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Published: June 22nd 2013
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July 2013
Site Visit to SA24 Thomas Howell's home Hello! It’s morning; I’m typing with fingerless gloves and wearing long underwear under pajamas with wool slipper socks and a fleece jacket. It’s our winter, and gets quite cold once the sun goes down at 5:30 until it comes up at 6:30. It’s the end of term 2 and I look forward to a 3 week holiday (when I will attend district curriculum training and teach extra class sessions for Gr 12) . And most importantly,
it will soon be a year since I arrived in South Africa.
I attended a short training for those of us who plan to host SA28’s, due to arrive in two weeks. Peace Corps Trainees will shadow an experienced PCV (that’s me!)for one weekend of their 10 week training. They will meet my host family, walk around my village and spend a day at my school, and pepper me with questions. I remember asking Thomas Howell (our site host last July) whether he liked winter or summer best. It actually snowed one day while we were staying at his site, and his family brought us a heater the second day. (I haven’t bought a heater because I’m tough...or is
it, I’m cheap?) Thomas’ immediate answer was that he preferred winter. I have experienced summer in SA now and I understand why he didn’t have to think twice to decide.
The training was great just to see other members of SA26 (my group), to see SA24’s I had met when I was a trainee, and to meet other PCV’s. I met Merideth and Gary, from Coeur d’Alene, ID who are my age..and most exciting, Merideth has a LOOM! They are COS’ing (Close of Service) this September and will return home. But it was great to meet and talk, and also share my weaving contacts with Merideth so she can dust off that loom. I also met PCV’s who live where there are much longer, hotter summers and shorter, warmer winters. I am happy with the proportion of cold to hot in my area.
It seemed a good way to mark the year by collecting photos of PCV’s from the start of my service to the present. It was sad to look at photos of friends who have returned to the States. This is called ET’ing (Early Termination of service) Each left for a variety of reasons,
3 or 4 left during training and then 11 or so since then. We have gone from a group of 44 to 27 or 28. Occasionally I list the names and count who has gone and who is still here, but my numbers are inexact right now. When PCV’s from other SA groups meet, a common topic of conversation is “What’s your rate of ET?”. Some groups have only lost 3 or 4 members. I don’t know that there is a reason why some groups lose so many more either. Peace Corps is changing its policy this year (they are always trying to get it right!) and is placing PCV’s of SA28 in only one province, with two volunteers in the same village if possible. Our group is spread out over two provinces and few have another volunteer nearby. I feel very lucky that my original language study group was placed where we are each within an hour’s travel to two shopping towns, so we meet for lunch almost every Saturday.
So to run through the year with the pictures. The first is at Thomas Howell’s home in Limpopo province. This is our language group with Thembi our
LCF (Language and Culture Facilitator) and Thomas Howell’s host mother and her son. Our language group originally had six, but Mary Kate returned to LA in July. (She flew back here in March to do some sightseeing in Botswana with Sharon. I went along on a visit to the nearby Buddhist temple.) In this photo is five of us along with Thomas Howell. Pat is on the far left and she returned home just before we were sworn in as PCV’s in Sept. Pat had 5 patches on her backpack for all the countries she had served in as a PCV. She was in her early 80’s and had so much spirit. But she was having more physical difficulties than she had expected and we were all so sad to say good-bye to her.
PCV’s are predominantly in their mid-20’s. I went on a short day hike with a group led by Joshua, one of our LCF’s. I am the youngest of the “elder” section, who are in their 60’s and retired. There were three of us women on this hike, Sharon, Lee and me. Sharon and Lee are also in the photo with the pots on the
day we all cooked a thank-you meal for our host families. Another photo at this event is of George with my host ugogo,Lina, and her grandbaby. George is wearing a tie beaded with South African colors. George lived down the road from me for the two month training time and was the best at greeting Lina everyday when we walked to our language classes. George and I went back to Watervaal (an Afrikaans name pronounced VaterFall) in February and I’m sure Lina was happier to see George than me!!!
Then there is swearing in day which made us official volunteers. Here is our language group and we have all made it through one year. Congratulations to Eva Cappuccilli from Tennessee, George Nishikawa from California, Sharon Minick from Colorado, and me from Washington/Idaho!!! The very next day after swearing in we packed up our stuff to move to permanent sites. In this photo you can see four people with shaved heads. 6 or 7 young women and men in our group did this. I saw some of them at the training last week and their hair was growing out quite nicely.
In addition to our language group
of four SA26’s who live in the KwaMhlanga area we have two CHOP volunteers. CHOP is the health program that PC runs, and the education program is SCRP.....remember the acronyms that PC is rife with? Hence the name of this blog. Lilly is SA25 and started her service six months before we did, and Hannah is SA27 and just arrived in February. The photo is at Roman’s Pizza in George’s shopping town, where they have the best spinach and feta pizza!
Getting together to eat and talk and then grocery shopping/internet cafe/post office errands is the routine. But one day we went for a hike right outside my village. The pictures are poor quality because I took them with my phone. Jane, a young woman in Kameelpoort, was our guide. Here we Americans were, dressed for hiking, and she wore a skirt and slip-on dress shoes. She took us in a round-about fashion to the hills around here, but had to go back to the village to ask the way to the creek. So the Gr8 boy, Elvis, that she asked for directions led us to this really pretty place in the hills. I hope we can get
Meal to Thank our Host families
Sharon and Lee survey the cooking and cleaning. back there again sometime.
I hope you enjoyed this photo tour of my year so far with the Peace Corps. I am not the best with remembering to take photos, but plan to post more of my little home/village/shopping town life, and of course, of the school, teachers and learners.
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Kristen
non-member comment
Congrats on year anniversary!
Carolyn, congratulations on your one year anniversary in Africa! It's so fun to see all these pictures. You will treasure these the rest of your life I'm sure! I especially like "our hiking group" where you look so happy! It helps so much to see pictures of where you are. Life continues to go fine here. Johanna graduated from Evergreen last weekend, K. and I went to visit Kaia in Brooklyn this spring, very fun and good trip. We still spend most weekends working on our house and catching up with each other. My mom keeps declining mentally little by little but she's still in her independent living "bungalow" and in good physical health. I hope your mom is doing ok. How long will you be in SA? I hope you are as happy as you look in the pictures. Thanks for writing such good blog posts Carolyn. Lots of love Kristen