Uh oh, there goes February!

Hmm, for lack of a better title, can you tell that I am a bit stretched! Teaching has me up till 11 o'clock some nights tackling the ever-surmounting grading. I'm finding it impossible to want to mark papers when I come home....thus I've been spending my afternoons baking and cooking up a storm, even finding vast amounts of pleasure in cleaning Johannes' bakkie or weeding the garden. Ay yai! The evenings are thus spent with the buzzing stick insects, praying manti, and moths (who I hope and pray don't attack me with acid again - my leg is still oozing blisters) and the entertainment of my students' english skills (spelling words like conflict get mistaken for cornflake because of the speech patterns!).

Thus, with little time to say too much, I'm going to leave this short and sweet with pictures for fodder. Please enjoy the friendly host of giraffes who wander not far from my backyard and the in-progress photos from the bar Johannes has been building (providing a backdrop for some painting). Enjoy a nibble from Johannes' homemade February 11th birthday cake and an angry snort from the teed off elephant (only one I've seen on the farm).

Bewitched

Life is unfolding rapidly and every day presents some new twist or turn. I now have 2 weeks of school under my belt. Some days I am impressed with how well it is all going. Other days I manage to be stunned by some facet or other.

It’s been an eventful 2 weeks. Finding my place in the school, getting to know and relate to the other educators, creating a platform with my students, balancing home life with school and negotiating the differences of living on a game farm and working in a town with black locals (2 very alternate realities).

I am always amazed with how steep my learning curve can be. When do we as humans ever know enough? When does our learning serve us and when does it stunt our growth?

I had one of the blondest and scariest moments of my life last week when I opened the electric gate to leave in the morning. While out of the car, I heard a noise from behind….only to witness Johannes’ bakkie rolling down the dirt road towards a ditch. Imagine the simultaneous amazement and panic on my face when I realized I wouldn’t make it there in time! Once the car finally stopped (luckily it didn’t have to roll far before stopping, thus little momentum for damage), I hopped in and tried my darndest to drive it over the rocks it had settled on. No such luck. It didn’t help that 2 days earlier I’d flooded my phone in the river! Alas, on my 4 km walk to the farm entrance, I saw the farm manager and he drove me back to winch Johannes’ car out. Where were my brains? By the grace of God, sometimes things do work out okay.

Today I witnessed the byproducts of black magic for the first time. I am still sitting with a heavy, thick fog in my chest. While working out of the staff room for my planning period, 4 boys brought in a limp, dead weight girl into the room. I was the only adult there and made sure someone had called her parents. They set her down on the dusty floor and within minutes a loud, high-pitched scream emanated from 2 classes down. The seemingly lifeless girl on my hands, Zandile, immediately jumped up and ran for the door and started fighting the boys, kicking and punching at them. The boys, stalwart, held her securely when she started tearing at her throat and fell to thrashing on the ground. Mind you, this was no epileptic seizure. Her eyes were tearing, but finally she resisted the need to thrash and I held a cool, damp cloth to her head, having no idea what else to do.

A few minutes later another girl (supposedly the one who had been screaming) was brought, limp and lifeless to another spot on the staffroom floor. She began screaming again and Zandile took to screaming as well. While it was obvious these two girls were on totally alternate planes, their behavior was absolutely similar. I was so impressed with the young gentlemen who brought the girls in, sweetly untying their neck ties, unbuttoning their collars so they could breathe more easily, smoothing down their skirts so their underwear didn’t show. They were clearly practiced in this routine.

I had seen a girl last week, lying on the floor in the staff room and had been told she’d been bewitched and infected with evil spirits. At the time, I had no sense of how on earth that could result in an inert girl who needed to be taken away by an ambulance. I though maybe she was epileptic and these other educators were not educated enough to identify it. But that moment last week prepared me to understand some of what was happening today while these girls’ spirits unfolded on the floor today.

After the girls had tired out, they lay on the floor at haphazard angles, and I looked at my grading sheet trying to figure out how to resume my work. Their dark demons, whether they were real or not, had poured something toxic into the air that made me feel heavy. I talked to some other teachers to understand what I had seen. It felt something like watching a National Geographic episode on tribal culture in anthropology class to see these girls absolutely fall apart.

Apparently there are at least 6 girls haunted by evil spirits at our school. They experience these demons at home and at school. The teachers try to keep the girls separated because they spur each other on. At least two of them see the same black man dressed in a suit chasing them. Because this only seems to be affecting females, I inquired as to it being related to rape trauma. I was told a few of these girls have been raped, so I wonder if culturally this is a way to let go of what we have even in Western culture: inner demons.

Solace. I am lucky to have a place that pours out beauty in a variety of forms. Today, that is what is needed to recover from the weight of such a deep day. Unfortunately, I’m feeling a bit leery of my local insect friends who zoom around at all intervals through the day. Including the moth that excreted some poison onto my leg, resulting in a long 7 inch, burn-like, blistering wound. I tell you, everyday brings something new! Still, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Sebenzakanzima Secondary School

I certainly thought I'd be writing Farm, Part II well before I had fodder for any other writings. Instead, I have news to share: today was my first day at my first paid job in almost 19 months! In what must be my shortest job search to date (1 week), I got an SMS on Monday from one of the local principals I was introduced to last week. I drove to the school, Sebenzakanzima, just outside of the limits of Pongola expecting to fill out the paperwork for an official job application. Instead, I was handed papers titled "Assumption of Duty." I was perplexed, not quite expecting what I was being offered, only to find out another position had opened at the school due to the death of a teacher.

And so, after filling out more paperwork yesterday and obtaining all the available English books possible, I assumed the available English teaching post for Grades 8, 9 and 10. I encountered a few of the other educators yesterday and they, too, were perplexed about me. Not being announced as a foreign volunteer come to save the day, they all assumed I was a white South African. A few made comments about how white South Africans have been fleeing overcrowding at the schools - with raised eyebrows and a glare made for cowering. However, I'm not really the white South African they think they're refering to and I'm also not fleeing.

With almost 250 names on my roster for 6 classes, it's going to be a crazy while ahead for me! I have no government curriculum to work from in a no-child-left-behind based system, so it should be interesting. I inquired today as to the discipline code at the school and, well, beating is an unofficial part of the game. So I made a strong point with my students today that I will never hit them, but that they shouldn't opt for pulling one over on me just because they think they can. In the end, my biggest threat is to send them to the principal, who will mostly likely give them a hiding or 3. It's the best I can do apart from alienating myself from the get-go and losing my new job. So, it's a bit harum scarum.

The classrooms are bare, bare, bare. The students stay with the same classroom all day long and the teachers float. Meaning the teachers all share 2 common spaces as their staff rooms. I'm sharing a desk with 2 other educators, one who kindly befriended me today. She even gave me a hamburger for lunch - it feels like school all over again! The teachers slowly started to talk to me today, but conceptually they don't seem to grasp that I'm foreign....and that I'm not living with my father on his farm nearby (a very strange rumor circulating). Everyone speaks Zulu as it is a Zulu-medium school. I don't understand a word excepting hello (sawubona) and work (sebenza), although I'm surely in the right place to start picking it up.

My work with the students went seemingly well, though there's not too much to report yet. I was so anxious yesterday, sleeping fitfully and eliciting words of comfort from Johannes. I don't know if I've ever been quite so nervous about teaching before. I think I realize that these students have never had a white educator before and was nervous that they wouldn't want to take me seriously. Luckily, they all seem to love learning English which will work fabulously to my advantage in the future!

One encouraging moment today came as the day was closing and I was invited to go to the visitation for the teacher who's place I'm filling. I gave about 8 teachers lifts in the back of the bakkie and we set out for Ncotshane (very difficult to pronounce with a click at the front of the word), the local township from where most of the students hail. The former teacher passed away Saturday, presumably from AIDS as many teachers here are dying from it. The visitations take place during the week, before the funeral which always takes place on a weekend. There is a huge ceremony involving a cow slaughter, so the weekend timing is a must.

When we arrived at the house of this teacher, all the women took off their shoes. As the women were filing in, the first teacher down on the ground, Disa, immediately started singing. The others joined in as they positioned themselves crosslegged on the straw mats. The men slowly entered as well (their shoes still on) and they joined the singing. It was incredibly beautiful and the moment's hesistation where I had not wanted to go (due to a long first day) melted instantly. Different teachers led the singing and the same ones led the group in Zulu prayers and passages from the Bible. It was a quiet house, where the sounds of the contracting tin roof made distinct clickings, along with the chorus of the roosters crowing outside. The old, old black women family members sat back, against the wall, letting the words wash over them, their eyes solemn and distant, but deeply open and watchful, their faces puckered with wrinkles from too much death and too much life.

At the end, I saddled off home after dropping the other teachers in town and carried on my long ride home. Home: where I shocked myself on a game fence yesterday and today where the warthogs greeted me through the long grasses and monkeys cried out from the trees. Not to mention the nice little poop our resident frog, Gregory, left for me right inside the doorstep. This feels like an impossibly unusual life I'm living right now. Truly African, in some ways endlessly authentic -- something I've been after with the culture for a long time. It felt good to be invited in today.

The Farm, Part I: the land & the trees

This weekend I had much more opportunity to view the vastness of the farm where I’m living. It is gargantuan. It spans 30km along one stretch of road and cascades across many hills and mountains deeper into the bush. The property is comprised of 13 previously independent farms, many of which were used for cattle farming.

The conservation tasks that lay before the manager at the inception of the farm, 9 years ago, were colossal. Part of what makes the bush-veld (field) so attractive to animals is the natural cycles of the land. In cattle farming the farmers resist the veld fires and attempt to suppress the natural burning and regeneration of the land. It became obvious to me on our drives this weekend the difference: in the former cattle grounds the veld is overgrown with bushes, especially those called “aliens” or plants that were brought in from overseas that overtake. In the conserved lands, the veld is vast, full of long tall grasses, velvety and rich. The acacia trees in the fields stand alone and aren’t choked out by other voracious plants. In the valleys are lush and thick with water loving trees, such as the tall mung’aro (African teak) trees.

But even in the conserved lands there are some nice groves of trees, filled with names like Acacia Tortilis, Red Ivory, Mung’aro, Kiat, and Mahoghany. All very different types of woods, all offering Johannes the chance of a lifetime to work with some very raw material. The friendly elephants of the farm have a nasty habit of knocking down the trees that get in their way. Which leaves many felled trees, ripe and ready for removal.

Just as Johannes and I arrived, another local woodworker brokered a deal with the farm to bring in a special saw to cut some huge logs on location. For the last 2 weeks, Johannes has been busy every day sourcing new logs in the woods and valleys. The Mung’aro is by far the largest, complicating matters a lot with heavy rains and waterlogged dirt roads. The first big project they tackled was a fallen Mung’aro log, about 5 feet in diameter and at least 12 feet long. The drawing I’m posting here was of this particular log, as the guys were setting up the saw to cut planks. What’s incredibly awesome for a furniture maker in this situation is that they get some very unusual cuts of wood, including edges with the bark along the sides. Additionally, Johannes has the control to keep planks together that originally matched in the tree itself - giving him the chance to make some seamless work that would be otherwise difficult to accomplish with store-bought wood.

The Mung’aro trees grow in the valleys along the rivers. They are thick and strong, with tall trunks uninterrupted by branches, making for nice long planks. But in-situ, they are even more beautiful, with incredibly complicated root structures grappling and curling around the rocks at its base. The saw dust has a divine smell, something equivalent to the smell of cedar, though entirely different at the same time.

There are so many trees to know and I’m lucky to have a good guide giving me their names. Our perusal of logs on Saturday and Sunday gave me a good view into the scope of the farm, though at any given point I probably couldn’t tell you exactly where I am! There are dozens of rivers, including the great Mkhuze River that flows into one of the country’s largest lakes, Lake St. Lucia. There are several incredible cliff-faces, including one that boasts a platform for camping and braaing while overlooking the Mkhuze River (Johannes and I are planning a weekend getaway on this farm, in this place for next weekend!). And what’s more, there are countless entrances and roads to navigate the farm from, making it feel impossibly large. But, with time, hopefully Johannes and I will get to make a lot out of that!