It's been quite a while since we updated the blog mostly because it's a bit of a challenge to think of what to write. Our lives here, though generally pleasant and comfortable, aren't particularly interesting. I do not really feel like I have much insight into life in Kinshasa beyond what I read in the news online or the general observations that just about any outsider would make about this place. So I have been holding back from writing. I cannot think of anything I feel like is worth sharing. My brother Thom says I should write about teaching, and another teacher expressed similar sentiments to me recently when I explained my trepidation about writing about my life here. He said that writing about the elite students that we work with could be a fascinating blog in and of itself. Yet, I shy away from writing anything too personal on the internet about people whose permission I don't have, and I don't really want my students searching out this blog so I'd never ask for permission. Plus, I seem incapable of focusing my attention on the uniqueness of my students' experiences as I am always getting wrapped up in their inability to use commas appropriately.

So should we just put this blog to rest? I don't think I'm quite ready for that just yet, but I'm still not sure what my goal should be in writing. I have been thinking about this issue lately as I have been reading quite a lot and questioning my own lack of inspiration for writing. I know that I can write, but why is it that I have nothing that I want to write about? And why is it that I seem to have an almost moral opposition to the romanticization and fictionalization of reality. My nitpickiness which probably comes from my grandfather makes me wary beyond belief of writing anything that is not 100% accurate. I also take this out on James as I have quite a proclivity for correcting and clarifying. So, I am still trying to figure out how it is possible to write about my experiences in a captivating way while preserving accuracy.

As I continue to try to sort these issues out, I will attempt to update more, but who knows how it will all work out. For now, I will look out my window and ponder the jungle in my backyard, one part of Kinshasa that I know rather well.

After two months in the Congo, I am still struggling to think of interesting things to write about our life here. It's not that we are by any means unhappy or even bored. As I mentioned, our quality of life is quite high. We've got a great place to live, can afford to treat ourselves to some of the ridiculously expensive imported foods, spend many afternoons at the pool, and always have people to hang out with. This blog is supposed to about "African" things, right? And we're just not in a position to gain much in the way of a perspective on the state of the Congo as relative outsiders.

As I mentioned in a previous post, one interesting thing about living here is getting to see the intersection of Central and Southern African goods and culture. Though the Congo is geographically in central Africa, South Africa seems to be working towards co-opting into it's area of dominance (that already extends across Southern Africa). South African companies are worming their way in, and the DRC is part of SADC (the Southern African Development Community).

The more interesting thing to observe is the intersection of culture here. People say 'koko' before entering a room just like in South Africa. They also grab they air to motion someone to come towards them just like in Chad. Congolese music, in addition to being some of the most popular music around Africa, shows some of this intersection as well. I came to surprising revelation the other evening while listening to a Congolese band playing in a bar. Some of the beats reminded me of jiving to South African house music. I had always thought of house music as a European style embraced by South Africans, but I finally realized it was more than this - sure the electronic side of house music is European but the beats are African and that's what makes it so popular. I'm still not a fan of most house music, but at least I can justify enjoying the song 'Jezebel' so much.

I've been having a hard time thinking about what to write on this blog lately. As I had imagined, our life here is much more focused on school and our students so I don't know that I will ever know enough about the Congo to really comment on culture, society, or politics like I could in Chad or South Africa. Living on the school campus is a bit of a unique experience. Though it's a like a compound that is isolated from what's going on around it, we can and do walk out the gate and around the neighborhood whenever we want. Of course, during the week, we're usually pretty tired by the end of the day and even walking 10 minutes to buy a few loaves of bread seems like too much work, but on the weekend we like to walk down to a busy intersection which is about a 30 minute walk from school. On the way you pass one of Mobutu's old palaces which also housed a zoo (complete with a lion that was killed and eaten during the fighting). It's a cool place, totally overgrown but the cages are all still there peeking through the thick undergrowth. You can see the remains of stalks where soldiers (we think) from the surrounding army have cleared some of the land to plant corn in past years. There's also a museum which we haven't been inside yet, but outside of it, there's a statue of Henry Morton Stanley that has long since fallen down. It's kind of creepy as the way his arms are extended towards the sky it looks like he's reaching towards heaven as he takes his last breath.

Another 10 minutes past the zoo/palace/museum brings us to the circle. There's a Nando's (which I've heard is not anywhere as good as Nando's in South Africa, but since I've never eaten Nando's before, who knows) and lots of small shops that mainly cater to the Kinois not expats though you can get just about anything you need in them. The best part though is that it's the closest market type area to where we live, and there are lots of ladies selling vegetables and fruit for much more reasonable prices than in the expat grocery stores or from the ladies who come and sell on campus. What's crazy about Kinshasa is that people don't really seem to care that you are there. Certainly the vegetable ladies want you to pick them for your business, but we haven't really been harassed at all walking around this busy circle or around our part of the city in general. Though children are occasionally excited to greet us, many children let us pass without a second glance something that would never happen in the other places we've been in Africa. People here just seem to be underwhelmed by foreigners. Maybe with so much negative involvement since Stanley first came down the river til now, they've actually figured out that foreigners and foreign aid aren't the answer, or maybe their just too busy to care. Who knows, but I'm happy to get a chance to walk around the neighborhood a bit.

As we get settled here in Kinshasa, we are constantly amazed by how comfortable our life here is. We've moved a few steps up from Peace Corps and though we don't have everything we had in South Africa (like a microwave), we have to filter our water and bleach our fruits and veggies, and sometimes the water or power go out, things are just a million times easier. It's bizarre because we suddenly find ourselves with lots of free time in the evenings and don't really know what to do with it. Here's just a few examples of what's changed...

We don't have to wash our clothes by hand. We've got a washer and dryer and our housekeeper usually does our laundry for us anyway.

When we wash the dishes, our non-stick pots and pans get clean in about one hundredth the time of our dishes in South Africa and we can wash them under hot water coming straight out of the tap.

We can buy alcohol and bring it home without worrying about concealing it.

We can also buy as much as we want of anything because we don't have to carry it on taxis.

We eat salad which we never really did in South Africa mostly because of the annoyance of carrying vegetables home from the grocery store. We also eat lots more fruit because of the same reason.

We can take a hot shower anytime we want. We can go number 2 in the middle of the night if we have to without risking the bad folks lurking in the night.

We can look at as many pictures and videos and download as much as we want on the internet (with the exception of tv shows and movies).

We can walk around our beautiful jungley school compound, see parrots, and enjoy nature.

We can swim in the pool that is a less than 5 minute walk from our house or play just about any sport with the teachers, aid workers, missionaries, etc.

We've got neighbors all around us who are always up for a beer and a chat.

We've got all of these things and yet we still live in Africa. This morning, we walked down to a busy intersection a couple kilometers from the school where there is a small market of sorts, just people selling food and things on the side of the road. We bought some fruits and veggies, and James bought himself a new pair of our favorite African (well really Chinese I'm sure) flip flops since he left his last pair in South Africa. It was nice to get out and see more of the area around the school, and not just from a car driving by it. In some ways, Kinshasa is a scary city, but walking around near the school, you don't feel like that at all. It feels like a much smaller place than a city of 10 million, and it was nice to finally feel a bit more grounded here and less wrapped up in all those conveniences I described above.

Thanks to all for blog title ideas. I decided to go with one of James' since it is supposedly his blog too though he wouldn't offer ideas until I put it out there to the world. So thanks for motivating him :)

We arrived safely in Kinshasa on Sunday after very different length trips. James' had a four hour direct flight from Jo'burg while I had a longer trek via Addis. I spent over 36 hours on airplanes in less than two weeks. Not fun. But it was wonderful getting to spend time with friends and family in Virginia and Maine and to see our beautiful kitty.

We also haven't written since our whirlwind July began. The first week of July we finished up the last of the school libraries and attended our final farewell function. It was nice to hear everyone's speeches and to present them with our silly gifts (as well as to receive some very nice heartfelt gifts from the schools. Some of the middle school girls came and did traditional dance (both Shangaan and Tswana styles of dance), and one of the principals' daughters came and sang some wonderful songs. The highlight of the whole day was the bus ride home with the middle school girls dancing like crazy to house music the entire time.

Then we attended the Pan-African Reading for All Conference in Gaborone, Botswana. It was a great experience for us as well as the principals/teacher who came with us since they got to experience another country with a very slightly different culture as well as connect with a lot of academics and some NGOs. Our presentation went really well, and people seemed very interested in the work we were doing. Overall it was a very useful and fun week.

We only got to return to the village briefly after the conference, but our host mom prepared a wonderful farewell luncheon before we said our tearful goodbyes. It was challenging to leave after two wonderful, exhausting, and rewarding years in Jericho. (Now I can say the name because we don't live there anymore.)

We've jumped into everything here though the first week has been mostly taking care of logistics. We've been to just about every expat shopping destination in Kinshasa and resigned ourselves to the fact we'll be doing our shopping at grocery stores rather than markets since that's the norm for expats here. The good thing is that our taste in food is on the cheaper side anyway so we won't fall prey to the often exorbitant prices here as often as most.

It's a big, hectic city and we're just now starting to figure out how to get around, but it will be interesting when we take our first solo trip out into the city. We've been getting back into French as we keep getting called upon by other new teachers to help with negotiations and anything that needs explaining in French.

The campus and our house is beautiful. We've got more than enough space and are still enjoying the luxury of indoor plumbing. Air conditioning is nice but not as necessary yet since it isn't too hot this time of year. Our gardener (yep, we have a gardener...and a housekeeper) is planning to get started on a vegetable garden soon. There's also a swimming pool on campus, and I'm going to start swimming for exercise in the next couple of days.

Next week, we'll be preparing for school to start and then on the 15th, things will begin for real. For now though, we're enjoying relatively leisurely days and nights in the Congo.

Today begins our last full week in the village. The following week we'll be traveling to Botswana to attend and present at the Pan-African Reading for All Conference. We'll get back from that Friday the 15th and have to head to Pretoria on the 17th to finish up our Peace Corps business. Then I'll be arriving in American on the 21st, spend the 25th-29th in Maine, and leave for Kinshasa on the 30th. It's going to be a jam-packed month, that's for sure.

So our fears about no one caring that we were leaving seemed to be ill founded. Three weeks or so ago, I discovered a secret principals' meeting taking place with the aim of planning our farewell. They didn't seem to realize how soon it was coming up and ended up settling on the 7th as basically the last possible date they could have it. It should be an interesting event, but it's a bit sad because these kinds of things are expensive so they can only invite so many people. Lots of people have been asking us about it who won't get to go, but it would be impossible to cater an event for the whole village (and when we suggested not catering anything, that was just an impossible proposition).

We have already had two smaller farewells that were really nice. I had planned two parties for my clubs to give them certificates and have snacks which felt a little weird since they are planning to continue after I leave. At the one for the magazine club, the teachers commandeered it a bit and had two kids give speeches and they gave speeches along with some presents. The second one was a bit bigger. One of our schools told us they needed us at school on Friday (the last day of school) and they did a program with the whole school. Conveniently they had just participated in an arts competition so they had their traditional dance routine and gospel song already prepared. Those were great plus more speeches, lots of singing and one of our favorite things...singing and dancing while presenting presents. All of the teachers took one of the presents (like towels, picture frames, etc) and danced them up to us on the stage and presented each one while all the kids were singing and dancing at their seats. It was super fun. When we have cheaper internet, we'll try to post videos of these things.

Anyway, it's been a great end to our time here but extremely busy. This week continues to be busy, even with no school. We've got to finish up the last of the libraries, make presents for all the schools, finish the paper and powerpoint for the conference, thoroughly clean our house, and make a dent in the packing process.

It's weird to think back over these two years as it's flown by, but it's crazy to remember everything we've done. We've traveled in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Liberia. We've been through week long power outages and months long water outages. We've been to countless weddings, funerals, and parties and marched around the streets. We made it through a month long teachers' strike. We've seen 4 of the big five and countless other animals. We've swam in the Indian (and Atlantic) Ocean. We've been to the ridiculous Hartebeespoort Snake Park twice. We've spent countless hours talking with our host mom. We finally made friends in the village. We've planned two fun camps that were plagued by extreme cold and extreme wet. We watched Siphiwe Tshabalala score the first goal of the World Cup in a packed room with people of all ages from the village. We saw the US take on England live. We have met an NBA player, the US Ambassador, the South African national soccer coach. We've built/supplemented 4 libraries. We've played Chicago with kids on the street.

It's been a wonderful two years.

For the past few weeks, I had been considering e-mailing Oprah my opinions on this issue, basically because if I were in her shoes, I'd feel a responsibility to help the boys of South Africa not just the girls. I don't know how much she knows about the challenges faced by males in this country, but on the off chance that she doesn't know anything at all, maybe my e-mail would get read by someone sort of important and make a difference. I know the reason that she started her school here wasn't really for South Africa, but for Africa itself where in most countries, girls have a horribly impossible time and for herself, as she is very dedicated to women's issues. Still, it makes me wonder why not base your school in a country then where girls really need your support.

This desire to communicate with Oprah had been brewing as, as I mentioned in the last post, we've been watching a lot of Oprah (we get episodes about 4 months behind so the final episode has not yet aired) since winter started. She's really quite good at making you feel like she is accessible and might just call you up when you really know that's never going to happen. Now, my reflection on this issue has been enhanced by the chance of me ever meeting Oprah has gone from never in a million years to slight chance we'll be in the same room, but would I even get to talk to her and if then, would it go beyond hello?

So a few more thoughts to ponder about boys, education and life in South Africa. In my research for our conference paper, I had the chance to read the report on South Africa of the 2006 PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study). This study which compared scores of 4th and 5th graders in 35 countries around the world (most of them developed, the only other African country included was Morocco) found that South Africa performed the lowest of all countries. Within South Africa, students from rural schools also performed significantly worse that students from urban and suburban schools. These statistics were not suprising to me, but what I found most interesting was the gap in performance between girls and boys. Overall, in all countries, girls performed better than boys, but South Africa also had one of the greatest performance gaps between girls (gr 5: avg. 319, gr 4 avg. 271) and boys (gr 5: avg. 283, gr 4: avg. 235). For context, the international average score (and most countries only tested grade 4) was 500. I wish they would have given the breakdown of rural students' scores by gender, but they don't.

In my schools, I see boys lagging behind consistently. I know a number of boys who dropped out of school after the finished 6th grade (end of primary school.) Because of my interest in this issue, I decided to disaggregate the scores on the pre and post assessments I did for creative writing for our research by gender. The overall average on the pre-test was 11.4 (out of twenty) and the overall average on the post-test was 13.4 so the average went up by two points. For girls, the pre average was 11.8 and the post average was 13.2 (an increase of 1.4). For boys, the pre average was 11.14 and the post average was 13.48 (an increase of 2.34). So as you can see, boys originally under performed girls, but made a much larger increase in score to outperform them.

I can only attempt to understand why this happened, but my guess is that, the boys were motivated by the kinds of activities we did because they were interesting to them. In my schools at least, the culture of girls seems to be very achievement oriented. They want succeed. They do everything that they are asked to so that they will get good marks. Though there are a few girls in that class who really just do not know how to read and continue to fail, most girls average 3 and 4s (above average). The boys just don't seem to care as much about getting high marks. I think it has to do with the factors I discussed in my previous post. They don't see the point. The creative writing activities we did were motivating to them because they were fun. Not a single one of them was for a grade (though in retrospect, maybe the should have been), but they did them anyway (boys and girls). Kids who completed their writing assignments got to go type them in the computer lab which was a big motivator. They got to write stories about things they were interested in. When I collected the post assessments (a story about a sequence of pictures), a few boys told me 'I think you're really going to like my story.' I don't know that fun and challenging activities are going to suddenly sweep across this nation, but I would guess they might help motivate boys.

Unlike the vast majority of volunteers, we watch a lot of South African TV. This is mostly because we have a TV in our bedroom. We had never planned on buying a TV when we decided to join Peace Corps a second time around, but when we arrived at our fully furnished house, there it was (along with 3 couches, something most volunteers also don't have the luxury of in their PC abodes). Now, we are both extremely happy that we've had our TV, not just because of the hours of entertainment it provides, but because it has helped us to integrate into our community and to be more effective at our jobs.

We get the 4 free channels (our host mom has a satellite but we did not pay to get a second box so we only watch satellite TV very infrequently) so it's not like we have a lot of programming to choose from. Most of our students are also too poor for satellite TV so that's also what they watch. Usually in the evening, we watch Oprah, our favorite soap opera Rhythm City, the news and possibly something else if there is something good on (for whatever reason old seasons of American reality shows...Survivor, Amazing Race and American Idol lately...are the most entertaining to us). Oprah we most only watch in the winter because it's on at 5:30 at which point it is too cold to be outside any more while during the summer we sometimes stay outside chatting with our host mom til 7 or 8.

Watching the news has really helped us to understand what's going on in South Africa. Yeah, we could look up news online, but the news we see on TV is the news that most people are hearing so it becomes part of the collective consciousness. We often have conversations the next day about the news with teachers and other adults that we run into. It has helped us to learn more about the South African government, politics, and important people (hence why we were very excited to see South Africa's Police Commissioner Bheki Cele at the basketball event. He is on the news almost every night.) It also makes our favorite South African TV show "Late Night News with Loyiso Gola" (which is trying to be like the Daily Show) a lot funnier when we know who and what he is talking about.

Having background in ESL and sheltered instruction, one of the things I know is most important with teaching in a second language is accessing background knowledge to help kids connect that to what they are learning. I have found background knowledge kids have of life in the village a little bit helpful (teaching about mammals, I got kids to think about which animals give birth to live young for example), but I've found knowledge of TV shows even more helpful as it is shared by almost all of the kids and it helps even struggling kids to get the context of things that are farther from their own experience. Recently, I taught a lesson about the elements of a story (setting, plot, characters, and theme) and explained that not just stories that you read have these elements, but TV shows and movies too. I got kids to identify these elements on the most popular soap opera, Generations, before moving on to a story they had read. To explain that sometimes characters can be animals instead of people, I got them listing the characters on the cartoon "Skunk Fu". To discuss theme, I had them identify the theme of "Captain Planet" which was a great example because it's so obvious. Then, it was a lot easier for them to look for the theme of their story which was also pretty in your face, but is daunting to kids because it requires reading.

Anyway, even if had watched Captain Planet as a kid, I wouldn't know that it was on TV on Sunday mornings if I didn't flip through the channels. We don't usually watch movies on TV because why watch a movie filled with commercials when I have 100s of movies at my fingertips, but I always make a mental note of what movies they are showing each week because you never know when one might make a good example in teaching or just a good topic of conversation.

With each passing day, we get closer to the end of our Peace Corps service. As I alluded in our last post, we have applied for an early Close of Service date of July 20th so if this date is approved we have less than 8 weeks left here in South Africa and only 4 weeks left of school (there is a school break at the end of June and beginning of July). We will most likely be going to school during this time anyway to finish up with sorting library books, but it doesn't feel the same when the kids and teachers aren't around.

The weird thing about leaving so soon is that it doesn't really feel like a particularly big deal. I think most people have just gotten so used to us being here that they forget we are leaving at all. While in December, it seemed like every 5 minutes I was being told not to leave and how much people would miss me, now people have settled into the year and aren't really thinking about us leaving. There has not been any talk about a "farewell function" in months. A farewell function is the typical large extravaganza held when someone retires or moves away for a new job, it usually involves a long program followed by a big meal. Though we are more than happy to go out like lambs, it is a bit of a weird ending to these two years of our lives in which we have been constantly thrust into the spotlight.

The biggest reminder that we are leaving is when we meet new people and are asked to help them with this or that project and have to reply that there just won't be time in the next two months.

In other news, though every day seems to be more important than the next in the quest to finish up our work here, we have both come down with a pretty bad flu/cold. James could not speak for about four days and I had a pretty high fever on Friday. Now, we both just seem to have pretty horrible sinus/throat situations going on, and I couldn't really sleep through the night last night because I just couldn't breathe. I'm hoping to make a fast recovery so that Monday I'll be good to go, but the freezing temperatures and constant dust clouds (dry season has officially arrived) are making it a challenge.

We recently had the opportunity to read a magazine article in a tourism magazine for the North West province that described our village in the context of a car passing through on the way to our neighboring national park (usually Friday and Sunday we see lots of Afrikaaners driving by, mostly intending to go fishing in the dam there as it's not as known for wildlife as other parks in the province). They say our village is clean and organized without a lot of trash on the side of the road. It is quite a funny description since there usually is quite a bit of trash on the side of the road, but I guess since there aren't like piles of it, it has gained the approval of the magazine writer. I was pondering this statement on Friday as I walked home, just 100 m or so from that same road the Afrikaaners were driving down, past a women and some children digging in the dry riverbed for water as, as usual, the water is out and has been for weeks. I wonder how that would fit with their image of this perfect, idyllic village where everyone is happy and properly disposing of their trash.

As an anthropologist, how you define culture is part of how you situate yourself theoretically, and I don't intend to discuss the many different definitions and ways of looking at culture that there are in the world, but I want to reflect a bit on culture and how people view it. When I first came to South Africa, I commented to some of the Peace Corps higher ups when they were asking me about differences between here and Chad that people are a lot more proud of their culture here. They were surprised, and I've heard repeatedly both from South Africans and foreigners living here that South Africans no longer embrace their culture, that ubuntu is dead, etc, etc. Yet, I have not changed my opinion on that matter. Never in Chad did I see anyone perform a "traditional dance" or wear "traditional dress" (though the way people danced was certainly different than how people dance in South Africa or anywhere else I've been and South African's would describe the way Chadians dress as traditional, but having seen photos of how people dressed in Chad 100 years ago, it's certainly not.) This country works very hard to promote the idea that every person has a culture and as part of that there are traditions including dance, music, dress, and food. The textbooks promote it. The existence of 11 official languages promotes it. TV shows promote it. Heritage Day promotes it. School competitions in traditional dance promote it.

Never in Chad did I hear anyone say they were proud to be Ngambaye or anyone tell anyone they should be. Speaking Ngambaye at school is forbidden, and other volunteers were shocked to hear that the teachers would speak Ngambaye sometimes to each other at my school between classes because that was not the norm. But when it came to way of life, the life people lived was certainly much more "traditional" than the life of the vast, vast majority of South Africans. Personally, I do not think you can say that one group of people have more of a culture than another group of people because culture isn't just traditions or living a certain way. It is all of that and more. What I would say is that for South Africans, especially those living in rural places as those in urban areas often deal with competing cultural identities, recognizing themselves as cultural beings is much more a part of their culture, and whether this recognition only comes from the imposition of others that it should be valued or is something comes from within, I cannot say.

I've been thinking a lot lately about friendship as we are nearing the end of our Peace Corps service. Though I feel that I have been successful here in becoming a part of my community, I do not feel like I have made any friends that I feel anywhere as close to as I felt to my host mother/sister (she is a year younger than me so hard to call her a mother) Isabelle in Chad. I think that part of our ability to become as close as we did came from not sharing a knowledge base of pop culture and the world. I can have conversations with friends here about just about anything because they watch the news, have seen lots of movies, have seen the latest Lady Gaga video, but it often feels like small talk because that's what it is. I think I was able to get to a deeper level with her more easily because we couldn't have those kinds of conversations. I don't remember 90% of what we used to talk about but we hung out for hours at a time every day. Of course, we were also able to do that because we had the time. People like to say that life in the village is boring but I don't know anyone who has time to just spend their whole afternoon just sitting around, talking and playing Uno every single day.

I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes the gulf of difference between two people can actually be a blessing and that you cannot assume that just because you share knowledge or interests with another person that will allow you to relate to them. Culture and identity are much more complex than interests or even traditions as these things have different meanings to different people and it may be harder to get to the meaning behind things that are more familiar to you than things that are foreign.

We have recently started to possess a cat. We do not own this cat and do not feed it, but it likes us quite a lot. It started about two months ago when I had the great urge to pet our next door neighbor's cats. No such thing was possible as they would not come within twenty feet of me so we bought two cans of tuna fish and started leaving out a tuna/lentil combo every night which was gone by morning. After a few days of this, we put it out earlier in the evening and then sat patiently inside until the cats showed up at which point we snuck outside and watched while they finished their meal. The next step was to sit outside the whole time they were eating. Finally, we tried to pet them. One of them, the dominant one of the two, allowed petting, but the other still won't come near us. At that point the feeding stopped (we had also just run out of tuna fish). We have not fed the cats in almost two months but the dominant cat comes to our door every day. She will walk with me to and from the bathroom or wherever I may be going as long as I stay inside the yard. She loves being petted, and it seems that that is her only incentive for hanging outside our door all day long as it never results in food. It's kind of the perfect relationship as I like her but not enough that I will be sad to leave her behind.

Last weekend, we attended the funeral of our host mother's nephew in law. It was a sad funeral because he had died in a car accident, but it was a wonderful time to be with our extended family here. We had to spend the night because it was in a nearby village and funerals start so early in the morning that you can't really get there on a taxi at that hour. Spending the night in an unfamiliar place is always a bit nerve-wracking because you never know how much time will be spent just sitting around with no one to talk to since Mma was of course busy taking care of the immediate family. That was not the case at all though as we arrived just when our sister and her kids arrived as well as our cousin. It was great to spend time with all of them. In some ways, even though this was a funeral for a person I didn't really know, I felt like I was getting a chance to attend my grandma's funeral. I know that's a silly thought, but it was the first time I got to be in a family oriented setting since she died and it was really nice.

This week was the municipal elections in South Africa. As Peace Corps volunteers we are not allowed to have political opinions, so I will just say that the election for ward counselor in our village was quite interesting and quite different from in nearby wards. We had 3 candidates, an ANC candidate, a DA (democratic alliance) candidate, and an independent candidate. The ANC candidate won with 57% while the DA candidate got 18% and the independent got 22%. In most other wards around us, the ANC had 80% or more of the votes so it was a relatively close election.

We've been really busy wrapping things up at our schools lately. If our early COS gets approved, we have only 5 more weeks of school and there's lots to do. It's been great finally getting to do things I've wanted to for the past two years. I have done some workshops for teachers and have been helping the English teacher a lot at one school. We're also getting the books organized at each school which is a bit of a task since they all have different levels of shelving situations. The community service club has been sponsoring after-school activities for the younger kids which has been crazy but fun. I'm also doing a leadership retreat for one school's prefects next week which I'm excited about. All in all things are going quite well, but it's crazy to think about how soon we'll be leaving.

This blog is not intended for reading by family or friends or fellow Peace Corps enthusiasts though of course you are welcome to. It is intended for those people who create computer viruses and other malware because for some reason they find that an enjoyable pastime.

I may be wrong in assuming that when people make viruses they do not understand the full impact that these viruses have around the world. They must find it funny to think about all the people that their viruses impact, but I cannot imagine that they include people in developing countries in their private laugh fests.

Viruses spread like wildfire here in South Africa as I'm sure they do in other places with similar conditions (where technology is very prevalent but not very well understood). It seems like it's a constant battle to keep the computers at our schools free of viruses which are mostly spread by USB sticks. Whenever the administrative assistants get together for a workshop or to submit data about the school, they come back with new virus from other administrative assistants. Some people are more concerned than others and follow the directions we give for checking their USB sticks and computers and can usually keep their computers pretty clean, they have to be extremely vigilant whenever anyone else uses their computer. Others don't seem to mind wiping their hard drives clean and reinstalling Windows every few months and just throwing away (or they know how reformatting) USB sticks.

So all this is to say, if you like to make computer viruses for fun, please stop. You are making the lives of people working in under resourced rural schools in South Africa more difficult. Is that really that fun? Are those really the people you thought you were messing with when you made your viruses?

My recent trip to Kinshasa has led me to a bit of pondering about the influence of South Africa and other big players (i.e. China, America, France) on the rest of the continent. I've only done it twice (to Liberia and now the DRC) to get on a plane in Jo'burg and get off in "Africa". Neighboring countries that I've visited are just too influenced by South Africa to feel really different. The closest I've come to feeling like in I'm "Africa" on ground based travel was on our short foray to Zambia, and Livingstone (one of the biggest towns, of course) is still chock full of South African chain stores.

The main reason we did not pursue employment opportunities in South Africa is that we didn't want the suburban lifestyle that is the norm for people living in towns here. We are done with malls and chain stores at least for a while. Though these things exist in America too, they are much more prevalent here where you have to really go to Jo'burg or Cape Town to find good independent restaurants or shops and even there they are few and far between. This relates in a way to something we call the illusion of fanciness that exists here. You can go spend the afternoon sitting in a chain coffee shop, but you'll most likely be disappointed. Just like the fancy houses you see looking nice from the outside with bad construction inside, most of the chain restaurants provide mediocre food and the clothing stores provide ill fitting, bad quality clothes (unless you are willing to pay an arm and a leg, and I'm not just talking Peace Corps money standards).

Anyway, so being sick of all this and not wanting to truly adopt it (which we'd have to living in a town), we searched elsewhere for employment. Ironically, the first conversation I eavesdropped on on the plane to Kinshasa was a few South African businessmen discussing their plans to bring a mall to Kinshasa filled with all of the retailers I've grown to abhor. Inquiring more of folks in Kinshasa apparently this has been in the works for a while so I'm sure it won't be happening anytime soon. I was also surprised to find out that South African fast food chicken place Nandos already has a location not far from the school where we will be teaching. I was less surprised to see all of the South African food products available in the ex-pat grocery stores (for inflated prices of course). It was even interesting to see a local version of Cheetos (which we call snacks or Zimbas in South Africa where they are much more popular than in America and exist in lots of flavors) being sold as part of the school lunch. I never saw a salty mass produced snack product for sale in Chad though there were lots of, mostly Nigerian made biscuits, so I am guessing that this idea came from South Africa but who knows.

Even in Liberia, a country that loves the US more than anywhere else I've ever been, there was South African DSTV (satellite tv), cell phone service (lonestar cell owned by MTN), and the nicest hotel/resort was owned by South Africans. I do not remember hearing much about South African influence in Chad, but I wasn't so well versed in South African commerce at the time either. Chad is not a country much worth investing in as it doesn't have the natural resources, population or tourism potential of a place like the Congo (it has oil of course, but not that much, and it grows lots of cotton but that's not going to ever send the economy soaring) or the strategic port location and natural resources of Liberia. The only country that seems to be investing strongly in Chad is China as they are doing across the continent very liberally.

The investment of countries with strong economies in developing countries brings up some serious questions about neo-colonialism. How can a country develop itself when all of the businesses are owned by foreigners? Certainly a better quality of life (if you consider the ability to buy processed foods and all the goods imported a better quality of life) is available to a small proportion of the population, but how does this develop the country? If these companies do decide to bring production to the host country, this creates jobs but how is it different from colonization? Is there a difference between colonies created by nations and colonies created by corporations? Does foreign investment encourage local entrepreneurship to compete or encourage a culture of complacency and expectation that others will support them?

I have read a bit on this topic and so I know I am certainly not the first person to ask these questions, but I am struck by them every time I wander outside of this country into the rest of the continent. Maybe returning to "Africa" with a new perspective on South Africa will help me to unravel the mess, but I don't know. I of course have my own beliefs, but that is not the way that development and investment seems to be going. It's hard to see how either aid or investment will really help these countries to develop, and I sometimes wonder if that is even the goal.

(I promise I talk about South Africa at the end of this post.)

Recently, watching Boardwalk Empire and Mad Men, I've been thinking a lot about prejudice towards white people in America specifically towards my own people. Being from my generation, I have not had to deal with a lot of prejudice on account of my ethnicity or gender. Most stereotyping I have encountered has come from my (now former) surname, and often it played out more as people just making assumptions about me i.e. elementary school teachers asking if I am going to be absent for Rosh Hashanah or people assuming I do not celebrate Christmas. Though I have a few times run into more negative opinions, usually these are just hinted at and most often they come from people who have never met a Jewish person before. I have had to deal with none of the employment discrimination and overall societal feelings that my father and his parents etc experienced.

I always found being stereotyped into being Jewish ironic as I am not Jewish. Culturally, of course, I am as Jewish as I am Irish, but in terms of what technically makes you Jewish, I am not. And though I will always celebrate Jewish holidays (and I wonder why most Christians do not), though I am not technically Catholic either, my religious beliefs lie on that side.

Though changing my name was mostly a convenience as a result of years of answering the phone to telemarketers to explain that there was no Mrs. Silverstein residing at my house, it was also an experiment in passing. Would I be treated differently if people could not make assumptions about my ethnicity (ironic of course as Cramer was changed from Kramer as a result of WWI era anti-German sentiment)? I have found that thus far I was right. American people who did not know me before do not make these assumptions, they assume I'm just one of the mixed up 12% this, 12% that been in America a long time folks. I don't know that they necessarily treat me better as a result, but it is certainly different. And though I was never a fan of stereotyping, I don't think I like this better as is a constant reminder of the veiled prejudice of American society.

Expressing yourself ethnically is a challenge for white Americans unless you live in an enclave of your ethnicity. I feel much more Irish when I am surrounded by my mother's extended family in New York. Of course, this only happens once every few years and has much less so since I've been off living far from the East Coast. I used to feel much more Jewish walking through the supermarket looking for kosher chicken with my grandmother in Florida as she showed me off to the other old ladies. I have not been to Florida since her funeral and have seen less of that side of the family too in the past few years. I want very desperately to maintain my cultural identity as being a Jewish and Irish identity, but I find this exceedingly difficult when the vast majority of interactions within an American sphere are based on parts of my identity...being a Peace Corps volunteer, a graduate student, teacher, etc, etc.

I find the ease with which white people pass as part of the majority interesting as this is certainly a new phenomenon in America resulting from the immigration of more brown people. Reading the book "How the Irish Became White", paints a very different picture of a 19th century America in which Irish people faced much of the same discrimination that black people did. By the time my family arrived at the end of the 19th/early 20th century, that level of discrimination was disappearing with the arrival of Eastern European immigrants (like the other side of my family), but stereotypes still persisted. Now, being Irish American is seen as this cute thing that doesn't really define a person (unless they are from a working class Irish neighborhood and outside of the mainstream of middle class white America). You can say St. Patrick's Day is for you, but the rest of the year you are just like everyone else. Though discrimination against Jewish people is fresher in our consciousness and there are more Jewish communities within the middle class, it does not have the same weight it used to, and it's easy for people like me to pass as long as your name doesn't sound so terribly Jewish as mine.

Now one of the reasons, I have been pondering this issue lately is that white South Africans really cannot pass unless maybe they live in Jo'burg*. You are Afrikaaner. You are English. You are Jewish. That is it. Though there is a small French Huguenot community in the Western Cape, most of them have assimilated into Afrikaaner culture. According to wikipedia, there are white immigrants from many other countries, but they make up a very small percentage of the white population. Though Afrikaaner people are the majority in terms of white people, the stereotypes that exist about them are not positive. Beyond the worldwide view of Afrikaaners as oppressors, Afrikaaners (especially those not from urban areas) are seen as backward. Not wearing shoes is just the beginning of a long list...The English have fared better in terms of public opinion, but are still seen as a unique ethnic group. Jewish people face the same stereotypes that they do all over the world. Maybe because white people are not the majority, there is no white assimilated majority that you can find your way into. This is a double-edged sword as white South Africans can express themselves culturally much more easily than I can, but they also face all that discrimination that I have run away from.

*Jo'burg is different as is more of a cultural melting pot than anywhere else in South Africa, but I'm not really sure how that plays out as I haven't spent a lot of time there.

There's no water. In our village, water is a constant problem for people. Though most people have taps in their yard or plumbing in their house, this does not mean that water will come out of these taps. In fact most of the time, water does not come out of the tap. It's sporadic, some people we know have gone 9 months without water. While the longest we've gone is about 2 months (right now we're about to pass that point). The water usually gets turned on after rain, but we haven't had rain in a while. We've also heard rumors that the ward counsellor (our government representative, just like in American cities) has paid them not to turn on the water so his friend can get a contract for water trucks. This is just a rumor, but at this point, who knows. What I do know is that the water trucks are not sufficient to meet the needs of people in the village. They come at different times during the day, won't drive down certain roads (like ours), and some people have told me they haven't seen one in weeks near their house. For people who are home all day, getting water is a bit easier, but it sometimes involves waiting in line with buckets for hours. If you work, it's close to impossible to get water. Some people dig in the bed of the dry river for water. This isn't common most of the time, but as the situation has gotten worse recently, there've 5 to 10 people there every time I've walked by (and that's just one place along a long riverbed). Because the Department of Education gives our host mother money for electricity which is more than enough, we were able to use that money to buy water to fill our two tanks. But this is relatively expensive (about $80 for 5000 liters as much as some people earn in a month), and if you don't have large water tanks like we do this makes it impossible.

What is hard for us to understand is why people do not dig wells. As South Africa is such a developed country, most wells are dug by machine making them very cost prohibitive, but it's hard to understand why this prevents people from just starting to dig. I know it's not glamorous, but when you have no other option, why not just dig? It's crazy the things people will do and refuse to do in order to be assert that they live in a developed place when the reality is that they do not have access the services that developed places do.

Yesterday, we attended a funeral and a wedding. Though we've been to lots and other parties, it was the first time we attended two on the same day. The funeral was for a teacher at one of our schools, and the wedding was for people we didn't know but we were asked to attend by a pastor who volunteers on one of the school's governing bodies. The funeral (and memorial service held on Thursday afternoon) were a bit bizarre to us just because we knew a little more about this man than many of the people who's funeral's we have attended. He was a very nice man, a neighbor of ours actually, but had been sick for the past 20 years. I remember first meeting him and noticing how sick he seemed. His condition got progressively worse since we have lived here. He stopped teaching about half way through last year. Other than one of the other teachers who would drive him to school, the doctor, check in on him, etc, he seemed to live a very solitary life. He was the only man of his age (51) that I ever saw going to the shop to buy his own bread and things. Most people ask children to do these tasks for them, and we are usually the oldest people at the shop. His funeral and memorial were huge affairs since he was a teacher. They had to have two separate sets of women cooking, one for family and friends and one for teachers and students, because there were so many people there. I wonder where these people were during his life, but at the same time realize how many more people were showing support for his family and those who really did care about him than would have in the states (where I'm sure he would have been forced out of teaching years ago.)

Anyway, attending these events also reminded me of all the things I'm going to miss about living in South Africa...singing Tswana hymns, dance marching around parties, chakalaka, old men and old ladies, etc, etc.

It's also weird though because though we've lived here over a year and a half, people still are surprised to know that we have done things like attend funerals (our cousin stopped by for a chat yesterday and we were talking about the funeral and he asked if it was our first), take a taxi to Pretoria (something unfortunately we have to do almost once a month) and navigate our way around Pretoria (as a city person, I love walking around Pretoria and we both know the city very well), say ko ko instead of knock knock, understand/speak Setswana, eaten pap, etc. It's okay when these assumptions come from random people as we are meeting new people almost everyday, but they often come from people who we've gotten to know pretty well in our time here. Though two years is certainly enough time for us to accomplish our work here, I think really overcoming these assumptions would take a lifetime.

In my attempts to talk about other things, I haven't mentioned work in a while. Things are going well though we are busy as we don't have much time left here. I'm trying to prepare to go to a conference in Botswana with 3 teachers in July both in terms of finding funding and prepare what we are going to present. Our community service club has been even better this year...the kids are focusing on crime as their issue and organizing an after school club to keep kids off the streets. I'm trying to finally set up a few workshops before we go. Our book donation should arrive this week so we've got lots of work ahead of us to organize the books. We've got the constitution almost done for our camp so they should be submitting the nonprofit organization application in the next few weeks.

Things are good though it's hard to believe how soon our time here will be coming to an end.

When we first arrived in South Africa, one of the first cultural sessions we attended was about 'ubuntu', the indigenous South African philosophy of communalism. Though ubuntu is a Nguni (Zulu, Xhosa, etc) word, the idea is embraced by South Africans and people throughout the continent, in Setswana (and other Sotho languages), there is an expression that sums up ubuntu "motho ke motho ka batho" (a person is a person because of people...the similar Zulu expression is "umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu"). As ubuntu was presented to us, it was a South African idea (there are similar words in many other Bantu languages throughout Eastern and Southern Africa as these languages are all pretty similar...Bantu languages just make up one sub-branch of the Niger-Congo language family...in contrast in Chad you find languages from completely different language families indigenous to places less than 100 km from each other), but in reality it is something that exists around the world not just in Africa.

The Raza studies teachers in Tucson taught their students to recite a poem beginning "tu eres mi otro yo" (you are my other me) which has it's origins in Mayan thought (the Mayan is "in lak'ech" but since I don't know Mayan, I'm sorry if that's wrong.) I believe that at some point in time, most everyone in the world lived by this philosophy.

Though I do not really agree with everything that Durkheim said about mechanical and organic solidarity, I see these concepts as good ways of looking at the differences in indigenous (I say indigenous because for the most part indigenous peoples are the one's maintaining societies that can be characterized as having mechanical solidarity) and Western or Northern societies. As Durkheim says, societies characterized by mechanical solidarity lack a complex division of labor (there can be blacksmiths, carpenters, and farmers but these people are connected and you know where the things you consume come from) which creates a collective consciousness that maintains social order. In societies with complex divisions of labor, people are less connected to each other hence individualism, inequality, and all the other fun that arises (at which point Marx has a much more cogent critique in my opinion).

So returning to the idea of ubuntu, I see ubuntu as both a manifestation of a collective social consciousness (of course we want to help each other because we see how interrelated we all are) and the law stemming from this collective social consciousness that governs the relationships between people in indigenous societies. It is hard for us Americans coming from our individualistic, capitalist society to truly embrace this idea because we are committed to protecting our own self interest first. Sure, I'll donate to charity, but I would never do so to the point where I would myself at risk for not having enough money for clothes, food, or shelter.

The concept becomes even more problematic here in South Africa because the world people live in is not characterized by mechanical solidarity at all. People buy their groceries at the grocery store, and they work in factories. I was reminded recently as we drove through a village in Zambia and saw how much was growing on the side of the road how far a South African village is from being self-sufficient (really even the Zambian village isn't with all the imported clothing, pots and pans, plastic, etc, but it is much more so.)

So how can we have ubuntu when the economic structure is most definitely capitalist, not to mention the cultural imperialism of the US that South Africans consume every evening (and day if they are unemployed) on their TV sets? I would argue though that it does exist despite these influences, yet it isn't so easy to see as one might expect. People are quietly loaning each other money, bringing food to neighbors, etc. People know when their help is needed, and they bring it. They aren't, like us Americans, trumpeting what they are doing for other people to everyone they know. I think that humility is a part of ubuntu because you do what you do because of the way you are connected to other people. You don't see it as a triumph but as a part of being a person.

The other issue that some Americans seem to struggle with is how the hierarchy of age relates to ubuntu. I would argue that in many indigenous societies, age is a very important part of social structure. We, in America, lament that we have lost this when we talk about how we don't take care of the elderly anymore, but just send them off to nursing homes. But we are horrified by this when we hear that a teacher sent a student to buy him some Coke at the shop down the street. I know that I have become particularly desensitized to this as a negative thing because I don't think it's particularly extreme here in South Africa (in Chad, they would close school so the kids could go build a teacher a house for example), but I think it is more an issue of understanding that hierarchy based on age is an inherent part of many indigenous societies. It seems to become less strong in societies with some organic solidarity like here, and hardly exists at all in white middle class America. I would argue that it is important way of organizing society and to see it as helpful or harmful to people is to miss the point. It is about how people relate to each other, and I know many people might disagree with me but there is no wrong or right. In order to have a society that venerates elders, you are going to have a society that does not venerate young people.

Anyway, I have been thinking about this a lot lately so I'm sorry if you actually read it and were bored to death. I want to expand a bit on age and traditional education to better explain why it's important, but I'm tired so that's all for now.

Today was the cluster (schools in our area) athletics competition. Athletics is code for track and field. Interestingly, athlete is used to mean track and field competitor not anyone who competes in sports.

Anyway, last year when we attended the athletics competition, we didn't really realize what a big deal it was. Since it happens early in the year, we hadn't been here long enough to realize that there weren't other big sporting events like it throughout the year. Though there are soccer and netball matches throughout the year, athletics is the only time when so many students from different schools are together at the same time. Last year, I was just annoyed by the amount of time spent preparing for the competition (practice makes it difficult to do many other activities), and while I was a little annoyed about it this year, I at least could see it in the bigger context.

Still, I was a little wary of the idea of spending hours in the sun trying to coordinate kids to participate in whatever event I was assigned to help with. But it ended up being a great day. I got co-opted into shot put and James performed a similar role in discus. I measured distances and shouted them to a teacher who I work with a lot. I had to repeat most of it twice because the roar of the crowd made it difficult to hear five point six seven or whatever I was saying. And while I admit standing in the sun for 5 hours was not exactly fun, it was so fun getting to see all the kids I know competing. Working at four schools, we know kids at all of those schools as well as the high school in our village and the middle school in the next village. Somehow kids from some of the other schools in other nearby villages seem to know who we are too and so they were also eager to say hi. And it was also fun to hang out with teachers from different schools all together.

Like everything in South Africa, racial dynamics came into play as the event was held at a primarily Afrikaaner school (actually I don't even know if there are any non-Afrikaaners there, I certainly didn't see any). Many of them came over to gawk at the children or yell at them for no apparent reason. Seeing us definitely confused them. Interestingly, besides the friendliness that we received from all around, the teenage boys also seemed to know that it was okay to make ridiculous comments to me (nothing offensive, just testing the waters) when they would never say those to the Afrikaaners.

Anyway, it was quiet the fun time and a great reminder of all the connections we have built her in South Africa.

Two of the biggest issues that face rural South Africa (and one of them South Africa in general) are strikingly similar to those facing rural America.

The first is the brain drain. Because of the lack of jobs in rural villages, people leave all the time to go to cities and towns. In the weeks leading up to our last camp, we lost one of the organizers to a job at a nearby casino. We haven’t seen her since but don’t blame her for taking the job. Why would you stay and volunteer your time to help at a camp when you don’t have any money to feed yourself and your child? But the problem is bigger than just jobs, and it starts much earlier.

The way that schools are funded in South Africa is very different from that of America. They are divided into quintiles based on the income of the families attending the school. Schools in quintiles one, two, and three can be classified as no-fee schools. These schools get more money from the government per student because the students are not paying school fees. In our community, the schools (which are in quintile three, the least poor of the no-fee schools) actually do charge school fees. These are very low – between R50 ($7) and R100 ($14) a year – and learners can be made exempt. But once you get into schools with school fees, every school is like a private school even though they may be receiving some money from the government. School fees can be very high at these schools, and they decide their own school fees. In some ways, it mirrors the way that communities in America who higher valued property have a higher tax base in turn providing more money to the schools. Here, though it’s just charged directly to the parents in the form of school fees.

So the school a child attends depends on how much the family can pay and instead of working to improve schools in the communities, the usual plan of attack is to take the child to the best school they can afford especially if they see the child having some academic potential. Even in our village and the neighboring village, there is a hierarchy of schools. One primary school is considered better than the rest (and has a higher fee). The middle school in the next village is considered better than ours. Children from the best primary school in our village either go to the middle school in the next village or to Brits, Jo’burg, or Pretoria. Those few of them who stay here are the ones who could just afford the best primary school, but can’t afford the better middle school.

This means that by the time they reach high school, those kids who were considered to have the most potential or at least who have parents with more money are no longer attending school in our village. This is facilitated by the fact that often their parents don’t live in our village either. In primary school, they stayed with their grandparents and now they are staying with their parents or aunts and uncles closer to Pretoria or Jo’burg. Why would they come back to a place that really isn’t their home anyway where there are no jobs?

The brain drain makes sense. You need to go where the jobs and money are to survive, but the question remains – what will become of rural South Africa? You cannot expect villages to develop when most young people are leaving them. And as I explained with the example of our friend, it’s not something that happens all at once. People are always trying to get out. I can think of very few people I know here who did not apply for at least one job within the last year. In many places, rural villages are already only home to the elderly and children. Our village still has some young people mostly because they were not well educated and do not have the skills they need to get a job. Should we work to develop villages in South Africa at all? Or are they a thing of the past?

The second issue is that of nutrition. Obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are wrecking havoc among rural (and other, but I don’t think to the same extent) South Africans. I recently read In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, and though most of his arguments were not new to me, it really drove home the similarities in destructive eating habits between South Africans and Americans. Like Americans, South Africans eat a large amount of refined carbohydrates. Here it is mostly in the form of fortified corn meal, rice, and sugar. Sorghum, the traditional staple grain, is considered poor people’s food, and so it is much less frequently consumed. I have not seen anyone grinding their own corn meal even though most people grow some corn in their yards (they eat it corn on the cob style and never seem to eat it all).

Soda is very popular, and the sugar industry is very powerful here. Though soda tends to be a bit more expensive than in America (because sugar is more expensive than high fructose corn syrup which has only made it’s way into a few products), people still might drink a liter or so a day. Processed foods such as juice blends that are maybe 3% juice and soup packets with who knows what inside are essential to the South African kitchen.

There have been some efforts by the South African government to promote healthy eating. Wheat bread is always cheaper than white bread, and school lunches must follow a certain menu, but in general the shift is towards eating more and more processed foods, particularly those that are high in refined carbohydrates. Diabetes is already killing lots of people, and most people I know have been told to cut down on eating something or another because of high cholesterol or high blood pressure or whatever it may be. In fact, I have been asked multiple times for vegetarian recipes because people have heard that being vegetarian is healthier.

What’s scary though is how the foods that are responsible for these problems have institutionalized themselves into the food culture. Drinking soda is an important social ritual for the teachers at school. Every afternoon, they buy a few bottles of soda to share. When people ask if I’ve had anything to drink, and I say water, they laugh because water is not a drink like soda, juice, coffee, or tea is.

Like in rural America, being fat in rural South Africa does not have the same degree of stigma that it does in the urban and suburban areas, and that goes not just for black South Africans, but for white South Africans as well. Gaining weight is a sign that you are well fed, happy, and economically secure. And sugar is addictive. Eating processed foods and foods high in refined carbohydrates is easy, and it tastes good. But in many ways this epidemic is affecting a greater number of people than HIV which is pretty scary.

We've been back at school the past two weeks, and it's been nice getting back into the swing of things after a month of break. It's also a bit weird to return to the beginning of the year energy so fast. In America, with a longer summer vacation, it feels like ages before school starts again. Here, it's like we just finished and now it's time to get back into it. This isn't particularly a big deal, but I guess I have a hard time feeling as motivated as the teachers do right now and taking advantage of their motivation. Still, it's definitely been nice. I've got two new computer students (teachers) so far who didn't express any interest in computer classes last year. I'm also working more with the math teacher on improving the 6th grade math class at one of my schools. I helped her once last year with a lesson about patterns which was a lot of fun. My first task is to teach decimals which is a bit daunting, but the thing I like about teaching math is that once you figure out how to explain it, there is just one right answer. I wish teaching English were so straight forward sometimes...

The other nice thing about this school year so far is having more down time. The end of last year was more than hectic so it's nice having time again for things like exercising and reading.

I wish I had more exciting updates to share, but for the most part our life has become pretty uneventful. We are looking forward to James' parents visit in 2 months and wrapping up our work here before heading to Kinshasa. It's weird how these two years are almost over. It's really flown by...

A lot has happened since our last update. We finished up the school year with a few more parties including a creche (preschool) graduation. I somehow got roped into photographing this event which caused a lot of stress for me. I have resigned from any further photography duties. Creche graduations here are a very big deal. There were multiple wardrobe changes. Kids came in their Bafana Bafana jerseys and did the first part of the program in those. Then they paraded around in their underwear before changing into their formal attire (bowties and sunglasses were quite popular for the boys, white dresses and make up for the girls). Finally, they donned caps and gowns. It was an epic event.

Then the day of the camp finally arrived complete with pouring rain. The camp was definitely a success in that all the kids really enjoyed themselves and the life skills classes were actually substantial and they learned something (they did role plays and other things relating to decision making, peer pressure, etc facilitated by our wonderful counterparts), but the rain prevailed every day. Only one day was the weather good enough to play outside for more than short periods of time so we improvised, replacing sports with drama and more indoor games. We got kids pretty sweaty with indoor dodgeball and chair netball. I mostly led the crafts which were a lot of fun, but when we finished early, I got to play some games too. Four square is a new favorite. Unfortunately, because of the rain, our attendance was a lot lower than expected. Lots of parents did not want their children walking to the camp in the rain and getting sick which is understandable. On a good note, we did not have to worry about the heat or having enough water since we could collect rain water. Including middle school kids also worked well as we got them really engaged in everything.

Then, after the camp ended we were off to Botswana. The first day we drove really far, to Nata, and didn't get in til maybe 10 o'clock at night. It wouldn't have been so late but it took us a while to get the rental car and do some errands in Pretoria. The next day we had a much shorter drive to Maun. We stopped along the way to see the salt pans on the side of the road, to really see the salt pans you need a 4wd and GPS but we walked around a little bit to get an idea. We also stopped at Planet Baobab a really cool lodge with lots of giant baobab trees and had a drink. On the side of the road, we saw some elephants and giraffes. Once we got to Maun, we hung out and did some grocery shopping.

The next day, we left in the morning for our mokoro trip. They took us on a speedboat to the village where the guides and polers stay (you need a poler, it's like a gondola). We met our guide Martin there and poler for the other boat, Luka, who was only 16. Mekoros are traditional dugout canoes and the coolest thing about riding in them is how close you are to the water. Before we went I was afraid of putting my hands in the water because of crocodiles, but they said it was fine. We rode about an hour and a half to our campsite (not a developed campsite, just a place to pitch tents and dig a toilet hole). You go through small channels in the reeds that are cut by hippos. They are pretty narrow so you are constantly getting smacked in the face by reeds. There are also tons of waterlilies everywhere, it was beautiful. We arrived at our campsite and set stuff up, hanging out for a few hours while it was hot. We went swimming at a nearby spot where the water was pretty clear and deep. Once it got cooler, we went on a couple hour walk looking for animals. We saw some giraffes in the distance and a buffalo skull but that was it.

The next morning we left at 5:30 for another longer hike. This one was a lot more rewarding in terms of animals. We saw a big leopard tortoise, then Martin told us he saw some zebra in the distance. We got closer and ended up being less than 100 feet from tons of zebras and wildebeest as well as a few tsessebe. It was extremely cool to watch the animals in that setting on an island in the Okavango Delta without a car or anything. Martin told us some crazy stories about his encounters with hippos and other guides with lions and leopards, but we didn't see anything dangerous.

The rest of our time in the Delta was spent relaxing, riding around the mekoros, learning how to make Delta necklaces from waterlilies, and swimming. We headed back to Maun the next morning. Back in town, we went shopping and got gas. Botswana was in the middle of a short and unprecedented petrol shortage so the line at the gas station was really long. We waited about 30 minutes. A few hours later though, the line had expanded (they were now the only place in town with petrol left) to at least 200 cars. It was crazy. We went to a crocodile farm which was a disturbing experience. There were hundreds of crocodiles in each pen and the smell was overwhelming. They were on top of each other and there really was no space to move around. The older, like 100 year old, crocs had more space to move around, but they were so fat it was just gross.

The next day we drove to Kasane in the northeastern corner of Botswana near the border of Zambia, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. On the drive, we saw an ostrich and lots of elephants on the side of the road. Some were in the midst of road construction, just hanging out on the closed portion of the road. Once we got to Kasane, we saw warthogs just walking around in the middle of the town.

The next day we we went on a game drive in Chobe National Park in the morning. You need 4wd to go in the park so we went with a group organized by the place we were staying. The shear numbers of animals we saw was amazing, we saw hundreds of elephants, Cape buffalo, and impalas. We also saw lots of baboons and vervet monkeys. We saw some warthogs and giraffes. In the water, we could see hippos and crocodiles. We saw a monitor lizard near the water. We also saw lots of cool birds including vultures, maribou stork, and hornbills like Zazu from Lion King. Sadly no lions though the guide had heard they were about and we followed some of their footprints for a while.

In the afternoon, we returned to the park this time in a boat. From the boat, we got to see lots of hippos close up as well as lots elephants playing in the water as well as litche (a type of antelope). We saw vultures eating a buffalo that had been killed by a lion earlier in the day. It was a cool way to see the animals, but it was a little bit colored by the obnoxious drunk Australians on the boat.

The next day we left for the border in the morning. We were a bit nervous about getting to Livingstone because we left our car in Kasane rather than deal with border crossing fees. It ended up working extremely well as we found taxis right away on both sides of the border. The border crossing is a short ferry ride from Botswana to Zambia. The ferry is much smaller than the Islesboro ferry and can only fit one truck at a time so the truck line must take days. On the drive to Livingstone, a black mamba crossed the road right in front of our car, it had to be at least 6 feet long. Once we arrived in Livingstone, we headed to a market. There are no markets in Botswana or South Africa so it was quite fun to wander around. Cloth was really cheap so I bought some even though I didn't really need it. That night, we went to a Mexican restaurant for tacos and margaritas, quite exciting since South Africa has maybe 2 or 3 Mexican restaurants in the whole country.

The next day it was time to see Victoria Falls. We headed out early to do the walk to Livingstone Island to swim in Devil's Pool. We had heard this was amazing but didn't know much about it. We met our guide and proceeded to walk about a kilometer across the top of the falls. We had no idea we'd really be walking across the water to get there. I guess when the water is lower, it's less like walking in water and more like walking across rocks, but we were up to our knees at times just 50 feet from the edge of the falls. We got to look over in a few spots and it's pretty amazing. It's a lot different from Niagara Falls because it is a gorge on both sides. It goes straight down and the cliff on the other side goes straight up. Upon arriving on Livingstone Island, our guide instructed us that we would swim the rest of the way. It looked a lot scarier than it was, but you could theoretically go over the edge if you got knocked out or something. The pool itself is just separated from the edge of the falls by a rock about a meter wide. You can jump in which was really scary, but exhilarating. We all jumped in a couple of times. It wasn't fun to stay in the water long because these fish kept biting our feet.

After heading back, we spent the rest of the day looking at the falls from lots of different viewpoints and marvelling at where we jumped in. Ryan did the bungee jump off of the bridge between Zimbabwe and Zambia which was cool to watch, but I'd never do myself. Oh yeah, and that was Christmas day. It didn't feel very Christmasy but it was lots of fun.

The next day we went white water rafting. Everyone warned us it would be crazy which made me a bit nervous since I never really thought of it as something scary when I've been in the past. I ended up feeling similarly, wasn't scary but was really really fun. You start just below the falls, and the first rapid is pretty huge. Some boats had to try 4 or 5 times to get across it. We were fine the first time. The morning was a ton of big rapids. We did flip once and spend a few minutes being tossed around before making it out of the water. The afternoon was much calmer, but still fun.

The following day it was time to head home. We returned to Botswana and drove to Palapye, and then the next day back to Pretoria and home. Since returning home, we celebrated New Years with our extended host family and have been relaxing and getting ready for school to start again next week.

Wow things have been crazy for about the past month and will continue so for the next week and a half until we're off on vacation. Here's just a few of the highlights:

Party for our host mom - The schools threw a party thanking our host mom for all she does to host us. Each school's principal came as well as a teacher and a member of the SGB (like a PTA). They braaied some meat and among other sides was our favorite - chakalaka which is like a spicy bean salad. Everyone had such a nice time that people keep asking us when we'll do it again.

Two parties for my clubs - For the community service club, we had a party at school, and I made everyone little gift bags with candy and snacks inside. They were most excited by their certificates and showed them off all over the place. For the magazine, it was another party at our house. They raised money selling magazines so they were able to buy some meat to cook. The boys took over the braaing which was very cute to see them very excited about doing a job normally reserved for men (there were no men there until James arrived late), and I made a chocolate cake. We played Sardines and Red Light Green Light and it was super fun.

A trip to the snake park - As you might remember, we really enjoyed a field trip to the snake park last year so we were excited to go back again with a different school. The animal situation was as ridiculous as ever - jaguars and lions pacing around their cages, ready to pounce on you if there were no bars, and a Western Diamondback Rattler also ready to strike, but other things were a bit crazier. I agreed to take kids photos and print them if they paid me the cost of the printing which turned into a disaster with kids throwing money at me and no paper in sight to write a list on. I'm still mucking through the photos trying to figure out which ones to print.

Learnership Dinner - We invited our friends who did a learnership with the department of education over for dinner to congratulate them on their year of service (though now they are doing the same job without getting paid.) It was fun for them to try new things (we made french onion soup, flatbread, pasta with a red wine based sauce, and apple cobbler for dessert) and most of them liked the food even though they really thought we were going to have meat.

Thanksgiving - We had a quiet Thanksgiving at home with two other volunteer visitors. Though we'd didn't do actual thanksgiving until Saturday because we were busy at school Thursday, it was a lot of fun and we had a LOT of food.

Water project - After being turned down at the bank the first time to pick up my money because I didn't have proof of residency with me, I was successful the second time around. The girl at the bank felt bad when she saw me again because she could tell I had been pretty upset by the whole situation. We bought everything we need, and now we are just waiting for it be delivered to install it.

Making beer - We've been making lots and lots of beer for this New Year's party we will be attending in a different province with our host mom. We have to keep the bucket of brewingness in our refrigerator so all of our stuff is regulated to the frig in the house. And we probably won't drink any of the beer ourselves, oh well it's a different kind of community service.

Camp - We've been crazy busy getting ready for our camp next week. It's ended up being much more of a headache than we could have guessed because we forgot how busy this time of year is with other things. It seems like the camp is not at the top of people's lists. Oh well it seems to be coming together at least sort of, and as long as kids show up on Monday it will be fine.

So after the camp we'll be off to Botswana and Victoria Falls then to the New Year's party. It's crazy to think 2010 is already coming to a close.

I decided to leave school a few minutes early today because of some omninous thunder and clouds. When I got home, James was already there and we thought we'd have time to run to the shop for some bread. When we left the house, lightning struck less than a mile away. When we got to the shop, we felt a few drops of rain, and as we began to come home, it started pouring. We ran home but did not succeed in staying dry.

It rained so hard that our yard became just three or four giant puddles. A non essential part of our roof blew off (like this wooden thing around the side, not the roof itself). A door frame stored on the roof almost blew off, and various pieces of tin from next door ended up in our garden. Branches ended up on the other side of the yard. For the first time, we experienced three leaks in our roof.

Amazingly the power stayed mostly on and is still on now. The mess even made it's way into the house as dirt from the rafters is now all over the place and there was quite a lot of water to mop off the floor. The door mat is dripping on the line.

But the municipality probably still won't turn on the water. It's been 3 weeks for us, 9 months for others in our village.

I'm writing this early on the assumption that nothing crazy will happen for the rest of the day. I hope that people enjoyed reading these, but I'm glad to be done writing them so it will probably be a while before we update the blog again.

Sunday

7:00 - good morning, electricity is on (it went out late last night during a storm) and we're ready to start the day.

8:45 - we leave too late for church. james is convinced that the confirmation started at 8, but I think it was 9. either way we can't be there until 9:15

9:15 - before sneaking in the back, ask someone and find out they started at 8, oops. sneak into the back row. the sermon is already starting. count the number of people sleeping in church (a lot) and watch these kids rocking out to some music in their headphones. more people come in late including a teacher and her daughter who sit next to us. they normally make people give offering based on section of the village, but since it's confirmation, we give it based on the person who we are the guest of. offering is fun because you get to dance up to the front and back to your seat.

11:30 - the teacher whose son is getting confirmed who invited us to their party (not the one who sat next to us) asks if we want to leave early and head over to her house. we say yes since we don't know where she lives and she has a car.

11:40 - meet some of her family and sit in the living room watching music videos waiting for everyone else to get back from church. a teacher from another school shows up and is excited to see us.

12:30 - people show up and we dance into the house with them. a few short speeches and grace and it's time to eat. sit with the important ladies and eat. accidently get this salad with liver in it and feed it to our host's really cute great nephew. after food (beets, butternut squash, rice, pap, chakalaka (bean salad), and salad), cold drink (soda), and custard full to the brim.

2:10 - the former principal of one of our schools announces she has to go to a neighboring village so we ask her for a ride home. right as we are leaving the host father of the old volunteers finds out where we live (we did not tell him he was wrong when he thought we lived at the catholic church).

2:30 - make it home right before it starts raining. enjoy the rain and look forward to relaxing the rest of the day...talking to our parents, checking fantasy football stats, watching the biggest loser australia and getting ready for another week to start tomorrow.

only one more day of this after today, yay! (I am really only continuing because I am stubborn, it's nowhere near as fun as I thought it would be)

5:45 - funerals start early so we get up early. quickly get dressed and eat and notice how incredibly messy the house is.

6:10 - off to the funeral, on the way see a lot of cars going the other direction (to another funeral) and wonder if they could possibly be on their way to the cemetary already.

6:40 - arrive to find out that the funeral hasn't even started yet (shocking) because of an issue with the funeral parlor and it's not going to start til 9. great, we have to be at the talent show at 9:30.

7:30 - the funeral starts (I guess 9 was just a guess). we are actually sitting where you can see (rare because we normally stand in the back) and it's a pretty difficult funeral. we did not know the guy, he was the cousin of one of my co-workers, but his friends are in tears talking about him.

8:40 - we sneak out because we have to stop back home before going to the talent show. too bad we stick out so just about everyone saw us leave early. there are lots of people there by this point, a few hundred and at least 50 cars. get a ride part of the way back from people who were anxious to go to the cemetary early. on the walk the rest of the way, see an old lady who is scared poopless of us. she crosses the street to get away from us and then stands there staring at us for 5 minutes as we continue walking.

9:00 - change clothes and get what we need for the talent show.

9:15 - walk to the talent show

9:40 - show up and help clean the hall.

10:00 - the show is supposed to start but the girl in charge has disappeared to get some stuff from her house. so we begin waiting

11:00 - get some fat cakes (beignets/friend dough) across the street. keep waiting.

11:30 - the teacher helping shows up. we think things will start. keep waiting.

11:45 - the teacher and girl in charge go away somewhere. keep waiting. play with some kids.

12:15 - they have a microphone. can we start? james falls asleep.

12:40 - actually start. james takes pictures, i judge the acts.

3:30 - it's over and we head home, getting a ride part of the way from one of the other judges and her NGO.

3:45 - our house is dirty. start cleaning.

5:45 - finally time to relax. there will be dinner, leftover cake, and tv. how long can we stay awake tonight?

7:00 - get up go

7:50 - stop by the school by our house and make sure the kids take the magazines to sell over the weekend and that the camp application forms will get passed out today. get serenaded happy birthday by the principal and 5 kids in the computer lab. there was dancing too.

8:30 - walk to the middle school to meet James. say hi to people along the way including an ethiopian salesman and contemplate all the different kinds of people I see in the village.

9:00 - help James finish up the recreation centre business plan and make the programme for the talent show tomorrow. get asked to be a judge for the talent show. distribute the camp applications to the middle school kids. they are freaking out excited.

11:30 - stop by the area office to say hi to people working there and then go look for a taxi to brits.

12:30 - get to brits starving. head over to the mall (now the old mall because there's a new mall but it's a far walk and we didn't want to take a taxi), afraid that the italian restaurant has moved to the new mall but really just moved across the corridor. pasta and salad makes for a delicious birthday lunch. other errands bring us to some clothing stores, stationary store, electronics stores and the hardware store. we run into some teachers and a principal and stop and chat. dying of thirst we stop for some iced tea before going back to get a taxi.

4:30 - the taxi rank is super crowded. get on the second taxi to come even though it won't take us very close to our house. when we get back to the village, we find out it rained a lot and the power is out.

5:30 - clean up and listen to some NPR on the satellite radio now that we have speakers for it.

7:00 - james is making me dinner. now I plan to eat food and cake, watch tv, and go to bed. we'll be up early for a funeral in the morning.

7:00 – Up and do a bit of internet before tackling morning chores.

8:10 – Leave for school, on the walk discuss my birthday tomorrow, Mma wants James to do something for me, so we’re going to go to Brits and I’ll have to figure out something to buy.

8:40 – Check the mail, it’s pension day so there are about 50 old people camped in front of the post office. Collect camp applications from kids, remind a teacher I’m willing to help her with teaching math. Head into the computer lab and put the finishing touches on the rainwater grant and enter in the accepted kids into the computer.

9:30 – Make James check it over (and get told I need to bake cookies for the teachers at his school tomorrow for my birthday), then the principal, then go take pictures of people who are going to help with the garden to submit with the grant. Chit chat with the principal.

10:30 – Library time. Clean up a bit and then read the 2004 Kids Guinness Book of World Records while the young librarians read to the grade 2s. The grade 6 appears to actually be busy in class so we scrap them for today.

12:15 – Print some donation request letters for the camp to bring to businesses in Brits tomorrow and procrastinate a bit on the computer. Listen to the noise of the little kids who have been mysteriously let out of school more than an hour early.

1:45 - Let's go home. It looks like it's about to rain, mma calls to tell us to bring a bottle of her homemade wine to a neighbor to bring to this display tomorrow for small businesses (they are starting a jam, preserves, etc business) and stop at the shop to get a bottle of coke. the guy asks me if I want red or white coke (they think there is a difference but it's just reusable bottles made in a different year).

2:40 - Bake myself a birthday cake and cook some beets. We don't like beets that much but needed to cook them since mma gave them to us the other day. Amazingly the power stays on while I'm cooking though we get treated to nice rain and a rainbow.

6:45 - Beautiful sunset. Power goes out soon after.

8 something - It comes back on.

10:00 - After dealing with internet difficulties, submit the rainwater grant and contemplate going to bed.

7:15 – Get up, the regular morning routine, check election results, especially sad about Arizona, Grijalva race hasn't been decided yet and just about everyone else I voted for lost. Maybe with Tom Horne as attorney general, his successor won't be as horrible to the education system, haha yeah right now he'll just stop lawsuits against his previously created unconstitutional policies and his replacement is about the same anyway. At least they didn't kill First Things First...

8:35 – Finally make my way to school.

8:40 – Gate is locked. Oops I shouldn't come late. Call someone to let me in.

8:45 – Take the kids who need to finish their articles to the computer lab. The principal, admin asst and volunteer are busy getting something ready to report to the area office. Everyone is going crazy. Working on the magazine layout, I am constantly interrupted by things like stuck shift keys and randomly appearing footnotes. What are they clicking that makes these things appear?

9:55 – I kick the kids out whether they are finished or not. Finally things are moving until

10:27 – Power goes out for a minute. Luckily it had autosaved and I only lost 5 minutes or so of work. James at his school with a ridiculous security policy wasn't so lucky.

11:30 – Eat some lunch. Samp and beans. Delicious. I don't know why I bring my lunch because they always make me eat the school lunch. And I scored two bananas.

12:15 – Magazine finally done. Start the copying process. First I copy the applications for the camp and an argument ensues about who has to pass them out since the person who volunteered said she is too busy now. It should take about 5 minutes. I tell them to do it tomorrow.

My copying keeps getting interrupted. I am joined by this boy who seems to find every excuse not to stay in class. At least he's practicing his English talking to me. I also keep getting called over to help my best computer student (one of the teachers) with something she is typing. Though she seems to have forgotten everything I taught her (bold, centering, font size, borders, etc), at least she's not afraid to type what she needs on her own.

2:05 – Done copying, I show the magazine to the teachers and principal. They are quite excited.

2:15 – Return to the computer lab to find out I've been kicked out because the volunteer wants to get a ride home. Ask nicely if I can go back in to get my water bottle cap.

2:20 – Cold drink (aka soda with the school management team...principal and head teachers) while watching boys clean the classroom.

2:40 – Head home. On the way, get called a lekgowa (white person) by a little boy. His parents also try to educate him that my name is Lebogang but it doesn't work. Also see some goats who have snuck into someone's yard and are lapping away at their water supply.

2:45 – Time to veg out for a while.

5:00 - I have been meaning to polish the floor for a while, Mma being out of town is a great excuse because it will surprise her when she gets back. Floor polishing is very popular here, but this is the first time we've attempted it. It takes a while since I have to sweep and wash the floor first. Plus I'm interrupted at least 4 times by kids wanting water. One gives me a kiss and when he comes back, another kid asks if it's true he gave me a kiss.

6:30 - Floor is sparkling. Let's make dinner, oops we forgot to buy bread, off to the shop before it's dark.

7:20 - I love bathing everyday again.

7:30 - Dinner and tv. And more TV till bed time.

Is this starting to get repetitive and boring yet??

5:45 – Again the sun wakes me up

6:30 – Get up, dishes, Morvite, make lunch because we've got bread, and ready to go to school

7:30 – Walk to school

8:00 – Arrive at school (this one is a bit farther away than the other) and talk to the principal about plans to apply for a grant to do some rainwater collection

8:05 – Attempt to do computer class with the one teacher who still wants to but attempt is thwarted because the principal didn't bring the USB modem today and the teacher wants to learn how to use the internet.

8:15 – Copy and distribute applications for our spring camp to all the kids in 4-6th grade. They get very excited when they hear there is going to be a sleepover, campfire, braai (bbq), AND talent show. I wish more could come.

9:30 – Stop by James' school across the street and we head over to the youth centre to talk to the manager about her plan to start feeding orphans and vulnerable children after school, promise to do more research on funders.

10:30 – Back at school, head into the library and start eating my lunch

10:45 – Young librarians (library assistants in grade 5 and 6) show up and we get the grade R (kindergarten) kids. They read to them, then the grade 1 kids. 30 minutes a class. Then grade 5 comes and I try to encourage them to read things that are not intended for grade R. An argument ensues over the extremely difficult 12 piece jigsaw puzzle that 8 boys are trying to put together at once. I make them put it away.

12:15 – Finally some time in the computer lab to work on proposals for the rainwater and borehole (well) projects.

1:05 – Leave early with James and one of the camp organizers to go ask the owner of a local bottle store (selling liquor, beer, and soda) for a donation. She's going to get back to us.

2:30 – Make it home. Snack time. Read for a while. Get talked into watching a movie (Mma is gone so it means we can watch whatever we want on the satellite tv.)

5:45 – Feel like I've been lazy so time for some gardening and laundry.

6:00 – Men show up to talk to James about the sports ground project. We have to help them fix their business plan by Friday, that will be fun. I continue pulling weeds. A neighbor shows up with an invitation for a tombstone unveiling in December. Our social calendar is getting too full.

7:15 – Super itchy from gardening (I find a nice bite from who knows what) so it's bath time.

7:30 – Sit down to watch last night's Monday night football but I'm already falling asleep so I come back to our house and end up watching a creepy documentary about a boy who murdered his classmate because he owed him 5 rand (less than $1).

One of our PCV friends did a series of posts last week about how she spent each day for the week so I thought, why not try it too. Hopefully, if anyone actually still reads our blog, it will be exciting for you to see more regular updates. If it's boring, sorry. Let's see if I can keep this up :)

Monday

5:45 – Woke up because it is already light outside at this time. Luckily I'm good at falling back asleep.

6:45 – Got up, washed dishes, had some Morvite (instant sorghum porridge), checked fantasy football scores (I had a good week, James not so much), cleaned the house a little, lamented that we had no bread to make sandwiches since we ate it all last night since the power was out and we couldn't cook dinner.

8:00 – Left for school.

8:05 – Arrived at school in the midst of assembly where I'm pretty sure the teachers were telling the children to check themselves for head lice. Hopefully I don't have head lice. Said hi to some of the teachers and headed to the computer lab to work on the layout for our second issue of the magazine. The kids asked if they could come in the computer lab to finish typing their articles so spent the morning alternating between helping them and trying to work on putting it all together. Finally kicked the kids out because they were on Encarta and not typing their articles and said they couldn't come back after lunch.

11:45 – Ate some split peas and mealie rice. Happy that the school lunch wasn't fish today so I could actually eat something.

12:00 – More magazine. Worked on the agenda for camp meeting and application form. A lot quiter now. Helped the AA with expenditure tracking for school lunch purchases.

1:30 – Headed towards the camp meeting. Hot and sweaty outside.

2:00 – Printed out stuff for the camp meeting at the middle school since we were out of ink at the primary school.

2:30 – Meeting started on time miraculously, but not until we had finished discussing why people would break up after dating for 7 years.

3:30 – Headed home, not quite as hot as before, bought some bread.

4:00 – Hung out reading and doing crosswords.

6:30 – Realized it was late and started making dinner.

7:30 – Dinner and TV time until I get too sleepy.

One thing I think about and talk about a lot, but have not shared really on this blog is how gender plays out where we live in South Africa. My experience in Chad was extreme. In our village, I knew two women who had salaried jobs (and maybe 20 men). My students were only about 20% female, and there were less and less girls as they went on in schooling. Everyone told me and believed that men were smarter than women. My host father one day would say 'of course, men are smarter' and the next day would say 'wow, you know so much more French than me' but did not see those two statements as being in contrast to each other So I felt like doing a girls' club and working with the girls at the school was a valuable use of my time. Though I naively tried to extoll the equality of genders, that wasn't really something that I was going to get through to people about. I was happy to at least motivate the girls to stay in school and to take part in activities outside of the home (though they didn't really need my motivation since they loved playing soccer so much).

Here in South Africa, you can say that there are issues of gender inequity and there certainly are. The rape rate is extremely high. The HIV prevalence rate is higher in women then men (partially for biological reasons as women have more Langerhans cells in their vagina than men who have been circumsized do on their penis). It is difficult for women to exert control over their sexual lives – to say no or to say to use a condom. Transactional sex is also an issue.

That being said, I know many more formally employed women than men in our village. Of course, many men who are employed live outside of our village, but among those who do stay in the village and those who come to our village to work – teachers, nurses, etc – there are more women then men. Of the men who stay in our village, many are employed informally in different types of labor. Some of these men and some who are not employed at all spend a good amount of their days drinking at informal bars. So the children of our village can choose male role models who are unemployed and suffer from alcoholism or female role models who are teachers or retired women who are busy taking care of their households and grandchildren.

So it comes as no surprise that the girls in our schools do better than the boys. Even in grade 6, the vast majority of the girls are engaged in their studies and are doing well or at least passing. About half the boys are completely withdrawn, some do not know how to read, and are struggling if they are still trying. Some are already smoking marijuana after school. On the other hand, there are a group of boys who are motivated and love to spend time in the library or computer lab. I worry even for them as they go to middle school next year and will face increased peer pressure to try the myriad of drugs available to them (marijuana, huffing glue, and nyope – a mixture of heroin and marijuana – are the most popular) and not to be nerdy. When boys make the decision to drop out of school, they shape a future for themselves that mirrors what they see around them. Sexual encounters are one place where they can exert control in their lives and from that reality come the public health and safety disasters of rape and lack of condom use.

These boys need role models, and there is only so much we can do to encourage them. We know a few young men who are acting in this way for them, but in a culture (like that of rural America) where success is equated with getting out, these successful young men are mostly in Jo'burg. But one thing is for sure, these boys need to be educated and motivated to see a different future for themselves if people want to see change in the future of South Africa. Ironically, as I type this, I am watching a rerun of Oprah (we get them a few months late here) where she signed the One Goal petition that was happening during the World Cup and declares that we should educate our girls. Oprah, of course, has a boarding school for girls here in South Africa. Though her school presents a great opportunity for those girls, I would argue that what South Africa needs is the opposite. We must educate and empower the boys to live productive and healthy lives.

Well it’s been a while since the last update because things have been pretty busy since the strike ended. Coming back to school, there was lots to catch up on. I had planned for the third term to involve the bulk of the work for my after school clubs so there was a lot of improvisation to be done. My community service club ended up doing their presentation for the 4th and 5th graders at their school instead of for 6th graders from other schools, but it went very well. Each child got a pamphlet (made by the club members) to take home with them about HIV and nutrition so that will be a great supplement to what they learned during the presentation. As for the magazine, they are still working on it, but we should be able to print it in the next couple of weeks.

We just spent a week at a few different Peace Corps workshops with counterparts from our village. The first workshop was just for volunteers and we reflected on being at the half way point in our service, the second focused on the Peace Corps’ Life Skills Manual (which contains lessons about various life skills topics like decision making, peer pressure, etc.), and the third was a great hands-on workshop about permagardens (i.e. gardening using compost, double digging, less water, etc.) It got us really pumped to help out with gardening in the village and did not leave us so sad that our tomato seedlings didn’t make it through our absence (Mma has more that are still going strong and we bought some sweet pepper and watermelon seeds). We are going to work with our counterparts to put on some trainings for school gardeners as well as parents or grandparents of OVCs (orphans and vulnerable children). With that, planning our next camp, and all our normal responsibilities at school, we are going to be pretty busy for the next few months.

This time last year I was writing about our misadventures with mulberry jam. Well I am happy to report that we found a much easier and less time consuming solution…mulberry jelly. By crushing the mulberries to juice them, we did not have to worry about hulling them which was the most difficult part of the whole jam making process. Adding pectin also meant that we didn’t have to guess how long it would take to cook so we did not overcook our jelly and it congealed nicely. The whole process took about an hour to make 4 jars, and even the clean up wasn’t as bad. Just one mulberry tree could yield quite a lot of jelly but since we only have so much pectin and so many people to feed, we’ll probably just make one more batch.

Another characteristic of this time of year is the lack of water. The last time it rained was in May, and though the weather forecast keeps mentioning scattered showers, we have yet to see one. As a result, the municipality has been very stingy with the water. Months ago they cut off water in one of the pipes that comes into our yard (not so bad for us as we have another pipe, but for many people it means they haven’t had water at their house in months). The pressure in the other pipe has been so low that we have not been able to fill our water tank (which is maybe 10’ high) in at least two months. And it’s gotten worse. Yesterday it trickled out and took maybe 5 hours to fill a very small bucket. Luckily for whatever reason our neighbor’s water was coming out pretty hard, and we filled quite a lot of other buckets. One of our schools is completely out of water, and the children were pressing their mouths up to the tap of the water tank hoping that something would come out. When the water is on, we’ve seen lines of twenty people outside of abandoned houses that do have working taps, waiting their turn to fill their buckets. The whole issue really does show the divided nature of South Africa. In Pretoria, though they may issue warnings to cut back on water usage, this would never happen. Yet, in our village less than two hours away, people are resigned to the fact that they may go months without water at their homes. There are very few wells in the village, another issue that seems related to the development of the country. People expect to receive municipal water so there is not another system in place even though for much of the year, municipal water cannot be depended upon.

One of the interesting things I've noticed as a Peace Corps Volunteer in South Africa compared to other countries is the lack of visibility of Peace Corps here. Most people in my village have never heard of Peace Corps, do not know anything about it's mission, and though I have one friend who takes it upon herself to educate everyone about the history of Peace Corps, most people could care less. In fact some people do not even know we work at the schools, and those who do know we work at the schools often have no idea what we do there or only a slight idea (i.e. teach computers). Our neighbor and tuck shop owner has been extremely friendly to us since we arrived here and always wants to give us free vegetables and fruit. Maybe a month ago, he was at one of the schools and saw me and said, oh so you are working at the school now! We've known him for a year and he had no idea what we were doing here. And you may say this is our fault for not going around educating people, but in a village of 13,000 are you really going to go door to door and explain to everyone the name of your organization and what your role is.

The reason I find this so interesting is that it stands in stark contrast to the visibility of Peace Corps in other countries. In Chad, I was constantly approached by people asking me if I knew so-and-so who was their Peace Corps teacher in 1975. I would often get on a taxi going to visit my closest volunteers and be updated on the whereabouts of James or another volunteer from someone who had seen them the previous week. In America, I've met people from all over Africa (for the most part, I don't feel like I've talked with people from other regions about Peace Corps so I can't really speak to the visibility of PC in those regions) who remember fondly their Peace Corps teacher. My mom's colleague from Sierra Leone heard that Peace Corps was returning there before I did and shared the happy news with us. Even the old Somali Bantu ladies who would come into the office remembered Peace Corps when the younger. The Liberians who took care of my grandmother when she was sick remembered their Peace Corps teachers. In Botswana, my host mom tried to explain what we were doing our cousin's fiancee, and she replied, 'you mean they are in Peace Corps'. At the border between South Africa and Namibia, the Namibian border agents were excited by our Peace Corps passports while the South Africans took no notice of them.

So why this disconnect? I think there are multiple factors at play...the first being that Peace Corps has not been here that long, countries like Ghana and Niger have long histories of Peace Corps volunteers, while ours is relatively recent, the first volunteers arrived in 1997. But that doesn't account for the difference between here and Namibia where PC arrived not much earlier, in 1990 or even with Chad where Peace Corps' presence has been spotty.

The next is population. In a country of 50 million people, 100 something volunteers easily get lost in the crowd while in smaller countries in terms of population, they are much more visible. In contrast to Chad where people always seemed to know who I was before I met them, here I still see people I've never seen before almost everyday in the village. In towns and cities, it's even easier to get lost in the crowd.

The next is diversity. South Africa's white, South Asian, East Asian, and Coloured populations make this country much more diverse than the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa (Namibia is probably the closest after us at 87% black, but we come in at 79% black, if you consider Mauritania as subsaharan there is a pretty equal mix of Moor and black there, but it's definitely a different dynamic from what you find here) This means that I am far from the first white person that most people (except maybe babies) have seen. Though we are the only white people who live in our village right now, we have a neighbor whose white son-in-law is often coming by, and white people are often in the village for professional reasons. Living in our village, there are people of Indian, Pakistani, Somali, and Japanese descent. So the idea of an outsider coming and living in a village isn't such a crazy thing here like it is in other places. Though there are missionaries in other countries, people seem to draw a line between them and Peace Corps because PCVs don't stay in places separate from the people, but in the community. Though that does distinguish us from others here, it still doesn't seem to be so strange.

Finally, there is the issue of development and resources. In rural parts of other countries, it is quite a special event when a development agency comes in and does a project. They usually come in, do it, and then leave it to fail or succeed depending on the community's drive. Usually they fail. Peace Corps presents an alternative to that as the volunteer is there for a long time and becomes a part of the community. Here we have other people working in community development within our village. Our chief does a lot in this area. There's the youth centre, the department of education, etc. We are not the only resource that the community has, and the others were there before us and will continue after we are gone.

All this being said (and kudos to you if you read it all), I think these issues present a unique (maybe not unique, I feel it maybe be similar in a place like China that meets some of these same criteria) challenge and opportunity to Peace Corps Volunteers. We are not automatically seen as resources to our community in the same way that volunteers are in other countries. We must carve our own niche. While this can be frustrating, it can also be liberating as we do not have the same expectations put on us, and it may allow for more creativity. And with that, I'm done with my rant.

Well the strike trudges on though it looks like we may be nearing the light at the end of the tunnel as the government and unions are supposed to resume talks this week. Though other sources say that there is no such plan for talks. One of my principals said the unions told them not to pay attention at all to the media, but it's not like there's another source of information available.

So in light of the strike, I'm trying to find ways to keep busy. I bought some tomato and basil seeds that I want to get started and we're going to try some of our other seeds that we didn't have any success with last year - radishes, cauliflower, and lettuce - at least we know that we can grow basil without any difficulty, I feel like it's like a weed. Mma already has carrots and onions doing well in the garden. I'm starting preparations for our December camp and planning our January vacation. I just realized that the April vacation does not coincide with Easter this coming year which means that we end up having a 6 day weekend for Easter (Good Friday, Easter Monday, a random day off because the next day is holiday too, and Freedom Day) so it seems like the perfect time for a short trip to Lesotho.

James is off helping at training for the week which makes my time to do nothing even more empty, but it might actually be easier to be productive without him always switching on Tyra and Judge Mathis (yep, our daytime tv here is so quality that they have to take these quality daytime shows from the states).

We got to attend a luncheon with the Ambassador and his family on Friday while we were in Pretoria for committee meetings. It was great to get to sit down and talk with them. They asked us lots of questions about our experiences, and the food was delicious. The Ambassador's house here is amazing, it's like a museum. Much fancier than in Chad, but in Chad we did get to use the pool whenever we wanted so there was that.

And I think I've exhausted my blog writing ability. Off to try not to watch Tyra.

South Africa presents such an interesting mix of developed and developing that it sometimes still throws us for a loop. This country is extremely unionized (and I can't say what I think about that as per PC policy, but if you know us, you can probably figure it out) and this time of year is strike season as it's when unions and employers negotiate for raises and whatnot. There has been a continuing threat for the last few weeks of teachers and other public service workers going on strike because the government won't meet their request. The government is offering a 7% increase and a newly revised R700 housing allowance, and the unions are asking for a 8.6% increase and a R1000 housing allowance. To an American who is used to thinking in terms of 2 or 3 percent raises annually, this may sound really really high, but electric company workers received 11% and the auto workers are striking for 15%.

Now the thing that is interesting to me about this strike is that the time it has taken to get started. The unions first announced their intentions of striking at the end of July and gave some time for the government to revise their offer. Then we heard the strike would start Aug 6, but then they would get more time and the strike would start Tuesday, Aug 10 after the women's day holiday on Monday. Then the strike of the 10th (which happened) was declared to be a one day strike to give a taste of what's to come. They gave the government until Thursday to make a new offer which we thought meant the strike would commence again on Friday. But no, it will take through Monday to inform all the union members, and now the strike may start on Tuesday. Everything has to go through the channels and there are quite a lot of laws affecting labour. It's organized, yet the amount of time it takes to make it happen is distinctly developing world. In Chad, because of the lack of communication and organised unions, striking was decidely simpler. If you hadn't been paid in three months, you went on strike until you got paid again.

So the dilemma we face is the perpetual one of the Peace Corps volunteer - waiting (with a little bit of cluelessness thrown in their for good measure). I got back from helping with the new group's training last week ready to get down to business finally after being away for most of the first month of the term but unsure of when the strike would start and how long it would last. I have lots on my plate if there is no strike - substitute teaching English and life orientation to grade 6, restarting educator computer classes, doing a workshop for educators on the Foundations for Learning campaign, getting the kids in my clubs to do the bulk of the work (putting together their magazine and planning and presenting an HIV awareness event for kids at other schools), and making sure people actually are using the library that we made a timetable for at the end of last term. But if the strike happens, I'll be finishing up my grant report, watching a lot of TV, and attempting to help out at the old age home. But the first priority is to be a good Peace Corps volunteer and practice the art of waiting.

As the world cup comes to an end this weekend, it's a bit hard to process. It seems like the World Cup has been omnipresent in South Africa's consciousness since long before we arrived in the country so it will be a bit weird to go on without it. In fact, it already has started to feel like the World Cup is over since we returned from Liberia. With South Africa, Ghana, and Brazil all out, most South Africans don't care about the final. Well I'm sure some are very enamored with the Dutch, but obviously that brings up lots of race issues in this country.

For us, the highlights of the world cup were the many different venues where and people with whom we watched the games.

Greenpeace at the high school for the opening match - Greenpeace set up a big screen and projector powered by solar panels on the roof of the school. Watching South Africa take on Mexico with a couple hundred people, a cross section of our village...children, grannies, young people, was an amazing experience. Everyone was so into the game, and when South Africa scored, the room was electric. Vuvuzelas, screaming, hugging.

At the Royal Bafokeng Stadium - Decked in our US finest, we went to see the US play England. We got into a few fights with the England fans around us (they were actually all South Africans since we were sitting in the cheap seats), but had a wonderful time. Watching the game live was exhilarating as there's just something about having to follow the ball for yourself without help from the camera that makes it more exciting.

In our bedroom - Much of the first week of the World Cup, after we finished up at the camp, was spent sitting at home watching games and relaxing with the two visiting PCVs who came to help with the camp.

At the primary school - Some of the people who were planning the camp with us worked hard to get a projector donated so that we could show games at the school. Though the kids didn't end up staying (I think they were mostly exhausted from the day), we watched the 1 o'clock game there most afternoons. Also relaxing, it was a chance to hang out with some of the volunteers.

In the OR Tambo international airport lobby - We found a coffee shop with a big screen t.v. and plopped down in time to catch the US Slovenia game. The seating area was open and as the game started people started to trickle in until it was packed with people standing the back to watch. Airport workers and international visitors watched together, and I think it was the most men in sombreros I've ever seen in one place as there were lots of Mexico fans in transit.

At various restaurants in Monrovia - Since there was no TV at Matt's house (or satellite), all of our game watching in Liberia took place at restaurants and bars. At the Syrian and Bengali restaurants, it was just us sneaking peaks at the TV while enjoying delicious dinners, but there were some memorable games...

At an English pub packed with ex-pats - We watched the US/Ghana game. The pub was packed, mostly with American, but a group of Ghanaians was there as well. Though we would have been happy no matter who won, it was hard not to get caught up in the USA fever of being around so many Americans.

At a fancy resort - We lounged in Matt and Alvina's honeymoon room watching games on the flat screen TV then headed out to relax on the beach.

At a popular Lebanese restaurant - We watched the Ghana/Uruguay game, and there were probably more people there than at the US/Ghana game. This time almost everyone was pulling for Ghana, and the outrage was palpable after Suarez cheated (except for from one lady who declared that he's "a UNICEF ambassador" so we shouldn't be mean to him). Though disappointing, we shared in that exhilaration and disappointment with the rest of Africa.

And now we are back to watching games in our bedroom as the final approaches tomorrow. And that's all for now.

On the plane both to and from Liberia, they showed the movie Family Wedding which I did not watch but is about a cross-cultural marriage, weirdly appropriate though I wish they would have shown something I actually wanted to see.

But before I get to the trip to the LIB, I should mention that our camp went down without much difficulty and the kids had a wonderful time. Because of the cold and unexpected vacations, attendance wasn't quite the 100 we wanted but we had in the 80s each day. I think it was a big change from school to be busy with activities - team building games, crafts, soccer, and HIV education - each day so by the time we got out at 1, they were all tired but eager to come back the next day. One of my favorite things about the camp was the volunteer participation. We had volunteers who we had trained before, but it seemed like everyone just wanted to be involved. One of the principals taught a fun game, and by the last day, even the campers were leading games. Hopefully they have been playing some of the games that they learned during the rest of the break.

So the day after the camp ended we headed to the airport for our flight to Nairobi and then Monrovia via Accra. Though it was a long enough trip for our ankles to swell up, we arrived safely on Saturday afternoon. We spent the first week visiting, preparing for the wedding, and helping out with the opening of an orphanage in a village near the Firestone plantation (Firestone has a huge plantation...in different tracts...of rubber trees. It is an interesting place as it's kind of it's own community with stores and "villages" of houses where the families of workers live. It's a very different model from the old farming and mining world here in ZA where men used to leave their families to work at the mines or on a farm, but more towards what they are doing now. I don't know that much about the South African situation, but Firestone has created a community that has everything people need...and I can't judge whether this is a good or bad thing from just driving through.)

Monrovia itself is an interesting place. You can see that it once was a developed (by West African standards, nothing like what you see here in Southern Africa, but much more than N'Djamena) city, and it's returning to that slowly. With the hustle and bustle, it's a bit difficult to imagine that less than a decade ago (in 2003) the city was under siege. As we drove around, Alvina (Matt's new wife) would tell us about where the rebels were and where Charles Taylor's forces were, but now it's all a mass of shops and street vendors. The evidence is in the shells of burnt out and abandoned buildings that still remain and the converted apartment complexes that used to house NGOs (they've found new homes). The orphanage that we helped with upcountry had been located in the old Voice of America building before moving to the new one.

It was crazy for us to go from living in a country with such an immense and usually effective infrastructure to one without any at all. Though they are building roads, it still takes days to drive to towns upcountry (Liberia is about the size of Tennessee). The roads around Monrovia are pretty good, but some are pothole heavy, and traffic lights are non-existent (I remember Chad had one traffic light that was for show, I never saw it actually work). In Chad, I never really thought too much about the fact that there was no electrical power plant, and that everyone relied on generators, yet in Liberia it felt like such a waste. With so much investment and foreign aid coming into the country, why could they not build a power plant? Actually they are building some sort of renewable plant that will recycle rubber trees for electricity (I'm not exactly sure how) so hopefully that will provide power to some people. The dull (or sometimes extremely loud) roar of the generator at night was a constant reminder of how we take our electricity for granted here. Even the people we hung out with living in air-conditioned ex-pat apartments had their generators turned off during the day.

There are definitely changes afoot though with municipal trash collection (from dumpsters not homes) and renovated market structures with concrete floors and tin roofs so going to the market isn't such a muddy experience. It seems like there are thousands of NGOs or at least hundreds, and I think we met more Americans in two weeks in Liberia than a year in South Africa. The UN presence is still huge as evidenced by the fact that I saw a truck with the license plate UNMIL - 15823 (or something similar...they start at 1 and issue license plates up from there so that means there are tens of thousands of UN vehicles in the country. Matt told us that there is a graveyard of expired UN vehicles, not surprising with the road conditions and constant precipitation.) The huge ex-pat community also meant grocery stores stocked with American products, weird to see after a year of South African brands. Much of it was off brand and expensive (a jar of peanut butter for $4). And you can use US dollars to buy most anything. In fact, prices of more expensive items are given in US dollars.

So back to our trip...we enjoyed the wedding. James fulfilled his role as best man nicely giving a toast that no one seemed to listen to because of the feedback in the sound system. We danced the Grand March which is a Liberian tradition (there was a marching part, soul train part, and then circle dance part...I'm not sure how much of that is traditional). The day after the wedding we all (the family and Matt's friends) went to brunch at a nice resort and spent the day on the beach and watching games in their honeymoon room on the flat screen. The second week, we did lots of errands, visited with Liberian and American friends, went to the beach a few times, visited an orphanage, and just hung out with Ron and Pat.

We had a great time with family, getting to know Alvina, and experiencing Liberia. As we start the post Peace Corps job search, it was neat to get to go and see Monrovia as we may just end up moving there (with all these NGOs, there are a lot more jobs than in other countries). Back in South Africa, the air feels drier than ever as we must have acclimatized to the humidity. I can even feel the altitude a bit in my breath coming from sea level. I'm most excited to hear Setswana again and see people we know. One interesting thing about Liberia is that people use English as the lingua franca. I think I heard about one conversation in Bassa (Alvina's language) the whole time though we spent lots of time with her family. Though Liberian English itself is difficult to understand for those of us who are not used to it, I expected to hear more other languages. I'm sure in the villages you would, but just like in cities here, lots of people speak English. The difference is that it's been that way for a long time and the grannies and children speak English just as often as the people who've been to school.

Hope to write another post about watching world cup games this week, but ciao for now.

So I've been trying to think of things to write about other than how busy we are with work and struggling, but just realized what is staring me in the face...the World Cup is starting THIS WEEK. This is a bit crazy to us and the rest of South Africa as it has been the most talked about hyped up thing of the century so far here so people are just a wee bit excited. In addition to the games, the government is sponsoring fan parks in big cities where people can watch the games on big screens. They said that one of the goals of this was to make the games more accessible especially to the people who don't have TVs. Most of the people who don't have TVs don't live in towns so I didn't really understand how this would work, but we found out last week that the municipality is bringing a big screen tv to the high schools in our village as an official viewing point so I guess that answers that.

I'm interested in seeing if the TV announcing will remain the same during the World Cup. During soccer games here, there are usually three or so announcers all speaking different languages. You only hear your language when your announcer is talking and there are no subtitles. On the radio, you can hear a game announced all in one language. I just don't know if all the international guests are going to like listening to the game announced in Zulu and Sotho, but maybe they'll have to deal with it. That's what happens when you visit a country with an amazing language policy like ours.

One of my favorite things about the World Cup mania is that people are constantly quoting advertising slogans...Feel it. It is here. (SABC), Ke nako (also SABC), Bafana kaofela (ABSA bank), Fevah sinayo (E!tv), for example. I don't know how successful these slogans are in actually advertising their brands, but they definitely have become part of the national consciousness when it comes to the World Cup. The other day, we were greeted with one. One of the ladies we work with (complete with rainbow colored wig and Bafana Bafana jersey) said instead of the usual greeting "Can you feel it?" to which we replied "It is here."

So Bafana Bafana is the South African national soccer team. It means "Boys Boys" (and the women's soccer team is Banyana Banyana or "Girls Girls"). People have a hard time getting that most people in American don't know the nickname of Team USA (the Yanks). Most of the Africa national teams have animal mascots, but ours is distinctly (or proudly, to take another popular slogan) South African. The most audible and controversial symbol of South African soccer is the vuvuzela, basically a plastic toy horn that people blow on during games. When I was watching the Confederations Cup on TV it sounded like a very loud swarm of bees was surrounding the stadium, but in real life it's a bit more deafening. Our favorite symbol of South African soccer are makarapas which are hard hats that have been hand cut so that they stick up in the air and painted to express support of your team. If you search for pictures of Kaizer Chiefs or Orlando Pirates fans, you should be able to find the full effect. Makarapas, giant glasses, and capes. It's amazing.

Finally, the newest trend in World Cup fevah has come in the form of the diski dance. Basically this is a choreographed dance that has moves that are similar to soccer moves (kicks and stuff). We've tried to learn it a couple of times, but it's really quite complicated. It could never take off like the macarena or something in America because it's pretty complex, but here it's approaching that level of popularity.

Can you feel it? It really is here.

After reading James' thoughts on his hero Ronnie James Dio, you may be asking yourself what exactly it is that we do here that we have so much time to immerse ourselves in pop culture. In reality, we are insanely busy to the point where we just get home and crash every night. Of course, insanely busy is a relative term as we are still here in South Africa and we are still home between 3 and 5 every afternoon. I think I would have a heart attack if I was still at school at 6 o'clock though this is something that my principals do often (the amount of paperwork put on the management is ridiculous...this week they got a memo telling them they needed to submit final grades for all students from 1994 until 2009. They keep track of these on progression schedules but finding them from way back in 1994 proved to be very tricky.)

Anyway lots of things have been keeping us busy. We are quickly preparing for our World Cup day camp. We got final approval for our grant last week so we are very excited about that. We've got over 250 applicants for 100 spots to attend the camp but are hoping to have another similar camp in December so that more kids will get the chance to attend. Our co-chairs (two wonderful volunteers) are amazing and took care of tons of stuff when we were out of town for a week for the training of trainers for the new volunteers who are coming in July. Now we along with the co-chairs are busy training our staff (who are mostly middle and high school youth) about camps and youth development. Things are on track, but the looming obstacle is Youth Day (a national holiday that happens to fall during our camp). We've attempted to help plan some sort of celebration to happen after camp that day with some community partners, but so far we have no plan at all so it should definitely be interesting.

Other than the camp, this term at school has flown by. Exams are starting this week which to many people means we can't do anything else. In reality, the kids have lots of spare time during exams because usually they take two tests a day and spend the rest of the time hanging out. We're doing a candy gram fundraiser for our magazine at one school which I'll be interested to see how it takes off. My other club (a community service club) has come up with a killer vision and mission for their project (which focuses around healthy living for HIV positive folks) and we'll be drafting the action plan soon. Next quarter, they are going to make it happen. At the other school, I have been busy getting the library off the ground though I've faced a few setbacks, mostly because of the end of the term. The teachers have said that they want to wait til next term to open it so I've decided to informally open it to kids during break time and I've got some very excited Young Librarians helping me. And then there's educator computer classes...We've actually had to start saying no or not yet to people asking us for help with projects because our plates are overfilled right now. And I've realized we won't have a spare moment in the village til mid-August or so which will be right around time to start planning the next camp.

But though it's a bit overwhelming, it's great to be productive and James is just as busy as me with libraries, reading tutoring, computer classes, and more. Hopefully all of the stuff we are working on now will make it easier for us to do some of the things we are even more interested in (i.e. I have yet to do a workshop about bilingual education which is kind of my main goal in being here). And besides, being busy helps us stay warm in the colder weather.

I would offer my throat to the wolf with the red roses. Why do you ask?

May Day, May 4th (of Kent state infamy), and Cinco de Mayo makes for a strange week.

Capetown is like the Outerbanks but with numerous financial institutions and French people.

I am willing to Early Terminate if and only if Steve Correl is leaving the office and I can take his place.

I forgot what it was like to huddle for warmth…I didn’t miss it.

I think that the Steelers and Browns should agree that Dennis Dixon and Antwaan Randle el and Seneca Wallace and Josh Cribbs should have to play every offensive down in their first meeting.

I just watched an Inconvenient Truth and fell asleep, took a break, played some baseball simulator 1.000, and then shut it off and that was in the first 30 minutes.

To answer the question I do miss America and not why you might think. Gary Busey on Celebrity Rehab is a crime to have to watch in reruns when I get back in a few years.

I am going have a sister and so finally I can play star wars properly, Matt was never a convincing Leia.

I am interested in how Marvel will actually make the leap from Tony Stark building some gadgets to Norse Mythology being real.

I had a dream last night that I got to tell my brother about the death of Ronnie James Dio and we had a long embrace.

Unfortunately for us, South Afrika is not the land of endless summer. It has gotten cold, and we are not fans. Though we have plenty of blankets, it is hard to motivate yourself to leave the house when it's cold outside. Plus, we seem to have finally broken free of almost a week of constant rain and clouds. Combine that with being sick and it's definitely been icky. But the sun has found her way back out which makes the cold a lot more bearable. And I know by a lot of people's definitions, it's really not that cold, but it feels like it is to me.

Now that we're coming out of the haze that was the last few rainy, cold days, I'm realizing how much work I have to do. We're going to find out soon if we got funding for our camp during the World Cup holiday, and there's lots of preparations to do for that. I'm doing computer classes for the educators at my schools, my clubs, and I want to get the second library opened and in use in the next few weeks. James is also busy with clubs, library stuff, the camp, and more I'm probably forgetting.

Snakes seem to be a reoccuring theme in our lives which is a bit scary. We found some snake skin in the house but couldn't find a snake. These random boys we don't know showed up with a baby snake in a jar and asked us if we wanted to keep it as a pet. One of the principals said her niece saw a giant snake in their kitchen, but they searched the house and couldn't find one anywhere. Our middle school girl friend was out in the bush with her friend and got bit on the back by a snake. She got to the clinic quickly enough that she was fine. That plus all of the tall grass and mud from the recent inexplicable rainy season has me scared. Last night, I dreamt a giant snake was chasing me. The only consulation of the dream was that somehow it was in Zanzibar, and I was enjoying sitting on the beach there before the snake encounter. It's probably a lot warmer in Zanzibar...

What a whirlwind life has been and it's not over yet. After working very hard to finish a grant application in mid-March, we were off to a Peace Corps training focusing on HIV/AIDS, grant writing, and project design and management. It was a great time, and a very valuable learning and networking experience for our counterparts who are doing a learnership (like an internship) through the Dept of Education. It was great getting a chance to go through the process of designing a project with them. We planned out what we'd need to do to build a community park which would be quite a fun project if they weren't so busy with starting the old age home. Maybe next year...

Then it was off to the Longtom Marathon (thanks to everyone who donated!). Even though we walked the 21 km, we were pretty sore by the end of it. It was fun to see lots of other PCVs and meet a bunch we hadn't met before, but it was kind of rushed because we had to leave at 7 the next morning to make sure we'd make it to the airport in time to meet my parents.

The trip to the airport was remarkably smooth even though it involved 4 taxis and 7 hours. We got there in time to grab some falafel before they got in exhausted because they really didn't sleep the whole ride. We took a couple of days to recover and see the village. They got to meet our host mom as well as some of our friends and co-workers. Though it was quiet around the village because of the school holidays, we did end up introducing them to a lot of people.

Then it was off to tour South Africa...first we headed to Pilanesburg National Park where despite lots of rain we saw a ton of animals up close...elephants, giraffes, zebras, a warthog, rhinos, jackals, monkeys and lots of different kinds of antelopes. It was pretty amazing. From there, we headed south towards the coast. We stopped for lunch in Ventersdorp (where just a few days leader former AWB leader Eugene Terre Blanche would be murdered on his farm) and spent the night in Britstown in the middle of the karoo (an arid area that takes up most of the west of inland South Africa). Most of the people there are coloured (which is the classification given to the descendants of the Afrikaaners and black South Africans). They've been a separate group for so long that they are seen as one of South Africa's racial groups, and a child in our village with mixed race parents wouldn't automatically be considered coloured. Anyway, it was our first experience in an area where the majority of the population is coloured, and it just made us even more aware of how culturally diverse this country is.

Then it was off to Knysna on the garden route. Along the way, James did a cliff jump into a pool next to a waterfall and we attempted to eat lunch in Outdshoorn (the ostrich capitol of ZA) but the town was overrun by an Afrikaaner cultural festival. Knysna was a bit too built up for our taste, and the garden route really felt like another country because it's so developed and touristy, but it's definitely beautiful. We hiked along the first part of the Otter Trail in Tsitsikamma National Park and saw duikers, dassies, and dolphins. It was breathtaking, but I got some killer blisters from putting my sandals back on when my feet were wet.

The next day we headed to Swellendam, an old Dutch town in the Little Karoo. It was super cute and right up against the mountains. We got some of the best food of our trip there (my parents said the restaurant where they had dinner was one of the best they had ever been to in their lives, but we skipped it for ramen, but the lunch was pretty darn tasty too). It was a good day to kind of relax before heading to Cape Town.

In Cape Town, we kept busy...went up table mountain, saw the penguins, took a day trip to Stellenbosch and winery, went to the botanical gardens, walked all around the city, visited the Jewish Museum, hung out at the waterfront, ate bagels, Ethiopian, Cuban, Indian, and Thai food, shopped for crafts, etc, etc. It was beautiful and felt a lot like an American city, definitely much more hip and safer than Pretoria. But I think if we lived there, we'd spend a lot of money.

We were pretty exhausted by the time we got home, but it was definitely worth it. Now we've got another training this week and then have to get to working on making this camp happen because we've got only two months to go. Then it's time for Liberia and Namibia, wow our time here is flying by.

Much of what we do on a daily basis right now has to do with libraries. James has been busy organizing and cleaning a library at one school, at another I'm sticking stickers on books to represent different learning areas, and at the last I'm playing chaperone to children who want to come and read the books. It's funny because neither of us really wanted to involve ourselves in library work (mostly because we didn't want to get stuck cataloguing books for two year) but it's become something we do almost everyday, and shockingly, it's rewarding.

The libary that is actually in use now is interestingly the only one that hasn't gotten donations coordinated by former volunteers but did have a lot of books donated in the past. The collection isn't that big but it's enough for most kids to find something they want to read. Kids come in and look through the books to find the perfect one to read. Interestingly, the books about HIV and AIDS are very popular as well as the one about how babies are made. Then they sit quietly or maybe in a group pouring over the words and the pictures. But the highlight of my time in the library thus far was when 4 grade 4 girls came in and decided to play school. One played teacher and picked up books to give lessons about. The others raised their hands and asked questions and repeated when she said to repeat.

Yet, the library is not always happy place. Last week, three grade 1 boys (yes, grade 1) broke into the library, grade 1 and 2 classes and wrecked havoc. I came in on Monday morning to find books all over the floor and broken glass. In the other classes, they spilled glue on the carpet and tore up notebooks. Though it was only a couple of hours till everything was put right, it still was hard to believe that these boys would want to destroy their own school and resources. Later that day, they came to see me with the other children and look at books as if they hadn't done anything wrong. And they did because really how are they going to learn to respect their school until they get to enjoy it.

Things are a bit crazy in the village with ongoing water strikes in the municipality (we haven't had water in weeks...well we've had it for a few hours but I don't know that that counts and it is...or was...dirty because the processing plant has some sort of problem). The biggest effect that this has had on us is that the strikers are blocking the road in the next village and so the teachers that don't live in the village (about 80% of them) can't make it here and people can't leave to do shopping and such things. So despite or maybe because of the strike we had a day full of amusing quotes...

A girl is crying grade 4. Becca asks why, a boy explains "That boy is bullying her because her father is Zulu, he's not sensitive to her culture".

Our friend who works at the area office has discovered that the new large TV in the lobby is actually a computer. James asks what you can do on it. He says "you can add a printer!"

Sitting and chatting Becca mentions that "I saw the grossest poop today. It was a person poop, it was too big to be a child." James drops everything to go see it and says he can here the flies buzzing around it from 50 feet away.

James calls Telkom for our 90 year old neighbor. The women on the phone asks why his English is so good though he has a Sotho name. He says "Well I studied in America".

We are sitting and talking and for some reason Mma explains "I am like Simba, the little lion king", I can't for the life of me remember why. Later she says that it would "take two buses to transport Zuma's family" when we are talking about Obama and Zuma's impending (obviously, it's going to happen) visit to our house.

And now we are watching Manhunt (the reality show that searches for South Africa's manilest man so I'm sure we will hear another choice quote or four.)

Summer seems to finally be on the way out which though I'm not excited for winter weather, we're loving for the moment. There are actually clouds in the sky, today they are big fluffy cumulus ones which means that sunsets are beautiful again and sometimes the sun goes behind a cloud. At night, I start to freeze and need the mink (heavy blanket, not actually made of mink) around 2 a.m. But during the day it still gets hot, and the walk home from school is pretty sweaty. In between weather really is the best.

We've had to travel a lot recently, well mostly James went to Pretoria 3 times in the last week for the diversity committee meeting, medical stuff, and taking part in the fishbowl (a part of the training for new volunteers where volunteers talk about their experiences...he represented married volunteers). I'm off to Pretoria Thursday for a meeting of the volunteer advisory committee. After that, things will calm down a bit for a while, but it will only be 3 weeks until our next Peace Corps training.

It's interesting comparing experiences with other volunteers which James had a chance to do a lot of on his trips to Pretoria. I feel like our experience is pretty unique, and we are very lucky in a number of ways. One of which is that I don't get harassed. Most of the other female volunteers deal a lot with harassment, and I'm not quite sure why I don't get harassed. I think it's because I'm ugly. I've actually wondered if I do get harassed and just don't call it that because it is less extreme than harassment I experienced in Chad. I'm constantly wowed by the respect that people show us, and the lack of the mocking that I experienced constantly in Chad. But I think a lot of it is in your mind. Today I was walking home and some children called me Mme Mmabatho (the name of an old volunteer) and I said 'Mme whooooo, it's Lebogang' and then listened to them repeating the conversation (especially the word 'whoooo') like 50 times. So I guess I could get annoyed by that, but when it's not malicious I think it's rather cute.

I think it's interesting the things we watch on TV here. A lot of cartoons, Oprah, and things like Make Me a Supermodel. And it's not like we are watching these with our host family so we have no excuse for the quality of tv we are watching. I also really really like South African coke commercials and feel kind of guilty for that since I'm pretty anti-Coca Cola in general. They are just so catchy. I wish we had a way to exercise more than sitting around and watching TV in the afternoon. It's hard because I have no desire to start running and with no bike or swimming pool, I don't know of another way to get cardiovascular exercise.

Work is just fine. It's pretty busy in general with teaching computers to teachers and school governing body members, working in the library, 2 after-school clubs, maybe starting to teach natural science, making the area office newsletter, starting an old age home, and more that I can't think of. I think the business that we experience during the day definitely contributes to our laziness in the evenings.

Also, I should mention that we are participating the Longtom Marathon (walking a half marathon) to raise money for the KLM Foundation which some of our friends started a few years ago when they were volunteers here. If you want to learn more about it or donate, you can visit their website www.klm-foundation.org and be sure to put one of our names in the Longtom Marathon Field if you are donating.

And that's the end of my long rambly entry.

I've decided recently that there are a number of ways to see fruit in life. One is that you can and do buy it when you want it at wherever you choose to buy fruit...whether it's organic or just regular...a subset of this is whether you wait for it to be in season or not, but there is a tendency to buy whatever fruit you happen to like regardless of the season. Then there's the only buy in season, maybe at farmers' markets. Then there's us...when we first got to our village, oranges were still in season and we have 4 or 5 orange trees in our yard so we only ate oranges. When the oranges ended, our fruit consumption dwindled and we may have bought an apple or banana or two. When there were peaches, we ate those. Figs. Grapes. Etc. But now we don't have any fresh fruit in our yard, and it's been a while since we have so the question arises, do we buy fruit? To most people it would be an obvious yes, yet we continue not to buy fruit. Somehow it keeps coming though. People keep giving us mangoes, watermelon, bananas, pomegranates from their yards or even that they bought. And it's not like we are out there asking or begging for fruit, it's just luck. And we appreciate it so much more now. But I don't think our fruit philosophy is for everyone as we might not always get our two servings a day. In fact, we can go days with no fruit at all. But our fruit philosophy seems to line up at least with our ma's as I've never seen her purchase a piece of fruit.

I hit a kid with a discus at a track meet.

I bruised my ribs playing capture the flag.

South Africa has an under 10 javelin throw.

I watched twilight and new moon and thought they were spinoffs of Charmed because the plot and technical effects screamed TNT quality.

Got my tickets to the gun show and the US vs UK world cup this week.

The maple will now make a run for the Stanley cup because giguere and Phaneuf are worth at least 20 points in the rankings right.

I really hope that the Steelers resign Casey Hampton and that they draft Spiller in the first round.

New Haven Connecticut looks like a strong candidate for being our new home despite the lack of a curling rink.

Found a thrift store in Brits but I dont want to dress like a 50 year old Afrikaaner woman so the point is moot.

Is fairly sure that Omo could take the paint off a car.

I think that people who make viruses should be ashamed of themselves because they are just hampering people in rural Africa.

We got home from our IST (training) on Wednesday night to find out the power had been out since Tuesday when there was a big storm. We called Eskom about 50 times and they finally fixed it on Friday around 3. It stayed on until about 7 and then went out for the rest of the night. We called them again today and it came back around 12. Who knows how long it will stay on this time. It wouldn't be such a big deal if we hadn't gone straight from eating 5 meals a day at training to surviving mostly on bread and peanut butter since we've been home. And we came home with the computer battery basically dead so we could not take advantage of our normal cheating by actually having entertainment when the power is out. Yeah I think we're pretty spoiled.

But the highlight of this instance of power outages (which does not top our 6 days of no power record) is that the old man next door had no power for two weeks so ma told Eskom that one of the many times we called. So they came to fix his power yesterday. He does not own the house, he watches it for a woman who we have met a couple of times and she seems very nice. Anyway apparently she is a sangoma (according to wikipedia "a practitioner of herbal medicine, divination and counselling") and the Eskom man said that he will never go into that house again because he was so freaked out by the stuff inside. I asked if it was bones and such (if you want a pretty horrific "comedic" rendering of sangomas, watch of Leon Schuster's awful Mr. Bones movies) and ma said no, but didn't tell us exactly what was so scary in the house and we were napping at the time so we didn't get to peek inside ourselves. So now we are aching to figure out the mystery of the sangoma.

We had a great time with our fellow PCVs at IST. It was a little surreal to see everyone for the first time since September since we've mostly just seen Kristen and Gabi, but once we got over the initial shock we had a lot of fun. We planned some great evening activities...a PCV costume party (I was a pussy cat vixem and James was a punk cop voortrekker), talent show, capture the flag game, and of course Peace Corps Prom. There were some genuinely really fun moments including an amazing Bohemian Rhapsody sing a long and Autumn, Kristen and I singing and dancing at the talent show (which for at least 2 out of the 3 of us are not talents). We also got to go back to our training site for an afternoon and visit our host family from training who were very happy to see us and meet their new baby.

Anyway it looks like the family has shown up from Rustenburg so I'm off to say hello and inshallah we'll actually be able to cook dinner tonight.

Since we last updated, the school year has gotten off to a fast start. We've both been pretty busy and happy to be so though what we've been doing isn't always the most exciting work. Though we are not here to do the work of our schools' administrative assistants, it can be difficult not to provide a lot of help in this area as we are more proficient (and most importantly fast) when it comes to anything involving computers. Actually all of the admin assistants are pretty proficient on the computer, but time management can be an issue for some of them. Anyway, this means that we've been helping out some which the schools really appreciate but is leading to us being asked to do things again and again. One thing we've been talking about doing to help in this area is creating templates and organizing them well on the computer so that in the future people don't have to retype everything. This helping with administrative work led me to work both Saturday and Sunday this weekend for a few hours at one of the schools to help them have everything prepared for the year. It's kind of crazy how they have to have all their work done now (time tables, schedules, inventories) for the opening of school because they are always getting inspected while the 'good' school still hasn't done their time table for the year yet which means that teachers just kind of decide when to teach randomly.

I've also been busy cleaning up and organizing the library at one school. I have a table to sit in their now and made pictures for all the initial consonants and consonant blends (tl, sw, kg etc.) in Setswana that I put up on the wall. Now I have to do English. One of the teachers who hasn't talked to me much asked me to explain the new lesson plan format to him so that was a victory. I've gotten educators to facilitate two after school clubs with me. And I had my first meeting of my teacher research seminar today. It's hard to tell how it went. There were 13 educators there, mostly because the one school that is hosting required their teachers to attend (though some of them were absent) so it was them and 4 educators from other schools. Some people seemed really interested but most didn't really show much emotion. It was mostly me talking and explaining what teacher research is and what we'll be doing this year so there wasn't that much time for participation. We'll see how it goes next time. I am a bit nervous because though I'm structuring it over the course of a year, I am requiring a bit of work from everyone (they have to write a paper and present it). We'll see how it goes.

James has been busy with much of the same stuff. He just discovered another messy library to organize as we're receiving some books that the old volunteers got donated soon. He's been setting up e-mails (or as they like to call them, websites) for everyone at the middle school because they now have the internet.

On Friday we're off for our IST (a Peace Corps training) for a week. It will be fun though weird to see volunteers we haven't seen since September again. It's weird to think that in just about two months my parents will be coming to visit and then in another couple of months we'll be off to Liberia for Matt's wedding and then Thom will be coming. I think the next year is going to fly by.

Well we've made it back home after a relaxing and amazing trip to Coffee Bay. In fact the last month or so has really been non-stop, so it's crazy to sit back and chill at home this week until the beginning of school next week. The end of the school year was chockful of parties and meetings so it went by pretty quickly. Then after school officially ended, our friend who we work with (she manages the education support center in our village) took us to Sun City for the day. It was quite the adventure, we mostly stuck to free activities (sadly didn't get to go to the valley of the waves waterpark which was super crowded since it was a holiday but we snuck into a hotel pool instead), walked around a lot, had some falafel, and met a talking bird. The most ridiculous part was waiting in line half an hour to ride the Sky Train which is literally like a metro car that goes 2 miles an hour (they have a commuter rail here so I don't know why it's such a novelty).

Then we made the speediest excursion to Botswana ever. We went one day and came back the next so the majority of the trip was spent in the taxi they had hired. Our cousin (the younger brother of one of our principals also) is getting married to a girl from Botswana so we went as part of the family delegation to the negotiations for the details of the wedding. He had already paid lebola (the bride price) so this was just about the details of the wedding. They both are really educated, independent people so it was interesting to see how they reconciled what they wanted with the tradition. James got to go and sit with the men during the negotiations while I sat with the ladies. The men did the actual discussions between families and would come and consult us at various times throughout. And of course we had lots of food including an amazing breakfast prepared by the bride's aunt who we stayed with. What we saw of Botswana wasn't too different from South Africa, poorer but the infrastructure was great, and the absence of Afrikaaners was noticable.

When we got back, it was almost time to head down to the coast for our vacation. We met up with 9 other volunteers in Pretoria and took a pretty excruciating overnight bus ride (with everyone who wanted to make it home by Christmas eve) to Mthatha where we got picked up to go to the Coffee Shack in Coffee Bay. We had an awesome time there. The coast was beautiful...rolling hills meeting cliffs. We went to the beach a lot, went surfing twice (the first time, our lesson, was more successful as we both stood up and rode waves into shore about 10 times each). We did a bunch of hikes...trekking through the dense forest next to a river to the sacred pools, a long hike to a waterfall that you had to swim the last part of, along the coast to the Hole in the Wall, and to the Mapuzi Cliffs where James did a pretty daring cliff jump and I did a less scary one into a river. It was really fun to get to hang out with other volunteers who we hadn't seen since September and just relax. It was crazy how unaccustomed we are to being catered to so we were kind of shocked by how nice and accomodating everyone was. We're definitely happy to be back at home, but also excited to think about future vacations and seeing more of the country.

Here are some photos:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2364478&id=23307843&l=e7c5d912d1

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2364477&id=23307843&l=b4dbe3a87d