Dumelang! Le kae? (“hey! how are you?” in Setswana)

Lots of new things have been happening lately so I thought it’d be a good idea to give an update of my life these days.

Training is almost over, on September 8^th my group will be sworn in as official Peace Corps volunteers and i’ll start my two year service at my site. The last two months have been a little like a honeymoon stage. The days have been long but nearly always enjoyable and interesting, with fun weekends and lots of good times. Some fun day trips too-we went to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, to the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, and on a safari near Rustenburg.

Visits to the museums and our experiences living in a completely black village have sparked intensely moving conversations about race, poverty, and human interactions in this country- both within the context of a Peace Corps facilitated discussion and among ourselves. Talking about topics like these and experiencing their effects on my daily life is one of the most fascinating parts about living here. In the US, the noise of a million things distracts me from delving into important topics like this…but here I live it, breathe it, hear it, experience it every day- its inescapable. Apartheid ended pretty recently in the grand scheme of things and there is such a long way to go. A real transformation of this country is going to take generations. However, I genuinely appreciate being given a chance to play a small small part in the change, and to watch this country grow and develop firsthand.

The days in Makapanstad are slowly coming to an end. I took my final language test today and passed! We’re throwing a goodbye party for all 56 of our families this weekend with dancing, singing and skits to thank them for all they’ve done for us, and then it’s off to my permanent site next Thursday. Things are about to get super real super fast. Good thing I’ve got a pretty rockin’ assignment to look forward to! I found out two weeks ago that I will be living in a small village in the Kalahari Desert in the Northern Cape province teaching English and coaching boys’ and girls’ soccer at an elementary school !!! So its pretty much perfect :) I was very excited to get the news.

I visited my new village last week for four days, met my new host family and principal and checked out the school. It went really well! I’ll be living with an older couple who are sweet as all get out. They have twelve (TWELVE!) children who are grown and gone. They’ve hosted two other volunteers before and loved them both so I know there is a lot of potential there for a meaningful relationship.                                      

I have my own one bedroom structure unattached to the main house which is going to be my one stop shop for sleeping, cooking, bathing, eating, and hanging out. I don’t have running water, but I do have electricity which will make cooking much easier and me a little less of a cavewoman. The last volunteer who was there left me this encouraging letter about my family and my school along with a box full of useful things (speakers, a guitar, maps, books, teaching resources, cooking spices, trail recommendations, and other useful tips) which left me feeling comforted on my first night there.

My school is called Bojelakgomo Primary School and I was very impressed after observing two school days there. The school has more resources and is more aesthetically pleasing than any other school I’ve visited in South Africa. There is a multinational NGO made up of Australians and Germans who have taken it upon themselves to help the school. They come twice a year and have built bookshelves, donated books, started a garden, and helped in other important ways. There is student art work on the walls along with educational posters, and nearly every kid has their own chair – things that are very rare to witness in a South African school. At first I was like, “man this school doesn’t need me,” but after talking with the principals and the teachers, I can see how much is lacking under the surface. I’ll explain what I’m going to do more later as I settle in and my work there evolves but I know I want to focus on reading comprehension and literacy. The last volunteer started some really good projects that I want to continue with as well as create some of my own. The teachers also really want to start a successful sports program, since there is such a high demand and no one willing to step up to run it. I’m really excited about that- I could see the students light up when I asked them about playing soccer, I cant wait to get started.

My house is in the northwest corner of the village and when I step outside my door I can see miles and miles of nothing but AFRICA every way I look. I decided it looks like a mix between the straight up African bush and middle of nowhere Arizona. I feel safe there, everyone I met was welcoming and easy going. I was also happy to learn that to greet family and friends there I say something different than what I learned in my training village. In my new village people say, “Ga Gona Molato” which is the Setswana version of “Hakuna Matata” (which is Swahili- who knew??) and LITERALLY means “no worries.”  So tons of times a day, I’ll begin every conversation with “no worries,” which just makes me smile at the thought.

Another thing that makes me smile is the sky. The sunsets are ridiculous explosions of orange and red and the sun is monstrously huge on the horizon every night at dusk. In addition, I cannot describe how beautiful the stars are so everyone will just have to come visit me and see for themselves. I promise itll be worth the trek. I’ve never seen that many individual stars, that many constellations, or the milky way that visible in my whole life. AMEN for mother nature, she knows what’s up.

All in all, my site visit was a very encouraging start. I didn’t have any substantial freakout moments but it was a little crazy to be in the place that I will call home for the next two years. Ive been building up to the moment for what feels like a long time and to drink it in, to let myself feel the weight of it all, was overwhelming and exciting at the same time.

Even though it will feel like I’m alone in the middle of nowhere, I actually won’t be too far from a bunch of PCVs. My village is within an hour of 16 other volunteers and we can all meet up on the weekends in each others’ villages or in the main town where we’ll do our grocery shopping (a town called Kuruman, two and a half hours drive south).  We’ve already created this great support network made strong by common ground, hilarious moments, long conversations, and our shared experience of South Africa. I know someone will need me to build them up from time to time, just like I’ll need to hear those same words when I’m feeling down. The Northern Cape is a good spot- im psyched! We have lots of hiking and sandboarding and adventuring to do.

On the way to our sites we experienced a luxurious two days at this hotel in the middle of nowhere. We called our all too brief escape from reality “Posh Corps.” Somehow, even after only two short months, being reintroduced to comforts Ive experienced my whole life was a little shocking. Using toilets inside that flush and taking showers and sleeping in crisp clean sheets and eating delicious food was like heaven.  I took my first shower in two months and damn was it a beautiful thing. The girl I roomed with, Tara (who will actually be working in a village of Kalahari Bushmen—eat that up anthropology majors) flooded our room and bathroom cause she forgot to put the shower curtain in the right place… I thought it was hilarious, we joked that she’d already forgotten how to take a shower.

There have been many memorable moments in the past couple of weeks and I want to share a couple; these are what I call my TIA moments-- which means “This is Africa” –it’s a phrase used to describe any absurd, beautiful, awful, illogical, crushing, happy moment … haha I know that narrows it down a lot. An example: I was on a run with a couple people one day and this guy driving a donkey cart (a makeshift wooden cart pulled by two donkeys) came toward us. As he passed us, I saw that he was texting on his phone. I absolutely lost it and turned to my running partners exclaiming things like “WHERE AM I?? what planet is this???” I know I looked like a crazy person and we all just started laughing uncontrollably. This guy was riding on such a primitive piece of transport, yet texting on his cell phone and it was too much for me to handle.  Other such moments include when I realized my new host family has a DVD player, but no running water (priorities people!), or when Gogo Joyce asked me to teach her how to text on her new phone, or when hungry children are eating rocks on the side of the road as a BMW cruises by. Contrasts like these are everywhere, and sometimes when I experience them at an unexpected moment, they hit me hard. This country is unique in that sense: the third world and the first world collide on a daily basis and the result can be completely disconcerting and downright ridiculous at times.

So yea, my thoughts are all over the place lately but this is a little slice of recent happenings. Things are about to change again big time. I think I’m ready. I want to find a way to make this new village mine, to begin to make some kind of contribution to the people around me, and to keep my sanity at the same time. Luck Luck wish me luck!

Came across this quote and liked it: “Humanity was born in Africa. All people, ultimately, are Africans.”

sala sentle  (stay well)

hellloo :)

I’m here! It’s greaaat. Don’t know where to begin.. there’s too much to say but i’ll just start writing and see what comes out.

I got to DC on July 5^th and realized once again how much I want to live there in the future, that city is too cool. We were there for two days, meeting lots of people and dealing with logistical things and such. Flight was good, arrival was good. We spent the first four days in country at a college campus that was way nicer than I expected it to be. I think they didn’t want to shock us too badly right off the bat. The best part was the monkeys walking all over the campus. I thought it was hilarious every time I turned a corner and found myself staring into some inquisitive monkey eyes. Lots of info, lots of hanging out.. it was a nice transition before we officially started training.

There’s 56 PCVs in our group, which is called SA24 -cause we’re the 24^th PCV group in South Africa. Everyone is normal and cool, interesting to talk to, up for some serious adventures and fun to be around. Not that I expected otherwise, but you never know. I hoped for a couple people I would feel comfortable with, but I got many more than that. The first couple of days were really great for that reason cause there were so many people to get to know. I was constantly laughing and genuinely enjoying every conversation I had over meals or tea or late at night... it made the transition between leaving home and starting this new life really good and not very scary at all. 90% of the group is under 30 (most people are like 24 but there’s a few straight outta college kidz like me), the other 10% are retired and in their 60s. Of the 56, one of the guys graduated from UF two years before me, one of the girls was a Rotary Exchange student like me, 2 others went to college with two people I went to high school with, and one girl is good friends with a very good friend of mine who I met in South Africa last year. On top of that, 4 of us speak German fluently. All of that makes me feel like this is where I’m supposed to be. We’ve already started to build relationships that I know i’ll need to rely on when things get rough. We’ve had crazy awesome dance parties, good discussions about everything under the sun, impromptu jam sessions, star gazing sessions, soccer games, yoga and running workouts etc—all the ingredients for solid friendship foundations. We learned we get a good amount of time off to visit each other once we’re at our sites and additional time to go on trips together, so naturally the planning has already begun. Some of us will even live relatively close to each other since Peace Corps organizes our sites in clusters (from 5 to 15 people in a cluster) around a town that we can all meet up in. It’s nice to have a support system, jumping into the abyss with friends by your side is easier and wayyy more fun than doing it alone.

4 days after we got to SA, we moved to our training site, a village called Makapanstad in the North-West Province. We’ll be here until the first week of September, after which we’ll be placed in a specific site/village for the next two years. Makapanstad is pretty rural, not much development besides houses and shacks and the occasional bar. There’s cattle and other animals wandering along every path and there’s dirt/dust on the ground and in the air that’s causing my allergies to act up like it’s their job. Orange trees, lemon trees, trash scattered all around, makeshift fences and gates, alarm clock roosters, barking dogs, constant catcalls/crude remarks/marriage proposals directed at all the female volunteers, kombis or taxi vans speeding along the one paved road, and people walking around greeting each other are the normal sights and sounds of the village.

 Here I met my very own African grandmother :) Her name is Gogo Joyce and she’s made me feel really comfortable in her home. Grandmothers here are called “Gogos,” and they are by far the most badass members of South African society. People do not fuck with Gogos. We were told to befriend old women wherever we go because they’ll look out for us, make sure no one messes with us or tries to rip us off. Joyce is always smiling. She’s super helpful with my language skills, always teaching me words and phrases, patient even when I ask her to repeat things over and over. She gave me an African name: “Lerato,” which means love in Setswana. All the Africans I’ve met and befriended call me by my new name. She laughs with pleasure every time I introduce myself to her friends and neighbors as Lerato, I can tell she likes showing off her new American granddaughter.

Last weekend one of the guys threw a party (there aint no party like a Peace Corps party) at his house and we all had to ask our host moms and Gogos for permission to go. Some of them wanted to know Josh’s family’s name and address… flash back to middle school sleepovers haha. It was a little silly but nice to feel cared about by these African families who have voluntarily opened up their homes to a bunch of foreigners.

Gogo Joyce is teaching me how to cook! My parents told me I couldn’t come back til I learned to cook so I decided it was time to give it a shot. The food here is decent enough. During part of training we’re taught how to cultivate our own gardens which I’m really excited about. I’m almost looking forward to cooking for myself for the next two years (gasp). There are a couple reasons for that: Clean water and properly cooked food are a real issue for some of us. To drink a glass of water I have to: boil water, let it cool, filter it through a brita filter, and then drop some bleach in it, leaving me with a “clean” bleach-like tasting cup of water for my drinking pleasure. To brush my teeth, I have to boil water. To do the dishes, I have to boil water. To wash a piece of fruit I want to eat, I have to boil water. Never in my life have I thought so much about clean water- I already know it will be a central theme of my service. This makes cooking food much more complicated as well. Some PCVs’ families are not as sanitary as mine and it sucks worrying that everything you eat might make you sick. The point is that it will be nice to get to our sites so we can control what we eat and drink without offending anyone.

A couple of us are planning to contact MTV about making a cribs episode, Peace Corps SA style, since our living situations are so pimped out. Some of us have inside toilets (the chosen ones!), some of us shit in holes in the backyard, some of us have showers, most of us take bucket baths (i’ll let you imagine that one.) It can all feel pretty crazy. Sometimes I feel like i’ve time traveled back many decades. But it’s nice to live simply and cool to know I’m reducing my carbon footprint considerably. Taking a bath is quite a process. I have to build a fire outside to heat the water so I’m not taking a cold bath in the cold (it’s winter here and the mornings and nights can get prettttty cold.) The first time I did it I laughed to myself thinking “what the hell am I doing building a fire outside in the cold in Africa just so I can take a bath?? how is this real life??” but people can get used to anything, and it’s one of the many foreign things thats starting to feel normal to me.

I’m learning Setswana! It’s one of the more widely spoken of SA’s 11 national languages so I was stoked about that. About 3 million SA people speak it as well as all of Botswana’s population. We were broken up into smaller language groups of 4 or 5 and nearly every day we have lessons with our language teachers. It’s overwhelming but i’ve got the basics down. There is soooo much more to learn but having short conversations here and there makes me feel like I’m retaining a good amount of it. There are a couple of crazy sounds that I’m trying to master but I know it’ll take time. Meeting white people who can speak Setswana is not an every day occurrence around here. Some of the people I’ve met have never even spoken to a white person period. (Race and SA’s complex national history is a WHOLE nother humongous topic that I will save for another day.) Speaking the language well is extremely important… half our battles will be about building relationships in our communities and getting people to trust us- learning the language is the fastest way to integrate myself. Mandela’s words can explain it better than mine: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, you will speak to his mind; if you talk to a man in the language he was born speaking, you will speak to his heart.”

We’ve also had a couple of school visits at different schools in the area to introduce us to the South African school system, making like 7 visits in total. I’m at a middle school that is pretty run down .. some kids don’t have chairs to sit on, no electricity, nothing on the walls, no flushing toilets (that’s pretty standard for everywhere though), a serious lack of teachers, lack of funding for basic school supplies and many other problems. However, there are a couple of teachers who definitely know what they’re doing and a good amount of students who want to learn. No matter what a school physically has or doesn’t have, I know it’s the teachers and students who will make or break my experience so I’m just hoping for the best later on.

In addition to language lessons, all the PCVs and training staff meet up nearly every day at a building in the center of the village to have training sessions about all the things that will affect us for the next two years: how to stay healthy physically and mentally, illnesses we need to watch out for, HIV/AIDS, sexual assault info, safety and security in general, race relations, what life at our sites will be like, teaching methods, the South African school system, the system under Apartheid, South African history and politics.. the list goes on and on. Sometimes my brain goes into overload mode and I feel like I can’t absorb one more word, but I’m impressed with how well organized and informative training has been. We’ll never actually be ready for what’s coming at us, but our awesome training staff is trying to at least make sure our villages won’t kick us out immediately..

I got internet on my phone last week which is soooo great cause now I don’t feel so disconnected. I can email friends and family, read the news, BBM anyone that has a blackberry like my mama :) text other volunteers here, etc. I find it funny that I had to move to Africa to get a smart phone for the first time haha but no complaints. It’s nice- I don’t feel so far away from home anymore.

Overall, life is real good. I’m very happy to be here with these people doing what we’re doing. It feels surreal about 10 times a day and i’m sure that’ll continue for a long time. There are moments when I feel SO high on life and others where I wonder how exactly I’m going to live here for so long. I recognize how incredibly much is waiting for me, how much I have to learn about this country, about Africa, about teaching, about race, about Setswana, about myself, about LIFE. I’m in no rush to learn it all at once as my schedule is pretty wide open for the next while. For now it’s about having as much fun as possible, and taking each day as it comes.

I’ve left out lots of things but I’ve already written a novel so I’m gonna call it quits for now. If you made it to the end, ke a go rotloetsa (I congratulate you). Hope you are all happy and healthy and lovin’ yourselves some summer days.  Drink an ice cold AMERICAN glass of water for me :)

Peace and love peace and LOVE.

In ONE WEEK I'll begin a whole new adventure in South Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer! For this reason I want to start this blog so I can stay connected to all the people I care about. It's a little daunting to think about posting my words into cyberspace cause I usually just write for myself, but I figured I needed to suck it up and get with the times.

I'm feeling pretty good about leaving these days. I graduated (WHOOP!). I've had the best summer I could ask for. Leaving now just fits, it's the natural next step. I feel as ready as I'm ever going to be (not that I'm ready by any means..) but so far all the stars have aligned, now I just have to do it. I feel ridiculously lucky to be going back to South Africa. I love this country with my whole heart. Its beauty is unique and breathtaking, and its people, from my limited experience, are extremely kind and open. Having already lived and taught there, I feel like I have a tiny incling into the next two years and hopefully I'll have a better chance at succeeding. My world is about to widen. Times like this are really cool cause I feel like I'm standing on the edge, where everything I know is about to change and nothing will ever be the same as soon as I jump.. I'm exxxcited!

I have no doubt this experience will blow my mind repeatedly-- I'll be sick, so sick, I'll be sad and lonely and I'll cry, I'll feel frusterated and useless, I'll feel unsafe and scared and many other things I can't forsee. But if I can come back alive and in one piece, mentally, physically, and emotionally stable, I will regard this experience as a complete success.
I want to become a part of a new family on a new continent. I want to be an African woman's daughter. I want to try everyday to make sense of the foreign words around me until they come out of my mouth effortlessly. I want to learn to trust the people I will meet as they learn to trust me. I want to teach some kids in a classroom something, anything- even though I know they'll teach me a hundred times more than I could ever teach them. I want to climb mountains and swim in oceans and see as many sunsets as I can. I want to make my own opinions about a continent that is vastly misunderstood. I want to make a new life for myself, with new friends (all the other PCVs I'm going with seem SO cool), and in the process expand my comfort level to new and such great heights. I know I'll be pushed to my limit but in my experience that's the perfect time to find out what I'm really made of and just how strong I can be.

This next week is about sad and sweet goodbyes and packing everything I'm going to need for the next two years into two suitcases and a backpack.. harder than it sounds.
I'm going to miss this carefree and beautiful Gainesville life with the best friends and family around. You are all wonderful and I am so lucky to know you. You all better come visit, OR ELSE.

next time you hear from me, I'll be in Afreeeka.
PEACE out :)