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.