15 September 2006
September 14, 2006
Last week we had a not-so-exciting trip to Pretoria for our mid-term health exams. What a joke! We both saw the good doctor for about 5 minutes, which involved taking our blood pressure, feeling our major organs, and asking if we were ok. You get what you pay for I guess...the health care is free for a reason. Then we were declared fit. Whew! So glad we traveled 10 hours one-way to Pretoria for that (but I know our moms will be happy to hear it!)! We did have a dentist appointment too, and I got new glasses as mine had broken the week before. The highlight of the trip was eating some scrumptious Thai food and hanging out with a few other friends who were in town for the same reasons. Monday was Adam’s birthday, I’m sure you noticed the date, and we celebrated with some homemade chocolate chip cookies (complete with REAL brown sugar!) and a coconut cake with chocolate frosting. I tried to make it special but sometimes special days here feel like just another day. Or maybe that’s just because we’re getting older and birthdays aren’t the celebration they used to be. Regardless it was a celebration, and yummy! (It was a special day…the wife made it that way. I was king for the day!)
Other than that, the last weeks have been business as usual, which means there isn’t much to report. One of the village youth asked Adam to help him set up a village volleyball team and they had their first ‘practice’ this week. We both played and have the red forearms to prove it! South African volleyballs are painful! But it was fun, and just nice to see someone with initiative. There isn’t much to do for the youth in this village, and it’s great to watch someone come up with a way to occupy his free time, organize his friends, and DO SOMETHING!
Another piece of news from this week was the delivery of brand new computers to three of our four primary schools from the Department of Education. The teachers are excited about it, but it’s coming at a bad time. Two of these schools have yet to receive their annual budget from the Department (on which they heavily depend), and have pretty much no money in the bank. Two of our schools don’t have adequate theft protection and are worried about the computers getting stolen, but can’t do anything about it because they have no money. But they go on and hope and pray they are still there the next day, and will probably end up moving them someplace else until they can strengthen the school’s security.
I’m sure some of you saw that South Africa was in the news lately, from the world AIDS conference in Toronto. The wonderful minister of health of the country with the highest number of infected people in the world, set up a booth that advocated natural items such as garlic, lemon, and beetroot as practical alternatives to ARV’s (Anti-Retro Virals – the current best medication for treating people with AIDS). She was subsequently ridiculed by many leading AIDS experts at the convention, and every day in the news here are stories of AIDS groups calling for her dismissal. It’s interesting to watch and to see what will happen.
I feel like we talk a lot about what we do here, especially with our free time, but that we don’t really describe village life all that much and the challenges people face. I’d like to start talking about other things and guess I’m starting today. I know a lot of you are curious about what this place is really like, and if you have questions that you want answered, just drop us and e-mail and we’ll see what we can do to answer it. We finally got our hands on some Census statistics of our villages (we only have stats for three of the four, however). The numbers were really interesting and to give you guys a better view of what these villages are like, I’ll pass some along. First up is the population. The largest village is the one that we live in, which has almost 1900 people. The others weigh in at 820 and 340. Pretty tiny! The vast, vast majority of people never completed high school. In fact in our host village, only 173 out of 1,900 people graduated from, or exceeded high school. In our host village, 1,370 people have no monthly income (I think this excludes government pensions and child support grants which is what most people live on), and the other two villages have similar unemployment percentages. Only 9 households in all three villages have a flush toilet. And the majority dispose of all waste by disposing of it (most likely burning it) somewhere in their own yard. These stats are from 2001, so I’m sure some things have changed a little, but it was our first glimpse into any kind of statistics on these villages. Pretty interesting, and at the same time overwhelming. It really outlines how much farther this government has to come to create true equality and help its poorest citizens rise up. It’s quite a challenge.
Well, I think that’s about all this time around. I hope you are all healthy and happy and enjoying fall as we greet the rising temperatures of spring. Take care,
Lerato
Birthday Boy getting older AND WISER!!!
Look at me…and my BLACK tongue (yes she was sick today)
Last week we had a not-so-exciting trip to Pretoria for our mid-term health exams. What a joke! We both saw the good doctor for about 5 minutes, which involved taking our blood pressure, feeling our major organs, and asking if we were ok. You get what you pay for I guess...the health care is free for a reason. Then we were declared fit. Whew! So glad we traveled 10 hours one-way to Pretoria for that (but I know our moms will be happy to hear it!)! We did have a dentist appointment too, and I got new glasses as mine had broken the week before. The highlight of the trip was eating some scrumptious Thai food and hanging out with a few other friends who were in town for the same reasons. Monday was Adam’s birthday, I’m sure you noticed the date, and we celebrated with some homemade chocolate chip cookies (complete with REAL brown sugar!) and a coconut cake with chocolate frosting. I tried to make it special but sometimes special days here feel like just another day. Or maybe that’s just because we’re getting older and birthdays aren’t the celebration they used to be. Regardless it was a celebration, and yummy! (It was a special day…the wife made it that way. I was king for the day!)
Other than that, the last weeks have been business as usual, which means there isn’t much to report. One of the village youth asked Adam to help him set up a village volleyball team and they had their first ‘practice’ this week. We both played and have the red forearms to prove it! South African volleyballs are painful! But it was fun, and just nice to see someone with initiative. There isn’t much to do for the youth in this village, and it’s great to watch someone come up with a way to occupy his free time, organize his friends, and DO SOMETHING!
Another piece of news from this week was the delivery of brand new computers to three of our four primary schools from the Department of Education. The teachers are excited about it, but it’s coming at a bad time. Two of these schools have yet to receive their annual budget from the Department (on which they heavily depend), and have pretty much no money in the bank. Two of our schools don’t have adequate theft protection and are worried about the computers getting stolen, but can’t do anything about it because they have no money. But they go on and hope and pray they are still there the next day, and will probably end up moving them someplace else until they can strengthen the school’s security.
I’m sure some of you saw that South Africa was in the news lately, from the world AIDS conference in Toronto. The wonderful minister of health of the country with the highest number of infected people in the world, set up a booth that advocated natural items such as garlic, lemon, and beetroot as practical alternatives to ARV’s (Anti-Retro Virals – the current best medication for treating people with AIDS). She was subsequently ridiculed by many leading AIDS experts at the convention, and every day in the news here are stories of AIDS groups calling for her dismissal. It’s interesting to watch and to see what will happen.
I feel like we talk a lot about what we do here, especially with our free time, but that we don’t really describe village life all that much and the challenges people face. I’d like to start talking about other things and guess I’m starting today. I know a lot of you are curious about what this place is really like, and if you have questions that you want answered, just drop us and e-mail and we’ll see what we can do to answer it. We finally got our hands on some Census statistics of our villages (we only have stats for three of the four, however). The numbers were really interesting and to give you guys a better view of what these villages are like, I’ll pass some along. First up is the population. The largest village is the one that we live in, which has almost 1900 people. The others weigh in at 820 and 340. Pretty tiny! The vast, vast majority of people never completed high school. In fact in our host village, only 173 out of 1,900 people graduated from, or exceeded high school. In our host village, 1,370 people have no monthly income (I think this excludes government pensions and child support grants which is what most people live on), and the other two villages have similar unemployment percentages. Only 9 households in all three villages have a flush toilet. And the majority dispose of all waste by disposing of it (most likely burning it) somewhere in their own yard. These stats are from 2001, so I’m sure some things have changed a little, but it was our first glimpse into any kind of statistics on these villages. Pretty interesting, and at the same time overwhelming. It really outlines how much farther this government has to come to create true equality and help its poorest citizens rise up. It’s quite a challenge.
Well, I think that’s about all this time around. I hope you are all healthy and happy and enjoying fall as we greet the rising temperatures of spring. Take care,
Lerato
Birthday Boy getting older AND WISER!!!
Look at me…and my BLACK tongue (yes she was sick today)
posted by aliberatinsa at 1:37 AM
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