March and April 2012, “And now a few words from
Garideth”
The South Africa school year begins in January and the first
quarter is over at the end of March so now we are into the second quarter. Merideth has kept her teaching schedule where
she spends time at three of the local primary schools. This involves teaching Grade 7 English,
introducing English in Foundation Level classrooms, conducting reading and
library time, and visiting a village crèche (pre-school). If that was not enough, she has just organized
after-school English classes for her Grade 7 students. She stays busy.
My schedule is more of a ‘floating’ plan split between one
village primary and the high school as well as on my other projects. Just recently we were able to get funding to
replace the pit toilets at one of the primary schools and I will be busy with
that for a few weeks. In February I
agreed to substitute for a Grade 4 and 7 English teacher while she was absent
for health reasons. It started as being
for one week, but then expanded to six weeks.
I could somewhat manage the Grade
7 kids but when it came to the Grade 4 learners, it was a disaster. Not all of them understand English so well
and they know I won’t beat them, so they tend to talk a lot and get rowdy. As the noise level in the room creeps up and
up, the constant buss of voices make it impossible to instruct. As soon as you get one group quieted, another
group across the room starts chatting. I tried being threatening. I tried taking them out on the soccer field
to run until they were exhausted and calm.
I tried yelling. I tried making
some sit outside. I went and got the
principal. Nothing was completely successful.
Oh well……nobody told us this would be easy. In spite of all their classroom antics, they
are fun and lovable children.
Our life here in Mmakau has settled down into a routine. We
have most of the comforts of home except a car.
We were both reflecting recently that the longer we are here, the less
we miss home. When we first came to
South Africa, I think we pined for what we left behind. But now, we seem to be into a groove where
the things we used to miss and wish for do not seem so important. We are growing more and more accustomed to
village life. We still complain to each
other about aspects of village living like litter and neglect. We enjoy the warmth and friendliness of the
people and can’t help but think they are growing very accustomed to seeing us
around. We know we will never fully blend
in because we are the only white people in a village of thousands. Whenever we go anywhere in the village, folks
still check us out or have a double take when we appear. As long as we can look forward to doing some
travelling every so often, it‘s all good.
We are gradually beginning to piece together how life goes
here. The pace is slower so the stress
levels are lower. People do not usually
have a car and tend to stroll slowly where they need to go. Some just seem to sit around a lot. Unemployment and poverty are high. People commonly have what appear to us to be boisterous
conversations. Although it seems like they might be angry,
they tell us it is just their way of talking. Most everyone can speak English but talk to
one another in Setswana even when we are present. We are still baffled by some things that do
not happen and are trying to understand why.
It may be we are slowly becoming indoctrinated and assimilated into the
culture. Peace Corps warned us that
South Africa would change us way more than we would change it. That is becoming true. But don’t worry, as much as we like it, we
are not thinking to immigrate.
During the last two months we were able to take a couple of
nice trips to two different South African areas. One of our goals while here is to see all of
the nine provinces of South Africa. For our
first six months, we were restricted to the North West Province for training
and site orientation. We live about 5 km
from the Gauteng Province border and 45 km from Pretoria. In December we became free to travel and during
early January we visited the Wild Coast in the Eastern Cape Province where we got
to enjoy some splendid ocean scenery. This
trip was described in our last blog.
At the end of March we were both busy giving term finals and
compiling grades. (Merideth and I spent
one weekend grading over 400 term exams.) We managed to finish up just in time to pick
up a rental car in Pretoria (yahoo I can drive again but it’s on the left hand
side of the road!!) and went east 5-6 hours to a town called Sabie in the Mpumalanga
Province. The next day we participated
in the Longtom Marathon. (We opted for
the half marathon.) A few years ago two
Peace Corps Volunteers used Longtom as the platform for raising money to send
deserving students to a very good middle and high school. So along with about 50 other Peace Corps
Volunteers, we found ourselves walking/trotting Longtom as we promised those
that pledged money for the cause. (Thank
you again contributors) The day proved
to be a success on all accounts – we finished in a little over three hours and the
funds raised by Peace Corps folks exceeded the goal. Both of us had tender rear ends the next day
since our training was minimal or none.
It was fun – the area has mountains covered with pine tree plantations and
is somewhat reminiscent of North Idaho.
It was also fun to see some of our PC cohorts again and hear how they
were managing life in ZA.
We stayed in Sabie a couple of days to relax and to do some
hiking. Sabie’s private pine plantations
provide most of the wood products used in South Africa. One day our B&B host matched us up with a
local group of retirees called the Wrinkled Wanderers who invited us on their
weekly hike which was to one of their favorite waterfall hikes. It was a beautiful hike (see the pictures)
and so nice to meet this group of local people who graciously invited us along for
the hike and lunch. This was an
unexpected surprise.
We had a week off from school so from Sabie we went on to a
place called Blyde Canyon for some hiking and sightseeing. It was also interesting. From
there we drove further east to Kruger National Park which is South Africa’s
largest and most famous nature park. We
arrived without reservations so we were unable to stay inside the park at one
of the rest camps. However, we did spend
a day driving through the park where we were able to see just from the car
plenty of the signature animals like elephants, zebras, springbok, and others
many in a herd environment. We will
probably return later this year (this time with reservations at the rest camps)
and arrange to go on some of the guided morning or evening game walks where one
can see the animals more closely.
After Kruger we drove west to Tzaneen for Easter where we
attended Mass given in English by the local bishop. In our village, all the church services are
given in Setswana so this service in Tzaneen was a treat. In the church yard were avocado trees loaded
with fruit and we were able to pick a bag of avocados. This area is low veld terrain with more rain
and a warmer climate than our village.
It is known for fruit growing and farming. From Tzaneen we drove home and returned the
rental car back to Pretoria. It was
definitely a plus to have a car for this trip.
At the end of March two South African holidays (Freedom Day
and Workers Day) were so close we had a five day weekend. So we rented another car and drove south from
Pretoria through the Free State Province to a small resort town called
Clarens. Free State is a rolling farming
and ranching area with wide open spaces and modest rainfall. Free State butts up to Lesotho which is the
small mountainous, land-locked country completely surrounded by South
Africa. Lesotho became its own country
as early settlers found it hard to conquer because the tribes could hide and
fight in the mountains. Besides they saw
it had limited agricultural potential and remains today a poor country. Clarens is an arts center with many galleries,
shops and restaurants as well as being close to Golden Gate National Park. We drove from Pretoria to Clarens the first day, visited Clarens the
second day, took a great hike to the top of Golden Gate Park the third day,
went west of Clarens the third day to explore and do some more hiking, and then
returned home in time to return to school at the end of the weekend. This trip gave us a chance to see Free State
and look at another face of the South African landscape and experience.
So now we are in May.
The second school term ends the third week of June after which we will
have the three week winter break. In
early July the third school term begins and by then we will have been in South
Africa for one year.
We are eagerly anticipating our son Devon’s arrival here on
May 17th, one day before his 23rd birthday. We are thrilled that we will be able to
celebrate his birthday with him in South Africa. He is thoroughly excited about coming here
and plans on staying in Africa until the end of his summer break from college
in August. We think he will divide up
his time staying on and off with us, travelling on his own, travelling with us
during our three week winter break (perhaps to the Drakensberg Mountains and
the Indian Ocean near Durban), and whatever else he decides to undertake in the
way of volunteer work. He has told us he
is looking forward to having some “adventures” during this visit and, being
parents, we hope and pray that whatever they are, they are safe and legal. It should be a blast for him as well as lots
of fun for us, and we will report on what happened in future blogs.
We may have other visitors in December when Merideth’s
sister visits and our other son Rowan visits.
Cape Town, the ocean, and Kruger trips are likely. In the meanwhile we will busy ourselves with
our work in the school and village. If you can, take a look at the pictures we
plan to add to the blog and give us comments.
And that’s the way it was.
