Sanibona! Its been a while, but to be honest, theres not much to update on.
I arrived up in Mtuba two weeks ago. An interesting town, there are 3 Peps (the equivalent of old navy), a grocery store, 2 banks and a muthi market (traditional medicine) and thats about it. If one Pep doesnt havent, the others will i suppose. I'm living in a village about 20 km from Mtuba. It takes anywhere from a half hour to an hour to get to work in the morning by mini bus taxi, the dirt roads through the village can take quite a while depending on the route the taxi takes.
Once I get to work...every day brings something new.
For the first few days I was able to head out with the mobile units, and while my Zulu skills are getting slowly better, I'm no where near a point where I can teach health education to the rural communities the clinics serve, nor am i even CLOSE to being able to gossip in zulu, and this is how a large part of the time in spent ou on the units amongst staff. I have however, found that I make a mean glass of juice from concentrate and have a true knack for handing out apples and scones to community members, and for the first week this has been my number priority.
Since the schools were on holiday and the units normally visit high school level learners, we have been out in the community for the past week. I saw my first pack of zebras in my second week, passing through a game reserve to visit a community 2 hours from Mtuba. So that makes the count about 12 zebras, 1 black mamba, 60 baboons, and 25 marriage proposals, and counting. Mom and Dad: if a heard of cows arrives at your door step, know I must have been given an offer I couldnt refuse, so far I have had no trouble politley declining these requests in a mix of zulu and english. While being freakishly pale and speaking a funny language has become old hat to me, it never ceases to amaze those I come in contact with as we head to rural areas with the units.
Community involvement has been at an all time low recently and I have starting working with the head of community outreach in order to draw in new communities. This role again, involves my excellent juice making skills, and my ability to type contacts into a computer and press print, but it has been an excellent lesson in the neccesary steps involved in involving the community, and sometimes not involving them. It seems that despite my good intentions, there is a system running here, that has been impossible to break into and offer potential improvements or ideas. Frustrating, but certainly a lesson in patience, and the importance of learning through observation.
My first weekend here, after a long day out with the units in which no one used our services, i was invited to a braii (barbeque) with one of the units drivers, and the three peacecorp workers who also work with the organization) Lessons learned: dont let some one convince you that you should put salt and lime in your hard cider, it is NOT a tequilla shot, there is a limit to how much meat one person can consume, and ive found it to be 6 pieces of ox heart, 5 pieces of ox liver, 2 cheese sausages and 4 pieces of jerkey...but thats just me.
Over Easter, I headed to St. Lucia, about a 15 minutes mini bus taxi from the edge of the village, where I went on a crocodile and hippo tour and horseback riding on the beach. St. Lucia ia a strange place, located just minutes from rural South African villages it is Afrikaaners on holiday central. I've since headed back to work, and well, not been up to all that much lately. The organization I'm working for is currently trying to diversify its funding, and I have tried by hand at grant writing the past few days. Well, grant fixing. But I've also spent long, very important, business hours, checking facebook and repeatedy refreshing my gmail account only to find that no one from home has written me an email at 4 am eastern time. Hopefully, I will be back out with the units soon, and able to see the work they do in a school setting rather than a community setting. For now, I'm here, refreshing my g-mail account...again.
There is so much I'd like to be doing, but no one to effectively voice this or set about putting any of it into motion. For example, on Saturdays we go to communities because schools are not in session, but no communities have been choosen for this coming Saturday and there has been no attempt to make this decision, only an attempt amogst staff members to hand the decision off to other staff members, and as the times goes by, the less likley we are to attract community members, since we will not have time to advertise. I've mentioned this several times, to serval people, but ah lass, I am destined to continuing clicking the refresh button.
Hopefully, my last week with the organization will bring more exciting, more involved experiences, I can only hope. The countdown: 21 days. I can't wait to see you all again, hopefully will more exciting stories that the tale of the never changing gmail account. I love you all, and miss you more than you could possibly know. Salali Kahle! Ngiyakukhumbula! (I miss you)