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Published: January 23rd 2008
Tuesday- Second day in the office. All of us packing into the one working car we have...a Toyota Tazz--not sure what the equivalent in the US would be. Raquel and I both "dressed up" since it was her first day back and I was going to be meeting a lot of the coaches/managers for the first time. Matt ran the meeting. It's interesting to be a white woman in the office-- I'm not 100% sure, but I think Raquel is the first woman that's worked down here and I think I'm the first white woman to work down here. When someone would talk or say somehting everyone would snap after...wasn't sure what that was but turns out it's something PPI people implemented instead of clapping....it's not South African. Then I just sort of talked with those South Africans that would talk to me and emailed. Laura is new as well but she is from Zimbabwe, or Zim, as everyone refers to it here. She, Raquel and I went with Sizwile (said Sez-Whee-Lay) to Molweni (said Mole-Whay-Nee) which is where he grew up and lives. It took a little while to get there and the road was hilly and windy. It was beautiful though, all green hills and cliffs. Was a rural area though- don't think many of you will have seen anything like it except in pictures (which I hope to send soon). School had gotten out so all the kids were walking home in their Catholic School-looking uniforms in the heat- some of them have to walk pretty far and it's really hilly. They kept yelling to Sizwile and he would yell back... they recognized him as well as the Peace Players car. He took us on some back roads and shortcuts. Some roads are paved and some are dirt roads with ruts in them. We ended up getting a screw lodged in one of the tires-but it's the only working car at the moment so we need it to not go flat.
We drove around to some of the schools that we have kids on our teams from. But since school was out the gates were locked. We saw cows and goats and chickens adn roosters just walking around or hanging out lounging in the grassy areas. The cliffs were quite a site and the river was really pretty too. It was a bit hazy so my pictures won't do it justice. Sizwile said that not too many of the people there swim in the river b/c there are "creatures like crocodiles but smaller" in there-- I thought he might be joking or speaking about a legendary creature but I guess they're real--and snakes too he said. We went to a few of the basketball courts that PPI has built---they all have great views of the cliffs and the houses. We passed some girls with a bag of mangoes and Sizwile was talking to them and they gave him mangoes for us --I dunno if he knew them or not-- he was speaking Zulu and I have no idea what he said. The mangoes were much smaller than we have in the US and they were stringier but they were juicy and sweet and just tasted better. We stopped off at a water spigot by one of the schools to wash our hands b/c they were all sticky.
We went to one of the player's houses and met her grandmother and other siblings...she is apparently one of the best players in our program and you can just tell she's a good athlete. They have an amazing view from their front porch. It's of a huge cliff to the right which goes all the way down to the river which flows into the lake that's been dammed. I guess there was some big canoe/land race this weekend and it was there and it was on TV. It's pretty popular but I don't really know what it is or what it's called but I'll find out.
Dropped Sizwile off at his house and Raquel drove us home. She had just gotten her liscence in NYC so she was excited to drive "legally" down here. I fell asleep on the way home. Got back to the office and picked up Matt and Dave, went out to Carole Baekey's house for dinner. It was a make your own taco dinner. She is an american lawyer who has lived down here for the last 20 years. She is on our board down here. She is quite um, accomplished I guess I could say. She's very nice and welcoming but she is a little brusk too I guess. Anyway- her husband is an engineer and he's South African,but he works with an "engineers without borders" group and has students from Johns Hopkins come down to work on some projects here for a few weeks. So it was kind of nice to talk with some Americans and be able to understand everything they were saying. Went home and had Matt get a bug for me and we tried to shoo out a gecko but we lost him- I said- as long as he doesn't sleep on my face tonight he can stay in here. I think he was the same one I'd had in there the night before. Joseph, who came to clean the house did an amazing job except that I didn't know where anything was anymore haha. Read and went to sleep.
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Shuja
non-member comment
Is this work or a vacation?
Jes kiddin! Sounds wonderful! Hope you pick up the South African accent. Hae you set up the Skype account?