kids

Kids, like intestinal issues and sociocultural confusion, are a constant in Peace Corps. And sometimes they wear on you the same. But most of the time they are godsends, as they too barely speak the local language. Instead of formal verbal communication, an erratic series of grunts and hand motions tends to suffice. Which, given my poor Sotho skills, is generally faster than trying to piece sentences together word by word. Ke….nyaka….meetse vs. pointing at the water barrel, pantomiming drinking, and then staring at the child to see if anything been conveyed. Usually not, but I haven’t died of thirst yet.

Some photos:


Motlare with his toy for the day. Yeah, I put a stop to it before they figured out space monkey.


Motlare in his true form - reaching for anything that I am holding.


Dankie and a neighborhood boy.


I let Dankie use my camera for a bit. We are still working on the whole not covering the lens with your finger bit.


Local kids who come over a lot.


Mostly because there is a kids bike at the house, broken and chainless as it is.


Leah and her daughter, Ndezi, who was tiny when I arrived. She forgot who I was when I came back from holiday break and burst out crying when I went to say hi. She's remembered now and is back to her usual huge smiles and sort-of waves.

things i like about my village

the fact that acceptable responses to 'how are you' is 'ke tsogile' [i've awoken] and 'ke lokile' [i was okay]. i still haven't received a satisfactory response as to why the latter is in the past tense, and no one else seems to find it as funny as i do.

the fact that my tin roof makes even the slightest drizzle sound like a downpour and every downpour like the apocalypse.

dust chicken from roadside stands, all slathered in peri peri [hot pepper] marinade.

how everyone in my village knows my name, and expect me to remember theirs after one meeting six months ago. after a while the awkwardness became funny.

the view on the taxi ride from my village to tzaneen, filled as it is with big, green farms on rolling hills.

sipping jasmine green tea in the courtyard while my brothers try their best to upset the mug and/or my book.

the fact that motlare, my 2 y/o brother, will repeat whatever i say the best he can. so far we have 'careful', 'okay', and 'bah ram ewe' down pat. we're still working on my name.

the fact that saleem, the proprietor of the local indian shop, still has no idea what to do with me and gives a look of genuine surprise every time i walk in.

the donkey carts [koloi ya tonki], which are just sawed-off backs of pick-up trucks hitched to two miserable looking beasts of burden that fly through the village with no concern for life or limb.

the local school bus, or twenty kids piled into the back of a pickup truck.

the zcc prayer meetings, which are conducted in song, and which carry through the evening in such an wonderful way.

the other small shop situated right next to the indian shop and which is only open when the indian shop closes (so, between 12 and 2). Go go gadget capitalism!

the fact that said shop just stared selling deep-fried hake for R4 (~50 cents).

the fact that it is mango season and there are three trees just outside my room. so good.

Soccer Tournament

I went with my friend, Mangena, to a soccer tournament at one of the local farms. The farm owners built a small field just outside the living compound on the farm. Someone offered the winner R500 (~$58) and then charged R5 at the gate. Apparently you can make bank doing that. Mangena was smart enough to bring folding chairs, so we set up near his friend Julia’s table, where she was selling some home cooked food. She gave us giant plates of pap, fried chicken, boiled cabbage, and beetroot. So good.

There were around 100 people there that day. The organizers had hooked up giant (as in, more than eight feet tall) speakers (as in, more than one giant speaker more than eight feet tall) right near our table and blasted (as in, eardrums are overrated anyways) local kwaito. People went around selling cigarettes, snacks, and booze. Judging from how little soccer was actually watched that day, I think the thing was just a pretense to have a dance party, but that seems to go for most things here in SA.

Some photos:


What, were you expecting grass?


The kid on the left wandered around all day selling snacks out of the basket on his bike. He also had some sweet shades.


The crowd, which was mostly made up of people who work at the farm and live on the compound.


Me and Julia.


Peace Corps: holding babies, saving lives.


Bush sunset at 30km/hr.

A video of the farm compound after the tournament. It is sideways at first because I didn't realize it was on the video setting. Professional to the last.

Tzaneen

Some pictures of Tzaneen, my shopping town (PC talk for the nearest town that has things for purchase beyond the minimal selection of the village). As I mentioned before, Tza is about 55+ km from my village and the trip via koombie (12-14 person van that serves as public transport here) takes from between 1-3 hours. The two hour difference is caused by having to wait for a taxi to pass on the main road (somewhere between one minute and 1.5 hours) and then wait for it to fill (same bag).

All in all, Tzaneen is a pretty amazing shopping town. There is a lot of money there due to the large farms nearby. According to a nearby PCV it has the largest collection of millionaires in South Africa outside of major cities. As a result there are many expensive stores outside of which I can be found, nosed pressed on the window in a Dickensian fashion. But it also means that we have access to a wide variety of goods and services, some of which is occasionally affordable on my rather petite stipend. Like cheese. And amazing Indian food.

Go here for some boring, impersonal, and, as it is a Wiki page, probably questionable facts on Tzaneen.

Some photos:










For a while during the spring Tzaneen was covered in these flowers.






Ethan at the pond/standing marsh near our friend's apartment.


Satvik, the backpackers just outside Tzaneen we stayed at over Halloween weekend.

Howdy howdy howdy

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I was busy finishing up a grant and some proposals before the holidays and then was out of province for a while on vacation. I have a few posts saved up which will post every week and a half or so. Hope everyone had a fantastic holiday season!

Sesi Miyelani's Birthday

A while back we had a birthday party for our Admin and Finance lady, Sesi (tr: Sister) Miyelani. It was, as with most things South African, a dancing affair. Someone blasted some local house music (a.k.a kwaito) from their phone and people randomly stood and danced as they saw fit.

Some pictures and video:


Sesi Miyelani dancing. We spread out tables and chairs and a had a lovely spread of cold drink (soda) and jiggies (basically crunchy Cheetos. The best).


Miyelani and Jennifer doing a traditional Tsonga dance - the electric slide.


Two carers doing a Tsonga dance, which consists mostly of shaking one's butt.


A carer and two cooks.

Apologies for the blurry end of the videos. My camera is strange.

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.