First Week

We have now been at our new site over a week, and a proper blog post is long overdue. Here’s a brief summary of our new lives: We arrived last Thursday afternoon at our new home at Salvation Army Mountain View Hospital in Kwa-Zulu Natal (KZN). The hospital is in a compound on top of a mountain, and we live on the compound along with many hospital employees. The hospital specifically treats TB patients (80% of whom also have HIV), and due to the length of the TB treatment many patients are here for 2-4 months. Adjacent to the hospital are two schools, one primary and one high school. The students at the primary school (kindergarten to grade 7) are all children from the local area which is called Ngwelu (pronounced Ing-way-loo). I call it an “area” because it is extremely spread out and isn’t really a village – although there is a local head man (sub-chief) who also works at the hospital. The high school is a combination of the local children plus children from all over the country. Apparently it has a good academic reputation and the cost of boarding is much more reasonable than the cost of other private schools, so that’s how it attracts students. To that end, the girls’ dormitory is right by our house and is the home to about 400 girls. The boys’ dormitory only houses about 200 boys and is about a five minute walk up the mountain from us.

So what are we going to be doing here? We are still trying to figure out which projects will work but our goal is to get involved with the children, especially the primary school. There doesn’t seem to be the same need for teachers as there was at our old site, but hopefully we can start some afterschool clubs for the children. With respect to the high school students, there is a young 25 year-old pastor who is in charge of the male boarders and he wants Matt to assist him. We have already helped him run 2 Friday youth meetings, and it seems like there will definitely be potential next year. The problem is that the South African school year is ending right now and the students are writing exams. The next school year begins in January, so that’s when we will really be able to start activities. The hospital staff also wants us to get involved with the patients, but we’re still a little unclear on what we can do to help because many of the patients come from rural areas and don’t speak much English. Ideas we have so far are playing games, teaching some simple crafts and doing puzzles with them, but hopefully with time we will come up with more ideas. On Tuesday we have a meeting in Vryheid (the closest city) with the Legal Aid Center. We are hoping to get some guidance from them on how we can help the patients with wills. The bottom line is we need to get through the next month. In mid-December we will be leaving on a trip to Mozambique (yay!) and when we return in January that’s when we will be able to really get some activities started.

The highlight of our time here on the mountain came last Friday night when we visited the girls’ dormitory. We went with the young pastor (who has basically been our personal guide this first week) at about 6:00 right after all the girls had finished eating dinner. And on a side note, this was our last stop on a looong first day of meeting everybody and awkward introductions. The girls were expecting us, and when we walked into the dining hall (basically a small auditorium) they went nuts. We have never heard girls scream like that EVER. It was like Beatlemania meets the Jonas Brothers on steroids. It was a couple minutes of pandemonium before the pastor could finally get a few words in to introduce us. When he finally introduced us he asked Sara to speak first. She only got a few words in before the screams erupted again. Sara probably only spoke for a net total of 22 seconds, but her “speech” lasted nearly five minutes with all the interruptions for screams. The same thing basically happened when Matt spoke. Never have either of us ever experienced anything remotely like that and, fortunately, never will we again. According to the pastor they were enamored with our American accents and the fact that we were from L.A. They would have cheered for anything that came out of our mouths. They even went crazy when Matt said “we’re not this interesting.” When we finally left, even that took a few minutes because everyone wanted to touch us. One girl lunged for Matt’s arm and ended up pushing him into Sara. Outside it wasn’t much better. Matt and the Pastor escaped out the gate but Sara got mobbed and ended up hugging about 30-40 girls in a couple minutes. All in all, it was a surreal ending to a good first day, and will end up being a highlight of our Peace Corps service that we will NEVER be able to forget.