Sunday, April 25, 2010

The Birthday Weekend

Thank you to all of you who wished me a Happy Birthday! This weekend was really fun with the highlight being a HOT SHOWER. I went and visited a friend who let me use her shower.

I guess I should provide some background on why I loved this shower so much. I do have a shower but have no hot water. It is getting into winter now and so it's pretty cold at my house. The water is even colder. So, when I take a shower at night, I get in, start shivering, get out of the water, put on soap, quickly rinse off, and then quickly dry off before I lose feeling in my fingers. So when I was able to take a hot shower I was really in awe. It was a luxury beyond description. It really was heaven on earth. I was speechless.

When I look back upon this past year I can see how so much has happened and changed. Yesterday I remembered that, for my birthday last year, I went to Disneyland with my roommates from Poly. I miss them a lot! The following year I was in South Africa in the Peace Corps, having graduated from Cal Poly and having been rejected from Peace Corps in Turkmenistan. These past 3 months have been especially crazy and eventful, with every day holding new possibilities. I wonder what things will happen tomorrow...

Friday, April 23, 2010

When You Really Want a Washing Machine

So I thought I would write about what I was doing all of last Saturday: washing my clothes. Washing everything by hand can get very annoying, time-consuming, and just downright unpleasant.

When I was still in the US we had many recommendations from Peace Corps Volunteers not to bring white clothing. Sadly, I chose to bring a few articles of white clothing, including two shirts and my socks. These, as you may expect, get very dirty very, very quickly. Of course, my other clothes get dirty but you can't notice it as you can on white cloth. One primary reason for all the dirt is the lack of paved roads and the prevalence of dust and mud. There is also a dog who lives with my neighbor which has taken a liking to me. Whenever he sees me he runs over and tries to jump on me--something I would normally welcome but now try to avoid. Am I a dog hater? No, no, no. It's just that I don't want to have to wash my clothes every single day!

Washing clothes usually takes place on Saturday or Sunday, preferably early in the morning (like 6 AM). There is actually a cool little washing sink outside of my house on the side with a faucet and bumpy surface to scrape your clothes against. Washing things like blankets and sheets is pretty difficult because they are so bug and heavy.

The bad part about washing clothes, at least for me, comes not in the washing but in the process of drying. This process can take a day to several days, depending on the weather. Back in March I was able to dry my clothes pretty quickly, as it was summertime. Now that winter is upon us (southern hemisphere) the air is cold and it can pour down rain in a frighteningly unpredictable manner. Once, I had my clothes out and there was a shower. Additionally, Tzaneen is very humid and even the absence of rain will not guarantee that your clothes will dry that day.

The frightening part of drying your clothes, which I have not experienced yet, is the possibility that a mango fly will lay eggs in your clothing. Don't read the rest of this post if you are going to eat something soon. The previous volunteer here in Tzaneen had one once and it was pretty freaky. These flies come out during the summer months and lay their eggs in the wet clothing. When your warm skin comes in contact with the cloth, the egg will hatch and a small worm will burrow into your skin. Something that looks like a black-headed pimple will emerge at that spot and if you pinch it or try to pop it, the little worm will pop out! It will then try to wiggle away while you scream your head off in horror. The way to solve this problem is to put something like vaseline on the pimple, which will suffocate and kill the worm. To prevent this, people have to iron all their clothing, including their sheets. I'm willing to do this, once I get an iron and place to iron my clothes.

On a completely different note, last weekend I stayed with a farmer who owns several acres of land outside of Tzaneen, growing macadamia nuts and avocados. Her hospitality was extraordinary and I was treated to great meals and drinks. Their family and friends are great rugby fans, and so I watched several games with them. South Africa is a country of great hospitality and I am always amazed at how generous people can be to people they just met.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The ProGroup Foundation

Hello everyone how are you doing? I am currently at my organization's office in Tzaneen and decided to write about what we do.

The organization was created to provide human right's information at no cost to the people of Tzaneen and the surrounding area. People can come to our organization for gender-based violence counselling and can also get PEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis). There are also volunteers here who can help clients obtain birth certificates and other important legal documents. Other people can go to court with clients and help them solve cases--the most common cases are maintenance conflicts. In these situations, a woman has had a child and is suing the father of the child for money to raise the baby. These cases are quite common, as many men father children and then leave the mother with the baby.

Like every NGO in South Africa (and all others, come to think about it) the foundation has many funding problems. There just is not enough government money to go around, and, as a result, NGO's must rely on funding from international organizations and foundations.

So what is my role here in this organization? It's hard to say, since I just got here! I definitely cannot provide counseling, since most of the clients are women who have been abused. They will not talk to a man, especially one who cannot even speak their native tongue. I do believe that I will be able to help with funding proposals, since they all must be in English. I'm sure that there will be other opportunities for me to help at ProGroup.

I was thinking about how to describe this Peace Corps experience in words and I remembered an exercise we did during training. Our facilitator, a current PCV, told us to take ten slips of paper and write on each piece something that identifies us. Most people wrote down words like "friend," "son," and "father." Then, the PCV asked us to take away one, then another, and another, until we were left with 5 left. This, she told us, is what it is like to be a PCV--since you are away from your home and everything you have known for your whole life, your sense of identity and of who you are is really changed. Now that I am beginning my service I can see that this was a good example (at least in my case). The lack of Asian-American and Chinese things here in SA means that it is so hard to identify with that part of myself. But, I think that once my kitchen is fully stocked I will be able to cook quasi-Chinese food. PCV's do struggle with their identity, along with many other lifestyle changes.

I don't think I saved those last five pieces of paper but I can be pretty sure of what they were. They were: son, brother, friend, Asian-American, and family member. One sure thing about being in the Peace Corps is that, in the absence of your friends and family, you really realize how important they all are to you.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

The Toilet Situation

The toilet was, and still is, a big concern for us Peace Corps Volunteers here in South Africa. Now that I am somewhat settled into my new home in Tzaneen and at my organization, I can write a bit about the can situation.

South Africa's economic diversity is really evident in the kind of toilets people have! There are bad pit latrines, nicer pit latrines, flush toilets, and really really nice flush toilets. I had a pit latrine back with my host-family and it was...tolerable. There were chickens all around it and a goat pen right next to the structure. It was very important not to look into the toilet! As you may expect you had to bring out the toilet paper every time you needed it, thereby letting everybody know that you were going to use the toilet. Fortunately, people here don't really care that much about toilet use, which is a big difference between Americans and South Africans. I feel that, as an American, going to the bathroom is something done in the background. I was sort of embarrassed the first time I walked out with a roll of toilet paper and passed by my entire family sitting on the lawn. The neighbors also see you going into the pit latrine. Well, it just takes some getting used to!

The toilet at my house around Tzaneen is a flush toilet and inside a room--big improvements! Sadly, the person who lived there before me did not take very good care of it and it is in need of some serious cleaning and repair. I never payed much attention to the price of toilet seats in the U.S., but now they are of a big concern to me. It's certainly a luxury item that not many PCV's will be able to have. I consider myself very lucky! Hope you are all doing well.