Sunset in Ixopo

Sunset in Ixopo
Originally uploaded by riesergal.

Ixopo, where I spent my holiday last week, is a place in the Kwazulu Natal Province described by author Alan Paton in Cry the Beloved Country as "lovely beyond any singing of it." It is. Can you see the baby eland munching grass?

Last week I accompanied students and staff of one of the primary schools where I volunteer on a field trip to Mapungubwe, a national park where South Africa meets the borders of Zimbabwe and Botswana. The three countries are separated by two rivers, the Shashe and the Limpopo ("the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees," where the "Bi-Coloured Python Rock-Snake" dwells, wrote Rudyard Kipling in his Just So Stories). The confluence of these two rivers is in a beautiful hilly desert locale with Baobab trees and other native plants, birds and wildlife. But the park is more than a beautiful place to visit. It has a great deal of history. Artifacts discovered at the site indicate that 1,000 years ago it was the home of the first powerful indigenous kingdom in southern Africa, forerunners of the Zimbabwe culture. The people of Venda, where I live, are descendents of this culture and of Zimbabwe. "This is the place of our ancestors," said the principal (pictured above with students), who was born in Venda -- as were most of the teachers. But the powerful history of Mapungubwe was marred by the fact that it was also apparently the place where some members of the once banned African National Congress (ANC) were put to death by the former apartheid government, a teacher explained. He said he had mixed feelings about being in the place.
The kids, the first generation born after apartheid, just enjoyed being out of school, riding a bus and having fun in the park -- oh, and also listening to the same song by South African band Malaika over and over again, thanks to a bus driver who generously let the kids pick the music. For primary school students in South Africa (and most adults here too), you can't hear "Two Bob" enough!

How was I ever able to function in a world without Wiki? Having access to it and Google from my cellphone means I can be the smartest person in the room -- well, at least the most resourceful. What do Zoroastrians believe? Wait, let me check. What is the name of the woman in that movie we are watching? Hold on, I'll find out. The student just fell down unconscious, but his eyelids were moving so we know he is possessed by demons. Well, the Internet says it could be a medical condition called eplilepsy (this really happened).
If only I can invent a way to wire the Internet into my brain...

I was in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, on Easter Sunday, on my way back to Venda after a two-week holiday in the southernmost part of the country.

In the hostel where I was staying with my fellow PeaceCorps travelers that morning, I woke up with a song in my head:"Jesus Christ is Risen Today." My Dad used to sing it with such gusto at the beginning of every Easter mass, and for me it has always been the quintessential sound of the season -- more so than "Here Comes PeterCottontail." I can easily recall the feeling of joy of being a kid, sitting with my parents and sisters in the church pew -- all of us gals dressed in new Easter outfits with matching corsages (courtsey of my dad) pinned on our chests. There would be a brass fanfare, the organist would would launch into the first notes of "Jesus Christ is Risen Today," the congregation would stand and we would all sing. Such a triumphant moment. How great it was to be alive!

After breakfast today, while wandering around town in the springlike weather (even though it is the end of summer here), I came upon a brass band performance in the garden of a Lutheran Church. As I stood at the gate listening to the band, one of the church members informed me that the Easter Sunday service was about to start. When I asked if it was OK if I attended, she said: "well it will be all in German, do you know any?" My Dad's family was German, I replied, feeling goosebumps at this suprising turn of events. So she took me by the arm, led me to a pew and handed me a songbook, indicating the page for the opening hymn.

You can probably guess what the hymn was, although here it was titled "Jesus Christus ist Erstanden." Drawing on my early experience as a member of theKinderchor (the children's section of my father's beloved Maennerchor, a German chorus), I was able to decipher the words and sing the song with as much gusto as my Dad did, and in his Mother Tongue.

Easter's cross cultural experience was a lovely way to end my trip -- a trip characterized by more views of diversity (in land, culture and people) than I had previously seen in my last 8 months in South Africa. During a two-day train ride (second class) fromPretoria to Cape Town, my friends and I met middle class Indonesians, Afrikaaners, Zulus, Brits, Aussies and Southern Asians.

In crowded, but cosy train cars, we traveled together through the dry and starkly beautiful Karoo desert, ostrich farms and then the rolling green of South Africa's winelands. During meals in the dining car, we listened to campy polka music with lyrics in Afrikaans. We also enjoyed watching the three folks in the berth next to ours. There was an elderly couple who frequently held hands and gazed at each other as if they were newlyweds and their sister, who spent endless hours peering out the train window with a look of pure joy on her face, waving enthusiastically to any people the train passed by.

In Cape Town, which is a lot like San Francisco I am told, my friends and I started each morning with real coffee (not the powdered Nescafe popular in Venda) from a different coffee house each day (there are many), sampled a wide range of foods, including steak from a springbok (like a deer), ostrich meat salad, tapas and spicy dishes influenced by the Cape's Malaysian ancestors.

In a nod to my mother's grandparents (since I have already referred to my father's side in this post), I learned that parts of Robben Island, the site of Nelson Mandela's prison home for 20 years, is sometimes referred to as "Little Ireland." The name was apparently given because of the island's craggy beauty, the small stone houses erected when the island used to house lepers and mentally ill in the 1800s and in honor of the Irish nuns who cared for them.

Robben Island is beautiful. The land surrounding the prison is a nature preserve, where there are many wild creatures roaming about -- including springbok, penguins, duiker and other four-legged, deer-like animals. The prison itself was old and stark, as one would expect a prison to be. A museum since 1997, it is open for tourists to view. Several cells contain touching artifacts left behind by political prisoners and letters explaining the artifacts' significance. For example, there was a Christmas card a prisoner had received from his wife. Because he had not been able to communicate with her for so long, he wrote, he found he was unable to feel anything when the card arrived.

We also received a tour of the jail by a former prisoner. It really brought the place alive to stand with this older man in the recreation yard and hear him talk of what he and his fellow prisoners endured and what they also did for diversion when they were there. "There were some good times," he repeated often, maybe wistfully or, perhaps, optimistically. Apparently one of those good times was when the prisoners captured a guard's beloved pet cat, skinned and ate it.

I don't want to bore people with more South Africa travelogue, but for those who are interested: the rest of the holiday included tours of wineries in the lovely, mountainous Stellenbosch region and a few days spent along the coast of the Indian Ocean where we stayed in a beautiful hostel run by a 72-year-old hippie named Deion who made us awesome oatmeal cookies each day.

The South Africa I saw in the Cape area is nothing like the far north where I stay, except maybe for the beautiful scenery. The majority of the residents and tourists are white. Most of the black and mixed race folks I saw were workers: shop employees, housekeepers, gardeners and domestics. A reality not too different from apartheid days.

In Venda, I am the only white person in my village and a member of very small minority in the nearby town. While I really enjoyed getting hot showers every day and frequenting bookstores and coffee shops during my holiday, seeing the huge gap between the way the cultures live made me feel guilty, as if I was betraying the kids and families of my Venda village.

As spring comes to North America, autumn is on its way in South Africa. Vegetation in Venda is abundant and still quite green, the sun still blazes most of the time, but lately there have been a few cloudy, chilly days reminiscent of October in Ohio. When the temperature drops, I yearn for pumpkin pie and hot cider. Because the pumpkin season is not quite here, I have had to settle for the leaves of pumpkin vines my family boils with tomatoes to make a spinach-tasting “miroho,” along with my homemade hot cocoa.
The past month has been eventful and busy, offering very little time to write. It started with my first earthquake experience as I was reading just after midnight Feb. 23. When the bed began shaking, I thought maybe it was from a truck idling outside. But after I got up to investigate, I felt a gentle vibration in the hallway and could hear the family’s dishes tinkle in the cupboard for a good 2 minutes. Nothing fell and the rest of the household slept on. The next day I learned the quake, centered in nearby Mozambique along the Zimbabwe border, registered 7.5, but because it was a “shallow” one, damage and injuries were minor. “Did you feel the earthquake” was the big question asked in shops and on taxis the following day, as earthquakes are not normal occurrences here. Some folks attributed the event as the activity of witches.
In early March I attended a week-long training session conducted by Peace Corps in the town of Polokwane (formerly known as Pietersburg), the capital city of Limpopo Province (in which Venda is located). I got a chance to see a few movies at the only theater in the entire province (“Walk the Line” and “Casanova”) and also to visit my first host family in the nearby village of Garamphele,
It was great to see the Mochakis, and they were happy to see me. Eleven-year-old Phumi, who usually tries to act cool, ran down the dirt road when I arrived and threw himself into my arms. His mom, Damaris greeted me with a huge hug and then a big plate of pap (the thick white paste made of cornmeal which South Africans refer to as their “staple food”) with a chicken drumstick for dinner.
Baby Letabo, just over a year old, has learned how to walk and run since I have been away, but is still as charming as ever. Her Uncle Phumi has learned more English at school and used it to ask me to take him to America the next time I go home. (I told him he must finish school before he can travel anywhere).
The family still lives in their cozy rural house with cattle kraal in the yard, but they now have a DVD player.
Phumi’s sister Sylvia; brother Ronnie, Damaris and I watched two DVDs they had recently purchased: The Gods Must Be Crazy I and II. The movies, a comedy/spoof about the San people (previously called the “Bushmen”) coping with the encroachment of modern society, was filmed in the nearby Kalahari desert. I saw the films in the states many years ago, but they took on a new meaning this time. Sylvia translated some of the characters´ comments that weren’t subtitled. And it was a treat to hear the sounds of birds that have now become so familiar to me and recognize the marula fruits the children gathered in the second movie as the ones growing on trees near Venda.
Speaking of marula, my Venda family’s home has become the site for nightly gatherings of friends and neighbors drinking “mukumbi” – a beer made from the nut-sized, pale green bitter fruit. This is the season for it – so in the Tsonga-speaking villages across the Levubu River where marula trees are plentiful, you will see women sitting along the roadside every few kilometers or so, selling buckets or empty soda containers filled with the homemade brew.
At my house, men mostly, sit on white plastic lawn chairs arranged in a circle with a bucket of mukumbi in front of them. They take turns drinking from the bucket with a dipper made from a hollowed out gourd. A handful of older women, dressed in their traditional striped Venda attire, sit demurely on the ground at the side of the circle of men, but don’t turn away the gourd when it is passed to them. I was offered the gourd once, and tried the beer. It is slightly bitter, but quite potent. One sip gave me nearly the buzz of a full bottle of Heineken.
In addition to fascinating beverages created from native plants, I have witnessed many interesting creatures. Yesterday, a three-inch spider crawled into my friend Emily’s rondavel and cozied up next to the sleeping bag she was sitting in. Unsure if it was poisonous and how fast it could crawl, I crushed it before we could photograph it. I could also describe the tar-like substance that spurted out when my foot came down, but I will spare you such gruesomeness.
Emily, as well as other volunteers (but so far, not me) have also had the experience of being home to the larvae of a certain fly common around rotting mangoes. They lay an egg in human skin and within days the white larva emerges as a big pimple. It’s not a pimple, of course, but you must use the same pimple-popping technique to remove the worm. Bet you are glad I shared that.The first term of the school year is winding down. It ends March 30 and is followed by a two-week vacation (referred to as a holiday here). Three of the four terms is followed by two weeks off. The last term, ending in November, is followed by a month-long holiday.
I have spent the first term giving workshops to teachers in 6 primary schools on South Africa’s national education curriculum (officially the Revised National Curriculum Statement or RNCS). It is a cumbersome series of documents, apparently based on British educational ideals, obtusely written by college professors with an excellent understanding of English.
RNCS offers guidelines on how to create a whole-school learning programme, grade level work schedule and complicated lesson plans to teachers who had not even had to write lesson plans before. Many of the rural teachers speak English quite well, but it is not their native language. They are tripped up not only by the complexity of the recommendations in the curriculum guidelines, but by the terminology. And, admittedly, so am I. A series of “learning outcomes” is used instead of “lesson objectives,” a series of “assessment standards,” must be followed to determine if prescribed “critical outcomes” are met during each lesson – not to be confused with “assessment strategies,” which is how the students (referred to as “learners”) are tested.
Here’s an example from one of the curriculum books:
“In the Foundation Phase, there are three Learning Programmes: Literacy, Numeracy and Life Skills. In the Intermediate Phase, Languages and Mathematics are distinct Learning Programmes. Learning Programmes must ensure that the prescribed outcomes for each learning area are covered effectively and comprehensively. Schools may decide on the number and nature of other Learning Programmes based on the organizational imperatives of the school, provided that the national priorities and developmental needs of the learners in a phase are taken into account.”
It makes me sigh just to write that. While the department of education is laudably trying to establish a strong and equitable education foundation for all of South Africa, they have reached too high and gone too fast without taking into account the limited resources of rural schools. The teachers, most of whom were trained in two-year technical colleges, just want to know how to teach better and how to write a good lesson plan. They are overseeing as many as 5 subjects each and multiple grade levels because of overcrowding (the average classroom size is 45 students) in buildings that are sometimes just tin shacks. They get so overwhelmed by the details sought in the curriculum’s forms, that many choose not to do any planning at all.
Happily, I completed my last curriculum training session today and am off to Cape Town next week with several other Venda-area volunteers for two weeks. We will be taking a second class train from Pretoria, down to the Cape. No Blue Train for us – we are volunteers. After the three-day journey, we plan to visit the Indian and Atlantic coasts, see Nelson Mandela’s former prison home on Robben Island, enjoy fresh seafood, visit the country’s famed wineries and do other touristy things.
When I return, I will begin working individually with teachers, assisting them in creating new, exciting and realistic lessons.

The contrast between developed and undeveloped areas of the world that I mentioned in my last entry is actually a regular challenge working in South Africa. Parts of the country are quite developed, as you may know, while the rural, predominately black areas where we are working are nearly the same as they were during apartheid -- with the exception of the recent addition of electricity. Running water, in most villages, is still a distant hope.
This morning I was waiting for the beat-up public minibus taxi on the dirt road outside my house in Tshifudi and a funeral procession passed by on its way to the cemetery. Instead of limos and sedans, this procession was mostly made up of pick up trucks with loads of people dressed in tattered clothing crammed into the beds. (an interesting aside: I was trying to be somber as the group passed, but many of the people shouted out my name, grinning and waving to me as they went by.)
Now, just a few hours later, I am sitting in an air conditioned Internet cafe in the former Akrikaner town of Makhado (formerly Louis Trichardt). Next to me is a 7-year-old white boy playing a violent video game where characters shoot each other with AK47s in realistic looking street battles. (He just told me it is called "GTA San Andreas.") He and three of his friends are playing each other, occasionally taking swigs from bottles of Coke.
In my village, kids still play with homemade push vehicles they make out of wire and rusty tin cans. Coke is a big treat. If I buy one at the little Spaza shop, several children will ask me for sips before I make it home.
There are a handful of fortunate people in my village who have cars and maybe computers -- my family is one of them. They have an older but still workable computer, satellite TV and a refrigerator that is often stocked with cold drink (soda). But some of the extended family members live in thatched roof rondavels and cook over an open fire. They don't have cars.
So I can be in my house where my host brother is watching MTVs "Pimp My Ride" and walk outside to where few people have rides. I can walk down the street with a barefoot youngster who's heading to a dilapidated rondavel home where she will make her own dinner alone because her mom spends most of her day working as a domestic in Johannesburg and pass her classmate who plays in the garden of her family's modern brick house with air conditioners in all of the windows.
And daily I am confronted by the question: which way of life is best? Is westernizing rural Africa its salvation or its downfall? The answer is never clear.

I've been back in Venda since Jan. 2, but it's taken me a while to find my equilibrium.
Going home was more difficult than I imagined. There was the culture shock of readjusting to a world where even the poorest kids have shoes, but it was intensified by traveling to a very materialistic society during the most materialistic time of year.
It hit me the moment I walked off the plane into JFK. The jolly voice of Burl Ives was blaring from loudspeakers in contrast to the general crabbiness of people waiting in huge lines for their planes or for difficult-to-find transport out of the airport. This was Day One of the NYC transit strike and I had a 10-hour layover in the midst of it all.
Once I finally made it to Ohio, I was overwhelmed by all the glittering holiday lights on homes in my sister's neighborhood. Even though my village in Venda has electricity, they use it sparingly -- for the (unfortunately ubiquitous) TV and maybe one overhead light at night. There are no streetlights, which makes it possible for me to see all the glory of the sky in the southern hemisphere.
In the states I was also was stunned by the amount of Christmas presents everywhere -- new ones for me as well as my family members nearly every day. I was happy that so many people thought of me, but all this stuff was so overwhelming. I felt the same overwhelm when I was moving my belongings to a storage unit before I left. Why do I have so much stuff? After 5 months without it, I know for sure that I don't need even half of it.
I'm not saying that Africa is better than the US. There is materialism worldwide, I am certain. In fact as I sit here in this Internet cafe, the Venda girl next to me is showing me her gaudy pink-gem bellybutton ring and complaining that it is painful.(!)
Really, the hardest part of being back home was returning to a world my father inhabited just before I left. Now his absence, especially during family gatherings, is so obvious. He would have focused on the spiritual aspect of the holiday. All my life, when we asked him what he wanted for Christmas, he would always respond: "peace, love and joy." I miss him so much.

In a little more than 48 hours I will be in Ohio -- where the temperature is 20-something Fahrenheit and there are mounds of snow on the ground, I am told. A dramatic switch from summer in South Africa. I expect to have other adjustments besides getting used to the cold. I'll be with my sisters, friends and other family members saying a final goodbye to my father, who passed away just before I left the country in August. It will be a bittersweet, but necessary time of reconnecting with my American support system and dealing with this loss. But I am also eager to return to Africa to get started on my plans for the new school year, to learn more about this multifaceted country, to utilize all the gifts my father and others who touched my life have given me and to remain wide awake through it all.

One of the biggest misconceptions I had about South Africa regards animals. In our Peace Corps orientation in Philly, many volunteers (me included), wondered about the possibility of encountering wild animals in our remote villages. We worried about getting ambushed by a lion or run over by an elephant. It's funny now. I did see an elephant very close to where I am living, but it was securely trapped inside the fences of Kruger National Park. My family assures me that it is rare that any animals escape from the park and never have they seen anything more wild than a dog. South Africa is supposedly home to the Big 5 animals (elephant, lion, giraffe, etc.), but they are no more visible to folks here than are the animals in the zoos in America. Most are restrained in maintained game parks.
Yet my village certainly has its share of resident non-humans. Herds of cows wander everywhere, occasionally blocking the roadway or wandering into the yard to find green grass. Mangy dogs come and go as they please, usually in a playful pack, as well as the occasional very scrawny cat. (None of the animals are permitted inside or are spoiled like American pets.) My family keeps about 8 guinea hens, freaky-looking turkey/roosters (pictured at left) that constantly squawk like children swinging on a rusty swingset. In addition, chickens, roosters and baby chicks roam about at all hours. There are dozens of doves that roost on the roof, as well as numerous other native birds flying about. And in a pen away from the house, are two huge hogs and six newly born baby piglets. During the day, the trunks of mango trees are home to two blue-headed green-bodied lizards the size of iguanas and very large brown bats that fly noisily overhead at night.

Schoolchildren follow me home from one of the three primary schools where I am working.

A gift of South Africa
As I was sitting in the crowded, quite battered minibus taxi on my way to the town of Thohoyandou to write this today, I tried to pass the time by reading a book by Deepak Chopra (The Book of Secrets, a gift sent by my sister Julie). I was immersed in the chapter titled "There is No Time But Now" as the taxi's rusty sliding door kept sliding open. Since I was the one sitting closest to it, I had to grab the handle and pull it shut each time. Three times I successfully accomplished the task with my left hand while still keeping my eyes on the book held in my right; but on the fourth, my little change purse tumbled from my lap and fell out the door just before I could close it. I shouted. The driver stopped. I retrieved the purse. When I sat down again, I put the book away. This allowed the wise-looking older woman in traditional Venda attire to ask me what I was doing in Tshifudi -- my little village -- and to give me a brief history of the town. No longer trapped by the book, I was able to gaze at the mist high above the green Zoutpansburg mountain range rising into the sky along the road, to feel the welcome coolness of a cloudy day after a week of 100 degree-plus temperatures, to hear the sweet chatter of a toddler who was cradled by his grandmother on the seat next to me. The greatest gift I have been given so far from South Africa is a growing ability to stay present for moments like these.
Sometimes the slow pace of the rural culture is frustrating. Every transaction takes three times more than it did in the US. People tell rambling stories that take a while to get to the point. Visitors drop by unexpectedly at all times of the day and are in no hurry to leave. The wait for a taxi can last more than an hour. But the thing is: I am not usually scheduled to be anywhere else. There is no easy means of escape (except perhaps to a book and see where that got me). I have no car. Thohoyandou is a 45 minute taxi rideaway from Tshifudi and it's only filled with shops, the Internet and three restaurants. It's too hot to walk far. My family has a TV, but that medium no longer holds my interest for long. Everyone else in my village just relaxes and enjoys the day together. So I do the same.
When the temperatures rose to 107 degrees Fahrenheit last week, most of the members of my host family, the Mammburus, gathered on the front porch at night where it was coolest. We watched the sky fill with stars (more stars than any sky I have seen before), helped the little ones to sleep with wet rags on their heads, listened to the chirp of bats and other animals that were were active despite the heat, and talked about all kinds of things. I might have been cooler in an air conditioned house somewhere, but I would not have found the companionship and simple joy that came out of that hot evening in Tshifudi.