Quick Update

Dear All,

Here's a quick update, as there are bunch of pictures that I want to post. Firstly, imagine my surprise (and my mixed feelings) when I came home from work this week to find that my neighbour/nemesis the little black goat had produced some progeny on my verandah (pictured)! The baby goat was actually quite cute, and was clearly only a few hours old as it kept wobbling on its weak little legs, and trying to suckle the air. Good thing I wasn't home at the time, though! I've caught that goat climbing onto my bed three times now. I'm sure it would have happily settled there for the whole birth business, if I'd been busy in the kitchen with my door open!

Next up, here's a picture of the bush bath! You can't really tell from the picture, but this tub is outdoors, under some trees on a sand dune, looking out over the ocean. You also can't tell that it was pouring rain the day that this picture was taken. Its a cool system though, and worth the effort: you pump the tub full of water, build the fire underneath, wait forty minutes or so, then get into a very hot, cosy bathtub and watch the whales!

Now here's a picture that I'm very proud of: our community support worker, Nomzingisi, and her lovely 1 year-old daughter. I spend a lot of my time with Nomzingisi; we profile the households in the village together, and I've learned a lot from her. I just really like this picture, and I wanted to share it:

And finally, here's a picture of a truck that flipped in the village this weekend. The driver and passengers (from a neighbouring village) were absolutely drunk out of their skulls (drunk driving is a HUGE problem in South Africa), and amazingly, all of them got out from under this car unscathed! And then went to the shebeen (informal bar). They left the truck where it is, and now it partially blocks the road. So far one wheel has been stolen (pictured). If we're lucky, people will take the body to sell for scrap metal...

October

At last, a new update! Spring has sprung in a big way here, with cute little goslings, chicks, baby goats, lambs, calves and baby donkeys popping up all over the show (see pictured). I even had a newborn baby donkey nibble my calf (and scare the living daylights out of me, until I realized what was going on) while talking to my sister on the phone the other day. Less cute (but very amusing) is how funny the kids find it when horses and dogs start humping next to the preschool fence.

October has been a very exciting month, with a real hodge-podge of excitement going on in my life. On the research front there have been some challenges –my translator signed up to be a census taker, meaning she has been working full time going house-to-house for the entire month of October collecting all kinds of data for the government. I certainly don’t blame her for taking advantage of this opportunity; its full-time work (unlike working for me), and its good work experience for her. On the plus side, it’s allowed me to catch up a bit on my interview transcription (my social scientist friends, you all know it’s important even if it’s the least exciting aspect of the research process).

Research-wise, the whole local understanding of rights business that I mentioned in a previous post continues to feature prominently. Several young men have explained to me in interviews that there are a lot of problems now because girls are promiscuous, and this is due to the fact that they have rights now. Their reasoning is: in the past girls weren't

promiscuous, because they’d be beaten if they were. Now you can’t beat them anymore because they have rights (not so day that violent relationships are a thing of the past here. Far from it. Indeed, the real low-light of this month was running into a bloody physical fight between one of my favourite local mamas and her boyfriend while out on a beach-walk with a friend), so they’re more promiscuous…

The whole subtle politics of clothing and dress –especially for women- is also interesting, in a somewhat more frivolous way. I think I’ve mentioned that married women aren’t allowed to wear pants or shorter skirts, and aren’t allowed to show their hair. The older married women were these old-fashioned traditional doeks with the two peaks (see one picture of older women from our recent community health day, and one of younger women), while a lot of the younger

married women wear these black lycra wraps over braids. Meanwhile, a lot of the younger unmarried girls are quite stylish in hairdo and dress, and like to show off their shapes in tight jeans and leggings. And a lot of them list being able to wear what they want as a prime reason why they don’t want to get married…

Finally, I’m 6 houses away from having done in-depth profiling visits of every household in the village. I haven’t even begun to properly analyze all the data I’ve got, but here’s two observations which will have some serious implications for life in this community a few years down the road: girls stay in school longer than boys (and no, it’s not because they’re taken out of school early to do hard, manly

labour. Believe me. It’s the girls who do the vast majority of the work among the under 15 set). Even with sets of boy-girl twins from the same family, girls are dropping out later than boys (still, most have dropped out by age 14 or so). The other thing I’ve noticed is that most of the young families in the village don’t have gardens, and aren’t, therefore, growing produce the way the older generation is. This means greater dependence on food which is purchased for cash and brought to the community. This in turn, may mean a less healthy diet…

It’s also been a very fun month on the social front. There have been some really lovely guests staying at the backpacker lodge, and I’ve had a wonderful time playing hostess, having nice little dinner parties at my place and sundowners on my veranda, and showing off my favourite little haunts in the village. Also, last weekend several of us went up to Lubanzi backpackers (a 4 hour walk or 1.5 hour drive north of here) for a birthday party, which was a nice treat. It was a really nice crowd of people, we ate very well, I saw a baby whale with its mama whale (!), and had a good long chat with my muchly-missed sister while sitting in one of these chairs (pictured). They also had TWO litters of kittens

(pictured). I almost died of a cuteness overdose, and really, really, really wanted to bring one home until I learned that my favourite had already been claimed. And finally, here’s a pic of the usual crowd on my verandah, playing with my crayons. Very cute at 5pm, less cute at 5 am. And a picture of me with one of my favourite local mamas. More to follow!

Since my last post the big event in the village was the funeral of a much-loved local man. Compared with what I'm used to back in home, funerals are not the sad, somber occasions that I am used to. Rather they tend to be all-day-long affairs to which anyone is welcome, with lots of singing, preaching, and eating. The family is expected to feed all the guests -easily numbering in the hundreds- a proper meal, and they will usually slaughter at least a cow for the occasion.

Anyway, this is the second funeral I've attended since coming to the village (there have been two others that I know of, but both were smaller affairs that I didn't feel comfortable attending. One was for a 5 year-old child whom I didn't know who drowned in the river, and one was for a 28 year-old guy who got stabbed to death in a drunken bar-fight. He lived on the other side of the village, and I didn't know him either). Although this funeral was similar to the first one I attended, it was a very different experience for me and really brought home how far I've come in terms of making some kind of role for myself in the community since I got here 7 months ago.

The first few hours consisted of preaching, the family and a choir singing traditional songs and gospel songs, speeches, reading the names of people who had donated money to the family, and the actual burial (in the cattle kraal. The men to that part). Its interesting, but rather long and tedious -there's always a tent hired for the occasion, but there are always far too many people for everyone to get a space under the tent. Being a low-status woman (young, childless and unmarried) I sit towards the back, in the hot sun squeezed between mamas and teenage girls. You aren't allowed to sit cross-legged, which also gets uncomfortable after a while. Anyway, things got more interesting once the burial was over and it was time for food. Two of my friends/teachers at the local primary school encouraged me to come with them to help serve the food (this is a job for low-status girls and women, and young boys. These two friends are both young and unmarried like me, although they've both got a child apiece). So we spent the next 2 hours or so in a long line of young -mostly female- people passing plates full of food down the line and passing empty plates back up the line to the outdoor kitchen. It was interesting; the line snaked around and shifted according to who had been served. It was also a very strange and awkward experience for me, as a lot of people had come from outside the village for the funeral, and had therefore never seen me before. So there I was standing in a line in the middle of a crowd of several hundred seated older Xhosa people, many of whom were staring at me and whispering to their neighbours.

Anyway, I overheard people saying -and my friends confirmed- that people were whispering things like "wow, this must be a very important village! I've never seen a white person serving before!" Meanwhile, many of the local mamas who know and like me were thrilled to see me working hard like a good local girl; my passing of plates kept on getting interrupted by getting pulled into big bear hugs and smothered with kisses. On the other side (literally. The men sit on one side, the women on the other), many of the local men who know me would shoot me approving smiles, while lots of men from other villages wanted to come greet me (this whole elaborate business with a hand-shake and inquires about one's health), I think for the novelty and to see if I could greet them in isiXhosa. I got more and more self-conscious as the day wore on.

There's also the whole gendered hierarchy at play here, which is always a bit uncomfortable for someone who grew up in a different society. The men get fed first, and the get the best food. They were on to tea and dessert before most of the women got their meat. Then the women get fed second. Finally the kids and young women get fed the worst food (by the time us servers got fed, . There's all kinds of nuance at play as well though. Older, high-status women get served before some men, and some men bring big pieces of choice meat over to their female friends and family.

At the same time, the whole business of serving reinforces the gender order, as does the the fact that the quality of one's food declines with status. I can't say I'm particularly comfortable with it, but I don't find it frustrating or offensive, really. If anything, I feel like a bit of a fraud the way I have felt the few times in my life that I've been encouraged to actively participate in religious life, for instance at a church. Without the faith to back up the action the action feels vaguely dishonest and hollow to me, like playing "let's pretend we believe in divine punishment and divine salvation" or "let's pretend we believe that these males are more worthy beings." At the same time, obviously one can't be completely free of judgement, try as I might. I can't help having thoughts like "THAT dude gets to eat before me? Come ON! He's like 18 and all he does is lay on his ass all day and he dropped out of school in grade 1 and he threatens his girlfriend with abuse if she cheats on him!" But for the most part its just part and parcel of life here. And in all honesty, playing the role of a good local girl in situations like this is probably the best thing I can do in terms of being accepted in this community. Since the funeral I've had local friends of both sexes come up and tell me that "its really, really good that you did that [served the food]," and that "yeah, the other people from the other villages, they're not used to seeing a white person do these things. But we tell them that you live here, among us, so you just do these things with us." So in an, ahem, anthropological sense its better than the first funeral I went to, where I got fed before most of the other women, and got given a big piece of choice beef because I was a respected foreign novelty.

The other thing that I've been meaning to mention in these blog posts is the really interesting -and sometimes pretty humorous- names that people in this community have. Virtually all names mean something (they're composites of isiXhosa words, with feminine or masculine prefixes and suffixes. For example, Sipho means "gift" and Siphokazi is a feminine form of Sipho). Many people have more than one name: one on their birth certificate or ID document (if they have one), a nick-name by which they are typically referred, and and an adult name. Most people get a new name once they go through initiation and become a man (if they're male) or when -and if- they get married and thereby achieve full adult status (if they're female). Married women all have "No" at the beginning of their name; its a bit like "Mrs," and denotes respect. Some younger people of either sex will also have "No" at the beginning of their nick-name, however. My favourite names that I've come across in the village so far: Nopanado (for those of you who aren't familiar with South Africa, Panado is a popular brand of painkiller. Its basically like being named "Miss Aspirin" or "Miss Paracetamol). " Also Noguava (as in, the fruit. This is the name of a teenage boy), Nocellular (as in, a cellular telephone), and Homeboy (also a teenage boy).

September in a nutshell

Here we have a set-up that I am very proud of: my radio! This incredible solar-powered radio/phone charger/ipod charger/flashlight/bottle-opener was a going-away gift from my friend Roula, who put a lot of thought into this fantastic gift. However, I could only get a static-free radio signal if I was touching the end of the antenna. A few weeks ago I had an epiphany: I could use this stir-fry pan instead! Now all I have to do is get up on a chair, hang the device from one of the nails on my rustic-yet-stylish pot-hanger, and bend the antenna so that it touches the handle of the pan. Now I get SAFM (South African national radio station), Mhlobo radio (“friend” radio; basically local pop music), and two Afrikaans stations (needless to say, I mostly just listen to news). It’s changed my life.

And here we have a phone of two of the preschool teachers during their computer lesson. There are 6 teachers, and I teach them basic computer literacy on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons as part of the volunteer work that I do for the local community-based organization. This responsibility was not one that I was particularly passionate about –computers aren’t exactly an interest of mine, and I felt that teaching computer literacy to beginners wasn’t a great use of my skills and expertise- and I had ambivalent feelings about what the merit of computer-literacy would be in a place where the only place to charge computers is through the solar batteries at the NGO office, and where only one local person actually owns a computer (the principal of the local school bought one a few weeks back; at that time she didn’t know how to turn it on). That said, 7 months in I’ve come around somewhat. Four of the six teachers (including the two pictured here) had never sat in front of a computer before, and it’s been great to watch how proud they of their new ability to send an email, create and print an attendance list of their students and so forth.

In this picture one of the teachers is emailing Karen, who is now back home in the USA (see earlier posts for info on how Karen is and what she was doing in this village), and one is emailing her sister who is in Cape

Town completing her high-school qualification. I’m really proud of them.ng-away gift from my friend Roula, who put a lot of thought into this fantastic gift. However, I could only get a static-free radio signal if I was touching the end of the antenna. A few weeks ago I had an epiphany: I could use this stir-fry pan instead! Now all I have to do is get up on a chair, hang the device from one of the nails on my rustic-yet-stylish pot-hanger, and bend the antenna so that it touches the handle of the pan. Now I get SAFM (South African national radio station), Mhlobo radio (“friend” radio; basically local pop music), and two Afrikaans stations (needless to say, I mostly just listen to news). It’s changed my life.

On the fieldwork front, things are also going well. My translator, the community health worker and I have now finished out quantitative and qualitative profiling of about 80% of the village; it’s a lot of great data, and I feel that I have a much better understanding of the circumstances of most people in the community now. I’ve also got more interview files than I have time to transcribe, which is fantastic. One of the more interesting findings to come out of this data is an interesting understanding –or misunderstanding- of the relationship between rights –in liberal-

democratic sense granted through the South African constitution- gender power, and social freedoms in this community. Without getting deeply into it, when asked about changes in the behavior and lifestyles of young people in this community, I’ve had adults say things like “I don’t like these rights. The women don’t belong to me anymore, they belong to the government” (middle-aged father of a large family, expressing frustration with his daughters), and “young people are disrespectful these days. They stand in front of elders with their boyfriends or girlfriends now, and it’s all done in the name of one word: FREEDOM! These problems are since voting. Since Mandela.”

Otherwise, the past couple weeks have had their ups and downs. I’ve been to the nearby town two weekends in a row to watch Canada and South Africa play in the Rugby World Cup (some of you know what a fan I am. Its killing me that I have to drive 2 hours just to find a TV), which has been good fun. On the downside, I battled with a two-week-long gastrointestinal affliction AND got impetigo (a very-contagious but easily-treated with antibiotics bacterial skin infection that a lot of the local kids –and some of the local adults- have). Keeping healthy in the field is an ongoing battle. Both afflictions are cleared up now, though. In other news, last weekend a local guy got stabbed to death in a drunken brawl in the village, and a much-beloved and very talented middle-aged man passed away after battling with AIDS and TB for some years now (his heavy drinking didn’t help. Drinking is a fundamental aspect of social life here, especially for people who have achieved the social standing that comes with mature adulthood; this can pose problems for people on ARVs). So this weekend everyone in the village –me included- will be going to his funeral.

Finally, here’s a photo of one of the very oldest people in the village. This woman is absolutely lovely, and is completely blind. I enjoy running into her when I pass her home, partly because initially she doesn’t know that I’m not from the community because she can’t see me (she clues in pretty quickly once I start talking, but still). I find her extremely striking-looking, which is why I’ve included this photo.

More news next time!

Hardcore!

Here goes with my resolution to update this blog more often. Good news is, it’s been a very busy week for me. Now that I have two people translating for me, I’m now out in the community pretty much every day. If anything, I’m really struggling to find the time to properly write down and compile all the data that I’m getting, both the data that is exclusively for my own research, and the data which I’m collecting for the NGO.

Although I’ve got a translator, I am very proud to say that I really feel like I’m making progress on the language front. My grammar is still very bad –and always will be, I’m sure, - but I’m finding that I now understand a fair bit of what is being said around me. The preschool teachers are a big help; most of them have pretty much stopped speaking English to me unless they’ve tried to tell me something several times, and it’s become clear that I don’t understand what’s been said. I appreciate the tough love approach.

The language-learning has been hard work; I get up every morning at 6:30 and study for about an hour (with a coffee and a chocolate-espresso rusk, of course. FYI non-South African friends, a rusk is kinda like a biscotti only fatter and not quite as hard. I source these babies from a

gourmet food store several hours from here. Gotta keep it civilized). Every week I make myself new vocab flash cards (English one side, isiXhosa on the other), and every 3 weeks I dig out my old cards to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything). And when I’m out and about in the community I always make notes in my field notebook every time I either hear something thatI’d like to understand, or when I’m trying to express myself and realize that I don’t know an important word. Dorky perhaps, but effective.

That said, although I’m busy I’m still running the after-school program up at the local primary school. This week we did puzzles, and the tweens were really into it (see picture). Unfortunately, although there was a range of aptitudes in the group –as with any group of kids,- I was amazed and dismayed to discover how poor their puzzle-solving skills are. These kids are in their early teens, and most of them really didn’t grasp that the puzzle is a square, and that the square will have straight edges that must line up. It was really frustrating to sit with them, take a piece of puzzle, and say “okay, what is this picture of?”” Okay, so it’s a piece of a pink flower. Where’s another piece with part of a pink flower on it?” And then, once they’d found the piece, watch them try and fail to fit it one way, not noticing that if they turned the piece 45 degrees it would actually fit together. Makes me pretty grateful for all the brain-building time my parents put in with me (NOT to suggest that parents are neglecting their kids here, or that these kids aren’t clever. They just haven’t been exposed to this sort of stuff much). In any case its rewarding to work with them in any case, and they seem to enjoy themselves as well.

Research-aside, it’s also been an adventurous week on the personal front. I’m currently sharing my house with Leisl (a long-time manager of the backpacker lodge, who now lives elsewhere but comes back periodically to help manage some of the microenterprise projects in the village), and this past weekend we went on a big hike over the river, down the beach, up and down some hills, and into the Mpame forest. It was an excellent walk, we met lots of local people from the next village, bravely ignored people’s warnings that there was a “igrogro” in the forest (a monster, apparently), custom-ordered a skirt for me from a mama in the neighbouring village (she’s known for her excellent skirt-making skills, and I want a red, rose-print traditional shweshwe skirt), investigated a fallen-down and abandoned treehouse, and arrived back in our village just before dark, being chased by a rainstorm, and had to swim the river-mouth with our bags over our heads because the tide was high (the river spills into the sea, so when the tide is high, the river is high also).

And finally, here’s a picture of me huffing a newly-charged car battery up the hill to my house in wheelbarrow. That hill is steep, and that battery is heavy! But that battery powers three tiny strings of LED lights in my house, so it’s worth it.

Miss you guys.

P.S. I’m going to shamelessly request some of you to send me music! I’ll even pay for the USB via email money transfer, if you live in Canada. I still haven’t managed to replace much since my IPOD was stolen in April, and I’m getting pretty tired of the same few albums.

Pics that didn't publish, babies, and more!

First off, here's the picture of the "Life Skills" homework that didn't publish:

Secondly, here's the next post:

After over 5 months, I can now say that I’ve settled somewhat comfortably into life in the village. The adjustment period was actually harder than I imagined, for a variety of reasons that I won’t burden you all with now. I think the hardest part, actually, is just feeling that no one around you really gets why it’s hard. In any case, I am now accustomed to bathing rarely, to washing my clothes twice a month (basically, when I run out of clean underwear) in a plastic tub, and to filling my weekends with visiting friends in the village, drinking in the shebeen, writing fieldnotes, long beach-walks, and treks to neighbouring villages in hopes of finding a greater variety of vegetables than is available in these parts (its nearing the end of winter now, so the gardens arebare.) Now when the odd guest at the backpacker lodge asks me “so, what is there to DO around here?” I realize I am actually rarely bored. That’s not to say that its paradise. It’s still a struggle to express myself properly, the lack of privacy is sometimes exhausting, and going months without snuggles and (ahem) romance is definitely bad for the soul. That said, here are some excerpts from the past couple weeks:

Here’s a less-than-flattering picture of me with a friend’s one month-old baby. Both my friend

“K” and her sister both had babies in the past month, so I’d gone over to visit the four of them. This family is one of the few in the village to own a television, which they power with a generator. I ended up spending part of the morning chatting, playing with the babies, and watching wrestling on TV (wrestling, for some mysterious reason, is very popular in this village), along with about 15 other neighbours.

And here’s a picture of some mamas, and a giant pile of meat. Karen (an American teacher who came out for 9 months last year to help get the preschool started, and who came back again for 6 weeks in July-August) and I had gone on a Sunday afternoon trek to the nearest trading store, and were walking back through a neighbouring village when we came across some of our local village mamas sitting with a bunch of other women. This gathering consitutes the remnants of a funeral which had taken place the day before; the sister of the sub-headman from our village had passed away. These mamas were working on finishing off the rest of the cow that had been slaughtered for the occasion, and Karen and I were privileged enough to be given a large slab of beef (and a knife with which to cut off bite-sized chunks).

So Karen and I were both having a nice time chatting anlaughing with the mamas, when a grandma cut off a large piece of pure, jiggly fat and passed it to Karen. This is considered a choice piece of meat in these parts, and was a generous gesture. Karen managed to get it down with a smile. Since Karen is a few decades older than me –and therefore of much higher social standing in this community-, I hoped I might be spared the privilege. Not so. My piece of fat was even bigger than Karen’s. I managed to chew twice, swallow it down in pretty-much one solid lump, smile gratefully, and say “mmm…limnandi!” (mmm…delicious!). I wasn’t hungry for about 18 hours after that, and it took several hours for me to get the congealed fat off the roof of my mouth. In the meantime, I struggled to communicate even more than usual because was unable to make the ‘q’ click (the one that sounds like a cork-bottle opening) due to the slippery-ness of the fat on the roof of my mouth.

More to follow!

Once again, it has been far too long since I updated my blog. In the past month a lot has happened on my end; I went to Zanzibar for two weeks with my lovely friend Jen Smith, I hired myself a regular translator, the lodge in the village got broken into (and our guards got kidnapped! But they were returned safe and sound), and much, much more. Rather than start at the beginning and update you all on the whole month, I’m going to post a bunch of shorter blog posts over the next few days.

So, beginning with yesterday: I am still running my after-school program for

grade 4, 5, and 6 at our local school, and although there are some ups and downs (mostly due to poor attendance by the teachers, meaning that as often as not there are no students at school either), the program is going well. Yesterday we tried building things with ‘Zoob,’ a lego-esque building toy which was donated –to the amazement of everyone in the village- by the South African government through the Community Work Program (this job-creation scheme. I won’t go into detail here). The kids were surprisingly enthusiastic. Here’s one picture of many:

Less inspiring is this page from a grade 6 student’s “Life Skills” workbook. In case you can’t read it properly, here’s an excerpt, with the spelling corrected: “a knight’s weapon was a double-edged sword that was very heavy it was his most prized possession knights would march into

danger and then using two hands hold the heavy sword fight against the enemy usually the enemy also had a sword so the two swords would hit against each other the knights jumped out of each others way so that as not to be hurt by the sword.” These kids’ language abilities in English are minimal, and they’re literacy is poor. No fault of their own; the school is just complete shit. This text –which is confusing even for me- has clearly been copied off a blackboard. Aside from the fact that knights and swords don’t really feature in these children’s lives…

After the “Life Skills” workbook, imagine my surprise when I found an interview with Justin Bieber in their isiXhosa reading-comprehension textbook:

More to follow in the next day or two…