Orangpples

I got back yesterday from a week away from site. I spent all of last week with 10 other volunteers preparing for the next group of volunteers – SA20 – to arrive late next month at what Peace Corps calls General Training of Trainers or GTOT. This means I was at the training college in Marapyane were my Pre-Service Training (PST) was held last July. Instead of spending a night in Pretoria to catch the Peace Corps provided transport at 10am I decided to stay with my PST host family before GTOT started. It was great to spend the night with them and see how they were doing. In the morning I made my way vie public transport from their small village to the training college. It was amazing to realize how easy that actually was, but I never once did it during the three months of PST last year.

We put a lot of work into designing the schedule and divided up when we will all return to facilitate sessions at SA20’s PST. SA 20 will be replacing the SA 16 education volunteers leaving over the next few months and will mostly be on the opposite side of the country from me in the North West Province so I’m glade I’ll get a chance to meet them at PST. They will also all be learning Tswana. At our PST people learned 5 of South Africas 9 official languages: Sepdi, Tsonga, SiSwati, iNdebele, and Zulu. With so many languages being learned large group sessions had to always use English and practicing with people not in your language group was basically impossible. Our PST was a microcosm of the linguistic soup that makes up South Africa, but it wasn’t very conducive for learning or cross communication. It will be interesting to see how SA 20’s language training goes.

Sunday also happened to be the start of the FIFA Confederations Cup here in South Africa. There has been lots of build up to this international event in the news media. The Confederations Cup is a test run for the World Cup next year and from what I saw in Pretoria earlier this week I think they’ll be ready. I actually got to go to the USA vs Italy game on Monday night, and although it was 1 – 3 Italy it was very fun. There were plenty of buses between remote parking centers and the stadium and roads were closed around the stadium making it easy to walk there. Wait lines going in weren’t very long at all, though it did take a while to get out. My one complaint would be that there was very little order in the concession and bathroom lines during half time, it was pretty much a free for all mob and you had to force your self to the front to get anything. Never having been to a World Cup game before I’m not sure how much of a chaotic mad house half time concessions are but I think there’s was some room improvement. Maybe putting up queuing lines or something.

Coming back to site always requires a major mental shift. Your going from constantly being around other Americans where conversations that seem normal and not forced to being the only person from your cultural back ground and understanding. But its also nice to be back to the familiar routine, sounds, and feel of my little street in the township. There’s about one and a half weeks left in the school term here before a month long break. I want to try to get the ground work for projects I want to work on next term done in that time. The first week of break I’m planning to do math prep classes for the grade 12 students at a few high schools in this area. In November all South African 12^th graders have to take matriculation tests to pass high school and over the next few months they will all put enormous amounts of energy into studying. I’m hoping to give them some tools that will make their studying easier and more efficient. After that I’m planning to go on a trip from Cape Town through the Eastern and Western Cape with a few other volunteers and a good friend from high school who’s coming to visit. So I also have a lot of work to do planning all the details of that trip.

Last week I got back from SA 18’s first in service training. This week long training marks the 6th month we’ve been here. It’s hard to believe its only been 6 short months (7 on the 14th) since I left, so much has happened in those months that I feel like I could pack 2 years of college into them. But then when almost every minute of every single day is a cross cultural/linguistic moment and those that aren’t are still filled with new sights and sounds the number of new experiences I’ve had probably add up to 2 years at UVA. It’s still surprising to think that everyone I interact with on a daily basis I didn’t even know existed 6 months ago and they didn’t know I existed. When I walk down the street I greet people with words from a language I hadn’t even heard of before I left (and didn’t actually train in during my 3 months of training, but SiSwati and Zulu just a little more different than American and British English). And somehow after 6 months this all becomes normal. The human mind has a great capacity to adapt and acclimate if only you approach life with open eyes and unjudging mind.

Coming back from the week long training was almost harder than coming back after vacation this last December. After traveling around and living out of a backpack for 2 1 /2 weeks I was ready to come back to site. It’s still new enough here that its like coming back to more vacation in an exotic place. But after a week of being back with all 33 remain volunteers from my group going back to being the only American in a South African township took a few days of mental adjustment. No I didn’t want to wave for the 3rd time in 30 seconds to the kids screaming my name from 300 ft away. Yes I wanted to talk about the book I was reading with someone, but no one was really interested. No I don’t have any cigarettes on me you asked me that yesterday and the day before and the day before that. Yes I wanted to play a game of 6 person Hearts. It was really nice to be able to see everyone, most of whom I hadn’t talked to much since September, and catch up on how their first few months at site went. Everyones placement and experience is a little bit different, but being able to share our feelings, observations and frustrations of living and working in South Africa was great.

Now that I’ve been back at site for a week I’m back into the swing of things. Its been a busy few days and I’m working on some cool projects. As more things develop on all of them I’ll be sure to post them here. But for know I’d like to leave you with some advice I thought up while sitting in kumbies traveling to and from training last week. For those of you who have never ridden in African taxis before its a one of a kind experience. Your crammed 3 or 4 to a row to get 16 people and luggage into a small van for up to 4 hour trips. South Africa has quite an extensive kumbie system and you can get almost anywhere on them as long as your willing to switch cars several times, sit for hours waiting for a 15 person van to fill up, and then sit for hours in a packed car with just your thoughts and the blaring radio to keep you company. To keep my self busy during my last kumbie trek across South Africa I thought of a list of things to help prepare anyone for the same ordeal.

• Bring a Rubiks Cube and see how many times you can solve it on the ride. It’s also a great thing use to start a conversation with you neighbor.

• Don’t sit in the back if you’re over 6ft tall. The back seat is the one that always gets 4 people to a row, has no leg space and takes the longest to get our when you stop.

• You can try to get a window seat, but it wont help much with the over 90 degree weather because everyone will tell you to close it. Even people wearing wool sweaters in the middle of summer will tell you to close it, somethings I’ll never understand.

• Go to the bathroom before you leave in the morning and be sure to take advantage of any stops you do have. And bring a roll of toilet paper just in case because you don’t know where those stops will be.

• If you ask for directions to the correct taxi rank in Pretoria you’ll most likely get a different answer from everyone you ask. And when they say go 3 robots down and then make a right they mean 3 stop lights.

• Wear flip flops on the taxi even if it means you have to carabiner your tennis shoes to your bag, it will make your life so much more enjoyable for the hours your crammed on the taxi.

• If the car is slowing down its because there’s a traffic cop in the next 5km not because your going to fast.

• Bring cookies