We awoke at 5:30 to HOT showers. What a treat!. It was a heavy day for language training and we got the first of three rabies shots. Victor, the medical officer, gave another talk on health and discussed what would be in the medical kit.
The morning was cold. The temperature in our room was 52 and the rooms do not warm up during the day.
The language is coming slowly. I don’t feel confident about it at all. Today Lydia and Morgan came to talk about the area where we would be located and what we can expect. It sounds pretty rural. It was even suggested that we might want to purchase a donkey and a cart to get around.
Meals have been good but a little on the starchy side. South Africans' staple food is bogobe (pronounced “boh-hoh-bay” and also called pap, pronounced “pop”), which is made from cornmeal and looks and tastes like grits, but cooked very firm, so you can pick it up with your fingers. I don’t particularly care for it, but it is not awful. We have had a sliced beet salad that is very good, and for lunch there is usually a piece of fruit. Breakfast has been oatmeal or sorghum bogobe – sort of whole-grain bogobe, but made like Instant Ralston. It's pretty good on these cold mornings.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
Pre-Service Training
The flight to South Africa was the longest we had ever taken. We were in the airplane about 18 hours. The flight was an hour late due to bad weather. We flew to Dakar, Senegal in 7.5 hours, stayed in the airport about an hour and then flew another eight hours to Johannesburg, South Africa: 15.5 hours total.
After we left the airport we traveled by bus for another couple of hours to the site where we'll have Pre-Service Training before our service begins -- eight weeks of introduction to South African culture, language, and the educational system we'll be working in. It is a former teacher’s college that has been closed since 1994. Some of the buildings are used by the provincial Department of Education, and some by the Peace Corps.
A good dinner was awaiting us and then we were assigned to our rooms. We are in the married couples dorm -- there are five other married couples in our group of 43 volunteers, of them much younger than us. (We do have some more senior single women in the group.)
The weather has been unusually cold and we crawled into our beds and covered ourselves with the heavy, warm blankets they had provided.
On Day 1 we awoke at 5:45 to a very cold morning and no hot water. We were not brave enough for a cold shower. We wore our warmest clothes. There is no central heat in the buildings (there is apparently no central heating anywhere in South Africa) and it was SO cold. The dining room was not too bad, but the classroom was very cold and we sat with coats and gloves on. By afternoon it had warmed up enough so that we did not need heavy coats, but as soon as the sun went down it was very cold again.
The activities of the day were lessons in Afrikaans and Setswana and introductions to the Peace Corps Country Director and the training staff.
The medical officer came and talked about keeping healthy and we also got shots for MMR and typhoid. We were both very tired and had a slight reaction to the shots. We came back to our dorm in the afternoon and took a two-hour nap and felt much better. Then we had dinner and crawled under our covers and slept. We both feel better today.
Already we have lost three people who started with our group in Washington. A young couple dropped out the day we were flying to South Africa, and a man dropped out on Day 1 of training. So far we are still here.
After we left the airport we traveled by bus for another couple of hours to the site where we'll have Pre-Service Training before our service begins -- eight weeks of introduction to South African culture, language, and the educational system we'll be working in. It is a former teacher’s college that has been closed since 1994. Some of the buildings are used by the provincial Department of Education, and some by the Peace Corps.
A good dinner was awaiting us and then we were assigned to our rooms. We are in the married couples dorm -- there are five other married couples in our group of 43 volunteers, of them much younger than us. (We do have some more senior single women in the group.)
The weather has been unusually cold and we crawled into our beds and covered ourselves with the heavy, warm blankets they had provided.
On Day 1 we awoke at 5:45 to a very cold morning and no hot water. We were not brave enough for a cold shower. We wore our warmest clothes. There is no central heat in the buildings (there is apparently no central heating anywhere in South Africa) and it was SO cold. The dining room was not too bad, but the classroom was very cold and we sat with coats and gloves on. By afternoon it had warmed up enough so that we did not need heavy coats, but as soon as the sun went down it was very cold again.
The activities of the day were lessons in Afrikaans and Setswana and introductions to the Peace Corps Country Director and the training staff.
The medical officer came and talked about keeping healthy and we also got shots for MMR and typhoid. We were both very tired and had a slight reaction to the shots. We came back to our dorm in the afternoon and took a two-hour nap and felt much better. Then we had dinner and crawled under our covers and slept. We both feel better today.
Already we have lost three people who started with our group in Washington. A young couple dropped out the day we were flying to South Africa, and a man dropped out on Day 1 of training. So far we are still here.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
"We Don't Know"
For weeks, when we tell friends and family we're going to the Peace Corps we've been besieged by questions. "What town will you be in?" "Where will you live?" "What will you do?" The answer to all of them has been pretty much the same: We don't know.
(Most of what we know is that our bags have to be less than 107 inches in total height, width, and length, and less than 80 pounds. Sally is having trouble imagining how to live for two years with less than 80 pound of stuff, but it's David who's more overweight at the moment.)
But pretty soon we're going to begin finding out. This Wednesday, July 22, we fly to Washington for "staging," our introduction to the Peace Corps and the other members of the group we'll train and work with in South Africa. Thursday we take off from Dulles for Johannesburg.
Where do we go next? We don't know.
But we do know we'll be in training for 10 weeks or so as a group. We don't know where. We do know it's referred to as "lockdown" for its intensity. (We don't know what Internet access will be like, so you may not hear much from us.) Part of the training involves living with a family. And when it's over, we'll finally have some answers.
(Most of what we know is that our bags have to be less than 107 inches in total height, width, and length, and less than 80 pounds. Sally is having trouble imagining how to live for two years with less than 80 pound of stuff, but it's David who's more overweight at the moment.)
But pretty soon we're going to begin finding out. This Wednesday, July 22, we fly to Washington for "staging," our introduction to the Peace Corps and the other members of the group we'll train and work with in South Africa. Thursday we take off from Dulles for Johannesburg.
Where do we go next? We don't know.
But we do know we'll be in training for 10 weeks or so as a group. We don't know where. We do know it's referred to as "lockdown" for its intensity. (We don't know what Internet access will be like, so you may not hear much from us.) Part of the training involves living with a family. And when it's over, we'll finally have some answers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)