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| The kids all love to be swung around. Even the ones that are too big if you ask me. I added this picture because you can see my house in the background! Its the yellow one at the right end of the row of houses above my head (the one thats in plain view) |
I have tried to add some more pictures! They aren't from this weekend, but hopefully you'll still enjoy them none the less.
Before I start telling you about my weekend I want to take a
moment to talk about a term I learned this weekend – “African Time.” I’m not
sure I have mentioned before how much this place reminds me of Hawaii, but when
my brother told me that a lot of people say they’re on “African Time” I was in
disbelief. What we have noticed about this program is that, although it has
been very well developed over the years, when we are given a schedule for the day,
the times are not exact. For some reason we end up waiting forever. My brother
attributed this to Africa time, very similar to Hawaii time, people have no
concept of a schedule. As my brother put it, a split second is more like 15 or
even 30, meaning 10 minutes somehow manages to turn into an hour. This is definitely
the truth, and us Americans have trouble adapting to this and it often causes
frustration among the group. Luckily, with my Hawaiian experience I am used to
things that should only take 5 minutes taking 45; however, we white folks stick
out even more when we walk. We walk with a purpose, rushing to get to the next
destination, regardless of if we have to actually be there at a specific time
or not. South Africans walk slowly, singing, dancing, and socializing along the
way with no sense of urgency about anything that they do.
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| Becky, Breanna, Me, Smu, and a bunch of the neighborhood Kids! |
Anyways, onto my weekend:
After school on Friday, we went to the minimall where we
picked up some postcards, and I got some markers and colored pencils. When we
got back to Cato we went down the street from my house to Silence Foods, which
is another house that sells chips (known as french fries in the US) out of a
little hut in their back yard. They are SO good, like, addictingly so, and they
are only 8 rand!
After getting some chips, a bunch of us went to Becky’s
house. It was raining and she has a covered area in front of her house where we
can all hang out outside but not get wet. Becky has a 7 month old little sister
who is adorable, so naturally I played with her the whole time while Seth,
Breanna, and Josh were having a sing along session with the most random songs.
At 6:30 I went home for dinner - chicken, potatoes, and
rice. I watched the news and some TV with my mama and my brother came over right
before Generations started. We all watched generations, and my mama would tell
Lungelo to shut up whenever he started talking during the show.
The rest of the night was made up of you have to be there
moments, but I’m going to do my best to explain them. First, Seth came over and
we watched “untold stories” Meanwhile, Mama started to explain to us how she
doesn’t always get along with one of our neighbors and now they are sick! She
doesn’t want to go over there because they were the only neighbors that didn’t
come visit and help her when she was sick. Then I asked her why a boy was
digging holes outside of their house and she explained that he was burying muthi
(pronounced moo-tee), which is like a medicine, but there is also buthi, which is a witchcraft, potion type thing. Then, while
cracking up, she was saying that she called her daughter and told her that if
she died it was because the neighbor was burying buthi! It was most likely muthi to
help cure the sick person in their house, but buthis are often used to send
ill-wishes. Anyways, mama was laughing so hard she was crying, which then made
Seth, my brother, and I start cracking up, and mama was generally being a riot.
Later that night I was talking to my brother and about to go
to bed when Breanna’s mom and aunt came marching through our kitchen. They
didn’t say a word to us and marched back to my mama’s bedroom apparently saying
in Zulu, “Gogo you must help us, we have a problem.” I then checked my phone
and I had a message from Breanna asking if I was still awake. My brother and I
both prepared ourselves for the worst. I was glad he was there to translate for
me though. So, as a little history, Breanna’s mama is pretty strict sometimes,
and it turns out that all that was wrong was that Breanna and Becky had gone
back to Breanna’s house and asked if Becky could sleep over, which immediately
caused a problem. Afterwards my brother said that he had thought someone had
died the way they walked into our house, and my mama kept saying “I don’t know
why they come to me! Its their problem, they should figure it out. Its not my problem,
so don’t ask me!” Everyone goes to my mama to find out what’s going on and to
get advice.
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| Speaking of my Mama, Here is a picture of when we first met!! |
Saturday was a lazy day. It was pretty rainy this weekend,
so unfortunately there wasn’t much outdoor activity. I worked on some homework,
studied for our Zulu test, hung out with Seth and Katie for a little bit. Went
on a short walk (it started to rain during it). It was the first time I went
out side and even thought to say the words “Its cold out!” since being here. I
also played with Smu’s friend Mandisa. She is 10, in 4th grade, and
doesn’t speak good English, so with Smu in Chesterville for the weekend we had
some trouble communicating with eachother… At one point while I was eating
lunch she kept trying to say something to me but I couldn’t understand.
Eventually, I’m pretty sure it came down to “I’m going to play. You’re boring.”
Oops! She came back eventually though and I gave her some markers and paper and
she drew me some pretty pictures and taught me some games, so hopefully that
made up for me being boring. Its hard to entertain kids when you can’t go outside!
After dinner I went over Becky’s house for a little while and played with her
baby sister, studied Zulu, and bonded with her 15 year old host sister. I went
home around 8, watched definitely maybe with my two brothers, and then went to
bed!
Sunday was pretty similar to Saturday with lots of homework
and relaxing. I actually took at nap… at 10 am? Despite it being the weekend, I
still found myself getting up at 8 each morning, so by 10 I’m already
exhausted. After my nap, I went to Josh’s with Breanna to study Zulu, went back
to my house to write an assignment, and then Josh and Breanna came over my
house to study Zulu. It was rainy and cool again which was a nice change from
the hot and humid weather we have been having. I actually slept under a sheet!!!
Ok sorry that has nothing to do with my day Sunday. Back to the point, the
highlight of my day (because I finally felt like I was being useful around the
house and not just sitting on the couch watching TV while my mama cooks and
cleans), was getting to re-cement our gate with my older bro! The bracket and
anchor that holds the top of mama’s gate to the wall of her house has been
breaking and eroding a hole in the wall. So Lungelo brought over some cement
and we went to town. We also fixed part of the wall that was crumbing away. It
proved to be quite the bonding experience for us and he was impressed with my
desire to play with the cement.
Whiteny Houston’s death has also caused quite the ruckus in
South Africa. I swear it has gotten more news coverage than any other story.
Breanna sent me a text Sunday night saying how her and her aunt, who is usually
mean and doesn’t talk to her, bonded over her death, and my brother and my mama
both started belting out the words every time they played a tribute to her. My
brother, and actually South Africans in general, sing and dance constantly. The
other night my brother was making fun of a reggae song that was playing on the
TV and made up is own, Jamaican accent and all. It had something to do with
waking up in the morning, going to the cubbord, and finding there is no jam…
between that and his dance moves, I was almost on the floor laughing as he kept
repeating “no jam.” Last night he kept singing Whitney Houston songs, and then
suddenly switched to an opera rendition of my name while in the bathroom
washing the tools we used to cement the walls. Always entertaining, that’s for
sure.
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| This is Clive, our very intelligent and very creative lecturer! |
Now its Monday again and I’m sitting in the SIT house. We
had our first Zulu test this morning, which I think went pretty well. Ngizama
ukukhuluma isiZulu! (I try to speak Zulu!) I think I’ve mentioned Beverly our
Zulu teacher before. She is quite the character and sometimes there is no
coherence to the things she teaches us. During tutorial I am also in her group
and she drills us on the lesson of the day and teaches us new random words,
while we can hear the tutorial group outside with Thula learning how to sing
the Zulu part of the circle of life and laughing loudly. It gets rather
depressing, especially on a Monday morning, but I just keep telling myself that
the extra work with the Bev-ster will help in the long run! I also got my first
field studies seminar assignment back and did well on that so I guess all in
all this week is off to a pretty good start.
A few things to look forward to:
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NGO visit on Tuesday to One Voice
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Another clinic day on Thursday
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A Zulu party Friday/Saturday?
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Another weekend out in Durban!
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