Holidays

The past week has been the perfect storm for holidays here in South Africa. Good Friday and Easter Monday are national holidays. Wednesday April 27th was also a holiday commemorating the 1994 elections that were the first ever held under South Africa’s new constitution – when Mandela was elected president. And next Monday is a holiday as well, but our co-workers can’t remember what the holiday actually is because there are too many this time of year. I think it’s something like Workers’ Day, or May Day. So what does all this mean for our work schedule? It means that we’re going to put one day of work in during a 10-day stretch. Not too shabby. The one regret is that we are not allowed to leave our site during our first 3 months – the preferred nomenclature among volunteers is “lockdown” – so we are unable to fully take advantage of this amazing stretch of holidays.

With one notable exception. Last weekend Peace Corps staff allowed all of us to travel anywhere within our province for the Easter Weekend. Anxious to enjoy the end of good weather, we spent three nights on the beach in East London. Mother Nature cooperated, and the days were in the 70s and there was very little rain. We even squeezed in a visit to the mall and caught a flick (for what it’s worth, we recommend that you guys check out the King’s Speech if you haven’t already). We stayed at a hostel across the street from the sand that had a great surfer vibe and was immediately next door to a solid restaurant/pub. We met a South African guy who was fascinated about our membership in the “Los Angeles fraternity of law.” We kept trying, unsuccessfully, to persuade him that it wasn’t precisely how it’s depicted in movies.

One of the amusing parts of the weekend was that whenever we talked to South Africans at the hostel, they couldn’t believe that we were living in a village, let alone didn’t own a car. Their jaws dropped when we explained that we took 3 public taxis to drive the 50 miles from our village to the hostel. To clarify, they did not think it was idiotic or dangerous for us to live there, but rather they were thoroughly impressed that we left the US to live there. It was actually very uplifting. And as an added bonus to the weekend, one of the guys already added us as friends on Facebook.

Now we are back in our beautiful village and it’s hard to believe that we’ve been here over a month. We still don’t return to work for four more days, so that should give us a lot of time to keep trying to woo the neighbor girl. Which means Sara will be baking cookies tomorrow. And probably the next day.