December Holidays

Well, COS (Close of Service) conference is over, and we’re back at site.  You could definitely say COS was bittersweet.  On the one hand, it’s amazing that we’ve all come this far.  Our group has been in South Africa for almost two years, and people have done wonderful work in their villages.  COS definitely brought forth feelings of accomplishment and, of course, people are starting to look forward to going back to America.  On the other hand, it’s always sad to say goodbye.  Some members of our cohort will be leaving in the next few weeks, and who knows when we’ll see each other again.  We’ve shared an experience that few people will ever understand, and it’s difficult knowing that this adventure is coming to an end.  Regardless of the mixed feelings, it was a great week including a trivia night and a TIA (this is Africa) party that featured some amazing costumes.

Now we’re back at site until December 28.  We’ll spend Christmas here and then travel to the Wild Coast (beach) for a few days before doing a six day hike with a couple of volunteer friends.  There is a small soccer tournament here this weekend, but it’s otherwise fairly quiet in the village now.  The boarding students are of course gone for the holidays, but a good number of other people are off visiting family as well.  I’m sure we’ll still get plenty of visitors next week though!

Lady Gaga and Other Updates

Last Friday we went to see Lady Gaga in Johannesburg.  Not exactly a concert we would jump at back in the States, but big acts rarely make their way down here and when a group of our friends wanted to go, we were game.  Unfortunately, she was on the opposite side of the (huge) stadium.  But all in all, we had a lot of fun and it was a great experience just going to the stadium that hosted the final match of the World Cup. 

Now we are back at site and find ourselves with a lot of time on our hands.  School is not officially finished until the end of this week when report cards are handed out, but none of the students show up.  Actually, two students came today because they were so bored at home.  They ended up getting to watch Mamma Mia on our laptop, so not a terrible day for them. 

This Saturday we are leaving once again to make the long trip back to Pretoria.  (Pretoria is only about 30 miles away from Johannesburg and we stayed in Pretoria after the concert.)  This time we are going for a Peace Corps event – our final official conference.  It’s exciting and surreal that we’ve already made it this far.  When we first began, the idea of our Close of Service conference seemed too far in the future to even think about.  But here we are, about to come together with what remains of our training class (35 out of 46 still here) for the last time.  The reason the conference is now is because some people will begin leaving at the end of December.  We, however, will be sticking it out until the beginning of April for the full two years of service after swearing in as volunteers (plus a couple of weeks because we want to finish the school term).  For those marking their calendars at home, April 4^th will be our last official day as Peace Corps volunteers, and April 5^th we will join the distinguished ranks of the unemployed.  So we still have a good amount of time left, but considering how quickly our final conference snuck up on us, April will be here before we know it.  Yikes!

Girls Club

I (Sara) have had a number of girls clubs since the beginning of the year.  I do girls clubs with the high school boarding students, but my Grade 7 club is definitely my favourite.  The idea is to bring girls together in a safe, nonjudgmental environment to discuss life skills lessons.  For most of the year, I tried holding the club at school during a free period on Fridays.  Unfortunately, the learners often have to clean classrooms on Fridays, which interfered with my club.  A few months ago, I began holding the sessions at our house after school in Fridays.  The girls love the fact that they get to take over our house and evict Matt to the hospital office.

While we still do a short life skills lesson at the beginning of the session (e.g., friendship, goal setting, values), the main focus has shifted to baking.  Needless to say, the baking gets a bit crazy.  Imagine a group of 12-15 girls huddled around a small table, yelling at each other in Zulu, fighting over who gets to add the flour or beat the eggs.  “Too many cooks in the kitchen” does not come close to capturing the chaos.  I’ve had dough all over the floor and tortillas on the walls, but it’s been so much fun.  Luckily, the girls are really great about sweeping the floor and doing the dishes afterward.

School doesn’t officially end for a few more weeks, but we had Grade 7 graduation this week.  Most of the girls will be moving on to the high school to do Grade 8 next year (the boys are less studious, to put it mildly).  There have been many trying times in their classroom, but I’m really going to miss these girls.  While our first year in the Peace Corps dragged on and on and on, this year has gone by so quickly.  

Ngwelu Road Race

As we are apt to do, we have failed to update this blog in some time.  Oops.  Almost two weeks ago, we held a community 5K race with a kids’ fun run beforehand.  Although we didn’t get the enormous turnout we’d hoped for, it was still a success and a lot of fun.  Due to bad luck with the weather, we had to postpone the race twice.  And when we faced a conflict with the Grade 12 graduation, we were forced to run on a Wednesday.  Despite all the false starts, all the runners ended up having a great time, and we still ended up running in the rain and mud.

We managed to get a couple small donations from a friend in Pretoria and a local doctor.  This enabled us to charge very little money for the entrance fee and even give small cash prizes.  Whenever we wake up early enough to run in the morning we are joined by kids walking to school.  Two 6^th grade girls, in particular, run with us whenever they see us.  We were really excited with them because the younger one finished in 2^nd place in the kids’ fun run and the older one finished in 2^nd in the 5K.  When the older girl opened up the envelope and saw cash her jaw dropped, and the next day at school she sought both of us out to tell us that her mother was proud of her.  In a rural area with little in the way of entertainment, we were more than pleased that we could provide kids with something to do . . . at least for one very muddy afternoon. 

It feels very strange to us that the election is tomorrow.  While it’s refreshing to avoid the constant media coverage, it is simultaneously frustrating to be so oblivious.  Someone recently sent us an email chain from 2008 when we made election night plans for people to come to our apartment and eat pizza as the polls closed.  Tomorrow night we will go to bed long before the result is known and await a test message from Matt’s sister Courtney to awaken us with the identity of our next president.  And then a few hours later we will go teach English to classrooms of Zulu students.  How times have changed!

Superlatives

If nothing else, we will leave here having taught our students English superlatives for “good”:  great, excellent, fantastic, outstanding, etc.  Because they always try to show off their English to us, our kids will drop “fantastic” or “excellent” to describe seemingly mundane, everyday things.  Recently, a group of kids watched a movie at our house.  When they left, one of the boys told Matt that it was a “fabulous visit.” 

Teaching superlatives, however, has also led to some unforeseen negative consequences.  All of these positive words roughly translate to “mnandi” in Zulu, and this same word is used to describe tasty food.  So Matt taught his 5^th graders early in the school year that “ukudla kumnandi” means “delicious food” in English.  At the time, Matt didn’t realize that mnandi was used not only for food, but also for every positive experience known to man.  Later in the year, Matt gave grade 5 a test and asked them to write a complete sentence about their favorite school subject.  We were thoroughly amused when one of the brightest boys in the class wrote “science is delicious.”  We’re not sure if our explanation of when to use “delicious” completely rectified the mistake, but you win some, you lose some!

Our Weekend

We’ve enjoyed a nice, rain-free weekend.  Because we apparently only know how to blog in spurts, why not tell you guys about our Sunday?  We were planning on going on a run, but when we were joined by our 10 year-old friend Aphile (pronounced A-pea-lay), we knew it would be more of a walk.  First things first, we had to walk with her to her house to ask permission from her mother, a local high school teacher.  It felt awesomely juvenile to ask a grown woman if her daughter could come out and play with us.  Fortunately she said yes.  So off we were on our typical walk to the main road, about 3 miles roundtrip.  At the road though, we spotted a bunch of baboons in the distance.  Because we had nothing better to do, we decided to check things out.  We ran into a group of young boys from our primary school who were walking in the same direction.  We asked them in Zulu “what are you doing?”  They responded in Zulu “we are fine.”  Hmm.  On the second take, with help from Aphile, we found out that the boys were going to throw rocks at the baboons.  Matt asked in Zulu if they wanted to kill a baboon.  They said yes and showed us their rocks.  We obviously started walking with them.  When we got to within a good 50 yards of the baboons, some of the young boys got excited and started running.  The baboons ran faster, much faster.  The boys heaved their rocks into the air, all falling at least 30 yards short of the mark.  A failed mission for the boys, amusing diversion for us. 

On the walk back Aphile was telling us about a book she is reading.  After our conversation included a mix of English and Zulu, we reached a roadblock.  We didn’t know the Zulu word she was using, so we asked her to show us.  The demonstration went as follows.  Aphile put Sara’s ipod on the ground and told Matt to walk 10 feet away.  Then she told Matt to call Sara.  “Zahara!  Zahara!”  (yeah we aren’t Matt and Sara here).  Aphile then told Zahara to walk to Sbu (Matt).  After that happened, she ran up and grabbed the ipod and ran away.  “Oh, steal!” we both laughed and told Aphile. 

When we got home, church was finished which meant one thing:  here come kids.  We had a noisy afternoon with 12 year-olds watching Terminator 2 (Schwartzkegger was requested) while the little ones colored on the ground. 

All in all an ordinary Sunday, but as we reflected on it we realized that what we consider mundane can actually be pretty entertaining to people back in America.  We are organizing a 5K race and kids’ fun run for this upcoming Saturday, so we will definitely let you guys know how that goes.  

What I Really Miss

Of course, we miss our family and friends, but people aside, it’s surprising what you end up missing.  You’d think I would miss having a washing machine or a dishwasher, but I’m pretty used to washing clothes by hand.  When it rains for several days straight (like it did this week), it would be nice to have a dryer, but no big deal.  Honestly, I’ve sort of forgotten what it is like to have a dishwasher.  As long as you don’t let dirty dishes build up, washing by hand is fine.

What I DO miss, however, is our Swiffer.  Sunday is our mopping day, and it is a physical and emotional ordeal.  After five minutes of mopping, the mop water turns brown, and 50% of our house still remains un-mopped.  Once, the actual mopping is finished, you then have to wait for an eternity for the floors to dry.  Confined to our bedroom, we typically twiddle our thumbs in boredom waiting for the sun to make its brief daily cameo and accelerate the drying process.  Once the floors are dry, there is a brief feeling of euphoria, however fleeting.  By this time, it’s nearly one o’clock and church will be letting out soon.  That means kids will soon be coming over for a visit, tramping dirt and mud all over our once immaculate floor (okay, not really immaculate but whatever).  Mopping sucks.  Big time.