23 June 2006

Greetings all,
Well, the end of the school term has come, and with it bitter cold! Brrrrrr! We woke up today to strong winds and we think the coldest day we have had so far. At least it’s sunny! So this afternoon starts a month long vacation which we are completely looking forward to. We need a break. Plus, we are eagerly anticipating the arrival of Adam’s parents on the 30th – a week from today! Our first visitors! We are meeting them at the airport, and from there going to Kruger National Park for a few days to see some wildlife, and then heading out to our little village to show them our life. We are super excited.
Other than that, it hasn’t been too exciting. Last weekend was a 3-day weekend due to Youth Day – a day of remembrance for a group of young people who were killed during a huge protest by students who were forced to learn Afrikaans in their schools and preferred to learn in English. Our friend Matt came to visit us for a few days and we spent our time cooking good food and playing Monopoly. The downside was that Adam fell sick over the weekend and proceeded to pass his germs on to both myself and Matt. What a guy! So we spent a few days sick at home – never fun. But we’re better now and ready to travel!
Hope all is well with all of you. You won’t hear from us for a few weeks as we will be out and about in the country. So take care and we’ll tell you about all of our adventures in a few weeks!
Love,
Lerato

09 June 2006

June 9, 2006
Greetings One and All,
Well, we had a sad occasion last week. Our good friend Andy decided to go back home. We knew it was coming for quite some time, but it was still sad to see him go. He left for various reasons, but missing his dog (Truman) and the comforts of home (Taco Bell) were high on the list. So last Wednesday, we took a trip to Vryburg to gather with a few other friends for one last lunch together. He will be greatly missed in our little group. So Andy, thanks for the fun and for sharing all of your embarrassing stories with us over the last 10 or so months (and there are many). Hope you are enjoying the good life again and that Michigan is everything you remembered it to be – maybe you can sell us a car someday. :o)
So after seeing Andy off, we stayed the night in Vryburg just for the joy of using a hot shower, and then headed off to visit another friend, Matt in his village. Wow, and we thought we lived in the middle of nowhere! Matt’s village is TINY. And far, far away from anything else. He took us on the grand tour (it took about 10 minutes) which included his two schools, the shop, the graveyard, the bridge, the sheep corral, and the ‘mighty Moshaweng river’ – which he says is a dry riverbed most of the year, but it still has some water in it from all the rain a few months back. Matt has a nice host family, with two really cute young girls. We were only there for two nights and a day. We passed the time by playing cards, and playing with some Play-Dough that a friend had recently sent him, and we even did a little bit of work. Matt and Adam played some snooker (South-African for pool) with some young locals at the shop one night too. I was slightly intimidated, being the only female in the room other than the shopkeeper, and so just decided to watch. The second night we introduced Matt’s family to burritos, which I think they enjoyed. Then on Saturday morning, we crawled into the back of a pickup truck for the long ride to town. Matt’s taxi was pretty interesting. It’s a pickup truck with a cab on the back. Inside, there are benches along the two sides and against the cab. Keep in mind this is just a regular sized pickup truck. By the time we were 30 minutes into the ride, there were 13 people crammed in the back of that thing. It was pretty amazing. I found it slightly humorous, but Matt said that doesn’t last long. And indeed it didn’t. His village is about 80K outside of Kuruman, 70K of which is on bumpy dirt roads. It gets uncomfortable pretty fast. Kudos to him for being able to do that every weekend! It took us 2 hours to get to town, which he said was relatively quick. I think we’re both glad its him and not us. I can’t imagine the trip back home, when all 13 people have a week or two worth of groceries with them. Yikes!
Back in our village, life is pretty normal. We started the computer classes with all of our Primary school teachers on Monday. We had a bit of a poor turnout, but hopefully that will improve, and it went well for the teachers that were there. Our Country Director, Lisa (the big boss!) came to visit us on Wednesday. She was just out visiting some of the volunteers in the area and stopped in for a few hours to see how we were doing. And that’s about all the excitement we have had in the last two weeks. Hope life is good back in the US. Until next time…
Andrea

25 May 2006

25 May 2006
Well, another two weeks have whizzed by us…and we are now on the entrance to June. Everyone knows what June means. More vacation beginning the 20 something of June!!! The past two weeks continued to be interesting to say the least.
The lobola party was exciting to say the least. The family got the payment and clothes and food and livestock…and we proceeded to eat 2 or 3 sheep on Sunday. I was part of the malome (Setswana for the eldest uncle who plays the important role in the payment of the lobola) which is the men! I consider myself a man’s man but even I was out of place. For the lobola party, the men and women eat separately – I don’t know why, it’s just tradition. So being a man and seeing as our host father wants us to experience the culture, I was out back with the men when the food was served. Let me talk about the food first…my gosh it was A LOT. 2 sheep and dombe (which is a traditional bread made over the cooking meat kind of like dumplings and my personal favorite) and I don’t even know how many pumpkins! When the food was ready the men circled up the chairs out in the back of the house and a giant bowl with the chest of the sheep and a mound of dombe are place in front of us. I sit there waiting for the plates to come out but everyone else starts clawing at this huge hunk of meat with their bare hands. So, being hungry I too dug in. The uncle next to me sees that I am not as ferocious as every else and asks if I am ok. Sure I am, I reply. Then he asks if I had brought a knife. Interesting question….but no I didn’t as I thought it would be included with the meal. But the host father stepped in and allowed me the use of his knife so I could get in there and (no not fight the others off) cut off some good chunks of meat. Suffice to say, I now know what lions are thinking when they are all standing over the kill!
This last weekend included a funeral. It is just the second we have attended but people have been dying all over the place in large number in my eyes. The village celebrates the life and then continues on. Sunday they buried a mother to four of the learners at our host school. One of the boys I play soccer with all the time and it is just sad to see these kids as orphans now. Our host mother may adopt one or two. We told her that we would be more than willing to give her some money to do so. I think $30-40 will feed one kid for a month (think about that).
In the land of our lives getting more bizarre, yet another step has been taken. Our host family is wealthy according to village standards, but they are still working on getting running water in the house as it is a big expense to get the well drilled and the water tank up. They have built a bathroom with a tub for when they do get water. Running water would be, for me, one of the first things get. NOPE. A family friend gave our host family her old TV. This TV has AV inputs on it so they can now hook up the DVD player along with the Playstation (our host brother left it at home when he came and visited at Chirstmas). Yes, I now can play Playstation but have to crap in a hole….bizzaro world.
Other than that, the bone chilling temperatures continue to persist. They say we are in a cold spell, I believe them. The nightly temperature when going to bed is around 45. And again…that is air temperature in the room. And bed time is like 9:30. I don’t know what the low is for the night but it takes a good 2 hours of sun to melt off the frost (frost in Africa….what the #$*%^#*$)! Good news is the days warm up to 60s and I get a lot of use out of those 3 long sleeve shirts! People keep telling us they have never seen it this cold…great! Boy, I miss central heating…or any heating for that matter.
Thabo