PC in SA: April 2007

30 April 2007

29 April 2007

This past weekend was a new event in the village to us. The Tombstone Unveiling. See, many times when people pass away in rural South Africa, the family doesn’t have enough money to pay for both the funeral and a tombstone, which are both an expensive events. So what happens is when the family eventually raises enough money to buy one, they throw a big party and invite the whole village to come see it. So this weekend was actually a party for the unveiling of three tombstones – our father’s father, our father’s nephew, and one other relative of whose exact relation we’re not sure of. The events started for me on Tuesday, when my host mother asked me to help her make some cakes. Cakes here are cookies in American English, and during these big events there are many cookies on hand to feed the hungry workers in between meals and for out-of-town visitors to take home on their travels. So I knew she wanted to make a lot of cookies, but I didn’t know exactly what I was getting into. 6 hours later, we had enough cookies to almost fill a 5-gallon bucket. And then she said that we’d make another kind the next day! So again, I show up in her kitchen after school and watch her mix together a huge batch of cookies – just dumping in flour, sugar, baking powder and butter to her own specifications and then mixing in other things, depending on what kind of cookie she wants to make – coconut, orange juice and lemon extract, or ginger. My job was getting the wet ingredients together – 12 eggs per batch and a bowl full of milk! It’s really quite impressive to watch and an amazing amount of dough. So after day 2 (only 3 hours of baking this time) our host ma informs me that Thursday will be the last day of baking. So again I come and help bake cookies – 5 hours on the third day. Baking really can be quite tiring! 3 days, 14 hours and cookies to fill many buckets.

(Adam) Thursday was slaughtering day. I stayed home from school to help out at our Grandmother’s house! 5 sheep and a cow – more meat than they had for even our brother’s wedding! The day started out the our host father showing up in his taxi with a new kind of passenger…5 sheep. All the men that had gathered pull the sheep out and get in a line. Our host father then sharpens his knife and cut the throats and leaves!?! With 5 dead sheep, the 8 men and I get to work skin and butchering. Now we have 5 sheep carcasses hanging from a tree. The one man asks me if I know how to slaughter the cow…not the intro I was hoping for when the cow is next. After chasing a cow around the corral and tying a rope around its neck, 5 different men try to wrestle the cow into position. This involved chasing it, or was it chasing us, around a tree until it didn’t have any further to go. Then the butchering and hanging from a tree. So 5 hours later, we have 1 cow and 5 sheep hang from a tree and the intestines in a pot being cooked from lunch….yum!

I on the other hand went to school to avoid it.

Friday was a holiday – Freedom Day – so we got to spend the whole day helping to prepare. Unfortunately, winter decided to show up that day too, so everyone was bundled up and crowded around the cooking fires all day. The women of the family stayed up all night cooking, but we opted to sleep. After helping to cut up 15 pumpkins and being in charge of cooking 6 pounds of pasta for pasta salad, that is!

Saturday morning was clear and cold and we arrived just in time to be given front row seats at the church service which was being held in a big red and white striped tent in our grandmother’s front yard. The crowd was so big that they had to take down one wall of the tent to allow people gathered outside to watch the service. It was a short service at home and then everyone piled into cars or walked to the cemetery where each of the three tombstones had been covered with a white cloth. Everyone crowded around the first tombstone and after a song and a prayer, a relative removed the cloth and read the inscription out loud. The priest then blessed the grave with holy oil, incense in one of those swinging ball things, and holy water sprinkled onto the grave with the branch of a tree. More singing, prayers and a speech from another family member, and we moved on to the next grave to repeat the service. When we returned to the house, it was lunchtime. By that point, we estimate that there were about 300 people there, waiting to be fed. I was one of the servers, serving my pasta salad, and watching the masses of food slowly disappears. The rest of the day was devoted to washing dishes and cleaning up, and then there was a braai (barbeque) in the evening for the remaining family. It was a busy and tiring day and so we have now fled to Kimberly to relax for the rest of the weekend. Monday is a school holiday and Tuesday, another public holiday (Worker’s Day) so we still have a few days to recover before heading back to school.
Andrea

The ladies and their cookies…it was just the beginning!!

The slaughtering line…Next!?

Blessing one of the tombstones

The old lady aka Grandmother

30 April 2007

29 April 2007

This past weekend was a new event in the village to us. The Tombstone Unveiling. See, many times when people pass away in rural South Africa, the family doesn’t have enough money to pay for both the funeral and a tombstone, which are both an expensive events. So what happens is when the family eventually raises enough money to buy one, they throw a big party and invite the whole village to come see it. So this weekend was actually a party for the unveiling of three tombstones – our father’s father, our father’s nephew, and one other relative of whose exact relation we’re not sure of. The events started for me on Tuesday, when my host mother asked me to help her make some cakes. Cakes here are cookies in American English, and during these big events there are many cookies on hand to feed the hungry workers in between meals and for out-of-town visitors to take home on their travels. So I knew she wanted to make a lot of cookies, but I didn’t know exactly what I was getting into. 6 hours later, we had enough cookies to almost fill a 5-gallon bucket. And then she said that we’d make another kind the next day! So again, I show up in her kitchen after school and watch her mix together a huge batch of cookies – just dumping in flour, sugar, baking powder and butter to her own specifications and then mixing in other things, depending on what kind of cookie she wants to make – coconut, orange juice and lemon extract, or ginger. My job was getting the wet ingredients together – 12 eggs per batch and a bowl full of milk! It’s really quite impressive to watch and an amazing amount of dough. So after day 2 (only 3 hours of baking this time) our host ma informs me that Thursday will be the last day of baking. So again I come and help bake cookies – 5 hours on the third day. Baking really can be quite tiring! 3 days, 14 hours and cookies to fill many buckets.

(Adam) Thursday was slaughtering day. I stayed home from school to help out at our Grandmother’s house! 5 sheep and a cow – more meat than they had for even our brother’s wedding! The day started out the our host father showing up in his taxi with a new kind of passenger…5 sheep. All the men that had gathered pull the sheep out and get in a line. Our host father then sharpens his knife and cut the throats and leaves!?! With 5 dead sheep, the 8 men and I get to work skin and butchering. Now we have 5 sheep carcasses hanging from a tree. The one man asks me if I know how to slaughter the cow…not the intro I was hoping for when the cow is next. After chasing a cow around the corral and tying a rope around its neck, 5 different men try to wrestle the cow into position. This involved chasing it, or was it chasing us, around a tree until it didn’t have any further to go. Then the butchering and hanging from a tree. So 5 hours later, we have 1 cow and 5 sheep hang from a tree and the intestines in a pot being cooked from lunch….yum!

I on the other hand went to school to avoid it.

Friday was a holiday – Freedom Day – so we got to spend the whole day helping to prepare. Unfortunately, winter decided to show up that day too, so everyone was bundled up and crowded around the cooking fires all day. The women of the family stayed up all night cooking, but we opted to sleep. After helping to cut up 15 pumpkins and being in charge of cooking 6 pounds of pasta for pasta salad, that is!

Saturday morning was clear and cold and we arrived just in time to be given front row seats at the church service which was being held in a big red and white striped tent in our grandmother’s front yard. The crowd was so big that they had to take down one wall of the tent to allow people gathered outside to watch the service. It was a short service at home and then everyone piled into cars or walked to the cemetery where each of the three tombstones had been covered with a white cloth. Everyone crowded around the first tombstone and after a song and a prayer, a relative removed the cloth and read the inscription out loud. The priest then blessed the grave with holy oil, incense in one of those swinging ball things, and holy water sprinkled onto the grave with the branch of a tree. More singing, prayers and a speech from another family member, and we moved on to the next grave to repeat the service. When we returned to the house, it was lunchtime. By that point, we estimate that there were about 300 people there, waiting to be fed. I was one of the servers, serving my pasta salad, and watching the masses of food slowly disappears. The rest of the day was devoted to washing dishes and cleaning up, and then there was a braai (barbeque) in the evening for the remaining family. It was a busy and tiring day and so we have now fled to Kimberly to relax for the rest of the weekend. Monday is a school holiday and Tuesday, another public holiday (Worker’s Day) so we still have a few days to recover before heading back to school.
Andrea

The ladies and their cookies…it was just the beginning!!

The slaughtering line…Next!?

Blessing one of the tombstones

The old lady aka Grandmother

21 April 2007

18 April 2007

Last week brought the end of yet another vacation. That seems to be all we ever write about, but hey, I’m not complaining! This vacation brought my Mom and her boyfriend Matt to South Africa. But I’ll get to that part in a minute. First, I need to give a Longtom Marathon report!
On March 30th, we made the long trip up to Sabie, a small town about 4 hours east of Pretoria where about 60 Peace Corps Volunteers gathered before race day. We were up before dawn the next day and piled into combis (minibus taxis) to take us to the start line. The drive took about 25 minutes and drove up the course that the ultra marathoners would soon begin – and it’s completely up a mountain! We were dropped off at the peak for the ‘easy’ part of the race – 21.1 kilometers down the other side of the Longtom Mountain pass. It was quite chilly at the top, waiting around for the race to begin, but the excitement and crowds of people helped dull the pain. The cold left soon after the race began. This being my first half-marathon, I was quite nervous at the beginning, but once I got into the rhythm of the run it was ok. I enjoyed having lots of other people running around me which encourages you to keep going and really enjoyed the water stops where people were handing out all kinds of food and drink – little bags of water, cups of poweraid and coke, bananas, jelly beans, and candy bars! I skipped the coke and most of the sweets, but did indulge in some chocolate about halfway through when my 5am oatmeal had worn off. For me, the run was tough – this was definitely the longest I had ever run in my life, and it didn’t take long to start feeling the effects of the constant downhill – something we couldn’t really train for out in our flat part of the country. But the scenery was great, as was the encouragement I would get from the other runners around me. 2 hours and 8 minutes later I dragged my tired legs across the finish line, happy to be done and proud to have run the whole thing. Adam had a good run also – his second time on this course – and finished in 1 hr 38 minutes! I would like to take this opportunity to thank those of you who have donated to the KLM foundation. We didn’t run this race only for fun, but as a fundraiser for a great organization started by two former South African Peace Corps volunteers. Adam and I raised over $500 and were the 2nd highest fundraisers pre-race day. THANK YOU!! Donations are still being collected, so if any of you still want to contribute just use the information we e-mailed out to you or contact us if you don’t have that info.
My Mom and Matt arrived on the night of the 30th and since we were running the race the next day, they bravely wandered the streets of Pretoria alone until we could join them Sunday morning. We met up with them at the famous Sunday market and wandered through the stalls looking at goods ranging from African crafts to clothes and hats to CD’s and books. They made some nice purchases that morning and then we hopped in the car and drove up to Pilanesberg National Park a few hours north. We spent two nights there, just driving ourselves through the park and getting some pretty good sightings. We saw lots of rhino, elephants, zebra, and giraffe – not to mention all the little antelopes. We also got glimpses of hippo, the rare and endangered Sable antelope, wildebeest, jackal, and best of all, our very first black rhino sighting. We were sitting in a hide near a watering hole one evening when a mother and calf wandered out of the bushes and down for a drink. It was quite exciting as they are very rare to see. On the last morning there, we went for a drive before breakfast and were delayed by two huge male elephants that were browsing the trees on the side of the road and wouldn’t get out of the way! After trailing behind them for a good half an hour, we had to turn around and take a half hour detour in order to make it back in time for breakfast and checkout.
The next stop was Madikwe game reserve, a few more hours north, quite close to the border with Botswana and Gabarone, their capital city. We stayed in an excellent safari lodge there where we were driven around to find the animals and pampered with too much food and excellent lodging. The lodge’s grounds remain unfenced from the rest of the park and at night after dinner you are escorted to your room by a ranger carrying a big gun. We wondered if this was simply for show, but on our way to sleep on the last night, we walked only 50 yards away from a bull elephant browsing in the trees. Mom and Matt also enjoyed a mid-afternoon visit by a troop of baboons on their porch one day! On our drives here we saw much of the same animals, except for being able to view lions on every drive we went on. They weren’t too active, just sleeping constantly, but we got pretty close and were able to see a mother with her three older cubs. In the park there were also three African wild dogs – a very endangered species – awaiting release in a boma, a large fenced enclosure where the animals can get used to their surroundings for a few months before being released into the park. They were being transferred here from another park to try to establish a second pack of wild dogs in the park. Other highlights included seeing a tiny elephant calf and its mother drinking at a water hole. The guide estimated the calf to be around 2 weeks old and we laughed as it tried to gain control of it’s trunk and struggled to climb up a muddy bank. We were also able to briefly spot a herd of buffalo, bringing Mom and Matt’s Big 5 sightings up to 4, with only the leopard remaining elusive to them. And to Matt’s dismay, we finished our animal-viewing portion of the trip without having seen any tigers. :o)
The village tour was next. We spent two nights there, showing them around our town and village and eating more traditional meals. They met our host family and got the privilege of playing UNO with our host brother Paseka and helping him to celebrate his birthday a few days early. Mom and Matt bravely stayed with us, in our ‘guest room’ in the unused and un-electrified part of the house! They did fine without running water for two days, though I think they were pretty happy to see the shower when we arrived at our next destination, Kimberly.
In Kimberly, we stopped to view some very old San rock engravings depicting all kinds of local animal and people figures. There were hundreds of engravings just etched into the rocks that are strewn about the ground on top of a small hill – a site believed to be sacred to the San people. It was my first time there too, and very cool to see. As Mom is now a jewelry saleswoman and certified diamond expert, we had to visit the Big Hole in Kimberly to learn all about the diamond mine that used to be in operation there. The place has been upgraded nicely since Adam and I were there last, and there is now lots of interesting information on display in a museum, a film to watch about the height of the mining era, and of course a nice little vault of diamonds on display, including the first diamond ever discovered (by Europeans at least) in South Africa. We stayed at a little B&B in a historic home, and in the morning as we drove out of town, did a little sight seeing of other historic buildings and the old De Beers mine.
On Easter Sunday, we took the long drive from Kimberly to Magaliesburg, where we were staying for the night. We were supposed to take a hot-air balloon ride the next morning, as one last adventure but unfortunately it was canceled due to weather. This did however allow us to have a relaxed breakfast, a leisurely morning walk and some time at a nearby craft market – a calm morning after being on the go for most of the trip. Back in Pretoria we had time only for lunch before the airport shuttle arrived to whisk Mom and Matt back to the US. We had a really great trip and saw a lot. It is really neat to be able to show people around South Africa and our lives here. Thanks so much for coming – we had a great time! Anyone else out there who wants a hand-crafted South African tour had better get their requests in soon – 5 more months and we’re outta here!
Adam and I took a bus that night to Umthatha, a town famous for being one of the places where Nelson Mandela grew up. We actually passed by a house we were told was his – a big new place he has apparently just built. It was the worst bus ride ever – driving too fast on windy roads and blasting gospel music until 3am – didn’t get so much sleep. From Umthatha, we took two taxis to get to a very remote backpackers on the south-eastern coast. Well, actually the taxis didn’t take us there. The last taxi dropped us off at a small shop in the middle of nowhere and us with instructions only to ask for the ferry. Not knowing the local language, we communicated with only the Xhosa word for ‘ferry’ which we had gotten off the lodge’s website, and lots of gestures. From where we were dropped off, there was no water to be seen and I was a little worried that we were in the wrong place. We were told to follow a woman and we wound through a very picturesque village set among rolling green hills. We walked in silence, wondering what we would do if we were indeed in the wrong place, miles and miles of terrible roads between us and the nearest town, when the woman finally said “Oh, you going to David!” We didn’t know who the heck this David guy was, but yes, we supposed we did want David. So we said “sure, yeah, David” and kept walking. We eventually came around a hillside and there was the river where we sat to wait for the ferry, which was unloading people on the other side. The ‘ferry’ turned out to be a very rickety old rowboat, rowed by a young man. Adam and I, our guide, two young girls, and two old women all piled into the little boat, and we entertained them by taking photos of this comical river crossing. On the other side, we continued our walk, led by this very gracious young woman who took us to the gate of the place where we were staying and then continued her own walk home. As we crested the last emerald green hill, we were rewarded with a spectacular view of where we would be staying – a series of round huts and other buildings set on a small hill right next to the Indian Ocean.
We spent two nights here, called Bulungula, and I could have stayed for a week. We got the first night free, as we had come by public transport – a feat that not many travelers attempt. Most are shuttled in by a 4x4 vehicle – the only other way to get there. We walked on an empty beach, ate fantastic meals, and took a canoe trip up the river one day. We had great weather and it was super relaxing. Around the campfire at night we met some interesting people, including a woman who ran an organization that brings doctors from other countries for 2 years of service in rural clinics, a girl from Michigan who was doing student teaching in Durban, and the 3rd youngest member of South Africa’s parliament! The stars were amazing at night and there was a beautiful view during the day - I really could have stayed there a long time. But alas, we had a free ride back to Kuruman waiting for us – an opportunity you don’t pass up – so we had to leave. The free ride was from a guy that Adam has met who lives in Kuruman and runs many different businesses in town. He currently has a piece of property inside Addo Elephant Park, near the city of Port Elisabeth, that he has asked Adam for help with selling. So we met him there to go see the property – an old farm where he grew up – and take some photos before heading home. If any of you are interested yourselves or know someone who might be interested in buying a piece of land in a national park in South Africa, let us know! There are a few old buildings on the property already, but it would be a great place to put a safari lodge! We rode with this guy’s wife, two kids, one employee, and a dog for 12 hours back to Kuruman, arriving exhausted and possibly actually glad to be done with our vacation – or at least glad to be in one place for longer than 2 days.
Now we’re back in school and trying to get excited about the second term, but already looking forward to our next vacation! Next weekend is a big family event here, so I’m sure we’ll have some exciting stories to tell next time. Until then… Cheers!