Monday, September 12, 2011

Now in South Africa...

And now a few words from Garideth

It’s September 12th now. We are slightly over two months in South Africa.  For those of you wondering why nothing has been posted it’s because we just now have a reliable internet connection and can finally update our blog.  A lot has happened to us here and we will try to summarize the events below.
On July 5th we flew from Idaho to Washington DC and spent a couple of days at a Georgetown hotel gathering the Peace Corps (PC) group together and being introduced.  While in DC Merideth and I were able to visit and have a nice dinner with niece Mickey Menard. There were fifty-seven of us in this PC group which is known as South Africa 24 or SA-24 because we are the 24th group of volunteers to go to South Africa (SA) since 1997 when Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton agreed PC would have a presence in SA.  The group mostly consists of recent college graduates with a smattering of us older folks and the makeup of the group is representative of the ethnic and geographic variety one would find in the general US population.  There are three married couples and about eight people over fifty.  The oldest volunteer was seventy.  Youngest was 22ish. Merideth and I are the only ones from Idaho.

From sultry and humid DC we flew to Atlanta where we boarded a direct flight to Johannesburg.  After 17 exhausting hours in the air we arrived here on July 8th as it got dark.  We are nine time zones away from where we started in Idaho.  When it is noon in Idaho, it is 9 pm here.
At the airport we were met by some of the staff from the South Africa Peace Corps office in nearby Pretoria which is the capital of the South Africa located about 30 miles north of Johannesburg. We then loaded our two bags each (up to 100 pounds total) into a large bus and travelled a couple hours northwest to Madikwe College, a small community-college type institution located near the resort Sun City.  Peace Corps was able to use the college facilities because it was during the school’s winter break.  Remember summer north of the equator means winter here.

Unloading from the bus, we were ushered into a large assembly hall where the Peace Corps training staff was awaiting our arrival.  This group included about sixteen South Africans who were hired as our language and cultural facilitators (LCFs) for the next two months.  The LCFs took the stage and proceeded to welcome us with a song.  Although we were exhausted from the long flight and shivering from the freezing cold in the unheated building, the magnificence and outright beauty of their singing was something none of us will ever forget.  This was our first taste of the singing tradition of South Africans.  In subsequent days as our training proceeded we were to experience this talent again and again in the schools and churches.

For the next five days we stayed at this site sleeping in unheated dorms rooms under a pile of blankets (it hovered at freezing overnight and hit about 65 degrees during the daytime), eating food provided by an Afrikaner catering company, and attending classes to introduce us to South Africa.  No cell phones.  No internet.  No leaving the grounds except when escorted in Peace Corps vans.  And we discovered that central heating of homes is rare. At the end of this week we were divided into language groups of four to six headed by an LCF (ours was Lebo), assigned one of four native languages to learn (ours was Setswana), and bused to a village north of Pretoria called Makapanstad.  This village is where Phase 1 of our community integration phase or pre service training (PST) was to occur.  

Upon our arrival in Makapanstad, we were matched up with host families who had agreed to house members of SA-24 for the next eight weeks. Our host family was Catherine Llale, a 69-year old widow with four grown children.  We called her Ko-ko which means grandmother.  She has a four bedroom house and off and on cares for her youngest son’s two young boys aged 2 and 4.  We were provided our own bedroom and right away got involved with cooking and other household chores.  The house has a small well (borehole) in the backyard and an elevated tank (a Jo-jo) that supplies water into the kitchen and bathroom of the house.  Out by the street there was a tap where my job was to fill 25 liter buckets and haul them into the house.  Because this water was better quality than the borehole water which was very hard, Ko-ko preferred that it be used.  In the back yard is a two-seater outhouse and a pit where all the household garbage was dumped and periodically burned. The bathroom and kitchen drainage goes to a septic tank in the back yard that only plugged up twice while we were there.  Our accommodations were average when compared to the other trainees.
For our required by the PC daily bath, we place a large plastic tub in the bathtub and using water heated in a 25-liter pail and a scoop, we stand in the plastic tub and wash.  It’s called a bucket bath and is not so bad once you get used to it.   It’s the way most South Africans grew up washing.
Makapanstad consists of about a thousand homes on more or less one-acre fenced tracts. Everyone seems to know each other with any news travelling through the village faster than imaginable.  The terrain is flat with grass and small thorny scrubs and trees.  A paved (or tar) road splits the village and provides the major route through the village.  All of the other roads are gravel or native soil (a red silty sand) and mostly ungraded and bumpy.  Random herds of goats, burrows, and cattle can be seen wandering the village roads.  Because of these loose animals, fencing is everywhere to enclose property and keep the gardens safe.  The village is governed by a tribal chief with the tribe owning all of the land and leasing the property to the tribal members.  .  It is rare for anyone to sell a house.  Instead homes are kept in the family.  Homes range from marginal one room shacks to elaborate brick homes one might see in an upscale US subdivision.  It’s wild.
In Makapanstad the villagers are all black which constitute about 75% of the South African population.  Afrikaners make up the next largest group at about 15%.  The remaining group consists of what are called colored which can be Indian or other mixed races. While Americans might be reluctant to describe someone by race, in South Africa it is not considered to be so politically incorrect. 
There are no street names or obvious geometric arrangement to the village which with the flat terrain makes walking to a destination a challenge.  The predominant form of transport for villagers in and out of town is the 13-passenger Toyota van which line up at the village taxi stand.  This is where the taxi fills with passengers departing only when filled.  For us in the PC the taxis will be how we travel since we cannot drive.  The fares are reasonable – it costs 11 SA Rand or $1.50 one way to ride the taxi from Makapanstad to the nearest shopping site.  Except for some small corner (tuck) shops, Makapanstad had limited shopping so we travelled to a nearby shopping center for items unavailable locally.  At the shopping spots there are modern malls with clothing, grocery, and other stores just like in the US.

What struck us immediately about rural South Africa is seeing people everywhere walking along the streets and roads.  For the ordinary villager to have a car and use it to travel for local errands is unusual.  Villagers might live in a nice house that has electricity, water available, a television with a satellite, kitchen electric range, refrigerator, and other modern amenities but still rely on the taxis for transport.  What are absent from village homes are central heating and hot water plumbing.  When it gets cold and it did for us in July and August, one sits in front of an electric space heater at night.  For hot water in the kitchen, one uses an electric kettle or heats water on the stove. 
At Makapanstad we started eight weeks of training called pre service training (PST) following a schedule from Monday thru Saturday.  Typically we would attend a class of our language group in the morning (starting out at 7:30) and then go to a class of our cluster (three subgroups) or with the entire group for medical, safety, history, teaching or other such instruction.  The non-language classes were conducted by existing Peace Corps staff or Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) that had designed this program prior to our arrival.  This involved a lot of sitting in classes all day which soon became a grind.  The day ended at 5:00 and after making dinner Merideth and I were asleep by 9 pm.

We were able to enjoy three Peace Corps trips during PST.  Our first trip was July 30th when we travelled to Pretoria to visit the Voortrekker Monument.  This shrine was built by Afrikaners on a hill overlooking the city in the 1930s to publicize mass migrations in the 1840s from the Cape Town area by the early Dutch-German settlers wanting to escape rule under the British.  The Voortrekkers travelled into areas inhabited by African tribes where they negotiating to initially settle in the Pretoria area where no tribes lived.  The Peace Corps wanted us to see this aspect of South African history so we could appreciate the past and present role of Afrikaners who are the descendants of these early white settlers.  Our disappointment with this shrine was that it seemed to blame the British for starting Apartheid and failed to discuss what injustices the Nationalist Party gradually imposed after 1948.
August 9th is a national holiday called Women’s Day celebrating a march on Pretoria in the 1950s by women to protest the Apartheid government’s plan to extend travel passes to include to women.  This march of about 20,000 women was one of the few instances when the ruling party, the Nationalist, reversed one of their racist proposals and has become the basis for this holiday.  Since this was a day off for training, PC arranged to take us in the three Peace Corps vans to the Pilanesburg Game Reserve located about three hours away.   We managed to see giraffe, wildebeest, impalas, rhinoceros, one elephant, warthogs, zebras, and alligators.  We did not see any lions since it was midday when they are not so active. At one point we stopped on the side of the road while several giraffes calmly walked across the road and we were able to snap  a nice picture which I'll send later.

The last trip we took was to Johannesburg to visit the Apartheid Museum.  This museum follows the struggle of the South Africans rid the country of Apartheid and secure democracy.  It has a large section of the museum dedicated to Nelson Mandela who came to represent the movement for South African freedom and was the country’s first President after Apartheid was abolished.  He’s revered here affectionately known as Madiba and has moved to live quietly in the village he was
born in 1918.  He’s the same age as my Mom.
The Apartheid Museum was great.  It reminded us of the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC in that it depicts to what levels of brutality government stoop to retain power.  In fact one of the primary designers in SA of apartheid was a student of the Nazi plan in Germany.  This museum deserves a visit by anyone coming here.

During our stay with host families the Peace Corp provides food to the families to supplement their normal food supplies since the families receive no compensation and are volunteering their homes during our stay.  In our house the PC food provided the bulk of the food supply with Merideth and me providing the balance of the needs.  The grandmother Ko-ko said she relies on just her government pension for support.

As volunteers the PC provides us with enough money for food, transportation, and other necessities.  It amounts to about $300/month.  Our rent is paid by our sponsors, the South African Department of Education.  All of our medical needs are covered by the Peace Corps.

Our diet is not too much different than that available in the US.  We eat chicken, green vegetables, eggs, potatoes, oranges and apples.  There are oranges trees throughout the village still holding some of last year’s fruit.  South Africans like to eat pap which is made from corn meal and is close to grits as served in the south but it is bland and starchy.  We have also been eating a lot of peanut butter sandwiches for lunch.  What’s missing are fast food or decent restaurants in the village and since we are not allowed to go out after dark we end up going to bed early and getting up at dawn.  When we get to a town, we might splurge by going to a sit-down restaurant.

Night time in some villages can be filled with party music coming from homes and shibeens (bars) playing loudly throughout the night wee hours. Funerals are frequent events that have widespread participation and involve the slaughter of a cow to be cooked and eaten by everyone.  The moon in the southern sky looks upside down.  The village dogs start to bark once darkness descends and only stop once it gets cold.  And then the roosters start to crow about three am and we are up at six for our bucket bath and off to training.

We are learning Setswana.  In this culture the traditional greeting is important.  When South Africans are greeted by Peace Corps volunteers in Setswana, it means a lot to them and gain acceptance.  For some of the older villagers it may be the first time in their lives a white person addressed in their home language.   We are required to achieve minimum language proficiency during training and had our final verbal exam last week which we both passed. Merideth has surpassed me with her language skills and together we hope to keep getting better.
Throughout the first six weeks of training none of us were given any idea of where we might go to live at the end of training.  Merideth and I knew that our language meant we’d only go to Setswana areas.  There are nine native languages in SA besides Afrikaans and English.  English is the official language and is taught in schools starting in third grade.  That makes it easy for us because everyone speaks English as a second language.  In the schools principals may want us to just speak English because learners (the SA name for students) are tested in English.  During training we had two or three interviews with the Peace Corps staff responsible for the placements but were kept in the dark about where we might go until August 19th.   SA-24 is involved with education programs and with each volunteer assigned to work with two schools in their village under the supervision of a school principal. 

Members of the previous group, SA-23, were assigned to community health programs and are working with a non-government organization (NGO) to implement AIDs/HIV projects.  The frequency of HIV positive individuals in SA is one of the highest in Africa and appears to be affecting family dynamics as much as chronic unemployment and alcoholic abuse is in the villages.  Both contribute to the common situation seen in a village where the grandmother ends up raising the grandkids.

The suspense regarding where we all would move to from Makapanstad for the next two years came to a head on August 19th when site assignments were announced.  However, before then Merideth and I had an idea where we might go because Merideth had put some clues together during our interviews.  First of all, we were initially asked if we would object to living by ourselves at a religious compound with nuns and priests nearby rather than living in separate quarters with a host family as is typical.  And later, we were asked if we’d be okay living in temporary quarters until December when an existing PC couple were scheduled to leave.  And finally two members of the training group were a couple who had extended their service for until December to be able to finish out the school year.  We were told on August 19th that we will be living for the next two years in a village about 1-2 hours from Pretoria (depending on your mode of transport).  For security reasons we cannot reveal the village on line.  Email us if you want to know.  We are permitted to name the village in a private email. 

Before we left our training village Makapanstad the Peace Corps threw a party for the host families.  The morning of the party Merideth and I got up early and helped with the cooking.  Someone had slaughtered a cow the previous day and while Merideth helped preparing salads, I helped to start the open fire pit over which were placed about six large cast iron pots in which we cooked pap (the South African staple), chunks of beef, and cut up pieces of the cow’s stomach and intestines.  Merideth ate a chunk of cow’s stomach and intestine which along with her previous eating of a chicken’s foot says to son Devin “match that!”  

Our sixth week of training involved a group of us attending a workshop with our school principals at the Orion Safari Lodge near Rustenburg.  We all thoroughly enjoyed the hotel’s hot water, showers, and buffets!  We then travelled to our new village staying with the Peace Corps couple we are replacing.  We were introduced at the schools and became familiar with the village.  For three months we will be living in a house in the village and then in December moving into the apartment vacated by the couple after they return to the US.   The apartment is within a Catholic mission facility where there are four priests, five nuns, a medical clinic, a vocational training school, a 750 learner public high school, and a 700 learner public primary school.  The mission was established in the 1930s with the two schools becoming public institutions at some point.  The apartment consists of three rooms (kitchen, bedroom and study) and has hot water with a shower – a plum by Peace Corps standards.  The only drawback is that baboons live in the nearby hills and if the doors to your house are not closed they will get inside and wreck the place.  We are happy about the folks we have met, the living arrangements, and this village.
We were sworn in as official Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) on September 8th.  The US Ambassador to South Africa Donald Gips and his wife attended.  The ambassador and his wife are from Boulder Colorado and are friends with Bruce Reed whose folks Scott and MaryLou are Coeur d’Alene icons.   The ceremony was really nice. 

We moved to our new village the next day.  We share a house in the middle of the village with a young South African policeman and his fiancĂ©.  The only drawback is that the village and municipal water supply has been experiencing water supply problems.  Our house has water from 11 pm until 5 am so we get up and fill some basins with water in the middle of the night.  With this we are managing.  However, no one seems to know if or when a solution to the village water supply might be achieved.  Once again water is important element to our life.  The good thing is that the mission where we will move in December operates with its own water supply which has not been affected by this water shortage problem.  We’re praying it stays that way.

The next three months are called Phase 2 training during which we will be figuring out our roles in these schools and start implementing the plan when the new school year starts in January 2012.

We hope all is well with everyone in the US.  Stay tuned for future entries which we’ll try to post monthly.  We'll try to add pictures next time.

And that's the way it was.