Ticket to Ride

I am at my wits end with the school administration and the pointless purpose to pursue government curricula regulations. In the past three weeks of school we have finished unexpectedly early 8 times. It makes it difficult to accomplish anything when you don't know how to plan your week or your day even.

I really do feel like a WASP sometimes and my work ethic seems to defy the African spirit to take a step back and breathe. Somehow, with school resulting in the education of a disadvantaged population, I cannot reckon with the breathing. Too much breath!

In past entries, I know I've dedicated very little to what it's like being so different all of the time. I have to speak quite openly about this because it's a huge part of my experience. My mother mentioned the other day that not many Americans could probably relate to my experience here in Zululand and she's very much so correct. It's not just the color of my skin but also the culture. The white Afrikaaner population here is strictly conservative and they tend to appeal to the "Boer"/farmer mindset that so easily supported Apartheid, though to be fair, I haven't met many of them.

While initially the Zulus at school raised their brows at me in skepticism they have slowly begun to embrace me. However, we will never be one and the same such that we'll be able to relate properly. Issues of gender and religion come into play. Not to mention family and the concepts that I should be well into bearing children by now and that a good wife caters for all her husband's meals. There are much smaller things, like we eat different things. I was seen eating celery one day (which I bought at the grocery store) and everyone was curious what it was! Meanwhile, my fellow educators commonly eat loaves of white bread for lunch, sometimes with the addition of a local spicy meat dish. I cannot imagine eating a loaf of bread for lunch and how that would wrench my stomach into a knot!

Some of the new student teachers simply stare at everything I do, as though they've never been around a white person before. It's unnerving that even to do something so simple as blow my nose becomes a point of interest for someone else. One of the teachers naively asked me what time of day most white people shower. As if I would know! I told her my routine but that's the best I could offer. In a way, I respect that my peers feel comfortable enough to ask me such questions and I hope in my responses I can dispel the myth that we (whites) are all the same. Just as on the flip side, I can easily dispel the notion that all black people are the same as well. Generalizations, as a rule, require great patience though often they evoke great frustration.

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Maybe some of you wonder what it's like to be gone from home so long? I think the edges get more and more blurry with each passing day of where I belong. The longer I stay here the more the foreign aspects become normal, comforting even. Some of the differences are still hard to deal with, but one learns to accept or even expect them as part of the status quo.

I've now melted from a tourist in South Africa into a volunteer, into a resident, into a citizen and now into a working-member of the country. Each way of participating allows a different perspective and provides different struggles. As a government-employed person I am more in the "norm" here than ever before and that has its certain perks. For instance, I'm a little less "special" and I don't seem like an alien from outer space for volunteering my skills to strangers. It also doesn't allow people to interpret my persona as "holier than thou." It's still odd for most white people to hear that I'm teaching in a black school (as the only white educator). However, at least now I'm in a fair trade between my skills and my employment and am doing just like the average Thando.

Being here longer does not mean life is getting easier. It's tough. Sometimes it's even tougher because I no longer have any deadlines attached to my time here. It's free, organic, open to movement and possibility. Many things could happen in an instant that would change my being here as I'm still not so attached. But, admittedly, I am attached. I'm attached to an aura that I cannot even name or put a finger on. I'm attached to being in a position that constantly makes me appreciate what I have and have had in life. It's difficult to imagine myself pulling away from such strong magnetic force.

Meanwhile my family is still overseas and my network of age-old friends. This also doesn't get any easier. The less you hear from people the more you wonder if they resent you for being away. I wonder if some family interpret my being here as "staying away." I wonder if my family and friends understand that I'm here because I'm drawn to this place rather than opposed to my homeland. Then I realize I'm making up all of these dramatic excuses because the real reason I don't hear from people anymore is because I'm so off the radar. Their silence is not personal and I have to remember that. Also, there's little I can do to rectify it.

It's now been eleven months since I was home and I do miss it every day. I am trying to live each day, one by one, with no knowledge or sight of where that will eventually lead me geographically. As a foreign citizen with no ticket home, that's the only way I can live for right now.

zoom broom

Nothing too big to share here, just the delight of an African grass broom. After the disaster of an old broom losing its handle, I tell you, this handy craft provides much domestic pleasure! And it only cost 10 American cents.

Elephant Release

This is just a peek at an elephant release I witnessed this week. Our game farm received an elephant they were "owed" by another local farm. This large truck carried the elephant in an interior compartment which prevents the elephant from stomping around too much. The compartment is open at the top, as you can see by the tree sticking out (elephant fodder!). Of course the elephant was sedated and he left the truck very slowly. When releasing an animal into the "wild" they first put them into a barbed wire enclosed area to get used to the new land before introducing them to the farm at-large. This particular fenced in area must be at least 2 acres. It's the closest I've been able to get to an elephant since I've been here. There are about 40 elephants total, but only about 6 bulls, so this new male addition will benefit the population greatly. Because the farm is so large, the elephants seem to hide away quite a bit so it was a real treat to get to watch this fella.

Memorial No.2

Vuyani Nyawo. Victim of one of the common car accidents pervading the area. A bright student in my largest class of 60, a face I can easily conjure up in my mind's eye from the usual blur of students. I cannot begin to suggest how sore and heavy it made me feel to have such a young life taken from my class.

After school all the educators collectively visited his home. At the back of the main house was a traditional round hut where we gathered, once again, women with shoes off and men with shoes on, on the floor. The floor was dark and cool in the heat, covered by a tapestry of mats, some grass woven, some made from recycled chip packs in the most elegant way. We formed a semi circle along the wall; the haunting singing began, while the mother and female relatives perched on mattresses opposite us. In the dense heat of the day the mother was wrapped in heavy blankets, a large woman forming a soft mass of fabric that heaved with the sobs of her great loss. My eyelids were wet with tears as I watched her body completely lose form and meld into the patterns of cloth.

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Sibusiso Ntshangase. Twenty-three years old. The man I give daily rides to and from school. He lives in the nearest town, Magudu, and walks at least 5 km just to meet me on the pavement where he hops in. Sibusiso is in my Grade 10 English class, the same as Vuyani was. Except, he's failing with a mere 19% average. I asked him the other day how many times he'd been in Grade 10. He said he didn't remember. I asked, "Two times?" He shook his head, "No." "Three or four times?" Still, "No." "Five times or six times?" He said, "Mistress, I don't remember," but somehow it seemed to suggest he'd repeated this level probably 5 or 6 times.

Sibusiso is quite tall, with a simple look on his face. The other students all call him Mazino and tease him for riding with me, but he always laughs good-naturedly. If I ride into town to go grocery shopping, he comes with and waits by the door to help me carry in my groceries. If I shop at the market, he helps me barter for mangoes, tomatoes, avocadoes and naartjies. I wonder often about Sibusiso's future. Where he will end up and how he will cope. His English is severely limited and I poke at it daily, teaching him the simple differences between when, where, who and what so that I can find out more about him and his life. We haven't gotten too far. I suppose he'll just keep going to school until he finds something better to do with his time. I know, it sounds shameful of me to say.

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The 5-Muskateers. They have no names. They walk in lines across the road, sometimes in groups of 3 and 2, sometimes configurations of 4 and 1. These students study at the school just below our farm. They wear sky blue uniform shirts, always unbuttoned on their commute. One student tends to wear either a bright red or blue shirt. If it’s warm, they go bare-chested, their chests hitting the air in such a proud, determined way. The shortest, who must be age 12, always has a stern, constricted look mounted on his face. They always walk the opposite direction to which I’m driving, so I encounter their 5 faces when walking some portion of their 10+ km journey. Waving to them with a flick of my wrist is a part of my daily routine and it cracks something marvelous in their faces. Strangely, it is just important a part of my day as my morning cup of coffee.

Bubble of life

At the beginning of April I had two dear friends, Sophia & Helena, visit from Cape Town. It was incredibly lovely to share a slice of this farm with some others and have them see into the window of this Pongola life! This followed a week's visit I made to Cape Town over my Fall Break. Both great moments for me -- I don't think I've ever talked so much in my life. Breathing out the isolation in words was a much needed detox. Not to mention the giggling!