Should you sacrifice work for love? Career Builder via CNN.com article.

I found this article on CNN from Careerbuilder.com. I immediately thought this might pertain to me, given my long (long long) distance relationship that I currently find myself in. I replaced “work” with “Peace Corps service” and it spoke to me. Sorta. The article talks about choosing love over career and vise versa. Can a person live with only one? The wizards at Careerbuilder (who were probably not taking into account those of us around the world that take long-distance relationships to the max and live in different countries in different continents) have decided that though a successful career is great in its own way, it doesn’t necessarily take the place of a fulfilling, romantic relationship. Ah, Careerbuilder via CNN, you are so wise. Now, where the hell were you nine months ago when the long-distance part of a long-distance relationship didn’t really hit me? My time in South Africa has been…turbulent/interesting/different/pure suckiness (can you guess which one?) and being in a long-distance relationship has been one factor that has made it such. Sure, I can be grateful that I’m not stuck wondering if my future love of my life is one of these drunk dudes with missing teeth and questionable hygiene who tell me they love me and call me “lahoa” (white person) or “baby.” Unenthusiastic yay. Would they have ever had a chance anyway? But I can wonder if leaving something that might still be something worthwhile way back when things were just starting to get….worthwhile….was really the right decision for me. I know I accepted my invitation and got on that plane to South Africa knowing that it wasn’t going to be easy, but somewhere in the back of my head I told myself that it’d be worth it somehow. And has it been? Ah, good question. The day we got together, I had already applied to Peace Corps and had already made the decision that I’d go whether the Peace Corps called and said they had a placement for me in a month or a year. I was going to do it. I’m, uh, determined (or stupidly stubborn) that way. I think I told myself that it wouldn’t be that big of a deal to go. Hey, I told myself, we were friends before; we’ll just be friends again while I’m in Africa and if things are supposed to work out, they will. Ha. Look at me, Mum, I’m optimistic! Yeah, that lasted about one month until my boyfriend told me he didn’t want to break up when I left. Now, things were going to get complicated. Nearly a year later, when I finally did get my invitation, accepted and moved all the way to South Africa, we were still together and we were doing well. Then things got really complicated. The “great cell phone reception” that I’d heard about turned out only to work in the one spot in my room that the spiders, dirt, and other ghastly things called home. Our conversations consisted a lot of “Can you hear me? Babe! Can you hear me?” with me doing the “trying to get reception dance” around my room moving my ear this way and that, shifting a little in my bed, standing on my desk, etc. When we’d finally get tired of trying to understand what “Ghreia hreai giera” meant, we said bye and hung up with more questions to ponder. Did he say he wanted to break up? I’d think the next day while I was sitting at work. Through every form of technology we would clear up what was misconstrued on the phone, or what that instant message “really meant” and then somehow find some time to get a quick update on the current happenings of our lives. It was exhausting. Oh, and did I mention the 7-hour time difference? Or the fact that he works 50-hour workweeks and I can barely manage to squeeze 8-10 hours of being at work a WEEK before I want to find a very high cliff and hurl myself off it? So then when I went home, my father asked me over lunch one day why he never hears us talking to each other. “It seems like you guys don’t connect,” I remember him saying. As furious as I was with that comment (“We do so connect! Take it back!” screamed my 12-year-old self), I realized that it was true. We worked so hard over the previous eight months trying to communicate that all we really needed to do to be happy with each other now was hold each other’s hands. It was that easy, no dance required. But was that productive? At a time in my life when I want to start figuring things out, I’m not figuring anything out. I’ve already made my decision about my Peace Corps experience a while back and now I am just biding my time till it’s over. How could I rationalize keeping the rest of my life at a standstill for it anymore? The article brought up a good thing for me to ponder: "On a scale of one to 10, how much will this particular job matter in 10 years?" and "On a scale of one to 10, how much will this relationship matter to me in 10 years?" Even though I do hope that something positive career wise can come from my time with Peace Corps, I’d like to hope that in the long-run it isn’t my defining factor. But my relationship? Now that’s a different story. As in-tune to my current situation as this article felt to me, its tips from the “experts” (there are people who are experts on this?) to keep the flame going were completely ridiculous and irrelevant. Have a coffee break with your partner? Ha, yeah right. We couldn’t even have a virtual coffee break because our times for coffee are nearly completely opposite. However, this is how something like that would go: Me: Love, you get on Skype at noon and I’ll get on at 7 p.m. You drink coffee, and I’ll drink coffee, decaf of course, and we’ll talk about drinking coffee if the reception hangs on long enough and if a spider doesn’t bite me or my fridge doesn’t shock me for coming too close, or if I don’t accidentally pour coffee on my computer.Him: Babe, are you still there? Can you hear me? Me: AHHHHH….damn fridge Gee. How romantic. With this good advice, you could almost be Cosmopolitan. Or Oprah. Or how about having a “work-free zone”? Ha! Be in the Peace Corps when people are calling you “lahoa” from your front porch and then tell me about “work-free zones.” Your work-free zone I call a $1,000 plane ticket home for two weeks…annually because saving the world does not pay well. Is that what you had in mind, Careerbuilder? Ok, so they weren’t writing for Peace Corps volunteers, I get it. But it does make me think about things. Leaving again to come back to South Africa, back to this, back to the dance and to “Can you hear me,” back to a place where I possibly have already gotten everything out of it that I could now seems counterproductive. So…maybe it’s time for a new plan.

As I sat down in The Principal’s office… (Sidebar: I refer to her as “The Principal,” capitalized, because that’s how everyone refers to her. It’s like how you would refer to God. Or Madonna.) …I tried to summon up the courage to tell her everything I had told Selena a couple of days before. It is true that her silly new hairstyle helped matters. So after a few moments of pausing and stalling, I finally opened up and told her everything. Well, almost everything. (She’s really scary.) After I finished I took a breath and waited for her response. “So, Dineo” she began, “you want the school to re-decorate?” Sigh. I guess that is a logical summary of my ten-minute rant of my 4-month experience at the school. Sure. Whatever. I want to redecorate. I came all the way to freakin’ South Africa with a very expensive college degree to redecorate your school. Gee, don’t you feel special? As I tried to re-explain the issues I felt were plaguing the school, I tried to emphasize that the suggestions I had for the school wouldn’t come overnight and they wouldn’t/couldn’t be done by only me. I could be an outside perspective and maybe bring some knowledge to the table, but the real work would be in the hands of management. We talked for what seemed like forever and as time went by, I became less nervous (aka scared shitless of her) and she finally began treating me like an equal not as a child. We came up with a plan for the next couple of weeks before I would go to visit the U.S. and she would go on leave for the rest of the year. And then, right before I thought we were done and everything was out in the open, she said two things: 1. “Dineo, I don’t know why you felt you couldn’t tell me this before now.” (In which my response was an innocent shrug when I was really thinking: Heeellllloooo, you’re SCARY!) And… 2. “It’s all the educators’ fault.” With the second one, I knew I really had my work cut out for me. The staff was going to blame the principal for the lack of progress and the principal was going to blame the staff. Ay, my brain hurts. So I knew what I was going to have to do. I was going to have to go back to middle school. I listened to the principal complain about the educators. I listened to the educators complain about the principal. To everyone, I was a giant walking ear and cheerleader. I didn’t entice any fights but I encouraged everyone to do the job that they’ve been hired to do. I wasn’t taking sides in the great duel. I realized that as corny and Miss America pageant-y it sounds, I really just wanted the kids to actually start benefiting from their days at school. During all this, I tried to find a way to cope through the things that weren’t really site related. Sure, this assignment wouldn’t have been in my top 20 of placements. I have genuine issues with a lot of things relating to my Peace Corps experience beginning way before I ever stepped foot on South African soil and I needed to work that out separately from the school. I could try to make the best of a shitty situation and just do it. So I took a couple of weeks off. From everything…now I’m back. I’m not necessarily happier. The issues didn’t magically disappear nor did I get an “Aha” moment and realize that I’m just a whiny little girl that likes to be unhappy and cynical. (Although…being unhappy and cynical does make for a more pleasurable writing experience. I’m just not the rainbows and smiles kind of writer…sorry.) But I found a way to cope and make myself ok with my situation. I made a plan for the future that makes these days easier to deal with and took my emotions out of the things that my emotions didn’t need to be involved in, which was a lot of things I realize now. Since that emotional Monday way back in August, I can say that things have started to change, slowly. I’ve learned through my travels that there are some cultures that are more resistant to change than others and South Africans are probably more resistant than most. But, I’m working with what I’ve got and I am starting to see little changes. Just a dent, but it’s working…for now.

A couple of weeks ago, I almost quit Peace Corps. I had my phone in my bra (the one truly African thing I’ve picked up) and I was just planning on what exactly to say to staff when I called. I thought about who I should call. Would I call my program supervisor? Would I call the director? Wow, I thought, this is the kind of stuff that I should have been trained on. I was baffled. I even went as far as visualizing how I would pack my belongings into my two bags. I thought about the things that I would leave behind. I thought about what I would say to my fellow volunteer friends. I tried to pick the best way to tell them. Text? Phone call? Should I whip up a few tears? Maybe a group email when I’m already gone. Poetic. As I pondered this I analyzed my situation. I was in school. I was surrounded by eleven children that only understood me when I said one of three phrases: No, Stop, and Tsamaya (Go). It was barely 10 a.m. and already I’d almost cried twice. I had to entice myself to get out of bed by dreaming about adding cocoa to my morning instant coffee (not necessarily my first choice of coffee additive but, hey, you use what you have). After breakfast I got spit on, wiped Paul’s nose every five minutes, got kung-fu kicked in the shin by the new kid that magically has just shown up in class, and got burned a little on the hand by a feisty child who has learned how to operate a lighter. Oh, and I counted to five about 50 million times for the kid who is really excited about learning how to count to five. That’s when I decided to quit Peace Corps. I…can’t…do…this…anymore. Ah, Oscar worthy. Just when I was about to do it, take the chance and just do it, I get beckoned for a meeting with the principal. It’s time. On the way to the principal’s office, the educator, Selena, tells me that I have probably gained a few kilos (Ok, so I’ve been adding cocoa to a lot these days) and criticizes the way I chew my gum. It’s 10:10 a.m. and I’ve almost cried three times. A new personal record. I sit down and the principal asks me for The Report. I gulp and stall for time by pretending to think of the right thing to say but instead just try not to laugh at her silly new wig-like thing and purple mini-hat. Ah, well at least I don’t want to cry anymore. Progress. So I tell her all about my magical trip to The Other Side, a.k.a. Vryheid, KwaZulu-Natal. I went there last week with the intention of finding my purpose but what I got instead was a look into what my Peace Corps experience could have been like. Showers, diversity, little orphans that get excited by just being picked up and danced with a little, and…best of all…pizza. Like I said, magical. I was truly in awe of Christi and everything that her Peace Corps experience has brought her. True, it hasn’t been easy for her. She deals with race issues everyday due to the diversity of races that still haven’t quite figured out how to co-exist with each other peacefully. But the opportunities that are available in her area are much more vast than anything my itty-bitty village has to offer. But her school. Her school has resources. It’s full of color and materials to help the children. It doesn’t look like it’s on the brink of completely falling apart. The educators at least seem like they’re there for the benefit of the children, not just to receive a paycheck and drink free tea and eat free food. The children even looked happy. Sure, they have similar disabilities that the children at my school have, but they looked like children that were cared for at school and not treated like servants. In the two days that I was at the school, I didn’t see one child fetch tea for an educator. It was so hard to watch and although I felt so completely and totally happy whilst there, the looming knowledge that I would eventually have to leave felt like a dark cloud looming over my head. I divulged everything to Christi in one long uninterrupted conversation where I talked about my four months at site and Christi listened. She understood me. A year and a half ago, she’d been dumped into the same situation as me and had no idea what to do. Peace Corps was no help. At the time, she was the only volunteer in South Africa to be put in a special school. Just like me, she was “trained” (if that’s what you can call those first two months in-country) on HIV/AIDS and non-government organizations and then got none of that in her actual assignment. Christi’s advice? Get out. Get out now. As I pondered her advice, I considered how I would feel moving to a new place, maybe a place like Vryheid. I could picture myself walking around downtown in the spring, getting pizza at Debonairs, actually buying the groceries that I wanted, not just the ones that I thought would last me two weeks till my next shopping trip or I could carry home on the taxi, and not feel like I have to keep my head down so I can pretend that nobody is staring at me as I walk down the road. Perhaps I pondered this too long, because before long, I almost started believing that this could be a reality for me. But, alas, it is not to be. Before I knew it, I was climbing back into the Van of Death (aka my school’s van driven by Selena who absolutely should not be allowed to have a driver’s license) and was heading back to Pankop. As we got closer and closer to Pankop, I could feel the happy feelings from the week in KZN being left behind and the black cloud grow larger and larger until it completely consumed any optimism I had once felt. Near that point, I thought of my options: 1. Deal with it. 2. Go home. So I had nothing to lose. I turned to Selena and word vomited everything that I’d been feeling in the last few months. I told her I wasn’t/didn’t want to be/couldn’t be a “educator assistant” (aka babysitter) and I honestly had no idea why Peace Corps placed me with Mantjedi (the school). I told her that despite all that, I had some ideas for the school and that it was fine if the school didn’t want to change, but that I wouldn’t sit around anymore. I couldn’t. When I was done, I turned away and we sat in silence for awhile. After a couple of minutes, Selena told me that I had to tell everything I just said to The Principal (my scary supervisor) on Monday. She said that The Principal was the one that was holding back the school. She said it several times: It was the principal’s fault. It was the principal’s fault. It was the principal’s fault. I figured that this was my bolder. Save the principal, save the school. I could do it. I’ve fought scarier people than her before and have come out triumphant. I could do it. So here I am. On the verge of tears on a Monday morning being told I’m fat and chew my gum wrong. What the hell was I thinking? I shoulda ET’d when I had the chance.

Meet Paul. Paul is one of the students I work with at the special school I’ve been at for the last four months. Hmmm, now that I think about it, maybe “work with” is a vast overstatement… But, Paul is different. When I first encountered Paul, he was laying on the floor trying to eat his shoe. The educator in the classroom was ignoring him and so were the other students. I watched him for quite awhile. He intrigued me. He didn’t do much all day (like most of the kids at my school) but he never seemed unhappy. Usually he would be led into the classroom by one of the older children, placed in a chair and he would begin chewing on the desk or a nearby chair, eventually making his way to lying on the floor, his shoe in his mouth. I was told that he was “blind, deaf, mute and stupid,” by one of the educators. Since most of the children lack real diagnoses on the state of their mental capacity, most of the kids are “stupid,” “mad,” “not normal,” or just plain “crazy” in the esteemed opinion of my supervisor, The Principal. Paul, however, is different. Because he is “blind, deaf, mute and stupid” according to The Principal and therefore not able to act as a servant to the educators, he is completely ignored most of the time. Don’t get me wrong, Paul is a little bit of a hard situation. He isn’t potty-trained so he has to use diapers; he doesn’t eat by himself so the educator (or I) has to feed him his two daily meals. He can’t get anywhere without being led very slowly by the shoulders. In the four months that I’ve been observing the on-goings of my school, I’ve noticed that most of the children are probably far behind their true abilities. But what would I know, right? I have a journalism degree. I’ve never been around special-needs kids very much before I got to South Africa. Heck, who am I kidding, most of the time… I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE HELL I’M DOING! Being that what it may, I know that these kids could be far ahead of where they are now if the educators would actually put away their tea cups, get some special education training, and actually try. It’s a far-fetched idea, I know. Silly me, but I’m a dreamer… I’ve decided to experiment with this theory and work with Paul, the Most Lost Cause of All the Lost Causes. My experiment was simple. I know that I’ve been told he’s mute and deaf, but the fact that he laughs sporadically and moves away from the educator or The Principal as she yells at him makes me think that perhaps he can hear and use his vocal cords just fine. Brilliant. So I pulled him off the floor, dusted him off, took his shoe out of his mouth, sat him down next to me and just talked to him while I fed him his porridge. I didn’t do the baby voice; I didn’t over-simplify things; I didn’t try to speak in Setswana; I just talked to him. I know, it’s silly. He doesn’t speak English! But, the more I thought about it, he doesn’t really speak Setswana either, in fact, he doesn’t really speak anything. So what’s the harm? After a couple of meals “together,” I started noticing that whenever something would fall on his shirt I would say, “Oops!” or “Oh-oh, Paul!” and he would laugh! As if on cue! He thought it was funny. Wait…he thought I was funny. Victory! Ok, small victory…but it kept me motivated. So last week after I finished feeding him his breakfast, I said, “Yay, Paul!” And he copied me by saying, “Yaaaaaaaayyyyy” and then promptly burst out in an evil laugh, “Brahha-ha-ha-ha!” Which in return, made me burst out in my evil laugh, “Brahha-ha-ha-ha!” Which we both found funny, so we burst out in a real laughing fit. And that’s how Paul and I became friends. Eventually he started answering my “Helllloooo, Paul” with a “Helllloooooo.” Followed by a round of evil laughing. For our own amusement, of course. So when the week ended, I was on cloud nine. Finally, something I could do since I’ve been placed in an environment that has made me feel completely and utterly useless and incompetent. Then Monday comes and at morning assembly, I see that the educator that usually works in the classroom I work in is out. Immediately I want to fake sick and go home. Although I know I can’t (shouldn’t) handle the classroom alone, and The Principal knows I can’t (shouldn’t) be left alone, I’m always left alone. So, begrudgingly, I head to the classroom and try to show no fear to the 11 students waiting to torture me for the next three hours. Two hours later, after I feed Paul, laugh half-heartedly at our evil laughs, get spit on and kicked by a student, and stop another kid from setting a table on fire, I realize that I’m not fit to do this. I’m not a teacher. I’m not a teacher’s assistant. I’m just a girl from Texas who thought she could take some pictures with some cute African kids and maybe help with HIV/AIDS education. What am I doing here? I’m trying my hardest to keep the kids from doing inappropriate things with each other while realizing that though I’ve only read about behavior like this in books and news stories that don’t end well; I know that this shouldn’t be happening. I watch the kids try to smack each other with sticks, books, and feather dusters and realize that kids of this age shouldn’t think that violence is the way to communicate. The worst part is that even though I know that this isn’t how children who have never been abused or borderline neglected should act; I can’t say anything to any of the educators. I can’t talk about it to Peace Corps. I can’t explain it to anybody and expect anything to change. The hardest part for me, the girl from Texas, to understand is that I will never really be able to change it. I once heard from a Peace Corps staff member that I’m not here to change culture. Is this culture? I remember listening to my South African language instructor explain that child rights laws are made so that young girls can marry whoever they want and children can get their parents arrested for no reason. I distinctly remember hearing that “the only way to teach an African child is to beat them.” And, unfortunately, a beatee becomes a beater. I see the cycle everyday as I see the educators and The Principal smack the kids and then the kids smack each other. I see Terrance, the feisty kid who screams a lot, try to get on top of other little boys and pull down their pants. I know what a lot of people are thinking as they read this. They’re surprised, they’re saddened, they’re mad at me for not doing something to stop it. What I can say is that I can hide the feather dusters, the sticks, the books. I can pull Terrance away from the other little boys and give him the sternest “no” I can muster. I can try to explain in a “culturally sensitive” way that the kids are inappropriate with each other, but all that will lead to is The Principal coming in, hitting Terrance till he pretends to be asleep and she’ll laugh at me for not being able to handle the kids alone as her and her scary eyebrows walk out of the classroom. And what happens when I leave? What happens on the weekends? What happens when I can’t be here to keep my mouth shut so the kids won’t be beaten or abused, even if it costs me a few headaches and a couple of kicks from one of the feistier kids? And Paul… I can talk to Paul and laugh with Paul and maybe even teach him how to drink from a sippy cup and eat with his hands now, but will anybody continue helping him when I leave? Will anybody talk to him? Will anybody do the evil laugh with him until he genuinely laughs? All signs point to no.

Subtlety is overrated. Why beat around the bush when it’s easier (and faster) to just tell people what you want/think/feel/need. Example number one: “You’re fat.” Example number two: “Give me 50 rand.”Towels are underrated. Westerns may think towels are only needed when wet situations may occur (or when at the beach) but alas! They can be so much more. They can be used to carry your baby on your back, as a door mat, or even as a skirt if you don’t have one handy and would like to make a very cool (read: strange) fasion statement.Life is simpler with no hair. At the local schools, children are required to keep their hair a certain length which is usually borderline bald. It cuts down on lice issues and creates a fun game for me where I try to decide if a child is a boy or a girl. It’s a girl! It’s a boy! Eish! I give up. Just tell me. Even adults follow this philosophy. Many a woman keeps her hair very short. Even those that let it grow out a little cover it with a hat and say their hair is “too natural” to be seen.The “everyone poops” law of life doesn’t really apply to everyone. It started as a joke between my friend and me but recently since I’ve been on school break I’ve begun to think this is true: My host ma never goes to the toilet! The pit toilet is close to my room and the door is loud and can often be heard opening/shutting and I have never seen her go in or out. I would ask her directly (see item 1) but I feel our relationship is not quite good enough for me to ask, “Hey ma, do you poop?” quite yet. Although I do believe asking such questions will finally warrant those weird looks she already gives me sans strange questions.Planning for the future is just plain silly. This statement is proven by the way South Africans build their houses, South African condom usage, food choices, and alcohol use. Today I will eat 2000 calories in one sitting of pure fat (washed down with three beers) and my tummy won’t be hungry anymore. Period. Who cares if I die from heart disease or liver failure in a couple of years leaving my family in poverty in a house that’s falling apart. The future is that: the future. I’ll worry about it when I get there.When the temperature drops below 70 degrees put on all the clothes you own, wrap a towel or blanket around your waist and complain about how cold it is until the temperature rises again. Oh, wait…I already do this. Moving on…You can live on pap and meat your whole life. What did you have for lunch? Pap and meat. What did you have for dinner? Pap and meat. What will you eat tomorrow? Pap and meat. I don’t know…seems a little dull to me even though it must make grocery shopping a snap.If the person is younger and smaller than you they’re probably not worth paying attention to. Actually, they would be completely useless if there wasn’t that nifty little government childcare check that comes in the mail every month and the fact that after a certain age, they become your very own personal servant! Woo.Thank yous and byes are frivolous statements that have no place in everyday conversation. Well now that I think about it, so are “pleases” and “excuse mes”…and toothbrushes…and hair combs…and savings accounts…and most vegetables. You may have no job, live with your mother (at 30), have five illegitimate kids with five different “wives,” no teeth and no job, but you’re still hot stuff and you should ask every girl out because damn it, she wants you. Um, where do I begin?

Currently listening to: Where’d you go? by Fort Minor Currently reading: You are not a stranger here by Adam Haslett

I recently received pictures from my brother showing off his apartment in Alaska. He's in the military and judging by his digs, working for the government has been pretty good to him. I like to think that I kinda work for the government too. In the oath we took when I officially became a volunteer, I remember there being something about "protecting the U.S. from enemies foreign and domestic" or something like that. And have you seen the silly disclaimer I'm required to have at the bottom of my blog? Yeah, that's for the MAN (as my brother so appropriately refers to the government).

So following my dear brother's example, I have taken some photos around my African Box (aka my room) to show you how I live it up here in my Itty-bitty Village in rural South Africa.

This is the outside view of my room. It's behind the main house and attached to the car port. I have two windows and a red door frame. Behind it, you can vaguely see my tin pit toilet. Yay.

This is the view from the door. Um, this one picture shows about 80% of my room. Ha. And you wondered why I called it a box... Oh, I thought about cleaning but....eh, cleaning is overrated.

This is the "bedroom" part of my room. My bed is always unmade. It's a religious thing. Anyway, the green thing above my bed is my mosquito net in "winter mode" since the skeeters don't come out in winter. You can't really see it, but the black bucket between my wardrobe and my bed is my bathing bucket where much deep pondering is done. Sorta. Behind it is my chamber pot for....well, emergencies.

Five steps from my "bedroom" is my "kitchen." Some call it efficient. Here is my fridge that regularly tries to kill me. The black cord behind it is my electricity. My hot plate/oven is where I cook my food. It has one temperature: hot. So when a recipe tells me to "turn down the heat" I just laugh and blow on it a little. Whatev. It's Africa. My oven smokes when I try to bake in it, but oh well. It usually comes out tasty anyway. The black bucket by my fridge is where I wash dishes and the red bucket underneath it is where I keep my daily water that I pull from the tap in the backyard in the morning.

Between my "bedroom" and "kitchen" is my "office." I used to have a TV on the little black table but my fridge killed it so now it's just where I put my junk. My office also doubles as a dining room.

This is the view from the window towards my door. My hamper doubles as a rack for the bucket that I use to wash my face/hands. I post recipes on the back of my door for inspiration. I can't/don't attempt to cook them here because they're mostly from UK/US magazines and the ingredients can't be found here or afforded on my budget. One day I will cook them and they will be delicious. One day...

So, what do you think?

I’ve traveled a lot. I’ve been in Europe, Australia, Central America, Asia. I’ve noticed that no matter where I go, one of the most interesting parts of discovering a new country is the means of transportation one takes to get around. In Europe, I’m a fan of the train. I love trains. I fell in love with the rail line when I first visited Italy and took a train with my brother on Thanksgiving Day to Florence from Rome. It was that trip that we sat on these awful little seats reserved for overflow. I remember a really hot Italian guy sat across from me and even from where I was sitting, I could smell how delicious he smelled. I was so enamored with him that even after his luggage that he had poorly stored in the compartment above my head fell onto me and gave me a headache that would bother me for the next two awful, cold, rainy days, I would still only remember his smile and the sexy “sorry” he uttered to me. Wait! Quick pause to remember. Ahhh… Since then, I’ve traveled by different means and often there is not a hot Italian guy around to make the trip all better. Flights have been missed or delayed, trains have been canceled (Word to the wise: When in Europe, learn “train strike” in the local language. It will come in useful), and buses have been…well, as buses usually are: late or non-existent. Still, public transportation is a marvel to me and I use it whenever I can, even when I’m traveling in the States. South Africa, maybe just because I’ve spent a considerable amount of time here, is its own story. In May I visited a backpacker (aka hostel) and was reading through the info pack provided in the room and under “Transportation” it said that under no circumstances should public taxis be used as transportation. I think I remember the words: Extremely Dangerous. In bold. I pondered this. Yes, I can see how this title might be warranted. I remember this one time I was on a taxi and did the unthinkable thing of looking over at the driver’s seat. The first thing I noticed was that there was no stick thingy on the speedometer. Well, ok, my Dad used to have a car that didn’t have a stick thingy on his speedometer. Not a huge deal. You just go about the same speed as everyone else and you’ll be fine, right? Then I noticed that there was a considerable break in the dashboard like someone had hit it with a baseball bat and the area around it was really dirty. The driver had to kind of tilt his head out the window to see the road. After I studied him for a second, I noticed that there were no mirrors. No rearview mirror, no side mirrors. Well, I guess those aren’t really necessary. Lastly, I saw that he was balancing a beer between his thighs. Hm, ok. Now that’s probably not cool. I know the U.S. has a lot of stupid road rules, but not driving while drinking probably isn’t one of them. Actually, it was kinda funny the way he was doing it. He would look out the front window then do a squinty thing with his eyes, then stick his head out the window. I guess to verify if he really saw whatever he thinks he saw through the window. When he would determine what it was, he would take a swig of beer and then repeat. Come’on…that’s funny! I decided after that ride not to look anymore. Ignorance is bliss, right? In training our really fun safety and security officer told us to be wary of public taxis. He couldn’t tell us not to take them. In the rural areas, taxis are the only way to get around. He gave us a nifty way of checking to see if a taxi was worthy. First, check the tires. If the tires have no tread, it’s no good. Second, check to make sure the door closes properly; you wouldn’t want to fly out while a taking a curve at a high rate of speed, now would you? And lastly, check to see if the driver is drunk. Ah, thought me in training a month before I would ever get on a taxi, swell advice dear Gert! However, since getting on more than my share of taxis since then, I realize the unfeasibility of these rules. First, all tires have no tread. It’s a fact. If you find a taxi with one tire with good tread it’s probably because the last one just blew out on the last run. I’ve been on taxis that have had tires blow out. Actually, twice. It’s a process every one is familiar with. One minute you’re driving along at roller coaster speeds (Weeee!) then all of a sudden you hear a pop and see rubber flying. The whole taxi gathers their things and makes their way off the taxi. The men ponder… wait, ponder is too strong a word, stare is more accurate… at the tire as if wondering if it’s really necessary to change the tire. When they realize that it is necessary, one of the men gets to work at getting the spare tire out and the others concentrate on lifting the bus, which looks very much like a VW bus but with more windows and slightly bigger. After about thirty minutes (smoke breaks included) the taxi is about as good as its going to get and everyone re-boards and bam. Back to business! Secondly, the door thing is just simply a silly thing to worry about. If the door doesn’t close all the way (which it often doesn’t) you just sit closer to the opposite window and find something to hold on to. Ta-da! No worries. One might be annoyed at the inconvenience of being driven around in unsafe vehicles. I get it. But instead of being scared or annoyed by taxi drivers (and taxis in general), I’ve decided to spend much time trying to understand them and therefore ride them whenever possible. Who needs safety when you can have adventure? A typical taxi experience goes like this: If I want to catch a taxi on the tar road a couple of yards from my house to visit my friends a few villages over, I stand on the side of the road in the direction I want to go and when I see an approaching taxi, I point downwards which is the signal for local. If I want to go to the closest city, in my case, Pretoria, I can either point straight up (I’m number one!) or put my fist up in the air (Power to the people!). I’ve seen people just point in the direction that they want to go (That way, please), which is really funny to see and I think is only used in the cities. Sometimes the drivers mock the signal in which they’re going so it looks especially funny because they usually stick their head out the window whilst they do it. So a taxi going to city might look to a foreigner like a political statement but really isn’t. There are also motions for train station (chuga-chuga with your arm) and bus station but I really don’t use those. Anyway, a taxi is hailed, I quickly monitor the situation. First, sitting in the front passenger seat is probably not the best option if you’re alone and if you’re a girl unless you know the driver and have already turned his proposal down. Second, if the front row is taken, it’s best to take the second or third, but never the back. The back is bumpy and is most likely to contain the village drunks ready and willing to wake up from their alcohol coma as soon as they smell a foreigner. Speaking of smell, that’s another reason to stay away from the back seat as well. Drunks smell. Quickly, I make a decision, get into the seat that’s best in the whole five seconds I had to ponder the situation, and off the taxi goes, usually before I can completely slide the door closed. The first thing I say is hello to the taxi. The person closest to me will usually respond and everyone else will stare as I get settled. There isn’t much room so usually I’ll see women piled under grocery bags, tires, baskets, chickens, etc. Believe me, after a while, you stop getting surprised at what people want to bring onto taxis. I’ve seen it all. Once I get settled, I pull out my money to pay the driver. There is no meter, no price listings. You just have to know. I’ve memorized how much it costs to get around my area of Mpumalanga/Limpopo. It’s knowledge you slowly acquire for survival. So, after my money is arranged, I tap the woman in front of me, say, “One, Pankop (my village) to Mmametlhake (my friend’s village)” and shove my money at her. This may seem rude to some, but it’s routine. Sometimes because of my accent, she’ll verify what I’ve said and I say yes then she passes the money and message on to the driver who collects the money, counts out change and slowly, the change gets passed back to me. At first I was wary of this. How can you trust that 19 strangers aren’t going to pocket your money? Well, because taxi drivers are kinda like the mafia and you don’t piss off the mafia. You just pass the money and mind your own business. So now that I’ve gotten a taxi and have paid my fare, I wait. About every five seconds the taxi stops to either pick someone up or let some one off. This is usually a long process. If you got on at a Taxi Rank (which is like a makeshift bus terminal where a lot of taxis gather to take people to different places) chances are you’re already at capacity people wise and over capacity with goods. However, because the taxi driver wants to make a good profit from the trip, he will usually stop a time or two to add one or two more. Now this is where things get really interesting. Little kids usually know to climb onto their mother’s laps but once that is done, there is just much squeezing to be done. Squeezing becomes nearly impossible when you already have 20, um, hefty African women on the taxi. But somehow people can make it possible to add two more. Often you’re handed a random baby or a package to hold while the person gets on or off. It’s an amazing feat that usually ends up with someone’s butt pressed up against the window. I’ve been in a taxi that had a capacity limit posted on the door of 15 and we had 22. Drivers love this. It’s probably a drinking story for later, “Hey man, I fit 22 in my taxi today, how many did you do?” The waiting continues as the taxi trudges along. A five-mile ride might turn into thirty minutes if you get a taxi driver that’s a little more drunk than most and who stops to talk to every passing taxi on the way. It happens. A lot of the time, taxi drivers will convene in the middle of nowhere and after a moment of talking, will come back to the taxi and tell everyone to move into a different taxi. Once I took a taxi into my shopping town and was the only one on the taxi with the taxi driver and his friend. On the way he kept asking me where I was going and I kept telling him. In the course of the ride that should have taken 30 minutes, he stops to get a newspaper, talk to someone on the street, and get his mail from a village that wasn’t even on the way. Then, he tried to take me to a village that I’d never been to in order to get another taxi to take me to my shopping town. After much arguing he took me the whole way but not before picking up some drunks on the way. Finally we got into my shopping village an hour later, but then just as we were taking the last stop before the taxi rank, the taxi broke down and the guys all had to jump out and push it the last couple of yards. Karma’s a bitch. When I finally get to my stop, I shout “SHORT LEFT!” and since nobody can understand my silly “accent” or the taxi drivers just think its funny to ignore the non-black girl in the taxi, everybody in the taxi usually has to say stuff to the driver in order for him to stop long enough for me to get off. I once met this taxi driver named Peter who I admired who took me, 50 children, and three other adults to a youth conference. When we first got picked up, one of the adults started yelling at him for being late and because this is Africa and there’s no such thing as “the customer is always right,” he yelled back at her. When we finally boarded all the children and adults into three taxis, we set off to a near-by gas station to refill before the trip. The kids immediately began shaking the taxi by jumping up and down and screaming/singing at the top of their lungs. When we got to the gas station, I thought he’d say something to the children to stop shaking the taxi, but instead he just opened the gas tank and let the attendant fill the tank. The whole way there, even though the screaming/singing/shaking continued, he didn’t say anything. Just kept going. After the conference just as the sun went down, we were on our way back when he turned and suddenly there was a girl in a car going the wrong way on his side of the road. She didn’t swerve out of the way but just stopped. We nearly hit her and I said to him, “Crazy drivers. What was she thinking?” and he just shrugged and said he’s seen worse. And that was it. No near panic attack or anything. And that made me think of all the things that these taxi drivers put up with. The road conditions always suck since the South African road authority think that putting a sign that says “Bumps Ahead” is better than actually fixing pot holes and since goats and cows run amuck there are always random stops and swerves to move around cows in the road. It would probably drive me to drinking and driving too. Ha. Maybe.

As I was sitting in my bucket today, bathing, I couldn’t help but reflect on these last five months in Africa. On close inspection of my body, I see that I’ve remained pretty intact. Though some of my friends have acquired new and strange Africa-induced disorders and complexes, I’ve remained, though a little more hairy than my real American self, pretty much the same. No significant weight loss or weight gain despite my co-workers telling me every week that I’m either getting fat (which South Africans say with no sugar coating, simply a “You’re getting fat!” is deemed appropriate here, something I thoroughly hate) or losing weight and should wear tighter skirts. It makes no sense to me; one comment or the other is never consistent enough to create a real complex, luckily. Although, I will admit, when my co-workers at school tell me I’ve gained weight, I do say, “I was just thinking the same about you.” Smile. It’s the worst I can do, and God forgive me, I do feel guilty because as a Western woman, I think that being told your fat is good cause to find the nearest cliff and hurl yourself off it, and would never encourage such behavior but my, these strong African women! Geez. Even when I come back with a comment that my high school teachers would deem “full of attitude” I only get a laugh and a, “Oh Dineo…” and then the woman that I’ve just told that to continues to stuff her mouth with white bread, pap or another equally as bad-for-you food item that is so popular around here. I, on the other hand, usually lose my appetite for at least an hour before I completely rebound and remember that my jeans still fit the same. Now, as for the state of my mental health, that’s a different discussion. Depending on whom you ask, some might have deemed me a little “different” before embarking on my Peace Corps adventure, but now, there may be more that may deem me so. Sometimes I wonder why my friends are always saying, “You’re crazy.” I thought they were just playing around, but when a lot of people from different circles begin to tell you that, you have to begin to wonder the truth behind it. It’s a strange phenomenon. Perhaps trying to help others makes one crazy? Hmm, I wonder if there’s been any research in the field… Whilst in training, I was given this graph to plot my overall feeling for the week. It ranges from 0 (completely crappy, suicide watch necessary) to 10 (orgasmic week of smiles and rainbows). I pretty much ignored charting my feelings during training. I figured that consistent 2’s or 3’s would make me doubt my commitment to this project, even though I know that I’m just a really bad trainer. And culture shock. When in doubt, blame culture shock. Works every time. But recently when looking through all the crap (I mean, resources) I was given during training, I found the chart and ceremoniously posted it on my fridge for future pondering. I had graphed the first few weeks at site between a 4-6 on the scale. Wow, I’m thinking to myself now, how optimistic I once was! I’m proud of myself and now want to keep the chart as-is to remind myself that at one point things weren’t so ­­­­_____ (well let’s just keep that blank for sake of the Peace Corps watchdogs). So now, as I sit in my bucket, I ponder my life in Africa. I’ve met people that I’ve liked and have met people that I’ve disliked. I’ve done things that have been enjoyable and things that have been not so enjoyable. Such as life, right? I’ve discovered that life in the Peace Corps is, in a lot of ways, indescribable to outsiders (sorry to classify you as such, but stick with me here). There are many words that I can use to describe The Peace Corps Experience, but those would be my words and not the words of the whole and besides, nobody pre-Africa would have classified me necessarily as an optimist. So you should probably take my comments in stride. However, judging The Experience on what I consider a “normal” scale would be unfair. There are so many new and different factors that you have to consider, the infamous culture shock being one of them. I can’t rate my life here on the same scale as I could have this time last year. I can’t say to myself, “Self, this time last year you (I) would rate satisfaction at a 7.85 but this year I can only rate it at a 3.” I can’t (shouldn’t) think my life is in shambles and that I’m on a downward spiral leading to a deep and dark depression, but think, “Well, self, last year you were in America surrounded by a culture you understood, making real money that your friends didn’t laugh at, and had a dog, apartment (with a shower!) and boyfriend (read: independence).” And this year? Well, this is the year where I literally run away from strangers proposing marriage to me, consider TB/parasites to be a real threat, often have no idea what anybody is talking about because they talk in some weird alien language that I just barely realized even existed let alone began learning, oh! And, have no dog or boyfriend within 10,000 miles. So yeah, things shouldn’t be compared. To combat my downward spiral inevitably leading to depression, lots of alcohol and woeful emails to friends and family about the suckiness of my current African life (which may or may not have already commenced), I’ve begun to try to think of my life on a new “Peace Corps-rrific” scale where every week is relative to the week preceding it. Instead of thinking, “Last year I was happier,” I simply think, “Hey, this week was better than last week!” And alas, I feel a bit more ready to move on to the next week. I guess this could eventually lead to issues if I have a series of bad weeks, but I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. Also, I’ve begun thinking about things that I’ve gained….hmm, ok, maybe I shouldn’t think about that. I’ve decided what is not good for my African self. Alcohol for one, I found out on the plane leaving New York, makes me depressed and therefore should try to be avoided. Check. That’s an easy one since alcohol consumption is basically not recommended in the village. Two, Facebook should be limit to a certain time frame and images should always be off. I don’t know when all my friends decided to start getting engaged and married, but I hate that it happened when I’m in Africa. Seriously, ya’ll, couldn’t you have waited a year or two? Now that I know that these “happy” (ok, so I’m a little bitter, whatev) moments won’t cease till I’m about 40, I guess I have to learn to deal with it. Or at least find a better way to fight the urge to de-friend someone simply because they put up engagement photos or updated their relationship status. Right? It’s a work in progress. And finally, three, Peace Corps propaganda (yes, it’s propaganda) should be avoided. I’ve realized that though at one point seeing those nifty posters in airport terminals or commercials on TV telling you that “Life is Calling” were once inspiring and motivated me to continue my application process, they now anger me and force me to spew a series of not-so-nice words that my grandmother probably would not be pleased to hear. I wonder if army soldiers feel the same way about those heartfelt “Army of One” (or whatever the tagline for that is now) commercials. I know the government does a lot more brainwashing (I mean, training) of soldiers than we get, so maybe they’re numb. But, alas, I am not. And now have realized these posters, news stores, and websites should be avoided. I have to be grateful about some things too. My boyfriend has stuck with me (he’s obviously equally as crazy) and my parents and friends have been a constant support for me on my good and bad days. They try to understand my new African life and my ever-changing emotions. My life has slowed down so much since I’ve been in my itty-bitty village. I actually have time to read books (I average about one a week) and learn to cook. Since I have no real social life in the village, I end up spending a lot of time thinking, which may or may not be a good thing, but it’s gotten me to ponder some more serious things about life like love and religion. So that’s where I stand now. The one thing I have realized is true that I read previously in Peace Corps literature is that this is a hard job. It’s not always fun and not always as rewarding as the propaganda says it should be, but at the very least, I’ll know a little more about what I can and cannot handle. I guess we’ll just have to find out together how my Peace Corps story ends…

Current Book: The Shopenhauer Cure; Irvin D. YalomCurrent Song: Taller, Stronger, Better; Guy Sebastian

Today someone really close to me was diagnosed with HIV. It was a day like any other off day. I’d spent the day seeking solace from the weather in my room and was nursing a cup of tea and thinking of resigning to my bed when I hear a knock on my door. On the other side was the person that I will call Spencer. “Give me a hug, Dineo,” Spencer says as she walks into my room. I give her a hug and we sit down on my bed. This happens at least every other night, so when she begins speaking, I have no idea what she’s about to say. “I was in Pretoria today,” Spencer begins. She tells me of taking tests in order to join the military. She says she had to take an aptitude test, a urine test, and many other tests. She says it in her normal Spencer way and I laugh along with her at all the right spots. And then she says something else: Spencer: And I had to take an HIV test… Me: Oh, really? I guess that’s logical considering every other test they made you take. Spencer: Yeah, the last time I was tested was in September and I’ve been with the same guy since then so I thought it was a mistake when they told me I was positive. Me: ….. What can I say? She didn’t say it in alarm. She even laughed a little while she said it. I was confused. I waited for a punch line for a moment but none came. She went on after a moment when I couldn’t think anything to say. Surely, it was a mistake and it was cleared up, given the way she announced it. So I continued to wait for the mistake that would unfold, everyone would laugh, Spencer would be relieved, then she would come home to Pankop and tell me this story of how she was HIV positive for a few minutes. But when she continued, that was not the story she told. Instead, she told me that the nurse who had taken the test sat her down and asked her about her love life. She said that she had only been with two men and that she used protection. She said the nurse gave her some papers and advised her to have a lab test to be certain. Spencer was confused and in a state of denial when she walked out of the nurses office. A girl about her age, who had been before her in the line waiting for the nurse, had told her of her promiscuous ways. She said she had slept with many men and never had used protection. “Ah, I don’t really care. I make the men I’m with withdraw (the African term for pulling out) so I won’t get infected,” she had told Spencer less than fifteen minutes before. When she left the office before Spencer went in, she bragged about being negative. And now Spencer sat beside her, a minute after being told that she’s positive, and endured more sex stories from this girl. “I couldn’t take it, Dineo!” she tells me now. She says the girl asked for her results and Spencer told her. A brave move, I think. The girl stayed quiet for a moment, Spencer tells me, but then she made up her mind that Spencer was lying and told Spencer that she should be on Generations. “You’re such an actor!” the girl proclaimed and though Spencer says she tried repeatedly to tell her the truth, Spencer failed to get through to her. I try to ask her what the nurse said to her; I asked her how she feels now, what she did when she left the office. I didn’t want to pry, but I was confused and concerned at how unemotional she seemed by everything. But she told me she cried. She told me she ended up yelling at the sex-driven girl and when she was hit on later at the taxi rank by a stranger on her way home, she had gone off on him, “I’m positive! Do you still think I’m beautiful?” She says she felt like it was written all over her, like a bright neon arrow was following her around atop her head stating her status, “HIV Positive. Stay Away.” I begin to find my words when I realize the truth myself. I tell her I’m sorry. I say that she’s young and that there are so many things to help her cope with this. I tell her that she can still do all the things she wanted to do in life, before she knew. She can live still. I’m saying all this, yet, I’m scared for her. She’s 19 and the closest South African to me, literally and figuratively. She hasn’t even lived yet. She hasn’t been to college; she hasn’t traveled outside the immediate area. And she’s still so pretty and full of life. I’m scared by the facts that I know all too well. I don’t want to scare her. I think back to the conversation we had on Sunday when we were talking about marriage and the future. She wants kids, she wants to get married. And, she’s been telling me since March, when I met her, that she wants to study in America. “I can’t go to America anymore,” she says as her eyes well up with tears. I know why she says this and though I try to ignore the image in my head of that immigration form that you have to fill out when you enter the country with its seemingly innocent question, “Do you have an illness of significant public health concern?” I remember the Soul City (a night time drama dealing with HIV) episode where a high school senior gets diagnosed with HIV and is therefore denied a student visa into the U.S. I know that things are changing in America, and that now HIV-positive people are able to get a 30-day visitor visa, but student visas? Maybe that would be stretching it. Even now, all the information I see online says that student visas aren’t granted to those living with HIV. (Get more information about different countries’ HIV restrictions here: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/104722) Despite everything, she amazes me. I wonder how she got so much courage so quickly. I know that I would be a ball in my bed if I were told such news. I wouldn’t see the light of day for a week and would not speak to anyone until I have mourned and would definitely not be brave enough to tell the sex-driven ignorant stranger next to me the truth. I would probably kick her instead. Of course, this is coming from me, a person who can make something trivial seem tragic. But not Spencer. It’s been less than 6 hours since she found out and she’s already told her friends, her boyfriend (who still won’t admit to cheating), her mother, and me. She worries about what her sister who will say. “She’ll yell at me,” Spencer says. “All she’ll talk to me about is sex. She’ll want to know why I’ve been sleeping around.” She says her boyfriend doesn’t want to get tested. She thinks he already knows and just never told her. Undeterred by her crap-ass boyfriend, and even more amazingly, she tells me she wants to continue talking about it to people. She says she wants to help me develop my life skills program I’m presenting to the local schools and speak to the students about HIV. She wants to show them that it happens to people like them. She says she never listened to the people that talked to her when she was still in school. She says the severity of the epidemic didn’t register to her coming from an old woman, an outsider, but she says, it might if she is able to go and show them that it happens to pretty, young, smart girls too. I agree. I can tell these teens all the facts, and though I’m a little bit of a celebrity in my Itty-Bitty Village, I’m not infected; I’m an outsider. But, maybe they’ll listen to her. I hope they listen to her. She may be the best tool in my tool box, if she’s ready and willing. Despite everything, she’s still upbeat whilst talking to me. She looks in the mirror a couple of times during our talk and says, “I don’t look any different….” I know it’s still hitting her, slowly. Her CD4 count is high still and she’s healthy, but how long will that last? Throughout it all, I stay optimistic and try to assure her that there’s so much more hope than there was ten years ago. Optimism is a new trend for the African me who has been a perpetual party pooper since landing in South Africa, but what other option is there? Before she leaves she tells me that from now on, she’ll count her years: One year with HIV, two years with HIV…and as I begin to lose my brief visit with optimism, she smiles and says, “Maybe they will find a cure.” “I hope so,” I tell her. I hope so.

“Ubuntu” is a big word around here. Everyone is always complaining about how nobody abides by Ubuntu anymore and thus, South Africa is going down into the pits. I’m trying to think of the easiest way to explain Ubuntu, but I’ve come across many different definitions. At first I thought it was a pretty cool concept when I was first introduced to Ubuntu; I was told that it was about culture/tradition, unity, courtesy and respect, among other terms. I was like, hot damn. Now this is a cool word. In English we don’t have such a word that can bring all these terms into one concise concept: Ubuntu. I think the group that I trained with was all so excited with this term that we even put it on our group shirts. Ubuntu: I am because you are. Ahh, cue the sentimental music. However, as I struggled through training and now at my site, I’m learning that this idealistic definition isn’t really what Ubuntu is about. It’s about obedience and at times, ignorance. I remember thinking when I first heard this “new” definition was at a Ndebele tribal meeting/church gathering thing that my training group was sent to in order to meet the Ndebele king. It was an outside gathering of about 150 people. The women and men sat divided and some women sat on mats. Some men had cane like sticks and women were supposed to cover their heads with scarves or hats. And, the men sat under the good tree. After the “ceremony,” which turned out to be nothing more than a queue of people individually going up to the mic and saying how many people from their area were going to attend this big Ndebele celebration in the next couple of weeks, we were put into a circle and was told that we would get to ask the Ndebele prince (the king never showed up) questions. So, we asked. I don’t remember what question was, but the prince answered at one point that Ubuntu was about tradition, obedience and not asking any questions. He was worried about the children and teenagers not following along with the Ndebele traditions and instead falling prey to Western ways. Alas, I thought, this explains a lot. It explains why the women never questioned the fact that they were not to sit on chairs for so many years and only given mats. It explains why women have no rights when it comes to her husband, or basically anything. Being a woman from America, if something doesn’t make sense to me, I ask why. In South Africa, a woman quietly accepts and moves on. The examples are all over South Africa. One doesn’t have to look hard to see that this definition of Ubuntu stands firm. Perhaps some may say that I’m selling the concept short and perhaps this “don’t question, just accept” philosophy isn’t Ubuntu at all, but instead just tradition. Plain and simple. It makes me wonder if this is the reason why HIV is rampant in South Africa. The principal at the middle school that I was prisoner to today told me that many women know that their husbands aren’t coming home at night to sleep with them and they say nothing to their husbands. If you ignore it, it’s not a problem right? I was shocked. If my husband didn’t come home one night and he wasn’t freakin’ Santa Claus, I would for sure ask that little (insert bad word here) where he was. When I say this, in a PG way, to her, she laughs at me and says, “Oh Dineo, you can’t tell an African man what to do. It’s different.” I’m like, wait. So this is why only 6% percent of relationships are faithful in South Africa (a statistic I read about in a national SA magazine)? Is this why over 20% of adults are projected to have HIV? Freakin’ Ubuntu? Because a woman isn’t supposed to ask questions? Because it’s always been that way? Because a woman doesn’t know what she’d do without her husband? Because her father cheated on her mother and therefore it’s acceptable for her husband to cheat on her? Excuse me, but fuck that. I try really hard to remember that the people I meet here have not had the kind of education that I was lucky to have and have lived in a very different environment than I. I get it. I’m lucky. God bless America. But what am I supposed to do in these situations? Accept that this is just how it is and allow South Africa to continue? Until what? When is it going to be time to let “tradition” go and just accept that things are going to have to change? I try to explain to her the theory of how promiscuity, especially in South Africa, has led to the spread of HIV. I say it in simple terms so she can understand and go on to brainstorm with her ideas why teenagers are still spreading the disease despite all the “good” information out there. She says the kids are so naughty. They have too much “attitude” and it’s hard to teach them. She motions to the noise in one of the classrooms and says, “See? They won’t just listen. They always have questions and are always talking to you about something. I just want them to be quiet and let me teach them.” Yes, the principal said this to me. So, I say, “So? Shouldn’t they have questions? Shouldn’t you want them to throw ideas off of you so you can help them process things better?” And she says she just can’t handle the new methods that the province is trying to make them use to teach the students. So then she tells me about the “road system” of teaching. It goes something like this: To start a vegetable garden you need to first put the seeds in the ground. Wait for it to rain or water them. Then pick the vegetables. So she explains this to me and though I don’t know (or because I don’t know) a lot about gardening I wonder how useful this information will be to me if I were to start a garden of my own. How do you know if the vegetables are ready? What about bugs? What time of the year do you plant different vegetables? Surely, if taught this way, students will have questions. But, in this method of teaching, there aren’t questions. It is what it is. I will tell you this, and you will take it and be happy that I have taught it to you because I am your teacher and you will respect me. Ok? And this is where all the students will say, in unison, “Yesssss, Ma’am.” But that’s the way it works. I will tell you the way and you will follow it and that’ll be the way you get there. Like a road. Hence the name, “road system.” She says it’s the best way to teach, the only way she ever taught whilst a teacher. Oh, I pity her students. So she takes me around to all the classes to introduce me to the students. Before we walk into a classroom, she tells me that we’re about to enter a classroom with the “naughtiest” children. When we walk in, all the students stand and greet her, “Helllllo, Missssss. How are you?” And she says, “Good, how are you?” And they say, “I’m good. How are you?” Which makes no sense, but I laugh and she reprimands them for not addressing me directly. So they do it again, “Hellloooo Missss Mashaba (my African last name) How are you?” And on it goes. I figure with them saying, “How are you” at the end, I could turn this into a fun game (for my own amusement because they obviously don’t quite understand), but decide to let it drop with a slight giggle. After they sit, she tells me that these are the ninth graders and that there are the naughtiest class at the school. I say, “Wow, the naughtiest? That’s quite an honor. Did you guys get a plaque?” And they stare at me. Tough crowd. She says something about them not being ready for high school because they don’t know enough. The kids continue to stare at her with no word. We leave and continue to the next classes and it’s all the same. Have you ever seen that Pink Floyd music video for Another Brick in the Wall? The one where all the kids are put through a little machine and all come out the same on the other side of the conveyor belt. Alas, this is the perfect example of South Africa. All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

All in all you’re just another brick in the wall. And that’s all it is. You’re an obedient child worthy of teaching, or you’re a naughty child. It’s not easier to be categorized either way. If you’re deemed good (aka obedient) you become a servant to the teachers. Today a teacher I was sitting with needed a cup to make some tea. She yells for a student to come from across the yard to get her a cup that was sitting on a table across the room from her. A total distance there and back of maybe 6 yards. It’s almost disgusting how these children are used. I would wonder why they don’t say “No, fat (insert bad word here). Get it yourself.” But then I remember Ubuntu-taught obedience and it makes sense. It’s the cruelest caste system I’ve ever experienced. So I don’t wonder why the kids at my special school always beat up on the blind kid. If the men control the women and the women control the children and the children control the special kids then the special kids control the….blind kid? And perhaps if the blind kid could, he would be kicking the chickens around. Teachers leave them kids alone

Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!

All in all it's just another brick in the wall.

All in all you're just another brick in the wall. "Wrong, Do it again!"

"If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you

have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?"

"You! Yes, you behind the bike sheds, stand still laddy!"

So it’s been a nearly two months at my site and I’m getting pretty used to things and, likewise, things (and people) are getting used to me. In a lot of ways, I’m grateful. I was way over the way people stare at me around the village at the shop and luckily, it seems like most guys have already asked to marry me so I’m getting less proposals, thankfully. The one downside to this is at my school where I spend about two or three days a week. The educators have come to trust me (or find me as a relief educator) and often leave me alone with the kids while they do “important school-related things” (code phrase for sitting around drinking tea that they were too lazy to get for themselves so they had a student fetch for them). Now, at first this was ok. I could watch the kiddies as they ate their breakfast/lunch. I could even start them off in their prayer before they ate. I was pretty proud of myself, considering the kids don’t speak English and I barely speak Swana. However, now as the days progress, and as I’m assigned to spend full days alone with them, I feel more like I’ve been placed in a cage with what feels like 10 different kind of animals. Let me set the scene: I walk into the junior class at 9 a.m. (where I’ve been placed on a daily occasion because the school can’t afford a teacher’s assistant) where ten special children who are seemingly so cute and adorable are seated around the two tables and lock the burglar door behind me which has a latch that is so high I can barely reach it. And yes, this locking of the door is essential; if the door is not closed and locked then surely my ten students will quickly dwindle down to two, believe me. I’ve learned the hard way. I walk over to the teacher’s table and take a seat. If it’s mealtime, which it always seems to be, I make sure everyone has a plate of the stuff that smells and looks very much like baby puke, the kids cross their arms tightly around them and tightly shut their eyes, and I initiate grace, “God bless…” and the kids carry on in an English prayer I am sure none of them really know the meaning to. (This I still don’t understand, it’s kinda like the belief is that God only speaks English because there is always English prayer being uttered from a non-English speaker who says the words but has no idea what he’s saying. Is it still a prayer if you have no idea what you’re saying? Hm, well, I guess if God understands…) Immediately after grace, the kids start shoving the baby puke, aka “food,” into their mouths. Sometimes some of the kids just stare at their food and move their spoon around it and make little puke piles in their bowls, and I have to get the spoon and feed them a spoonful “airplane style,” and then they figure out that this baby puke is actually fairly safe to eat and then they continue on their own. However, there is this one child, Paul, who cannot eat by himself. The other educators say he is deaf, dumb and blind, but everyone still screams at him and sometimes he’ll laugh for no reason, which I think is pretty cool. But, anyway, I find him usually trying to eat his shoe somewhere in the classroom, stand him up and lead him to a chair that I place in front of mine and begin spoon feeding him myself. It’s a really easy thing to do because he opens his mouth to indicate that he’s ready for a spoonful, swallows, then opens his mouth again. Sometimes he’ll laugh and there will be baby puke down his shirt so to prevent this turning into a mess, I usually wrap him in a towel so the mess won’t be so tragic. As I’m feeding Paul, I try to make sure the kids don’t start an impromptu food fight, which has happened before. Usually the two unofficial “class leaders” will finish first and begin kind of taking away the other kid’s plates before they’re completely finished. Or, they’ll yell at the other kids to hurry up, “O feditse? O feditse?” (You finished, you finished?) And then before they have a chance to answer yes or no, they’ll take the plate, schlop whatever is left into one bowl and pile the rest together. I would say something about this system, but I see it a lot and it’s not anything new or unexpected. As my mum would say, “tootie fruity” (mum language for oh well). Finally I finish with Paul, clean him up a little, give him a wee bit of water from the community cup and give his plate to the class leaders who rush the plates back to the kitchen to be washed and ready for lunch. The rest of the kids take this time to go to the bathrooms while Paul takes a seat on the floor right by the door and returns to playing with his toes/clapping/laughing/chewing on his shoe. (Yes, I know that chewing on one’s shoe is not necessarily good for your health, so I do make an effort to take away his shoes as soon as he takes them off in the morning but he always ends up chewing on something. So the difference is when he chews on his shoe in front of other educators he doesn’t get screamed and swatted at with a belt like he does when he starts gnawing away at a chair or table.) As the kids arrive back from the restrooms (my super fancy word for brick surrounding a hole in the ground, literally), they wash their hands in the water bucket filled with oodles of laundry detergent (soap is soap right?) and towel off and sit down back in their seats. Then they stare at me for a little while as I consider my options. Option A, give them the leggos and let them build things for a couple of hours but risk a leggo throwing war or option B, which is give half the kids the puzzle blocks and the other half their beadwork. With option B I know that at least half the kids will stay occupied so I go with that one and hope for the best. (I know some of you are thinking that I should have more options than this. Hm, have you ever been stabbed with a crayon? Yeah, it looks blunt and painless, but that mo’ fo’ hurts, man! And I don’t speak enough Swana to actually do anything besides coloring or the above mentioned options with them.) I pull out the bowls of beads and the puzzle blocks. I put the puzzle blocks on the rug and half the class heads that way. I prepare some string for the other kids and let them get to work making strands of beads. It’s now nearly 10 a.m. I relax for exactly five minutes before I see one of the kids has taken off his belt and is threatening to hit another kid with it. Ugh, I take it away from him. Then another kid starts screaming for no reason. He just likes to scream. One kid is pelting him with the puzzle pieces and that just makes him scream louder. I stop the throwing of the puzzles and try to get Mr. Screamer interested in the puzzle games. It works for a second but then I look over and I see the same child that had the belt now has a feather duster and is swatting Paul on the head. I rush over and take it away from him, I look him in the eye and tell him, “No,” in English, which I know he understands all too well. He smiles and tries to look innocent. The kid who was previously screaming is now saying “No,” repeatedly and is flashing the middle finger at everyone. I’m not sure if this has the same meaning in South Africa as it does in America, but still, I tell him to stop. He stops, but then starts saying, “Mme, mme,” which is Swana for “ma’am” and is pronounced like “ma,” and tapping me on the shoulder over and over again. To play with him a little, I tap him repeatedly on the shoulder and say, “eng, eng, eng?” (what, what, what?) and he thinks this is funny, which I appreciate for a moment until he begins to think this is a fun game to play and I start to get annoyed. This goes on for a couple of minutes until another child shows me his shoe and a shoelace and says something that I think means that he wants me to re-lace his shoe. I take his shoe and begin to re-lace, then the kid who was screaming, then tapping me on the shoulder (his name is Terrance) starts screaming again. I look up and realize that the kid who had the belt and the feather duster has now found the scissors. I get up to take them away but he runs too. The classroom is small but has obstacles so it takes me a minute to catch him and take them away from him. In the meantime, Terrance and another child have begun imitating wrestling moves which pretty much means that Terrance is sitting on this kid’s head. I pull Terrance off and tell him to stop it. He mocks me like a parrot and continues tapping me on the shoulder and hopping. The other kids who have been doing their beadwork during this time have stayed pretty much to themselves. One kid stares at me, smiles and occasionally laughs the whole class. He gets a kick out me trying my non-violent approach to discipline. Then the kid who has had the belt, the feather duster, and the scissors now has another belt that the educator who is normally in this classroom has to keep the kids in check. I usually keep it on a higher shelf because I don’t believe violence is the way to keeping kids in line, and unfortunately, the kids know this and use my morality against me by being really bad around me when they know there is no one that is going to try to hit them. He’s swatting Paul while Paul claps his hands with his pants around his ankles. I have no idea how this kid’s pants came down, but I take away the belt and pull up Paul’s pants and look at my watch. It’s almost 10:45 I consider holding the belt for the next thirty minutes till lunch time but then I’ll be giving them the impression that I might hit them which theoretically means, they win. Junior class-1, Ausi (Sister) Dineo-0. I will not go down like that. So I put the belt where I hid the other belt, the scissors, and the feather duster. Ha. Take that! I sit back down for a minute and take a quick count of the children. 5, 6, 7, 8…Oh crap. I look at the door and alas, it is unlocked and ajar. They have escaped. I instantly know who is missing. The only child who is tall enough to reach the lock, and this other kid Vero, who doesn’t talk apparently, the educators say, because he has epilepsy (yeah, I know, doesn’t correlate for me either). I look out into the yard and sure enough, I see the tall kid with two rolls of toilet paper walking around the yard. Grr, he took my toilet paper too. I open the door and yell for him to come back. I look around for Vero but no sign of him, he usually wanders to the kitchen because he’s always hungry. He’ll be fine there. I yell out once more and then let him be. If he needs sun, who am I to deny him? The school yard gate is locked anyway. I close the door again and the wrestling has resumed. A kid, Thabiso, who until this point has been sitting in his chair acting very calm (which is new for him) has decided to join in. Two boys are sitting on a kid with quadriplegia. Ah! I rush over and pull them off of him. He’s laughing but I’m getting a headache. I tell the boys to stop fighting. I don’t know if they really understand but I figure that even if I could say it in Swana, I would not be able to get through to them. Eh, I try to distance them from each other as much as possible, but I know that as soon as I turn my back, they’ll be on top of each other again. The door stars banging. I look over and through the bars I see the tall kid and he’s pulling Vero by the arm and screaming, “Gogo! Gogo!” (Grandmother! Grandmother!) I go over to let him in and somehow he’s lost the two toilet paper rolls and is covered in grass. I don’t think about the possibilities. He comes in, sits Vero on top of the table and then hands me the community cup. I refuse it, and he lets go of it and the water falls all over my skirt. Great, now I’m cold. It’s 11 a.m. He runs back outside and I close the door. Oh well. Maybe he’ll find another educator and bug them for a couple of minutes. Again, screaming. I look back towards the rug and Paul is being kicked by the child who had the belt/feather duster/scissors/other belt in the face. I pull him away, look him in the eye again and tell him to stop. He has to stop now, right? I try to find my Zen as he smiles at me, and promptly continues to kick Paul. I will not hit this child. I will not hit this child. I will not hit this child. Every child is beautiful. I will not hit this child….. hold him further back and try simultaneously to move Paul away from the kicking range of this kid. As soon as I let go of his shoulders, he moves back over and kicks him in the crotch, and I notice again that Paul’s pants are down. What the f...? I decide this child needs a time out. Time out is a constructive disciplinary action, right? I look around the room and since it’s basically a 15 foot by 15 foot square, I decide that the only place that a time out will probably be halfway effective is if he is on the outside. So I lead him to the door, unlock it, and put him on the other side of it. Now, you think about what you did… He looks pathetically through the bars as I simultaneously watch him and the rest of the kids. It’s calmer. An eerie calm. I know it won’t last, but I enjoy it anyway. 11:15 a.m, lunch time. Finally. Two of the kids who have been doing the beadwork bring their strand for me to tie. I turn my focus away from my feisty boys and try to quickly tie the strands. When I look back up, five minutes later, I realize that my kid who was supposed to be in time out has disappeared and Paul still has his pants down. Oh, oops. I pull back up Paul’s pants, tighten his belt, and go over to look for my missing kiddie on the outside. I stick my head out the door and there is no sight of him or lunch. Damn. Another ten minutes pass. I hear the latch of the door trying to unlock and I look over to see that the principal is returning my escapees (Oh, you shouldn’t have…really). I tell her about my plight with my wannabe wrestlers and she asks me for the belt. I consider briefly whether I should tell her where it is and encourage her violent disciplining, but she finds another stick-like thing for pointing and goes to the boys and starts speaking rapid fire Swana, telling them to settle down and go to sleep, “Robala! Robala!” (Sleep! Sleep!) Ha, I think in my head, good luck with that. I’m tried the “nap time game” and it does not work with these kids. Too smart for that trick Lehoa (white person), they think, as they look at me demonstrating the sleeping position. She stays for ten minutes and I sit down while they’re calm. Ah, I can think again! Fabulous. Then her phone rings and she leaves. Ugh. Lunch, where are you? Please come. Lunch, lunch… Finally, at noon, lunch comes, not a minute too soon. The kids wash their hands, dry off, I try to beg Terrance to just sit and eat but he decides to play Duck Duck Goose by himself with everybody’s head while they eat and nobody really seems to mind, so I set my mind on feeding Paul. Now, Paul’s fed, the kids are finished eating and I send them out to play. “Tsamaya!” (Go!) And they do. The room is a mess and I’m still wet from the water and smell like the kids do (read: not good). But, hey, I survived. One day down, about 402 school days to go. And people wonder why I’m so pessimistic about survival...

Peace Corps Volunteers do this really weird thing every time they meet for the first time. I remember the first time I encountered this kind of interaction was when I was at Staging (pre-training orientation) in Philadelphia prior to flying to South Africa. I remember that day like it was yesterday… I left Houston early in the morning and arrived in Philadelphia still a little shaken and dazed from the combination of sadness, anxiety and lack of sleep from the night before. I somehow gathered my two checked bags, added them to my stack of carry-on luggage and got on a taxi. There, I encountered my first fellow trainees. They were nice, I thought. We talked about how we got to this point and how we felt about South Africa. It was an easy conversation and felt nice actually knowing someone else that had been crazy enough to try this out as well. We got to the hotel, checked in, found some other trainees and decided to go to lunch. At lunch the conversation focused on packing, leaving home, and the voodoo witch doctors that we feared lay ahead in South Africa. We got back to the hotel right before our orientation session was about to begin. Orientation was overwhelming. I don’t understand why Peace Corps does this orientation in-country. I figure it is a last-ditch effort for Peace Corps to weed out those that are truly skittish about service and maybe save some money on the international flight if someone does bow out. A couple of times I decided that I was in way over my head and, just to make things worse, had packed completely inappropriately. It was not a fun feeling. However, after orientation was over things got worse. I officially met my roommate for the night in our shared hotel room after orientation and immediately disliked her (I can say this now because I’ve decided her feistiness is fun, not annoying like I thought at first). However, since my feelings towards people when I first meet them are either dislike or fear, I decided to give her more time before making my final decision. So awhile later, everyone met up for dinner. We walked the streets of downtown Philadelphia until we saw a sign that said “Free Wine” and like moths to a flame, we entered. The restaurant wasn’t bad and the wine was actually pretty tasty. We divided up into four-person tables and ordered food and chatted. It took less than twenty minutes to realize that this was going to be an awful dinner. It began innocently enough, why did you want to join PC? What are you expecting from South Africa? What do you want your assignment to be? Which were all fair enough, until the conversation stopped being a…conversation, and turned into a formal interview. Suddenly, each person was expected to explain (in detail) each and every professional, academic, and volunteer experience they had before this moment. Then that turned into trying to “one-up” each other with knowledge about South Africa and/or HIV. I tried to change the subject to something a little more light (i.e, not something that made me want to gorge my eyes out) and asked if anyone planned to visit home during their stay in South Africa. Suddenly, I transformed from the quiet, uninterested one to Enemy. Each person at my table looked at me with disgust and literally turned their noses up at the very idea that our two years of servitude be interrupted for a foray back to America. How dare the thought! After an hour or so of glares, I found a way to escape and as soon as I got back to my hotel, called my parents and boyfriend and told them I was coming home. The feeling subsided as I explained what happened and my boyfriend gave me the sound advice of “screw them.” Thanks, babe. Now, a couple of months later, I still find myself in said conversations when I encounter new PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers). It’s agonizing. I don’t understand why my fellows in peace need to be so damn uppity. Was that a secret requirement that I was not aware of? Sometimes I can understand how this can happen. I know that in Houston I liked to tell people that I was going to join the Peace Corps. It got me out of a early termination fee from my cell phone company and got me out of one (ok, two) traffic tickets the month before I was scheduled to leave. I enjoyed the look that people gave me when I told them that I was moving to Africa. It sounded cool. And, people were always telling me how “selfless” and “brave” I was. I tried not to let it go to my head, but I see now how it affected others. Perhaps my feelings towards the whole thing came because sometimes I really don’t know how I became qualified to be here. Sure, I’m adaptable and well-traveled; I’m moderately friendly and patient; and, which is probably most important to qualify for service, I’m pretty healthy. But surely there should be more to being a Peace Corps volunteer than that, right? Well, whatever it is, I really doubt I have it. So if near dimwits like me can get into Peace Corps, why try so hard to prove that you have the brains to get in? It’s not that hard. Most things that I’m going over with the people I encounter so far have been more along the lines of “No, you shouldn’t eat food off the floor,” and less along the lines of Astrophysics. There’s this one in particular volunteer that shall remain nameless that came to training and was always trying to tell us the “right” way to do things: go with this cell phone company, do this on kumbis (public taxis), don’t eat that. However, now said volunteer, unfortunately, lives by me and makes very public proclamations about how he’s never at the schools he’s assigned to or even in his village. And, I bet he was one of those volunteers that sat at staging trying to prove that he was better/more qualified than any one else. Puke on him. At least I make an effort of going to work even if it usually only consists of explaining the diet of Americans or the fact that America is not on the African continent. So where am I going with all this? I’m not quite sure. But, thinking about all this makes me wonder if I enjoy being with my South African or American colleagues more. Sure, it’s nice to not be berated for speaking English when I’m around Americans, but there’s a since of enjoyment/fulfillment I get from explaining things that I consider simple but some haven’t ever considered or been made aware of. And, come’on, it’s kind of funny that the only time I’ve ever really, really considered going home was when I wasn’t even around any South Africans or not even in South Africa! Now, that really says something, right? It puts my frequent rants about South Africa in perspective and makes me think that maybe it’s not as bad as I think. Hey, maybe I can do this! Hm, who would have thought? Ha

Every Tuesdays and Wednesday, I pull myself out of bed, get dressed and walk myself to the Pankop Home-based Care and Drop-in Center. Sometimes (ok, most of the time) it’s quite uneventful. I sit and daydream while people talk in Setswana around me and I wait for a guy named MmmmPaul (I know his name isn’t spelled like this but it makes it funnier for me to think that it is).This dude never shows up. I met him once a while back when I went by the center after school let out to let him know I’d be there the next day. He gave me a lecture because I stood while I talked to him. “Dineo,” he told me, “you shouldn’t stand while speaking to a man.” Ha! My mind said, but I decided not to argue and willed my legs to sit. He told me he wanted to have a big meeting with everyone who worked at the center and formally introduce me to the organization. He made grandiose plans that I knew, because this is Africa, would never work out and said to come by at 9am tomorrow. I said my goodbyes and left. At 9am the next morning, MmmmPaul was nowhere to be found. So, I cooked with the ladies at the center who made food for the school children and for the adult learners. It wasn’t too bad. Finally, at 11:30am, I was told MmmmPaul would not be coming in today. So I was given some food (a day doesn’t start off well without a plate of bogobe!) and watched a lame Nigerian film with a couple of other ladies who were “working.” It’s been nearly three weeks since I’ve met MmmmPaul and we together decided working Tuesdays and Wednesdays would be best for everyone involved. I have not seen him since. So now every Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I wake up pretty much whenever I want to (which in Africa, is usually no later than 8am for reasons unknown), get dressed, and walk myself to the center only to be turned right back around by the ladies at the center. “Come back tomorrow,” they always say. However this Wednesday, in a defiant I will work today attitude, when I was told, “MmmmPaul isn’t coming in today,” I said ok, smiled and kept my ass in the chair. There was some Setswana chatter I’m pretty sure was about me, and then I was told to stir the chicken. So I stirred. Since it was late in the morning, most of the cooking was done so as the clouds darkened, the social circle that I had sat myself in began to move into the office. Although a part of me said that I’d made my case and could/should probably be leaving, I stayed and thought, What the hell, let’s see what happens after the cooking. As everyone settled into the small office, somebody popped a dvd into the player and on came a recording of a street performance somewhere in Johannesburg. Damn, I thought, jibberish…at least the Nigerian films are in English. I watched anyway. At some point someone came to me with a bowl of bogobe and I began eating. I distracted myself from the boringness with the occasional glance at the TV and a lot of daydreaming of pizza and showers. Then, thankfully, the film was over and I was halfway through my bogobe, which I consider a victory, and was about to excuse myself when suddenly rain started gushing down and the temperature dropped at least fifteen degrees. I considered walking through the rain but my beautiful handbag and my inability to explain a good reason why I had to leave right now made me turn back to my half-eaten bogobe and put my bag back on the ground. I was stuck. Then suddenly, I heard American music coming from the TV. I glance over and do a double take as my mind processes what I just saw. Why is that woman on her knees? What is that…and then I read the script over the image, “Big Black Meat” and it all hit me. PORN! Hardcore porn. I turned towards the other ladies and must of given them quite the expression because they laughed at me and said, “Dineo, are you ok with the pornograph?” I hesitated only a moment. Was I being tested? How should I react? There aren’t any kids around, well, besides myself. How would Peace Corps want me to react to this? As the questions swirled in my head, I found myself faking cool and saying (whilst smiling, of course), “No, no. It’s cool. Ke siame (I’m good.).” Lie. All lies. As I turned back to the TV, I thought more deeply about the scenario I currently found myself in. I resisted texting every PCV in my phonebook for some guidance and wondered if I should actually try to watch the film with interest along with these women I barely know or glance casually at the TV like it’s nothing, “Oh, Big Black Meat Two is so much better,” I could say as I roll my eyes. I looked around the room as casually as I could muster and saw that all the women had resumed watching the TV like it was Oprah and were back to eating their bogobe. I stared down at my bogobe and back at the TV where an Asian housemaid was showing the camera parts of herself that I don’t even want my doctor seeing. I couldn’t eat anymore. I put the bowl of bogobe down. I tried to act casual. I didn’t know why I was so shocked. It’s just a little porn. I’m 23 and I’m in the Peace Corps. Surely I can handle a little “Big Black Meat”…at work…in Africa. South Africa just got a lot more weird. However, as I tried to play cool, I found the relaxed nature of everyone during the film was more surprising than anything. About 20 minutes in, a man came by to sell some blankets. He came in, greeted everyone, said something about the blankets, some of the women felt the blankets and decided they were good, found some money, paid the man, he said goodbye and left…all like there were not three penises on the very large TV screen. At that moment I really started to believe that they were testing me, “Let’s see what the ‘lahoa’ (white person) does when we put on porn. It’ll be so funny!”Another ten minutes passed as men and women came in and out to use the restroom in the office and only one woman mentioned anything about the fact that we were watching porn…at work. It didn’t even seem shocking to her. It was just, “Oh, pornograph.” It was kind of like she was at the zoo and had just seen the lion cage, “Oh, lions.” And then she left. As the storm roared on and the sex onscreen continued, suddenly things were silent. There was a commotion as everyone wondered where the sound had gone. A few women tried to push the buttons on the two remotes that controlled the TV and dvd player but all they were able to manage to do was to restart the film. More Setswana erupted as they tried to get back the sound and to the place where the film had left off. As they scrolled through the chapters, the sound was nowhere to be found so the film was paused mid-sex scene and there was some yelling to someone outside. After awhile, a man came and they explained the situation to him and he pushed a couple of buttons without success. I couldn’t believe it. It was porn. Sound in porn never really made any sense to me in the first place. How many times does one need to hear “Yes, yes, right there,” before it gets old? But these ladies were intent on having the sound back on. I guess they wanted to hear what happened in the lame and poorly-scripted storyline. I would have offered to narrate a story of my own, but wasn’t eager to add “Adult film scriptwriter” to my list of skills. And then, just as suddenly as it began, it was over. The ladies resigned themselves to the fact that the dvd was not going to work and after a minute the rain stopped and I downed my tea and made my exit. I laughed to myself as I walked home.Never a dull day.

Everyday that I go to work at the school, I have to explain my perspective on two topics: food and religion. This week, it started off innocently enough and then turned into something completely different. I walked into the kitchen just like any other day and greeted the cook and two educators that were standing around drinking coffee and eating Fat Cakes. I took a seat and proceeded to watch one of the educators slather his bread with mayonnaise as if it was butter.

(Note to self: Never eat mayonnaise again. More on my plight with mayonnaise in a later post.)

As I tried to hold down my breakfast, an educator, Rosina, asked me what I did this last weekend. I ran down my short list of things I did (which always borderlines on nothing) and asked her what she did. She told me she cleaned on Saturday and then went to church all day on Sunday. Thus began the interrogation:

Rosina: So don’t you go to church?

Me: No. (Smile)

Rosina: Why not? Don’t you believe in JESUS?

Me: I used to go to church all the time. (Smile)

Rosina: So why don’t you go now? Why don’t you tell us so that we won’t have to go anymore either? (snicker)

Me: I try to do more of a daily practice kind of thing. (pulled that one out of my ass)

Rosina: Oh, so in YOUR religion you don’t have to go to a church?

Me: Uh, well, yes…but in Buddhism…(beginning to sweat)

Now, this made me think about my stance on religion and I put myself back in my recruiter’s office many years ago. I remember her asking me about being in “religious” countries and asking what my reaction to living in a country that would practice a different religion than mine. I remember enthusiastically ensuring her that it would not be an issue, “I’m very open to learning and living in different conditions in religious countries.” I said with a smile wearing the $175 suit I would later return. Honestly, at that point I was so miserable that I would’ve given a bullshit answer to anything, “Sure, I’ll eat nothing but sheep insides if it means I can do it in India.” I wanted out and I was going to get there even if I had to wear a burqa for two years. Plus, I needed to keep the act up for her because the first time I met her I was wearing a “Cerveza Por Favor” shirt. (Ok, oops. It was laundry day.)

Anyway, two years later, sitting in that kitchen I thought to myself that though I didn’t want to cause any unnecessary conflict, I was going to have to try to represent myself honestly if I was ever going to survive this game for two years. I couldn’t pretend that I pray before every meal or lie about attending church. So, as carefully as I could, I explained that honestly, I didn’t attend any church/temple/mosque of any kind and I simply tried to live a life with a Buddhist mind set. If categorized, I would identify as such. (But really, who likes to be categorized? Not I.)

I’m not sure what I said, but I said enough and she stopped asking me. We went on with our day.

Later that afternoon, as I find myself back in the kitchen helping with the daily churning of the bogobe (which proves to be quite a brutal task and keeps my arms sore for days), the cook asks me about food in America with that “crazy white girl” look as I begin to sweat and clearly show that I am not one that has suffered for bogobe before. Trying to hide the strain in my voice, I tell her that no, we do not eat bogobe in America. I hope that the conversation ends there, but alas, it never does.

Side note: For those of you not in the know, bogobe also known as “pap” is a thick white corn meal that looks very much like mashed potatoes but is completely (yes, completely) tasteless and is very, very stiff. It actually looks a little like Play-Doh, and is typically eaten with the fingers and is served at every meal. Yes, every. In other countries they have these things called “staple foods,” a concept that Americans don’t bother with because we, honestly, have a very little attention span and thus have taste buds that need to be stimulated with new and different food every time we sit to eat. In most countries I’ve found that some form of rice is the staple food, or something made from bananas/plantains. Anyway, bogobe, from what I’ve heard, was created back, back in the day as a cheap and easy form of food. It requires only finely ground corn (called “millie meal”), water, and lots of arm power. 50 kilograms (about 100 pounds) of it costs about R180, or $20, and can feed a family of 4-5 for a month. However, it lacks any nutritional value and is very, very filling (and, from what I’ve seen doesn’t need to be refrigerated after cooking.)

Anyway, back to the kitchen, churning the bogobe with a wooden spoon that looks like something from Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, I try to explain that in America we don’t really have a staple food. This baffles the cook and she temporarily forgets that I’m ruining the precious bogobe as she contemplates the concept. She asks me if we ever eat bogobe. I say no. She asks me if we eat rice. I tell her sometimes but it depends on the meal. She doesn’t quite understand this. As the strain in my face shows that the bogobe is thickening, she snaps out of her bafflement and returns to stirring the bogobe with such ease it makes me laugh. It’s hard, really it is.

As she finishes the bogobe and assigns me to tend to the chicken (a task I enthusiastically trade for the bogobe), she tells me that from now on I will need to make the bogobe by myself so that I can take it back to America and show Americans how to cook it. I smile and tell her I’ll try but leave out the fact that the lack of nutritional value and tastelessness of bogobe will probably keep it from becoming very popular. Together we put together the plates for the school kids and as she prepares the meals for the staff, she laughs with another woman as she points to the portion of bogobe that her and I decided would be sufficient for me (which still takes half the plate and will leave me feeling bloated and gross for the rest of the day) and says that I need to eat more so I can get fat and my family at home will see that South Africans liked me. I fill my mouth with bogobe before I can say something inappropriate.

As we sit down to eat, a male educator tells me to say grace. Quietly, I sigh to myself, and tell him that I don’t know grace. Smile. He laughs at me, says grace and as our fingers plunge into our bogobe, he starts with the religion factor again. At this discussion, the deputy principal is present and because we’ve already had this discussion, I don’t contribute much but instead smile and swallow as she reiterates the discussion we had before (where she concluded that I’m Hindu against my parent’s and boyfriend’s wishes) and they both stare at me with the “crazy white girl” look that I’m often given. Luckily the conversation turns from English to Setswana/Sepedi/ Venda and I take that as I sign that the discussion of my love for JESUS has ended and I can return to daydreaming about pizza and hot showers.

However, because there is still much time to sit around after lunch but before we’re allowed to leave the school grounds, we move outside to enjoy cold drink (aka, soda) under a tree. The conversation continues in a local language and I watch the kids “play” but what looks more like walking around aimlessly, and then suddenly, someone is trying to get my attention, “Dineo! Dineo! [Something in a language I don’t understand]” Smiling, I turn back to the group and they’re all staring at me and the principal, my scary supervisor, is asking me again about food in America. I think for a second about why I may not be getting through to them and change my approach to the subject: “Well, many years ago…” I start as I begin to explain the melting pot of cultures that is America. I try, unsuccessfully, to explain it along the lines of the migration of the different groups into South Africa, but end up just saying that we eat rice. Yes, rice is our staple food. Why not? Everyone likes rice, right?

And then, like clockwork, my principal asks what my boyfriend eats since she knows that he is a black American. Well, I say, he eats the same as me, which in this case is rice. “Hm, but his mother doesn’t know how to cook bogobe?” I’m asked. “No, I don’t think so,” I respond, smiling. Always with a smile. She thinks for a second and I try unsuccessfully to analyze her expression (stupid drawn on eyebrows). Then, in a move that couldn’t have been better scripted she asks if he (meaning said boyfriend) has a problem with my lack of JESUS in my life. The question is so sudden I can’t stifle my laugh and as seriously as she asked the question respond with, no I don’t think so. Suddenly, a strew of questions from onlookers: what about our future children?; what about when you get married?; what does his mother think?. I want to say something clever and funny, if not a bit sarcastic and feminist, but thinking in my well-trained “What would Peace Corps want me to say?” mind I simply say, “Well, I don’t know. I’ll have to ask him,” and finish off my cold drink. And bam, just as suddenly as the conversation began, it was over.

I find that the longer I’m here in South Africa, particularly in my Itty-Bitty Village in Mpumalanga, South Africans are beginning to ask me more and more direct questions about Where I Come From, or as they call it, that side. For example, “In that side, how much does a man give his bride’s family for her?” Most of these questions come whilst I’m in the kitchen, helping cook.

I should stop here and make a quick note to anybody who’s never had the misfortune of seeing me attempt to cook, that I am not a skilled cook. Quite the opposite, actually. Many scars on my body (seen and unseen) can be attributed to my unsuccessful cooking attempts. However, since my arrival in Africa, I’ve felt a unexplainable gravitational pull to the kitchen. It’s exciting to see what you can do without the help of Betty Crocker and/or a phone to order take out. (Ha, my friend once told me how to cook a cake from scratch and I was amazed when it wasn’t as simple as “buy a box of mix, add egg and water and bake.” Wait, Betty Crocker isn’t the only once that knows the recipe for delicious dessert? Strange.) As a result, I’ve gained a little bit of knowledge in the subject and have had several successful cooking attempts since I’ve began cooking for myself. My mum would be proud. (Well, actually scared for my safety and anyone or anything near me, if she was being completely honest.)

Anyway, the kitchen and the women in it can be a friendly place if you offer to help and, in my case, stay away from knives. I have learned much about the organizations for which I volunteer and about the lives of women in this country and it gives them a chance to ask me anything they want about myself and that side.

If I earn a couple of battle wounds in the process, so be it.

I had to post this. Peace Corps people who watch me, sorry. It's funny. Get a sense of humor.

In this video, you'll see the wedding party dancing (particularly in light brown, the bride and groom) and you'll see the wedding planner in the red hat and two other highly entertaining dancers who decided to join in. Watch and laugh.

April 2009 066.avi

Complain about cold showers. If the water falls, I’m happy.Complain about the taste of tap water. It’s gotta be cleaner than what I get from the JoJo.Complain about road conditions in America. If it’s tar and is moderately pot hole free, it’s perfect.Say there’s nothing to do in Houston. Ok, Dad, I learned my lesson.Take pizza delivery (or Domino’s Pizza Tracker where you actually know what’s going on with your pizza. It’s brilliant!) for granted. I’m going to hug the next pizza delivery guy that comes to my door, “Thank you, pizza gods. Thank you.”Underestimate how nice it feels to walk into a bar and say, “Blue Moon please, in a bottle” and have it be ok with the bartender, the people around me, and my mother (who I’ll tell the story to later).Take for granted that my boyfriend doesn’t cheat on me, that my dad doesn’t cheat on my mum, that my uncles don’t cheat on my aunts, or that my brothers don’t cheat on their girlfriends, Etcetera, etcetera. Be picky about an apartment. “Oh my god, babe, look! It has a flush toilet and a shower with hot water! We’ll take it!” My boyfriend will have to go apartment shopping alone when I get back.Washing machines and dishwashers. Need I say more?Think to myself that my 2002 Mazda Protégé is old and needs replacing. My host family in Seabe has one car that required my host father to pour water and knock things around in the engine before trying about 30 times to start it before it groaned to life. Yesterday at the garage (aka, gas station) I saw some men pushing a car back and forth to get it started after filling it up with petrol. After a few tries it started, everyone jumped in and they were off. Oh, how I miss you, car. I will never call you old again!Say, “This is the most disgusting toilet I’ve ever seen!” Think that the line at the customer service in Verizon is too long. I had issues with my phone the other day and almost cried because I couldn’t think of anybody I could take it to who would fix it.Say there’s never anything on television. I have four TV stations which are usually pretty fuzzy and come through as black and white. But, I’m grateful and can always find something to watch when the need arises. Roll my eyes when someone suggests pizza/Chinese/hamburgers/Mexican for the second night in a row. Think the police department or government in America sucks. Ok, it doesn’t. Thanks, South Africa for teaching me.Underestimate how nice it is to have a nightlife that doesn’t include pajamas and my bed.

Most events are quite funny here in South Africa. Moments when I’m at a funeral, wedding, or Peace Corps event and something completely unexpected happens, are my favorite times in South Africa. Everyday there’s a possibility that something completely crazy is going to happen…most days something completely crazy does happen and my brain goes crazy trying to remember every single detail of what’s going on so I can write it down later. At a wedding last weekend… I really wish I could have video recorded every second of this wedding. My friend Anne and I went to a wedding in Seabe (the village I lived in during training). I had already gone to two funerals and thought a wedding would even out my “cultural experience” as Peace Corps like to consider them. We ride into the place in Anne’s host sister’s car. There are people all over the place. The house is quite small and off a dirt road. Everyone is seated outside in plastic chairs under the two big trees in the dirt yard. Instantly you notice that the men and women are separated. There are people in dressy clothes as well as people in jeans. Most kids have no shoes on and are covered in dirt. There is a big van with a plastic beer attached to it parked on the side of the house that’s handing out beer to people (kinda like an ice cream truck for adults). Opposite of the ice cream truck (on the women’s side of the yard), there is a big white tent that the wedding party hangs out in. It’s quite nice and looks very typical of a wedding in America. The bride and groom sit in on a throne-looking thing while they eat. The bridesmaids and groomsmen look awkward in badly-made Peptol Bismol-colored dresses and ill-fitting tuxedos. The serving of food is quite a process. You can tell that some people show up primarily for the food and for the availability of alcohol. Women stay up all-night cooking food for everyone. Usually a cow and a couple of chickens are slaughtered in celebration and it takes a lot of man (I mean, woman) power to do this. As the food is being put on a long buffet-style table, more women come out to assume their position to shovel food onto guest plates. The queue gets long quickly and many men and children cut in line so it’s usually a long wait to get through the food line. Anne’s host sister informs us of a hidden smaller buffet table in the bridal tent and we get in line for food. We’re given plates and as drunken men try to talk to us, we are pulled in and out of line by gogos (grandmother/older women) trying to protect us. It’s a delicate tango trying to stay in line and be polite, but keeping out of the reach of the drunken men begging for attention. When we finally get our food and sit down to eat, we’re constantly asked who we are, where we stay, where we’re from and if we’re having fun. Almost usually in that order. So, it’s: chew, chew, “Dineo…,” chew, chew, “Seabe…”, chew, chew, “America…” chew chew, “Ee! Monate…” swallow. Repeat. After the cow is eaten, the wedding party dances a really cool dance over to another house nearby to change into their traditional wear. During this time people continue to eat and drink. Anne and I are assaulted by a string of drunk men who don’t speak English and whose Swana is incomprehensible. They fall on us and they’re pushed away by Anne’s host mum and sister (and anybody else who deems it necessary to rescue us). When the bridal party is dressed, they dance all the way back into the tent. They have on really cool outfits that are nicely made and look way more comfortable. They finally settle into the tent after thirty minutes of dancing and have dessert and champagne. By this time, women have changed the tent decorations to more traditional fabrics and accessories. Presents are presented to the bride and groom and the family that surrounds the tent make “Ohh” and “Ahh” noises as they open up each present. We watch the drunken men make a mockery of themselves by dancing in the small area between the women and men’s sections of the yard. One particularly drunken man falls on me as another stares at my chest and asks me for my number. Once they’re chased away I see that another man is getting into a fight with the DJ. During all this, children stare at Anne and I as sober men and women ask us our details (who are you, where are you from, where do you stay, etc) After two hours, we’re exhausted from dealing with all the different factors and are driven home where I meet my host mother who has been entertaining herself with adult drink. The day before the wedding… Peace Corps hosted a party for the families that hosted trainees. A few trainees (myself included) spent the previous evening cutting up tons of squash, carrots, onions, and potatoes. The next day, a few other volunteers woke up early and joined a couple of volunteer family members to cook the food. The men, from what I hear, busied themselves cooking the lamb that had been slaughtered in honor of the event (including my host father, which interested me because I’ve never seen this man make his own tea, let alone, any kind of food). The women cooked and served everything else. The ceremony was set to begin at 11 a.m. Since we’re in Africa and thus on “Africa time” many people weren’t ready or hadn’t arrived yet at this time so the ceremony began near noon. A program was neatly typed up and placed neatly atop each seat (which was very loosely followed). As the program began with the training manager calling the place to order, the South African National Anthem breaks out. So we sing. Finally, the training manager (Victor) makes his announcements and the MC (Casey) takes over. She introduces the “important people” and each trainee introduces his/her self to the audience in his/her “target language” (which is something that you are never pre-warned about. It just happens, “Trainees will each greet themselves in their target language.” It’s a statement that makes me cringe just thinking about). So each trainee greets themselves and names their host family. As each trainee speaks, the training family that is recognized begins a bigger and bigger spectacle. It starts innocently enough, “Hello, I’m so and so. I stay in Seabe/Troya with so and so family,” then the trainee smiles, points to his/her family and they stand up, get a slight applause, smile, wave and sit down. Next trainee. However, as trainees go, the families try to “one up” each other. By the end of the introductions, the families are dancing up and down the aisles, “praising Jesus” and hugging and dancing with their trainee. It’s funny but what is supposed to be a ten-minute introduction turns into half an hour. Then someone bursts into song. So we sing. After the song, Casey introduces the two trainees who volunteered to make speeches in their “target language.” So, Amanda begins her speech in Setswana and after two or three sentences, Victor interrupts her, whispers something in her ear, whispers something to a language trainer, and then a language trainer stands up and tells Amanda to start again. Yes, from the beginning. Amanda begins again, but wait, first…a song. So we sing. After the song, Amanda begins again this time with an interpreter. So she talks, the interpreter interprets, we laugh at the right spots and applause her when she’s done. Then, of course, as she makes her way back to her chair, a song begins. So we sing. Casey introduces the next speech giver, David. He gets up and begins his speech. Victor interrupts him, whispers something in his ear, whispers something in someone else’s ear. The other person gets up and a song begins. So we sing. Another language trainer enters the room, rushes to the front, and stands next to David. Victor tells David to begin again. Yes, from the beginning. David begins again, the interpreter interprets, we laugh at the right points, and when he’s finished, we applaud him and then…a song. So we sing. The program continues with the person who’s supposed to be speaking beginning and then being stopped (song break!), an appropriate translator is found and the person begins again. Oh, but I mustn’t forget Victor turning off and on the mic which screeches and emits a static that makes it hard to hear anything (and I’m sitting in the second row) and giving it to the person who’s talking, the person holding it awkwardly or refusing it altogether. During this time, we’ve sang about 20 songs and the program that was supposed to be an hour has turned into two hours. The program trudges on. An American at one point made a very bad decision to have all the trainees sing an “American song” and because most of us refused to do “This land is my land” we begrudgingly decided to do “American Pie” because, well, it says American in the title, right? It’s a classic. So, we cut it down to two stanzas, congregate at the front, with no practice I must add, and begin the song. Immediately it is known that this was a very bad idea. Who are we to pretend that we have the voices of angels? We are Americans. We sing in the car or the shower when nobody is watching. We don’t sing like South African do: loud, powerful, and graceful. We didn’t sing at the beginning of each school day. We realize that we don’t have the natural singing ability of our host country nationals, cringe and continue anyway to screech through the song. To sooth the ears, a wise South African begins a song. So we sing. Finally as our stomachs begin to rumble, we present our families with certificates of recognition (during which another spectacle begins but this time loud house music is in the background and each family takes more time for their dancing/singing/praising Jesus performance), we (the trainees) get back up to sing the American national anthem (which we, thankfully, can do much better) and everybody finishes by singing “Shosholosa” which is a really nice song that is A, something we Americans can actually do well, and B, a really popular South African folk song. It’s in Zulu, I believe, and is about encouraging a train to go up a mountain…kind of like the Little Engine that Could in song. The program ends with Victor telling the families to get their food first, then the children, then the trainees. Finally, food. However, by the time we go through the line, most dishes have finished and we end up with limited choices of cold drink and food. We don’t mind though, we sit outside in some shade and laugh at the day. After we’re done eating, many pictures are taken with our families and random adults and children who just decide to jump into the shot. Then it’s over. Three hours later, I’m home. Ah, South Africa. Never a dull day.

(Editor's Note: This blog was created on March 29, 2009)

Training is almost over. I can’t believe it. I remember sitting in my bedroom a month and a half ago having a near breakdown thinking that I would never see this day. Now that it’s here, I feel like it wasn’t so bad. So, this is where the statistics stand after two months: 0- The number of trainees that have quit so far. I believe we are the only training class in the history of Peace Corps South Africa to not have anyone quit during training. We’re quite proud of this fact. We have one week left, but I feel pretty positive about maintaining this title. 1- The number of electronics I’ve killed thus far. I killed my MP3 player by dropping it into my laundry tub. Ok, oops. I really blame Victoria Secret for this one because….well, just because. 567- The number of men that have proposed marriage to me on the street. 567- The number of marriage proposals that I have turned down. 567- The number of marriage proposals that were revoked because I don’t know how to make (and don’t like to eat) pap. Sorry, guys. I like food that has flavor. 15- The number of minutes it took to get me completely addicted to Generations. 150-The number of primary school kids that laugh at me when I tell them my African name is Dineo Mashaba just like the evil character on Generations. 8- The number of letters I’ve written and sent off to America. 3- The number of roosters outside my window at 3 a.m. every morning making tons of noise. 5,897- The number of times I considered going home. 5,898- The number of times I convinced myself to staying. 58- The number of bucket baths I’ve taken since getting to South Africa. 4- The number of (very memorable) showers I’ve had since getting to South Africa. 12- The average number of times my host father says the word “nice” to me a day. 7- The number of books I’ve read since arriving. 3- Then number of dinners I’ve had that have included some really weird pieces of chicken and/or sheep, which are the times I had chicken neck, chicken feet and liver (in the same meal!) and that one time we had what I think was sheep stomach, which smelled so bad I did the worse thing I could possibly do and said no, thanks. 2- The number of funerals I’ve attended. 1- The number of weddings I’ve attended. I know there are tons more numbers I can give you. My time in South Africa has been filled with many incidents of blog-worthy events. Unfortunately, I think it’s a little much to write a blog everyday, especially since I can hardly find a good internet connection. Hopefully at site I’ll be able to write more often, especially since I’ll (hopefully) be spending more time alone. Tomorrow we get our results from our language interview, Tuesday we go to Pretoria to shop, Wednesday is an all-day policy “This will get you kicked out of Peace Corps” talk, then Thursday is our swearing-in ceremony and then…off to site. It’s going to be an interesting week.

So I just got back from my permanent site and….woah. It’s easy to complain about something that you had no say choosing and will be your life for two years. I know that other Peace Corps people will possibly understand, but to everyone else:

It’s like someone who barely knows you and you barely know, saying that you will spend the next two years in a place that doesn’t understand you, that you don’t quite understand yourself, that speaks a language you don’t understand, to live with a family that doesn’t understand you and that, likewise, you don’t understand, in conditions that you don’t understand, in a country that you don’t understand, and, doesn’t quite understand you…..AND work in an environment that doesn’t understand you, in an environment that you don’t understand.

So, get it?

Ha, yeah, well…welcome to life in the Peace Corps.

So, for those that are curious, I’ve been placed in a village called Pankop, an hour north of Pretoria. It’s in the northern edge of Mpumalanga near Limpopo, Don’t bother looking at a map for it. You won’t find it. I do hear that Google Earth has heard of it. Ha, maybe.

I’ve been placed with a special school that serves about 30 mentally and physically disabled children ranging from ages 5 to 25. It’s….interesting. The school is actually better than the other schools that I’ve been in the area. It has things on the wall, and enough money to feed every student two meals a day. The day begins with morning assembly at 8:45 where the kids sing about being special, “I’m special. I’m special….(something, something in Setswana I can’t understand).” Then breakfast follows, which lasts for more than an hour, then by an hour or two of lessons then break immediately followed by lunch. Then the van comes by and picks all the kids up and the day is done….at 1:30. Then the kitchen makes food for the staff, which takes about an hour, then everybody eats and gets tea. This happens Monday through Thursday. Fridays are a “sports” day, which consists of the kids walking aimlessly around the grounds instead of going to class, oh, and the day ends at noon instead of 1:30.

Throughout all of this, impromptu meetings are held to “introduce” me to “important” people. It usually goes something like, “Diiiinnneeeooooo!” (my supervisor calling me) then I come (quickly, musn’t keep her waiting) and I’m sat down in a chair, where rapid fire Sepedi/Setswana is spoken in a way that makes it hard for me to hear anything but “Dineo,” and “Peace Corps.” Then my supervisor tells me to greet whoever is there at the moment, I put my PCF on quickly, get up, greet, sit down, then more Sepedi/Setswana is spoken, then I’m asked to leave. Oh, I’m also usually asked what I eat, “O jele eng maabane phirimana?” (What did you eat last night?) and, reluctantly, I answer, “Ke jele bogobe le nama,” (I eat pap (gross porridge stuff that is tasteless and fattening) and meat) then whoever is around laughs at me, my supervisor laughs, and then I am asked to leave. This happens a couple of times a day, whenever the need to laugh strikes my supervisor.

Luckily, my supervisor was only around for one day, then left. I think she was really put off by my age and by the fact that I have no skills pertaining to beading, weaving, or sewing. Ok, sorry, but none of that is requirements for an American degree or for the Peace Corps. The first day I met her and her scary eyebrows, she asked me how old I was and when I told her she said I was very, very, very, very (very x 10) young. I think the fact that I’m short didn’t help my case (damn genes). Oh! She also yells at me frequently for not knowing Sepedi, despite the fact that I was “taught” Setswana….two completely different languages.

Oddly enough, side note, most Africans I meet are very disturbed by the fact that I wasn’t taught any African languages in school. I find this fact very interesting, mainly because these languages are not even spoken throughout South Africa, much less throughout the world. I think the only other countries where Setswana is spoken readily is Botswana, and even then, it’s pretty different. Yet, many people say they want to come teach African languages in America. Ha. Good luck with that, I say.

Anyway.

Most of the time I try to go with the flow and not let my supervisor get to me, but when I begin to think that this is how I’m going to have to live it gets really discouraging and depressing. Some times I think I can deal with it. I know that having her as a supervisor while I’m here, I’ll definitely get a lot of stories to share. Eventually, maybe, I’ll be able to figure out a way to deal with her and things will be better, but until then…

I think one of the two problems I face is being a complete and total outsider. I don’t know why I thought that integrating here would be like integrating into the Penn State community. Ha. I figured that Penn State is like 95% white and that I eventually adjusted to that and felt at home at one point. However, I don’t remember anyone ever clearly staring at me or feeling my skin or hair to see how it felt or moved. Well, that definitely happens here. Everywhere I went this last week I was stared at. I was stared at during a funeral for a community member, I was stared at while walking down the street, I was stared at while riding a taxi, going to the shop, everywhere. People didn’t even try to hide it! It was crazy. I didn’t have my sunglasses with me to feel a little more protected, but every time I looked up I saw at least 20 sets of eyes on me. Imagine painting your naked body neon green and walking around the streets of rural Kentucky holding a bag of cocaine and a bible….still, you will probably not get as much attention as I did this week. Believe me. It was so rough. I hated it. It’s so bad that when I walk with my host sister down the street, passing cars will slow down and stick his/her head out of the window doggie-style and stare as the car passes me. I’m like, damn…haven’t you ever seen a non black? Geez. It got the point that by Saturday I would cringe whenever I had to go out. I’m developing social anxiety disorder. Yay, a souvenir from my travels.

Oh, oh…I almost forgot the craziest part….I was called “lahola” which means white person. I’M NOT EVEN WHITE! Every time I heard it called, I would fight the urge to look around and say, “What? Where?” But then I realized they were talking to me! Hot damn. Crazy world. I was going to explain to my host sister and mother at one point that I’m not really white, but then I heard some of her friends making Mexican jokes, so I thought I’d just save the educational moment for another time. So, I’ll be white for awhile, whatev. I think the subject will come up when my other truly white Peace Corps friends come down to visit and they see how light a white person really gets. Then it’ll be like, “Dineo, do you have skin damage?” Haha. I’m excited for that conversation.

Anyway.

The other big issue is my name. Ok, so I know that in the spirit of cultural integration, it is customary to be given an African name, mine is Dineo. However, whenever I’ve told South Africans my real name, they always say it with no problem and even add a really cute rolled “r” at the beginning “Rrrrroze.” I love it. So, on my way to site, I decided that I would boycott my African name (sorry Dineo) and stick with Roze, just to feel more like myself. Well, that lasted about 2 hours. My supervisor figured out that everyone was given African names and demanded I tell her mine. I was scared of what new name she would create so I told her “Dineo.” So after that, I was reprimanded every time I introduced myself as Roze. Even my host family has forgotten that my real name is Roze. It’s quite sad. Add that to the fact that my new host mother thinks all my clothes aren’t appropriate, so she’s going to make me all-new African clothes. Roze has been sent back to America; I am now Dineo. Sad face.

It’s strange but I remember years ago when I was sitting at my initial interview for Peace Corps before I even graduated, I remember my recruiter telling me that Peace Corps will make you realize so much about yourself. I remember thinking that she’s crazy because I already know so much about myself, eish, was I wrong. It’s only been two months and already I know things about myself that I didn’t before.

So on Thursday, two years later, laying in my new bed thousands of miles from that office, hearing the pounding rain on the tin roof haphazardly nailed into the wood beams of my new room, feeling the rain begin to sprinkle into my new room from various points while the wind shakes the walls and the windows, I can’t help but think, what the hell was I thinking?

Luckily, I survived that night curled under my blankets by remembering that rain in this culture is actually a good omen. And, I am still here. Hanging by a thread.

The one thing that keeps me going is that older PCVs say things get better. They say eventually the stares will cease, a compromise will be struck with your host organization, enough language will be learned, and a somewhat normal life will be born.

It’s the only thought that keeps me going.

(Editor's note: This post was created March 11, 2009)

So yesterday we visited a middle school near our host homes. My group went to a middle school that served grades 7-9.

It was an interesting experience, to say the least. In some aspects, it reminds me very much of standard public school education in Texas (Thanks, Bush!) But, in other ways, it’s way worse than Texas public school. Unbelievable, but true.

The teachers don’t have desks. There are no neatly typed and printed handouts for each student nor are there any room decorations. There are barely enough desk space and chairs for the students in the room and a box serves as the trash can. Some classrooms don’t even have teachers; which means that students either use that time to do their homework, or as an extra break. Sometimes a teacher will peek his/her head in to make sure they aren’t killing each other.

Some of the kids are still pretty smart. They are learning English and have a pretty good grasp of the language just after a few years of being taught. In the education system, the students aren’t taught to think critically about problems, but to memorize facts and solutions to problems. I sat in on a math class and they were talking about triangles. I could tell they’d gone over the material before, and they had memorized the types of triangles and the difference between the lengths of each side for each side. The teacher then goes through a different, new, subtopic: quadrilaterals. The teacher goes through each type of quadrilateral and demonstrates by using the door as an example:

Teacher: Our door is an example of a type of quadrilateral. It has 4 sides. (She points to each side) This is side one, this is side two, this is side three, and this is side four. (She moves over to the chalk board) This chalkboard is an example of a quadrilateral. It has four sides. (She points to each side.) This is side one, this is side two, this is side three, this is side four. (Then she picks up a book.) This book is an example of a quadrilateral. It has 4 sides. (She points to one of the sides.) This is…

Students: side one. This is side two. This is side three. This is side four.

This goes on for several more things. The students repeat more and more each time and soon the class is in perfect unison. The class repeats the different types of quadrilaterals several times and then they take a break copy down the homework into their notebooks (again, no paper handouts).

I learned from education PCVs that this is a pretty standard way of “teaching.” I call it the “repeat after me” way of learning. I understand how it works, but in a language that isn’t a student’s mother tongue, I wonder if they’re really learning or just memorizing the words the teacher wants to hear to be correct. Like a person learning the words to a song in a language they don’t know.

This theory was tested in the Life Orientation class. The class was talking about environmental pollutants. One potential pollutant named was buildings because buildings may have snakes and broken bottles. Hmm…..ok. The way the children responded and the teacher reacted to each of the student’s answers, you can tell they had gone through it before and were merely repeating an answer they’d already learned and not thinking critically of the problem.

The teacher also asked what the problem with living in a landfill area was. Obviously, most of these children had never experienced this problem because in the village trash is burned by each family and most kids have only lived in this village. Landfills are only found in more urban areas. Anyway, the “correct” answer was that landfills make your eyes burn and there are flies near landfills. Ok, so this is true, possibly, but the bigger problems or risks were never accessed or even proposed.

So school day was definitely eye opening. To say the least.

The one thing that I have been incredibly amazed at each time we visit schools is the amazing ability these kids have to sing. There is a morning assembly and the kids usually sing a couple of songs together and it always, undoubtedly, sounds amazing. Truly, if Oprah were keen to it, surely she would have done an episode about it a time or two.

Hmm, I wonder if the kids in her “special school” in Joburg sing as well. Maybe it’s too Americanized for that. I would hope they do.

Anyway, after we left the middle school, we got lunch and then I came into my room to take a nap. I had the weirdest dream about going to a job interview with my underwear outside my pants. To make matters worse, a girl that I was with (in the dream) saw and tried to help by suggesting I take off my underwear diaper style (which is the only way I can describe it) and put them on under my pants, like they’re supposed to be. I couldn’t figure it out so I just went ahead with the interview as is. Scary. What’s that all about? The dreams are getting weirder and weirder as I spend time in this country. I know that Malaria treatment is supposed to make your dreams crazy, but I’ve been off that stuff for almost a month and a half now. I just don’t get it.Anyway, one more day till site announcements. Woo (or boo), depending on how you see it. I just want to get it over with. I’m done with the anticipation. Let’s get the show on the road!

(Editor's note: This blog was written over a two-day period, March 8 and March 9)

March 8, 2009

Today I found out that there is a definite possibility that I may hate my site. We had a meeting with the people that are choosing our sites and we found out that there is going to be a couple of volunteers placed in the same location that we are in now. It may not seem like that big of a deal, but we’ve spent the last month and a half just thinking that this was a temporary location, that we could leave here and go somewhere new. Ha, I think that a lot of us are born nomads, gypsies. But also, I don’t want to stay in this village. I’m getting more and more frustrated with my host family (namely my host father), and since this is a pretty small area, everyone knows everyone and pretty much everyone is related somehow to each other. So staying will pretty much guarantee that I’d have to maintain a relationship with them (him).

I’ve discovered that before training, I didn’t have very many expectations. I remember the first week we had interviews with upper management and I was asked what I expected in my site. I was taken aback. I had no fucking idea. During the whole Peace Corps process, I’d lost all sense of having a choice or an opinion in the matter of my life, so actually being asked was crazy. I quickly made up something. I don’t even remember really what it was. We also had a written questionnaire that we had to fill out, and I remember it listing examples of things our jobs could entail, and I remember saying that most of them were ok. Anything sounded better than being unemployed, which is what I would be if I were back in America.

But now, five weeks into training, I have expectations. I know more of what I want, mostly by learning about the things that I definitely don’t want. And, I definitely don’t want to stay here. And, I’m definitely not a small-town girl. Ha, who knew? Ok, I already knew that, but it’s definitely a sure thing now. I just love having tons of possibilities around me and knowing that I can have what I need when I want it. Oh, and I like living in places that are on a map or that Google recognizes as being valuable enough to warrant a search result. If Google turns up “no results” when a town named is entered, like Seabe or Marapyane is, then it’s not a place you will find me (on my own freewill. In Peace Corps, I have no say on anything). I trust Google to know the good places and if it’s not in the database, it’s not my kind of place.

Anyway…

So, doing the math…There are 11 of us that could possibly be put into the surrounding area. One site we know is going to a married couple. So, that leaves 9 of us to “compete” for 2 sites, which would mean that I have about a 20% chance of getting a site here. However, there are a few people that have expressed a sincere desire not to be placed here, so that leaves about…7 or 8, which makes my chances up to 35%. Plus, they said that one of the sites is with an organization that does home-based care for HIV patients as well as….a domestic violence shelter. So, I’m screwed.

Since I’m the only one that has direct domestic violence/shelter experience, and they go mainly by experience…I now have about (at least) a 50% chance of getting placed here. I only say 50% because there’s another girl that has expressed interest in working with victims of domestic violence. So, I feel like the spot will definitely go to one of us.

On the bright side, I do know this area and I have a good idea of what I’m in for if I stay here. Moving leaves a lot of variables. I could possibly be more optimistic if I knew that my site had such amenities as running water and electricity.

We know that a couple of people are going to more “urban areas” but my chances of getting placed in one of those areas, despite saying in my final interview that I wanted to be placed in an “urban area” are very (very, very) slim.

I’ve lost hope.

March 9, 2009

So I’ve slept on this new knowledge and thought about it all day. I’m coming to terms with being one of the unfortunate few that is not going anywhere (literally). I’ve began thinking of domestic violence as something that I am familiar with and wouldn’t be so bad.

I guess I even have contacts in the domestic violence world and could tap back into them if I really wanted to. I know I gave the agency I worked with a lot of crap, but I think what I may be going into is a lot (lot, lot) less developed and my knowledge would probably work. Hey, it’s a start, right?

I think, honestly, the electricity issue might be the hardest thing to deal with. I know I was said during my last interview that I didn’t want to have to fetch water, but stupidly, I assumed that we would all have electricity because all of the last group had electricity. Stupid, stupid.

Note to self: Assume nothing in the Peace Corps…anything is possible.

So, we’ll see. It’s become a little bit of a joke now, between the Setswana and Sepedi language groups. Mainly Setswana because we’re the ones at the biggest risk of being placed here. I’d be very surprised to see a Sepedi here. Most of us have decided to hate the Seswati and Zulu groups because they have gotten word that they’re sites are going to be awesome. They’re going to the mountains near Swaziland, where it’s said to be quite beautiful, and some may have the opportunity to work both in South Africa and Swaziland! We hate them.

The one downside to their placement is that it’s going to take quite a while for them to get to Pretoria (where the Peace Corps office is). Ha. Take that!

Ugh, I just want it to be Friday already. It’s so hard to know that they know and are being cruel by not letting us know. Honestly, site selection people listen up, I think it’s bullshit when they say that don’t know what site we’re going to be placed. I think that crap’s already been decided and they’re just waiting for the OK’s from all the right people. Most of it isn’t going to change. We’re all way too diverse in personality and skills to be that interchangeable. So, give up the charade and tell us already.

Woah, can you sense my hostility coming through? I feel it radiating.

Ok, really, I am frustrated by all this, but mostly it’s my host father and men in this country. (Ha, always blaming men for my troubles, ay?)

I don’t get it. I really wasn’t a feminist before coming into the Peace Corps, and the gender issue never even really came up or bothered me much until I got into this country. Now I always feel like it’s in the back of my head and I feel like the fact that I don’t have a penis is really going to get in the way of me doing well here.

It’s even portrayed in the way we’ve been trained. Sure, there are women that have come to talk to us, but usually they’re with a man and the man does most of the talking. When we have panels with community members, the men are always the dominate voices. Even with our Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitators (LCFs) we see how the men are dominate every discussion. Take for instance when a translator is needed between us and a community member, a male is asked to translate. Even if that LCF that is asked is my…unique (read: crazy and unreliable) LCF that leads my language group. But, he has a penis and therefore, he’s better than the women and deserves to stand up and give his own interpretation of what is being said while translating.

What pisses me off the most is that all the PCV’s (Peace Corps Volunteers) that come to facilitate workshops are mostly male volunteers! It makes no sense because there is notoriously more women in the Peace Corps and therefore more women in Peace Corps-South Africa. Get the problem, now?

Soo…I was pondering this issue while (another) male volunteer was regurgitating the same information that we’ve learned three times from three different male volunteers in previous weeks. The facts are that volunteers apply to present topics during training and are selected by the training staff (of which one, I think, is a full time employee, and you guessed right, a South African man). So the theory is that a South African man is selecting PCV’s who just happen (ironically) to be male. Is it because more males apply to present? My guess is no. From my count so far, we’ve only had 2 female PCVs come to present a topic to us. They had the shortest time slots and, I think, their time was also cut down by schedule changes. The few other female volunteers that came to training have been on committees and required to come. They don’t count.

When I was Australia, we used to call issues of this sort Penis Problems. Haha. P-Ps…Haha. It’s still kinda funny.

Anyway.

I should get off my high horse and deal with things the way they are, right? My new mantra for life is: It’s not bad, it’s different. It’s not bad, it’s different. It’s not bad, it’s different.

If I say it enough times, maybe I’ll start to believe it.

It’s not bad, it’s different.

Hmm, maybe it’ll take a few more times and see how it works.

Goodnight

(Editor's note: This blog was written March 7, 2009)

Dearest Reader,

So I’m sitting here in my room and it’s about 9 p.m. and I’m exhausted. I’ve been in my room since I got back from school. I watched Charlie Bartlett.

It’s easy to focus on the movie and just forget that I’m in Africa. I feel like I’m just lying in my bed in America just watching a movie like I used to in my pre-Peace Corps world.

But then, my host mum will begin yelling my name, “Dineo! Dineo!” and I snap out of it. Just like that, and then I can feel myself becoming peeved as I pull myself out of bed, and put on my “Peace Corps face” (PCF) and open my door with a smile. Then my host mum usually begins yelling fast Setswana and I look at her (smiling) and giggle my little girl giggle and try to figure out what the fuck she’s talking about. It’s usually something about my day, how I slept (South Africans are always wondering where you’re going and how you’ve slept. It’s weird. I don’t get it.), or…my favorite, she says, “Dijo, dijo.” And at first I thought I could say, (with my PCF on) “Nnya, ke a leboga. Ke siame,” (No thanks, I’m good.) but what I’ve come to realize in the month that I’ve been here is that she’s not asking me if I want food, but rather that she is asking me (or telling me) to make food. And…this is the oddest part, she doesn’t want me to make for her, but she wants me to make for her husband…my very “traditional” (read: chauvinistic) host father.

Oh wait, quick break for a language lesson!

In Setswana, asking/requesting/need is all the same word: kopa.

Ke kopa metsi = I need/request/ask for water.

Now, back to my story…

Today, I was sneaky. I kinda pretended I didn’t know what she was saying and just kept saying, “ee, ee…sentle!” (Yes, yes…good!) Which would be the expected response if she had asked me how my day was. (Ha, I love being a foreigner sometimes.) She was probably drunk (ok, to be fair, she usually just smells like alcohol, I’ve never seen her drink, but I am 23 and have been around a drunk person or two in my time so…draw your own conclusion), so she didn’t notice the difference, gave me a hug (which usually is more like a dance) and then walked away. Victory! America-1, South Africa-0

I was settling into the movie, about thirty minutes later, when my host Dad began yelling my name, “Dineo, Dineo!” I put my best PCF on and open the door and there he is. He says, “Dineo, did you enjoy Joburg? Yes, sentle. Sentle.” Since he always answers his own questions (he too usually smells of alcohol), so I usually just smile, nod, give him the thumbs up sign (something I’ve definitely began using A LOT) and repeat “sentle, sentle” (good, good) like a demented robot till he walks away. Sometimes to make my smile more authentic, I count how many times he says “nice” in my head and it’s usually a lot so it makes me laugh.

But anyway, today he said “You make us some eggs. Yes, make us some eggs and bread.”

Now this is the tricky part. I could: A) make eggs for the people in the house which, at the time of said conversation, was me and my host mum and him, or B) make him eggs, or C) say, “Make it yourself, old man,” and return to my movie. (If a train leaves Baltimore going 70 mph, and a train leaves Los Angeles going 80 mph, how long will it be before they collide?) Hmm…

In a normal circumstance, I would do C, however, in South Africa, I do B. See, I’ve learned that whenever he says anything pluralized like “us” or “we,” or even “you,” he usually means “me.”

Example:

Are you going to eat? = Aren’t you making me something to eat?

Dish out food for everyone. = Make me a plate.

(or in this case) Make us some eggs = I’m hungry and I’m a man and I can’t be seen in the kitchen so you, American, make me dinner.

So, no longer able to keep my perfect PCF on, I drop the act, pause my movie, and go into the kitchen to make him his eggs. In an act of passive aggressiveness, I add a little too much salt and instead of giving him warm milk with his tea, I give him powdered creamer. Ha. Take that! And to answer your question, no…it’s not a language barrier. Believe me.

After I deliver his food (on a tray!), I go back to the kitchen to get an apple for myself and when I pass the dining area, he says, “Cucumber, Dineo. A little bit of cucumber, yes yes, nice” and so I go back, cut some cucumber, deliver it (Anything else, dear father?) and retreat to my room. Where I’ve stayed for the last hour.

Now, I could stand up against him and say, dare I say, “No,” or “Nnya”, but after my host sister from Joburg came down a couple of weekends ago and told me she learned to cook because her father (my dear host father) used to beat her when she didn’t cook him dinner after she came home from school. Ohh, says little me, that’s…interesting. The rebel in me says I should say no just to see what happens (curiosity killed the cat), but in the interest of staying on the good side (or, more precisely, the invisible side) of my Country Director, I’ll just deal with it. 2 more weeks. 2 more weeks.

Speaking of my country director, I should now pause and say, “Ke rata South Africa!” (I love South Africa!)

Sometimes I write and forget that I’m being monitored. Damn Patriot Act. So, if you see me on the streets of America in a couple of month’s time, you know why.

Honestly though, writing is definitely my avenue that helps me work through all this stuff. And, though I’ve been known to be against censorship (cough-still against censorship-cough), I can understand how my little itty-bitty blog can impact a potential Peace Corps applicant/trainee/invitee/whatever from being excited for South Africa or for the Peace Corps. Ok , I get it. I don’t want to discourage anyone. (Ke rata South Africa!) But, I do want to tell the truth about my experience here.

So, I’ll end this and go to bed on a quote from a fellow trainee that I was advised to include on my blog after a “negative” post: “Despite all this, I’m still here!”

Poetic, I know. True just the same. I’m sticking around for another day.

Goodnight

(Editor's Note: These posts for the next month might be posted after they are written due to unreliable internet connection. This post is from March 1, 2009)

Hey ya’ll,

So it’s closing in on a month since I’ve been gone. Woo. One month down, 25 to go. Haha. It’s very different and very much exactly what I expected it to be. Does that make any sense?

I know we should be grateful to be able to get to the phones every couple of days and have some access to computers, but still, I feel really disconnected to the outside world. I even feel disconnected to the rest of South Africa outside of our little bubble of Seabe (the village I live in, which means “contributed to someone’s death”) and Marapyane (which is where the college that we have training at is). My family, surprisingly, has a TV and although the news plays every couple of hours and I watch it in Setswana and in English, I still only seem to get a very tiny bit of what’s going on around the country and the world.

I have gotten into a “soapie” called Generations that is on every night. It’s really trashy just like all American soaps. It’s my bonding time with my host sister-in-law. She’s pretty funny and tries to get me to understand all the background to the characters. There’s a chick on it that has the same name as my South African name, “Dineo,” which means gift in Setswana. It’s funny cause Dineo is really dumb, and, of course, married to an old guy who just had a stroke so now she’s sleeping with his son (who’s 30.) But at least she’s pretty. Haha.

Besides trashy SA television, I’ve learned so much about the South African culture. Like I’ve expressed to my Mum and Dad, I’ve learned the hard way about the importance of gender roles in SA when my host father told me to cook him dinner when my host sister was away one weekend. Of course those weren’t his direct words….I think what happened was my host mum called me: “DIIIINNNEEEOOO…..DIIIJJJOOOO!” Then when I came out of my room (5 inches away from where she was yelling) she kept saying, “Dijo, dijo…” and making the eating motion with her hands. Luckily, I pay attention in class and told her I wasn’t hungry, but that didn’t fly so I made food for everyone anyway. After that I’ve been “forced” to cook random things (usually beans and eggs cause that’s all we ever have in the house) a couple of times whenever my host sister-in-law is away.

It’s hard for me to see the clear and definite division between male and female roles because I’m very much not a traditional type of girl. Some of it is my inner rebel telling me that I don’t want to have to do something just because I’m a girl and the other part of me thinks that there should be a choice, which, most of the time, I don’t think there is.

I try very hard to be more obedient and to pick my battles wisely. I know that my family is awesome for letting me stay with them for two months and most of the time they just let me do my own thing so I just take it in stride.

So…speaking of picking my battles…

Good ol’ Uncle Sam is now feeding me and since I technically “work” for him now, there are new rules to my life…and to this blog. Boo. Yes, the Peace Corps is making me CENSOR my blog. Tragic, I know. It’s possible that I could have known this way before I came and been possibly smarter about some choices I made, but...I was much to busy to read the handbook so I just found out at staging. So what does all this mean?

I have to take the Peace Corps logo off my page.

I have to give the url to my country director and my blog is going to be “monitored” for unsatisfactory material.

I have to put a disclaimer at the bottom of my page saying, “The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps.” (Hahaha, well….duh.)

I have to be “culturally sensitive” with any content published on my site: “Volunteer-posted material should not embarrass or reflect poorly on the Peace Corps or on the countries where volunteers serve.” So…no bad talking about Kenya or Romania, but apparently, I can trash talk Cuba and Mexico all I want. Interesting.

So what all this means to you, dear reader, is that if you know me, and you read something that sounds unlike me, it’s probably based on these policies that I am now forced to comply with. And I would say that I could tell you in an email how I really feel about something, but apparently, the Patriot Act says that the government, and subsequently the Peace Corps, can monitor those as well. So I’ll just send you a pigeon. Monitor that, America! Ha.

Anyway….on a more serious note…I’m trying my hardest to adjust and it’s definitely a choice everyday to go straight into my room when I get home in the evenings or to socialize with my host family and with the neighbors. I have gotten used to spending the last hour or so of sunlight after I get home just drinking some tea, reading a book, eating a guava I picked from the backyard, and watching the sunset from my host family’s porch. It’s very beautiful and calming.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to some things, but I know that I can definitely learn from the simpleness of the culture around here. It’s slower, calmer, and more genuine in some ways and I definitely think Americans can learn a little about that from South Africa.

Sala Sentle.

Today I began thinking about packing for South Africa.

Early in the morning, strangely, I get really motivated to do things and can get a lot done before I begin feeling lazy again. I re-read the requirements for baggage and, after pulling out the luggage that fit the requirements, I realized that I will have to cut down. A lot.

Yesterday, after I got sent home from work. (Screw you, Diane.) I began throwing things out. It's easy to throw things out when you only give what you are about to throw out a second's thought. So let's say you see a shirt and even though it could be in style in two years, you know you haven't worn it for awhile, you just throw it out and move on. Bang. Just like that. After the decision process was completed with my closet, I threw everything into a black trashbag (2 big trashbags! Go me.) and hulled it downstairs. My closet is still on the full side, but I figure after I pack, I'll throw out more.

I know what you're thinking: Why throw things out when I'm going to be back in two years? Well, I've always wanted to be that person that can fit everything they own into a car. I definitely can't do that now (damn couch), but after the Corps, I probably will be able to. That's a cool feeling. And isn't it fung-shui to live with only the basics? Hmm, maybe that was a Buddhist thing I read...

Anyway, the packing has commenced and it isn't a fun process, folks. Good thing I'm unemployed and have the time to put some elbow grease into it. It's hard to pack when you have no idea what it's going to be like in Africa. Ok, ok, mad props to the Peace Corps, they do try by sending out a packing list and trying to give you as much background information as possible about your assignment, but the underlining message is: Hey, anything can happen. Be prepared.

So although I hate packing and unemployment is a little scary in this bad economy, it has made me more excited. It was strange. Until....9:30 a.m. this morning, I don't think I would describe myself as excited, but the more I cross things off my list and talk to Leroy about my imminent departure, I get more excited.

The way I think about it now: I'm unemployed. People more educated as me can't get jobs, so I'm going. No turning back now.

Welcome to my blog!

I know that this blog isn't very exciting quite yet, but I hope in the near future it will be. I created this blog in hopes that I can keep in contact with friends and family while serving in the Peace Corps/South Africa. Maybe I'll even make some new friends. Hmm, we'll see.

Anyway, I promise to blog as much as possible. I can't say what I have to say will always be interesting or blogworthy, but I'll write it anyway.

So...

Today is January 27, and I have exactly one week till I leave for South Africa. Can't exactly say what I'm feeling, but I know that I still have a lot of preparations to do. I continue to put anything PC related off, for no reason other than pure laziness. Ha. My life would be so much better organized if I could just stay on top of things. Ha. Oh well.