Rain, Electricity, and Thanksgiving

It′s the end of the school year and we are feeling a bit adrift.

Although school isn′t officially out until Dec. 11, students at the middle and high schools are no longer attending school because their exams are over. Teachers are still grading exams, so they are at school, but it seems ghostly without the students. The primary schools are still functioning, but even some of them are not doing the same kind of class work they did when we first arrived. They no longer have to teach so that the students will pass exams.

The holiday vacation will last for a month, until Jan. 11, and then we will start the new school year and things will probably be very busy.

We are in the rainy season. The rain is not a steady rain or a misty rain but intermittent torrential downpours. It will be very bright and sunny, and then clouds will move in and we′ll have a powerful thunderstorm, with dramatic lightning and crashing thunder. When it beats on our tin roof it can be intimidating. The storm may go on for a couple of hours and then passes on. Often the storms occur at night and when we get up in the morning the dirt paths have changed into muddy ruts filled with water. It makes walking to some of our schools challenging.

Electricity has been a problem for the past two weeks, and rain and electrical outages are related – the one often seems to cause the other. Last night, during a particularly loud thunderstorm, the lights went out. We have candles at the ready, but often there′s not much to do but go to bed.

While the electricity is usually back on in time to heat our morning coffee, the schools seem to have more trouble. The electricity has been off in our schools all week, which that means that fax machines, copiers and computers don′t work. This is frustrating to David who goes to the schools only to find he can do nothing. One day a principal had to drive to another town to fax an important document.

We′re already feeling technology-deprived. More than once we′ve wanted to do a computer-based presentation, but we have no way of doing it – nobody seems to have a video projector anywhere around us. And even if we had one, could we count on having electricity to power it? It is instructive how we Americans take reliable electrical connections – and hot water and cellphone service and Philadelphia Cream Cheese in the grocery stores -- for granted.

Thanksgiving: The Turkey Story

Speaking of cream cheese (how′s that for a transition?) we had a wonderful Thanksgiving with nine other Peace Corps volunteers as guests for the weekend. The Peace Corps doesn′t observe most American holidays unless, like Christmas, they are also celebrated in South Africa. Thanksgiving, however, is an exception. We were given Thursday and Friday off to celebrate it.

We started our preparations with an ingredients hunt – Thanksgiving means cranberry sauce and stuffing and pumpkin pies and turkey. We took a couple of taxi rides to shop for things like ground nutmeg and pumpkin and chocolate chips – and, of course, a turkey.

We rounded up most of what we needed, but we hit a real problem with the turkey. We′d been told that most places wouldn′t sell turkeys, but we would almost certainly find them at the Pic ′n′ Pay in Brits. And we did. There they were, in a freezer case, encased in white shrink-wrapped plastic. But we wouldn′t have recognized them if they hadn′t said ″TURKEY″ on their wrappings. They were all no more than the size of a football, and weighed around 3 and a half kilograms – about 7 and a half pounds. That′s a pretty good chicken, but it is no Thanksgiving turkey for 11 Americans, three priests, and assorted other guests. We panicked.

One of the nuns who lives here asked what we were doing for Thanksgiving and we shared our fears. She volunteered to help. She was going to Pretoria, she said, and she was sure she could find a real turkey in the big city.

And sure enough, late Tuesday afternoon she drove up a 17-pound turkey in her trunk – a genuine Jennie-O bird imported from Willmar, Minnesota. We traded her our 7-pound squab. David made pumpkin and Derby pies. Sally made an apple coffeecake (that′s where the cream cheese went). Each of our Peace Corps guests brought a dish or made something after s/he got here. We had a wonderful spread: mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce (made from dried cranberries, and it turned out well), green bean casserole, bread stuffing, mushroom gravy, macaroni and cheese, butternut soup, green salad, and a couple of vegetarian dishes. And turkey. Plenty of turkey.

Our guests stayed for two nights, and we had fun catching up and telling each other about what we have been doing since we were together in training. There was also a hike up our mountain that was cut short by a thunderstorm, and we played card games. Taboo, a word guessing game, was a favorite.

The only problem was that some of the educators we work said, ″Why weren′t we invited?″ It′s a major cultural difference: Here in South Africa a celebration carries an open invitation – even a wedding or a funeral calls for an open-house event with a LOT of food and anyone who lives around can come and eat. It′s not unusual to slaughter a couple of cows, and local women will come and cook for two or three days. Our co-workers are surprised when we tell them that in America we do not attend weddings or most parties unless we are invited by the hosts themselves, and when we have a party we prepare just enough food to feed the people we′ve invited.

Next time we′ll have to think of some way to show our hospitality to our South African friends -- without slaughtering a cow.