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

An Identity Crisis and the Great Garage Band War of '09

As you may remember me saying in one of our first posts we were given the Setswana names Mpho and Lebogang by our host family in our training village.

When we arrived at our permanent site we were told that we would be given new names but our host father forgot and never named us. We were secretly totally ok with this because we think the whole naming thing is a little weird and we decided that we would just use the names Kimberly and Tony. Tony is easy enough to say/remember and Kimberly is actually the capital of the Northern Cape Province (where we live!) so it doesn't get much easier than that!

Most people were ok with this but SOME people thought it was totally unacceptable. "You are living in Bothithong - you must have Tswana name...you MUST." We were able to politely explain to most that we were never given a Tswana name in Bothithong and were fine with using Kimberly and Tony. Some still would not have it, so on a taxi ride to town one day the woman sitting in front of us turned around to ask who we were, where we were from, etc... At some point she got bored and decided to end our conversation but shortly after she turned around she whipped her head back and said "You are Tato (me), You are Tebogo (tony)!!"...as if she'd recieved some vision from God or a subliminal message from some unknown source informing her that the two Americans behind her were "Tato and Tebogo!!!!" After her outburst she turned around and didn't say a word the entire rest of the taxi ride. We kind of just laughed it off...ha, ha, crazy lady on the taxi.

That is, until a few days later when we started to hear people in the village yell "Tato...Tebogo!" as we walked to the shop. Apparently word had gotten out and we decided to just go with it. Sure, whatever, we didn't really need/want names but now that they've been given to us we'll just use them if people ask for our Tswana names.

ALSO, apparently some people also heard that our names in Marapyane were Mpho and Lebogang. I MAYBE told one or two people in passing that we had those names in our training village...but that was obviously enough to get a whole group of people calling us Mpho and Lebogang.

So now we had a group of people that called us Kimberly and Tony, a group that called us Mpho and Lebogang, and a group that called us Tato and Tebogo.

BUT IT DOESN"T END THERE!

The other day we got a knock on our door and found a group of about 5 or 6 kids standing there. They came to say hello and also inform us that we must both change our names immediately. Tato and Tebogo were not good names. As it turns out, the oldest daughter of the family we stay with is Tato and there can't be two Tatos in the same family so they decided that Kerabo would be my new name. Tony was told that there was already a Tebogo that lived on this side of the village and that this was grounds to start a name brawl and that Tebogo #1 would probably "hit him and maybe stab him (insert jabbing/shanking motion)" because he had the same name. Fairly sure that Tony's life was not in danger, we tried to convince them that Tony was just going to keep Tebogo. They insisted that he would "for sure get stabbed," and Tony finally relented and allowed them to give him a new name. After much discussion they settled on Malafats (which is, coincidentally, the name of our host family's dog).

So now we each have four names; for me - Kimberly, Mpho, Tato, and Kerabo and for Tony - Tony, Lebogang, Tebogo, and Malafats. We've gotten used to answering to all 4

In other news - We found something else to keep us busy :

Please enjoy these totally dumb ringtones created in garage band. :)

The first was created by us to use when our friends Lauren and Andy (who we're super couple-gay for) call. The next was their retaliation against us for creating such a horribly obnoxious ringtone involving their names.

This is the beginning of the Great Garage Band War of '09.

Love you all!!

Kim and Tony

Finally!!!
The first of many videos to come.
The Rondavel Tour, mind the spelling error in the video's title though.

A Tale of Two Ovens (and other stories from the past two weeks)

It’s official! Tony and I have graduated from trainees to full-fledged volunteers. On September 17, 2009 at the Mmabatho Palms Resort and Casino in Mafikeng we swore in with our 39 fellow friends and trainees.

But let me back up a little and explain how we got there…

After our site visit we returned to our training village, Marapyane, and our first host family to finish up training and take our dreaded tests. The most feared and evil of which being the LPI or Language Proficiency Intake. Our task was to sit in a room and have a 30 minute conversation with our tester in Setswana. This was followed by a randomly drawn situation card which ranged from useful scenarios like – You meet someone on a taxi that you think can help you with a project you’re working on, explain your project and ask them if they’d like to get involved. – to completely useless scenarios like – Your family is coming to visit from America. Call a hotel and make a reservation for them. (I call this useless because everyone, even Tswana speaking people, would use English to do this). Peace Corps requires a score of intermediate-low to pass and I was sure I failed miserably but somehow both Tony and I scored intermediate-high! I’m still slightly convinced that the tester mixed up my tape with someone elses but whatever, I’ll take it.

After testing came shopping day…l bet you’re wondering why I followed that with a … and not a !, because if you know me at all, you know that I have a love/talent for shopping. Not this time. We were dropped off at the Collonade Mall in Pretoria at about 11:15 and told to be back and ready to go by 2:30. That gave us approximately 3 hours to buy everything we needed (house-wise) for the next 2 years. That means pots, pans, an oven, silverware, plates, storage, etc…Now, we can definitely get most of these things in our shopping town but then the problem becomes how to get them from there to our village since the only transport back and forth is by taxi and taxi = many people packed into a kumvi and definitely not enough room for stuff. So it was either get it now or risk not being able to get it for a long time. In an effort to maximize our time we and some of our other couple friends developed a divide and conquer strategy. The boys took half the list and went one way, the girls took the other half and went the other way. This would give us plenty of time to get everything AND have lunch and a beer before we had to leave. It’s fail-proof, right??? Wrong, don’t worry we find a way to mess this up, just you wait.

The whole thing was a blur, frantic conversations about which electric kettle was the better buy, lamp shades flying, “are these dish cloths ugly?” It can be best compared to an episode of that show Supermarket Sweep, except not fun and with no cash prizes at the checkout counter – just a problem with my credit card that forced me to jog to the opposite end of the mall to withdraw cash from the ATM.

After all of our items were finally purchased and packed onto the truck the girls team and I went to the *Spur (see below for an explanation of this amazing establishment) for a celebratory beer. All was well until the boys showed up and Tony and I discovered that ‘oven’ was on both of our lists. That’s right, we bought two ovens. Tony sprinted back to the truck to try and get it off to return it only to find that the truck had already left. I tried really hard to care but I was too worn out and really enjoying my beer and friends at the Spur and I figured we’d work it out somehow, which we did - thanks for buying our spare oven Hillary! So all in all, shopping day = mass chaos/confusion/insanity but all worth it for the beer and friends at the end.

After shopping day and testing, all that was left was to say goodbye to our host family. This was much harder than we thought it would be. We’d grown used to the crowded house, the loud music, and kids 24/7 and we’d really come to love the entire family. The last night they bought us a cake and threw a little goodbye party and we exchanged gifts. They gave us a beautiful set of embroidered sheets and we gave them a set of new knives, a photo album full of family pictures we’d taken over the past 2 months, and Connect Four of course (because every family needs connect four). This is most definitely my favorite new picture:

I think that pretty much brings us back to swearing in...which was awesome. We got to relax with all of our friends one last night at a super nice hotel and casino before we all went our seperate ways. The new US Ambassador to South Africa was there too and he even posed for a super cheesey prom style photo with the couples and the Peace Corps country director! Which I don't have because my camera batterie went dead before we took it - but here's a pic of me and Tony right before the swearing in:

Now we're back at our pemanent site...for good. We are in what Peace Corps refers to as "Phase 2" or the "Community Integration Phase," until December 17th. During this phase (which used to, very accurately, be called "Lock Down") we are pretty much forbidden to go past our shopping town because we are supposed to be getting to know the community and our fellow teachers (although we do get a few weekends leave for Thanksgiving and to visit other volunteers at their sites). This is all great - EXCEPT, 5 days after we got here school let out for Spring Break and all the teacher's left town so we have A LOT of free time. Like, A LOT. Sleeping late is out of the question because the chickens won't allow it, I've yet to get any knitting or art supplies from town, and reading, interneting, and watching movies can only kill so much time in a day. SO, Tony and I have developed this list:

TOP TEN THINGS to do during a Spring Break on Lockdown:

10. Make your own horse shoes

9. Fashion a weight set out of concrete and rebar

8. Try to lure baby goats with rotten carrots

7. Learn how to raise chickens for eggs

6. Start a running club - (possible with absolutely no effort by jogging through the village and seeing how many children will stop what they're doing and randomly decide to jog with you - despite the fact that they're wearing giant combat boots or no shoes at all)

5. Listen to the hand-crank transistor radio while waiting for solar batteries to charge

4. Chase cows away from your laundry

3. Stare out the window of your current house at your future house wondering when the renovations that were supposed to start a week ago will actually start.

2. Take a bus to town and sit there in the hot sun for 45 minutes while two women scream at eachother because one of them threw the other's corn meal out the window.

1. Hypothesize ways to keep your margerine from melting because you can't figure out how to get the rifrodgerator you bought from town to your house.

Let us know if you can think of anything else we could do!

That's all for now!
Tune in next time for a tour of our rondewal, and an update on our new house.
Later,
Kim and Tony

Livin' on the Edge...of the Kalahari and a Bipolar Meltdown

So I guess it has been a while since our last post and a BUNCH has happened, I just haven’t had time to sit down and write about it! I’ll try to organize this the best I can. I wrote about three different posts during this month but didn't have a chance to post them so this will be an attempt to combine them all:


Sickness! –About half of our training group got the flu! It sucked pretty badly and enough people got it that they ended up moving quite a few people (including Tony and I, because our family was sick, as was I) back to the college so we could recover. Our little “quarantine” actually ended up being really fun and I got to know a few people that I didn’t know that well before…and don’t worry parents I am fully recovered. ☺


Host Family Hang-ups – Now, don’t get me wrong, we REALLY love our host family. They’ve been absolutely wonderful to us and I feel like we’ll stay in touch with them for years to come. That being said, I am 100% ready to move out and regain some personal space. We live in a VERY large family and privacy/quiet time is pretty much impossible. The noise starts anywhere from 5am to 7am, depending on what day it is, and it starts with multiple slamming doors, yelling children, a crying baby, and -what I find MOST baffling- house music blaring from the living room speakers. The music is the worst. Why??? Number 1, it’s sucky music, and number 2, it’s so incredibly loud that, at times, I feel like it’s shaking the whole house and I’m seriously concerned that the windows in our bedroom are going to shatter. You probably think I’m exaggerating...but I’m not. The music continues from about 5am to at least 7pm, sometimes later.
I’m also really ready to cook start cooking for ourselves. As much as I appreciate them cooking dinner for us most nights, it usually ends up being some sort of boiled meat and paap, and I feel I’m missing out on some very important food groups…mainly fruits and veggies. As a result we pull oranges off of our neighbor’s trees and pound lemons (which are much less sour than in the US) like nobodies business.



Permanent Site Placements – YES! We finally got our permanent site placements. Tony and I will be moving to a medium sized village in the Northern Cape…basically on the edge of the Kalahari Dessert. We’re about an hour from a much bigger town called Kuruman. Kuruman is our designated “shopping town” where we’ll go every other week or so to get groceries, hang out with other volunteers, spend the night from time to time when we need to get away, etc…
We spent half of last week at our supervisors workshop at a VERY nice resort called the Red Sands. It pretty much rocked our socks off hard-core style. We stayed in these super awesome chalets and the food was ridiculous and there were monkeys that jumped all over everyone’s cars Jumanji style. ALSO, there were showers…yes, HOT SHOWERS. HOT SHOWERS. One more time…HOT SHOWERS. We went over some more Peace Corps Policy and met our future supervisors/the principal of one of the schools we were going to be working in. All in all, what these few days boiled down to was basically a cruel, cruel trick…a momentary stay in the lap of luxury before we were thrust out into the hardships of village life.
After our stay at the Red Sands our principal drove us to our future home. I’ll be honest with you here and say that after he left us, I cried for the first 30 minutes because our electricity wouldn’t work and our rondewal was SO tiny that, with our luggage and furniture, we could barely move. I was also slightly concerned about the fact that it was a rondewal (which is basically a round house with a thatched roof), due to my grass/pollen allergy…something I informed Peace Corps of...more than once. Plus, per Peace Corps policy, couples were supposed to be given a dwelling with at least 2 rooms.
BUT, as we settled in and met our host family…and Tony fixed the electricity…I regained my composure and decided that I would discuss the living situation with Peace Corps the following week. (Which I have…and we’ll be moving across the street into a house when we return in a week and a half or shortly after.)

The next two days we spent visiting one of our schools, observing, and getting to know the teachers and our host family. We basically live on the compound of an elderly couple. Our "dad" is awesome. When we walked up he was busy carving a giant wooden cane in the shape of a snake because he pulled a muscle while playing soccer at the senior recreational facility in the village. We later found out that his favorite retirement hobby is carving wooden toys…Tony almost cried. Everyone in the village was incredibly welcoming and happy to meet us. They made sure we had everything we needed and our principal took us around to meet important members of the community.
Our weekend activities also included a nature walk along the local river with some of the neighbor kids. They basically caught every animal they could find to show us, including giant grasshoppers, frogs, crabs, and baby goats. Later that day, hours after our nature walk ended, they even knocked on our door to show us a giant rat they’d caught...it was pretty gross…but also pretty funny. ☺

So, despite my minor melt down, we really had a great time at our site and are looking forward to living and working in our village. After talking to a few of the other trainees I found out that pretty much everyone had a similar melt down and we decided that Peace Corps is basically like a trip of bipolar insanity…complete with really high highs and really low lows. One minute you’re a puddle on the floor saying, ‘what was I thinking doing this!’ and the next you meet a group of kids or an elderly man that are so happy to meet you that you remember why you did and think, ‘how could I ever think of leaving before my two years is up!’ I think the hardest part will be being away from our family and friends back in the states but I’ve decided that the key is to take things one day at a time. The prospect of 2 whole years away from everyone is really hard to think about and on the bad days maybe I just need to think about getting through the month, or the week, or maybe even just that day.

For now, we’re back at our training site for one more week to finish up, say our goodbyes to our training host family, and have our swearing in ceremony.
Miss you all ☺
Kim and Tony


ALSO - If you wanna send us a package here are some things that we could use that we can’t get here or are too expensive/hard to get here:

DVD’s (movies or tv shows) – What we REALLY need is someone to get us an external hard drive, load it up with a ton of movies, tv shows, etc… that we like and then send it to us. This is asking a lot, we know, and are totally fine if this never actually happens.
Kraft macaroni and cheese
Magazines – Kim’s favorite is BUST but any girly magazines will do, Tony’s is whatever skateboard/science mags you can find.
Yarn and knitting needles
Nice Shampoo/conditioner
Flip flops
Luna bars (peanut butter cookie, cookies and cream, smores)
Jump ropes
Stickers
Deflated basketball
Stickers
School Supplies (I can be more specific about this later)
Dried herbs
Pretty things that will make us smile


Also – if you should choose to send us a package please make sure you write that the value is $0, wrap it in multiple layers of paper or bubble wrap, and say/write on the outside that it is either donated books, or religious materials. If you don’t, they’ll search it and charge us a bunch of tax in order to pick it up. ☺