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...

Week 2: In which the intrepid anthropologist succumbs to gastroenteritis, but eventually makes it to the fieldsite

Although the drive to my fieldsite takes three days, I only made it to my fieldsite on Thursday of my second week in South Africa. I was all set to leave Cape Town on Sunday, only to wake up at 1am on Sunday morning with the worst gastrointestinal affliction of my life. A friend in Cape Town had come down with the same thing a few days before and had been hospitalized due to dehydration, so I knew I was in for an unpleasant ride. I managed to avoid being put on a drip, but I was still in for three hellish days of high fever, stomach pain, and a revolting diet of “raspberry-flavoured” oral rehydration salts. A three-day solo drive was out of the question.

The saving grace of this otherwise terrible ordeal was that I had ample time to read Circles in a Forest, an English translation of an Afrikaans classic novel by Dalene Matthee. It was a gift from the mother of an Afrikaaner friend of mine, and I finished it in two days (admittedly

, I couldn’t do much other than read anyway). It’s got plenty of romance, adventure, and roughing it in the wilderness, as well as a complex yet likeable protagonist. On a deeper level, the author also shapes a compelling argument about frontier capitalism, environmental conservation and social class. It also provides a good intro to understanding the complex and antagonistic historical relationship between English and Afrikaaner South Africans. I would recommend it highly.

By Tuesday morning, however, I was ready to set out on what turned out to be an absolutely spectacular drive. The first day out was along one of the main highways out of Cape Town, which mostly meanders through wide valleys full of farms and vineyards, with mountains on either side. At one point I drove past a large bush-fire, which was pretty dramatic. I was told by local friends that it hasn’t rained in Cape Town since early January, and temperatures were reaching 37 degree Celsius when I left the Cape. Inland it had been over 40 degrees for a week. I could see the fire coming from kilometers away; the huge cloud of black smoke rose into the otherwise clear blue sky. As I got closer I realized a whole hilltop and hillside was blazing, all along the side

of the highway. It felt like being in an oven.

The second day out I drove through the Karoo (see picture above), a lonely and spectacular semi-desert in the middle of the country. I passed maybe two cars an hour, and one small frontier town every two. Lightening was flashing on the horizon for most of the afternoon, and the last hour of my drive was through a pretty dramatic storm. Also, I got stuck in the little town of Graaf-Reinet for a hour while mechanics installed an electric fuel pump (it was too hot for the regular pump), and got to check out some real anthropological gems in the tiny local museum (see picture. This was part of an actual display on early inhabits of the Graaf-Reinet area).

The last day of my drive was through the densely-populated urban and rural areas of the former ‘homeland’ of Transkei, eventually to arrive at my fieldsite.

So I’m now set up in a lovely three-room turquoise house on a hill overlooking the sea. It’s about 7:30 am on a Saturday and as I’m writing this in bed I hear my neighbour’s kids playing on my front porch. They’ve replaced the mom and baby donkey that sleep on my porch at night (the picture was taken just after dawn, through my bedroom window. They're very cute, but also a bit scary until I figured out what was going on; they stamp there hooves a lot, and scratch their bodies against the door in the middle of the night. The door opens right into my bedroom). Kilo, a local dog who lives at the backpacker lodge in town has also taken to coming up to my house to be fed every morning and night. I’m making more progress so far building relationships with the local fauna than I am with the people.

That said, the community clearly has a good idea of how to make use of their resident anthropologist. I’ve been given a desk in the office of the local community-based organization. At this desk I am supposed to plan an English-language-teaching after-school program for grade 4 through 6 at the local primary school (Mondays through Wednesdays from 3:30-4:30). I’ve also been asked to do regular classes in basic computer literacy with the preschool teachers, and to help the young man who manages the village library (yes, they have one. The community-based organization has done an amazing job of getting donations of books in both English and Xhosa for their school-aged children, and have build a beautiful rondavel hut as a library) to organize books as they come in. When I asked him what he needs help with, he explained that he doesn’t always know whether a book is fiction or non-fiction, and gave the example that he had filed a book on “The Rainbow Nation” under weather, only to learn

his mistake. I think I’m up to the task....