The Continent

Jess writes:

Remember that West Wing episode where C.J. Craig sits in on a meeting of a cartography lobby group that is trying to convince the U.S. government that our current maps of the globe are wholly inaccurate and, with some truly mind-boggling proof, they manage to completely readjust C.J.’s worldview, resulting in her random outbursts (i.e. “Where the hell is France?!?”) for the remainder of the episode?? Come on, that was one of my favorites!! Well, anyways, off the preamble…

This last week, oddly enough, I was involved in more than one conversation that revolved around the incorrectness of maps and the ginormous size of Africa (yes, many volunteers are dorks, like myself, and yes, we do have these types of conversations sometimes!). Then, as luck would have it, I was sent a link (by someone who is aware of my dorky-ness) that just so happened to introduce me to Mr. Kai Krause and his noble cause, “The Fight Against Rampant Immapancy”! The link itself was a redrawing of Africa with other recognizable countries drawn to scale within its interior, in order to show exactly how ginormous Africa really is! How convenient!!! So, as my excitement would have it, I’ve included this image here:

(Since the jpeg is equally enormous, I’d suggest checking out the actual article - click here - to see the original picture!!)

So, as you can see, my recent obsession with ‘The Continent’ and the incorrectness of our world maps is not wholly irrelevant! Africa really is unbelievably huge and our current maps really are unbelievably misrepresentative!!

Anyways, I always find these little tidbits interesting, so I figured I would pass it along. And isn’t it cool to think that if Adam and I ever do manage to do a Cape-Town-to-Cairo trip after our service, we’ll actually be travelling the whole of Japan, India, and Eastern Europe, as well as most of China and some of the E.U.?!? Now that’s a journey!!!

Water, Water (Sometimes) Everywhere

Jess writes:

Today is a water day – that is, the day when the outside water taps are turned on in Schoemansdal – and, due to my new obsession with everything water (think previous site, without water…gr.) I’ve decided to dedicate an entire blog post to the activities that revolve around our water usage. Boring, you say? Well, you might be surprised… or at least thankful for the water that we all have across the pond!!

As it turns out (but nevertheless unsurprisingly) we take for granted the many ways in which we use running water in the U.S. – the pure ease of turning a handle and having hot or cold water at your fingertips – who would have thought it a luxury?!? Well, of course, a bout of service in Africa (or most other places in the developing world) will quickly change your opinion! And now, I can honestly say, I will never take that glorious, running liquid for granted again (much the same with flush toilets, washing machines, and real cold soda!! Ah!)

Water days in Schoemansdal are once every three days (thank god!!) – meaning that, the water taps in the yard (we have one primary and one secondary tap in our yard), come on as such: Monday on, Tuesday & Wednesday off, Thursday on, Friday & Saturday off, Sunday on… etc. And while we are not the luckiest of South African PCVs (some have water on everyday!) we are certainly better off than many (again, think ourselves, at the previous site)!! But since water is such a daily necessity, every PCV develops his or her own system for ensuring that some water is available on the majority of days when the town water is shut off. Thus, on those eventful water days, we take at least a half-day off from work because our focus shifts to hoarding and our schedules are booked with running from the house, to the tap, and back again, with many sorts of water collection containers and water-heavy activities. Take a look:

First, when the water comes on around 8:00am, we get right to the most important item on the water collection list: filling up the reserve containers & restocking our drinking water. As for the reserve containers, we have two, very large buckets (about 5 gallon) that are stored in our kitchen and kept as close to overflowing as possible – this will serve as all the useful water for the following two days. As for drinking water, we have 3 large-handled water jugs (5 litres exactly), 2 metal canteens, and no less than 4 portable water bottles that we fill with ‘clean’ water. To get the water ‘clean’, of course, we have to at least filter the water (we will sometimes still boil the water before filtering, depending on the quality of the water, but usually our taps run often enough to skip this part). Filtering, cup by cup, to fill the 3 large jugs, 2 canteens, and 4 water bottles can take over an hour, with other chores interspersed.

Next, around 9:00am, we move to the chores that require a lot of running water (and time) – namely, laundry and cleaning. For laundry, we fill our “bath bucket” (one of two black buckets, a little less than 5 gallons) halfway with water and some powdered soap and we fill our “bath basin” (a huge, elongated, plastic tub) halfway with water and fabric softener (the whole “bath” part will make sense in a bit… by the way). We then proceed to launder: plunging the clothes in the “bath bucket” with a laundry plunger, or just our hands, and rinsing the clothes in the “bath basin”. A typical load of laundry requires 4-5 changes of soap-water in the “bath bucket” and at least one change of softener-water in the “bath basin”, hence the need to do laundry on water days. Laundry will take anywhere from 1 to 3 hours, depending on the size and will require the rest of the day to dry, hence the need to do it earlier in the morning.

Cleaning, as mentioned above, also requires a lot of water, primarily because everything can get so dirty in the process – i.e., dust rags, the broom, ourselves, etc. And if mopping (which we rarely do, because we both hate it!) we obviously need a lot of water for the mop bucket, which is its own, separate bucket stored in the kitchen with the cleaning supplies. If nothing else, we at least pour a bucket of Jayes fluid down the pit latrine for sanitation sake. Jayes fluid is basically a super disinfectant that you mix with water to keep the pit latrine from getting too smelly or, worse yet, actually unhealthy. But since Jayes fluid is such a harsh chemical, we can’t use any of our reserve, wash or bath buckets for the mixing, so we revert to the mop bucket in most cases.

After laundry and cleaning, we move to the less water-heavy but equally important water-needy chores:

First, there’s washing the dishes, which requires us to fill our hotpot (electric tea kettle) to the top for hot water and to fill our two dish basins part-way with soap-water and clean-water for washing and rinsing. Once the dishes are done for the day, we’ll usually refill the hotpot and two dish basins with water again in preparation for the next round of dishes that night or the following morning (so that we don’t use up our reserve water).

Then, there’s the water needed for cooking. Since we can’t fill every pot and pan in the house with water, in anticipation of needing it later, we will fill our “kitchen bucket” (the other of the two black buckets, a little less than 5 gallons) and store it under the kitchen table.

Next, there’s the elusive bathwater… remember that “bath bucket” and “bath basin”? We will fill the “bath bucket” nearly to the top, with enough room to add some hot water, and bring in the now-empty “bath basin” to stand in for our ‘shower’ (and of course by ‘shower’ I mean pouring water over our head with a plastic cup from the bucket while standing in our basin). And for the hot water, I’ll fill at least one large cooking pot to be heated right before starting. Together, Adam and I use just slightly more than the one black bucket for our two ‘showers’, so if we shower early enough in the day, we can even refill the “bath bucket” for the next day before the water is shut off (so we don’t have to use the reserve water from the blue buckets).

Finally, around mid-day, we will have all buckets filled, all drinking jugs topped off, all canteens and water bottles chilling in the fridge, all clothes & dishes clean (our own bodies soon to be clean too – ah!), and hopefully, enough water collected to last the 48-hours… because the taps dry-up around 4:00pm. Such a sad, sad sight: a tap dripping slower and slower until it… stops. Goodbye water. See you in a few days.

So there you have it! The whole water routine and my reason for being water-obsessive (its understandable now, right?)!! Okay, gotta run… it is water day after all!!

50 Years Later - A Call to Serve

Jess writes:

Aside from the entrance of “Kamikaze October Bugs” for PCVs in South Africa, this October holds some special meaning for Peace Corps worldwide. And before continuing with our typical posts, I would like to take a moment to mention this milestone in Peace Corps’ history…

Last week, hundreds of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, students, professors, and government officials joined at the University of Michigan to honor a call to service that occurred exactly 50 years ago: On the steps of the Michigan Union building, in Ann Arbor’s University of Michigan campus, at 2:00am and in the drizzling rain, then-Senator John F. Kennedy made a speech urging students to serve in developing countries:

“How many of you who are going to be doctors are willing to spend your days in Ghana? Technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world?... On your willingness to do that, not merely to serve one year or two years in service, but on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend the answer as to whether a free society can compete. I think it can. And I think that Americans are willing to contribute.” (October 14, 1960)

It was dubbed the great “Call to Serve”, and while 2011 will be the momentous “50 Year Anniversary” for Peace Corps (as it was founded in 1961), last week actually started it all.

Aaron Williams, our current director of the Peace Corps, made a statement at the ceremony, commenting on Kennedy’s vision of the Peace Corps, "The movement that began here in Ann Arbor went on to change the way America sees the world…” and, most importantly, he added, “…and the way the world sees this country.”

The ceremony itself drew people from every corner of the country, and gathered together people that have experienced Peace Corps in very different ways. One man, Bob Dascola, has a barbershop just a couple blocks away from the Union building, and was only 14 years old at the time. But he convinced his parents to wait up for Kennedy to arrive, heard his speech, and the next day rode his bicycle alongside Kennedy’s motorcade as it left the campus. Bob was never in the Peace Corps, but he says he remembers that experience like it was yesterday.

Gene Schreiber, age 72, was one of the first volunteers in Tanzania in 1961 and is astonished to see that the Peace Corps has continued for half a century. He says candidly, “It was a pioneer type of spirit then… You go and do something new, you don’t really expect it to last.”

Perhaps my favorite mini-story of the occasion was that of Tom Hayden, age 70, who was editor for the Michigan Daily when JFK made his speech and when the Peace Corps formally began months later in 1961. He told reporters at the ceremony last week, “I wouldn’t have missed this. You simply don’t get many opportunities to relive important moments like this in your own life.”

Over the last 50 years, Peace Corps has had more than 200,000 volunteers respond to Kennedy’s “Call to Serve” in 139 countries around the world. So, to the Peace Corps, from a currently serving Peace Corps Volunteer, I say this: “For all your good and your bad, your tough and your insufferable, your hot and your buggy, your patient progression and small steps forward… for your vision of change, one volunteer at a time… Happy early anniversary.”

(Excerpts of this post taken from Detroit Free Press, Ann Arbor Chronicle, NPR, and Google Images)

RWO: Kamikaze October Bugs

Jess writes:

Recently, we have discovered that the early summer brings out some crazy things in South Africa. Some of these are typical – the heat, the rainstorms, the snakes – and some of these are not so typical – power outages, more water (what?), and some crazy bugs. In particular, we have dubbed one bug in our South African English, “The Kamikaze October Bug”, which loosely translates in American English to, “The Dumb June Bug”. Simply put, this mini creature begins appearing at the start of summer (our summer starts in October, opposite of June) like a June bug, is about the size of a June bug, with a hard-ish shell like the June bug, and comes out in the evenings due to its attraction to light and warm ground like a June bug. The primary difference with our “October Bug” is that it is downright idiotic… hence “Dumb”. Specifically, in addition to being attracted to light, it seems to be attracted to anything that spins at a dangerous velocity in which it can get caught, whirled around, and then propelled at unnatural speeds to its crashing death… hence, “Kamikaze”. Without fail, each evening, these stupid little critters find their way into our bedroom, fly themselves into either our ceiling fan or our standing floor fan, and become nature’s very own pinballs against our concrete walls. Worst of all, since their pinpall pattern is so entirely erratic, there’s always a likely chance that their Kamikaze dive will end up hitting one of us, instead of a wall – and man can those little guys hurt at that speed! Nevertheless, they seem to lessen as the summer’s heat increases, so eventually we expect that they will no longer be dive-bombing us while we eat dinner and catch up on episodes of old TV shows. Until then, we just have to protect ourselves under mosquito netting from the World War Arcade Game that has become our bedroom in the evenings! Eish!

G.O.L.D. Camp

Jess writes:

As I look back at our recent blogs, I realize that I actually missed a pretty great two-weekend activity prior to leaving for our visit to the States: The 2010 Peer Education Camp. Since we were super caught up in pre-visit plans and spent our first couple return weeks just laying around missing AC and flush toilets, I never did get around to mentioning our time at the so-called “GOLD Camp”. So here goes…

Thembalethu hosts a program for 14-16 year old students who are nominated by their fellow learners to be “peer educators.” This program, sponsored by the South-African based G.O.L.D. (Generation Of Leaders Discovered) Program emphasizes the importance of leadership, smart decision making, and the importance of transferring knowledge from student to student. Each year, Thembalethu puts on a two-weekend camp for its newest Junior Peer Educators (JPEs – the new “nominees”) to learn about life orientation, lesson plans, and being role models. As the newest volunteer additions to Thembalethu, Adam and I (as well as Heleen, a short-term Dutch volunteer) were invited to join and facilitate the activities. In short, we had three primary roles:

1) “Guest Star Judges” – A name generously given by the Peer Education Coordinator (and Thembalethu’s Deputy CEO), Cleopas, to us. Basically, we were responsible for awarding points to the ‘teams’ of JPEs based on G.O.L.D. goals (i.e., leadership, teamwork, creativity, etc.) and, most importantly, for their presentations at the weekend-end Talent Show.

2) “Ask The Volunteers” – A mid-day lesson brake based on a make-shift question box designed to allow the JPEs to ask any questions they wished of the volunteers (within reason, of course) about ourselves, our countries, etc.

3) “The Obstacle Course” – To supervise the afternoon, team-challenge obstacle course and to award winners, as well as additional points based on the aforementioned G.O.L.D. goals.

Needless to say, this was a pretty easy job – with all the perks of getting to oversee the “fun” activities of the weekend camp!! But specifically, each of our functions had its own highlights:

For example, being the “Guest Star Judges” meant that all the teams were always in a constant competition against one another to win over our attention… So whenever a session started and we entered the room, each team would begin to sing, dance and try to outshine their counter-teams. This usually ended in a completely chaotic scene of roaring song, crazy dance, thunderous stomping, and stupendous table thumping, but it still made us laugh every time at the sheer amount of enthusiasm displayed!! (And of course we always awarded points!)

The “Ask The Volunteers” responsibility was always the most interesting, since many of the questions we were asked – while similar each weekend – each had their own unique, and quirky spins. For example, the most common question pertained to what it was like to live in the United States. However, it was always asked in some great manner resembling, “What is it meant to live in the US where you live where you are from?” And usually, this was followed with something similar to, “And please do you know Mr. Obama or Beyonce?” Ha! I loved these ones!! Another particularly popular topic was the cost of flying to the United States from South Africa, or vice versa, and the cost of other amenities such as cars, houses, school, etc. And in general, there was always a random smattering of completely off-topic and non-question related additions, such as, “I love you! You are so fun! I can go to the US with you now?” We usually got hugs from a lot of those same learners as well – so adorable!

And finally, our role as supervisors of “The Obstacle Course” was perhaps the best of all. Not only did we get to watch all the kids attempt a fairly challenging course – with obstacles ranging from the basic monkey bars and balance beams to cargo nets and cross-tie rope walks – but we also got to witness many of them at their best, and sometimes their worst, but always trying to work together. On so many occasions over those two weekends, while watching all eight of the JPE teams compete, there were times when we were so completely excited when a team would figure out a trick to help eachother out or finally, finally, after many tries, manage to get all of their team members over an obstacle. Of course we yelled and cheered for them while they went through the course, but I feel like more often than not, it was those little thoughts to myself – those, “Yes, there you go, come on, you’re almost there…!” – that were the greatest of all. And sure… it might sound mushy, but it was truly great to see those kids work together to get something done!

And to top it all off, each weekend ended with a presentation by each team that they had practiced for the previous two days. The teams were told to make it fun, creative, and inspiring and they really did a great job at putting together some awesome creations! Most involved some form of song, dance, and skit – each with their own style, but many with very entertaining dance moves and surprisingly funny jokes in broken English! But one group in particular, the “Better Lifestyle Team”, put forth the best presentation of all: beginning with a ‘stomp’ routine that turned into a dance routine, transitioning to short series of teamwork challenges (think circular “trust falls” – pretty impressive!), and ending with few songs that culminated in a soft background hum while a few of the members stepped forward to do spoken word about why the youth of this country are so important and about how South Africa has the potential to move away from its past and more forward to a better future. Yeah… I won’t try to hide the fact that the skit performed by that team was pretty incredible.

So all in all, the weekends we spent with the JPEs at the 2010 Peer Education Camp were truly great – a fun way to meet the Peer Education learners, spend more time with Thembalethu staff, and perhaps, for the first real, tangible time, to feel like something we were doing was actually making an immediate impact on someone’s life. I remember telling my parents that during the camps I had a couple of those “warm and fuzzy Peace Corps feelings” while hanging out with a lot of those kids – to see how happy they were to eat tons of really good food, to stay up late in their huge bunk beds, to play all afternoon on a super cool obstacle course, and to take pride in their new roles as leaders – to see them not only have a good time, but to step up to a new challenge… and to be a part of that. It was a great two weekends!

RWO: Poop In This

Jess writes:

It's been a while since we posted our last RWO, so I decided to opt for a real, basic observation (and because I'm still dreaming about those glorious, porcelin contraptions we experienced once again on our U.S. vacation... ahhh...)

So, as it turns out, pit latrines really are more dependable than flush toilets. They may be gross, smelly and home to stupendously large cockroaches (and yes, the kind that can fly – eek!), but they do always work. We have friends that are living with flush toilets – a true luxury for PCVs – and they are often dismayed to discover that after a long awaited trip to the loo, their luxurious flush toilet is currently not flushing. You see, when the water gets shut off in an area (and this happens frequently in many of our villages), toilets no longer have the capability to flush… I had never really thought about this in the states. So while we have to squat daily in our scary, concrete little hole, at least we can walk away knowing that our business is “out of sight, out of mind”.