Here is Amazing

Adam writes:

I just wanted to right a bit of an update for all of you who are reading. We have been at site now for almost a month and I know that I have been conspicuously silent on the blog. To be honest, it was mostly because I wasn’t in the best place, I felt, to be writing to all of you. We have been living in a single room in a house with a family of five since we have arrived. We were told by Peace Corps that they would move out by the first week of April. And since we are still living with them that obviously didn’t happen.

For me, this has been hard. We have very little personal space and are unable to fully settle in and become comfortable. There is a lot I could say about how the living situation has been hard on me, but I think I can sum it up by saying, it has prevented us from making this place our home. I still feel like we are visitors here and that is probably a feeling that will continue as we learn the language and begin to make friends here. But to at least be able to have a home to make our own would go a long way to making me feel more comfortable in our new surroundings.

On a lighter note, I am writing this mostly because I have been feeling a lot better about things as of late. The family is still at least another couple of weeks from moving out, but Jess and I have finally got into a rhythm and have settled into a schedule, and that helps. Also, the weather has finally shifted into deep autumn and soon winter, so we have had overcast with cooler temperatures lately and it seems to have settled into sunny days that still push towards 90, but then cool quickly in the afternoons and evenings. The weather is actually quite enjoyable at the moment. (Maybe we are acclimatizing again.)

So what is it that we have been doing since we arrived at site? So far we have been at Swa Vana most days. We have spent days at all three centers spending time with the kids. They have been on spring break for the last two weeks. They are starting to get used to seeing our faces around. I have also helped pick up the meat order for the kids lunches with Happy, our supervisor. And this week we have spent the mornings doing home visits to the children’s houses. This entailed walking through almost all of our village. It turns out that once you get a little bit away from our house, our village is actually quite pretty.

Starting next week Jess and I will start collecting the data and information we need to write our Community Needs Assessment. This is a report assigned to us by Peace Corps that will help us better understand our community and what they see as their primary needs for development. It will require a lot of work and it promises to keep the two of us fairly busy.

We have also tentatively started to learn some Tsonga, though a more dedicated effort will start next week. It seems to share a lot in come with SiSwati which should be helpful to us. Also, we are trying to identify a tutor for both languages.
So far though, things have moved fairly slowly here with a lot of down time. This coupled with the fact that we are already looking to secure dates and then tickets to come home towards the end of August or early September for Kimmie and Brian’s wedding, and I have had a lot of time to sit around thinking about home and how much I miss my friends and family. These few weeks have been very hard. Thank you to all of you who have been maintaining some amount of contact through Facebook, it has been extremely helpful. And the weekly phone conversations with family have been invaluable.

When you have to go outside and use a pit latrine to go to the bathroom (and yes, they smell exactly how you’d imagine they would), when water has to be carried in jugs and boiled and filtered to be drinkable, when cooking is a difficult task because the kitchen is always full of people and it is setup for necessity and not ease of use, and when you understand very little of what’s going on around you because you were taught the wrong language, it is very hard to understand what it is you are doing here.

When you think about being surrounded by family and friends, being able to go out for the evening, riding your motorcycle, eating your favorite foods, having the luxury of running water and a flush toilet one room over that you can use at night (South Africans lock up their homes around 8 o’clock and no one leaves till morning), and having a washer and dryer, it is hard to understand why you are staying here.

But very recently, I have been reminded that we are here because we are living our dreams. We are on a great adventure and along the way we will do some good here. As I look out my window now I am reminded that we are living a world away in a wonderful and beautiful place. We are in Africa. And even though that is mud shacks with tin roofs, and pit latrines, and kids with little to eat and no clean water, it is still gorgeous and filled with people that are filled with a sense of community and are happy to share their lives and culture with you. It really is pretty amazing here.

And soon the family will move out and we will settle in. We will set up our kitchen and plant a garden. We will continue to learn the language and begin to understand people. We will begin to really work with our organization and begin programs that might make a real difference. And by the time we come home for the wedding I will have forgotten my anger and frustration about living in a room with a family. We will be bursting with excitement to see you all and share with you what we are accomplishing here. We will be dying to catch up with all of you and do those things listed above that we are so desperately missing here. And we will be sad when we realize that our visit was only too short and over too soon. But we will be excited about getting back to our home here and continuing our work. We will be excited to see the kids at the organization and our friends here in our village.

It has been this realization that recently has helped me rediscover why it is that I am here. Things are not perfect here and I am not always happy and smiling from ear to ear. But I do want to be here, and here is amazing.

Please continue to stay in contact as hearing from you always brightens our day. I love and miss you all!