Orangpples

Note: If you haven’t seen my previous blog post, I’m running a half marathon next month to help raise money for a Peace Corps Volunteer started organization Kgwale le Mollo to help send two rural South African kids to one of the best high schools in South Africa. Please consider helping me with a donation! Thanks.

I’ve always been fascinated by the country comparison pages on the CIA Factbook. So much so that I actually carried an offline version of all the information with me into the Peace Corps. It’s amazing the type of patterns and astounding facts you can find in that data

Earlier this week a 10^th grader had come over to my house for physics help and we started talking about the world map on my wall. He mentioned how much bigger the United States was than South Africa which immediately made me think of the Area Comparison on the CIA Factbook. I brought it up and showed him and he was just as amazed as me to think that there was an entire country 2 sq km with a population greater than 30,000 or a country with less than 50 people living in it. Looking through the list of country comparisons I saw the HIV/AIDS adult prevalence rate and figured it be a good thing for him to see where South Africa fell on this list. He stared at the list for a good 10 to 20 seconds in complete shock mouth almost open. When I looked at the list again I tried looking from the perspective of a 16 year old South African and had almost the same reaction.

If you didn’t click the link to the list, do it now.

Here’s what I noticed after studding the list:

• The top 9 countries are all the southern most countries of continental Africa.
• All of these countries have an HIV rate over 10% while the 10^th country (Kenya) is at 6.7%. A percentage gap that large occurs no where else in the table.
• You have to go all the way down to number 23 to get off the continent of Africa.
• Less than 1000 miles off the coast of South Africa (#4 at 18.1%) is Madagascare (#116 at 0.1%)
• There’s no trend between GDP, war and conflict, or many other measurable statistics. Somalia is at 0.5%.

To help visualize this data I made a color coded map from a blank SVG map of Africa on Wikipeida and the effect is even more obvious. In the graph, the more red a country is the higher the percentage of HIV/AIDS in the country, when multiple countries through out the world have the same percentage the ranking is done alphabetically.

As the true impact of these numbers slowly materialized in front of the young man he asked me the next obvious question: Why? Truth be told I didn’t really know how to respond to him and would appreciate any thoughts from others more knowledgeable on this subject. Looking at the data and the astounding fact that the most affected countries are all grouped together in southern Africa I figure there has to be some explanation for it. I fumbled through an answer about differences in culture and the like, which in no way satisfied him.

After he left I went to the place that knows all answers and googled for information on the subject. As you can imagine this is a pretty controversial issue with people suggesting things that I’d never heard before and seem pretty preposterous such as the majority of HIV cases are actually spread through immunization needles (does nothing to explain this trend) to the prevalence of concurrent sexual partners in some African cultures (goes a long way to explain the trend I feel).  And making the map from the CIA Factbook data made me remember a Hans Rosling TED Lecture I watched about a year ago. I just rewatched it and highly recommend it, it will be the most enlighting 10min of your day. If you’re a PCV in South Africa I’ll give it to you next time I see you, that lecture is a must watch for every volunteer in the country in my opinion.

During training we would often hear that life in South Africa was unique because of a concept fundamental to its culture: Ubuntu. In Nguni languages (isiZulu, siSwati, isiXhosa, isiNdebele) this is most often expressed through the adage “Umuntu ngaumntu ngabantu” – A person is a person through other persons”. We were told that because of Ubuntu there is a closer sense of community and unity then elsewhere. Ubuntu is commonly explained as similar to the Golden Rule: “Love thy neighbor as they self”. But even if there is some overlap in the core sentiments invoked by both Ubuntu and the Golden Rule, there are also some key differences; which make translating the ideas between cultures difficult. Most importantly, embedded in the Golden Rule is a sense of “I”, and in fact that individualism is found throughout western thought – epitomized by René Descartes “I think, therefore I am”.  While embedded in the idea of Ubuntu is community and unity.

If you followed the link to the Wikipedia article on Ubuntu you saw Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s definition of the Ubuntu philosophy:

A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

As an American living among South African culture it’s often difficult to see the ideas of Ubuntu in daily life here. I’ve often participated in conversations with other volunteers centered around the idea that Ubuntu is dead. Perhaps the only times we are able to see it is at weddings, funerals and cultural events where everyone is invited and often times a cow or two is slaughtered. But these are big important events, when looking for Ubuntu in daily actions it’s elusive at best. Certainly in most aspects of the education system, the political system and the way children are treated and raised it’s nonexistent. Perhaps the the culture norm that bothers me, as well as other volunteers, the most is the casual way trash is discarded wherever one may be. If a sense of community and interconnectedness of all people is so important to the concept of Ubuntu why do people just drop plastic bags as they walk, unwrap a candy and let the wrapper fall to the ground where they stand, and throw coke bottles out the window. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve finished a snack or drink on a taxi and the person next to the window offered to through it out for me! Or the weird looks I get when I’m handed a coke can to through out the window and instead put it in my bag to place in a trash can. As American’s we take all these things to mean that Ubuntu is dead, but I think this sentiment comes our different cultural backgrounds. And every now and then an aspect of Ubuntu that we can relate to our understanding of the Golden Rule seeps through.

This blog post is really about one of those times.

Last week as I was biking to a school my chain locked up on the way down a hill. I’d never seen a bike chain get stuck like this one; somehow 5 chain links had got caught between the smallest and middle gears in the front. I flipped the bike over and tried pulling them out, which only served to get my hands dirty. I next tried to use some near by rocks to hammer the chain outwith out much luck. I’d been working on this for maybe a minute and a half before someone asked what was wrong. When I explained she stopped someone going someone going in the opposite direction and told him what was wrong. He immediately turned around and told me to follow him to his house, which was about a block away. There with the help of a screw drive and hammer we proceeded to unlock the chain (and luckly this hasn’t reoccurred). I thanked him for all his help and was about to jump on the bike and continue to school, but he insisted on taking me back to the sink and having me throughly scrub my hands. I’m pretty sure my attempts to unlock the chain with out real tools would have failed and forced me to walk back home, but thankfully I didn’t have to.

I think this is an important example of why Peace Corps is a 2 year commitment. I can’t help but think a similar situation would have played out if this had happened not after I’d been biking around the township for over a year, but in my first month here. I’m sure someone would have helped me eventually, but I doubt it would have been that fast. Having lived here for the last 15 months I am now part of the community and that has certain benefits. Maybe to much sometimes, because I also can’t help but wonder how fast someone would have stopped to help if it wasn’t “that weird umlungu American that lives in the township” and just your average person on a bike. But I can never know, for I can only experience life here being treated a 23 year old American and never as someone who was born and raised here. But I’d like to think the fact that I’m the only white person living in the township had little to do with the help I got, and that the same would have been extended to anyone.

The Umjindi Mumicipality hereby informs you that reticulation has been completed.

This was the beginning of a message that greeted me as I entered the small one room library in the location. Reading further down the announcement I found out that reticulation (what ever that actually is) was completed for Phase 2 and Extensions 15 – 17. This are some of the least developed areas of the location. I’ve been through them only once or twice, but the difference between them and where I live is almost as great as between where I live and Barberton itself. Almost every single house is made of wood planks and you can see in through the cracks. There’s also a vegetable garden in front of most houses and the number of chickens wondering the street is closer to that of a rural village than a township.

I had to wonder how many residents of these areas 1) actually make it all the way up to the library which is in a much different area of the location and 2) how many of them would understand what the message was about. When reading it I had no idea what the word reticulation actually meant except for something I might have found on the GREs. After reading further down the letter and seeing that requests to have water hook ups could now be made I figured it had something to do with water piping. Since I was at the library I went in and found a dictionary to look reticulation up, here’s what I found.

reticulation: to divide, mark, or construct so as to form a network

Ok I can sort of see how that might somehow be the same as connecting really poor houses to the main water supply, but seriously, which ever office bound bureaucrat who picked that word had no idea what their actual audience was like and must have only been trying to impress their boss. I didn’t see a SiSwati translation of the announcement anywhere (I was sort of looking forward to using the SiSwati equivalent of reticulation in random everyday conversations), so I can only hope that there were other means of getting this message to the people that live in this area.

This is the great divide that exists in South Africa right now, and its not a racial one. It’s between those people who can use the word reticulation in the main subject of an official flier about water distribution and those people who cut their own wood to build a small 2 room shack for their families. These two groups coexist with in kilometers of each other but each has very little understanding or the other. For me as a Peace Corps Volunteer it is very interesting to sit somewhere in the middle of the two groups and go back and forth.

Almost all South African phone plans are prepaid. This is one of the reasons cell phones are so prevalent here since the phones are dirt cheap and you don’t need to pay a monthly fee just how much you use. I’ve never had a prepaid phone in America so I’m not sure how it works there, but I think the system here works very well but leads to some interesting cell phone practices.

I thought one of the biggest annoyances of a prepaid system would be continually having to recharge your minutes. But that’s not the case at all. Since everyone always needs to buy minutes the laws of supply and demand have made it easier to buy airtime in South Africa then bread. And the bank Peace Corps set me up with, FNB, has this free service that lest me buy airtime directly from my phone — why such a great and arguably superfluous service is free but withdrawing money from an ATM costs 1% of your withdrawal is one of the many aspects of South Africa I may never logically understand. The prepaid system works quite great in this respect. And it’ss nice to know that you’re not going to get a crazy long bill at the end of the month for going over you SMS limit, since when you’re out of what you paid for you can’t send any more.

Another feature of prepaid system here in South Africa is that you don’t get charged for incoming calls or SMSs. This has the beneficial result that you can basically buy at $25 phone and never put airtime on it but still receive calls. This is actually a great model for children and I don’t think I ever saw more then 2 or 3 rand on my 13 year old host brothers phone. But it also has some very interesting negative consequences. Since getting a phone call is totally free people hate letting the phone go unanswered. This means people will leave meetings, stop driving the car, run out of a volleyball game or anything else they are doing to answer the phone. In America when both parties are getting charged for the phone call its easier to let a missed call go by since when you call back at a time convenient for you you’ll be charged just the same as if you answered it right then.

Another thing about cell phone use in South Africa is that it seems no one ever leaves voice mail messages. I’m not sure if this is because some aspect of the prepaid system makes voice messages unbeneficial to either the caller or callee or there’s some other cultural aspect to it.

Something else that is prepaid in South Africa is the electricity. This also creates some interesting ways to look at electricity use. As the kilowatts count down and your trying to make them last just one day longer before you walk to the corner store and buy more the way you use electrical appliances changes. At first this was rather confusing to me. During training I would come home someday and help my host mom cook dinner over a propane burner instead of the stove. I finally understood that this was because there was only enough kilowatts to keep the lights on and fridge going for the night and running when I was helpin

Almost all South African phone plans are prepaid. This is one of the reasons cell phones are so prevalent here since the phones are dirt cheap and you don’t need to pay a monthly fee just how much you use. I’ve never had a prepaid phone in America so I’m not sure how it works there, but I think the system here works very well but leads to some interesting cell phone practices.

I thought one of the biggest annoyances of a prepaid system would be continually having to recharge your minutes. But that’s not the case at all. Since everyone always needs to buy minutes the laws of supply and demand have made it easier to buy airtime in South Africa then bread. And the bank Peace Corps set me up with, FNB, has this free service that lest me buy airtime directly from my phone — why such a great and arguably superfluous service is free but withdrawing money from an ATM costs 1% of your withdrawal is one of the many aspects of South Africa I may never logically understand. The prepaid system works quite great in this respect. And it’ss nice to know that you’re not going to get a crazy long bill at the end of the month for going over you SMS limit, since when you’re out of what you paid for you can’t send any more.

Another feature of prepaid system here in South Africa is that you don’t get charged for incoming calls or SMSs. This has the beneficial result that you can basically buy at $25 phone and never put airtime on it but still receive calls. This is actually a great model for children and I don’t think I ever saw more then 2 or 3 rand on my 13 year old host brothers phone. But it also has some very interesting negative consequences. Since getting a phone call is totally free people hate letting the phone go unanswered. This means people will leave meetings, stop driving the car, run out of a volleyball game or anything else they are doing to answer the phone. In America when both parties are getting charged for the phone call its easier to let a missed call go by since when you call back at a time convenient for you you’ll be charged just the same as if you answered it right then.

Another thing about cell phone use in South Africa is that it seems no one ever leaves voice mail messages. I’m not sure if this is because some aspect of the prepaid system makes voice messages unbeneficial to either the caller or callee or there’s some other cultural aspect to it.

Something else that is prepaid in South Africa is the electricity. This also creates some interesting ways to look at electricity use. As the kilowatts count down and your trying to make them last just one day longer before you walk to the corner store and buy more the way you use electrical appliances changes. At first this was rather confusing to me. During training I would come home someday and help my host mom cook dinner over a propane burner instead of the stove. I finally understood that this was because there was only enough kilowatts to keep the lights on and fridge going for the night and running when I was helping cook dinner at a fellow trainees house. I was making french-fries and using a small pot to try to conserve the oil even though it would take longer. My friends host told me to pour the rest of the oil in a large pot and cook all the fries at one time. When I asked why it was because we only had 5 kilowatts left and she couldn’t recharge the box until the next day.

The prepaid way of looking at cell phones and utilities takes some mental adjustments When you just get a bill at the end of every month you never really think about conserving electricity or air time because the bill is going to come regardless and adding a little more to it won’t matter that much. Right?. But when you pay before hand and watch the resource disappear before your eyes as you use appliances or talk on the phone, all you think about is the decreasing amount of time you have left.

g cook dinner at a fellow trainees house. I was making french-fries and using a small pot to try to conserve the oil even though it would take longer. My friends host told me to pour the rest of the oil in a large pot and cook all the fries at one time. When I asked why it was because we only had 5 kilowatts left and she couldn’t recharge the box until the next day.

The prepaid way of looking at cell phones and utilities takes some mental adjustments When you just get a bill at the end of every month you never really think about conserving electricity or air time because the bill is going to come regardless and adding a little more to it won’t matter that much. Right?. But when you pay before hand and watch the resource disappear before your eyes as you use appliances or talk on the phone, all you think about is the decreasing amount of time you have left.

My first spring time in South Africa has already begun and there are only two colors on the trees purple and green. About a week and a half ago these purple trees started blooming all over town. The colors were so vibrant and unique for trees that I thought I would take out a few pictures.

Road leading into Barberton bordered by Jacaranda Trees

The Purple Foothills of Barberton.

When I got back home I decided to google “Purple Tree South Africa” and it turns out South Africa is famous for these trees and I can now understand why. The trees are called Jacaranda trees and the trees in Pretoria are so famous that sometimes called “Jacaranda City” and there’s a whole flicker cluster just for Jacaranda trees in Pretoria!. I’ll have to remember to make a trip to Pretoria next October so I can see them.

The blossoms have already started falling and going down some of the streets in town it looks like there is a centimeter of purple snow on the ground. Its really cool to look out towards the mountains and see purple patches all over. I’m used to looking at the vibrant oranges, yellows and reds of an American forest so the Jacaranda purple is always surprising when I see it even after a few weeks.