Saturday, July 13, 2013

Starting the Final Two Months


Starting the Final Two Months

We are now less than 60 days from close of service which will happen September 6th culminating our 26 months of Peace Corps service.  As we approach the end, we feel some but not a great deal of the sadness some predicted.  Rather, we are ready to put South Africa with all its problems and frustrations behind once and for all and move on while holding onto the good memories and experiences.

The last few months have been varied.  When the first school term ended in March, we took a two week trip to the Drakensburg Mountains, visited Saint Lucia on the coast, and travelled into Swaziland.  A friend from the US, Bob Davis, came and accompanied us for these days then Bob later took in a game reserve.  He was good company.

We had been to the Drakensberg Mountains a couple of times previously and this time we were able to visit areas we had not seen during those former visits.  One day when we were staying at a place called Witsieshoek we took a hike up onto the top of the escarpment.  This involved climbing up a vertical chain ladder about 100 feet to get into Lesotho where we were met by a friendly border guard carrying an automatic rifle.  Apparently rustling of cows and sheep of the Lesotho herders was common.  The same day we hiked onto the top of a waterfall that went about 900 feet off the escarpment. 


One afternoon just before dinner the lodge owner asked us to help out with a man with a flat tire.  We came across this giant of a Russian man named Dmitri in a rented car who we quickly helped.  He ended up staying the night at our lodge because a serious thunderstorm came up and told us his story.  He had left Russia several years ago, studied at Ohio State, worked in Canada, and then returned to Russia where he gambled it all in a speculative deal and now is set for life.  He travels sometimes alone and sometimes with his family who are living for a couple of years in Portugal because they wanted to see what it was like there.  The next day we came across him on the road driving along slowly in his rental car with its donut spare tire.  He was a character.

Our trip continued on to Sani Pass where we hiked around in Lesotho and got to see the herders there wrapped in their wool blankets.  One day when we were on a guided hike, the guide pointed out to us a couple of fellows carrying loaded backpacks stuffed full of dagga (marijuana) and being smuggled down into South Africa.  Lesotho known as the mountain kingdom is landlocked by South Africa with a lot of rugged terrain and poor rural populations.  But the mountains here are beautiful probably the nicest we have seen in South Africa.

From the Drakensberg we drove to the Indian Ocean to a small resort town called Saint Lucia which is famous for the wetland park nearby.  We took an early morning boat ride into the wetlands where we crept up next to groups of hippos and saw the estuary up close.  We spent a couple of days lazing on the beach enjoying the warm waters of the Indian Ocean.  We tried to see some of the crockidiles that live along the shore and to see the hippos which come into town at night and wander around but were unsuccessful.

Our last stop was in Swaziland which is another land-locked country like Lesotho and is one of the few African countries ruled by a king.  We stayed in a really nice B&B with a pool and took in some day hikes in the nearby reserves.  The weather was exceptionally good for our entire trip which ended with all of us driving back to Mmakau.  This will probably be our last sightseeing trip in South Africa. Over the last two years we have seen much of South Africa and its surrounding countries. 

Mid April found us back in our village and working at the schools.  Gary has been doing improvement projects and Merideth has been teaching.  We have decided that when the second term ends in June, we will be done teaching and doing any improvement projects concentrating on doing some final special projects.  These include raffling off our bikes, doing a vision screening project, and distributing a donation of about 500 stuffed Teddy Bears to the younger children.  We have also decided to take it easy and relax more during these last few weeks.  Our work here is done.

To prove this point let us tell you about a couple of our South African experiences:

Gary’s recent fiasco with the tribal office is an example of how things work here and why we feel frustrated in our service.  One day Gary received a call from the school Administrative Assistant (AA) asking to meet the next day at the tribal office to help with a flagpole problem.  He went at the agreed upon time but no one at the office knew of the meeting so after 45 minutes waiting he left.  The AA later explained she tried to call to cancel but gave up when there was no answer – she lives about 100 yards from our house.  The project the tribe wanted was to fix their flagpole which was being obscured by a large tree.  Gary took down the flagpole and painted it.  The chief wanted to cut down the tree but Gary suggested they move the flag’s concrete base.  He dug out the dirt around the base and had a cable to pull the bottom to its new location.  The chief said he’d come collect the cable one morning and Gary waited until midmorning then called.  The chief was busy in meetings but agreed to come the next day.  The next day once again he didn’t show up or call.  When contacted, the chief said he was very busy – no apology and no attempt to reschedule.  All of this means driving about 1 mile to haul a heavy steel cable to the office, connect to the pole base, and drag it all out of the old hole to the new spot.  Probably about 45 minutes of effort.  So today Gary is waiting for the chief to get around to this job which the chief says he doesn’t do because he is busy with other work which appears to be a lot of just plain doing nothing whatsoever.  With leaders like this character, it is no wonder South Africa is in such miserable shape.  Individual initiative and gumption are rare.  Countless times we have planned to do something only to find out at the last minute that the activity has been called off and we were not notified.  Common courtesy and consideration do not exist.

In April Merideth presented in front of a meeting of Department of Education (DoE) staff in Rustenburg where she was supposed to discuss what she was doing.  She took this opportunity to point out to these officials that their practice of taking teachers out of classrooms for seminars of questionable practical value was counterproductive to learning.  She asked why DoE inspectors visiting schools sat in an office and looked at a sample of the children’s workbooks rather than sitting in on actual classroom teaching in order to provide constructive criticism.  Some of the audience embraced her points while others just dozed off because change and effectiveness are not in the vocabulary of South African education.  It’s no wonder South Africa education is frequently rated at one of the worst systems in the world.

In April Merideth was able to secure some books for the pre-school she works at one day a week and enjoyed distributing them to the children last month. 


In June Merideth received a gift of stuffed bears from a US group called the Mother Bear Project and distributed about 200 bears to Grade R and 1 learners.  For most of these kids this is probably the first toy of this type they have ever received. She is going to get two more shipments in the next few weeks and will give out over 500 of these bears to the children. 


About ten weeks ago we rescued four little kittens abandoned along the road who may have fallen down into a deep drainage basin or dumped in there.  They were about three weeks old.  We brought them home and started feeding them canned food mixed with warm water and after a couple of weeks they graduated to kitty chow.  They all survived.  We named them Buster, Mango, Opal and Thato.  A few weeks ago we gave one to a village lady and took the other three to the vet in Brits who found homes for them all.  We think our big cat Zazu will be adopted by one of the priests but are still looking for a better home for him.


A couple of weeks when school term 2 ended, we attended a close of service conference put on by Peace Corps in Pretoria.  This three day event was the last get-together of those in our class.  We came with 58 volunteers and are now down to about 46 people remaining.  More than half of those remaining will leave early before our official end of service in September.  About ten are extending service to complete a school term or to do another year doing something different.  Generally it seems most volunteers are ready to finish and, like us, have experienced frustrations during their service but leave with an overall positive but done-with-this attitude. 

After this conference we went to Mauritius and Reunion Islands located out in the Indian Ocean for a week at each island.  We decided to splurge with a comfortable trip to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary.  The islands were nice and warm and we ate well and enjoyed the beaches.  It was like we were in another continent somewhere like Hawaii and the Caribbean.  Mauritius is culturally very blended and Reunion is like a slice of France transplanted into the middle of the Indian Ocean.



We return here a few days age and will start our seven finals weeks.  At the end of August we will go to Pretoria for a week of final medical and administrative stuff then fly away from South Africa on September 7th.
 

 We are in the middle of figuring out the route for our return home in September.  It will most likely involve a safari week in Tanzania, a self-guided bike tour in Normandy, a week in Paris, a train trip across Norway followed by an Arctic 12-day cruise, a visit to Iceland, and then landing in New York for family visits.  We expect to be back in Idaho by mid November.  When we get settled back in Idaho we will issue a final posting of this blog.

 And that’s the way it was.