When we got there there were about ten guys standing around the plot, which was already dug to about two feet.

There is hard, dry soil here, so two guys would jump in with pickaxes, break up the earth, and then two other guys would go in with shovels to clear the loose soil. As it is a communal effort, after a minute or so two new people would take over pick-axing or shoveling. I got a lot of strange stares (happens a lot being the only white dude most places) and people seemed a little hesitant to talk to me, but after I jumped in a shoveled for a while, though, I was treated like a member of the group. My friend told me that white people almost never attend the digging, and absolutely never participate. Take that race-based cultural barriers.

We spent the morning and afternoon digging, breaking for bread and tea occasionally. Once we were finished we shared huge communal plates of mala ya kgomo (cow entrails) and nama ya kgogo (chicken meat). As I've mentioned before, cow stomach turns mine, but I made a fair show of putting some down.

After lunch we proceeded to the family's house for the memorial service, which took place under a tent in the family's yard. It was about an hour long and featured speeches from family, friends, and co-workers. They placed me at the front table, which, after the initial awkwardness, was really nice. Most of the carers from our org were there, and a few led songs during down times. There is nothing like forty South African women belting out traditional church songs. Nothing.

After the service we ate (noticing a theme?), luckily just bogobe (pap) and chicken. Unfortunately, my ride to the funeral (which was 25km away) the next morning had to go to his uncle's funeral in a different village and my family had a different one to attend in my village, so I couldn't attend. I'm glad I was at least able to be part of the memorial service.

The other funeral I attended was for my co-workers uncle. A note: uncle (malome) is a general term for an older male, so it was actually his cousin thrice removed. This time, I just attended the funeral proper.

We arrived in the village around 7. The service, again under a tent in the family's yard, started around 8 and lasted about 45 minutes. After the service there was a viewing of the body in the house and then we followed the transport car to the graveyard. As the procession approached the graveyard everyone got down on their knees and said a prayer before entering the gate. The procession was led by some traditional singers. The one male carried a tall, thin stick and, for lack of a better description, kept beat by airily beatboxing highlighted with the occasional high-pitched whistle. The five or six women sang traditional church songs along with the beat.

We filed around the plot and the coffin was moved onto the lowering mechanism thing. No idea what to call it, but I'm sure you know what I mean. Friends and family made speeches, mostly in Sotho. At one point everyone laughed and looked at me. My friend told me later that the guy had said, "We are truly blessed, a white person has joined us." All in good fun. The coffin was lowered down and the skin of a recently slaughtered goat was put over it. Asked my friend why and his only response was, "it's tradition." It seems like many things here are done as tradition long after the initial meaning has been lost.

Large pieces of tin were put over the coffin and cement, sand, and water poured over, followed by dirt. Once the hole was filled, stones were put around to mark the plot. Then family put the personal effects of the man who passes on top of the mound. They included two bowls, a cup, and a pair of shoes. Most graves I've seen around have similar things on top.

The singers then led the procession back to the family's house for a meal. I was seated with older family members (an honor), and we shared copious amounts of pap, beet root, chicken, and a whole boiled goat head. I tried the latter, but stayed away some. My friend's mother was in the group lording over a giant bucket of umqomboti. Umqomboti is a traditional home-brew made by fermenting mealie meal. It is thick, occasionally chunky, and always tangy. I was served a mason jar of it, with everyone watching, including the maker, to see how I would respond. Luckily I had tried it before and knew what to expect. After putting it down my friend and I went for 'after tears', the traditional post-funeral drink of remembrance. South Africans would like Ireland, I think.

Funerals here tend to be more a time of positive remembrance and community bonding than a somber, black dress affair. At the meal after the service it would have been easy to forget that we were there because someone passed. People were singing, some guy was hawking aloe beauty products, and conversation was lively. It's a much better way to remember someone, in my opinion.

Anywho, it was fascinating to see the traditional practices and cultural differences. With the frequency of funerals here, I'm sure I'll attend several more during my service.

Abbot and Costello

Some photos of my brothers (nephews), Dankie and Moclare. While they don't look much like Abbot and Costello, our conversations are generally as elucidating as "Who's on First?".


Dankie outside my house. Behind him are the jerry cans we use to store rain water, which is used for tea as it is much less salty than the pumped variety.



Moclare was much more interested in touching the lens of my camera than having his picture taken.




To date, they have destroyed two decks of cards. Motlare likes to throw them around my room and then run off screaming. Dankie enjoys showing off his counting skills (in both English and Sotho), so I have him call out the number on the cards as I flip them. The face cards gave us no end of trouble.






Dankie demanded that I let him use my camera. I forgot that it was set to video. Hence:

N'wanedi Pt. 2

There was also a lovely dam. Well, two, but I only got pictures of one.






That tree always had a ton of birds on it. It also wasn't always white.

N'wanedi Nature Reserve

Over Easter weekend 17-or-so of us Limpopoites traveled up to the N'wanedi Nature Reserve. We all met in Thohoyandou, an extremely poor but culturally significant town northwest of Giyani (so northward by a good ways from me). We rented a taxi and made the extremely long trip to the reserve. As this was a month or so into site, and we were all still so new to our surroundings, it was one big PCV lovefest.

A lot of photos:



Elizabeth scrubbing pots.
And Seth grilling.
Gender stereotypes, go!



Sean, who can build one hell of a grill fire.


Out-of-focus delicious chicken.


Cate.


Ethan.


Carol, at whose Tzaneen apartment I stay probably a little too often. She is my Peace Corps mom, and has kept me fed and healthy.


There was a troop of baboons near our guest house. One was brave enough to come into one of our rooms. Our friend Elizabeth ran at it screaming. Somehow, that did not result in her immediate dismemberment.














Thatched roof.


We tried to go canoeing on the lake, but there was only one car to transport them and it was out god knows where. So we hiked to the water instead.


Seth and the Baobab.


Sami.














Veronica.