Home sweet home

Today I heard that former Peace Corps volunteers are ineligible to be on the show Survivor. Apparently the shows claims that we’ve “been there, done that.”

Right now I’m currently sitting in my new home for the next two years. Its in a small village, in southern Limpopo province, but first, let me back up and explain how I got here.

About two weeks ago I visited my permanent site for 5 days to check it out before I moved there permanently.  Details about my new home to come. The closest volunteer is about a 30 minute kombi (public transport/”taxi”) ride away. His name is Nick. Figures that I move across the globe and the closest American grew up 3 hours from my hometown. We share the same “shopping town,” which is where we travel on Saturdays to get groceries because the only things you can buy in my village are rice, soda, and tomatoes (literally). Since we live close, Nick and I decided to travel back to our training location together at the end of our visits. That is when the fun began.

Nick and I met in town ready to start the simple journey back to finish up our PC training. Each of us has a bookbag and a totebag, plus Nick was carrying a pair of shoes and a huge pawpaw fruit (similar to papaya). Of course we, and all of our luggage end up squished in the very back of the kombi (taxi) with two other people and about 4 inches of leg room. What we didn’t know then was that on every transfer (we had
about 4 of them) on our 5 hour journey we would end up squeezing into the back, bags flying everywhere, not able to move a muscle, much less take off our jackets, which had begun to make us sweat profusely.
We finally arrived back at our training site, a little sweatier, and a little wiser about packing lightly when using public transport.

After our site visit we had two more weeks of training which included our final language test (I passed!). We also had a picnic for our training host families that included a spontaneous talent show. I accidentally ended up doing a spontaneous ballroom dancing presentation with another volunteer who dances. The South Africans loved it! On September 8, 2011, I was sworn in as an official Peace Corps volunteer and on Sept. 9 I moved to my tiny village on the side of a hill.

I live with an older man, (his name is either Elias or Silas, I still haven’t been able to figure that out), and his wife, Josephine. Their grandchildren, an 11 yr old boy named Nolo, and a 2 yr old girl named Frenchie.  I live in one room of a cement building off their back patio. It has electricity, but nothing else, including furniture as of now. I was doing everything off the floor, cooking, sleeping, storing things, etc, but I was recently able to aquire some desks from school and a few chairs.

Also, I have recently gotten a Blackberry cellphone plan that has “unlimited” internet access, so I should be able to e-mail more and post pictures more frequently.   I can’t watch youtube videos or download large files, but I can post pictures that I take on my phone and do most anything else. It may seem weird to be a Peace Corps volunteer with a Blackberry, but it was the cheapest and easiest way to get Internet access… welcome to the developing world.