i had a good weekend. i had a weekend that made me want to smile again. the type of weekend where you expect nothing and are surprised by a boost in your soul. that is what this past weekend was like for me. after having some stressful weeks dealing with bugs and huts and being homeless WITH a kitten, i decided to take a break from my life here and visit a friend. i dropped my kitten off at the bug infested hut and fled, feeling depressed and confused about why i was in sa.
first of all, seeing a good friend always helps. sometimes you just need someone to slap some sense back into you. sometimes you need someone who will cook you a good dinner and let you watch an entire season of the office in a row on her computer. sometimes you need to spend time with a person who vows that she will also quit the peace corps if you quit. that is the type of friend i went to see. just by being around her, my spirits lifted and i felt like a) things would probably get better and b) i could do it.
as if that wasn't enough, we found out that one of my favorite south african bands was playing in town on that very weekend! i was super excited and demanded that we go, which, being a good friend, she agreed to. we went to the very odd festival that they were playing at, which was something like a farming fair. we wandered around and saw all of the huge tractors and the cows and the farming crap that i know nothing about and then we went to the concert. it was small and there weren't a ton of people there, which means that i was able to get nice and close to the band. and then, I ROCKED OUT! i listened to freshly ground play old songs that i love and new songs that appreciate. one song was clearly meant for me. it is called pot belly and the chorus goes something like: "fat thighs, flabby arms, a pot belly still gives good loving..." this is the reason i love this band so very very much.
sidenote- i also got to talk to my best friend dana (right before the concert), who had just gotten married and was at her reception. it made me so happy to hear her voice and to know that she was having the perfect day that she deserved. love you dana!
after this wonderful concert my friend and i went to a club where we danced our butts off. it was all the same crap music that i used to dance my butt off to in america and it made me feel like i was at home. it was exactly what i needed to feel myself again. what i realized was that i didn't need a new hut to live in. all i needed was some good music and a bit of booty shaking with some friends.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
bug sweeping, squatting and hut swapping
so i have found a new place to live! hooray! after the earwig incident i was left homeless, squatting in the homes of friends. that was a week ago. i still have another week before i can move...
last saturday my australian friend jenny and i went out to clean the earwigs from my hut. when we opened the door, everything was covered in earwig bodies. there were thousands that had been killed by the four bug bombs that i had set off. it was the most bugs i had ever seen in one place in my entire life! we had to sweep a path to walk through so we wouldn't crush them into the cement floor. we took everything out of my hut and put it in the front yard and then started sweeping. by the end, we had a pile of earwigs that resembled a large mound of grossness. my host mom wanted to keep them to show her husband when he got home, so she swept him into a box. it nearly filled the box. jen and my host mom mopped and re-polished the floor with the shoe polish that rubs off on everything and i went through all of my things in the yard, shaking bugs out of it all. since they have pinchers, they sometimes stick to things when they die, so i had to pick off a lot of bug bodies from sheets and clothes. it rocked. after we cleaned, we started to move the furniture back in and i realized that the earwigs were still falling from the ceiling, this time still alive. instantly there were 15 more crawling on my floor. i started stomping in attempt to kill them, and then i swept them out, only to find more had replaced them. it was a game i couldn't win. so i gave up, i moved my stuff back inside, and i left with jen to go get pizza, our reward for the cleaning. i haven't been back since because i don't want to stay there in the dark with the bugs falling from the ceiling. i am afraid.
since then i have had a series of ups and downs as i have been trying to find a new place to stay. i cannot stay in town because peace corps wants us in the community, so some of my coworkers have been helping me to look. i saw some ok places but all of them are much smaller than where i currently stay and none of them are in as beautiful an area. such is life i suppose. yesterday i went to look at a place that my manager joseph used to stay before he got married. it is a small cement room with a tin roof right outside the main home. the room is a normal bedroom size, and there is where i will sleep, cook, bathe, do dishes, laundry, etc. it is much smaller than where i am staying now, so i might have to get rid of some of my furniture, but i am pretty sure that i will not have to deal with it raining earwigs. the room is painted bright blue and has two windows to let in good light. there is a pit toilet in the yard and they also have a water tap in their yard, which makes me life so much easier! and the nicest thing of all is that it has electricity. right now there is only a light that they ran into the hut, but they are going to have someone come and run another extension cord that will have a plug on it so i can plug in things if i need to. i don't have any money left to buy electric things, so i will continue to cook and heat my room with gel and paraffin, but i am going to buy a water kettle to heat water, so that bathing will be much easier. a pensioning couple live in the house and their children are all grown and living elsewhere. they have chickens running around the yard and 4 cows that they keep in a pen. they also grow maize. i think it will be a decent place to stay, and i know my life will be at least a bit easier. it is also half the distance out of town, so now i will only have to travel 10-15km to get to and from work.
in work news, i am currently trying to get a computer lab up and running at our office for the community to use. we are having a guy come in to build customer counters and shelves since the room is quite small and once he is finished we are going to order 10 desktop computers. i have been contacting different people and running around visiting different places to try and get this thing moving and i must admit, it has been quite fun. i am also trying to register OADP for nonprofit status, which is a huge pain in the ass. i just recently found out that we have problems with our constitution but i cannot get the office in pretoria to send me the letter that states all the problems. it will be amazing if this ever gets done!
and that has been my life. the last week and a half have been really hard and i have often thought about going home. my bestest friend dana is getting married this weekend and me being here doing this seems like a really stupid reason to miss that. plus i don't feel super happy and i always feel extremely alone. here's to the last month of lockdown and the future of spending every weekend traveling to see a different friend.
last saturday my australian friend jenny and i went out to clean the earwigs from my hut. when we opened the door, everything was covered in earwig bodies. there were thousands that had been killed by the four bug bombs that i had set off. it was the most bugs i had ever seen in one place in my entire life! we had to sweep a path to walk through so we wouldn't crush them into the cement floor. we took everything out of my hut and put it in the front yard and then started sweeping. by the end, we had a pile of earwigs that resembled a large mound of grossness. my host mom wanted to keep them to show her husband when he got home, so she swept him into a box. it nearly filled the box. jen and my host mom mopped and re-polished the floor with the shoe polish that rubs off on everything and i went through all of my things in the yard, shaking bugs out of it all. since they have pinchers, they sometimes stick to things when they die, so i had to pick off a lot of bug bodies from sheets and clothes. it rocked. after we cleaned, we started to move the furniture back in and i realized that the earwigs were still falling from the ceiling, this time still alive. instantly there were 15 more crawling on my floor. i started stomping in attempt to kill them, and then i swept them out, only to find more had replaced them. it was a game i couldn't win. so i gave up, i moved my stuff back inside, and i left with jen to go get pizza, our reward for the cleaning. i haven't been back since because i don't want to stay there in the dark with the bugs falling from the ceiling. i am afraid.
since then i have had a series of ups and downs as i have been trying to find a new place to stay. i cannot stay in town because peace corps wants us in the community, so some of my coworkers have been helping me to look. i saw some ok places but all of them are much smaller than where i currently stay and none of them are in as beautiful an area. such is life i suppose. yesterday i went to look at a place that my manager joseph used to stay before he got married. it is a small cement room with a tin roof right outside the main home. the room is a normal bedroom size, and there is where i will sleep, cook, bathe, do dishes, laundry, etc. it is much smaller than where i am staying now, so i might have to get rid of some of my furniture, but i am pretty sure that i will not have to deal with it raining earwigs. the room is painted bright blue and has two windows to let in good light. there is a pit toilet in the yard and they also have a water tap in their yard, which makes me life so much easier! and the nicest thing of all is that it has electricity. right now there is only a light that they ran into the hut, but they are going to have someone come and run another extension cord that will have a plug on it so i can plug in things if i need to. i don't have any money left to buy electric things, so i will continue to cook and heat my room with gel and paraffin, but i am going to buy a water kettle to heat water, so that bathing will be much easier. a pensioning couple live in the house and their children are all grown and living elsewhere. they have chickens running around the yard and 4 cows that they keep in a pen. they also grow maize. i think it will be a decent place to stay, and i know my life will be at least a bit easier. it is also half the distance out of town, so now i will only have to travel 10-15km to get to and from work.
in work news, i am currently trying to get a computer lab up and running at our office for the community to use. we are having a guy come in to build customer counters and shelves since the room is quite small and once he is finished we are going to order 10 desktop computers. i have been contacting different people and running around visiting different places to try and get this thing moving and i must admit, it has been quite fun. i am also trying to register OADP for nonprofit status, which is a huge pain in the ass. i just recently found out that we have problems with our constitution but i cannot get the office in pretoria to send me the letter that states all the problems. it will be amazing if this ever gets done!
and that has been my life. the last week and a half have been really hard and i have often thought about going home. my bestest friend dana is getting married this weekend and me being here doing this seems like a really stupid reason to miss that. plus i don't feel super happy and i always feel extremely alone. here's to the last month of lockdown and the future of spending every weekend traveling to see a different friend.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
When it rains it pours…
The next morning I woke up and there were hundreds and hundreds of dead earwigs all over everything. Some were still living, and crawled around fighting for life. They covered everything in my home- floor, cabinets, food, desk, table, etc. I decided to rip the carpet out of my bedroom, so I spent the first 20 mins of the morning trying to pull it out from under my furniture. It too was covered in bugs. Then I packed up my kitten and my stuff for the day and lit two smoking bug bombs that I had purchased the day before. Realizing that I had a huge problem on my hand, I had a coworker go with me to many different stores in town to find out what to do about this whole thing. I was told to buy a fogger, which is like a normal American bug bomb that you set off. I bought two, one for each room, and was told that I had to stay out of the home for 3 days. When I went back to my home around
I don’t know if I will be staying at my rondeval in Moyeni. My supervisor asked the staff to start looking for a new place for me to stay, still in a village, but maybe in an area with electricity. I don’t want to live with the bugs but I don’t want to move. It is beautiful where I stay, and my host family is nice. I have a nice home and I am getting used to not have electricity. I don’t know what to do. Just wait I guess. This is Africa, afterall.
Monday, May 12, 2008
i live in the mountains and i hate hiking. that is kind of ironic, isn't it? well you all will be happy to know that i finally went on a hike. my australian friend jenny and i went to royal natal national park, which is about 25 mins from my village of moyeni. it is in the northern drakensberg mountains and contains come of the peaks that i can see from where i stay. neither jenny or i really like to hike (or are in shape enough to do anything too extreme) so we decided to go for an easier hike along a gorge in the park. it was a beautiful sunny saturday, perfect for walking in the mountains and enjoying the area we get to live in. we set off around noon and walked along a relatively easy path down the gorge, which offered amazing views of the mountains and the valley around them. of course, about 10 mins into the hike my camera batteries died and i could no longer take photos. great! for some reason i also thought the path we were taking was paved, so i wore flip flops at foot attire. when we got there i quickly realized how that was a bad decision. although the path was by no means difficult, it was not really flip flop terrain. luckily, i made it in and out without any sprained ankles or broken bones. the two of us walked for about an hour and a half down the path and then decided that it was a good time to turn around and walk back. the whole hike is about 8km in and then 8km back. we didn't do the whole thing (clearly) but we made a decision to come back one day and do the whole thing. we shall see if that actually happens. either way, we had a lovely time just wandering around in nature, enjoying the warmth of the sun that is sure to leave us soon.
when we finished our hike, we decided that we absolutely needed to get pizza and beer (obviously we are real hardcore hikers). we went to the best pizza restaurant around bergville, which is way out of town on this random road. the place was super cute with chairs made of shovels and candle holders that were dancing african women. we split a pizza and had a couple beers and then decided to call it a night. jenny drove me home, stopping along the way at the water pump so i could fill my 6 liter bag of water to use that night on laundry.
the next day i decided to have a relaxing day in my hut. i woke up late (around 7:30) and made french toast. as i was getting back into bed to read for some hours, the children visiting my home decided to start harassing me. they were peaking in my windows and banging on my door and they absolutely would not leave me alone, even after i gave them a toy to play with. finally i gave up and had them come in to color a coloring book i was sent from america. they colored the whole book, using one color to scribble the entire page, not caring about the lines or the shapes. they also broke all of the crayons i had given them. this is why i love children. after an hour or so of this, i asked them to leave so i could do laundry and they went about their business. i spent the rest of the day relaxing and cleaning and playing with my kitten. i made pizza for dinner using a technique my dad told me about. i took two cake pans and placed one on top of the other so it would act like an oven. the pizza turned out ok although i burnt the shit out of the crust. such is life with no electricity i suppose. i made another pizza and took it to my host family so they could have some as well. all in all it was a good weekend. i try and appreciate them when they happen cause they don't occur all the frequently these days. one day at a time...
when we finished our hike, we decided that we absolutely needed to get pizza and beer (obviously we are real hardcore hikers). we went to the best pizza restaurant around bergville, which is way out of town on this random road. the place was super cute with chairs made of shovels and candle holders that were dancing african women. we split a pizza and had a couple beers and then decided to call it a night. jenny drove me home, stopping along the way at the water pump so i could fill my 6 liter bag of water to use that night on laundry.
the next day i decided to have a relaxing day in my hut. i woke up late (around 7:30) and made french toast. as i was getting back into bed to read for some hours, the children visiting my home decided to start harassing me. they were peaking in my windows and banging on my door and they absolutely would not leave me alone, even after i gave them a toy to play with. finally i gave up and had them come in to color a coloring book i was sent from america. they colored the whole book, using one color to scribble the entire page, not caring about the lines or the shapes. they also broke all of the crayons i had given them. this is why i love children. after an hour or so of this, i asked them to leave so i could do laundry and they went about their business. i spent the rest of the day relaxing and cleaning and playing with my kitten. i made pizza for dinner using a technique my dad told me about. i took two cake pans and placed one on top of the other so it would act like an oven. the pizza turned out ok although i burnt the shit out of the crust. such is life with no electricity i suppose. i made another pizza and took it to my host family so they could have some as well. all in all it was a good weekend. i try and appreciate them when they happen cause they don't occur all the frequently these days. one day at a time...
Monday, May 5, 2008
another birthday in south africa
two years ago yesterday, i was celebrating my 21st birthday in cape town, surrounded by friends and alcohol at the wonderful madame zingara's. that was an amazing day. i never thought then that i would be back here so soon, celebrating yet another birthday. yesterday i turned 23. the whole day i had this sad feeling in my stomach, not only because i was getting older, but because birthdays don't seem to be as big of a deal anymore. people celebrated with me, baked me cakes, bought me presents, and genuinely acted like they cared (cause they did), but something was still not the same. maybe this is how it is getting older...
i started my day driving back from pietermaritzburg, where i had gone for the weekend to buy a heater. i found a sweet one that runs on paraffin, and by sweet i mean it is probably going to gas me out of my hut. i got to see my best friend who is a peace corps volunteer living outside of pmb, which totally made my weekend. she made me this amazing cake that was delicious. it did, however, look like it had been blown up and stuck back together again.
i left pmb in the afternoon, driving back with an australian friend that i met in bergville. she is allowed to drive a car here (imagine that!) we picked up another pcv who lives in bergville and the 3 of us headed north to our mountain town. once we arrived home, we picked up a few more people and went out to a bush camp to have a birthday braai. we were there for hours eating and drinking a bit of beer and wine, and just having fun talking with one another. after the feast, the girls brought out another cake that looked about as good as the first one i had but tasted great. we packed up all of our stuff and headed home around 11pm, the latest i have stayed up in months!
as you can see, i had a really nice day overall. i wasn't alone like i thought i would be. i wasn't in my hut feeling sorry for myself, like i thought i might be. i had new friends around me, showing me that my time here has not been a waste, no matter what i might think from time to time.
it still made me really miss home and my old friends though...
i started my day driving back from pietermaritzburg, where i had gone for the weekend to buy a heater. i found a sweet one that runs on paraffin, and by sweet i mean it is probably going to gas me out of my hut. i got to see my best friend who is a peace corps volunteer living outside of pmb, which totally made my weekend. she made me this amazing cake that was delicious. it did, however, look like it had been blown up and stuck back together again.
i left pmb in the afternoon, driving back with an australian friend that i met in bergville. she is allowed to drive a car here (imagine that!) we picked up another pcv who lives in bergville and the 3 of us headed north to our mountain town. once we arrived home, we picked up a few more people and went out to a bush camp to have a birthday braai. we were there for hours eating and drinking a bit of beer and wine, and just having fun talking with one another. after the feast, the girls brought out another cake that looked about as good as the first one i had but tasted great. we packed up all of our stuff and headed home around 11pm, the latest i have stayed up in months!as you can see, i had a really nice day overall. i wasn't alone like i thought i would be. i wasn't in my hut feeling sorry for myself, like i thought i might be. i had new friends around me, showing me that my time here has not been a waste, no matter what i might think from time to time.
it still made me really miss home and my old friends though...
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