When I started Peace Corps two years ago, I never thought I would face two infestations during my short time in South Africa. I should have known better. I had to move yet again at the end of November thanks to good old flying ants. It went something like this…

One happy sunny Saturday I was busy packing up some things to take with me to a training in Joburg that my organization was letting me attend. The day seemed normal for summer- hot, sunny, and dry. As I was just about to leave, I glanced toward my door to see the chickens swarming. I couldn’t figure out what they were doing, so I moved to the door only to see flying bugs everywhere. I panicked and closed the door, unclear as to what was happening. I quickly opened it and went out to see where the things were coming from, only to be terrified to see them hatching out of the walls of my hut. In every crack of the homemade poop plaster, there were flying bugs hatching and flying out. Each crack was also filled with larvae. The chickens were simply trying to eat the flying creatures as they pooped out of my wall. Disgusted and covered with goose bumps, I got my can of Doom bug killer and sprayed each crack until I was sure the things were dead. Then I grabbed my shit and left, telling my host sister my wall was pooping bugs and asking her to tell my host family so they could fill the cracks. It wasn’t until I was on my way that I realized that there were probably cracks on the inside of my hut as well, and if they were hatching on the outside from the cracks, they would probably do the same thing on the inside. At this point I was assuming they were termites.

Forward a week later, Friday night around 8pm. I had just gotten back from the training and my supervisor was driving me back to my village. As we entered the village, I noticed that there were a ton of bugs flying around, and the further in we drove, the worse it got, with the windshield wipers needing to be turned on to push them out of the way. My supervisor told me they were flying ants and that it happens every couple of years. Great! My fears of my hut being infested were creeping back up and as we pulled into my yard, I told my supervisor that she wasn’t allowed to leave until I checked (although I was still hoping that I was being paranoid). My light is on the other side of my hut from the door, so I opened up and walked in, crossing the room to turn on the light. Once on, I looked down and to my horror, my floor was covered in dead flying ants that I had just walked across. Thousands of dead flying ants. Guess I was right about those indoor cracks. So like the brave girl that I am, I ran screaming and crying from my room out into the bug infested night. I told my supervisor, she checked out, we told my host family, they apologized and started sweeping them up, and then I left, choosing to stay the night with my supervisor instead. I knew at that moment that I wasn’t going back there, especially since my fear of bugs has grown exponentially since I have had these infestations.

I called some exterminators to see if there was anything I could do, but they were in the dirt foundation and there aren’t many cheap options for taking care of this problem. Two weeks later, I was living at the community center in Emmaus, yet another village in yet another room.

Now the community center is pretty nice, has a shower/toilet block, so no more bucket bathing, and the woman who lives there is remarkable and speaks English well. The room I was put in was twice the size of my last room and had a ceiling and tiled floor, so the chance of another infestation was reduced simply because it is built properly. It used to be the old kitchen for the center, so before they moved me in, they decided to paint the room to make it new and fresh. What they didn’t tell me was that they decided to use the cheapest, most toxic oil based paint they could find. The first week after I moved in I figured the smell was just because it had been painted two weeks before, but after a month and then a month and a half of horrible toxic fumes, I was starting to wonder if the paint was normal. My breathing started to suffer, I had to sleep with a cloth covering my mouth, and I eventually bought an inhaler to help me breathe better.

Not one to sit by and take living in shit, I researched home remedies. I tried putting buckets of water around the room to absorb the smell, I chopped up plates of onions, I put out white vinegar in bowls, and I put cups of vanilla extract all around the room. Nothing helped!! If the windows were shut, it was like a death box of fumes and it was awful.

I decided, against my better judgment, to sleep with two windows open at night, even though I didn’t have bars. The smell was just that bad. One of the windows I kept open was by the head of my bed so that I could have fresh air while sleeping and hopefully not die in the night. I see now that this is where I went wrong. One night, roughly about 11pm, I was sound asleep and dreaming when something woke me up. I looked out the window and didn’t see anything, so I thought I was being paranoid again and tried to go back to sleep. About 20 minutes later I heard something again and as I lifted my head to look out the window, I came face to face with some guy, standing in the dark right outside my window. Great. Just great. Again, acting as all brave young women act, I screamed at the top of my lungs for as long as one breath allows and the dick ran off. I then went to get the others who live at the center to help me.

The next morning we discovered that someone had cut a hole in the fence surrounding the property and that is how they got into the yard and to my open window. They probably thought the room was empty, seeing as how the others were watching TV in the common room when everything happened. I guess it was good that I woke up and prevented the dick from stealing my things, but the scare it gave me lasted weeks and to this day I sometimes wake up to a noise at night with plans to scream.

All in all, it was a rocky first month at my new home, but now, a month (and vacation) later, I can say that I am settling in well. They put bars on the windows that open (although I don’t sleep with my windows open anymore) and the paint smell is better, although it is still there. I’m pretty sure I heard some gun shots a couple weekends back, but as long as they aren’t shooting in my yard, I’m not too concerned about it. And so far, nobody else has tried to break in, so that is a bonus!! The showers make up for the lack of feeling secure, except for when we run out of water and then have to wheelbarrow to the neighbors to fetch buckets again, old school style. I tell you what, I can’t wait to have constant running water again. That is what is bringing me home in July!!

i would like to rant to you all about some recent comments that people have made to me about my 'singleness,' both by americans and zulus. i will start with the african viewpoint, seeing as how it annoyes me less.

since i have arrived here in kwazulu natal, every young woman (and every young man, for that matter) that has met me asks me if i have a boyfriend. now from the guys it makes sense, seeing as how most of them want to date/marry/have sex with an umlungu (white person), and constant harassment from them is normal. from the women, however, it is simply a question to find out more about me. the funny thing is, i have never met a woman here who is single (at least not someone in her twenties, like me). so when i answer 'no, i don't have a boyfriend,' i am bombarded with a variety of questions, all basically wondering why. it seems as though being single here is unacceptable. me trying to explain that i haven't met anyone here that i click with, that most men in my village speak very limited english, or that the 40% HIV infection rate is a bit concerning seem to do nothing to wipe away the amazement that these young woman have towards my singleness. in the beginning, i just laughed it off and accepted it as part of the culture, but now that i have been here for a year and a half, it is starting to annoy me, not to mention the fact that it is giving people the wrong idea about me. some zulus that i am better friends with think that maybe, just maybe, i am into women (which i am not). others think it is simply that no man would want to date such a strong willed, outspoken woman. while driving around a village yesterday with my coworker, i asked her if she would come to my wedding in the us if i ever got married. her response said it all. she told me that she would DEFINITELY be there, even if she had to spend all of the money in her bank account to get there, just so that she could meet the man that would marry me. she would shake his hand and say 'good luck' and tell him that 'i had a good heart,' as if that was going to make up for my faults. she just couldn't imagine the type of man who would settle down with me. and this came from one of my best friends here. i know her opinion is shared by many women at my office, and it is the direct result of me being single this whole time. no matter how many times i tell them all that i would LOVE to meet a man here that i click with, their opinion remains the same.

now i probably could handle all of this if it weren't for recent comments made by american friends (and family) both here and back home. here, i am a white girl from a country far away who does strange things anyways. opinions will always be a little skewed. but when the response from friends and family to my 'no, still single, no guys i'm interested in' is 'well have you met any girls your into?' i start to get annoyed. i am not sure when being single for a long period of time meant that you had changed teams. and to top it off, i found out that some of the other pcvs here thought i was gay with one of my friends, just because we spent a lot of time together. does anyone take the time to think about what it is like for volunteers here? that having a friend you hang out with all the time is probably your way of staying sane? that not dating anyone probably has more to do with not being able to communicate or find someone who has ANY of the same interests as me within my VILLAGE? or maybe that my reasons for not jumping into the sack with some random guy could be because of my concern for AIDS and the fact that half of my coworkers are infected? just some thoughts...

anyways, stop asking me the same questions. i am still single and still straight, and if magically either of those two things change, i will let all of you know.

other than that, life here is same same. still working in the agriculture department. still can't stand my supervisor. still live in a village and bathe in a bucket. and i am still happier than i ever was in the usa.

see some of you next month on your side of the world. and hi julie ;-)

it has pretty much been forever since i updated you all on my life. let me make a list of things that i have done/have happened to elaborate on.

1. freshly ground concert in durban

2. world cup tickets

3. threw my back out for the 3 time

4. turned 24

5. mamello had her baby at the office

ok well that is all i can think of, so lets begin...

some time back (it has been too long now for me to remember) i attended a freshly ground concert at the durban botanical gardens. freshly ground is a south african band that plays afropop music and i love them. i first fell in love with them when i was in cape town in 2006 and this is the second time i have seen them in concert since i have been back down here. the concert was amazing and i proudly stood in the front row with 12 year olds, singing and dancing along. the concert was in the afternoon in the gardens, and everyone brought picnic lunches and wine. it was a good moment in my sa life. one day, i will post the sweet pictures i took... one day.

next- i found out a few weeks back that i got tickets to the 2010 world cup. i currently have tickets to 4 games: two with american/norwegian friends and 2 that i will be attending on my own. all of the games are in johannesburg because i have a coworker who lives there and will let me crash at her place for free. two of the games are in soweto, which for any of you that know anything about sa means something. even though it is still pretty far away, i am excited and mystified. this is like the time i went to the world series right before i left america. i am sure it will be an experience that i will never forget- a once in a lifetime thing. and i don't even like soccer that much! i will also be attending the confederations cup this june, where i have tickets to see brazil v usa and brazil v italy, both in pretoria. i am pretty excited about that as well.

in exciting health news, the disc in my back slipped out again and i spent a week in bed, hardly able to walk. i woke up one monday morning feeling fine, and then all of a sudden, my back was in horrible pain. i instantly laid down on my bed and called a coworker crying. she came out and we tried to get me out of bed, but it was impossible. the pain was so bad that i could not sit up and push myself out of bed. even after lots of pain meds, i was stuck. i had to pee in a bucket lying down cause i couldn't move. finally, a physio drove out to see me and after a bit of me protesting, they were able to yank me from my bed, screaming the whole way. once on my feet, they had to hold me up because my legs were shaking so badly. i was instantly covered in sweat and felt like i was going to be sick. they helped walk me to the car, and the world around me went gray. once in town, i had the doctor come out to the car and give me some shots in the back. i also picked up some different types of pain meds. then my coworker (and great friend) let me stay at her place in town, with running water and normalcy. it was the worst pain i had ever felt in my life, and the feeling that i couldn't walk or sit was horrible. staying in bed for a whole week was horrible too. but since then i have gotten a new mattress and a board for my bed, and that has helped with the healing process. unfortunately, i am at risk of having this happen for the rest of my life. yay!

a couple weeks back, i turned 24. i can honestly say it was one of the worst birthdays of my life. we had a peace corps training all day, which was, as usual, pretty boring. i was away from my site and most of my good friends, and i couldn't celebrate with anyone because there was nobody for me to celebrate with and no where for me to do it. i ate dinner, had to get some hep a shots, then went to bed early. my dad even forgot to call, and i had to remind him of what day it was. overall, it was miserable and i can honestly say i hope i never have a repeat birthday like that one. and now i am 24, which isn't old but isn't young young and there are lots of things that i haven't done that i feel like i should have by this point in my life... like say, fall in love with someone, even if it doesn't work out. but seeing as how my life is on hold until peace corps ends, i pretty much will just keep on keeping on as i have been.

finally, and perhaps the most exciting news of this long rant of a post, my coworker and very good friend mamello gave birth a few weeks back to her second son in her car at the office. now of course i miss it cause i am always late to the office, but other coworkers were there to help her deliver in her backseat. the doctor was out of the office and while contemplating the next move, the baby decided he had had enough. he was born healthy and happy, although he had 6 fingers on each hand (they tied the sixth one so it died and fell off). his name is cebo or bheki jr and he is adorable. i got to see him and hold him when he was one day old, and seeing as how that is the first baby i have ever held ever, it was pretty special. and in addition to her giving birth, she also left me in charge of the agriculture department at the office while she is on maternity leave. so now i am acting manager and trying to keep things afloat while she is on vaca for 3 months. it has been interesting so far...

well friends, that is about the extent of the excitement in my life. basically, i work and work and work and sometimes do fun things on the weekends. in august i am going home for a bit, so that is the next big thing i have to look forward to. that, and i only have 10 months left of service. looks like i just might be able to do this whole peace corps thing after all.

lets just say when it rains in rookdale (my village), it pours.

yesterday afternoon, on my way home from work, it started to rain. luckily, the taxi drops me off at my gate, so i don't have such a long distance to travel to get safely inside my hut. i hopped off the taxi, popped open my umbrella (which broke into two pieces in my hands) then quickly scurried through the gate. i had my bag around my shoulder and my clean, ironed clothes that i had just picked up from the cleaner in a plastic bag in my hand. the first bit of my yard is dirt, so when it rains it turns into a mudslide. this makes maneuvering it quite difficult, but i was managing just fine, that is until the bottom of the plastic bag with the clean clothes ripped open and all of my clothes fell into the mud. now of course they couldn't fall in clump, sparing some from disaster but instead had to fall out evenly distributing themselves into the mud. AWESOME! i screamed out and hurried to get them off the ground, all while my younger host brother and 3 of his friends watched me from the safety of the house. i am annoyed, but i carry on across the yard, as the rain is still pounding down on my head.

once inside my hut, i quickly began trying to get the mud out of the clothes with the smallest amounts on them. i took a cloth and a container of water and began scrubbing. i managed to get about 5 items clean-ish and hung them up on the clothes line in my room. a few other articles of the whiter variety were too dirty to be saved with a mere cloth, so i through them into my big bucket and dumped the rest of my water bucket on top. sadly, it wasn't enough water, so i braved the rain and went to my tap to fill my bucket up again. i made it all the way back across the yard, right to my front door step when i biffed. i mean i really biffed- mother of all biffs biffed, and my body slammed down onto the tiny cement step, scraping up my arm and leg and covering my body in mud. now lets think about what happens when a person biffs with a 5L bucket of water in their hands...

i picked myself up, swearing and tearing up from the pain, and began the process of cleaning up 5L of water from my hut floor. that's right folks, the water bucket emptied onto the floor of my tiny room. luckily, my floor is dodgy and slanted and all the water rushed to one corner- the no mans land corner. this is the corner where i keep my cleaning supplies and such, where there is an ant hill and lots of bugs. i don't mess around back there, so over the months, it has accumulated a lot of dirt and dead bug bodies. i started mopping up the water, but i seemed to be getting nowhere, so i took the only two big momma shower towels i have and used them to soak up a tiny bit of water. then i moved all the shelves and buckets and started mopping up the rest. when i finally finished 30 mins later, my mop was dirty and covered with dead bug bodies that wouldn't come out. it took me another ten mins to clean the mop. then i headed back again to mop up the rest of the dirt and grime that had worked its way all over my floor.

with the floor finished, i went back outside to get my water bucket and realized that in the fall, the bucket received a fatal injury in the form of a giant hole in the bottom. angry, i dug out the one bucket i had left, which was also filled with dirt and bugs, and started cleaning that out, along with my mop and mopping bucket. the whole time it was still raining outside and i was still covered in mud, head to toe. once the cleaning of buckets was complete, i started the process of cleaning my door mat and gogo rug that i had on the floor when the water attacked. i had to hang them on the clothes line and dump buckets of water over them to clean the dirt off. then i started the process of cleaning the clothes that were covered in mud. now the things i take to the cleaner are the things that i find hard to wash by hand: big towels, jeans, sweatshirts, etc. lets just say i wasn't very happy trying to get the grim out of my bulky items.

when everything was said and done, i was soaking wet, the sort of clean clothes were on the clothes line (in the rain) and my floor was slowly drying. it was about 7:30pm and dark. Only 2+ hours of good cleaning to end a day! i sat down on my bed to watch an episode of scrubs on my computer when all of a sudden the screen went black. man, i have all the luck...

this may be the most bizarre blog post to date. last week i decided to accompany two of my coworkers to the local hair salon. i wanted to see exactly what they had done to their hair. i must admit, the salon was quite sad- a couple random chairs, a bucket in the sink they filled to wash your hair, some old nasty towels. the experience was interesting as i watched how my coworkers had their hair washed with a couple different products then had their hair covered in yellow gunk and placed under the dryers for 30 mins. now the staff of this salon consisted of two zulu women and one women from the congo (who spoke very little english and zulu). with 30 mins to kill, the congolese woman decided to chat in the best way she knew how, and tell us stories of her homeland.

she first started by admiring my piercings and visible tattoos with a look of horror. she kept asking me "nice? nice?" which i think was her way of wondering if they hurt. she then told me "jesus no like you. no like tattoos" to which i responded that it was fine, jesus and i didn't have a relationship anyways. from there, clearly not off of her tattoo rant yet, she told us all how women in the congo get their boyfriends name tattooed across their breast and then they break up with said boyfriend, meet a new man, marry him without telling him of the tattoo and then on the honeymoon, when the new man finally sees the tattoo, he gets upset, goes to priest and then they get divorced. i think this happened to her sister, but it could have just been her way of saying woman... i am not quite sure.

now all of this was done in very broken english with random french words thrown in. it was entertaining and it killed the time while we all sat there (this was during work by the way). but then suddenly, our friendly congolese friend started talking about horses (she used the french word until we figured out what it meant) and doing absurd hand and hip gestures. it took me a while to catch on but finally i realized that she was talking about having sex with a horse. from there, the story went something like this:

woman: people *hip thrust* inyama but inyama sicky sicky then people get sicky sicky

me: so they get the sicky sicky from the animals, the horses?

woman: yes, animal sicky sicky, man sicky sicky then *hip thrust* woman. woman get sicky sicky (all of this was hand signaled with her grabbing her crotch and saying sicky sicky and then grabbing the imaginary crotch of someone else and saying sicky sicky-thus the transfer)

woman: get sicky sicky congo, no medicine, just kufa, kufa (followed by her acting dead)

woman: horse big for human

me: oh i didn't need to know that. where does this happen?

woman: congo and here. everywhere.

me: i see

by this point i was laughing in a stunned sort of way. she was so serious and she just kept repeating herself and her hip thrusts over and over to get her point across. then she continued:

woman: mulungu get fat woman, give money, money

me: wait, white people? me?

woman: yes, no you, mulungu in congo

me: ok good

woman: mulungu get fat woman, give money, give ruff ruff

all of us: dog?

woman: yes give dog, woman *hip thurst* dog. dog sicky sicky, woman sicky sicky. no medicine. woman kufa.

at this point i am wondering if she is saying she blames white people for the sicky sicky, which i take to mean HIV & AIDS. i don't ask her this question or any others for that matter.

after 2o mins of the animal sex conversation, my coworker had had enough and kindly demanded that she wash the crap out of her hair and finish the process. my other coworker said this woman hardly ever spoke when they were normally in there, and blamed me for her random (and disturbing) outbursts.

their hair was washed again, dried and then carefully combed into the style in which it will remain for weeks to come. then the three of us got up and left, laughing as soon as we exited.

lets just say that sicky sicky has become a part of our vocabulary now...

Mozambique is where vacations go to die… at least if you are an O’Neil. But I am getting ahead of myself a bit. Our vacation didn’t start off in shambles.

My brother Tom finally left America for the first time in his life to come and visit his sister in a faraway land called Africa. He left the cold and snow of northern Michigan to join me in the dead of summer in South Africa, to spend 25 days aimlessly wandering around. Somehow, Tom managed to get into a car accident on the way to the airport and miss his flight to Johannesburg, and yet somehow he still managed to make it over the big blue ocean and to Durban, where our travels began.

Now the start of the vacation was typical, with a busy itinerary of activities that anyone visiting southern Africa should partake in. My brother saw the Indian Ocean for the first time, went on a safari in a game reserve where he saw all the significant animals that one should see (except cats), took a proper ghetto taxi around Durban, one of SA’s biggest cities, went to a craft market filled with traditional South African goods that were probably made in China, and went on a hippo and croc boat tour that brought us within feet of the friendly creatures. All in all, the start of the vacation went well and it seemed like Tom was enjoying himself in Africa. I certainly didn’t have many complaints. I got to spend my Christmas day on the beach, working on a sweet tan. No snow or Christmas tree or presents for this Michigan girl. It was great!

Then three days after Christmas, early in the morning, the five of us traveling together decided to board a bus to Maputo, Mozambique. I personally was excited to get out of SA, see another country in the world, and spend even more time on some beautiful beaches. The bus ride went off without a hitch, and we made it to Maputo around 6 in the evening. It was raining, which was a concern since we were supposed to camp, but we were in Mozambique and that somehow made things better. Now if any of us had been smart and looked at the signs that were all around us as soon as we got off the bus, we would have all been better prepared for the ‘fun’ that was about to begin. The hostel that was supposed to pick us up (for free!) forgot about us and none of us had cell phones that worked. After sitting around for a bit, the woman who worked at the bus company borrowed us her phone so we could call and find out what happened to our ride. 30 minutes later, a car finally showed up (after the woman called the hostel back about 2 times) and took us to Fatima’s, our home away from… well, South Africa. The hostel was packed as everyone flocks to Moz for the holiday. By this time it was getting dark and raining harder, and we still had to set out tents up. Luckily for us, we were camping on the cement roof of the building, totally exposed to the elements and with puddles of water surrounding us since there was nowhere for it to go. We all felt a little broken down, but seeing as how we had no choice, we set up shop, cooked some dinner, bought some expensive beers, and then braved the rain one last time to climb into our soaked tents.

The next morning we woke up to more rain, which was a bit distressing. In addition to the weather not cooperating, the hostel sucked horribly. The bathrooms were disgusting and the toilets magically didn’t flush. It was worse than my pit toilet in my village, which is saying a lot. The staff at the hostel was less than helpful, not telling us of a single entertaining thing to do in Maputo and giving us no help with directions. Fed up, we left in search of food, sights, and money.

I must admit that that day we spent wandering around Maputo was one of the worst days of the whole vacation. We walked for what seemed like forever, the rain stopped but in its place came humidity so think it felt like I was dying, and once we had seen the three sights that a travel book recommended, we were out of things to do to entertain us. I couldn’t wait to get out of the city and back to the beach. That evening, we decided to upgrade and move into a dorm. We packed up our wet tents, paid (or should I say overpaid) for the shuttle the next day to Tofo, and called it a night.

Bright and early the next morning we boarded the shuttle bus to Fatima’s in Tofo. The bus, which was very expensive, was so packed full of people that is was miserable. Tom had to sit in a seat where he couldn’t lean back and where he had a person essentially wedged in between his legs. My seat was better, although I too had a person sitting in my lap. It was very hot, the aircon didn’t work, and for some reason, the people sitting by the windows (which were of course not us) decided to keep their windows closed. I sat there, sweating in my dress, wishing the miserable trip was over. Unfortunately, it had just started and we had 7+ hours left. Luckily we had a driver from hell that put the pedal to the metal and, risking all of our lives, got us to Tofo in a decent amount time. We only had to stop for a blown out tire once and for airtime for the drive about 10 times!

Once in Tofo, we set up camp next to the hundreds of other campers in the designated camping area that this time was on sand. I must admit that the next couple of days that we spent in Tofo were not all that bad. It was hot and sticky, and it rained all of New Years Eve, but the place was better, the ocean was amazing, and all in all things were ok. Not great, but not horrible. The only problem was that all of our clothes were wet and the constant rain every night never allowed anything to dry. Around this time, my clothes started to get moldy.

The morning we were planning on leaving Tofo to head even further north, it was raining- again! We still had to pack our tents up and by this point the 5 of us were so fed up with the rain that we considered just going back to Maputo so we could leave Moz forever. After some arguing, however, we decided to give it a shot and work our way north. The rain let up, so we moved quickly and managed to catch a bus from Tofo to Inhambane. In Inhambane we got directions to take a dhow across the bay to Maxixe. From there, we made the decision (a very poor one we later found out) to take a taxi from Maxixe to Vilankulo, our destination. After waiting for about an hour to fill, and after no more people could be squished in, we left. After about 30 minutes of driving, it started to rain again (surprise, surprise) and the road turned into complete shit. The potholes made it impossible to drive, but somehow our taxi driver was unfazed and carried on at an impressive 120km/hour clip. So it was raining, he was driving too fast, swerving from side to side and almost flipping us, and there we were, crammed in the taxi that leaked. Jeff, one of the lucky five of us, was fortunate enough to have a Mozambican puke on him in the taxi. That, for me, was a first.

When we finally made it to Vilankulo, it was still raining and we had yet to walk to our hostel. A small local boy came up and offered to guide us to our destination, which we gladly accepted. Once there, we opted for beds in a dorm, seeing as how all of us were so SICK of camping in the rain that we needed a much deserved break. Now Vilankulo is known for the islands that are just off the shore, and when the weather is nice, you can take boats out to the islands and explore. Of course for the 3 days that we were there, it never stopped raining long enough for us to make it out to the islands. Instead, we sat around under whatever covering we could get and chatted, read, or acted bored out of our minds. During the short periods of time that the rain let up, we walked to the market to buy food or walked along the beach (which wasn’t really meant for swimming but was filled with fishing boats). Some of the people that stayed at the hostel were cool, and their company helped brighten the days. At night, the rain would stop, so one night we went to a bar in town and another night was spent sitting on the beach in an impromptu drum circle. The days we spent in Vilankulo were probably the most relaxing, but were still a disappointment.

After 3 days of rain, the 5 of us finally gave up and decided to head back to Maputo early so we could get the hell out of Moz. We took yet another horrible bus ride to Maptuo, where I again sweated off my weight in water. Once in Maputo, we headed back to the same horrible hostel and planned for our evacuation of Moz. But of course, the busses back to SA were full and we would have to spend one more entire day in the country that had broken our spirits. Determined to make the best of it, we decided to switch hostels and spend some more time exploring the city. If I am going to be honest, this extra day that none of us wanted turned out to be a good thing. The weather was better, the new hostel was nicer, and the time we had gave us a chance to change our opinions of Maputo. I still don’t love the city, but I do have a new appreciation for it.

Finally, the morning came where we could go back to SA. We parted ways at this point and 4 of us went back to Durban and 1 went to Jo’burg. Excited for the bus ride and the aircon, we gladly boarded the bus and were on our way. We should have known that this wouldn’t be as nice as we had hoped. About 2 hours into our trip, the aircon stopped working and this bus didn’t even have windows that can open. Again, we were melting on the bus and could do nothing but suffer through the 8 hour ride back to SA. It was quite a fitting end to the Moz debacle!

The time I spent in Moz definitely gave me a whole new appreciation for South Africa. I don’t think I can express how happy I was to finally make it back to Durban and back to a country that felt comfortable and friendly to me. We were all exhausted and disappointed, and I am positive that my brother never wants to travel in a developing country again. But we had made it in and out of Moz in one piece, and we now knew what amazing things we had available to us in SA.

Hello world- I’m back! It has been quite awhile since I posted about my life, but with vacation ending (and sending me into a downward spiral of depression) and my stomach attacking me so viciously, I didn’t have much desire to put my thoughts into words. But now, with Obama as president and my stomach finally returning to a somewhat normal state, I feel inclined to tell you all about my vacation- the good AND the bad. So you will find below two blog posts about what I did with my 25 days of rest in southern Africa.

But before you get to that, I just want to quickly thank a couple people who didn’t forget about me over the holidays. Thanks to Melanie and Julie for sending me packages of love that made me smile, laugh, and do a little inward jig. Thanks to Becca, who sent me an awesome postcard from Ireland, where she partied with friends that I miss dearly. And thanks to Nina, who probably never reads this, but who sent me a lovely Norwegian Christmas card that truly made me smile. Thanks for remembering me here in Africa guys!!

I finally hiked to the top of Sentinel- something I doubted I ever would do. Although the hike is not that difficult and not supposed to take that long, hiking to the ‘summit’ of any mountain is a daunting task. My brother and I set out early to drive the hour and a half to the start of the hike. Little did we know, the last stretch of road to get to the car park is horrible and covered in jagged rocks that were just waiting to puncture our tire. Now it was a an impressive feat in itself that my brother and I had made it there, seeing as how neither one of us really knew how to drive a manual, especially on the wrong side of the road and the wrong side of the car. But somehow, we managed to make it to the start of the road from hell, and at that point nothing was going to deter us. As we inched along, wondering the whole time whether or not we were on the right road, we climbed higher and higher. The view from there was spectacular. When we finally made it to the car park, we got the first glimpse of the trail that was ahead of us and the peak we were meant to reach.

At 8am we started the trek up the mountain. The path wasn’t too steep but did have tons of rocks and obstacles to maneuver. After about 2 hours of hiking, we stopped to take a quick water break and decided to eat some peanuts. Unfortunately for me, the break lasted a bit too long and when we got moving again, I felt funny. I was all of a sudden really dizzy and tired, and easily could have lied down to take a nap. I pushed forward, but stumbled a bit as we rounded the corner to the chain ladders.

After watching three others climb the two ladders up the side of the cliff (and taking a little snooze on the rocks), I pulled myself together enough to start my climb. Once I was up, I called down for my brother to join me and the two of us successfully made it to the top of the peak (which was really a plateau). You could see for miles and miles and the view was amazing. All around us there were mountains and hills and lakes. We decided to continue on, climbing up one last set of rocks to start the 30 min walk across the plateau to see Tugela Falls, the second tallest waterfall in the world. I slowly made my way across the flat rocky surface until we made it to the edge on the other side. The waterfall wasn’t spectacular, but we had made it and that was exciting. We sat and had lunch and the break seemed to help my body recover from the altitude, which was the only thing that I could think of that was causing me to feel sick.

We took in the view, had a mini photo shoot, and then decided that we needed to get on back down the mountain we just climbed. Of course, as soon as we got moving, it started to rain (you could call it the theme of our vacation). This wasn’t too big of a deal except we had to climb back down the very long chain ladders. The metal was slippery and the task was daunting, but I managed to make it down one and then the other. If I would have slipped, I would have died, it was that high up. My brother, who was the second one down, had trouble keeping his body from shaking and said it was one of the scariest things he had ever done. Once safely back on the lower mountain, we started our trek back down the mountain, going back and forth, back and forth across the side. I was exhausted and sore, but seeing as how my brother had a flight to catch the next day, I kept moving. The rain came and went, leaving us wet and with puddles that we had to dodge. When we finally made it back down, it was 2:45 and almost 7 hours had passed. I was tired but happy, and I think both of us were glad that we did the hike. We then started the long drive back to Bergville that would lead to the end of my brother’s time in South Africa. It was a fitting ending, seeing the whole country from the top of the mountain. I just wish I wouldn’t have gotten a horrible fever from the altitude and have to spend my brother’s last night in bed, trying to recover.

It was Tuesday evening and I was packing for my week and a half thanksgiving/life skills training vacation when I realized that my camera, which I keep in a drawer by the side of my bed, was missing. Now I had not used my camera for about a month so at first I thought maybe I moved it somewhere else or let someone borrow it. I searched my room (which takes about 5 minutes to do, thanks to its size) and called some friends, and after nothing turned up, I realized that my 14 year old host brother had taken it. Why, might you ask, would I automatically assume it was him? Well…

First off, my host family told me he steals. They warned me a couple days after I moved in, which was great news to me, as you can imagine. Second, the kid likes to creep around my hut. My host family has caught him lingering around my home a couple times and I have seen him peeping in my windows, one time getting a full on naked view (poor kid!) Finally, the morning that my camera went missing, I noticed that when I came back from the outhouse someone had been in my room. It had rained the night before so there were footprints on my straw mat that were bigger than my flip flop size. I figured it was him and I quickly checked to see if anything was missing, but my money, phone and laptop were all sitting out and were all still there, so I thought I was safe. Thought I scared him off before he could do any damage. Guess I was wrong.

That night, once I realized what had happened, I ran next door to my family’s house in the pouring rain to tell my grandma what I thought happened. She told me he probably did take it, said sorry a few times and then asked me what I would do. Nothing. What could I do? He is 14 and clearly has issues so….

The next morning at 5 am my grandma woke me up to give me back my camera. She was standing there with my host brother and a neighbor (I still don’t know why he was there). I later found out (from my grandma) that my host brother had stolen money from his grandfather, disappeared for the weekend, came back with neighbors following him claiming their things were missing, ended up in the police station for the night, was beat by the police (best part of the story considering my host grandma doesn’t speak much English and this whole thing involved hand signals), and then returned to the house were he immediately stole from me. Glad to see he learned his lesson with that beating and all.

I am never having children- especially not a boy.

The next day, my life improved greatly as I headed off to meet the other 11 PCVs in KZN to celebrate thanksgiving. We all stayed at an Italian villa that someone’s supervisors own. It came complete with a pool, DSTV, enough bedrooms to house 15, and wonderful running water.

We spent thanksgiving swimming, cooking and drinking and I can say that a) thanksgiving is much better when it is with friends instead of family (no offense family) and b) after hardly eating meat (or good food) for about 10 months, I had a new love for turkey and stuffing, two things I normally hate. See, I am changing and growing. Thanks Peace Corps.

We then spent the next day chilling at the beach, eating leftovers and swimming in the Indian Ocean. For a girl from Michigan, such post-Thanksgiving day activities are unheard of. No snow- it is a miracle!!

i want to start off by saying that yesterday was my brother's 22nd birthday. i cannot believe that is has been a full year since i helped my brother celebrate 21 in chicago. i don't think it was what he had in mind for his 21st, but we had fun and hit up some sites together and to be honest, it was the last time that we really spent time together before i left (not sure what went down over xmas). anyways, HAPPY BIRTHDAY LITTLE BROTHER!! it seems as though both of us are now at the point in our lives where our next 'big birthday' is 30. how scary is that.

moving on to things pertaining to my life, i got my dear little cat shobi shobi castrated yesterday. poor little guy is no longer a man. now the reason i am sharing this with the few people that read my blog is not because my cat is the only thing i have to talk about but because the process of me taking my cat to the vet both entertained and annoyed me greatly. as you may know, i cannot drive while i am here so i depend fully on public transportation aka the taxis. every morning i walk about ten minutes to get to the place where i catch a taxi in the morning. yesterday, shobi shobi accompanied me on the walk, stuffed nicely in his plastic lunch basket i bought as his carrier. as one would expect, he was angry at what i was doing to him, so he meowed and meowed from his little cage. when it was time to get on the taxi, he had a little fit in the basket and made everyone in the taxi stare at me with disgust (mind you he is inside a contained area and not really bothering anyone). i apologize and take a seat in the back, putting the basket on my lap. the entire 20 minute ride into town, people kept turning around and glaring at my cat. i was able to calm him down by petting him and he meowed maybe 5 times during the ride, but each time some person sitting in front of me turned and glared. now i know that most zulus don't like cats but lets not pretend like this is the first animal they have seen on a taxi. it is very common for chickens to be in boxes or bags, squawking and flapping in their containers, angry at the world. and i have even had friends who have had goats on their taxis, leading me to believe that animals are not off limits. what bothered me about this whole situation is that most people in my village know me, so the mistakes and strange things i do usually don't get the look of hate but instead that kind look of silly umlungu. but no, they were not forgiving at all about my cat and it pissed me off. if i had any other choice, i would not have taken a damn taxi!!

hours later, when i brought poor shobi shobi home, he was still drugged up and resembled a drunk person. he would wobble when he walked, fall over, then get up and wobble some more. then he peed on my bed and puked on the floor. don't know about you but all of those things have happened to me at one time or another while intoxicated...

moving on, the title of this blog comes from my current attempt at a site change. basically, i am fed up with my back/knee problems and want to be closer to a physical therapist. i also want running water so i can stop carrying water altogether, which is heavy even in smaller quantities. and to be honest, i have been at my current site for almost 8 months and i don't see myself fitting in here in any sort of role other than that of administrative assistant, which is not what i came here to do. most of the problem is me and not knowing really what i want to do. however, i feel as though too much time has passed now and i cannot break out of the role that i have been shoved in. most days i still spend doing nothing and it drives me nuts. basically, i have had enough...

i am looking into an organization in durban called the aids foundation. i have contacted them and plan to meet them sometime over the next couple of weeks. if they decide they want me (which they may not) i would move to durban and work under their director of research. the idea of all of this excites me so much that i really hope it works out. finally, i might have work that entertains me or at least makes me think. and i would be living in a city which is what i wanted all along. i also could see a physical therapist without having to take an hour taxi ride to the next city. wouldn't it be lovely!?!?!

lets hope it works out. for your sake and mine!

i realized today how interesting it is to be outside the US on an election day. the news this morning was all about the election (understandably) but what fascinated me most was not the random interviews with americans living in south africa but was instead the news clips on election activity occuring in other african countries. there were parties and celebrations in kenya (again, not surprising) but they also discussed musicals/plays that have been made about barack obamas life. and in nigeria, they showed cars driving around with barack obama bumper stickers, exactly the same as the ones in america. i suppose an election like this is a rare occurance. not all presidential nominees are half black. not all have relatives that live in africa. but to see the excitement of africans for our potential future president makes me smile and proves to me just how global this world is... even on this continent that so many people see as dark and underdeveloped. it is not often that a majority of the world gets excited about an election.

i would go on to other, more personal topics now but i find that nothing exciting is going on in my life these days. i am still alive however, and i suppose that is the most important part.

i also have a new tattoo. that makes five.

well folks, it is official. i have a slipped disk or a perforated disk or something like that. good news i guess, since it means the back pain i have been haing for the last 3 months wasn't all in my head. let me replay for you what happened...

end of june: i bent over to feed my cat and WHAM! the pain hit and i had to fall over on the floor. spent a week in bed (luckily at a PC training so i was staying somewhere nice) and took lots of meds.

beginning of july: back at site only a couple days and it happens again. i have to spend a long weekend in bed with only my cat to take care of me. again, meds saved me.

last weekend (durban): my friend and i went to have a fun weekend away and of course, as is my lcuk, it happnes again. we are at a mall and the pain just sneaks up on me until i have to go and lie down in a bathroom. could hardly move the rest of that day and the next day i decided to taking sleeping pills in order to handle the 3 hour taxi ride home. it was horrible!

so after the third 'incident' i was told to venture up to pretoria to see a doctor about this little probelm. yesterday i saw that doctor and had a mri done, only to find out that one of my disks in my lower back no longer lines up with the rest of my disks. he is a troublemaker. he is also black and the rest are white. so VOLIA, there is where the pain is coming from. now what...?

doctor said no to surgery, at least not yet. i still have control of my bladder and my legs so surgery isn't needed and hopefully never will be. basically, i have to take meds and go to physical therapy for at least 6 weeks. the disk will eventually pop back into place as long as i am careful and i do my pt.

so here i am, with a back that doesn't work and a lot of pain. i am not sure what caused it but i think it is how i carry my buckets of water and how i do my laundry. since i don't really have any other options on how i do these things, i am not sure how i am going to change this, but who knows, i am sure something will work itself out.

personally, i think my body is telling me it doesn't like living in a hut. that's ok though, cause my mind is telling me the same thing. heather=not peace corps material

in other fun news, a canadian couple are coming next week to volunteer at my org for 3 months and the husband is an IT spcialist. he is going to help me get computer classes up and running at my office, and since i am in the process of getting another computer lab put into a community center, he will help teach classes there too. i never thought that i would be doing anything IT related, seeing as how back home my brother and my dad are the computer gurus (dad works at IBM, brother is studying computer software engineering). but here i am, the computer expert at my work, who everyone comes to for help. i guess some of the knowledge my dad and brother have rubbed off on me. who would have thought- heather, an it person in africa. so much for hiv/aids.

so last week was a rough week. seems to happen that way. can't be just a rough day. has to be an entire week of misery. last week was that week. started off on monday with an attempted mugging. i was walking down the street at about 3pm, only 4 blocks from the peace corps office, headed to the pharmacy to get the meds that the pc didn't have in stock. i am strolling along, keeping a close watch on the purse, thinking what beautiful weather we're having when two guys come up from behind me. i hear them coming and i slow a bit and stand off to one side so they can pass me. they pass me but are walking very slowly so i have to slow my pace even more. then all of a sudden, they both turn at me and close around me. one grabs my purse while the other one tells me to give the man my phone cause he has a gun. i scream no really loudly and yank back on my purse, turning my body in the process. then i scream help. there are people around that see what is going on and i think this scared the muggers cause they just kind of stood there. some people called me over to them and walked me down another street, away from the muggers. a white man driving by in his car pulled over after seeing what had happened and offers me a lift back to peace corps office, a whole 4 blocks away.

once i get back to the office, i burst into tears. i was so annoyed with myself for taking a purse, for not putting my money and phone in my bra. living in small town bergville made me comfortable, thus allowing me to let my guard down. unfortunately in south africa, you can't let your guard down. when you do, assholes try and mug you.

a couple days later i was back in safe bergville. i was proud because i had braved the jo'burg taxi rank and made it home safe and sound. little did i know that i had carried some friends back with me- bedbugs. the first night back in my hut was normal, that is until i woke up in the morning and had bites around my waste and on my feet. thinking something must have been in my bed while i slept, i got dressed and went to work, thinking nothing of it. when i went home that evening, i shook my bed off and decided to switch my pjs, putting the ones i wore at the hostel in pretoria back on. i went to sleep thinking the bug was gone. the next morning, however, i woke up to have bites all over my back. it looked like chicken pox all over again. disgusted and itchy, i dragged all my blankets outside and hung them on the line. then i sprayed my bed, my sheet and my blankets with Doom, the kick ass bug spray. not knowing whether it was bedbugs or fleas, i scooped up shobi shobi and covered him in two kinds of flea killing medicine. finally, i gathered up all of the clothes i had slept in for the last two weeks and took them to the washing place in town. when i returned home, i had purchased another can of bug spray and i again attacked my blankets and sheets. i also covered my mattress in Blue Death, a white powder used to kill all kinds of critters. even with all of the chemicals, i was still scared to sleep in my bed, so that night i slept on top of all the covers and froze my ass off.

i am still not sure what was attacking me in my sleep but i think it was bedbugs. after talking with one of my friends who stayed at the hostel with me, i found out that she too had some sort of bites or rash on her body. it seems as though i picked the bugs up from the hostel bed and carried them all the way back to kzn with me. i believe that i have the problem under control now since the bugs weren't actually in my bed but on my clothes. occasionally i still get a bite but i am hoping that it is from something flying around in my room and not crawling around in my bed.

so after the stressful week, i decided to spend my weekend in my village, relaxing and watching sex and the city. my host family invited me to the opening of the new baptist church in my village on sunday, and although i have avoided church so far, i decided that it was about time that i make an appearance. the service was normal. lots of singing, lots of talk of god. afterwards there was lots of food, followed by lots of dishes that i helped the zulu women wash. then i brought out my camera and let the children take pictures for a couple hours until the batteries died. i actually had fun. that's right, heather had fun playing with the church children.

but the strangest thing for me was the going from watching sex and the city to sitting through a church sermon about sinning. my life here is so full of contrasts and contradictions. i am constantly being pulled from one direction to the other. sometimes it wears me out.

ok time to go flip through the Qur'an that someone gave me. :-)

some of the things i do here i would never do in the us. but then again, if i were in the us, i wouldn't be banned from driving like i am here. either way, it seems that i have become comfortable taking rides from from random men. i know this sounds really dodgy, but i promise it isn't. or maybe it is and i am just being silly. either way...

so it all started when the man in line behind me at the grocery store asked if i was heading home. i had met him before on my morning taxi to town and he works down the street from me. misinterpreting what he was asking, i said yes, thinking he wanted to walk to the taxi rank with me. as we walked outside, i realized that he had a car and was in fact offering to drive me home (he lives in my village). the car ride was fine, if not a bit awkward because of his limited english. he dropped me off at home and said he would pick me up the next day to take me to work. luckily he didn't show the next morning and i got out of what could have been an awkward situation.

this same type of thing happened again a couple weeks later as i was heading to work one morning. i was running late (as i often am now) and was waiting at the spot where i catch a taxi in the morning when a man drove by in his work vehicle. he stopped, reversed to me, asked me if i was going to be late to work, and then told me to get in. that particular day was when the nationwide strike was occurring, so we chatted about that, about how if he didn't go to work he wouldn't get paid, and about how he had a wife and family to support. he was nice enough, if a bit annoyed. was the fastest i ever got to work in my life.

following in my new trend, i was picked up this morning by the police. that's right. same situation, same driving past and then reversing back to me. there were two cops in the car and i wedged myself in between them. again, they were both very nice and asked me all the same questions that everyone asks me. the new twist in this trip was that the driver was blatantly hitting on me over and over again. he asked for my number and i told him i dropped my phone in a bucket of water. he told me i looked beautiful and i told him i doubted that since i hadn't showered in days. he was perfectly harmless with his flirtations and i laughed them off on the 15 min ride to town. what was funny about getting a ride with the cops was the reaction of some of my coworkers as i pulled up to the office in a the cop car. i think it surprised some of them... at least until i explained.

in other news, i recently finished a book about Mormonism that really impressed me. as many of you know, the organization that i work at is very very religious, so religion has been thrown into my life all of a sudden and it has been an interesting thing for me to deal with. i suppose that i am used to it all now and am somewhat numb to the daily religious routines that we go through here at work. anyways, there was a quote at the end of the book that i really appreciated.

"There are some ten thousand extant religious sects- each with its own cosmology, each with its own answer for the meaning of life and death. Most assert that the other 9,999 not only have it completely wrong but are instruments of evil, besides. None of the ten thousand has yet persuaded me to make the requisite leap of faith. In the absence of conviction, I've come to terms with the fact that uncertainty is an inescapable corollary of life. An abundance of mystery is simply part of the bargain... And if I remain in the dark about our purpose here, and the meaning of eternity, I have nevertheless arrived at an understanding of a few more modest truths: Most of us fear death. Most of us yearn to comprehend how we got here, and why- which is to say, most of us ache to know the love of our creator. And we will no doubt feel that ache, most of us, for as long as we happen to be alive."

interesting...

"perhaps as you went along you did learn something. i did not care what it was all about. all i wanted to know what how to live in it. maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about." -hemingway

a friend sent me this quote and i find it very fitting. i still am no closer to figuring out what i am supposed to do here in middle of nowhere south africa, but i still learn things everyday. it may not be the right things or the most important things, but i learn nonetheless, and from the same same that is my life now, i am growing. i am trying to live in it.

♫

want to know how to make yourself look like an asshole?

get on morning taxi to work, like usual, with coffee and book to read. wait for taxi to fill up and have someone sit next to you. wait for person to ask you random questions about how you live in a village, etc., etc. in attempt to try and make conversation with random person, ask where in town they work. then have the person tell you that they work at THE SAME PLACE AS YOU. now you are an asshole.

that's right folks. i did this just the other day on my way to work. the woman, whose name i still do not know, was someone new and i don't think she is permanent staff, but she works at world vision all the same. she just looked at me and asked, "didn't you see me at work yesterday?" then she proceeded to name people who i work with, in case i thought she was making it up. i didn't know what to say. i couldn't bring myself to ask her anymore questions, in case i was already supposed to know the answer (hence the reason i still don't know her name!) anyways, that was a great start to the day.

in further life news, today is saturday and i am at the office. tomorrow i will also be at the office. this is a lot of overtime, seeing as how i get paid NOTHING. such is life. things are quite hectic here as we are behind in putting data into the computer. there are 5 or 6 of us who are working around the clock. the other night, jamie (sa15 pcv) and i stayed at the office, taking turns working on the computer and sleeping on a mattress on the floor. i don't know if i will be doing that again. i spent the next day exhausted and cranky, and i ended up leaving early. part of me feels like saying screw it to the whole thing but i feel really badly for the women who are working their butts off to get it done, so i will stay and help. it should all be over by wednesday...

in addition to the wonderful data entry, world vision recently received a gift from BIC of pens, pencils, crayons, highlighters, etc. lots and lots and lots of all of these products. i was put in charge of going through all of this stock and organizing it. nothing like hours of manual labor. boy do i love lifting heavy boxes over and over and over again. once i sorted and wrote out all of goods, i then have to divide it into 4 and resort it all. did i mention that i love my life??

... since i returned from the wonderful peace corps training, i have had a series of mishaps occur in my life. i threw my back out like an old woman and was unable to leave my bed for 4 days. those were 4 thrilling days, spent alone with my kitten and my dvds and some pain meds. i dropped my lovely cell phone in a bucket of water (surprised it hasn't happened before now) and it stopped functioning properly. it works again, but i can't let the battery die because if i do, it is almost impossible to recharge it. it also doesn't like to connect anymore with the charging cord, so it takes a bit of blowing and jiggling to get it to work. and yesterday, to top it all off, my water kettle stopped working. no more coffee in the morning or hot bucket baths for me. the piece of shit was only a month or two old, and get this, i think it stopped working because it got wet. doesn't that seem odd.

next weekend i am planning an escape. so are about 12 other peace corps volunteers. we are going to durban for an i need a break from work/i don't have a site/i am leaving in 4 weeks type of get away. i have not yet been to durban ever, so i am quite excited... mostly to see the ocean again. and lets be honest, to party the nights away.

today is friday. today is also the last day i will be in bergville for quite some time. tomorrow i head off to far away provinces and long lost friends. well, not quite. tomorrow i leave for a peace corps training in polokwane. that is right- i am returning to the province where this experience all began. i will also be reunited with the rest of sa17. some people i will be happy to see again, after three long months. others i could do without seeing, well, forever. i am not entirely sure what this training is about and i don't really care. i am just excited for a break from the same same that is my life. i am also excited to have my lockdown end, so that i can start taking weekend trips to explore different parts of sa. and, in all honestly, i am excited to have hot running water (even if it is only a bath) for a few weeks. i will actually smell nice again... i hope.

did you know that i can go about 4 days without bathing and my hair only starts to look gross on the 4th day? that is pretty amazing to me. i have stopped bathing, usually doing it twice a week at most. it is too cold. and it takes too much time to heat the water and pour it in my shower bag (repeat this 4 times) and then struggle through bathing in the middle of my room in a bucket when it is cold and the bucket isn't big enough. then i have to get dressed (quickly to prevent freezing) and mop up all the water on the floor and dump out all the water that i used and so on... the process is annoying and wastes my time, especially when i like to be asleep by 8:30-9. plus the only one who has to smell me is my kitten and he doesn't smell that great either (typical man).

today is friday. today is also the day that the ten slightly used desktop computers are being put in the new computer lab at my work. i am very proud. this is the first task that i have accomplished at my work. granted, it wasn't as hard as it could have been since there isn't a lack of funding at my ngo. but either way, i helped get them here. yay! i have to put passwords on them all and i plan to use animal names on 9 of them. the last one is getting michigan, so that i can represent.

today is friday. today is a good day.

ps- i won't be posting for the next 3-4 weeks. i am sure this will upset you all.

so my bestest peace corps friend therese is moving sites. currently she is living in a town called pietermaritzburg, which is a two and a half hour taxi ride from bergville. all things considered, that isn't too bad but it isn't just the next town over. but soon that will all change. my good friend is moving (as i have already said) to a town called estcourt, conveniently located 45mins away from bergville. my life just got a whole lot better. now i can go visit her on weekdays and still get back to work in time. now we can travel together a whole lot easier. now on boring weekends we can just take turns visiting each others villages. it is going to be great.

... and she has hot water and a bathtub. OH YEAH!

that's right folks. i not only went camping (in the winter!) but i also went hiking and i must admit, i didn't hate either one as much as i thought i would. now granted, my two months of living without electricity probably helped open my mind to the camping idea a bit, but i have never liked hiking in my entire life. i do it from time to time cause usually there is something amazing to see at the end of a hike, but i hate the entire time it takes to get to the amazing thing and the entire time it takes to get back. i am too fat to be a happy hiker.

so the two volunteers who live in bergville, kristen and jamie, decided that they wanted to go hiking over the weekend. jamie's boyfriend was coming into town and he had a friend from american visiting, so showing him the drakensberg mountains was important. the group of us headed out to the cathedral peak area after work on friday and set up tents in the campground at the bottom of the mountains. we all sat around cooking dinner, drinking wine, making s'mores and trying to stay warm as the temperature dropped lower and lower. i must admit that sleeping was difficult and that i spent a good 12 hours not being able to feel my toes. however, that is the price one pays.

the next morning we woke up bright and early and packed everything up and headed to the start of the trail. we were doing a hike called rainbow gorge, which follows a river and leads, in the end, to a huge rock that has fallen and wedged itself into the gorge (the amazing sight at the end). the beginning of the hike was very steep and i was out of breath in about 5 mins. i thought i was going to have to tell them all that i was too out-of-shape to do the hike when kristen told me it got better. this is another reason i hate hiking- i am always the fattest or most unhealthy and it makes me feel like shit. everyone i seem to go with is skinny and fit and could probably run the whole hike (like the group i went with this time and the norwegians, to name a few).

anyways, she wasn't lying and it did get better. the hike probably took 5 hours total and involved some climbing on big rocks and a lot of hopping on stones back and forth across the river. i only fell in once and only with one shoe, so i consider it a victory. i must admit, the boulder at the end was beautiful and with the sun and the water coming down, it was well worth the hike there (probably not the hike back though). but throughout the whole thing i was laughing and having fun. maybe it was the company. maybe it was the fresh air. or maybe i have changed and i am the type of girl who now LIKES to camp and hike. i don't know. i don't want to know.

it was a good weekend.

so i moved recently into a nice one room hut. some features that make this property so valuable are:

- the tin roof, which prevents earwigs from raining from your ceiling

- electricity (need i say more)

- a proper outhouse that is clean and not too smelly

- a water tap in the front yard (what an idea!!)

- a wonderful and kind new family living right next door

- a shorter trip to and from town, lying only 15km outside of glorious bergville

- the view of the mountains and the lake

yes, my new hut is MUCH smaller than my old one and i have to sleep, bathe, cook, wash clothes/dishes, and do work all in the space of a small american bedroom. but i wouldn't give up this new life for my old one ever. my life has gotten a million times easier which has taken a weight off of my shoulders. i really wanted to prove that i could live without electricity and easy access to water, and i guess i did make it two months, but i never realized how stressful it actually was. you think when you don't have any of the annoyances of a modern life, things should be more relaxed. not true. modern life is easier. no way around that. and sadly, i am not the type of girl who is cut out of the 'camping' lifestyle. using an outhouse and bathing in a bucket is about as much as i can handle, and i don't feel bad about admitting that!

anyways, i am happy again. i don't expect it will last long, but i am glad that i feel it. i was a little unsure for a few weeks there. also, the desks were built this weekend in the computer room that i am getting up and running and work, so one small success has been achieved. gonna give myself a little pat on the back now...

i had a good weekend. i had a weekend that made me want to smile again. the type of weekend where you expect nothing and are surprised by a boost in your soul. that is what this past weekend was like for me. after having some stressful weeks dealing with bugs and huts and being homeless WITH a kitten, i decided to take a break from my life here and visit a friend. i dropped my kitten off at the bug infested hut and fled, feeling depressed and confused about why i was in sa.

first of all, seeing a good friend always helps. sometimes you just need someone to slap some sense back into you. sometimes you need someone who will cook you a good dinner and let you watch an entire season of the office in a row on her computer. sometimes you need to spend time with a person who vows that she will also quit the peace corps if you quit. that is the type of friend i went to see. just by being around her, my spirits lifted and i felt like a) things would probably get better and b) i could do it.

as if that wasn't enough, we found out that one of my favorite south african bands was playing in town on that very weekend! i was super excited and demanded that we go, which, being a good friend, she agreed to. we went to the very odd festival that they were playing at, which was something like a farming fair. we wandered around and saw all of the huge tractors and the cows and the farming crap that i know nothing about and then we went to the concert. it was small and there weren't a ton of people there, which means that i was able to get nice and close to the band. and then, I ROCKED OUT! i listened to freshly ground play old songs that i love and new songs that appreciate. one song was clearly meant for me. it is called pot belly and the chorus goes something like: "fat thighs, flabby arms, a pot belly still gives good loving..." this is the reason i love this band so very very much.

sidenote- i also got to talk to my best friend dana (right before the concert), who had just gotten married and was at her reception. it made me so happy to hear her voice and to know that she was having the perfect day that she deserved. love you dana!

after this wonderful concert my friend and i went to a club where we danced our butts off. it was all the same crap music that i used to dance my butt off to in america and it made me feel like i was at home. it was exactly what i needed to feel myself again. what i realized was that i didn't need a new hut to live in. all i needed was some good music and a bit of booty shaking with some friends.

so i have found a new place to live! hooray! after the earwig incident i was left homeless, squatting in the homes of friends. that was a week ago. i still have another week before i can move...

last saturday my australian friend jenny and i went out to clean the earwigs from my hut. when we opened the door, everything was covered in earwig bodies. there were thousands that had been killed by the four bug bombs that i had set off. it was the most bugs i had ever seen in one place in my entire life! we had to sweep a path to walk through so we wouldn't crush them into the cement floor. we took everything out of my hut and put it in the front yard and then started sweeping. by the end, we had a pile of earwigs that resembled a large mound of grossness. my host mom wanted to keep them to show her husband when he got home, so she swept him into a box. it nearly filled the box. jen and my host mom mopped and re-polished the floor with the shoe polish that rubs off on everything and i went through all of my things in the yard, shaking bugs out of it all. since they have pinchers, they sometimes stick to things when they die, so i had to pick off a lot of bug bodies from sheets and clothes. it rocked. after we cleaned, we started to move the furniture back in and i realized that the earwigs were still falling from the ceiling, this time still alive. instantly there were 15 more crawling on my floor. i started stomping in attempt to kill them, and then i swept them out, only to find more had replaced them. it was a game i couldn't win. so i gave up, i moved my stuff back inside, and i left with jen to go get pizza, our reward for the cleaning. i haven't been back since because i don't want to stay there in the dark with the bugs falling from the ceiling. i am afraid.

since then i have had a series of ups and downs as i have been trying to find a new place to stay. i cannot stay in town because peace corps wants us in the community, so some of my coworkers have been helping me to look. i saw some ok places but all of them are much smaller than where i currently stay and none of them are in as beautiful an area. such is life i suppose. yesterday i went to look at a place that my manager joseph used to stay before he got married. it is a small cement room with a tin roof right outside the main home. the room is a normal bedroom size, and there is where i will sleep, cook, bathe, do dishes, laundry, etc. it is much smaller than where i am staying now, so i might have to get rid of some of my furniture, but i am pretty sure that i will not have to deal with it raining earwigs. the room is painted bright blue and has two windows to let in good light. there is a pit toilet in the yard and they also have a water tap in their yard, which makes me life so much easier! and the nicest thing of all is that it has electricity. right now there is only a light that they ran into the hut, but they are going to have someone come and run another extension cord that will have a plug on it so i can plug in things if i need to. i don't have any money left to buy electric things, so i will continue to cook and heat my room with gel and paraffin, but i am going to buy a water kettle to heat water, so that bathing will be much easier. a pensioning couple live in the house and their children are all grown and living elsewhere. they have chickens running around the yard and 4 cows that they keep in a pen. they also grow maize. i think it will be a decent place to stay, and i know my life will be at least a bit easier. it is also half the distance out of town, so now i will only have to travel 10-15km to get to and from work.

in work news, i am currently trying to get a computer lab up and running at our office for the community to use. we are having a guy come in to build customer counters and shelves since the room is quite small and once he is finished we are going to order 10 desktop computers. i have been contacting different people and running around visiting different places to try and get this thing moving and i must admit, it has been quite fun. i am also trying to register OADP for nonprofit status, which is a huge pain in the ass. i just recently found out that we have problems with our constitution but i cannot get the office in pretoria to send me the letter that states all the problems. it will be amazing if this ever gets done!

and that has been my life. the last week and a half have been really hard and i have often thought about going home. my bestest friend dana is getting married this weekend and me being here doing this seems like a really stupid reason to miss that. plus i don't feel super happy and i always feel extremely alone. here's to the last month of lockdown and the future of spending every weekend traveling to see a different friend.

Monday night was just like any night in my hut. I got home around 6pm, I started cooking cauliflower for dinner, and I sat down to superglue my plates back together since 3 of them fell on the ground and broke into pieces (I don’t have money to buy new plates!) I had purchased more bug killer spray and so I casually sprayed around the two rooms of my hut. I noticed that more earwigs than normal started crawling out of the wood work to die, and I quickly started to kill them with TP. Some crawled under my spare mattress on the ground, so I lifted it up to spray under there and noticed through a whole in the carpet that there was mold. UGH! So I halted the attack on the earwigs and heaved the mattress into my kitchen and pulled the rug up to mop up the mold with bleach water. I was trying to decide if I should pull the whole carpet out cause there was some mold on the bottom when I noticed a noise from my kitchen room. The earwigs, which are infesting my thatched roof, started dying, which caused them to fall from my roof to the ground. It was only a few at first, and then the numbers increased and it sounded like rain as the bugs hit the cement floor. It was by far the most disgusting thing I have ever had to deal with. I quickly gave up fighting off the mold and cooking dinner, and crawled into my bed, which has a mosquito net over it. It was the only place I could avoid the rain of earwigs. I did my best to make sure I was protected at went to sleep… kind of. The next morning I woke up and there were hundreds and hundreds of dead earwigs all over everything. Some were still living, and crawled around fighting for life. They covered everything in my home- floor, cabinets, food, desk, table, etc. I decided to rip the carpet out of my bedroom, so I spent the first 20 mins of the morning trying to pull it out from under my furniture. It too was covered in bugs. Then I packed up my kitten and my stuff for the day and lit two smoking bug bombs that I had purchased the day before. Realizing that I had a huge problem on my hand, I had a coworker go with me to many different stores in town to find out what to do about this whole thing. I was told to buy a fogger, which is like a normal American bug bomb that you set off. I bought two, one for each room, and was told that I had to stay out of the home for 3 days. When I went back to my home around 3pm to get clothes and set off the bomb, the bug problem hit a whole new level! There were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dead bugs all over EVERYTHING! I have never seen this many dead bugs before. It is easily going to take me an entire day to clean the two small rooms of my hut. I was so disgusted that I started crying. Everything was dirty and smelled like bug bomb smoke. It was the final straw. I have since found out that this is common from thatch in the winter. You can’t really get rid of the earwigs so you just have to wait until it gets warm again. And it is better not to spray anything because they start to die and fall from the roof, which I found out the hard way. Just live with the bugs, that is what I was told. Shit. I don’t know if I will be staying at my rondeval in Moyeni. My supervisor asked the staff to start looking for a new place for me to stay, still in a village, but maybe in an area with electricity. I don’t want to live with the bugs but I don’t want to move. It is beautiful where I stay, and my host family is nice. I have a nice home and I am getting used to not have electricity. I don’t know what to do. Just wait I guess. This is Africa, afterall.

i live in the mountains and i hate hiking. that is kind of ironic, isn't it? well you all will be happy to know that i finally went on a hike. my australian friend jenny and i went to royal natal national park, which is about 25 mins from my village of moyeni. it is in the northern drakensberg mountains and contains come of the peaks that i can see from where i stay. neither jenny or i really like to hike (or are in shape enough to do anything too extreme) so we decided to go for an easier hike along a gorge in the park. it was a beautiful sunny saturday, perfect for walking in the mountains and enjoying the area we get to live in. we set off around noon and walked along a relatively easy path down the gorge, which offered amazing views of the mountains and the valley around them. of course, about 10 mins into the hike my camera batteries died and i could no longer take photos. great! for some reason i also thought the path we were taking was paved, so i wore flip flops at foot attire. when we got there i quickly realized how that was a bad decision. although the path was by no means difficult, it was not really flip flop terrain. luckily, i made it in and out without any sprained ankles or broken bones. the two of us walked for about an hour and a half down the path and then decided that it was a good time to turn around and walk back. the whole hike is about 8km in and then 8km back. we didn't do the whole thing (clearly) but we made a decision to come back one day and do the whole thing. we shall see if that actually happens. either way, we had a lovely time just wandering around in nature, enjoying the warmth of the sun that is sure to leave us soon.

when we finished our hike, we decided that we absolutely needed to get pizza and beer (obviously we are real hardcore hikers). we went to the best pizza restaurant around bergville, which is way out of town on this random road. the place was super cute with chairs made of shovels and candle holders that were dancing african women. we split a pizza and had a couple beers and then decided to call it a night. jenny drove me home, stopping along the way at the water pump so i could fill my 6 liter bag of water to use that night on laundry.

the next day i decided to have a relaxing day in my hut. i woke up late (around 7:30) and made french toast. as i was getting back into bed to read for some hours, the children visiting my home decided to start harassing me. they were peaking in my windows and banging on my door and they absolutely would not leave me alone, even after i gave them a toy to play with. finally i gave up and had them come in to color a coloring book i was sent from america. they colored the whole book, using one color to scribble the entire page, not caring about the lines or the shapes. they also broke all of the crayons i had given them. this is why i love children. after an hour or so of this, i asked them to leave so i could do laundry and they went about their business. i spent the rest of the day relaxing and cleaning and playing with my kitten. i made pizza for dinner using a technique my dad told me about. i took two cake pans and placed one on top of the other so it would act like an oven. the pizza turned out ok although i burnt the shit out of the crust. such is life with no electricity i suppose. i made another pizza and took it to my host family so they could have some as well. all in all it was a good weekend. i try and appreciate them when they happen cause they don't occur all the frequently these days. one day at a time...

two years ago yesterday, i was celebrating my 21st birthday in cape town, surrounded by friends and alcohol at the wonderful madame zingara's. that was an amazing day. i never thought then that i would be back here so soon, celebrating yet another birthday. yesterday i turned 23. the whole day i had this sad feeling in my stomach, not only because i was getting older, but because birthdays don't seem to be as big of a deal anymore. people celebrated with me, baked me cakes, bought me presents, and genuinely acted like they cared (cause they did), but something was still not the same. maybe this is how it is getting older...

i started my day driving back from pietermaritzburg, where i had gone for the weekend to buy a heater. i found a sweet one that runs on paraffin, and by sweet i mean it is probably going to gas me out of my hut. i got to see my best friend who is a peace corps volunteer living outside of pmb, which totally made my weekend. she made me this amazing cake that was delicious. it did, however, look like it had been blown up and stuck back together again. i left pmb in the afternoon, driving back with an australian friend that i met in bergville. she is allowed to drive a car here (imagine that!) we picked up another pcv who lives in bergville and the 3 of us headed north to our mountain town. once we arrived home, we picked up a few more people and went out to a bush camp to have a birthday braai. we were there for hours eating and drinking a bit of beer and wine, and just having fun talking with one another. after the feast, the girls brought out another cake that looked about as good as the first one i had but tasted great. we packed up all of our stuff and headed home around 11pm, the latest i have stayed up in months!

as you can see, i had a really nice day overall. i wasn't alone like i thought i would be. i wasn't in my hut feeling sorry for myself, like i thought i might be. i had new friends around me, showing me that my time here has not been a waste, no matter what i might think from time to time.

it still made me really miss home and my old friends though...

I have recently found out that I share my rondeval with a lot of birds. They like to build their nests in my thatch roof. I can sometimes here them at night, rustling around, shifting to get comfortable. It creeps me out so I put my headphones in a pretend it doesn’t exist. It the morning I usually hear them chirping and flapping around. So far, I have been ok with sharing my hut because the birds have stayed on the outside and I have stayed on the inside. However, last week when I got home from work, I found myself under attack. I opened my hut and walked into my first room which is my kitchen. I heard a commotion in my bedroom, so I pushed back the curtain and walked in. I instantly heard very loud chirping. All of a sudden I had a bird flying at my head, squawking and flapping, trying desperately to escape. I, of course, ran out of my hut screaming, unsure of what to do next. I went to get my host father, who started laughing when I told him. He walked back to my hut with me and as we were approaching the door, the bird dive bombed at us, finally finding his freedom. We ducked, and then my host dad told me everything was better and walked away. I spent the next 10 minutes making sure there were no other birds that had infiltrated the thatch. I am paranoid that there is a hole that they can get through now, so every time I hear them making noise, I look around and make loud noises hoping it will scare them. I am not so sure that it actually works. I also recently found out that something called bird lice exists and that I have to be careful not to get it. I was told that I will need to bug bomb at least every 6 months so that their lice doesn’t bother me. GREAT! Along with the birds, I have found that I share my home with these sweet little bugs with pinchers. They are gross, but a lot smaller than the cockroaches that I shared my room with in Limpopo, so I try to just put up with them. We had a rather hard rain a few nights ago (which is uncommon because it is winter, which is the dry season) and I found that these bugs multiple when it rains. Either that or they fall out of my thatch (damn thatch is the cause of all my problems). I was walking around killing them left and right! They were on the walls, on the floor, crawling out of my stove top, crawling around my dishes, etc. It was AWESOME! Finally, I busted out my Doom bug killer and sprayed my whole hut, feeling satisfied that I had done my best to exterminate them. The next morning, I woke up to find the dead bug bodies all over the ground in both rooms of my hut. It was a joy to walk around picking them all up at 6am. And sadly, this only deterred their attack because the bugs have now reappeared, there solely to make my life miserable. Hopefully, when I bomb for the bird lice, these little bitches will also die! Following this trend of creatures living in my house, I am happy to announce that I am now the owner of a tiny kitten! It is a seven week old male tabby cat and it is so damn cute! I had asked my neighbor to look out for a kitten for me, thinking that she would tell me when she knew of someone with a kitten and I could go and check it out and decide if I really want one. Just kidding! I came home from work the other day when it was dark and muddy and two boys were waiting there for me- with a kitten! My neighbor had sent them over once she had seen me walking home from work. I was excited, but not prepared at all for a new kitten. I had nothing to feed it, no place for it to go to the bathroom, and nowhere for it to sleep. And the thing looked scared to death and wouldn’t stop meowing!! Things have settled a bit now, I went to the vet and bought de-wormer and flea powder, I got a litter box and some cat food, and the kitten seems to be warming to me. I decided to name it unoshobishobi, which means tadpole in Zulu, which everyone here thinks is ridiculous. He sleeps with me most nights, curled up on my chest. Recently, he has started to wake up at 3 am and bat at my face. It is really annoying but I can’t kick it out of bed because he is too damn cute. I am totally in love and glad that I have someone to keep me company in my hut. Now I have to figure out how to get it back in the US, if the little thing actually lives that long!

that is right folks, my new name is gugu, short for gugulethu which means precious or treasure or something like that? i hear different things every time. one thing that everyone does do when they hear my name is laugh. i take this to be a welcoming thing, like you are one of us cause you have a name we can understand. i am probably wrong.

so i have been in bergville now for 10 days. 10 long, interesting, confusing days. i am still alive and i haven't burnt my hut down with my candles yet, so i consider this a victory. it has definitely been interesting! i had a breakdown my first night in my hut because it was so dark and nothing was unpacked. i cried like a baby and then went to bed at 8pm without making dinner. since then, i can honestly say that things have gotten much better. everything is put away and i have kind of gotten the hang of things. my bedroom is pretty cozy and cute, with pictures up everywhere. my kitchen is functioning and will hopefully become more welcoming once i have spent some more time decorating it. i use tons of candles and paraffin lamps as my source of light and i cook (sometimes) on my two burner stove top that burns the green gel. i have a SWEET collection of buckets that i am proud of. i have buckets for dishes, buckets for laundry (which i haven't braved yet), buckets for water, a big ass bucket for bathing, and another one for mopping/throwing out my dirty water. oh i also have a bucket for peeing. it is pretty sweet. i have fetched water once since living there and it is a pain in the ass. the pump is a 10 minute walk away and i cannot carry the water back without the help of my 17 year old host sister, who throws the bucket on her head and walks back without using her hands to hold it. she totally puts me to shame. i have a whole new appreciation for how much water i use, and i have learned to bathe in a very small amount of water. i think hut life will be ok, if a little boring. the nights get lonely and i would kill to be able to watch a movie on my computer. i am considering buying a car battery and running my laptop from that. i will let you know how it goes.

i have absolutely no idea what i am doing at my ngo, but the people are very nice and i think i will like it. i have spent the last week and a half just following around joseph, my direct supervisor. most of it has been meetings or trainings that are all done in zulu, so i understand very little. what i gather is that the trainings are important and interesting, and it makes me angry that i cannot speak a lick of zulu. this also makes me wonder how i am going to help the hiv/aids sector when most of their work is done in the community or with community members and it is all done in zulu. i promise you all, i will never be fluent in zulu. guess i will just have to see how these first 3 months go.

in a couple weeks my whole office is gone because they take vacation days. normally, i would use this time to travel, but since i am on lock down and cannot leave the bergville area, i am stuck. the thought of staying at my hut for a whole week without coming to the office makes me nervous, but i am trying to come up with ideas for how to spend my time in a productive way. i just met a teacher who teaches at the primary school in my village (moyeni) and i have asked her if i can attend classes at her school one of those days. she is now very excited and already asking me for my input on things she is doing. the risk you run in asking to OBSERVE something. she has also invited me to some womens prayer retreat as well, which i will have to find a way out of. ha ha. i will let you all know how it goes.

ok i have to go catch my work taxi home. time for some more pasta for din din. maybe i will knit tonight. or maybe just go to bed at 9pm. i am officially a grandma!

sanibonani all! sorry for my extreme lack of posting but i hardly ever have access to the internet these days (and will probably have very limited access for the next 2 years!) i have lots to tell, so this may be a long post!

so i have officially become a Peace Corps volunteer. we had a swearing-in service on april 3, 2008 which means that my 2 years of service started from that exact date. it was a fairly simple process of taking an oath, but it meant it a lot to me, seeing as how training was not the most fun time of my life. since i have finished training and become a volunteer, i have left the village of bakenberg and the province of limpopo for my permanent site of bergville, kwazulu natal. this is where i will be living for the next 2 years of my life (if i make it that long).

bergville is a tiny town in the drakensberg mountains. it has one grocery store, a couple banks and a post office. there are no internet cafes or movie theaters. the whole town is made up of only 5 or 6 blocks as far as i can tell. the ngo that i will be working for is called world vision and it is located in bergville. world vision is an international organization that has its headquarters in seattle. i am not really sure what they do, but i know that their main focus is children and that they are very christian (you will find that christianity is attacking me here in rsa). as far as what i will be doing at world vision, i am not sure. my first day is tomorrow and i am supposed to spend the first 3 months just observing so i can find a place where my skills will be most useful. i want to do something with hiv/aids, so hopefully that will end up working out. i am excited to work there but at the same time nervous because a) i am not religious and b) both people i am supposed to be working under are very very very busy and i am not sure if they will have time for me. at this point i don't want to be left on my own to figure shit out but i get the feeling that that is what i will end up doing.

i am not personally living in bergville, but will instead be living in a village called moyeni which is about a 25-30 drive outside of bergville in a pretty rural area. i will be getting to and from work via khumbi or minibus taxi, which takes a bit longer and is the main method of transportation for black south africans (you will probably never see a white person on a khumbi!) i am staying in a double rondavel (a round hut with a thatch roof) that doesn't have electricity or running water. my rondavel is located on a family compound, so they have a house next door to where i will be living in the same fenced in area. the family is very nice, although i am nervous about the 17 year old host sister for reasons i will not write here. there is a father, mother, young son, the 17 year old and a dying brother-in-law. their home is quite small but very cute. they have a jojo tank outside their house (it collects rainwater to use for water) and there is a pump about a 10-15 min walk away where i will also have to get water from. the village of moyeni is very cute but very rural. the houses are very spead apart and i am still not sure how i will get from house to house to get to know my community. a bike is out of the question because the roads are so bad that even a normal car can't get to my house; it needs to be a truck to get through the mud. the mountains are off in the distance and are what i see every morning and there is also a lake nearby, although nobody swims in it. i am scared as shit to live without electricity but i am going to give it a go. i am the only volunteer out of my group of 30 that doesn't have electricity. i will cook using a two burner stove that has a gel i pour in and burn. i bought a gas lamp and a ton of candles and i am hoping this will do. i have no refrideration so that should be interesting and i might see if i can get a gas fridge, although i am doubting that i can pay for that. i will continue to bathe in a bucket and do my laundry/dishes in a bucket. oh joy!

there are two volunteers from the group two before mine that also work in bergville. one of them works at world vision with me. they have a different living situation because they stay in an apartment in town (and no, i cannot do that. i have already asked!) they will be leaving in september but at least they will be around to help me for the first 5 months. antoher volunteer from my group was supposed to work in bergville with me, and in fact when we came to visit for a week in march she came with me. the rondavel that i am living in was supposed to be her home and she was supposed to work for world viison. she decided after visiting here that she wanted to work someplace else, so she did not return with me and my living situation and ngo were switched. needless to say, it has been a stressful few weeks for me being moved from one place to another and finding out that i was no going to have to rough it on my own.

i have access to the internet on my cell phone but it is slow and i cannot send emails from it. i can, however, check my emails and post facebook messages (go figure!) so you can send me stuff from time to time that way. i am in the process of trying to hook my phone to my laptop so it can serve as a modem but it isnt working and i dont think i will be able to get it to work on my own. plus, i dont have electricity so i will probably just leave my laptop at work and will thus hardly use it anyways. if you do want to stay in touch, please send me mail. i love writing letters and love love love receiving them. my new address is:

heahter o'neil c/o OADP

po box 37

bergville 3350

kwazulu natal

south africa

you can also try texting me, cause i am able to text america and europe. my cell number is +27838639307. if you text (or call!! it is free for me!!) from america, you would dial 01127838639307. anyways, it is an option for you all.

ok i think that is the pretty much all i have to say. i must admit that right now i am having a really hard time here and kind of want to come home at least once a day. i hope that things will get better once i have been here awhile, but i still have doubts as to whether peace corps is right for me. i guess we will see how it goes ;-)

I am sure many of you have been wondering what I have been doing the last month and a half. Basically, I have been going through training. That, and I have been living with a family. It has been a pretty surreal experience, especially since my family is very religious and very set in following certain gender roles. I live with just a mom and dad, both in their mid 60s. Their house is like a small house in the US, only without running water. This means there is no bathroom and no kitchen sink. There is also no fridge. It is pretty crazy. I am learning the Zulu language (and yes, it has clicks!) because I will be moving to the province of KwaZulu Natal on April 3. It is about 8 hours south of where I am living now. I am very excited to find out where I will be living and what I will be doing. Most of us will be working with local NGOs, either on NGO development or HIV/AIDS awareness. None of us really know yet. There is much more to write about but I unfortunately don't have time. I also have VERY limited internet access, at least until April 3, maybe even longer. So send me letters and I will write you back with a very detailed descripition of what I have been doing. Trust me, some of it has been very funny. Ok- salakahle.

after two days of staging, i feel overwhelmed. i still don't know much about what i am going to be doing in SA. i do, however, now know how everybody is feeling about leaving; all the fears and hopes for the PC experience. oh staging...

so tomorrow is it. we finally leave. right now it is hard to believe. i'm not looking forward to the flights, to lugging my bags around, or to the hot weather that is waiting for us all. ugh. but i am ready to learn more about what i will be doing and i am excited to go back to SA.

This time next week (Jan. 30) I will be in Frankfurt, waiting for my evening flight to Joburg. I have been waiting for so long to leave and now that the day is around the corner, I am starting to wonder if this is really the right thing for me. The excitement is dying and I feel more stressed and annoyed, overloaded with information while also knowing very little. Everyone tells me that it it going to be ok; that it is going to be a great experience. I hope they are right...

Once I arrive in South Africa:

Upon arrival at O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, you will be driven for approximately 2 hours to Mokopane Education Center in Mokopane, Limpopo Province. You will stay in a dormitory, which is basic by U.S. standards, and spend the first 9 days at a center being oriented to South Africa. Thereafter you will be welcomed into the home of a South African family who will be your host until April 3, 2008.

The first question this email raises is what does 'basic by US standards' really mean? No running water or electricity? That seems pretty basic to me. The second question I have is how will I get along with my family? I have had a hard enough time trying to get along with my actual family, so the thought of having 'another' family is a bit... overwhelming?

I am told that during my training, which lasts until April 3, I will have little contact with the outside world. No email, no cell phones, no smoke signals- nothing. I am ok with that (I think). I hope you are too.

During the first 8ish days I will be attending a very intense load of classes that include language, safety, history, geography and something called medical sessions. It looks like I will either be learning Afrikaans or Sepedi. Whenever I think about Afrikaans, I think of my American friend at UCT who used to call it the 'language of oppression.' Another one of my friends, however, pointed out that English could also be considered the same. Perhaps if I become fluent in Afrikaans, I will be able to communicate with the Dutch, and will in turn be able to go to the University of Amsterdam for my masters degree. Guess I shouldn't think about these things now...

On Sunday, February 10th you will travel to begin your stay with families in the Bakengerg area, which is approximately 1 hour from Mokopane and 2.5 hours from Pretoria, the capital city. All meals and day-to-day living activities (e.g., cleaning, bathing, washing clothes, etc.) will take place at your homestay. You are expected to become an integral part of your South African family, including joining them for your meals. The staple food is maize (corn meal), prepared as a thick porridge called “pap” and eaten with vegetables or a sauce. Fruits and vegetables are seasonally available. You will learn to enjoy the staple foods of South Africa.

I remember eating pap while I was in Botswana. I was sitting around a campfire and our Zimbabwean chef made it for dinner. The thought never crossed my mind that in 2 years I would be eating the stuff as my staple food. Funny how life works out.

Anyways, this is the gist of what I know now. After I move in with my host family, I continue with a rigorous schedule that starts at 7am and continues throughout the day. On April 3 we have our ceremony to swear us in, so as long as I pass my oral language exam and survive until then, I will become an actual volunteer. Yippie!

well i finally started a blog (possibly many many countries too late). perhaps i will use this to write about my experiences in south africa... and then again, maybe i will keep them to myself.