Longest post ever!

I use this blog to keep in touch so that people may be able to picture (a little) what is going on with me. Today’s is especially long, because I have so many new things to take in. However, I really doubt they will be this long in the long run, so don’t get your hopes up ☺. Haha.

Also! I forgot to mention so far, that I have adopted a new name here. It is: Sbongile, which is Zulu means, “we are thankful”. The women at my work gave it to me after fighting about it for about 20 minutes in rapid Zulu. Fabulous!u

My work site is OK. Very intimidating. It’s kind of all a mess right now, however this gives me a lot of room to grow and help the organization, so I guess it’s a good thing I got placed here (?). We will wait and see. I hope it works out. My first two goals were to get the feeding scheme up and running again, which is well on it’s way—I’ll explain in a second, and to help work on the reporting that needs to be done each month.

I found out that there was enough money for the feeding scheme so on Thursday I told my supervisor that we needed to go into town the next day with the shareholders to buy food. So I met up with the shareholders and one of the employees Friday at 9am. The power was out—load shedding (rolling blackouts that happen pretty much every day for anywhere from 2-4 hours). Annoying, but manageable. So we go back at 11 only to discover that the computers are all broken so we can’t get bank statements or take money out! So, back to square one on Monday morning at 9am. I’m hoping that things go better this time. My first mini goal will be accomplished Monday. Hopefully money will come in more regularly so this doesn’t happen again (yeah right-this actually happens often). So, that will just have to be taken care of by getting more funding. I’m kind of stumped on this issue. I don’t really know where to go yet. I’m going to go to our umbrella organization in the next couple of weeks and beg them to help me find something. Haha. Also, I’m hoping to meet with the Dept. of Health next week to talk to them about what has been going on (they asked my supervisor to come in—and that means that I will be going, because she now likes it when I go to all the important things with her). I will keep you posted on that. Apparently they showed up for a surprise visit last week while we were out, so they do want to talk to us, so it’s time to take advantage of their interest in us. It’s weird, I am supposed to be just observing for these 3 months but because of my supervisor’s attitude I kind of have had to jump in and actually do things. I’m not really sure how I feel about this, I do NOT want to come in and tell people what to do. However, she is kind of expecting me to do this. So, instead, I have decided to do very low-scale things that are just basically organizational in the first three months, so as not to look like a bossy outsider. It’s a good plan I think.

This week was just spent moving in to my house and then trying to put my finger on the reports that are due each month. Apparently my center turns them in about 15 days late every month and they are wrong each time anyways. So, I told my supervisor that we are going to institute a filing system so that we can have quick access to the forms that are needed, as well as a schedule hanging up to know when they are due! Easy enough, right? Except that we don’t have a working copy machine. I wish I knew how to fix ours, but alas, I do not. Maybe I will write a donation letter to a copy machine company in South Africa? What an idea! That would be sweet.

I am starting to fight the feeling of high expectations. I really just need to FORCE myself to go slow and to keep my expectations low. I am going to set goals for myself that I will be able to meet and won’t be crushed by if it doesn’t happen. I need to set reasonable goals, also about getting to know people ein my community. It’s easy to not meet people in the community because I am so close to town. So, I go in a lot (out of necessity, mostly). However, my host has offered to introduce me to his friends, and so far, the one’s that I have met are really nice. Many of them do not live in walking distance of my house though, so there goes that plan. There aren’t really many people my age in my age group who live around my house. However, there are a couple of workers from my center who are younger who I may work on befriending. It’s going well so far but I’ll have to work on it.

So the Zimbabwe situation is pretty much on everyone’s minds here, and all over the news in South Africa. It’s maddening because Thabo Mbeki (SA’s president) has evaluated the situation and has publicly stated that it isn’t a crisis. Then, I ask you, what exactly is a crisis? think he won't admit it because Mugabe was very good to the ANC during Apartheid and doesn't want to go back against him. However, he has clearly lost his marbles, so who even cares? There are two Zimbabweans who live on my compound. They fled Zimbabwe last month and quickly found jobs in PMB! Both work at a bed and breakfast. One does gardening and the other is an electrician (I think he also works at the B&B but I’m not really too sure). They keep to themselves pretty much, I think it’s mainly because they are always working. My host told me that the man who owns the B&B brought them to him because they needed housing that was affordable and because he is friends with the B&B owner. They say things are really really bad and that people buy up the goods and then sell them at a 5x-10x profit and that no one can afford food. Both of them are sending almost all of what they make home, and they both seem very happy with themselves, which I am excited about.

The food prices are apparently rising. Either they already did or it is about to? My host is always talking about this, as well as the electricity price going up. These are some of his favorite topics. I’m not really sure how much the food prices are going up? But apparently it’s significant enough to also have the radio talking about it all the time (the SA type NPR, which is ehhh alright, not as good as NPR).

I buy my food at this supermarket in town right by the taxi rank. So I do all of my business in PMB and then at the end go to the SPAR supermarket and get my groceries there. It’s OK. This supermarket is a little small and doesn’t really have much variety on different things. However, the other supermarkets are a lot farther away and not really in a fun walking distance of the taxi rank. I catch a taxi here to the next taxi rank where I then take a taxi back to my village. Today Shange (that’s my host’s last name) took me to Pick N Pay, which was huge and amazing. They had so many different kinds of vegetables and meats it was like I had died and gone to heaven! Haha. Shange says that this is the one he always shops at and wouldn’t mind telling me advance when he is going so I can just tag along. This is nice because this supermarket is definitely not in walking distance of the center of town. It is, I guess, but lugging all those groceries back to the rank would be a pain. Also, all the streets closer to that supermarket are empty, and I’m kind of weary of walking down empty streets, you know? Most everyone buys their groceries in town. Because it is semi-rural it is close enough to town that people just go there to shop. Actually this was the case in Bakenburg as well, but it was more expensive to go into town because it was farther away, so there was a larger Spazza (convenient store) nearby. I have yet to see veggies sold in my section of Sweetwaters (It’s called Zayeka—and area inside of Sweetwaters—SW is made up of about 8 or 9 areas). This is a bummer, but I have a pretty good set up to get to the supermarket (it is really to catch a taxi here, which is really nice and convenient). Taxis fit about 16 people and barrel down the road at an amazing thing. I like taking them. I would say that at every single trip I meet or talk to someone interesting. Also, people can NEVER believe that I stay in Sweetwaters (you rarely see white people even drive through SW, so this makes sense) or be taking a taxi. Their disbelief is kind of fun to be a part of, but I can see this getting tiring. Like, I am already tired of being stared at constantly, everywhere I go. I’m sure I will learn to ignore this.

Sweetwater’s is extremely hilly. Like rolling hills, but a lot steeper. Almost like mountainous hills. Does that even make sense? Whatever, look up “valley of 1,000 hills KwaZulu Natal” and then look at pictures and just imaging houses on most of the hills as far as you can see. It’s quite beautiful, I must say. I don’t think the leaves change, but I will keep you posted. I definitely have seen a weather change even from when I was here 3 weeks ago. It’s a lot colder at night and in the morning and cooler (but still hot) during the day. Apparently, according to friends still in Limpopo it is still like an oven, heat wise.

I should get going to bed soon but let me tell you about my day today. I woke up at 630 because I had to get up to do laundry as well as Jeff called me. We talked and then I begun laundry at 745am. This continued until around 930 (I had a lot of laundry). I then started to collage in my room and just cook breakfast, etc. Then at 1:30 Shange asked me to go to town with him for company so he could pick up a friend there and bring her back to SW. I said yes (and this is when we went to the supermarket, on the way to get his friend). We picked her up and brought her back to the house. It turns out she was coming over to help Shange grade his school papers for the accounting classes he teaches at the high school. I also decided to help him because he has been doing so many good things for me the least I can do is help him out. So, for the next 3 hours Shange, Thendiwe, and I graded papers—and we didn’t even finish! I’m going to try and help a little more tomorrow, because I really am so thankful for Shange’s help and he’s really stressed out about grading these papers (I was just checking things off from an answer key). He definitely has a lot of students. Then around 5 we took her back to the township she lives in closer to PMB. After that we tried to go find Shange’s sister who’s family was visiting a friend in another area by PMB (they live in Durban). They had already departed for Durban when we got to their friend’s house. However, we tracked them down and hugged them and said goodbye to them on the side of the road. Next, by this time it was around 630—Shange decided he was hungry and since he had to go to church at 8pm -12am he wanted to get some fast food. Fist we tried to go to this weird restaurant called Nandos (I’ve not eaten there). However, the line was too long. Next we went into a Chinese restaurant. I was really excited about this prospect because this is the first Chinese restaurant I’ve seen in SA. We couldn’t get it though because the line was too long. Shange has never had Chinese and we decided that we are going to go there in the future so that he can give it a try. Next we went to McDonalds (there are 2 in PMB, weird). He got some food and then we drove back home. It is so weird that there are McDonald’s here. They haven’t reached Namibia yet, I liked that there. However, like I said, there are only 2, so it isn’t too bad. It’s weird seeing the mashup of America with rural South Africa on a daily basis. It’s very difficult. On the way back home we stopped at his friend’s house and picked up a bike helmet for me to borrow so that Shange and I can go bike riding tomorrow morning. I don’t know how this will work, because of the hills. I’ve tried to explain this to Shange numerous times but he doesn’t really seem to understand it, but he will understand it because of my performance tomorrow. Haha, I’ll let you know how it goes.


<3