Bored...

This post comes to you out of straight up, 100%, total boredom. It's Sunday at noon. This is what I've done so far today:

8am: Woke up to clucking chickens and mooing cows despite my earplugs
8am - 9am: Glared at Tony as he was sleeping because I was angry that he was able to stay asleep despite the noise and WITHOUT earplugs.
9am: Tried to uplaod pictures onto facebook
9am - 11am: Consumed an entire pot of coffee while yelling at the computer screen and telling Facebook that I would punch it in the face if I knew where it lived because it wouldn't let me uplaod my pictures.
11am: Made another pot of coffee.
11:30am: Googled "poisonous spiders of South Africa" because we found about 15 of these in the computer lab:






Meet the Brown Button Spider, a member of the Widow family, and definitely poisonous.
12am: Started writing this post.



In other news:
We've planned our 16 day Christmas vacation!!!! Yay!!! We've decided to travel up the South Coast and end in Durban. We're staring at a place called the Irie Lodge in Warner Beach (http://www.irielodge.co.za/), moving to the Mantis and Moon in Umzumbe (http://www.mantisandmoon.net/), then going to the Indigo Skate Camp for one night (http://www.indigoskatecamp.co.za/), and ending at Anstey's Backpackers in Durban for the last half of the trip. Words cannot describe our ridiculous amounts of excitement. Plus we're travelling with our dear friends Lauren, Andy, Casandra, and Kevin.


We are also excited because the beginning of our vacation marks the end of Phase 2, aka the Community Integration Phase (but more realistically known as Lockdown). This means we regain our status as human adults capable of making our own informed decisions. We can leave our sites when we want (pretty much), visit friends in other villages and provinces, take weekend trips, etc...!!!



I don't think I really have anything else to say...


I'd like to tell you about how we moved into our new house but that hasn't happened yet so it would be a lie.


We're in the process of making our Christmas cards...so that's exciting.


We found a kid named Obikeng that has a basketball so we're working with him to get the basetball goals lying ON the ground next to our Primary School put INTO the ground.


We've also been elected to the Grade 7 Farewell Party Planning Committee!

AND we want to say CONGRATS!!!! to Laura and Victor on their new baby Macario Doyle Meza-Rulon!!!!! We can't wait to meet him!!!

Ok that's it!


Kim (I refuse to put Tony's name on this post because he's sleeping...STILL!)

I know...it's been a while

So it's been like a month since our last post (minus that one I posted moments ago about transportation). I'd like to say we've been super busy but...that's not really true. We've just been kind of lazy about posting stuff.

Work has been...interesting. It's the last term of the school year so the teachers seem to be all consumed with filling out term reports and finalizing assessment schedules. Tony and I have been hard at work cleaning up the computer lab - turns out our primary school had 40...yes 40!! NEW computers sitting there...unused...for 2 years! They also happened to have a $2000 projection screen and a giant Smart Board lying around. I'm guessing all of this awesome stuff came from the District or the Province or some other important branch of the educational system hierarchy that requires a capital letter. Unfortunately a bunch of awesome stuff is only awesome if somewhere in the giving process the giver informs the givee(s) of how to operate said awesome stuff. Apparently this very imperative step was overlooked, thus the reason why everything has been sitting in a room unused for 2 years. Fortunately we got most of the computers hooked up last week and the projection screen working earlier this week. We tested it out by hooking it up to the computer and our hard drive and watching Jurassic Park and Back to the Future on the computer room wall. So we're pretty sure it works.

In other news - -
-We have officially entered the rainy season. Insanely intense storms that sound like a million freight trains are about to run over your face have become a many times weekly occurence. As a result the power flashes on and off even more that it did before. Here's Tony venturing outside during one of these devil-storms:

And here's a creepy picture of lightening bolts we took from our rondeval:

-We may have accidentally gotten a dog.Meet Spots (aka Bagels):

Spots is our neighnor's dog. Unfortunately they're not home a lot and don't feed him much so we started feeding him and now he won't go away. It's okay though because we like him. :) We're also trying to change his name to Bagels (for obvious reasons) - so far it hasn't worked but it's still early in the process.

-No. We still haven't moved into our house. Why? I don't know...

-Ummmmmm. I think that's it.OH. People back home - friends, family - send us some books...please! We've run out and I recently sunk so low as to read a book called Jamaica Inn by a woman named Daphne Demaurier. I know it sounds like a gem...but it wasn't.

Tune in next time when I make an attempt at writing a semi-serious post about the conditions/population in our village.

Love you all, miss you!

Kim and Tony

Transportation

I will now take this opportunity to explain to you the tranportation system of rural South Africa. As I've said in previous blogs our village is about 80k outside of a town called Kuruman - which is also our shopping town. There are a handful of small shops (referred to as Tuck Shops) in our village but you can really only get the basics there - bread, eggs,corn meal, giant bottles of sprite and fanta, chicken spice, soap, etc...you know the basics. On occasion some shops also have onions, tomatoes, and potatoes. Unfortunately we have yet to find a way to live only on the foods that the tuck shop provides so we go to Kuruman about every other week or so to get groceries. We've also gone there on occasion to run errands for the school - printing photos for the cross country team, etc...So, anyways, the point is, we go there on a fairly regular basis.
When venturing to Kuruman we have three options: Taxis, the Mega Bus, and Baakies

Taxis:
Taxis in South Africa are not the same as Taxis in America. In South Africa, taxis are large 12 to 18 person vehicles called Kumbis. Some Kumbis are well maintained and clean. Some are covered with colorful stickers, have doors held shut by rope, and sound like the entire underpart of the car is going to shake loose at any moment. You pretty much take whatever you can get. You have two options for getting a place on a taxi, you can call ahead of time and reserve a spot, or you can stand on the side of the road and wait for one to pass. All towns and cities have large taxi ranks where all taxis drop off their passengers. Just like the taxis themselves, taxi ranks come in varying conditions and ellicit varying reactions upon arrival, ranging from - "wow, this one has organized rows with signs" to "wow, this one has the distinct smell of urine in the air and that guy looks like he's probably gonna mug me." Getting home on a taxi is just as easy as getting to town. You generally show up at the rank, find your designated row or ask around to find the location of your village's cluster of taxis and hop on. Taxis don't leave at designated times, they leave when the taxi fills up. Asking the driver what time the taxi leaves is pointless and futile because he will most always give you some random and probably completely innacurate time. Most people just get on and sit and wait until it fills up. Taxi drivers are generally pretty nice guys, they do what they can and try to answer your questions and get you where you need to go, but it is still a business so, despite the fact that there is a clearly posted limit stating how many passengers each taxi can accomodate, they WILL cram in as many passengers as they can and, from my experience, it seems that babys and any children under the age of 10 don't count when trying to assess whether the taxi is full. Thus, a very roomy 12 person taxi can at any point turn into your worst nightmare - you clutching the edge of the seat trying not to fall off and 15 other people trying to do the same while balancing bags of food and screaming baby's on their laps...all while riding along a very bumpy dirt, gravel road for about an hour and a half. It is also worthwhile to mention that taxi drivers seem to be very territorial about their music and most have installed gigantic speakers throughout the taxi to make sure that everyone can hear. The music usually falls into one of two categories - the dreaded, inescapable, house techno crap OR the Weekend at Bernies theme music...the latter being the obviously more preferrable of the two. (Side Bar from Tony - Most taxis have a 1000watt amp with 2 12's)

The Mega Bus
The Mega Bus is just like it sounds. It's a gigantic bus. There are many Mega Buses that have routes through the rural villages and drop off at the Kuruman taxi rank. The Mega Bus runs on a very regular schedule so you don't have to sit around and wait for it to fill up, plus their Maga-ness means there's a lot more room to spread out. It's also 6R cheaper. The only down-side to the Mega Bus is that it doesn't run on Sundays and there are occasional fights because someone stole someone elses corn meal or someone is passed out drunk in the middle of the aisle.

Baakies
Baakies are trucks. Some baakies have campers over the top and benches in the back and operate as taxis. It is against Peace Corps policy for us to use these unless we are able to get a seat in the front with the driver. This is probably for good reason and I would imagine that riding in one would be like multiplying the shittiness of those really bad taxi experinces by 3. I mention it because it is a means of transportation that many local people use to get to town and from village to village.

For probably obvious reasons, we try to take the Mega Bus whenever possible. We also feel that, in the event of an accident (which is probably high as car accidents are the leading cause of death in South Africa), our chances of death (based on size, overall condition, and people to space ratio) seem to be much lower in the Mega Bus versus the taxi.

I hope this has cleared up any questions that you might have on how we get from point A to point B.
That's all for now!
Kim and Tony