A new post for you the interested few

about some happenings here in the southern hemisphere

It’s so flipping hot, Colorado legalized pot??

I miss you all A LOT

ok gonna stop this rhyme before you lose your mind…

;)

My school re-opened at the end of September. No road has been started or even planned as far as I know so everyone is in the same spot as before, big surprise. It’s complicated to explain how the strike was able to go on so long in the first place. There were threats of burning schools and intimidation by coercive men but parents and teachers were also complicit in a sense for not doing anything to change the situation. The principals and teachers were still getting their paychecks so there wasn’t much incentive for them to stand up in opposition to the strikers. I get it, they’re tired and someone handed them an unexpected vacation-- being a teacher is HARD work especially out here where the fruits of your labor are rarely ever seen or acknowledged. School in the village isn’t an avenue for a child to equip themselves with knowledge to succeed in the world like it should be. It’s a past time, a space for kids to be kids and if they happen to learn something throughout the day it was probably an accident anyway.

One of the biggest problems with the education system is the huge disconnect between what the national and provincial governments think the rural areas kids can handle and what they actually can. The same curriculum that challenges white children in the suburbs of Cape Town will never ever be even remotely appropriate for kids in the villages. I use a modified version of the fourth grade curriculum for sixth grade and even that is far too advanced. Fourth grade has them writing plays and debating social issues when some kids can’t even read and have no concept of what a story is, let alone a play. The gap only widens when something like the strike happens disrupting what little learning momentum they had. After three months without regular schooling, whatever progress they made in the year has been erased, it was like starting over from January. The provincial education department came up with a “recovery plan” to make up for the months lost by synthesizing the most important lessons and concepts from the time missed and the time left before the school year ends on December 7^th. They mandated longer school hours during the week and tried to make Saturday school happen but the teachers’ unions nixed that. The recovery plan implemented in this area, even more so than the regular curriculum, is way too ambitious. I want the government officials in charge of making education policy to sit in a village classroom for an hour cause I’d bet you my first born child they never have.

I could say a lot more about this but thinking and writing about it makes me tired. Watching the strike unfold gave me some more perspective as to how unstable the entire country is. Around that time the 34 striking miners were killed by the police in Marikana and other strikes and protests were erupting. It was almost as if you could feel an energy pulsing through the country. The government’s ruling party is messing up big time, people are starting to notice and resentment is starting to build. The ANC has created a small elite that largely ignores the needs of the rest of the country, especially the rural areas, because they’re too busy filling their pockets and driving around in slick new cars. White South Africans have been upset about the ANC for a long time but black South Africans are starting to rise up as the gap between rich and poor gets wider. According to the World Bank and the Gini index, SA is one of the most unequal societies in the world. It’s difficult for a lot of people to challenge the ANC, in their minds and with their voices, because it is the party of Nelson Mandela and the long walk to freedom. But if they keep up their current practices something crazy is going to happen in the next couple years. A lot of western countries point to South Africa as a beacon of hope, of racial and economic success in Africa. People love the story of SA, rising from the ashes of Apartheid as a rainbow nation committed to democracy and human rights. Not to say that there isn’t truth in that narrative, but in my opinion it is no longer a foregone conclusion that South Africa will continue on an upward trajectory. I see it as teetering on an edge with the chance of going either way, imploding or prospering. I can’t explain this as well as I want to but there was an article in the Economist a couple weeks ago that hits the nail on the head if anyone is interested: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21564829-it-has-made-progress-becoming-full-democracy-1994-failure-leadership-means   Don’t worry Peace Corps hasn’t managed to take away all my idealism, but after 16 months some cynicism is inevitable. This country is filled with millions of good people doing good things, but if they want a better future for their children the political situation will have to change.

Despite the problems related to the strike, since school re-opened I’m feeling the most confident I’ve felt as a teacher. My kids have been very well-behaved lately, it’s kinda freaking me out. I know their individual personalities really well after all this time and I’m happy with how my relationship with each of them has evolved. We’ve done some cool stuff lately like made drawings for December’s World Aids Day and exchanged letters with the people my aunt works with in a halfway home in Virginia. They were so excited to get their own personal letters one of them cried. Journals are still a hit, they love writing in them almost as much as I love writing in mine. Day to day it’s easy to block out the larger issues and negativity. I try to focus on each day, each lesson, each kid and go from there.

I applied for a grant from PEPFAR two weeks ago. It’s a $1000 grant from the US government to be used for HIV/AIDS education and prevention endeavors. Three other volunteers and I are planning a GLOW  (“Girls Leading Our World”) camp for the girls in our schools in March. It’s going to be a four day girls’ empowerment camp with crafts and games, interactive lessons about important topics like HIV transmission and protection, gender roles, sexual abuse, good decision-making skills etc. GLOW is done by volunteers in lots of Peace Corps countries, I’ve talked with a couple people who said it was the best part of their service. The four of us are excited about it. I know it will be so worth it despite all the work we’ve done and will have to do to pull it off. The need for information about health and safety is so crucial. The week I turned in the grant a sixth grade girl at my school was raped by a twenty year old guy. It was mentioned at a staff meeting, not in an off-handed way, but not with the sensitivity and significance I thought it deserved. The scary truth behind the teachers’ response is that it happens more often than I want to admit. My counterpart who will come to the camp with me is the life-skills teacher, I respect her a lot. She told me that the girl remembered from her life-skills class that she shouldn’t wash herself before she went to the police. That was huge to me, and I hope for the teacher as well. They caught the guy who did it, don’t know what’s going to happen to him but I hope it involves rotting in hell. Development and empowerment work when directed at girls and women can be immensely successful because of their integral roles in their families and the community. The camp will be a small response to a big big problem, so much more is needed to build up the new generation of women to protect their bodies and respect themselves, but I hope it will give the girls who come information and skills they will use and pass on.

Soccer is going great. The district games ended for the year so I wanted to find a way for them to keep playing. Melissa, a friend of mine who lives about forty minutes north of me, has a school team too so we were brainstorming how we could get them together. School funds paid for the cost of transport and food to the district games so I just assumed it’d be easy to get funding for a friendly match. Negative. My principal not only said it wasn’t possible to use school money for non district games but also that there aren’t supposed to be any extra-curricular activities until next year due to the strike recovery schedule. I was like whaaaaa?? Soccer is the one thing the boys get really excited about and the bogus rules really got to me. I personally talked to some important person from the district office about our specific situation and waiving the no extra-curricular rule for Saturday games-- he said yes! I kept my principal in the loop so she didn’t feel like I was going over her head. Melissa and I tried to fundraise, we asked the boys to bring money but the most they could scrape together was 10 rand a person (about $1.30). We advertised taking pictures of the kids with my camera and printing them for 20 rand, making a profit of 10 rand each photo. (Everyone LOVES pictures of themselves cause no one has any. My dad took a bunch when he was here and mailed them to me in a package, when I gave them out it was like Christmas morning.) We raised some money with the pictures but not enough. Both of us were about to throw in the towel when it hit me to email the NGO that does development work in this area. One email, two paragraphs, and they gave me 6000 rand (about 700 USD) to be used for soccer related expenses for the rest of my service. F YEAH. so exciting. They gave me a little less than the PEPFAR grant without the 17 page grant application. Our gameday was awesome. We organized transport and lunch and Melissa’s school performed a traditional dance for us. The dancing was incredible. The teams were evenly matched and the level of soccer played was impressive. Her team is coming to my village next weekend for another game, everyone is pumped. I can now plan more games and buy new balls and soccer nets, a little money can go such a long way.

I’ve been doing a lot of work for the NGO that gave me the money for soccer, the Kalahari Education Experience. They are making progress with the plans for the orphanage that’s going to be built on the school grounds. Things are taking way longer than they projected but I’m not at all surprised. The KEE found an SA mining company based in Johannesburg willing to fund all the building and construction (including, so they say, water access for the orphanage and the school.. this is me not getting too optimistic but I HOPE it works out) so the funds the Australians’ have raised can be used for non construction related expenses like furniture, appliances, school books, maintenance etc. I’m learning alllll about how much work goes into a project like this, how to make it sustainable, the limits of what can be achieved by development work in poor regions of the world. The construction is the easy part, keeping it running, making sure the community takes ownership of its progress, and manages the money required to run it properly, are going to be a few of the many challenges in the future. I’ve inadvertently become a building/construction/planning authority which is just as much of a joke as it sounds. The Australians want the village to be involved in the decision making process but that isn’t as straight forward as it sounds. Decisions need to be made about the type of construction material to use, the blueprint layout, the rules for the orphans, the criteria for who gets to stay and for how long, different budgets for all sorts of things etc. The emails keep coming and they’re all addressed to me because I’m the only one with internet. It’s been difficult to be the bridge between the two worlds: the high standards of a functioning first world NGO with expectations and goals and a need for answers, and the reality of what can be accomplished in the village. It’s tough getting straight answers out of Africans regarding what they are going to do tomorrow let alone what they think of the dimensions for the new floor plan someone far away just came up with. I end up making lots of decisions myself which isn’t sustainable or the way it should be, but I’m at a loss for how to balance the expectations of everyone involved. I’m still trying to figure my role out, to set boundaries about what I will do and what I can’t because what happens when I leave in July and there’s no one to answer those emails ? I want to help however I can because I believe in the project but I’m sensitive to the fact that I could be creating future problems by doing so much now. Life lessons left and right I tell ya.

The first week of October I went to Pretoria for Mid-Service Training (MST), a milestone that sounded light years away when I first got to site. SA24 back together, it was a great week. Half the week was spent in sessions, half in doctors’ appointments… half at happy hour haha. The sessions were basically just revisiting stuff we’ve gone over tons of times- stress coping mechanisms, mental health strategies, planning for the second year, safety and security. We were informed about the national plan in place for when Nelson Mandela dies because when it happens it’s going to be madness. It even has a name, WHAM: “What Happens After Mandela.” I keep waiting to see WHAM news headlines and to get a text message from PC that says something like “Brace yourselves, It’s happening.” The man is getting old and I feel like it could happen any day now. I’m not saying I want it to happen (seriously I’m not) but I wouldn’t mind being called to the capital to hang out with Barack and Michelle and all the other foreign dignitaries who would attend the funeral if he did. Just sayin. I went to the doctor’s for a physical and the dentist for teeth cleaning. The dentist we went to was very fancy. I was feeling super first world until the power went out in the waiting room and I remembered what continent I’m on. It’s the same dentist that Bono uses when he’s busy saving Africa, I was hoping we’d run into each other but no such luck. I’m a healthy girl, no cavities and proud of it. Only problem I’ve been having is with my IT band and my left knee, it bothers me every time I run and sometimes when I walk. I got xrays and went to a physical therapist but there isn’t much to do besides some exercises and icing every day. I’m hoping it’ll go away soon.

I applied to a bunch of Master’s programs the past couple months. It was super satisfying to click submit every time. It was quite a feat without regular internet on my computer, I feel like I’ve earned my diploma already. Most of the schools are in Washington DC cause that’s where I want to be, in the center of the things I care about the most. I feel good about my decision to go back to school, I’m just as sure about this as I was about the Peace Corps, and that’s really all you can ask for in big life decisions.

Researching programs and filling out applications has got me daydreaming about my future American life, the post PC apocalypse. I can’t wait til my problems are like .. “shit I don’t want to write this 30 page paper and I’m out of coffee” instead of  “F this storm, parts of my ceiling just fell on me” which happened last week. Thank you, rainy season. I know I’m idealizing, that problems exist in the States too… even if I can’t think of any right now haha. I’m not wishing the time away, I’m not ready to be finished yet. When this is over there are things that I already know I’ll miss so I’m trying to actively enjoy them. Stuff like the ritual of sitting in my doorway at sunset and the quiet nights punctuated by occasional drum beats. On Saturday morning I went to a funeral and listened to three hundred people sing beautifully in a graveyard, that kind of emotion and community isn’t as easily found other places. I truly cannot wait until washing machines re-enter my life but I do enjoy the small sense of accomplishment I feel when I’ve finally pinned the last piece of hand washed clothing on the line. Living at the mercy of the elements usually totally blows--when it rains I can’t run or do my wash or use electricity, when it’s hot I can’t sleep or stop sweating or breathe for that matter, when it’s windy the entire Kalahari blows through the cracks in my room. But all of that has given me more flexibility and patience to adapt to my physical environment as best as I can, and a different kind of respect for mother nature. She calls the shots and I know it. Also, later when I am just as poor as I am now I’ll have no legitimate excuse.

 Year 2 is already picking up speed. I was told over and over again that the second year would be much easier and faster than the first, that it takes a whole year to integrate before you hit your stride and start to see something come of your efforts. I didn’t think it would apply to me but around the time school opened things got easier. It will never actually be easy, but it feels like things are coming together in a way they hadn’t before. Every little success isn’t such a struggle like it used to be. I feel more capable of accomplishing the things I want to and more aware of what I want those accomplishments to be. I’ve known from the beginning that I’d find a way to make it through to the end, but for the first time I can actually envision what the other side will be like. There’s about 9 months left, so basically I just have to have a metaphorical PC baby and then I’m golden. The US will be waiting for me when I get home, I have faith it’ll still be standing. There was a mildly important election that took place last week and I know the man who won has got things under control ;)

lots and lots of Love   

Time for an UPdate. Things with school have been unusual lately. Strikes have kept my school closed for all but two weeks since the beginning of June. The three week winter holiday was thrown in there, but all in all five weeks of regular schooling have been cancelled so far. On June 1^st, I walked to school to find chains and a padlock around the gate and a sign warning people not to open it. I heard from my principal that men from my village and from the surrounding area were striking in order to get the government’s attention. Their list of demands was long but the main components included: paved roads, government housing and more access to water. She explained that they forced the schools in my district to close because it gave them greater leverage at the bargaining table as the government only really listens to protesters when the schools are involved. The strikers claim they are trying to improve their communities but they are causing more harm than good. Hijacking a bunch of kids’ education to achieve an end is such a noble strategy...

That first week they set up roadblocks on the only road to town demanding money to pass. Tires were burned and barricades were set up in the middle of the road so vehicles couldn’t get through. Me and the other volunteers affected laid low, sharing information with each other about what we knew and stories we’d heard. Peace Corps advised us not to go near school or engage in any discussions about the strike. The Peace Corps security officer was talking to the local police stations trying to get a handle on the situation and when it would be diffused. That weekend the provincial elections were taking place, and since there were going to be a lot of high profile government officials in the Northern Cape’s cities, the strikers amped up their tactics. They set up more roadblocks on the main highway that connects my shopping town with the city of Vryburg, rocks were thrown at cars, more fires and rioting.

 Peace Corps decided to evacuate me and a couple others, meaning they wanted us out of our villages before the elections began. Evacuation and consolidation are terms used in PC’s emergency action plan, put in place in case of natural disasters or political turmoil. The other volunteers and I used to joke about being consolidated alllll the time- if the littlest thing was reported in the news, we’d be like “Code Blue! better consolidate ASAP” to us it meant a party in town for a couple days while whatever “danger” we were in passed. So it was pretty unreal that it actually happened. I’d heard stories of vehicles being chased off the road by gangs of men at the roadblocks and other unsettling things so I tried to brace myself for anything on the morning I had to get to town. I made it fine, the only transport out of my village was with a taxi driver who was part of the strike effort, so they let us pass at the roadblocks without any issues. A group of PCVs and I were consolidated together that week and it was just as fun as we’d talked about. We posted up at our favorite guesthouse. It was like our own embassy, American ground, in the midst of the African strife. The newly elected officials promised the protesters they would begin construction work on paved roads on July 1^st, so the chains came off the gate and the fires were put out. School re-opened with five days left in the term, just in time for the students to fail their biannual standardized tests. The nation-wide exams are extremely difficult and without the two weeks of prep time before, there was even less of a chance for them to do well.

I came back to school after the break hoping the new term would get off to a fresh and functional start. That illusion was gone the following Monday when I again found the gate locked and an empty school yard. The government hadn’t done anything by the deadline and since there wasn’t even the pretense that the demands would be met, everything started up again. From what I’ve heard, it seems like men in different villages are banding together, feeding off each other’s energy, which is what is keeping them strong and resolute. The strikers burned a PCV’s school to the ground about 200 km from me, so it feels more serious this time. (Needless to say, she doesn’t live there anymore.) My school was broken into and the only two computers were stolen, all the school records and grades gone with them. There have been other reports of burning schools and homes--people have figured out that if something burns, they get attention and news coverage so it’s happening more often. I’ve heard they won’t back down until they “see the bulldozers” for the new roads.

To be fair, the roads in this area can barely be classified as roads. They’re sandy and rocky, they’re dangerous to drive on and it makes getting anywhere a very long process. The Northern Cape is like the province that South Africa and time forgot. It has the least people and it’s the least developed. I sympathize with the strikers’ desire for a better infrastructure, for basic needs that would do a lot to enhance their quality of life. To a certain extent, I can even understand why they are holding the schools hostage, because it’s the only way they have a shot at getting what they want. I just hate that it has to be like this, that so many students are missing out on many weeks of learning, that none of them are getting their daily school meal from the National Food Program, and that no adults seem to care.

To keep myself from going crazy with cabin fever, I stayed at another volunteer’s site for a while helping out at his school, teaching a couple classes and pulling kids out individually to work on literacy and basic reading skills. I’ve also been trying to get my act together with grad school applications. It’s a weird situation to be in. One of the only things that was constant in my life was school. Uncertainty is all around, but the one thing that I knew for sure was that I’d be going to school everyday. It’s not an exaggeration when I say I don’t know what’s going on the majority of the time. I’m always resisting the urge to make sense of the vast number of things that aren’t making any sense at any given moment. I never know what’s coming next, I have no idea who the ten people are in my host parents’ house, or if I can get a hitch to town, or how long I will be waiting for who knows what, or what that person is trying to say to me. But focusing on the things that are more structured, like school, helps me to deal with the rest of the chaos. I thought the school system was stronger than this and I thought education mattered more than this. Throughout the whole thing I haven’t felt particularly unsafe, but I know if things continue PC will probably want me and a couple other PCVs to move sites. I love where I live though and I’ll do whatever I can to stay, so I’m hoping things don’t escalate in a dangerous way and that school opens sometime soon.

In the middle of all that madness I had about the three coolest weeks a person could have. My parents came to visit! Because I was distracted with the strike, I didn’t really realize how much awesomeness was about to hit me in the face, it was way more epic than I anticipated. I got to Cape Town a couple days before they got there. It was great to have time to myself in an actual city, to walk the streets with a cup of coffee in my hands and pretend like I lived there. It didn’t hurt that Cape Town is one of the most awesome cities ever. My parents got there safely and I wasted no time getting comfortable in our sweetass apartment. We did all sorts of stuff- went on a wine tour, climbed Table Mountain, went to Robben Island, walked around the waterfront, went to a Rugby game, watched the EuroCup final, met up with a bunch of other volunteers and their families/visitors. It was great that they got to meet some of the people I spend the most time with. I have to say my parents thoroughly blew me away with their coolness- staying out late, buying everyone drinks, telling stories, game for anything. It was nice to talk and talk and talk, to explain about everything related to this experience and hear about what was going on at home. It was surprisingly normal being with them given the unusual environments we were in. I also got to feel like a kid again. I wasn’t alone and completely responsible for myself for a change… My mom cooked dinner, my dad made fun of me nonstop when I wanted to watch Real Housewives and other trashy TV—just like old times on their couch in Gainesville.

From Cape Town we flew to Zimbabwe and crossed the border into Zambia for a week. There was some sketchiness at the border and it took a couple hours for our comfort zones to expand to the run down streets of Livingstone, but once we got settled it was great. The first night we walked to the bridge of no-man’s land between the Zambian and Zimbabwean borders to watch the full moon illuminate Victoria Falls. That was around the moment when I realized how sweet the next couple days were going to be. We went on a game drive in Botswana for a day, a river safari on the Chobe river, walked on trails around the falls, got to go right up to the edge, went on a booze cruise on the Zambezi river, rode Elephants through the bush, saw so many animals.. It was awesome for me to see other parts of Africa, I wanna travel through this whole continent. I’m looking for applications for travel buddies so if you’re interested holla at me ;)

Our next stop was my room, the center of the middle of nowhere. It took us three days of traveling to get there but I am so glad they came. I was kinda stressing about it beforehand, worried that it would be difficult to bridge the gap between the two very different cultures. But my parents and my host parents got along so well so easily, my worries were for nothing. Kindness knows no nationality, the goodness in everyone’s personalities broke through the language and cultural barriers. As corny as that is, I’ve watched it happen over and over again. I’ve lived with five host families in three countries on two continents in three languages, and every time I’ve gotten lucky. We made dinner together, walked around, visited school, played cards, shared pictures. We took things slow and simple which is the only way to be in the village. They handled it all really well. I feel more connected to both sets of parents now, but especially my real parents who understand my life about a million times better now that they’ve seen it for themselves.

I dropped them off at the airport in Johannesburg and for once it was me watching them go through the security line instead of the other way around. They started their trip with a couple days in London and ended with a couple days in Iceland visiting my brother and sister. (I missed the part when my parents became such jetsetters…)  When it was over, I was ready to get back to my less action packed life. I was grateful that everything worked out, it was so great they could come.

Something else that’s made me happy lately is that my hair is slowly getting back to normal. To my complete confusion, my hair started falling out in January. It took me a while to realize what was going on. To realize that my hair had lost a lot of its thickness, that its texture had changed and that more than a normal amount was falling out every day. My first thought was that there was something missing in my diet, some nutrient or vitamin that I wasn’t getting enough of.  PC’s medical staff shot that down. They said that would be the case only if I was severely malnourished, which I’m clearly not. I went through a bunch of ideas, something in the water, my birth control, heavy metal poisoning of some kind etc, but the medical staff kept saying it was due to stress. They assured me it would most likely all come back at some point, even if it took a long time. One of the medical officers told me she’s seen hair loss in all four Peace Corps countries she’s worked in and that many volunteers lose their hair to varying degrees due to the stress of their daily lives. This seemed like a lame answer to me, hair loss seemed so extreme. I felt like there had to be some specific cause or chemical in my body causing it, and I just wanted someone to tell me what I could physically do or eat to fix the problem.  

I got my blood tested in SA and again during my visit in Florida to check for serious health issues, but thankfully they all came back negative. Stress seemed like the only answer, and the only prescription I got was to stop stressing. Funny thing is, it’s pretty hard to stop stressing about your hair falling out when it won’t stop falling out. It sucked waking up every morning to clumps of hair on my pillow, I could feel it getting thinner and thinner. I stopped brushing it altogether, washed it less and less, whatever I could to stop the mass exodus of hair. It made me realize that I’ve taken my thick healthy hair for granted my entire life. At the worst point, I lost about 3/4 of my hair. Fortunately, I had A LOT of it to begin with so it wasn’t too noticeable. No one could really tell unless I told them because I lost it evenly all over.

 It also played into this fear that I’ve had since I started PC, that I’m exposing myself to random health risks that will manifest themselves later in life. Messed up I know, but africa’s got the strange disease category on lock and my mind makes up some crazy thoughts sometimes. All I wanted was for it to grow back sometime in the future, even if it took a year or two. I got over it after a couple months though and around that time it stopped falling out in big amounts. Last week, for the first time in seven months, I brushed it! It’s not as thick as it used to be, but it’s definitely getting there. When it’s back to normal, I will add it to the gigantic mega huge supersize list of things I won’t take for granted again.

A couple other things that stand out recently: The West Wing is the greatest show ever created in the history of this universe. (Maybe the Curiosity rover will find out about some awesome TV shows on Mars but til then it’s West Wing 4 lyfe.) I’m about to finish the last season after many nights of pretending like everyone I know is wonderfully well-spoken and intelligent and works in the White House. The Colorado shooting made me sad, and also made me think about what it must have been like to be a Peace Corps Volunteer on September 11^th. It’s not comparable but similar feelings of American solidarity were evoked.  I’ve heard people say that living abroad constitutes a rejection of the US on some level. For me the truth is, living away from the States has given me a fierce and unique brand of patriotism that will never go away. Which probably has something to do with why I love the Olympics so much. I’ve been reading all the updates and watching how the medal count doubles as the “I’m the world’s superpower” race. Hoping the soccer girls can pull out a gold medal... Alex Morgan, marry me. I remember watching their World Cup match against Japan when I first arrived in SA last July. Some hints of controversy surrounding the amazingly talented Gabby Douglas remind me that it’s not only South Africa that has serious race issues. It’s all too easy for me to think that I come from this post-racial society and that the racial tensions I experience in SA don’t exist at home. But the truth is, the US still has plenty of work to do. Overall, I think international sports competitions help to ease racial and cultural tensions. It’s idealistic but it makes me happy to watch the world come together over incredible displays of human ability.

That’s all I got for now. I always start writing a blog with the intention of making it wayyy shorter than it becomes…

May is taking its sweet sweet time but March and April were a blur. At the end of March over the school fall break I traveled to the Mpumalanga province close to the border of Swaziland with five other PCVs. Once again we had to admit to ourselves that the NorCape is inferior to that part of South Africa. Sand and sunsets are cool and all, but the green mountains and vistas were my kind of stunning. We had a killer time hiking through Blyde River Canyon and canyoneering through the rivers and waterfalls that make up that area. It was a simultaneously strenuous and relaxing week- the days were spent exploring, the nights chilling on the porch of our guesthouse making dinner together, drinking wine, playing cards and marveling at how good we had it.

From there we traveled the short distance to the base of Sabie mountain where we met up with about seventy other PCVs from all over SA. We got there Friday morning and began one of the crazier weekends of my life. I got to meet lots of volunteers for the first time. There are four different groups of us in country at any given time, a new group arrives every six months as the oldest group finishes up. Since we usually only go to trainings with our own class, it was really great to have a chance to meet the others. Saturday morning most of us woke up at 4:30 AM to catch a bus that drove us up the mountain to the starting point of the Longtom half marathon. It was freeeezing at the top with so much wind and fog that I couldn’t see twenty feet in front of me. The conditions were a joke, laughing at the absurdity of what I was about to do seemed like the best preparation tactic since I could barely stop shivering enough to stretch. But it turned out awesomely. The visibility got better the farther I ran, with a pretty view of the valley below opening up before me towards the end. Believe it or not, I really enjoyed myself the whole time. I ran with friends and talked a bunch, I ran alone and thought a lot about what the hell I was doing running thirteen miles on a mountain… I built it up to be bad but when it wasn’t, my body found a rhythm and the time passed easily- I finished in one hour and 55 minutes which was more than fine with me. I got the race itch, I wanna run another!

It was an inspiring day as all the PCVs who attempted the race finished- the most incredible of which was my girl Jill, who blew all our minds by finishing the ultra marathon race in under five hours and twenty minutes. The Longtom Ultra is grueling and regarded as one of the toughest ultra marathons in the world. Five PCVS, four guys and Jill, ran the 30 miles/56 km UP and DOWN the mountain. They didn’t take the thirty minute bus ride to the top like we did, they ran every step of the way. Jill was the third woman to finish overall (and the first of all the PCV men), and she’d never even run a regular marathon before. She was the talk of the race, strangers were exclaiming how impressive it was. The day ended with a marathon sized BBQ back where we were staying and late night dancing despite our sore muscles, it was a memorable night. I want to thank all my family and friends who donated to my race fund, you guys were so generous. We raised over 20,000 dollars in total for the KLM foundation which supports arguably the best secondary school in South Africa. It was great to be able to give that much in scholarship money to (cliché but totally true) the future leaders of this country.

As if that wasn’t enough excitement for me, the next day I got on a plane and flew HOME :) too exciting for words but I’ll give a brief overview. When the customs officer stamped my passport in DC and said “welcome home,” I almost leaned over the counter and kissed him. It was a two week whirlwind- so fun, comforting, gratifying, natural, strange, funny, and a little unbelievable. I didn’t try to process it all, I just let it happen, knowing I’d have days to think it through later when I was back in my quiet room. All six of my family members were in the same room at the same time, something that hadn’t happened in over fourteen months. I got to do nearly everything I wanted to and spend time with everyone I wanted to. I drove all over town with the windows down and the music up, went to the springs, the lake and the beach- springtime in Florida at its finest. I spent days and nights with my best friends and family, talking laughing dancing eating laying chilling being. How good it all was is a testament to the awesome people in my life. I’m a lucky girl.

I was worried it would be extremely hard to come back after being reminded of life in Gainesville, but it hasn’t been too bad. The night I arrived back in SA, I was wearing my high school soccer sweatshirt in Pretoria when this girl in the bunk bed next to mine starts freaking out because she not only graduated from Buchholz High School in 2002, not only was on the soccer team and had my same sweatshirt, but is also a PCV who I’d somehow never met or heard of before. whaaa ?? We were dumbfounded. In my head I was like “Ok universe, I read you loud and clear. Thanks for the sign.” Home is here, home is wherever I am. The world is smaller than it appears... I’m not alone even though some days I feel otherwise. Feeling the love and support from across the atlantic gives me the energy I need to pour into school and work at site. I’ve always been like that- some people need to cut themselves off from their former lives to be successful in their current situations. I thrive best and feel most fulfilled when I know how solid the important relationships in my life are. So thank you all.

There’s good and bad news about the water situation I wrote about last time. Bad news first: the water in my village failed the NGO’s sanitation test miserably. They took extra care to tell me that of the different locations they tested, the water in my village is the worst. There are incredibly high levels of nitrates, magnesium, calcium, chloride, and E coli, among other things. The report they gave me was pretty depressing. I got a translation as to what those components actually mean for health risks and while it’s not deadly or anything, it’s not good either. Basically the high level of nitrates poses the most serious health problem. The amount of nitrates is more than 700% the normal and healthy level. It can cause acute health risks for babies and young children (particularly pertaining to physical development of their bodies), as well as complications for pregnant mothers- aka most of the people in my village. They said the bacteria levels can cause a range of infections, even if a person were only to drink the water one single time. I boil and filter all the water that I drink (and still this has got me a little worried about what kind of future health risks I’m exposing myself to) but that’s not practical for everyone around me. All this made me feel the complete opposite of encouraged. I understand that the NGO has regulations it has to follow to be able to provide its services but it just seems so ironic that PlayPump considers this water to be too dirty to make cleaner because—news flash-- people are drinking and using it anyway. everyday. They have been for many years. It’s all they have. Going through this reinforced my previous thoughts about how essential clean water is to life. To me, it’s a human right, as essential and integral as dignity itself. Whatever I said before, I totally got my hopes up that it was going to work out. Everything seemed to fit so well. Looking back, it fit too well, it happened too fast and it would have been too easy. That should have been a dead giveaway cause anything that happens quickly in Africa is not to be trusted.

But all hope isn’t lost. After I got the news that it wasn’t going to happen, I talked to a couple different people about what to do. My thoughts were- either I can try to find a company that will independently filter/clean the water so that PlayPump will reconsider, or I could find a new company all together. I emailed a couple friends from home who I thought could help and they did, providing me with more details about the dangers of the components in my water, practical and impractical methods for cleaning it, and possible American NGOs/companies that they thought might be able to help. It meant a lot that these people took the time to use their resources and email colleagues to help me when this problem probably seems so far removed from their lives.

The breakthrough came when I spoke to a man I met a while back who is the contractor for the orphanage they are building on my school’s property (I’ll explain the orphanage in a sec). His name is Johann and he runs an NGO in the town where I buy my groceries. He works in a lot of the villages in the area heading different development projects and he comes by my school a lot. He knew about the lack of water and that I was trying to find a solution. He told me he’d check up on some things and get back to me. Turns out he highly recommended my village’s situation to a company he does freelance work with- a mining company based in Johannesburg that installs pumps in rural villages for “team building exercises” (still don’t exactly understand why but I didn’t ask questions). I’ve exchanged multiple emails with this company and it’s looking good. They understand that the water quality in the Kalahari basin is basically all this bad. They don’t have any regulations about water sanitation that would stop them from being involved which was what I was most concerned about. As of now, they are coming to my village in June to see if the spot works for them. They said they will most likely install a pump, and they are looking into the cost of filters to see if it is something they can afford as well. The filter was never the most important part for me. It would be amazing to find a way to provide cleaner water to this area, but really, quantity for me outweighs quality. Like I said, people are used to the water the way it is- what they really need is more consistent access to that water since it is always turning off and there are not enough pumps spread out around the village. I want a pump installed in this particular spot because it will provide steady water access to all the students, staff and cooks at the school, to the future orphanage, and to the families nearby. A filter would be icing on the cake. I’m much more hesitant to get excited this time but maybe Round 2 will be different. If it does work out, I think it will be a longer process which is fine with me because the one thing I’ve got is time. Dealing with this has shown me that there are always options that haven’t been exhausted and that there’s plenty of money and resources in the world not to be able to solve a problem like this. Gah okayyy, enough about water. someone get me a beer.. please.

I want to mention the orphanage project too even though I can go into more detail later when the construction begins. There’s a multinational NGO that has been working in this area for around twenty years called “The Kalahari Education Experience” (KEE). Different groups from usually either Germany or Australia come at least twice a year to teach in schools or help build classrooms or any number of things. At my school specifically they have donated lots of books and teaching resources. They built two classrooms, as well as bookshelves in every room. They’ve helped in huge ways. My principal came up with the idea for an orphanage about five years ago. Then, just like now, there were lots of kids growing up in kid-run households, or kids living with their grandparents that were too old and sick to take care of them. She wanted to build a place for them to live during the school week so they could focus on school and receive better care. She pitched the idea to the KEE and they were more than receptive. As of now, the Australian group has raised over ¾ of their monetary goal toward construction, about 100,000 dollars. I met the two women who are heading the building design and the fundraising when they came to visit in November and they are such cool ladies. One of them was the first woman in charge of one of the main research stations in Antarctica many years ago, and she still spends two months out of every year there. They are both authors with very interesting lives who just happen to build orphanages in Africa in their spare time. They are super happy I’m here because now it is much easier for them to be in contact with the principal or any of the other people involved—I’m the only one for miles with internet access so I’ve become the liaison between Australia and the Kalahari. We exchange emails about all aspects of the project- methods, money, community involvement. It’s very cool to be a part of it because the plan is a great one and I know it will benefit the community in a big way once it’s finished. The Australians are coming again at the end of June for two weeks so construction should get underway around then. Here are links to the three newsletters they made to fundraise which explain things more clearly (with pictures!) if you’re interested:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/81248672/Orphans%20house%20newsletter%20sept%202011.mht

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/81248672/Orphans%20house%20newsletter%20Dec%202011.mht

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/81248672/Newsletter%20April%202012_pdf.mht

School’s going well. I go back and forth between feeling like a good teacher and like a total fraud pretty regularly. This is the shortest term of the four so I feel like I’m cramming in lessons and assessments left and right. I gave my class journals after I got back from vacation and it was a huge hit. They love them and are always asking me if they can write. It’s great because I can have a unique conversation which each kid about whatever they want to write to me about. It’s given the quieter students a way to express themselves, and I encourage the ones who can’t write well to draw pictures instead. They all keep saying how much they want to meet my friends from America, so you guys should probably get on that and come visit. I also started tutoring sessions with a small group of my students having the most trouble. The five of them can barely read and even though they’re pretty good at faking it in class, it was painfully clear that they needed individual help. I’m using workbooks from second and third grade and working through them slowly hoping it’s helping somehow. At the very least I can tell they love the individual attention, and for a kid who isn’t paid attention to much at home, that can go a long way. I want to keep doing it the rest of the time I’m here and hopefully branch out into other grades with kids that the other teachers tell me need extra help as well.

I was sick last week for too many days, uncontrollably throwing up, constant nausea, the works. It was awful and a little scary at times. I felt weak and isolated- the doctors is three hours away on a bumpy jarring road and in addition to not knowing what they could actually do for me, I was pretty sure the ride alone would kill me. I couldn’t eat and I was trying to keep myself from getting too dehydrated. My mom talked me through it by text, I would have been even more of a mess without her. It reminded me how lucky I am to have been relatively healthy the last couple months and how seriously I want to stay that way. I wasn’t dying or anything but getting to the other side made me want to keep health and safety as my top priorities. The goal is to make it through to the end of this not too much worse for the wear.

Getting over the hostile takeover of my body by bacteria and coming back from the States are both contributing to this feeling of recommitment I’ve been having lately. The feeling comes and goes when it wants but I’m trying to sweet talk it into staying around for a while. As good as it was visiting home, I wanted to come back. I’m not ready to be done yet. It’s like Peace Corps and I are renewing our vows. The year mark is coming up and I’ve been told by tons of people that the “year slump” is about to hit. Around this time some serious soul-searching takes place, volunteers inevitably question what they’ve actually accomplished in a year, whether projects are futile and sacrifices are pointless... it’s so easy to get down as winter comes and the days get darker and the nights colder. I’m going to do my best to hold on to this feeling of recommitment when I have tough days. It’s the natural ebb and flow, I know going through the shit times makes the good times and small triumphs that much more meaningful. Besides leaning on friends and family, one of the ways I deal with the more difficult stuff involves writing pages and pages in my journal, and sometimes when I get really desperate I talk out loud to myself and to the donkeys who are listening to convince myself that I got this… But I’m not too worried (talking to yourself is normal right?) cause I know every little thing is gonna be alright.

Yesterday marked 8 months in South Africa. Ohh yeaahh! It seems very long and very short simultaneously. I think about time all the time. Two years is: a little less than 1/11 of my life so far, 1/5 of a decade, half of high school, half of college, half a presidential term, the amount of time it takes a baby to learn to talk, it’s two Christmases, two Gator football seasons, two birthdays…  it’s long but it’s also short in the grand scheme of things. In African time, it’s an eternity. In the eyes of a child, it’s an eternity. In the eyes of an old person, it’s a drop in the bucket. It’s all relative. There are days that feel as long as a week and weeks that go by in a blink. It might be weird to say, but knowing time will never stop, or speed up, or slow down, no matter what it feels like, is a comforting thought to me. The longer I’m here, the faster the weeks seem to go by. Like where did January and February go?? Here are some things that have been going on lately: 

I’ve almost made it to the end of the first term at school. It’s been a serious learning curve- up until a couple months ago I didn’t know anything about Learning Outcomes or Assessment Standards or Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements or how much work teachers put in to lesson planning. Not to mention how difficult it can be to manage a classroom full of rowdy pre-teens. I’ve been teaching 5th grade English and co-teaching 4th and 6th grade as well. Some days I’m on fire and they’re actively engaged in the lesson, understanding whatever it is we’re talking about and it feels so GOOD. And some days I can tell I’ve gone too far over their heads. The blank stares and the rising noise levels are usually a dead giveaway. I started with the most basic English concepts I could come up with. My first lessons were on things as fundamental as vowels and consonants in the alphabet. Sounds silly but it was totally necessary, no one could tell me what a vowel was in the beginning. I think I’ve touched on this before: this isn't because they are stupid or lazy. They are products of their environment, one in which no one really encourages them to learn and where most teachers themselves don’t know the basics of the subjects they’re teaching. Slowly they are coming along. It can be frustrating but I know all I can do is keep on keepin’ on and look for little signs of improvement. Makes me wanna go back and give big hugs to all my former teachers and say “Thank you thank you, I appreciate you!”

One of the main challenges I’ve encountered is getting my students to think critically. Simple memorization was the main method of Bantu education (the education system during Apartheid). Education was memorizing definitions and mindlessly spitting back words in a specific order. Blacks were not supposed to think for themselves, as the Apartheid Afrikaner government surely realized that thinking wasn’t conducive to their continued minority control of the majority. This legacy is still obvious in the contemporary school system despite the ANC’s (SA’s current ruling political party and the party of Nelson Mandela) efforts to institute query based education models. For me this means constantly trying to get my students to answer the simple question “Why?”…“Why do you think that?” “Why do you like the story?” “Why do you think to run is a verb?” “Where did you get your answer from?” etc etc.  Homework answers that I correct are often directly copied passages from the text we’re working on. They are not used to being asked questions period, or to come up with answers in their own words. My questions are met with averted eyes and heads tilted down. I wanna be like, “Smooth guys, I know the drill, I went to school tooo remember.” It’s funny how crazy loud and rambunctious they are the second they leave my class but when answering questions sometimes all I get is a whisper. I can tell the process will be long and complicated. First they have to realize that their own individual thoughts are worth saying out loud (that sounds really sad but it’s definitely a factor) and then I have to find a way to get them to speak up!

Another enduring legacy from Bantu education, a much more harmful one, is corporal punishment. Corporal punishment is the beating, whipping, hitting, flogging, smacking of students by teachers as the dominant form of discipline. It is an African Peace Corps volunteer’s worst nightmare. There were so many sessions on it during training to try to prepare us for when we experienced it firsthand. I am lucky, I have never seen the teachers at my school hit children. Occasionally I see sticks and whips lying around, possibly as a reminder of what could happen if the students misbehave in class, but I’ve never witnessed it myself. Some of the other PCVs are not as lucky, I hear horror stories on a weekly basis. Technically it is illegal and a teacher could go to jail if they are reported but that rarely happens. Teachers complain that while the government made it illegal, they never implemented a replacement discipline program that works. To many teachers in SA, beating a kid is the only way to get them to behave. They don’t realize the atmosphere of fear that is created by the threat of getting whipped, and that fear does not facilitate learning, but completely inhibits it. Not to mention IT’S ABUSE. Cultural difference learning point Exhibit A: To me, with my Western mindset, it’s abuse. To them it’s an effective form of discipline. (Ethnocentrism can be a topic for another day...) Beating children is still a commonly used form of punishment by parents too. Kids are brought up getting hit by their parents, their teachers, their neighbors, by any adult really. The logic behind this is that “all children are children of the community” so it is every community member’s job to discipline a child when they misbehave. Because kids are used to being hit, they hit each other. All the time. That is what I see a lot of and it’s what makes me sad and angry almost daily. I can’t make it through a whole class without one kid wailing on another. I don’t know how many more times I can go over the class rules to make them get it. I don’t know what to say or what to do to make them stop. A couple weeks ago one of my kids took off his belt and started whipping a girl with it. By the time I could get to him he’d done it multiple times. The girl was relatively unfazed (that says a lot right there) but I was about a millisecond from breaking down into tears. I’m lucky and the students are lucky that my principal does not tolerate the other teachers using corporal punishment, but there is still a long way to go before physical abuse will be eradicated from mainstream SA society.

Something potentially awesome: one of my PCV friends, fed up with the water situation in his village, found an NGO that installs “play pumps” in elementary school yards free of cost. “Play pumps” are water pumps that look like mini merry go rounds, like what you would find on a park playground. Kids pump the water when they play on it, the turning of the merry go round wheel brings the water up from underground where it passes through a filter system and comes out through a tap.  The best part is that it uses no electricity. It costs about $14,000 to install one. My school has no direct access to water as of now, the kids can’t wash their hands or drink water unless they bring it themselves, which they rarely do. Occasionally they get a cup from the kitchen with lunch (the two school cooks get their water carted in by donkeys in the mornings, water sanitation at its finest...not.) I contacted the NGO since I knew we had a tap that had been covered over but that has the potential to provide water. It’s in a great location too, right on the edge of the soccer field so it can be used for the school and for other people in the village’s personal use at no cost to the school. A rep from the NGO came to check it out over a month ago and it met all their initial requirements! I was so pumped (pun intended). The next step was to wait for a company to come test the rate at which the water flows out of the ground to see if it’s worth it to install the pump, and to test the composition of the water to make sure it is clean enough to drink by their standards.  They came and I watched with anticipation as they checked the water flow rate – it was more than enough! Now I’m just waiting to hear if the water tested clean enough. They said I should know in a couple weeks. If it is then they’ll install the pump for free!!! And I’ll be the happiest white girl in Africa. I’m trying not to get my hopes up, it still feels like a long shot and way too good to be true but if for some reason the water gods grant me this wish, I will be so grateful. Nearly all of what I’m doing on a daily basis can’t be measured in any tangible way, but this would be different. If it doesn’t work out, I won’t regret going through this process. Now that I know that there are organizations like this out there I can look for others that might be able to do something. But for now I’m going to wait and wish and hope and cross my fingers and knock on wood and not jinx it by stepping on cracks in the ..uhh.. sand..

Soccer Soccer Soccer, man I love it!! Being in SA for the World Cup in 2010 was the coolest thing ever. I could try to explain but you should just go to Brazil in 2014 and check it for yourself. That experience helped me to understand what soccer means to South Africa. It’s a universal connector. It’s more than a sport, it has helped diplomatic relations between countries and it brings people together from all over the world. I love that South Africans, no matter if you’re nine or ninety years old, love it so much. I held tryouts at the end of January and formed a team of some pretty darn cool 11-13 year old boys. I picked them based on their skills and how disciplined/well-behaved they are. I’ve played on enough teams to know that the two qualities are equally important. In the beginning of January I went to a meeting held by the school district and found out there are three big district tournaments already set up for different age groups. This was a huge relief to me as I’d been trying to figure out how I was going to find other teams to play against. Knowing there was already some kind of infrastructure in place and that there would be a place for me to meet other coaches, was a huge weight off my shoulders. In the months leading up to then, I’d been stressing about a bunch of things- finding teams to play, finding money for equipment since we only have one ball, making sure the boys can find cleats to borrow and uniforms to wear, filling out all the right paperwork, getting their birth certificates notarized… but somehow it’s all kind of come together. It taught me to chill out when it comes to other projects and stuff like this. I realized that while I have to try to problem-solve as best as I can, I can’t stress or worry too much about everything- the universe has a way of working things out if I just move in the right direction and keep my eyes and ears open. Practice has been really fun! It’s helped me to form a closer bond with the boys on the team who are also in my class. I can tell I’ve earned some major cool points with them and visa versa. First game is this Saturday!!

Even though a lot of my time is taken up with school and soccer stuff, I still have plenty of time to chillax and to mentally escape back to the first world. I spend lots of time reading and watching shows and movies that help me do that. I counted the other day and in eight months I’ve read 31 books and watched every episode of Entourage and Sex and the City. I like to think of my external hard drive and my Kindle as my children, I love them more than a person should love inanimate objects. I also read the news religiously. New York Times, CNN, NPR, Washington Post, Huffington Post, BBC, The Gainesville Sun, anything I can find. The republican primary race has been really entertaining lately. I decided that if Rick Santorum gets elected president, I’m not coming home. I’m not worried about it though, Obama’s got it on lock. I just imagine him sitting in the oval office leaning back in his chair amused at how hard the republican candidates are fighting to be the one that he beats in November (Also: Dear Rush Limbaugh, you are an ass. Love, Julie). It keeps me sane knowing what’s going on at home and in the rest of the world. I’ve always loved reading and watching the news but being this isolated has made me crave information even more.

I feel like there is so much more to say but it’s hard to know how to explain... I can write about school and soccer and the big things but there are so many small, strange, cool moments and cultural practices that I wish I could transplant into my family’s and friends’ brains so I can give them a more complete picture of the way I live.

Things like waking up to an orange sky and to the sounds of roosters and donkeys. I greet every person I meet throughout the day, no matter if I greeted them an hour before. I shake hands with a specific handshake and only ever with my right hand. I touch my right elbow with my left hand when I hand someone something as a sign of respect. I eat with my fingers when sharing a meal. I’ve tried chicken feet, chicken liver and goat brains. I clean my shoes in the morning, as the first thing a South African will notice about you is your shoes. I wear a skirt every day. Women don’t wear shorts, I don’t think my host mom has worn a pair of pants once in her seventy plus years of life. Transportation really does suck. It takes me nine hours roundtrip to buy groceries every other weekend, as there is no fresh food in my village to buy. Hitchhiking is usually the safest and sometimes the only option. All vehicles break down all the time: a couple weeks ago my ride broke down and I found myself stuck in the rain far from home off the main road with a dying phone. TIA. There are always at least twice as many people in a vehicle as there are seats. Personal space ? What’s that?? Babies are routinely thrust upon me as mothers just assume I won’t mind holding their child for an extended period of time. (I mind.) Women whip out their breasts in public to nurse their babies. This seemed like such a paradox to me because I was taught how important it is to cover my knees, shoulders and hair to show respect and yet there are uncovered boobs everywhere (?????), but it’s another thing that’s become normal. Babies (usually very cute ones) are all around, the world’s overpopulation problem on continuous display. Getting pregnant is called “falling pregnant” like if someone trips you, bam you’re SOL. I don’t turn on the light anymore when I feel bugs crawling on my skin in the night, I just swat and turn over- the true test of integration. I check to make sure my electronic devices are charged and my headlamp is within reach in case the power goes out which it does for hours randomly all the time. When it starts to rain I know just where to put the buckets to catch the water that leaks through my roof. I have multiple buckets in my room, one for dish washing, one for washing my face, one for washing my body, one for storing water, one for carrying water, one to pee in during the night (you’re welcome for that mental image). The “pee bucket” is a sacred and wonderful thing, ask any PCV and they’ll tell you. Shit and all other pit latrine experiences are constant and completely acceptable topics to discuss with other volunteers. The very little discomfort I felt about discussing my bodily functions (Hondurty and Guateballin’ crew hollllaa) before I came to SA is completely gone. I lost it for good around the time the PC doctors talked about playing “Diarrhea Bingo” during training so we would be able to explain to them in precise detail exactly what kind of intestinal issues we are having (again, you’re welcome for that mental image). I don’t even know if you who are reading this are disgusted right now or entertained- that’s how normal this stuff is to me haha. I could go on but I won’t push my luck anymore ;)

I might have gotten a little off track but my point is.. I am learning a lot, changing in obvious and less obvious ways, but also reaffirming core beliefs and ideas that were formed in my mind before I came. I am always trying to integrate myself as best as I can. To mimic the people around me, to bridge the cultural gap between us, to be sensitive to the cultural differences I encounter, to adapt to my surroundings without sacrificing the ideas and practices that are central to who I am. It’s a process that will continue for the rest of these two years. I have tried to merge my American self with my Peace Corps self with my African self. Above all, I’ve tried to stay true to myself. Sometimes it results in a mess. I’ve embarrassed myself in front of large crowds, offended people without meaning to, and probably unknowingly contributed to negative stereotypes about Americans. I know I’ll never be fully integrated. I could live in this village for the next twenty years and still not understand important aspects of Tswana culture. That’s okay with me. It’s a balance between fitting in and standing out that I’m still trying to get right.

Ohhkaaayy I hope all of that made sense. Too many months in the bush, sometimes even I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Good thing I’m coming HOME (!!!!) soon to give me a much needed dose of the people and things I care about the most. I’ll be back for two weeks during my school’s fall break in early April. SO EXCITED doesn’t begin to explain what I’m feeling :) :)  America, I’m so happy I get to hang out with you again. I’ve missed you. annndddd if you are reading this, I’ve probably missed you too :)

Piece and Luhv

Back in the village. Life is simple again, quiet and calm. After a wild whirlwind December, it’s been nice to slip back into my routine. It’s so flipping hot. I decided the only way to deal with it is to resign myself to the heat, embrace it, pretend like I’m in a sauna at a high class resort on some beautiful African island…

Where to begin? I started my adventure within this bigger adventure in Pretoria where the US government (The HIV/AIDS fund PEPFAR, aka “President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief”) was kind enough to put us up in an awesome hotel for ten days.  PEPFAR was the best (only good) thing to come out of the Bush administration, thanks George W! We were there for Peace Corps In-Service Training (IST), which included sessions on all aspects of HIV/AIDS education, grant writing and proposals, and project development skills. The HIV/AIDS sessions were the most interesting to me. I learned a lot of new things and reinforced key information that I already knew from my HIV training with the Alachua County Health Department back home. An extremely fascinating South African named David Patient led the sessions. He is one of the longest living people with HIV, diagnosed in 1983. He was hilarious, crude, and had pictures with Bono and Brad Pitt as his screensaver, nbd. He led us in some intense yoga sessions every morning and had just climbed Mount Kilimanjaro a few days before meeting with us- the man is as healthy as an ox.

Living in my village has given me a pretty pessimistic view of HIV. For the most part, it seems relatively hopeless. It is an exceedingly complicated topic tied up with notions of gender roles, of race, of poverty, of politics. Talking about it is taboo. People die of HIV all the time but instead of identifying the real cause of death, everyone will say the person died of tuberculosis, or pneumonia, or cancer. These are all diseases easily contracted once a person has full blown AIDS and their immune system is severely weakened. People don’t want to know their status because that would involve going to the clinic to get tested and the fear of a neighbor seeing them and the news spreading like wildfire is too great a deterrent. Asking a man to use a condom can cause serious problems for a woman in African society. Parents don’t want their kids taught about sex in schools (cough US problem too cough) but of course many children start having sex at a very young age whether or not they are taught about safe sex.  In the village there isn’t much to do for entertainment, trust me.

Listening to Patient speak gave me a brighter outlook on what can be done in SA and made me realize how much global progress against the disease has been made. Patient’s central theme was: dying from HIV is a waste. The South African government provides ARVs (the medicine used to fight HIV) for free to any citizen with HIV. All you need to do is get tested, take your medicine, adhere to a certain (but not impossible) diet, and you can live a long and healthy life. Unfortunately, getting people to get tested and take their medication will remain complicated for a while, but at least options exist for people who want to practice safe sexual health. Patient offered us a lot of ideas and tools that we could possibly implement in our schools and communities. Most importantly, he advocated meeting people where they’re at and tailoring presentations about HIV to your audience to be as effective as possible. Overall, the training was very helpful, Peace Corps outdid itself. Every afternoon we were free to hang out, play sand volleyball, use wireless internet, watch movies, sit by the lake, go to the gym, the sauna, the hot tub, the pool, eat, drank…and to DANCE, with SA24 theres always a lot of dancing.

From there I was expecting to bum around some friends’ villages in the area for a week or so, but instead ended up taking part in an epic road trip to Kruger National Park. At a hostel one night we met these two Dutch guys who offered us a ride to the game reserve; they were hoping to offset the cost of their rental car and gas. They were nice, normal guys spending a semester abroad at the University of Pretoria and it took me no time to make up my mind. Promise it wasn’t as sketchy as it might sound. We rented a second car cause so many of us wanted to go and ended up being nine people in total. They proposed the idea around 9 PM and we were gone by 9 AM the next morning. The drive was beautiful. As much as I like the Cape, it doesn’t hold a candle to that area of the country (Mpumalanga and Kwa-Zulu Natal provinces) with its lush green vegetation and mountains. Kruger is one of the most famous and widely visited game parks in the whole of Africa and driving through it showed me whyyy, it was absolutely incredible. It was the most authentic safari I’ve ever been on cause we were our own guides following the map and trails, never knowing what animal would appear around any given corner. I SAW TWO LIONS MATE! Nala wasn’t having it and tried to get Simba off her so Simba threw his head back and roared while Nala flung herself into the grass to take a nap- just like real life haha. Definitely the highlight. Elephants, giraffes, monkeys, hyenas, crocodiles, rhinos, buffalo, zebras were all nice enough to make an appearance. It was so unreal, beautiful and a BLAST. We also went zipling which was super fun, as if I wasn’t already pumped enough on adrenaline.

From there we caught a bus to Durban, a city in the Kwa-Zulu Natal province on the Indian Ocean coast. Durban is one of SA’s most progressive cities, evidenced by the fact that it had just hosted the United Nations Climate Change Conference a couple weeks before we got there. Our hostel was a short walk to the beach and that’s where I spent most of my time. Twenty five of us were there, in three rooms with lots of bunk beds. It was not the nicest of places, I shared my bed with some bed bugs, cockroaches visited me often in the night, and everything was damp cause of the proximity to the ocean, but it brought us even closer. My hygienic standards have considerably lowered themselves anyway.  I was still a sleep talking machine though, cursing bugs and random people in my sleep. Anyone that has slept in a room with me knows I’m the most entertaining when I’m asleep.

It was a great time, lots of sun and surfing and relaxing and checking out the city. Christmas didn’t feel like Christmas at all until I skyped with my family as they opened presents and we virtually shared Christmas morning together. My mom even had presents wrapped for me in a stocking which they took turns unwrapping for me. It was wonderful. Christmas was harder than I expected it to be but talking to them took away most of my homesickness, it was the next best thing to actually being there. New Years was really special too, we danced the night away at a bar on FLORIDA street (thought that was fitting) and ended the night/morning swimming in the ocean (we may or may not have had clothes on) as the sky turned pink and the sun rose over the water. Something tells me most of the nights of 2012 won’t be that exciting, it set the bar pretty high.

The next night caused a lot of excitement but not for the same reasons. Thinking about writing about this has been weighing on my mind but I’m gonna give it a shot. Walking back from dinner, some guy tried to rob me on the street with a knife. It all happened very quickly and aside from feeling a little emotionally unstable at the time, I’m totally fine. Luckily, he didn’t touch me with the knife and he didn’t get any of my stuff. About fifteen of us had gone to dinner but on the walk back we were walking at difference paces and me and two friends, Melissa and Suzannah, were about 100 yards behind the group. The general idea is that a man approached me from behind, grabbed my wrists with one hand and tried to wrestle my phone out of my hands, while his other hand had the knife at my stomach. In the confusion, I didn’t see the knife and because there was a crowd of people standing by us, my instinct was to fight his grip and hold onto my phone, assuming that if I struggled long enough someone on the street would intervene. No one even flinched or looked mildly concerned even after Suzannah yelled for help- looking back on what happened that has been one of the most difficult things to process. If there is a next time, I will give an attacker whatever he wants (besides me of course), nothing I own is worth my safety. After a very long couple of seconds of struggling I managed to twist out of his grip and the three of us ran like hell to the hostel. He tried to follow us but we lost him. Major thanks to my friends Zacc and Chris for their self-defense lessons before I left home, I know it helped.

It shook me up for sure but I just feel lucky that things turned out the way they did. I received awesome support from the other volunteers and especially from my family. I was nervous to tell my parents, the thought of causing them anxiety and pain when I’m not coming home for good anytime soon was hard, but I knew then was the time to tell them when we could skype and they could see my face and know I was okay. Their response was exactly what I needed and while I know they were/are scared, they managed to be there for me in such a good way. My dad deals with trauma every day at work and offered good advice on how to work through what I was feeling at the time and what I can expect to feel in the near future. I’ve also known about the basics of trauma work my whole life from long dinner table conversations and the osmosis that occurs naturally when you’re the daughter of a psychologist. In a nutshell I just need to talk about it when I feel like I need to so I don’t repress my feelings and let it affect me in more negative ways than it needs to, hence the writing of it down in a public space.

I still get a rush of adrenaline and a mental flash of what could happen whenever someone walks too closely to me on a street and I feel an even stronger aversion to attention from men than I’ve felt since I got here, but I know it’s gonna take some time to get over. It’s made me think even more about South African poverty, about senseless acts of violence, about the racial and monetary divides in this country and why they facilitate the most intense kind of crime, and about my own vulnerability. It shook me up but it in no way shook my resolve to be here, I’m committed. I’m going to be as SAFE as I possibly can, I’m so determined to come home safe and sound at the end of these two years it's not even funny. My goal is to deal with it as healthily as possible so I can continue to get the most out of this experience.

I had a great time in Durban and in December in general and the incident didn’t change that at all. I like being Lerato Molefi, but it was just what I needed to be JULIE for the last month, to speak English as fast as I wanted, to not be stared at, to bounce ideas and frustrations off people who understood all too well, to stay out late and sleep in, to laugh continually, to hug and be hugged. The break came at the right moment. It rejuvenated me and gave me back some perspective that I inevitably lose from time to time. It got me pumped to commit myself even more to my work at school and to the relationships in my community.

With that in mind, I’m still gonna take things one day at a time. I need to continue to take care of myself mind body and soul because I’ve realized I’m no use to anyone if I’m not in a good place myself. I’m going to try to make the most out of what I’ve got. It’s a process--that has become my mantra, I think that phrase over and over again. Showing up is half the battle! So these next couple months I’m gonna show up and make myself as useful as possible.

School started last week. I’m a REAL teacher. say what?? so far so good. More on that later, for now Ive got some sweating to do and some homework to grade.

sending you all best wishes for a safe, healthy, fantastic and love filled 2012!!