We're finally real Volunteers!

Well…there has been a change in plans, and we’re now living in the Eastern Cape province.
The big change came about as a result of our site visit a few weeks ago (sorry, we’ve been terrible about posting). We went to a small village in KZN that was stunning. It was very close to the Drakensberg Mountains, pretty rural, you could see the mountains, etc. We didn’t arrive on our first day until late afternoon. We were staying with Sara’s supervisor whose house was…interesting. The next day, Matt went off to a neighboring village with his supervisor, and Sara went around our village with her supervisor. We met caregivers for the organization, local government officials and visited the clinic.
Matt sat through an awkward meeting in his village – Peace Corps provides handbooks that describe the differences between South Africans and Americans. For example, the handbook explains that “5 minutes” really means 5 minutes to Americans. They are intended to be a reference point for the assigned host family. However, during Matt’s community meeting is supervisor read the entire 40-page handbook. Including the section on how American women don’t appreciate sexual harassment from men.

Later in the afternoon we met back up to see the place where we were supposed to live. Our Peace Corps supervisor informed Matt prior to the site visit that he was “concerned” about the size of the rondaval (traditional round dwelling) but not to worry because the host family was a lovely religious family. With these two tokens of advice in the back of our heads, and following a hot day of awkward meetings, we were not exactly stoked to see our new mansion. Nothing could have prepared us, however, for the experience that awaited us.

We first heard the singing from about two blocks away. We instantly knew the singing was for us, but two blocks is just long enough for that last glimmer of hope that those are the loud neighbors and our real host family is quietly and casually waiting for us. When we entered the house the “singing” could no longer be so characterized as it was, more accurately, screaming. We were ushered into seats in the family room and surrounded by about 15 of the most vociferous South Africans we have yet encountered. When the singing stopped the family launched into an hour-long religious ceremony in Zulu, complete with a 25-minute fire-and-brimstone sermon from one of the younger men. The entire sermon was in Zulu except one brief part when the man looked at Matt and said “you are like an ocean” and then everyone laughed. The woman adjacent to Matt turned to him and explained “He says you are like an ocean.”

Our intended rondaval was so tiny it violated the Geneva Convention on living quarters for prisoners. There was no separation at all, which means that we would have been tripping over e/o while trying to bucket bath, cook, etc. So that’s how well our day was going at about 6:00 p.m.

Back at Sara’s supervisor’s house that evening, we were cooking dinner at about 8:00 when suddenly we began to hear loud banging noises on the tin roof. Sara and her supervisor stood up and looked at each other. The sounds kept coming one after the next, and then the window next to Sara shattered. Sara yelled for Matt who was in the next room, and the three of us ran into Sara’s supervisor’s room. Sara kept looking behind her honestly expecting to see people entering the house. Once in the supervisor’s bedroom, which unfortunately did not lock, Matt sat with his back against the door while Sara’s supervisor tried to call the police. At first she didn’t have airtime and then Matt’s phone didn’t have a signal, but she finally got ahold of someone. She told us to stay quiet, and Sara kept whispering to Matt “are they in the house, are they in the house?” The sounds stopped, and Sara’s supervisor then began saying “they are just trying to scare us.” Yeah, well it worked.

The police showed up fairly quickly, including one carrying a huge assault rifle. They said they would patrol the area for the next few hours. They kept saying that it was just “stupid people” and Sara’s supervisor kept saying it was just jealousy b/c we were there. Who knows. Our feeling was that we were absolutely not welcome in the community, at least by some people.

In the meantime, Matt called our Peace Corps security and safety officer. He was really great throughout the whole experience. He asked if we wanted to go stay with Matt’s supervisor in our shopping town. We declined since my supervisor didn’t have a car, and we had no idea if his supervisor’s house was any safer. We spent the night at Sara’s supervisor’s house, but it was definitely not a restful night of sleep.
The next morning, Peace Corps instructed us to catch a public taxi to Joberg. Yes, we were basically evacuated from our site visit. After what now can be considered comical delays on the part of Sara’s supervisor ( Peace Corps told us before 8:00 a.m. to leave and Sara’s supervisor felt the need to bathe, clean house, introduce Sara to more caregivers, take pictures, talking with board members, etc. We did not leave the village for over 2 and a half hours) we finally made it to Joberg and then Pretoria safe and sound. Soon afterwards, we officially heard that we would not be returning to that site and would not even be going back to KZN.

We heard about a week ago that we were moving to the Eastern Cape. This meant that we were moving to a site unseen without knowing the language. Luckily, Xhosa, which is spoken here, is in the same language group as Zulu, so hopefully we’ll catch on fairly quickly. After swearing in as Peace Corps volunteers (yay!), we traveled about 20 hours to the Eastern Cape. We are living in a government RDP house (basically, the rural projects), and the area is absolutely beautiful. We are about 80ks from the beach and are very close to Hogsback, the area that inspired The Lord of the Rings (super boring movie – sorry)(that was Sara’s parenthetical, Matt thinks it’s super awesome). It is hilly/mountainous and COLD, at least at night. We slept with layers upon layers the first few nights. Thankfully, we purchased a blanket this weekend, so things are better.

We are really excited to be in the Eastern Cape. There are so many places here we want to visit and feel lucky to be living in such a beautiful site. Visitors are welcome  (Trevor, google Jeffrey’s Bay).