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…

The pics that didn't publish

For some reason the internet cut out yesterday, as I was trying to upload my pics. Here are the pictures that go with yesterday's blog post:

I'm back!

Dear all,

First off, any apologies for not updating the blog is over a month. Roughly a month ago I had an auto-electrical issue with the car, which took a week to resolve. I was stranded outside the village (in a beachy surf town, so it could have been worse) waiting for the repairs, and have been busy since I got back. The more time that elapsed between blog updates, the more daunting the task of actually updating it became. I've finally decided that I have no hope of filling you in on the events of the past month, so I'll focus on little snippets of the past couple weeks.

The biggest news is that I have substantially changed the nature of my volunteer job for the local NGO in a way which is very exciting for my research. I'm now working with the local Community Health Worker to do an in-depth qualitative and quantitative profiling of all the families in the village. The profiling schedule, guide, questionaire, survey (whatever you want to call it) was designed by me, with input from the NGO director and the Community Health Worker's. I've shamelessly included questions which will further my research, but I've been transparent about it. And I'm now out in the community A LOT, which is fantastic.

The only downside to this new activity is that the challenges faced by some families in this community are more in-my-face than they were before. My medical anthro/public health friends would be particularly appalled by the unacceptably poor medical care that is available at the local clinic. By way of example: two weeks ago I visited a family, and the first thing the mother of the family did was explain that she's having problems with her TB medication. She'd been on treatment for active TB, and had gone to the nearest clinic (across the river, in the next village) to get more meds. She could tell that she'd been given different medication than the last time she went, however, and was concerned that her new medication wasn't working; she was coughing up blood again. I asked her to show me her new medication. It turned out to be vitamin C (it said so right on the package)! This woman is illiterate, so she couldn't read the packaging. Now she probably has antibiotic-resistant TB, and has likely infected the rest of her household. Sigh.

On a more positive note, this past weekend was an exciting one in the village. Five young initiates (basically, young men who have gone through ritual circumcision and three months of preparation for adulthood in seclusion from the community) returned to the families. This was a cause for great celebration, much beer-drinking, and, for the younger men, stick-fighting. The whole extravaganza lasted all weekend, and all the women turned out in their best head-wraps, beads, and facepaint for the occasion (see photo of perhaps the most dignified of grannies. She was very excited to pose for the photo).

Also, the weekend before went to Port St John's, a small town a few hours up the coast. These lovely signs were on bottle stores where we (as in, myself and other guests at the backpacker lodge where I stayed) stopped to buy beer en route to some waterfalls.

Finally, the school term ended last week, which means my after-school program is on haitus until the kids return to classes in late July. The picture is of my grade 5s, showing off these woven plate things that we made.

More updates to follow! xoxox

Rainstorms, Turtles, Interviews and More!

I’ve been back in the village for a week and a half now, I admit I was feeling a bit bored the first week back. Things got more interesting last weekend, however; this past Saturday we had had the heaviest rain that I’ve experienced since arriving in this village. It was absolutely torrential when I went to bed Saturday night, and I was astounded when it was still pouring when I woke up on Sunday morning. By mid-morning the rain had stopped, and it was pretty neat to see how the landscape was transformed. The river which runs along the edge of the village had swollen considerably –it took three days or so to go back to its normal size,- and it was clear that it had already gone down from what it had been overnight. Sizeable trees and all kinds of wood and debris were beached on the shore. I went down to take a closer look, and saw a bunch of local kids collecting fish that had been beached–presumably pushed up by the river

Walking along the riverbank I then saw a bunch of boys on the sandy bank on the other wise of the river, beating something large with big sticks. I watched for a few seconds, and realized that they were hitting a huge sea-turtle on its shell! Oh man, was I shocked and appalled. And then really angry. It was the first time since I’ve been here that I really felt disgusted and horrified by the local people –as well as feeling the stereotypical anthropological guilt and ambivalence for feeling such a profound us/them sentiment. Moreover, I knew that these are hungry people with different values, and that a sea-turtle is good food. But guilt aside, I couldn’t sit and watch these kids beat a sea-turtle to death. As I said, the river was much higher than usual, and it’s usually-clear water was brown and murky. The turtle itself was beached only 50 meters or so from the river mouth, and the ocean was brown and murky with debris from the rivers (the village is between two rivers, both of which spill into the ocean). Currents are bad here at the best of times, and when the rivers flood and the water gets murky, sharks some to the river mouths to catch fish, and eat dead dogs and sheep and things that get pushed down from upriver. Given these circumstances I was afraid to swim the river, so I made what in retrospect was a pretty juvenile decision –I ran up the hill to the house of Annette, the Education Program Manager (a late middle-aged woman from Cape Town, who speaks fluent isiXhosa) for help.

Soon Annette and I were both on the riverbank screaming bloody murder at these kids, to the point that they stopped hitting the turtle because they were actually stunned to see us so worked up. A teenage guy must have heard all the yelling, because he came out of the forest to see what was going on. Annette and I managed to convince him to put the turtle in the water (I blatantly lied, and said that the turtle wasn’t good food), and soon the guy was pushing the turtle towards the river. As soon as it reached the water, it promptly swam for the sea. On Monday morning, Annette had me visit all three preschool classrooms to tell them about the turtle, show them turtle pictures, and to teach them that turtles are endangered animals that should not be killed. I still feel a little uneasy about the moral colonialism of it all, but the kids were pretty excited about it, and it was a lot of fun. And, the turtle is free.

This week was also an exciting one on the research front. Firstly, I began my involvement with the “Storytelling Project.” The local NGO has had a plan for a long time to film village elders telling stories about their lives. The idea is that these elders can pass along their stories as wisdom to future generations. The local Community Facilitator –we’ll call him Jomo, he’s a research participant of mine- has been trained in using a video camera and has been groomed for the task for a while, but lacked confidence in his ability to do a good interview. Someone at the NGO suggested that I could help him with this, and I JUMPED on the opportunity. We now have a shiny new video camera and tripod, and I’ve shamelessly developed an interview guide which includes questions which are useful for my research.

We did our first two interviews yesterday, at the homestead of an elderly local man. The interview itself took place outside, with the grandchildren and great-grandchildren sitting around, a radio playing, and various livestock walking around. I thought it would be too loud, but in the end the background noise just added to the ambiance. I can only follow about 25 percent of what is being said at this point, and at one point the old man who was speaking paused –in the midst of waving his walking stick enthusiastically and miming kicking something- and looked at me like he expected a reaction. I looked around uncertainly, and all his grandchildren were looking at me with mischievous grins on their faces. I asked Jomo what was going on, and he started laughing and said “the guy is saying ‘the white people were kicking our asses!’” I looked a bit sheepish and said (in isiXhosa) “Oh… Yeah, so I’ve heard…” which they seemed to find funny. The old man carried on with his interview…

At the end of the interview two of the old man’s teenage sons emerged from the garden with a few stems of sugarcane, and started hacking them into segments with a machete. They gave the two elders, Jomo, and I each a length of sugarcane. I asked Jomo how to eat it, and he said “first you rip the bark off with your teeth.” I tried –with some success- but my efforts clearly looked pretty lame to my hosts. One of the teenagers took back the sugarcane, and shaved off the bark with a small knife before giving it back to me. Much better. I was just getting into chewing and spitting the sweet interior of the cane when I noticed that one of the old men was spitting out call kinds of blood alongside the sugarcane pulp. No one else seemed concerned; I guess the guy was used to it. No wonder these people are missing teeth…

Finally, I’ve realized that I haven’t taken may pictures this week, so I’m posting some old ones here. One is a picture of a local woman smoking in one of the shebeen’s (informal taverns). The older women really like to have their pictures taken (especially when they drink), and like to strike very serious poses. As soon as the picture is taken, they all want to see the picture and invariably laugh at lot at it. Only women smoke these long pipes; they are long like that so they can breastfeed a baby and smoke at the same time.

The second picture is a sunset from my porch. The was taking during the after-school program that I help run at the local school. We had guest at the backpacker lodge who is a physical theatre performer, and she wanted to come up and do some activities with the kids. They loved it.

The pics that didn't publish

Here are the pics that didn't upload on that last post, for some reason.

Road-trip and more!

Apologies yet again for the long delay between posts. I’ve been taking a partial break from fieldwork these past two weeks, as my sister Joey came to visit me from New York as a birthday present! She left on Saturday, and I’ve been back in the village as of Monday. I’ve been nursing a

mild depression over the Canadian election results since I returned, however, and have only regained the strength to write as of today.

On the fieldwork front, the last day before I left the villagewas “HIV/AIDS Testing Day.” This was organized by the Community Outreach officer for the local NGO; she's a young local woman with a bachelor’s degree (a rare achievement in these parts) who was hired only a month ago AND had a baby only four months back. For the testing day she arranged for an HIV education and testing group to come from the nearest hospital (2 hour drive in a 4x4 or an eight-hour mission by foot/mini-bus taxi), rented a tent, and arranged speeches and catering (as in ordered food and organized local women to cook it) for the whole village.

The testing day itself was successful in some respects; the turn-out was good, the education and outreach people were personable and –as far as I could tell with my as-let-limited isiXhosa skills- informative, and quite a few people got tested in the little safari tents that were pitched around the headman’s house to provide privacy for the testing and counseling. Particularly interesting for me was the instructional play for how to use condoms. Holy cow, the actors got WAY more physical with their demo than you would ever see in North America! I –and many locals, as you can see from the picture above- were genuinely shocked (and amused, in most cases) to see the male and female actors (same-sex sexuality was completely off the agenda, as far as I could tell) rubbing up against each other in a simulated-erection-inducing display of affection. Much less cool was the fact that almost no young people turned up for the event; almost everyone who attended and got tested were age 35-plus. Not encouraging at all. On the positive side, the NGO has asked me to do a focus group with some local young people to see what could be done to get them more interested in these sorts of events. On an unrelated note, I’ve also added a cute picture of the local kindergarten students in the pre-school garden, learning about how squash pollinate.

After HIV-testing day, I drove to Cape Town to meet my sister. We spent a lovely four days in Cape Town before driving along through the Karoo and along the coast back to the Transkei, where she got to see the village that I’m living in. Highlights included eating a lot of really good food, seeing some elephants up really close, and chilling in the Transkei. Lowlights consisted of the car getting broken into via the trunk while in Cape Town, resulting in the theft of all my camping equipment, my car radio, my phone, and my ipod. All have now been replaced at not inconsiderable expense, but I am now music-less. I invite any and all of you who might wish to send me music (I lost all my music, as I left my good lap-top with the music on it in Canada, and brought only a cheap notebook with me. Sticking music on a cheap usb would be awesome) to contact me so I can tell you my mailing address. My new ipod is just waiting to be filled…And now, for a photo montage of the trip: me

at the Kalk Bay Harbour house (some of the best seafood I’ve ever had) the day I got my bangs trimmed and had clean laundry for the first time in weeks, Joey and I with Ronnie at Ronnie's Sex Shop (a charming roadside bar in the Karoo), mama and baby elephant (part of a herd of 27 that surrounded our car), and the view from my kitchen window.

And finally, a few weeks back one of you blog reader

s requested a photo of my car. Here she is, in all her glory. On that note, the drive back from dropping my sister off at the airport was the most exciting one for hitchhikers yet. A good hour from the village I was flagged down by a middle-aged mama, who was standing by the side of the road alone, surrounded by quite a few shopping bags. It was going to be dark before too long, and I knew that this woman would really struggle to fit all that stuff

into a mini-bus taxi, so I pulled over. As soon as I pulled over the woman began to enthusiastically pile her bags into the back seat, just as two young men appeared out of nowhere carrying two very large cardboard boxes. I pieced together that these young men were somehow related to this woman, and that they themselves weren't looking for a ride, so I got out and opened the trunk to accommodate what turned out to be two large

boxes of raw chicken. I asked where the woman was going, and she said “Tafelehashe!” (the closest trading store/market). I was just about to shut the trunk when the two men appeared from behind a tree again, this time struggling with a 20-liter plastic tub of the sort that around here people usually use to store water. All three tried to pointedly ignore my evident reservations about taking a large tub of unknown liquid in the car, until I closed the trunk, pointed at the tub, and said very loudly “Yintoni-le!?” [what is it?!]. It was beer. Great. After a good ten minutes of maneuvering, the guys managed to wedge the beer behind the passenger seat, and we were off. None of the chicken or beer spilled, the woman made it to the market, and I made it home.

This week has been a quiet one on the work front, a fun one on the social front, and a productive one on the research front. It’s a week of school-holidays at the moment (the South African school-year is structured very differently from the Canadian system), so my after-school program and computer teaching have been on hiatus. My supervisor at the NGO has also been on vacation, and the one job she left me with was to make a very large seashell and driftwood mobile to hang from the ceiling of the preschool library. As you might imagine it’s been quite strenuous work combing the beaches for pretty shells and nice pieces of wood (photos of completed mobile next week).

Never one to shirk from responsibility, I used the driftwood mobile assignment as an excuse to take a short weekend trip to Coffee Bay (see photo above of some typical coastline en route). It’s a much busier –and better serviced; it has electricity, for instance- village than this one, an eight hour walk or two hour drive (the road goes inland and back out again) up the coast from here. In addition to several beach bars, a pizza restaurant, three backpacker lodges, and a café, the village has a little boutique-y shop that sells clothes from India (you know, the scrubby hippy-backpacker style), delicious treats (who knew I would find

wasabi and fish sauce only a few villages away, when I struggle to find green vegetables in the one that I live in?), and pretty gift-shop type stuff like attractive soaps, candles and beaded sun-catchers. So I stocked up on pretty beads and 20 cent colourful Indian bangles, to mix with the seashells.

Otherwise, the trip to Coffee Bay was great fun! I went cliff-jumping into the Indian Ocean, went spelunking in a cave full of bats, ate fresh crayfish that I bought from a local crayfish-diver (see picture. Those crayfish are not all for me; I pooled my funds with three German guys and a Brazilian guy to buy those babies for a total of $14) and roasted on a fire on the beach, and partied like a first-year undergrad (my Saturday nights in the village almost invariably consist of being in bed with a book by 10:30, so I had to balance this out somehow).

Once back in the village, I resumed my routine of hanging out with informants, who themselves are usually at the backpacker lodge (the place where most young locals are employed –if they speak some English,- and the main focal point for socializing). This can sometimes be frustrating, as the backpackers are usually curious about this -presumed American, until they learn otherwise- girl who speaks some isiXhosa and appears to know some of the locals. I’m often roped into conversations about how long I’ve been here, followed by “Oh, what is your research about?” (not that I blame them for asking; I’d do the same). And then as soon as they find out about my research topic, then, man! Most of the time they have soooo many questions! I’m more than happy –and confident enough- to answer the questions like “what is your house like? What do you eat? Do you live with a family? Do you speak the language? Is it lonely living here? Do you feel safe?” but more often than not their questions veer towards the most grim and notorious aspects of life in South Africa: “is there a lot of AIDS here? Is there a lot of rape here? What about domestic violence? Do all the men have lots of affairs?” And this get annoying sometimes, for a number of reasons. Firstly, how the heck would I know? After five weeks I’m not exactly walking around asking “so, neighbor, are you HIV-positive? I know your husband is, because I've seen him at the mobile clinic. But are you using condoms? And hey, have you been raped before?” Secondly, why ask me to explain what life is like the village, when a local person is sitting two meters away? And thirdly, I get annoyed at how disrespectful it is to local people to sit here right in front of the local people and ask some foreigner who is new to the community to talk authoritatively about this stuff. I mean, how would you feel if you’re the young local person, and THIS is what outsiders want to know about your community. On the plus side, I learned this week that it can be very helpful for my research to say “why don’t you ask [insert name of local tour guide]? He knows better than me, given he’s from here.” And then I eavesdrop on the ensuing conversation. Sneaky.

Otherwise, its been a good week on the research front, over

all. I did my first proper interview (I’d decided not to do any interviews until I’d been here several months and built some rapport with the community, but my volunteer work has put me in contact with the librarian in the village regularly enough that I felt it was appropriate to interview him at this stage). Also, the manager/part-owner of the backpacker lodge (he owns 60%, the community owns 40%) has asked me to do a genealogy of the whole village, capturing photos of each community-member, noting their clan-name, and recording whatever personal stories they deem important for future generations. Apparently this is something that he and the village headman have wanted to do for quite some time, and he figured that this is a task that an anthropologist could be useful for. So I’ve done some research on genealogy software, and have begun the project. Approximately 900 people to catalogue (keeping in mind that about half are children, and will probably not have stories to tell yet), and so far I’ve input about 50. Quite ironic, in some ways, that I’m finding myself doing some seriously old-school anthropology; I certainly never planned to document lines of decent, clan groups and so forth.

As an aside, researching genealogy software has been really interesting! Some of the most sophisticated open-source programs are actually affiliated with big American churches, meaning they’re pretty useless in a society like this one. They are programmed to assume that if two people are married, all children of either party are the offspring of these married individuals. In other words, if John Doe and Jane Doe are married and if a child is added to Jane Doe’s family tree, the program is designed to add this child as John Doe’s child as well. And adding children to an unmarried couple is impossible (most children in this village born to parents under 30 are born out of wedlock -I can’t believe I’m using such an old-fashioned word!-, and quite a few of the young women my age have children with several different men). Adding adopted and foster children adds

another level of difficulty, let alone multiple spouses (there are only 5 men in this village with one than one wife, so this won’t be a big challenge). I’ve found one that seems to be working fairly well for now, though.

Alrighty, this is enough for one day. I’ll leave you with my favourite/least favourite photo of the week: an empty sorghum beer box, one of many, many such boxes found by the roadside. P.S.: the other photo above is of the sunrise from my porch. Sometimes my neighbour's rooster wakes me up early enough for me to drink my coffee and watch it come up.

Apologies for the long delay between posts. Unfortunately, I've been sick (yet again), this time with

African Tick-Bite Fever. As you might have guessed, its a tick-born illness, transmitted through bites. Symptoms are swollen glands, body aches, fever, nightmares and headache. Luckily I was spared the bad headache and nightmares (just crazy dreams, not scary ones), I think because I got antibiotics soon enough (the same ones that are used to treat malaria, so the crazy dreams continue).

The actual bite itself was also pretty hideous for a week or so, although its now scabbed over. I think I'll a scar for life, but at least its a scar with a decent story behind it. The only upside of the tick-bite fever is that its like chicken pox in that you have a fair bit of immunity once you've recovered from it. Here's hoping.

Given I have been off sick for a while, I also don't have so much in the way of exciting news to report. I've been spending a lot of time resting and reading, first in bed and then, as I got better, on my porch. Its actually been nice -in a way- to have a chance to really pay attention to the small things. I've watched a lot of thunderstorms, seen a lot of rainbows (and a double rainbow, see the picture!), and watched my neighbour's new chicks grow from newly-hatched to tennis-ball-sized. I've also made a friend for life of the backpacker lodge's dog Kilo (see picture), because I've been feeding her all my food that has gone off while I've had no appetite (I have no refrigeration, and its still humid and summery). Kilo now arrives at my house between 6 and 7 every morning, and follows me around for a good part of the day.

The only really entertaining story of the week occurred on Sunday, when I had begun to feel a bit better and was getting really cagey in my house. I decide to venture a slow walk out to one of the little shops to buy milk, and on the way I passed half the village either en route to or from church (well, I'd say less than half actually. The self-professed Christians are the minority here), or en route to or from a bar (Sunday is the big party day, and a lot of people brew the traditional beer. They get started early). The shop also runs an informal bar, and in the yard sat two old women who had clearly downed a few bottles already. They were in a pretty boisterous mood, and had several empty bottles of Castle Milk Stout sitting next to them. We exchanged the requisite greetings, and they joked that I should buy them another beer. I bought them one (the beer comes in 750ml bottles that people share), and they insisted

that I sit with them for a bit and share the beer. We had a nice little chat in my broken isiXhosa and their broken English. Then one of the women starts calling people over enthusiastically. She's waving her beer bottle and pointing at me emphatically, saying "this girl" followed by something that I couldn't understand. I supposed that they were telling everyone that I'd bought them the beer, and smiled uncertainly until the woman put down the beer bottle and started gesturing enthusiastically. It was then that I realized she was saying "this girl! This girl right here has really big breasts!" I reacted with shock, and everyone laughed as I got up and scampered away.

Other than this one outing, since I've been in better shape I've been spending some time in the library, changing displays and improving the cataloging system. Not so exciting, but I've been surprised at some of the books. For instance, who would translate Beauty and the Beast into isiXhosa but keep Medieval European fairy-tale pictures, and offer no context as to what people are wearing, doing, living in, etc (see picture)? This is a village where many, many people are illiterate and have hardly watched television (a few people have battery-powered TVs, and they mostly watch wrestling). At least its a good story. A less excellent library holding is "The English Roses" by Madonna. Someone probably donated it. Its a not-so-heartwarming morality tale of four girls (nicknamed "the English Roses"), who refuse to befriend a lonely neighbour because the girl is too pretty (with even bigger blue eyes and ever

blonder hair than any of the Roses), and they are jealous. However, they learn the fault of their ways and all five girls become friends. In the end they all grow up to be extremely beautiful. The dubious moral of the book is that their good-looks is their just reward for overcoming their jealousy...

Better updates next time, I promise!

The pictures

Argh! Here are the pictures that I tried to upload yesterday, but that didn't publish to the blog. Apologies. The internet connection is less than excellent...

p.s. The formatting issues are due to my failed attempts to move the pictures around the blog. Sigh.

Funerals and more!

Greetings all! This blog entry will differ from previous entries in three ways: firstly, I am no longer going to number the blog entries week by week, as I've realized that I can't always guarantee a weekly update. Secondly, I am going to try my very, very best to format this properly this time. Lastly, I'm going to add a lot of pictures, and provide some short anecdotes rather than a long update.

First off, here's a picture of the local store, which I tried to update last week, but failed:

Perhaps the most dramatic thing that happened this week was a HUGE funeral. The man who died was an influential man in his 70s, with a large family. Contrary to what I'm accustomed to, funerals here are very public affairs. Literally every able-bodied person in the community attends; by 9:30 am there was a steady stream of people coming from all corners of the village and neighbouring villages. It was blistering hot (I owe my excellent tan mostly to sitting o

ut in the sun for hours at this funeral), and all the older people had umbrellas that they used as parasols. It looks pretty neat to see all these dignified, elderly people navigating steep trails in long lines, each holding their colourful umbrella above their heads. The actual funeral lasted all day, including a choir singing, the burial, and a huge feast where they fed EVERYONE. Apparently two cows and eight sheep were slaughtered for the occasion, in addition to all the other food.

And here's a picture of my neighbour's chickens drinking my laundry water! I thought they would be deterred after one sip, but they actually seemed to like it...

In other news, on Thursday of this week I drove to Cintsa, a beachy little to

wn approxim

ately 4.5 hours drive from here. It’s on the very edge of the Wild Coast aka. Transkei region (where I am living), but unlike the village that I live in, it’s right off the main highway and consequently popular with both backpackers and with wealthy holidaymakers. I’d gone to Cintsa on the recommendation of the director of the community-based organization that I volunteer for because an NGO in the area has a very well-established computer literacy program in place. They have computer labs in several local schools, as well as a mobile lab (in a converted old safari van) which visits several more. They also teach adults in the evening, and have a well-developed curriculum designed to build computer literacy from absolute beginner. I’d arranged to meet with the directors of the program, learn about their curriculum, and to visit their schools. All this to –hopefully- help me gain some skills and ideas to use in my teaching of the preschool teachers in the village.

The trip was quite worthwhile in terms of getting some good ideas and materials for my teaching, and it was also nice to go to a beach bar and order all the things I don’t get to eat in the village (cheese, pizza, ice-cream). I have more mixed feelings about the backpacker hostel I stayed at in Cintsa. The location was gorgeous the facilities were excellent (I had a nice little room in a cute, thatch-roofed cottage), great activities (beach volleyball with free wine every afternoon at 4!), but I think I might be either too old, too lame, or too sober to really get into events such as “topless 10:30” (free drinks if you take of your shirt in the bar at 10:30 p.m.) The most unexpected aspects of the trip, however, took place en route to and from the village.

The first 1.5 hours of the drive are on a dirt road, and it was pouring rain. A lot of women were walking to market, hospital, etc, and were trying to get rides. At one point I had two women in the back (one perhaps 35, one perhaps 45), and a later middle-aged woman in the passenger seat. I stopped to pick up an even older woman, who climbed into the back seat. I asked her where she was going, and she launched into a long, animated monologue that was well beyond my language ability to decipher. I asked her to speak slowly and to please repeat, but to no avail. Finally I make out the word “shot-gun.” What?! So then the younger woman in back –she is the only one who speaks some English- chimes in and explains that the older woman wants “shot-gun,” and wants me to pull over and let her switch places with the woman in the passenger seat. I was a bit shocked, and said that the two women must work that out themselves. So they launched into an animated discussion. I never figured out the decision that I was reached, but in the end the older woman stayed in back. Then, on the drive back I had just turned off the highway when I got pulled over by a police officer. There were several cops and several cars pulled over, so I assumed it was a routine check. Perhaps it was, but I was not asked for my license, car registration, or anything. Instead, I got trapped into a long conversation about where I come from, where I am going, do I like South Africa, do I like South Africans, WHAT do I like about South Africans and so forth. I finally asked if I was allowed to drive on, and the police officer –in seriousness- said I could o

nly leave if I took down his phone number and promised to call him. Ugh. If anyone has a little fantasy about dating a cop, I can pass that number along...

Cops aside,all in all a good week, right up until yesterday when it took a tragic turn for the worse: one of my flip-flops (aka thongs, aka jandals) broke (in a tricky-to-duct-tape manner, as well). I’ve worn those sandals every day since I arrived in the village, and have some sweet tan-lines to show for it. It’ll be a month before I’m in a town big enough to replace them, meaning I’ll be forced to wear my hitherto hiking-only sport sandals. It’s going to hamper the hippy-meets-surfer-girl style I’ve been rocking since I got here, but this fieldwork thing is supposed to be hard and all, so I guess I’ll have to manage.

To finish off, here's a photo of one of the mamas cooking the children's school lunch, and a photo of the sunset from the porch of my desktop in Wilderness on the drive to the village.

Week 3: Thunderstorms and isiXhosa Lessons

This past week has been the first week that I’ve felt I’m making small progress with my research. As I mentioned in my last entry, I’ve been assigned the job of teaching the six preschool and kindergarten teachers basic computer literacy, and I’ll be teaching them in groups of two, from 2-3pm three days per week. I can’t say I’m passionate or challenged by the actual material, and I struggle with frustration at the slow pace of work around. But I remind myself that it’s affording me a regular opportunity to get to know six gainfully-employed (and thus more independent from boyfriends and parents), local women in their 20s –the prime demographic for my research. I’ve also been asked to help the young male librarian to organize the library, which is also good research-wise because it gives me an opportunity to interact regularly with a young male in an environment that isn’t a local bar. Less excellent is his suggestion that I could become one of his girlfriends (he has one in the village, one in the nearest town, a serious one in Cape Town, and a child with a fourth. And this is just what he is willing to openly admit to me).

Otherwise, most of my time is filled with language training, and with going for long walks in the village. One of my walks this week took me to one of the seven informal bars in the village, where I sat on the women’s side of the bar and drank home-brewed maize beer out of an old infant formula can (see picture). You can sort of tell from the photo that most of the women in the bar are older women (the younger ones don’t tend to cover their hair). At any time o

f day most of these bars are full of the elder persons in the village; these grannies and grandpas are enjoying the benefits of having children and children-in-law to tend their homes, gardens, and livestock. To my surprise, the people most likely to be drunk in public here are white-haired and wrinkly. In contrast to there being seven bars, there are only two shops (one pictured).

The local kids find me pretty hilarious, as I’m always either practicing my ‘clicks’ (as in, the click sounds in the local language), or practicing imaginary conversations under my breath. In fact, the four girls who live in the house behind me have figured out that I sit on my porch every morning with my coffee and my language-training flash-cards, and often come to critique my pronunciation (see photo of a typical morning view from my house). They’ve also taken to bringing their adorable little brother along (age 14 months) because he is absolutely

terrified of the ‘white lady,’ and they want to laugh at his expense. The sisters will peek around the side of my porch, place him on his fat little legs on the edge of the porch, and then withdraw a distance and giggle as he stares at me in wide-eyed terror. If I try to say something really threatening to him, like “Molo, Thando” (hello, Thando), he erupts in tears and screams for his mother. I imagine he’ll become accustomed to me one of these days…

In other news, the strangest and most dramatic thing that happened this week involved an amazing thunder and lightning storm on Thursday night. I’d been down at the backpacker lodge socializing with some of the young, local women when a very dramatic storm began to build. Thunder had been rumbling and

lightning had been flashing on the horizon for about half an hour when I decided to head home before it got so dark that I’d need my headlamp to find my way up the hill back to my house. Often I stay at the lodge until well after dark, but I didn’t relish thought of slipping and sliding on wet grass and cow patties in the pouring rain trying to get up the hill with my headlamp (that and the stormy atmosphere was somewhat spooky, and I don’t exactly disbelieve the locals that their ancestors are all around us here. And I know that all the men who die here are buried inside the cattle kraals [pens, basically. They’re always right next to the house], and I have to navigate around a big kraal en route to my home).

Anyway, it takes about 10 minute to walk across the field and up the hill to my house. As soon as I set out I began to wonder whether walking home was a bad plan; really dramatic fork lightning –even horizontal lightening!- was flashing on the horizon on three sides. I then realized that in addition to the sound of the thunder, I could also hear all these female voices chanting. Halfway up the hill I encountered this big-bodied mama with her head-wrap and layers of heavy skirts, standing at the edge of the steepest part of the hill, face to the wind, waving a piece of cloth at the sky and chanting the same phrase over and over again. She ignored me completely, even when I paused near to her to watch what she was doing. My house is the first of seven or eight houses and huts spread across the top off a long , high ridge, and as I got towards the crest of the hill I saw five or six women all standing on the hilltop. Just like the first women, they were all standing face to the storm, chanting the same few phrases over and over, waving pieces of cloth at the sky. Just from listening I could tell that other groups of women were doing the same thing on a number of other hilltops throughout the village. The women on one hilltop would start chanting, and the others would join in.

The whole experience was very surreal and powerful; huge forks of lightening lit up the horizon in all directions for a good 20 or 30 minutes (during which time it went from dusk to dark), and occasionally these women were backlit, silhouetted against the sky. I felt a bit unsettled standing on the hilltop next to my house in this hot, heavy rain with the horizon lit up by lightening, at one point so bright that the whole village was lit up in colour for a split-second, and I could see all these women standing on the hilltops, chanting at the sky. They eventually stopped once the eye of the storm moved along, but it rained steadily on my tin roof all night. When I asked about it the next morning, I was told that the women were telling the thunder and lightning to go elsewhere. Until next time...