ZULULAND

I left Tueday, March 18th for my second research trip to villages in KwaZulu-Natal (called KZedN by the South Africans) to learn more about their culture, lifestyle, and financial situations.  Once again I traveled by Greyhound (a deluxe and expensive way to travel on PCV budget) and was able to sit in the upper deck, front row, so had fantastic views. Sometimes it reminded me of Montana, like this one~

I decided to blog more of my journal this time, and will likely add to my Limpopo trip so I have a better account for my future memory (which means my lack thereof).

My first overnight was in Glencoe at the home of a teacher. Thuli,  from Laura's school, who was very gracious.

 Kids from the neighborhood congregated around, and finally came into the house and sang some church songs to me, so I share a camp song with them as well.  Great fun!  Then we had pap (cooked white corn meal, the staple of many diets here) with hot bean sauce and lamb for supper.  Her husband owns a bar in a nearby town and I think well run bars must make money here, as they live in an impoverished neighborhood but have this newer home with all the glitz.


Early to bed and early to rise.  She has a SUV and fills it with riders to the next town, where she dropped me off to meet Liz, then she parks her vehicle and takes a transport out to her village school. Liz came by public taxi to meet me, we hung around until the grocery store opened so I could buy some food to take to her place, then we sat in taxi for an hour for it to fill (this is a familiar story?!).



 Dropped my bag at her house then went to school until early afternoon and I did one interview with the school's admin person.




Went back to eat, then walked to a mission up the road. Came back and she cooked me a PC style dish of onion/green pepper/fresh diced tomatoes/ Raja curry powder with garlic, add in chick peas and cooked rice.  Pretty tasty!  She has electricity and a hot plate, but chose not to spend the money on a fridge.  Pretty simple cooking and lifestyle!

Liz, in her rondoval that is about 15' in diameter

We went over to her host family's house at 8:00 and watched their favorite nightime soap (her bonding activity) and to bed early.  She gave up her bed and slept on the floor.  Up the next morning, she scrambled eggs and put it between two pieces of bread for breakfast, then on our way to school again, where I conducted several more interviews.

Jonelle, a PCV who I met the first week in Pretoria, picked me up that afternoon.   She works with a NGO based in England, and has limited use of their truck for travel to the schools they help support.  We saw these giraffes near the road on the way.  The lodge is new, and very modern; living in the lap of luxury.   She is very appreciative of this, but is very isolated, as there is NO public transportation to this place. I had a great room to myself, but it came with a pet...one of the biggest spiders I have ever seen! 

We went for a morning walk and spotted these guys along the way, along with numerous antelope.

There is a guest lodge below that David Rafferty (for whom the NGO foundation is named after) started, and I was invited to go on a historical walk with the guide who did a dramatization of the Fugitive's Drift battle for us.This area is known for the Battlefields between the Brits and the Zulus. 

After two great nights there, she then took me to PCV Laura at another village.  Laura lives in a little house next to her host parents, and has no electricity or water in her house.  The village and her family just got electricity, but it has not extended to her place and that's fine by her.  We went for a walk up to a cave; one of the neighbor boys joined us. We ate by candlelight that night, and watched a movie on her computer.

The next day I spent at her school doing interviews of the teachers and once again, heard some amazing stories of how the village people live.  Here I am in front of the library with some of the learners.

Her host father is a successful retired worker with a work pension, plus a government pension.  He wants to help start a pre-school and had the woman who would run it come over and we visited.  Went through the S. W. O. T. process, which he liked very much.  There were many important factors they hadn't considered.  After two great nights here I went back to Glencoe with Thuli, spent another night with her, hung around her house watching BBC the next morning, then took the bus back to Joburg and arrived home about 8:00 p.m.  A wonderful trip!

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY

Here's a couple of views today as I walked to my morning bus top.   There are just two seasons here...summer and winter, and we will be in the winter season in about two months.

Note on the lower photo the lovely roses inside the fenced net ball (their term for basketball) courts at the primary school.  If you enlarge the photo you can see one of the backboards.  Also note the round barbed wire on top of the fence.

The little blue shelter came in handy when it was pouring rain while waiting for the bus the past two weeks.  There are usually just 2-3 of us that get on here.  Today a learner got on along the way, whom I had never talked with, and asked me if I would help her with a quote that she needed to write a speech on for her class.  I guess I am becoming accepted.  It was pretty cool. 

I also made a wonderful discovery last night.  After a couple months of fighting super slow internet in my house and having trouble skyping Cinda on her cell phone, I went upstairs to my bedroom and found the speed is fast enough I can even blog!   This is good as I may have to work from home after the NGO's office lease expires in June...except I'm not sure if my fingers will function very well in a 50-60 degree temperature in my place.  A bonus is I can sit here and look at the beautiful full moon.

I'm off to the province of KwaZuluNatal tomorrow morning to do more research for my project, staying with three different volunteers.  Two live in tiny places w/no water or electricity, and the other is a woman I met the first week here who has extended and lives in a very nice lodge of the English based NGO she is working for.  So I'm sure I'll have interesting photos and comments in a week when I return.  I'll be taking the Greyhound bus for six hours and don't mind at all; it's not crowded during the week and I listen to or read on a book and enjoy the scenery.  This is the same province where I went on my photo safari three years ago, but a different area.

WEATHER...ISN'T EVERYONE TALKING ABOUT IT?!

Take a look at this great article in a March 7th newspaper in South Africa:

March 7 2014 at 08:32

No skirting around the issue of rain dancing here

In antediluvian times – I speak of last month – we, in Gauteng, were happy with our idyllic climate. We were having our usual totally reliable and glorious summer – a 15-minute storm every afternoon at 4.15pm followed by a balmy evening.

This week the system broke down.

We are not used to consecutive days of heavy rain. Not like the Brits where the weather has been reliably lousy since Cretaceous times and where it has now been downgraded to “rather awful”.

Across the world the weather is behaving badly. Look at America with its “hercanes” sending trailer park caravans bowling across the prairies like tumbleweed and leaving thousands of overweight caravan owners in singlets and string belts, homeless.

In North America last month, old ladies were snap-frozen in funny postures as they bent down to pat their |little dogs.

And now look at us.

Not far from Gauteng, drought-stricken farmers had been praying for rain for weeks. Now, I hope, they’ll pray for it to stop.

The very act of praying for rain always suggests to me that we are assuming the Lord isn’t aware of what’s going on. Anyway, if we had total faith, why not specify just how much rain we want? And where?

(“Lord, I need 10mm on the cabbages but hold off on the mealies, please.”)

The world’s funny weather will be a major topic on March 23 when we celebrate World Meteorological Day. This year the theme is ‘Weather and climate: engaging youth’.

This is because today’s youth will experience the increasing effects of climate change. The World Meteorological Organisation wants to encourage young people to learn more about weather and climate “and to contribute to action on climate change”.

I will spend World Meteorological Day as I normally do, letting myself go only when I get home and can celebrate with a scotch, just as I do when marking World Potable Water Day.

I have suggested to the World Meteorological Organisation that it should debate whether praying for rain is tantamount to conspiring to alter the weather pattern because we, in South Africa, have an act of Parliament that specifically forbids interfering with the weather in any way whatsoever.

Well, in any way except “seeding” clouds from the air with ice crystals to make them drop their load of rain. And I doubt this will remain legal for long because it has led to understandable friction when one farmer who does not receive rain claims his rain was stolen by his neighbours who seeded the clouds.

The law forbids anybody to “accelerate, aggravate, impede, suppress, retard or alter the natural occurrence of rain, snow, fog, hail or similar atmospheric precipitation, or lightning, or tornado, or cyclone, or similar atmospheric phenomenon”.

Even producing a little zap of lightning without a permit from the minister could land one in chookie.

Significantly, the law came into effect soon after a certain Reverend Gert Yssel declared that the miniskirt was causing a current severe drought.

He also blamed the miniskirt for the poor performance of the Springbok rugby team.

It was, he said, God’s punishment for being so wayward and allowing young women to show off their legs.

People laughed. Yet when hemlines dropped the rains came back. And we beat the All Blacks.

The Weather Modification Act does not mention skirts.

Another topic this month will be, of course, climate change. I don’t doubt the climate is changing.

Last Autumn, you might recall, summer went on and on and the leaves, which should have been on their way groundwards in May, remained sticking to the trees like election posters.

Contact Stoep: E-mail: jcl@onwe.co.za; Website: www.jamesclarke.co.za

CONNIE'S CRAZY ABOUT CAPETOWN!

Flew to Cape Town with Vicky on Friday for a three-day weekend.  Stayed at The Backpack, one of a multitude of backpacker hostels, but this one highly recommended by other PCVs, and rightly so.  Very well located near the red/blue hop on-hop off bus line, and close to restaurants and shopping areas, clean and good service.  We booked too late to get a bathroom in our room but didn’t find it too inconvenient to go down the hall.

We got a two-day pass on the bus, hopped on to go to Table Mountain on a beautiful, clear day.  Didn’t take me long to know that I want to come back and just walk around the paths to further admire the gorgeous views…

Dassies all over the place

and to see more of the dassies…which a tour guide told someone they are like rabbits, but related to the elephant.  (?!)





The bus continued on to a coastal drive












that came to the V&A (Victoria and Alfred) Waterfront, where we did a brief but scenic canal cruise.

Note the clothes on the line of this old ship.  Apparently someone's domicile!





The next morning we took the other bus line to the wine country tour through very pretty country side, again up the coast,

and this time explored the V&A more thoroughly, having a good time watching/listening to street musicians and having tasty eats

Tried to get tickets for a tour of Robben Island on Sunday, but discovered that reservations need to be more in advance.  That is where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned.

Will do that tour the next time, as well as down to the Cape of Good Hope and the penguin colony.

Sunday we walked around by the Capital Grounds, an Art Museum, and toured the South Africa Jewish Museum and Holocaust Museum.  Mandela’s first job as a lawyer was with a Jewish owned firm, and the Jewish community was supportive of the anti-apartheid movement due to their persecutions in their past.  It was interesting to learn about their migration to South Africa and that history.

Also came upon a drumming class on the street enroute to retuning to the hostel.


And, oh yes, it was raining when I left Joburg, rained while I was gone, and is raining still yet today on Tuesday.  Quite unusual, so say the locals.  

MORE TRAINING, MORE RAINING

Tshidi and I were driven by P. C. to Polokwane (2nd time there in two weeks) to present at a regional training event for the PC volunteers, to introduce them to the financial education program so they will consider using it as a side project in their schools/communities.  Very enjoyable, lots of great people, as always, and we were lucky to stay in a nice hotel and former non-TV viewer as I am, I found myself much enjoying all the various channels on the flat screen TV in a room with coffee and tea available.

Rained a bit there, then all night, all the way home, again all night and still this morning, so my walking has been pretty absent...there's walking in the rain (lovely, if light!) then walking in continuous downpours.  Was chilly in my cottage last night; understand that there will be a lot more of that to come this winter (starting about May). Will buy some heavy blankets and look into buying a gas heater for the main floor.

Next up~Capetown with Vicky this weekend.  Am excited to see this beautiful city, so more photos then!