Today I sat down to write you guys a letter and realized that I
literally haven’t sent out any updates since the beginning of March!
What?!?! I do apologize. Time flies when you’re living the dream.
Monday was the beginning of the 3rd quarter in the South African
school system. Here we begin the school year in the middle of January,
which is kind of nice because the school year coincides with the
calendar year. Its also winter here in the Southern Hemisphere. It
doesn’t get down to freezing where I live, but we have to bundle up
because no one in this country has central heating.
I just passed the year mark of living in South Africa. Wow. Hard to
believe I’ve been here that long and at the same time, hard to think
about having more than that left to go.
Guess the reason I haven’t written in a while is that I’m getting so
used to everything that most of my daily life seems normal, and
nothing to write home about. However, despite how long I’ve been here,
I’m STILL figuring out how this community works. Last weekend I went
to my first burial society meeting. Believe it or not, there are at
least 5 different burial societies in my village of 1,000 people. A
burial society meeting is a monthly meeting where the women get
together and plan for funerals. Here all the community women and men
gather together to help the family with the funeral. They cook a huge
meal which is served to the guests after they walk back from the grave
site. In this village, hardly a weekend goes by when there isn’t a
funeral, usually for someone who was “sick for a long time” (which
most likely means that they had AIDS).
One thing I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to is being stared at ALL
the time. Everywhere I go, people are staring. If its not because I’m
the only white person in that part of town, then it’s because I’m
walking through the city with my huge backpack. Sometimes I get really
frustrated by all the stares, but I’ve recently tried to combat it by
just smiling back! You’d be surprised how many smiles I get in return
and how good a smile is for promoting race relations in this broken
country.
Quick story to end this update. Last month I had some friends visit
from America. We were travelling around the country when we decided to
take a local metro train in Cape Town. Being a poor Peace Corps
Volunteer and being used to taking public transportation, I decided we
should purchase 3rd class tickets . We got on the train in what looked
like the 3rd class car - there was graffiti all over, the windows were
clouded over. Unfortunately, we thought wrong. When the guy came
around to check the tickets, he told us we were in the 1st class car,
kicked us off, and made us pay a fine that was 6 times the amount we
paid for the ticket; plus we had to wait for the next train and STILL
ride in the 3rd class car. Of course we tried to explain that we were
confused tourists, but he was having none of that. It all worked out
because on the next train we met some cool kids that were playing my
favorite South African house music jams on their phones. Just the sort
of thing that continually happens to me in this country – a
frustrating experience that stems from things not being made clear,
turns into something good.
Its Nelson Mandela’s birthday today! The first black president of
South Africa and an amazing example of how to encourage cooperation in
the midst of hatred. Here the tradition is to volunteer for 67 minutes
today in honor of him. Don’t worry – I think I’ve got that covered for
today:)
