My First Post. YAY!

Hello Friends! It’s been forever but I finally managed to get access to a computer with the Internet. Since there’s a crapload of journal entry excerpts on here (from the past 4 months), I will post it in chunks so that it won’t be so boring, but mostly so the computer doesn’t explode. Also the pictures are teeny tiny because the Internet runs off phone minutes so we pay per usage, and I be broke.

22-JULY: Staging in DC. Meet and greet, vaccinations, and more!

25-JULY: ROSIE’S BDAY!

26-JULY: Arrive in JoBurg after 18-hour flight. Thrown onto a bus and driven 2 hours to the Teacher’s College which will be our training site for the next 2 months. Cold, painful winter. No one ever said it was cold in Africa.

28-JULY: Pooed for first time since the 21^st. After several fruitless attempts at consuming massive amounts of bran, fiber tablets, and coffee, I think it was sitting on a cold chair that did the trick.

Toilets and showers in some dorms explode. Yes, showers can explode. As one PCT (Peace Corps Trainee) most accurately puts it, “Our bathroom has Typhoid.” Welcome to Africa.

29-JULY: Manage to experience every emotional state within an 8-hour frame. Question my chemical balance, or imbalance. Toilets and showers continue to explode.

Discover secret magical toilets that are rumored to flush down even the macdaddiest of gorilla fingers.

30-JULY: PATRITI’S BDAY!

Develop mild asthma toward fire. Trash is not collected. It is burned. Plastic, aluminum, glass. All of it, burned. Sometimes it’s thrown down pit toilets by irresponsible citizens who would rather not burn their rubbish (I love their British English, so sophisticated) and gaping holes in the ozone layer.

Rubbish bonfire

2-AUGUST: Move in with host family. I have 3 brothers and a mother who calls me “Baby girl” or “My love.” Haha Coincidence? And they’re Catholic, but they just call it Roman here. “Are you a Roman? There are many Romans here.”

Some brothers and cousins

More cousins, uncles, aunts

3-AUGUST: Discover I’m white courtesy of my uncle. When I tell my LCF (Language and Cross-Culture Facilitator aka Language Teacher) the news, he replies with, “You didn’t know?”

4-AUGUST: Woke up from a very vivid dream and briefly forgot where I was. The donkey standing outside my window reminded me.

Donkeys everywhere!

5-AUGUST: CIM’S BDAY!

Invited to first wedding. Who do I know so well already that I am invited to their wedding? No one. We were at the school at which we were doing our practicum. A teacher saw the lekgowa (white people), that’s us, walk by, and handed us a stack of flyers to his brother’s wedding. Ubuntu at its finest.

6-AUGUST:

Found a fatty roach in my room. Pondered killing it but chickened out. Scared it into a dark corner. As long as I can’t see it, it is dead to me. Tree- Roach duty isn’t the same when done solo. How am I supposed to keep an eye on the roach and call for help at the same time?

Receive first letter! Dated 9-July. Go 1-month turnaround. Thanks, Rosie!

A cricket falls out of my skirt as I undress for a bath. Long skirts = good for weddings, work, funerals; bad for housing critters.

Interview SGB (School Governing Board) who told us it’d be nice if we could provide them a library, computer lab, and an auditorium. I think they’ll be sorely disappointed when they find out the resource we’re providing is us.

Chat by campfire under the stars. See the Milky Way. AMAZING. Good day.

9-AUGUST: Attend first mass. Unknowingly sit in the choir and have to walk down the aisle singing and dancing. Embarrassing but kind of funny. (Later my brother who was alter server makes fun of me and says I looked shy and awkward when I was “dancing.”)

Church celebrates new priest. People come one by one to give gifts of money, blankets, anything. One woman gives him her baby which he then raises and holds up in his hands, and no lie, it is the Lion King. Straight up. Thought it was a perfect photo-op but vetoed the idea after pondering the level of appropriateness.

Attend the wedding we were invited to. Lasts nearly all day. Once they pop (the question), they just can’t stop (partying.) We aren’t allowed to enter or exit the party without first dancing in a conga line throughout the entire venue. Not just the wedding party, but all of the guests. Picture the Fresh Prince episode when Jazz gets married at the chapel and dances down the aisle with his jam box on his shoulder.

There was a man passed out on the floor toward the beginning of the wedding, early noonish. Too much booze. All the kids pointed, the grannies stared, and we took lots of pictures.

The man passed out at the wedding

10-AUGUST: I am called China. Not China girl, or Chinese, but China. I am the entire country. Or the wrestler. Not sure which is closer but my guess is the country. It feels like growing up in Texas all over again. Ah, sweet memories.

Become violently ill for 24-hours. Swine flu has shortly arrived in South Africa. Who knows. Ironically, as the principal makes an announcement about Swine flu during morning assembly, I run to the bathroom to vomit and diarrhea at the same time. It’s like that drunk girl sitting on the toilet with a trash can in her lap. Except they don’t believe in trash cans. Not in the traditional sense at least. I had a system worked out. There were two stalls next to each other. I don’t like puking in a toilet my asshole just exploded in, so I designate each toilet for each port of exit, and I jump back and forth as nature calls. Stall number one was for vomit, stall number two was for number two. Those pneumonic devices sure come in handy.

Observe a class at the local high school. Teacher gives me the lowdown before beginning. They are going to have an oral exam on English grammar, grade 10. Class begins. They read an article 3 times, once silently on their own, then the teacher reads it to them, then they take turns reading the article aloud called “Sex for Money.” The moral of the story, don’t have sex for money because you’ll get AIDS and die. You may think your sugar daddy (exact terminology, I kid you not) can provide you a life of luxury but he’ll give you AIDS or other deadly, incurable STIs. Not entirely sure how English grammar was assessed in this examination, but then again there are a lot of things I’m unsure of. Textbook example of Bantu education. And this is an exemplary school. We’ve got work to do.

12-AUGUST:

Sweep carpet. That’s what you do when there is no vacuum cleaner.

19-AUGUST: MOM AND POPS’ 30^TH ANNIVERSARY!

Teach first solo class. LOVE IT. Classroom teacher never shows up. Perhaps thought my teaching his students meant a day off? Either way, no one seems to care. Or notice. Later discover he is fired a week later. Not because of his lack of attendance, but because of his relationship with a student. The age difference is actually totally appropriate and not perverted at all since students can stay in school as long as they want. Not legally, but some schools don’t enforce the age limit law since they don’t want to deny any student of their education.

Post office goes on strike. Some cab companies go on strike. Telkom is still on strike making it impossible to contact home.