Today, September 17, 2009, we took the oath to become Peace Corps Volunteers.
Yesterday we traveled on a chartered bus from our training site to the casino/hotel where we were sworn in. We were sad to say goodbye to our host mother and her comfortable home. We met at the college with all our luggage. The bus was so full that the back several row of seats were stuffed with luggage and the Peace Corps also had a truck and trailer full of stuff we had bought earlier this week on our Shopping Day excursion to Pretoria.
It was a long ride. We were supposed to have arrived around 2 p.m. and it was a little after 4 when we finally arrived. The training manager, who was driving the truck, was calling David in the bus and texting him with messages updating us on what to do about our luggage. David, in turn, was relating the updates to the whole bus. It got kind of funny, especially when David announced he was impersonating the training manager.
We arrived at a lovely hotel casino with nice rooms and bathrooms.
We hauled all our stuff to our rooms and then had a session with Country Director McGrath. It covered stuff we had already discussed such as blogging and travel and leave and last minute details.
(You may have noticed the disclaimer in the upper right-hand corner of this page. The Peace Corps insists that whatever active volunteers write has to avoid controversy and respect the security of other volunteers. That's the reason we don't but place names or very many personal names in this blog. If you're really dying of curiosity about where we are, email us. We can tell you in private, just not in public.)
We had a delicious buffet dinner outside near the pool. We sat around for a long time talking with fellow trainees and then went to bed.
This morning we awoke and had a nice breakfast. Then we had to move our entire luggage out of the rooms into the same room where we had the ceremony. I was glad we had not bought a refrigerator or a big stove.
We had had our clothes pressed by the hotel housekeeper and we looked quite nice when we were dressed for the ceremony.
At a little before 11 a.m. the new U.S. ambassador-designate to South Africa, Donald Gips, arrived and we had a group picture taken with him. The school principals we will be working with were in the audience. Then the ceremony began. The first two South African speakers were from the Department of Education and both gave thoughtful speeches and expressed their appreciation for the Peace Corps. Then the Country Director spoke and administered the oath. It was quite moving. We all stood and raised our right hand and promised almost the same thing the president and other officials promise when they take the oath.
After the oath our language training staff came up and sang two African songs for us. Finally, the ambassador-designate gave a short speech encouraging us and promising to support us. (We are his first group. He has only been in South Africa for three weeks – not even time enough to present his papers for acceptance by the South African government and move from being ambassador-designate to ambassador.)
Afterward we had a buffet lunch. Our supervisor had arranged for a kombie to pick us up and bring us back to our permanent site. We are staying with the chief of the village and his wife for another week until we can move into a place near the Catholic school where we will be working.
It was sad leaving the hotel because we were parting from all the trainees we had become so close to in the past very intensive eight weeks. The next chance we'll have to see most of them will be in January, when we have an in-service training conference. Nonetheless, we're glad pre-service training is over. If we survived that two months, surely two years at our site will be easy by comparison.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
We Go to a Tombstone Unveiling
The day after the farewell party (see previous post) we went to a tombstone unveiling. This is a major event for South African families – and, like weddings and funerals, its the occasion for a big and expensive party for the community.
Yesterday three stones for members of our host mother's family were unveiled, and she has been cooking and preparing all week.
Saturday night and Sunday morning the house swarmed with visiting family members. We left at 8 a.m. (unveilings always occur early in the morning) and went first to the home of our mama's brother-in-law not too far away, where there was a religious service run by the ZCC (Zion Christian Church). It was conducted under a rented tent set up in the yard. The men's choir was dressed in beige military-style uniforms and they sang and danced and from time to time while they were singing they all jumped or stomped together. We caught the tail-end of that service as they choir was slowly dancing/recessing out to a waiting bus. We got in a relative’s car and drove quite a long way, over very dusty roads to a very rural cemetery. The three family tombs had lace coverings on them so they were easy to identify. Some 200 people had come out, family, friends, and church members. Our hostess said that really wasn’t a huge gathering because the persons for whom the tombstones were made had died many years ago and were not remembered by everyone. A tombstone is not necessarily carved within a year after a death. It can be erected decades later.
At each tombstone the ministers had a little service and a family member was invited to say something about the departed person. We heard poems and songs too, all in Setswana. It took about an hour and a half to get to all three tombstones. It was spiritually meaningful, even though we did not know the people being honored. When it was over we drove back to the relative's house where there was a feast.
Before we could enter the house we had to either wash our hands or submit to the substantial water spray the ZCC church performs to cleanse people. That is traditional. We chose to wash our hands in a tub near the entrance. Then we were sent down to a buffet of all kinds of home-cooked food. This was an even more lavish party than the Peace Corps thank-you event. Two cows had been slaughtered at the house (we missed that part, fortunately), and the ladies of the neighborhood had been cooking for days. There were huge pots and buckets of food to try.
By afternoon we were back at our house sitting under the trees and talking with our host mother's company. Her daughter and little grandson came, as well as her niece, who is in law school and a friend, and also our host's sister and her children. It was a most pleasant afternoon with our new family.
Yesterday three stones for members of our host mother's family were unveiled, and she has been cooking and preparing all week.
Saturday night and Sunday morning the house swarmed with visiting family members. We left at 8 a.m. (unveilings always occur early in the morning) and went first to the home of our mama's brother-in-law not too far away, where there was a religious service run by the ZCC (Zion Christian Church). It was conducted under a rented tent set up in the yard. The men's choir was dressed in beige military-style uniforms and they sang and danced and from time to time while they were singing they all jumped or stomped together. We caught the tail-end of that service as they choir was slowly dancing/recessing out to a waiting bus. We got in a relative’s car and drove quite a long way, over very dusty roads to a very rural cemetery. The three family tombs had lace coverings on them so they were easy to identify. Some 200 people had come out, family, friends, and church members. Our hostess said that really wasn’t a huge gathering because the persons for whom the tombstones were made had died many years ago and were not remembered by everyone. A tombstone is not necessarily carved within a year after a death. It can be erected decades later.
At each tombstone the ministers had a little service and a family member was invited to say something about the departed person. We heard poems and songs too, all in Setswana. It took about an hour and a half to get to all three tombstones. It was spiritually meaningful, even though we did not know the people being honored. When it was over we drove back to the relative's house where there was a feast.
Before we could enter the house we had to either wash our hands or submit to the substantial water spray the ZCC church performs to cleanse people. That is traditional. We chose to wash our hands in a tub near the entrance. Then we were sent down to a buffet of all kinds of home-cooked food. This was an even more lavish party than the Peace Corps thank-you event. Two cows had been slaughtered at the house (we missed that part, fortunately), and the ladies of the neighborhood had been cooking for days. There were huge pots and buckets of food to try.
By afternoon we were back at our house sitting under the trees and talking with our host mother's company. Her daughter and little grandson came, as well as her niece, who is in law school and a friend, and also our host's sister and her children. It was a most pleasant afternoon with our new family.
Monday, September 14, 2009
The Farewell Party for Our Hosts
Our eight weeks with our home-stay families is winding down as training nears its end, and Saturday we trainees put on a farewell-and-thank-you party for our host families. The Peace Corps bought a whole cow (slaughtered somewhere else), and village women came to cook the bogobe and several kinds of vegetables, including butternut squash, green beans, cabbage, and spinach. It was a traditional braai, with lots of grilled meat and chicken -- cooking the meat is a job that men traditionally do over an open fire. David proudly demonstrated his skill at grilled chicken.
I wore a traditional dress that my host mother had made for me. It was quite a hit, especially with the local women who came up and hugged me and told me how good I looked.
The trainees put on a show for the hosts and we gave our families certificates of thanks for hosting us for the last seven weeks. Many of the hosts got up and talked about how much they had liked having the trainees. One tall, large woman told us that her husband had died a few years ago and she was lonely now. She liked having the trainees in her home and she had a couple living with her. She had decided to give her male trainee the name of her late husband so, she said, she felt she had her husband back for a short while. The trainee in question turned bright red, but it was really very touching.
Many of the speakers began by singing a short song. The audience knew these songs and joined in. The wife of the tribal chief was present and she, too, began her talk with a song.
The trainees put on a hilarious skit. It was about an African family that takes in a trainee and all the funny things that happen. The trainee asks where the shower is and the host says the only time she will see a shower is when it rains. It went on to exaggerate the amount of the trainee's luggage and the difficulties of language training and was quite a hoot.
One trainee gave a short speech in Setswana and another read an original poem.
After the program we had a big dinner with lots of food. Besides the meat the men had cooked we had vegetables and salads that local women had made and a custard for dessert. It was all very good. We are going to miss our host mother and our neighbors.
I wore a traditional dress that my host mother had made for me. It was quite a hit, especially with the local women who came up and hugged me and told me how good I looked.
The trainees put on a show for the hosts and we gave our families certificates of thanks for hosting us for the last seven weeks. Many of the hosts got up and talked about how much they had liked having the trainees. One tall, large woman told us that her husband had died a few years ago and she was lonely now. She liked having the trainees in her home and she had a couple living with her. She had decided to give her male trainee the name of her late husband so, she said, she felt she had her husband back for a short while. The trainee in question turned bright red, but it was really very touching.
Many of the speakers began by singing a short song. The audience knew these songs and joined in. The wife of the tribal chief was present and she, too, began her talk with a song.
The trainees put on a hilarious skit. It was about an African family that takes in a trainee and all the funny things that happen. The trainee asks where the shower is and the host says the only time she will see a shower is when it rains. It went on to exaggerate the amount of the trainee's luggage and the difficulties of language training and was quite a hoot.
One trainee gave a short speech in Setswana and another read an original poem.
After the program we had a big dinner with lots of food. Besides the meat the men had cooked we had vegetables and salads that local women had made and a custard for dessert. It was all very good. We are going to miss our host mother and our neighbors.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Riding the Kumbies
Public transportation is very different in South Africa is from what we're used to in the United States. Because so few South Africans can afford cars, most people travel by public transportation, which mostly means taxis – but not the U.S. kind of taxis.
A U.S. taxi is a car that is rented by an individual to go from one specific address to another. Here that is called a ″meter taxi″ and it's found only in big cities. Out in the countryside where we are there are a couple of other kinds of taxis – ″local″ taxis that run a more or less prescribed route, picking up and dropping off people along the way, and larger vans that run longer distances from one "shopping town" to another, or between a major city like Pretoria and a smaller town or village. (In small towns there are often no large grocery stores. The small stores that exist are ″tuck shops″ that are expensive and usually have a limited supply of non-perishable goods. So people who want to shop at larger stores with less expensive food have to travel to a "shopping town" to buy their groceries and clothing and furniture and fixtures.)
The local taxis in our area are uniformly Asian-manufactured copies of American mini-SUVs with a little added headroom. They look like Jeeps with high foreheads, and hold a nominal 10 passengers – or more if they can be crowded in.
The long-range vehicles, also Asian-built look like American minivans (Toyota Sienna, etc.) but they're larger, and hold more passengers. Factory-standard they have 13 passenger seats, and most are customized to carry another three or four people. They are called "kumbies." We don't know why. Maybe because they "come by" on an irregular schedule.
The schedule is irregular because no kumbie leaves with empty seats. It has to fill up completely before it starts out. The first time we went from our village to Pretoria we stood on the side of the road and when we saw a minibus we held an index finger up. It had room so it stopped and picked us up. Then it continued to go around on local streets until it is full. When it was full we started for Pretoria.
(The taxi gesture language in South Africa is much more sophisticated than just standing on a curb and waving your hand the way it's done in New York: if you're going "local" you point down and local taxis stop for you. If you're going "to town" you point up and kumbies stop for you. And in some places you point back toward where you came from in order to get a ride home.)
Once in the outskirts of Pretoria passengers would shout ″short left″ or ″short right″ to indicate to the driver that they wanted to be dropped off at the next left-hand or right-hand street, and the driver pulls over and lets the passengers off.
We ended the first part of our journey to town in at a ″thekisi renke,″ or taxi rank. That is a where kumbies congregate. In big cities a taxi rank can be an underground garage or an open parking lot where kumbies wait for passengers. A queue marshal controls the area. He is the final arbiter if there are problems. At the taxi rank we changed to a different kumbie for the final leg of our trip back to the training college. (The kumbie left the taxi rank full – we waited for about 45 minutes for it to fill up – but once it got out of the city and into the countryside and began to drop off a passengers the driver began to pick up passengers going ″local″ to fill the vacant seats.)
These kumbies are very snug when loaded with people and their possessions. When we traveled we had two flexible suitcases that fit in the small trunk and under a seat. One fellow Peace Corps volunteer had a large, hard-bodied suitcase, and had to pay for an extra seat for it – but it is unusual to have something that large on a kombie. On our trip people got on with babies and diaper bags, lots of groceries, big bags full of clothes, and more. One of the passengers had apparently been to a vegetable market and had about 10 separate bags full of produce. He had to sit in the very back row of the kumbie and when he left he handed his produce, bag by bag, to passengers in rows in front of him who in turn passed them on over the seats of the kumbie until they were up front near the door. A person sitting in the front somehow managed to hold onto them while the fellow struggled to climb over the passengers in front of him. We were so crowded and the spaces for moving in and out so narrow that it took him a while to extricate himself. This kind of crowding – and cooperation – is the way kumbies work.
A U.S. taxi is a car that is rented by an individual to go from one specific address to another. Here that is called a ″meter taxi″ and it's found only in big cities. Out in the countryside where we are there are a couple of other kinds of taxis – ″local″ taxis that run a more or less prescribed route, picking up and dropping off people along the way, and larger vans that run longer distances from one "shopping town" to another, or between a major city like Pretoria and a smaller town or village. (In small towns there are often no large grocery stores. The small stores that exist are ″tuck shops″ that are expensive and usually have a limited supply of non-perishable goods. So people who want to shop at larger stores with less expensive food have to travel to a "shopping town" to buy their groceries and clothing and furniture and fixtures.)
The local taxis in our area are uniformly Asian-manufactured copies of American mini-SUVs with a little added headroom. They look like Jeeps with high foreheads, and hold a nominal 10 passengers – or more if they can be crowded in.
The long-range vehicles, also Asian-built look like American minivans (Toyota Sienna, etc.) but they're larger, and hold more passengers. Factory-standard they have 13 passenger seats, and most are customized to carry another three or four people. They are called "kumbies." We don't know why. Maybe because they "come by" on an irregular schedule.
The schedule is irregular because no kumbie leaves with empty seats. It has to fill up completely before it starts out. The first time we went from our village to Pretoria we stood on the side of the road and when we saw a minibus we held an index finger up. It had room so it stopped and picked us up. Then it continued to go around on local streets until it is full. When it was full we started for Pretoria.
(The taxi gesture language in South Africa is much more sophisticated than just standing on a curb and waving your hand the way it's done in New York: if you're going "local" you point down and local taxis stop for you. If you're going "to town" you point up and kumbies stop for you. And in some places you point back toward where you came from in order to get a ride home.)
Once in the outskirts of Pretoria passengers would shout ″short left″ or ″short right″ to indicate to the driver that they wanted to be dropped off at the next left-hand or right-hand street, and the driver pulls over and lets the passengers off.
We ended the first part of our journey to town in at a ″thekisi renke,″ or taxi rank. That is a where kumbies congregate. In big cities a taxi rank can be an underground garage or an open parking lot where kumbies wait for passengers. A queue marshal controls the area. He is the final arbiter if there are problems. At the taxi rank we changed to a different kumbie for the final leg of our trip back to the training college. (The kumbie left the taxi rank full – we waited for about 45 minutes for it to fill up – but once it got out of the city and into the countryside and began to drop off a passengers the driver began to pick up passengers going ″local″ to fill the vacant seats.)
These kumbies are very snug when loaded with people and their possessions. When we traveled we had two flexible suitcases that fit in the small trunk and under a seat. One fellow Peace Corps volunteer had a large, hard-bodied suitcase, and had to pay for an extra seat for it – but it is unusual to have something that large on a kombie. On our trip people got on with babies and diaper bags, lots of groceries, big bags full of clothes, and more. One of the passengers had apparently been to a vegetable market and had about 10 separate bags full of produce. He had to sit in the very back row of the kumbie and when he left he handed his produce, bag by bag, to passengers in rows in front of him who in turn passed them on over the seats of the kumbie until they were up front near the door. A person sitting in the front somehow managed to hold onto them while the fellow struggled to climb over the passengers in front of him. We were so crowded and the spaces for moving in and out so narrow that it took him a while to extricate himself. This kind of crowding – and cooperation – is the way kumbies work.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
The One-Month Mark
We have now been in Peace Corps Training for a month and so much has happened. We are kept VERY busy, Every day we have two to three hours of language training, then about five hours of lectures or classes on everything from classroom management to dealing with poverty to safety to cultural differences. It is all challenging, especially Setswana, the language we are learning. David and I are struggling with it. Some of the sounds are not ones we use in English and forming your mouth to make those sounds is difficult.
We began this adventure at a defunct teacher training college where we lived in dorms for our first week here. It is winter here. The weather was SO cold when we arrived and central heating is not common in rural South Africa, so we just had to endure. Fortunately, the Peace Corps provided a couple of very heavy blankets that kept us warm at night, but getting ready for bed or getting up in the morning was very chilly. The temperature in the morning was about 50 degrees and it took some time to get used to it. We both wore our coats, sweatshirts, scarves, gloves and hats whenever we went out. The classrooms were very cold too. In the last week I’ve noticed that it is getting slightly warmer. Winter is ending here, but I’m not too sure I welcome summer as they say it is very hot.
In the afternoons the weather warms up considerably and when you are in the sun you don’t need the extra clothing, but as soon as the sun goes down it gets very cold again.
It is also very dry and some of us have had minor breathing problems because of it.
After our first week here we were moved to host families in the village. We lucked out with a lovely widow who has a nice house with running hot and cold water, a nice kitchen and bathroom and even a washing machine. It works differently from an America washing machine, but it is easier than hand washing. Of course, when we go to our permanent site we will probably have to haul and heat water and wash clothes by hand, but for now, I’m enjoying a little more luxury.
The one thing that is very different is that many houses like our host’s are not completely finished. Our bedroom has no ceiling. We just look up at the rafters and the tin roof. She has drywall to put in a ceiling but has probably never felt like she had enough money to hire some one to do it. David thinks it may also help keep the house cooler in the summer by not having a ceiling.
The food so far is good. Other than the bogobe (see previous post) we have lots of vegetables—cabbage, green beans, Swiss chard (they call it spinach), beets, carrots, potatoes, etc. The apples right now are small but very crunchy and delicious. Many families have orange and lemon trees in their yards.
We have learned to take a minibus or “kumbi” to town. In the smaller rural towns the kumbis are the main means of transportation. They hold 15 passengers and as a rule do not leave for their destination until all seats are filled. This can mean waiting a few hours for a kumbi to be ready to leave. Since we are not supposed to be out after dark, it means we have to plan well and make sure we leave with plenty of time in case a kumbi is slow to fill up.
There is a lot of reference to “Africa time” around here. It means that things to not always happen in the punctual way things often do in America. It is more relaxed here but that can drive an American mad. It takes some getting used to.
After the first two weeks we were allowed limited use of a computer lab that has very slow access to the Internet. It can take 20 minutes to load a page. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. It also is fussy about the type of computer. My Macintosh has no trouble connecting, but David’s PC and some other PCs cannot connect.
We have attended some interesting events with our host families. I went to church with our host mama and her sister-in-law. The service is much different from the one I am used to. It lasted about three hours. I really enjoyed the singing, but I did not understand the preachers.
We had a field trip to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. It is really well done. The entrance recreates the building entrances during Apartheid when whites and blacks had separate entrances. There are large displays of the hated passes that all people had to carry on them at all times. If blacks were caught without their passes they could be sent to jail. The passes also had to be filled in correctly. Then there are film clips of incidents that occurred while the blacks were trying to get the right to vote. It was a very moving experience.
We began this adventure at a defunct teacher training college where we lived in dorms for our first week here. It is winter here. The weather was SO cold when we arrived and central heating is not common in rural South Africa, so we just had to endure. Fortunately, the Peace Corps provided a couple of very heavy blankets that kept us warm at night, but getting ready for bed or getting up in the morning was very chilly. The temperature in the morning was about 50 degrees and it took some time to get used to it. We both wore our coats, sweatshirts, scarves, gloves and hats whenever we went out. The classrooms were very cold too. In the last week I’ve noticed that it is getting slightly warmer. Winter is ending here, but I’m not too sure I welcome summer as they say it is very hot.
In the afternoons the weather warms up considerably and when you are in the sun you don’t need the extra clothing, but as soon as the sun goes down it gets very cold again.
It is also very dry and some of us have had minor breathing problems because of it.
After our first week here we were moved to host families in the village. We lucked out with a lovely widow who has a nice house with running hot and cold water, a nice kitchen and bathroom and even a washing machine. It works differently from an America washing machine, but it is easier than hand washing. Of course, when we go to our permanent site we will probably have to haul and heat water and wash clothes by hand, but for now, I’m enjoying a little more luxury.
The one thing that is very different is that many houses like our host’s are not completely finished. Our bedroom has no ceiling. We just look up at the rafters and the tin roof. She has drywall to put in a ceiling but has probably never felt like she had enough money to hire some one to do it. David thinks it may also help keep the house cooler in the summer by not having a ceiling.
The food so far is good. Other than the bogobe (see previous post) we have lots of vegetables—cabbage, green beans, Swiss chard (they call it spinach), beets, carrots, potatoes, etc. The apples right now are small but very crunchy and delicious. Many families have orange and lemon trees in their yards.
We have learned to take a minibus or “kumbi” to town. In the smaller rural towns the kumbis are the main means of transportation. They hold 15 passengers and as a rule do not leave for their destination until all seats are filled. This can mean waiting a few hours for a kumbi to be ready to leave. Since we are not supposed to be out after dark, it means we have to plan well and make sure we leave with plenty of time in case a kumbi is slow to fill up.
There is a lot of reference to “Africa time” around here. It means that things to not always happen in the punctual way things often do in America. It is more relaxed here but that can drive an American mad. It takes some getting used to.
After the first two weeks we were allowed limited use of a computer lab that has very slow access to the Internet. It can take 20 minutes to load a page. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. It also is fussy about the type of computer. My Macintosh has no trouble connecting, but David’s PC and some other PCs cannot connect.
We have attended some interesting events with our host families. I went to church with our host mama and her sister-in-law. The service is much different from the one I am used to. It lasted about three hours. I really enjoyed the singing, but I did not understand the preachers.
We had a field trip to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. It is really well done. The entrance recreates the building entrances during Apartheid when whites and blacks had separate entrances. There are large displays of the hated passes that all people had to carry on them at all times. If blacks were caught without their passes they could be sent to jail. The passes also had to be filled in correctly. Then there are film clips of incidents that occurred while the blacks were trying to get the right to vote. It was a very moving experience.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
We Go to a Wedding
Today we attended a traditional African wedding. We left for the wedding at 11:30 and Sara’s mother (Sara is another trainee who lives near us) got into our Peace Corps kumbie (minivan) and directed us first to some relatives of hers who were bringing some food to the wedding. They lived on a farm and we me their old grandparents as well as the rest of the family.
Then we drove a long way to the wedding. It was in someone’s yard and a big tent had been set up for the guests of the bride and groom. We were not invited into the tent except to dance briefly as we left in front of the bride and groom. However, we were definitely part of the celebration.
The wedding was quite elaborate. First we sat around with a very loud sound system blaring out music. People danced and we were served bogobe and meat. Then the bride and groom and their attendants came dancing into the yard. The dance to their wedding tent took quite a while. The groom did not actually dance. He walked with a cane and I was told he had been injured in an accident. His bride walked in with him and them danced with another member of the wedding party.
The wedding party changed costumes three times and each costume was quite elaborate. Apparently the bride pays for all the costumes and it can cost a lot of money. They were quite beautiful and varied for each dance.
After the second bridal dance, we were served a big meal with lots of dishes to choose from.
The dancing is largely a kind of line dancing but folks can get up whenever there is music and dance. A couple of quite old folks days a lot during the day.
Peter, our language trainer, is quite a dancer as is Sarah’s mother. Her son said she is a party girl but very kind. David drew quite a crowed when he and Sarah’s mother started to dance. He let loose with the kind of dancing he and his sister Patricia often do (jitterbug) and he added a little Michael Jackson. The crowd really loved it and the guy who was filming the wedding insisted he do it over so he could get it on video.
Many of the men tended to sit in corners of the yard drinking and smoking marijuana. Some of them were annoying but for the most part we could brush them off. I can see why alcoholism is such a problem in SA.
We finally left after the third dance. We had been at the wedding about seven hours and even though we spent a lot of that time sitting, it was warm and we were very tired when we returned.
Then we drove a long way to the wedding. It was in someone’s yard and a big tent had been set up for the guests of the bride and groom. We were not invited into the tent except to dance briefly as we left in front of the bride and groom. However, we were definitely part of the celebration.
The wedding was quite elaborate. First we sat around with a very loud sound system blaring out music. People danced and we were served bogobe and meat. Then the bride and groom and their attendants came dancing into the yard. The dance to their wedding tent took quite a while. The groom did not actually dance. He walked with a cane and I was told he had been injured in an accident. His bride walked in with him and them danced with another member of the wedding party.
The wedding party changed costumes three times and each costume was quite elaborate. Apparently the bride pays for all the costumes and it can cost a lot of money. They were quite beautiful and varied for each dance.
After the second bridal dance, we were served a big meal with lots of dishes to choose from.
The dancing is largely a kind of line dancing but folks can get up whenever there is music and dance. A couple of quite old folks days a lot during the day.
Peter, our language trainer, is quite a dancer as is Sarah’s mother. Her son said she is a party girl but very kind. David drew quite a crowed when he and Sarah’s mother started to dance. He let loose with the kind of dancing he and his sister Patricia often do (jitterbug) and he added a little Michael Jackson. The crowd really loved it and the guy who was filming the wedding insisted he do it over so he could get it on video.
Many of the men tended to sit in corners of the yard drinking and smoking marijuana. Some of them were annoying but for the most part we could brush them off. I can see why alcoholism is such a problem in SA.
We finally left after the third dance. We had been at the wedding about seven hours and even though we spent a lot of that time sitting, it was warm and we were very tired when we returned.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Home Stay
We are now into our second week of training and almost everyone agrees that it seems we have been here longer. That is probably because we have been so busy with all the activities and language learning. Our days are packed with mostly interesting work.
We heard an almost three hour lecture today on the history of Bantu education that was most interesting. The speaker was an older man who had lived through the pass system and had nearly been denied the right to study physics and chemistry (which he later taught) in college because they were disciplines Blacks were discouraged from learning.
This past Saturday we met our home-stay families. For home stay, each volunteer is assigned to a family that lives in the community near the college for the remainder of training. We were fortunate to be assigned to a lovely widow who is treating us so well. She has let us have the run on the house and is a great cook. In the evening she helps us with our Setswana vocabulary. I’m happier here than I was at the dorm. It is much more comfortable and our host has hot and cold running water – a nice luxury. Her house is quite nice and we have a large bedroom all to ourselves.
The house is in a sort of suburb of the rural village near the campus. The lanes are all dirt, and the houses are a mixture of very nice modern homes and tiny tin shacks next to each other. Other trainees are staying in houses near us and we took a walk around the neighborhood yesterday. People are very friendly. In the mornings we are picked up by a Peace Corps kumbi, a mini-bus, for transport to the campus where we have our classes.
Our mama's house and those like it in our area are brick with tile roofs, and they wouldn't look out of place in any American town. But the yards are mostly red clay, not much grass, and each lot is surrounded by a fence. You need a fence because there's a lot of livestock wandering around – chickens and dogs and cows and donkeys. Yesterday, the gate to the yard was open and donkeys came in. David chased them away. I don’t have any idea who they belonged to.
The yard is a combination of very nice parts and not so nice parts. There are some trees and bushes, but right now it's winter here, so the grass is brown and there are no leaves on the trees. Each fenced plot has a plowed garden area and some outbuildings. Everybody has an outhouse. Most of the new brick houses have a smaller place in back, cinder block or tin. Our host told us that the old shed in the back of the yard was a little house where she and her husband stayed while they worked on the house. We have seen others like that around here. That seems to be common for a family to buy land, built a little shack where they live while they are building the house themselves. It can take years doing it that way, but mortgages are not common, especially with people who do not have white-collar jobs. Some things never get finished: Some rooms in our house have ceilings, and some don't. We can hear about everything our mama says and I’m sure she can hear us. We try to be quiet and our mama is very quiet, so we cannot complain about noise.
Running water is a luxury. Most of the modern houses around have JoJos – big green plastic tanks on tall towers behind the house. An electric pump pulls water from a well and keeps the JoJo filled, and gravity does the rest. (JoJo is a brand name, but it's become generic, like kleenex: our first day back in class after we moved to our homestays, the standard question was, “Do you have a jojo?” The lucky ones did.)
(Hot water is even rarer. If you have a geezer you're really lucky. A geezer is a water heater: like “jojo” its a corruption of a brand name -- “Geyser” became “geezer.” In our house there's a 150-liter hot-water tank lying on its side in a big red plastic tray up in the rafters, and in the bathroom there's a huge sort of free-form bathtub. We are in heaven.)
The disparities are striking. One house may be like our mama's, up-to-the minute, with a jojo and a geezer and an electric stove and refrigerator, and next door there's a tiny shack made out of corrugated tin. Four or five 20-liter plastic drums beside it are the family's water supply (they're put in a wheelbarrow and carried down to the public pump for filling every couple of days), and while there may be electricity in the house, much of the cooking and water-heating are done over an open fire in the yard – and dry donkey dung is a standard fuel.
At least burning the donkey poo helps clean it up. There's not a lot concern for the environment. Litter is everywhere, and everybody disposes of their trash by throwing it in a hole at the back of their lot and burning it – not a pretty smell some days.
We heard an almost three hour lecture today on the history of Bantu education that was most interesting. The speaker was an older man who had lived through the pass system and had nearly been denied the right to study physics and chemistry (which he later taught) in college because they were disciplines Blacks were discouraged from learning.
This past Saturday we met our home-stay families. For home stay, each volunteer is assigned to a family that lives in the community near the college for the remainder of training. We were fortunate to be assigned to a lovely widow who is treating us so well. She has let us have the run on the house and is a great cook. In the evening she helps us with our Setswana vocabulary. I’m happier here than I was at the dorm. It is much more comfortable and our host has hot and cold running water – a nice luxury. Her house is quite nice and we have a large bedroom all to ourselves.
The house is in a sort of suburb of the rural village near the campus. The lanes are all dirt, and the houses are a mixture of very nice modern homes and tiny tin shacks next to each other. Other trainees are staying in houses near us and we took a walk around the neighborhood yesterday. People are very friendly. In the mornings we are picked up by a Peace Corps kumbi, a mini-bus, for transport to the campus where we have our classes.
Our mama's house and those like it in our area are brick with tile roofs, and they wouldn't look out of place in any American town. But the yards are mostly red clay, not much grass, and each lot is surrounded by a fence. You need a fence because there's a lot of livestock wandering around – chickens and dogs and cows and donkeys. Yesterday, the gate to the yard was open and donkeys came in. David chased them away. I don’t have any idea who they belonged to.
The yard is a combination of very nice parts and not so nice parts. There are some trees and bushes, but right now it's winter here, so the grass is brown and there are no leaves on the trees. Each fenced plot has a plowed garden area and some outbuildings. Everybody has an outhouse. Most of the new brick houses have a smaller place in back, cinder block or tin. Our host told us that the old shed in the back of the yard was a little house where she and her husband stayed while they worked on the house. We have seen others like that around here. That seems to be common for a family to buy land, built a little shack where they live while they are building the house themselves. It can take years doing it that way, but mortgages are not common, especially with people who do not have white-collar jobs. Some things never get finished: Some rooms in our house have ceilings, and some don't. We can hear about everything our mama says and I’m sure she can hear us. We try to be quiet and our mama is very quiet, so we cannot complain about noise.
Running water is a luxury. Most of the modern houses around have JoJos – big green plastic tanks on tall towers behind the house. An electric pump pulls water from a well and keeps the JoJo filled, and gravity does the rest. (JoJo is a brand name, but it's become generic, like kleenex: our first day back in class after we moved to our homestays, the standard question was, “Do you have a jojo?” The lucky ones did.)
(Hot water is even rarer. If you have a geezer you're really lucky. A geezer is a water heater: like “jojo” its a corruption of a brand name -- “Geyser” became “geezer.” In our house there's a 150-liter hot-water tank lying on its side in a big red plastic tray up in the rafters, and in the bathroom there's a huge sort of free-form bathtub. We are in heaven.)
The disparities are striking. One house may be like our mama's, up-to-the minute, with a jojo and a geezer and an electric stove and refrigerator, and next door there's a tiny shack made out of corrugated tin. Four or five 20-liter plastic drums beside it are the family's water supply (they're put in a wheelbarrow and carried down to the public pump for filling every couple of days), and while there may be electricity in the house, much of the cooking and water-heating are done over an open fire in the yard – and dry donkey dung is a standard fuel.
At least burning the donkey poo helps clean it up. There's not a lot concern for the environment. Litter is everywhere, and everybody disposes of their trash by throwing it in a hole at the back of their lot and burning it – not a pretty smell some days.
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