Comrades and Singing

Last week I was awoken from a turbulent dream to find myself in need of a bathroom. I was staying with the Chauke family, so going to the bathroom meant getting dressed and taking a stroll through the darkness of the corn field to the pit toilet. Stumbling out through the corn stalks, I noticed the faint sound of singing as it emanated from some unknown yard the village.

As I walked backed to the house, the singing gradually became more distinct. Once back in bed, the singing flowed unimpeded through my window along with the moonlight. I could not sleep. After a few wasted minutes of trying, with great effort, to keep my eyes shut, they popped open and I quickly re-dressed. I had resolved to find where and who and why there was singing happening at this hour.

Once outside, I looked at the sky and tried to gauge the time. The sky seemed to glow promisingly, so I assumed that it must be early morning, perhaps five. With quick steps I walked towards the music, avoiding donkey poop – which is large and dark and sometimes hard to see – and generally tried to warm myself up. 10 minutes later I was peering at a group of about 30 people standing in a circle, in close proximity to a healthy looking fire. They were singing and clapping their hands in a way that was absolutely memorizing to me. An individual singer, without accompaniment, might sound a little off-key or even unambiguously dissonant. But when the whole group was singing, the harmonies sounded perfect. Really, it’s almost good enough to entice a person out of his bed in the middle of the night.

Upon finding the source of the music, I was presented with a dilemma. In physics, they call it the observer effect: sometimes, the very act of observing something alters how it would have acted in the first place. In certain social settings, my presence brings about a response that is potentially distracting. Perhaps this is something private, and my presence will not be appreciated? If, as can be reasonably assumed, this is a gathering of religious significance, will I be desecrating something or the other by participating? 

I had come too far, however, to creepily observe the group from afar. Besides, I’ve lived in South Africa long enough at this point to feel comfortable participating in such events. After the requisite explanations, my presence is almost always tolerated, sometimes even celebrated. So, I strode out of the shadows and into the yard with the singing. Heads turned and I waved and gave a perfunctory “Avuxeni” to the group. Since they were all singing, there was no response. I sat down next to an old man and suddenly noticed that everyone present, myself excluded, was wearing a Zionic Christian Church pin on their shirt. Since they are ZCC members, there is a special way to greet them.

“Khotsong”, I said to the old man.

“Ayete”, he responded, looking at me with sudden interest.

“Le Kae?” I asked.

“Ra gona”, he replied, extending the “o” sound until it trailed off. He did not inquire as to how I was.

We were silent for a few moments until he asked me my name and where I’m from since I am clearly not from here. There was more silence between us after that.

Then he asked me “In kari muni?”

I took out my phone to see the time and was surprised to find that it was 2:30 in the morning. Do these guys do this every Sunday?

In between songs, the old man speaks some rapid Shangaan to the group. I don’t catch everything, but I do catch “white guy”, “America”, and “Obama”. To my relief, no one takes interest and the singing resumes. After a while longer, a guy in a Che Guevara T-shirt takes me by the hand into the circle. I find myself clapping along with the group, though not singing because I don’t know any of the words. Every couple of minutes, the guy in the Che Guevara shirt falls down to the ground, holds his position for a moment, and then rapidly ascends back to his feet. Despite the chilly morning, he is sweating.

Minutes fly by and the thrill of being in such close proximity to the music it making me glad I got out of bed, despite my initial misgivings. Fatigue inevitably sets in and I eventually bid the group goodbye and headed back home to catch a little sleep before sunrise.

~             ~             ~

I have been running quite a bit lately, though I am concerned that it hasn’t been enough. I completed the 56 kilometre Long Tom Marathon at the very end of March, my birthday in fact, in six and half hours. That time qualified me to run the Comrades Marathon, which is somewhat longer at 89 kilometres (roughly 55 miles) and much, much better attended with fifteen to twenty thousand participants. Having, literally, just crossed the Long Tom finish line, a few of the many Peace Corps volunteers who had cheered for me as I completed the race asked me if I now intended to run the Comrades.

I was in a weakened mental state when they asked me. The first 2 hours of Long Tom felt great; too good, in fact. I whizzed through the first part on track to complete the course in 5 hours flat. I was confused too, since there had been much talk about hills and how difficult they would be to traverse. Why aren’t I hurting yet? Am I that good? Reality set in during a conversation with a fellow runner, perhaps 20 kilometres in. He pointed to landforms in the hazy distance that looked suspiciously like mountains to me. He informed me that we would be crossing them before the end of the race.

“That’s going to be the hard bit”, he reflected casually before surging ahead. Sure enough, once the hills began, my pace slowed down rather significantly. Suddenly my goal of “not ever walking” fell by the wayside. The new goal was simple: finish. At whatever cost. The hardest part of the marathon was not the mountains, however. The final 5 kilometres of the race were a slog for me. At that point my body felt ravaged. There was chaffing in some obvious places and some less obvious places. There was an intense sunburn enveloping my legs and neck. I was famished. All of this and I was feeling pain in every muscle I could think of. During my physical decline, I managed to chat with a number of people. One woman, the woman I guess I can blame my decision to run Comrades on, told me that she thought Long Tom was harder than Comrades due the hills.

With those words still fresh in my mind, I hastily decided to run Comrades on the reasoning that it can’t be that much worse than what I had just done. My fellow volunteers forced the point by pledging emotional and even monetary support for my venture. The emotional support has been great and a few volunteers are even coming to Durban to celebrate with me or commiserate, depending on whether I finish. The monetary support was great too, since getting to and from Durban, arranging accommodation and the various race-fees add up.

The Comrades Marathon, www.comrades.com, is the most popular ultra-marathon in the world. It is also a sporting event of some significance in South Africa. They even show it on TV! The race is from Pietermaritzburg to Durban in Kwa-Zulu Natal province and it promises to test my physical limits. This will be my second ultra-marathon and the longest distance I have ever run over the course of a single day. It is on this Sunday (May 24th, 2009).

That is what my mind has been consumed with lately. After the Marathon (AM), I will have to collect myself and begin to asses my remaining PC service. After Comrades I will have scarcely 11 months left until my South African visa expires.

Pictures & Diversity

I related my experiences at an Ethiopian birthday party for the Peace Corps South Africa diversity blog, which is moderated by the Peace Corps South Africa Diversity committee.

Here is the link: http://meltingpotintherainbownation.blogspot.com/

If the entry seems a little too polished to be mine, you can thank Jade for her gracious editing.

I am also posting some photos I have accumulated over the last couple of months. These include shots from a visit to Mabula to see the Chaukes, Christmas with my boss and some other PCVs, and various random shots from around Tzaneen. The album is called “Signs etc.”

The website for the race I am running on Saturday of this week is here: http://www.longtominfo.co.za/.

A couple weeks ago, my boss taught me how to swim, which is a skill that has eluded me all my life. I can now doggy-paddle for short periods of time before sinking, which is fantastic.

Thanks for checking in. There will be more soon.

Oli

Taxis and Land Claims

I am on a taxi that will take me from Nkowankowa to Tzaneen, a roughly 30 minute journey. This taxi is the old model that seats 15 people. The South African government is trying to phase out these older,  taxis as part of their 2010 World Cup preparations. The driver had been going slowly until he filled the taxi to its limit. Now that we are full and on an open stretch of road, the taxi’s already over-taxed engine is being coaxed into ever greater speeds. Taxi drivers are notorious for driving fast, and it’s because they have to drive fast if they want to turn a profit. Even with that understanding in mind, every so often I find myself at the mercy of a driver bent on putting the fear of God into his passengers for no discernable, logical reason. It is exactly this situation that I find myself in now.

As the whine of the engine grows louder, and the blurred landscape accelerates, I make a furtive glance at the speedometer. It reads zero, as do all of the various meters and gauges located behind the steering wheel. On one level, this ought to put me at ease. If the speedometer reads zero, that means I am not plummeting down a hill while the driver dodges oncoming traffic and farm animals. The reason he is dodging oncoming traffic is because R36 is a two lane road which frequently becomes an unofficial four lane. The farm animals are from the villages that line the road.

As we crest a hill and begin our final descent into Tzaneen, I have decided to close my eyes. I am closing my eyes because I don’t want the driver to see the look of horror on my face at everything he does. While I have blocked out visual stimuli, there is nothing I can do to avoid the toe-curling G-forces that move me this way and that.

The taxi suddenly slows down; jolting all the passengers forward in their seats. My eyes snap open and I see the tail end of another taxi, mere inches away from our front bumper. He is passing all other vehicles, just like us, but at not quite as high a speed as our driver would like. The rest of the trip was spent hurtling up and down massive hills, horrifyingly close to the taxi ahead of us, which refused to let my driver pass. When we finally pulled up to the petrol station in Tzaneen where we are dropped off, the drivers glared at one another and exchanged a few terse words. Clearly, there is some back story to all this that I will never know.

Question: What do Kentucky Fried Chicken, Curves, The Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints all have in common? Answer: They are all institutions which have a presence both in Tzaneen, South Africa and Des Moines, Iowa, USA. The KFC is very popular here in Tzaneen; the only complaint that I’ve heard is that they don’t sell any pap. I have eaten at KFC infinitely more than I thought I would have before I came, which is to say I’ve eaten their twice.  When I was conducting a survey for the Dept. of Water Affairs, people in the Lenyenye township often thought I was with “that church” since that was the last context in which a white person visited their home. “That church” turned out to be direct Des Moines connection #4, the Mormons. I tried to get in to one of their newly built churches in Lenyenye, but found it to be all locked up. I found another Mormon church in Tzaneen proper, but it was also gated and locked. I’ll try back later in my never-ending search for other Americans.

I have finished the project I was working on for the Dept. of Water Affairs. In the end, about 15% of the households we surveyed had leaks. Since South Africa is considered an “arid” country, water is an increasingly hot commodity. As with most infrastructures in South Africa, it was built to keep only the white population living at first world standards. Once Apartheid ended, millions of new people flooded a system built to accommodate only a fraction of the total population. This is true of roads and electricity, both of which are under increasing strain as new users are added. This is also becoming true with water as well. As water use increases and running water is gradually spreading to areas that previously had none, South Africa is heading towards a water deficit in the near (roughly 10 years) future. Therefore, water leaks ought to be a high priority issue for the government to tackle, lest South Africa’s water table disappears down the drain. Or at least that’s the point I tried to make in my report to DWAF.

So with that project done, I am to be turning my attention towards two new water reticulation projects Tsogang is currently working on. I’m not exactly sure where I’ll fit in, but I’m sure to find out eventually. I’m also working on a large stack of training manuals that have fallen into disrepair. This is rather dry work to do, but I understand its necessity, so I am able to keep motivated.

I’ve spent the majority of my mornings training for the Long Tom Marathon, which is a 56 kilometre race which I will be running on the 28^th of March. Running provides me a golden opportunity to explore Tzaneen and, inadvertently, meet people. One morning I found myself utterly lost at a T-intersection surrounded on all sides by banana trees. I found a guy standing by the side of the road hitch-hiking and asked him which way I need to take to get back to Tzaneen. His response was “Are you running?” I said yes and told me he’d just run back to Tzaneen with me. He was dressed in dress shoes, a nice pair of jeans and thick woollen sweater. Despite his attire I quickly realized that he wanted to run much faster than I did.

After about 20 minutes I am dyeing. I look at him in wonderment. He is not sweating, or showing any visible signs of fatigue. “Gee,” I say between ever deeper breaths, “You sure do run fast.”

He beams at me and explains, simply, “I am a Makgoba.”

The Makgoba clan is a well known one in these parts, chiefly for families’ most famous member: King Makgoba. In the mid 1890s, white settlers began to push into the Tzaneen area in ever greater numbers. King Makgoba defended his land and people from the invaders in what became known as the Makgobaskloof Wars, but was eventually killed and beheaded by Swazi mercenaries at the behest of the Boer commander General Joubert. Makgoba’s subjects were forced to leave their land or stay on as paying “tenants”. So, it is this defiant, warrior spirit that propelled my running partner into town, dragging me behind him. It turns out he was late for class and decided to make a run for it instead of waiting for a ride.

If I hadn’t been so tired I would have asked him about the recent land claims made by the Makgoba clan. The Land Claims process is meant to address past injustices, like the Makgobaskloof War where the Mahgobas were thrown off of their ancestral land. While on the face of it, this seems like a good policy, there has been some grumbling. Part of the Makgoba land claims includes a tea farm which is a major employer in the area. I’ve spoken with a few different people who are concerned that once the land passes from its current owner to the Makgobas, and all of the farm equipment is sold, the jobs will disappear. The right path forward is unclear to me.

Random Community Events

I am often mistaken for a missionary. This was the case yet again as Oros and I made our way, house by house, through the Lenyenye Township outside of Tzaneen. While Tzaneen is predominately home to Shangaan speaking people, Lenyenye is mostly Sepedi. This is a legacy of the Apartheid policy of keeping ethnic tensions high amongst black groups so as to channel anger and resentment away from white rule. Thanks to a certain church that has set up shop in the area, my presence made many homeowners rather suspicious. Apparently this church has been sending out white missionaries door to door for months now. After greetings, many homeowners asked Oros, in Sepedi, why our church was bothering them again.

 

After explaining ourselves, we are finally able to get to the meat of our survey, which is very short. We ask how many taps the household has and then we see if any of them leak. And that’s it. People are often disappointed. After perhaps 5 or 10 minutes of introductions and explanations, the survey itself takes maybe 30 seconds.

 

We’ve found some interesting things along the way. One woman had her tap running constantly, at full blast, for months. She couldn’t turn it off because of damage to a thin rubber washer in the faucet that had broken. I wondered why she didn’t bother to try to fix it, at least for the sake of saving money if not water conservation. The problem is that she already owes 10,000 Rand to the municipality for her water bill. 10, 000 rand is an insurmountable bill, one that she will never, ever, pay off. She pays 50 rand a month when she can; often skipping a month if the money is thin. She hasn’t got any incentive to save water because there is no relationship between the amount of water she uses and the amount of money she has to pay at the end of the month. This is something we saw over and over again. The poorest families often owe massive amounts of money to the municipality for their water.

 

As we conducted our survey through Lenyenye I noticed a long train of elderly women, referred to as kokos(with the ‘k’ sounding like a ‘g’), in bright yellow vests running through the streets. I was told that this was a charity event for children. After the koko run was over, we heard loud horns and drums coming from a few blocks away. We followed the sound until it lead us to a large community centre. Inside we found a stage and an audience, with kokos dancing and the music alternating between live horn music and incredibly loud, thumping techno music. Oros and I sat down near the back, hoping to observe the event in an unobtrusive way. Immediately we were approached by one of the officials for the event. After asking us who we were, she insisted that we sit on stage at the VIP table. We tried to get out of it, but quickly realized that to refuse would be impolite.

 

South African community events have a few necessary components. There must be food. If you want anyone to come, you must cook up some porridge, beef stew, cabbage and other traditional food. There must also be very loud music. The music is almost always techno or house music—the sort of music my mom couldn’t stomach for two minutes is joyously accepted by 80 year old kokos in South Africa. There must also be a VIP table. This is a table which faces the audience and is reserved for ward counsellors, chiefs, representatives from government ministries and other notables. Since Oros and I had literally wandered in off the street, we wanted nothing to do with the VIP table. We didn’t even know what exactly the event was for.

 

As I nervously approach the stage, the music suddenly turned off and all eyes were on Oros and me. We took our seats at the table and wrote our name, place of birth, and company on sheet of paper so that the MC can introduce us to the audience. I looked at the program and noted that the event was running about two hours late, which is actually pretty good for this sort of thing. Once Oros and I arrived, however, the show began.

 

The MC asked me my name and, as expected, couldn’t figure out how to pronounce it, “Al… Alfred?” he asked. The trouble people have here understanding my name confused me when I first got to South Africa. There are a couple notable Africans who are named Oliver that almost everyone knows. There is Oliver Mtukudzi, a well known Zimbabwean musician and there is Oliver Tambo, a former president of the ANC during the struggle against Apartheid. The problem lies in my pronunciation. I pronounce Oliver as “Ah-lih-ver” while the African pronunciation is more like “Oh-lee-vah”. They may as well be different names.

 

When the MC realized I am an American, his face lit up. Once the MC introduced me as such, the crowd was appreciative as well, actually giving me a standing ovation. After that, my duties as a VIP were essentially complete. For the next three hours I watched various groups of children dance, hula-hoop, and sing their way through the program. It was delightful. Even though I should be used to it by now, I was still surprised to see that almost every kid in the room had impressive dancing ability. Prior to each dancing competition, all the children in the room surged towards the MC to volunteer to compete. As the program continued I found myself glancing more and more at the women preparing the food that I was increasingly hungry for. At the end, the VIPs were showed to a back room with a private buffet and a table while everyone else stood in a long line to get their food.

 

Moments such as this present a problem for me. My instincts are egalitarian, and I feel funny coming from a place as wealthy as America so that the Lenyenye Community Center can pay to feed me better than I feed myself or the majority of their community. These sorts of dilemmas are strictly academic however. While I may feel funny walking out of the community hall with a full stomach as hundreds of children wait in line for food, to not accept the generosity offered to me would be self-serving and impolite. I can’t count the number of times people have flown out of their chairs so that I can have a place to sit, and I can’t count the number of mangos, papayas and bananas my friend Patrick has brought me over the course of my stay here. People are so generous here that I have trouble keeping up.

 

I’m visiting my host family, the Chaukes, this weekend. It is Dodo’s and Mamaza’s birthday (they are twins) and I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Beyond that I am now training for a 50 kilometer race in March. This is a daunting prospect, especially while training under the harsh African sun. 

I have added new photos, by the way.

I Think About This a Lot

This is a link to an article from the BBC that outlines some of the problems that foreign aid can cause or exacerbate: 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7740652.stm

Aid well spent is aid that makes itself unnecessary. Peace Corps South Africa has talked to its PCVs about sustainability repeatedly. Speaking of Peace Corps, here is another article that I read recently that gave me food for thought:  

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4295&page=2

I think that some of the criticisms in this article are overly strident for the sake of being provocative; not to mention the annoying straw man argument technique employed throughout. Still, there is much in this article that Peace Corps ought to address back in Washington D.C.

Development is a riddle with few easy answers and a myriad of trade-offs to consider. America has its own development problems: from crumbling infastructure (collapsing bridges, energy woes) to a classist, under-funded educational system. If we can't develop our own country properly, how are we supposed to design programs that will develop other countries?

Chess, Surveys & More Pap

Recently, a 30-foot section of wall behind my apartment complex collapsed. The sky had been growing progressively darker, and the wind was picking up, so I initially mistook the loud booming sound for thunder. Upon opening my door, I was confronted with billowing dust and a large semi-circle of debris emanating from a massive gap in the wall. Through the gap, I noticed a half dozen bewildered men who had previously been leaning stacks of heavy ceiling tiles against the other side of the wall. This had clearly been a mistake.

As my fellow apartment dwellers gathered to observe the spectacle, I wondered if this hull breach would compromise my safety. The complex is completely surrounded by a wall, and has only two entry points, one of which is a locked gate only for pedestrians and the other has a guard at night. The wall is topped with electric fencing all around. People are very serious about security here in South Africa. Interestingly, the owner of the lot behind my apartment perceived a greater threat from us than we did from him. For the next week, a guard sat by the whole-in-the-wall all night to protect the property from my neighbours and me.

The rainy season is finally in full swing. This means that every couple of days we have a torrential downpour on a scale rarely seen in my original Iowa stomping grounds. The rain is making Tzaneen greener and has brought out massive insects that never fail to entice me down on my haunches for a closer look. This behaviour alternately amuses or embarrasses whoever is walking around with me.

I have recently visited with a fellow Iowan named Bridget. Not only is she an Iowan, but she grew up in the same town and went to the same high school as me. I didn’t know her back in the States, but we were introduced through a mutual friend. She’s been living in South Africa a little longer than I have and works for an organization that trains women in journalism. I took her to meet Patrick, my entomologist friend who works at the Malaria Institute, and she took some photos which I have placed in an album called “Patrick at the Malaria Institute”. I visited her and her fellow volunteers as well. They are living in a currently defunct game park. The park is defunct in that it doesn’t currently admit visitors for a fee, but it is not lacking in animal life; giraffes, warthogs, springboks and a host of other animals roam the grounds. I could live here for 50 years and never get used to giraffes blocking the road, or baboons doing anything at all.

Speaking of animal life, there is a large elephant in the room and his name is Obama. The mood in Tzaneen after the US presidential election was generally positive. The Daily Sun, the most popular newspaper in South Africa, ran a cover story asking “Where is our Obama?” On the morning of November 5^th I was awoken by a call from one of my co-workers at Tsogang congratulating me on Obama’s victory. Since the election, when I say I am from America, whoever I am speaking with often grins and says “Obama”. When I found out the next morning, I wasn’t jubilant. Honestly, I was mostly just relieved. Phew.

Because I am petty, I made a point of visiting a butchery where I had previously engaged in a brief discussion with a clerk on the merits of an Obama presidency. He contended that Obama would let “the Muslims take over” the United States. My mind briefly considered the Muslim take-over of Spain in 711 and the glorious age of tolerance and learning that followed. However, instead of bringing Mediaeval Spain into it, I just smiled and agreed to disagree. I didn’t mention the election on my second visit, but the grin on my face said enough. I bought a Kudu steak. Isn’t that cool? Try buying Kudu in Iowa.

Last week I was treating myself to a nice meal at a restaurant. The restaurant was crowded so I ended up sharing a table with a family of 5. My food came first, and everyone at my table looked perplexed. “What is that?” one of them asked. I had ordered the vegetarian stir-fry, which is about as un-South African as food can get. Their food came next and it was pap, chicken & chakalaka. After they had dug in, I asked how it was.

“Very good. Do you like pap?” the woman next to me asked.

“Sure,” I say with a shrug and a smile, “Ni rhandza vuswa”, which means “I love pap” in Xitsonga. This is not technically true. I will eat it, occasionally I even have a craving for it, but love is certainly too strong. However, one must be careful what one says about pap in South Africa. People may take it personally. Besides, my limited Xitsonga doesn’t allow for much nuance.  

The woman’s face lit up at this. To my surprise, she immediately took her knife and cut off a whopping portion of pap and deposited it on my plate. She then began tearing off a piece of her chicken for me as well, but I insisted that pap was more than enough. I thanked her profusely and was sure to make lots of “mmm” sounds as I ate with my fingers. Surprised as I was at this sudden generosity, it certainly fits the pattern. I have been lavished with kindness and generosity since I first came to South Africa.  

There are a couple projects that I am currently working on. One is a survey commissioned by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF). The survey’s purpose is to identify leaks in the municipal water system and to collect general information on water use habits. While the survey’s purpose may sound a little mundane, I’m thrilled because it means I will be going door to door chatting with people. I will be accompanied by a Sepedi man name Oros who will act as a translator and social lubricator. Excited as I am, I am also bracing myself for the inescapable discussion about America with every single householder. While this won’t make it into my final report to DWAF, I will make note every time someone mentions Obama to me over the course of the survey.

The other project is my chess club. I had been kicking around the idea for a while and asking myself where I would get money, how I would recruit players, and finally who I would get to help me do it. The last question was answered first. A friend of mine from the complex, named Sammy, offered to help me coach over a chess game one evening. He knows a few other 20-something men living in the complex who also know how to play chess and can help too.

As for members, I have nearly 20 children at the apartment complex alone who desperately want in. I have taken to sneaking through the complex after work just to avoid the repeated pleas for more chess. I only have one board, so when I do play chess with the kids they always bicker over who will be first. So, with everything in place, all my chess club needed was more boards. The final piece of the puzzle came from the caretaker of the complex. He had previously mentioned to me how he wished there were some way to keep the kids occupied and out of mischief after school. They are, uh, a rambunctious bunch of youngsters—always breaking bottles, scaling the building, defecating in the parking and generally causing havoc. I explained that on Wednesdays & Fridays he can now rest assure that the only violence committed by the children will take place on the chess board.  

So, I am keeping reasonably busy. At the end of the month I will be attending more Peace Corps training. After this training, my NGO will be shutting down for a month over Christmas/ New Years. I intend to hike extensively. This will be my first December without snow. Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” has been floating through my head lately both out of a yearning for snow and in response to the Christmas decorations that began appearing in the Tzaneen malls over a month ago. The survey begins next week, and I will keep you posted.

Thanks for reading.

My New Flat, Visiting the Fam

My new flat is great. The apartment complex reflects the diversity of Tzaneen. While a majority of tenants are Shangaans or Sepedis, there are significant numbers of Afrikaners, Indians, Somalis and Pakistanis as well. The parking lot is always swarming with children engaged in various forms of play. It is extremely gratifying to see that children from all of the various ethnic groups play together with no regard for skin colour, religion or nationality.

Speaking of nationalities, I suppose I should add one more to the list: American. There are two Americans living in my apartment complex, and one of them isn’t me. One day as I was going out to do some grocery shopping I bumped into a couple of Somali guys, both of whom, I later found out, are named Mohammed. We got to chatting and one of the Mohammeds detected my American accent. After I confirmed my nationality, he got excited, “You have to meet my son! He’s an American too!” As it turns out, the family had been living in Arizona up until a couple of months ago and their son was born there. After eyeing me suspiciously for a few moments, the young man walked over to where his father and I were standing. My fellow American is just over one year old and apparently a bit of a handful. As we walked, Mohammed had to chase after his son three times. On one occasion he ran up to a group of older children, took their ball, and made a dash for it.  

So, abandoning my shopping plans, I found myself walking back through the complex to meet the family. I had seen them walking around the complex before, but had never suspected the connection. It was weird realizing that they had been in America more recently than I. They are still getting used to South Africa. “What do you think of South Africa?” the mom ventured. I said that I was having a fine time indeed, and yourself? “I miss Arizona” she responded immediately. She said this with such pathos that I wanted to leap off of the floor and hug her right there. I confided that I, too, miss America on occasion.

Obama came up in conversation. They love Obama. I promised to bring over my absentee ballot for a look-see when it arrives. We also talked about their mosque. I posted a picture of the Tzaneen mosque in a previous photo album because I think it is the most impressive and attractive building in town. I have been continually surprised that so few people in Tzaneen seem to know about it. My new Somali friends are very proud of it since it was built entirely with money donated by the Muslim community here in Tzaneen. I met another Somali man who had lived in Los Angeles for 20 years before coming here to Tzaneen a few months ago. Two decades as a cognizant adult living in America trumps whatever I’ve got; this guy is simultaneously more American than I am and more Somali than I could ever hope to be. Another Somali gentleman that I met was also a recent arrival in South Africa, but had come directly from Somalia. In four months he has learned practical English, Sepedi, and Shangaan. During my 8 months in country, I have made scant inroads on a single language. Eventually we got to watching Bollywood movies after it was explained that Somalis have a special affinity for Indian culture.

The aforementioned hordes of children running around the apartment complex have shown themselves to be apt chess pupils. I brought my board outside one day at one kid’s request and was immediately surrounded by a dozen or so children. What was to be a low-key chess lesson turned into a chess marathon that was cut short only by the failing daylight. Since then, I have brought the board out a few more times, always with the same overwhelming response. All of this got me seriously thinking about creating some sort of chess club. The exact shape of this club is not yet known to me, but it feels inevitable that it will happen.

After moving and settling in to my new place, I realized that I hadn’t seen my host family, the Chaukes, for a long time. During a bout of Peace Corps training a few months ago, we were given three hours to say hello to our families again. This amount of time was appreciated, but hopelessly inadequate. My host mom Lina told me that I needed to come back for a week long visit. In those three hours, however, all of the love they had shown me during my stay with them was re-affirmed. I vowed to return for a longer stay at a later date.

So, a couple of weeks ago I hopped on a Kombi that took me from Tzaneen to Polokwane, followed by another kombi that took me to Mokapane, and then my final kombi ride which took me to Mabula village. Even though I spent only two months living with the Chaukes, compared to my nearly six months in Tzaneen, going back felt just like driving home from college. I was going back to my roots, spending time with the people who taught me how to behave properly. As you drive from Tzaneen to Polokwane the landscape changes from lush mountains covered with banana plantations and immense pine forests in neat grid patterns to a dry, orange coloured scrubland with the occasional mountain jutting up from the otherwise flat earth. I somehow found myself in the very back of each kombi, which meant I was sharing a bench seat with 3 other fully grown individuals -- a tight squeeze.

My weekend with the Chaukes was great. I heard all about the Matriculation process that my brother Dodo was is going through. Matriculation happens during the final year of high school and involves a slew of government administered tests over various subjects. These tests scores determine whether you graduate high school as well as your eligibility for university. This is obviously a stressful time. Dodo even had to miss a soccer game that Mabula’s team played against a neighbouring village so he could study for his Physics exam. Since I no longer have to worry about physics (if only I’d studied half as much as I’d worried…) I went to the game.

My younger brother Comutcho, a family friend named Buti, and I hitched a ride to the game with the team. The team and various hangers-on were all jammed into the back of a pick-up truck, which they call a “backie” in these parts. Once the truck got moving, singing and horn-playing began in earnest. This jubilance was cut short when the engine died. We rolled over to the side of the road and lifted the hood. Somehow, after a few minutes of tinkering, the engine was brought back to life and we were off. The singing resumed. This portion of our journey last another couple of minutes before the next breakdown. After breakdown number five, the team had to hop out of the backie and make a run for the field so as to avoid the fine for being late. They got there just in time. The game was played on a field surrounded on all sides by a tarp, to encourage the payment of a five rand entrance fee. The field itself was mostly dust and sand, with a smattering of grass. Consequently wherever the ball went, a small cloud of dust followed, often obscuring both ball and player. We scored in the first 10 minutes of play. The remaining 80 minutes kicked up additional dust, but resulted in no additional points. I will always find this particular aspect of soccer bizarre, but at least we won.

In Mabula itself, I made the rounds; visiting various family and quasi-family members. These meetings consisted of a short English portion and a much longer Shangaan portion where I mostly listened. I have long since made peace with the fact that I have no idea what people are saying most of the time. I have learned to listen to the tone of voice, watch facial expression, and generally enjoy the way people talk at least as much as I enjoy listening to what people are actually staying.

Rachel’s 24^th birthday is coming up next week, and I have offered to cook her some traditional American food: tacos. She had never heard of such a food before, which I found astonishing despite the good sense that it makes. In fact, “American” has been the theme of all the meals I’ve cooked for her thus far: pizza, spaghetti & meatballs, hamburgers… Tacos are the most exotic to date, so I am considering making some pap just in case she doesn’t like Mexican food. She cooks for me too, the most recent meal being classic South African food: pap, atchar, chakalaka, chicken. This is eaten with the fingers, of course. While I am spilling food all over myself, trying to eat the least finger-friendly finger-food I’ve ever encountered, she deftly roles the pap into a ball and adds to it a pinch of veggies or chicken. I think eating with your fingers is harder than eating with chopsticks.

Thanks for reading.