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Published: October 20th 2009
Hello everyone!
Phew! All I am doing right now is taking a deep breath! As I have told many of you September was a very challenging month for me, to say the least. I am not exactly sure how I thought I could work part time, write a proposal, and finish my courses all at the same time! I also was dealing with some health issues which added stress. They say the only way to really know a country is to spend time in its hospitals and prisons, I guess I partially know South Africa and I am in no hurry to meet the other half! I am feeling really well now and I am enjoying a low stress October! My thesis has changed again, but I am really excited about my latest topic. My proposal went in for internal review yesterday, which means my supervisor gave it the A-OK and now two professors in our dept have to approve it before it heads to the board. This is a long process! I will briefly describe my new topic at the bottom of this message. Some good things have come out of the past month. The researcher I am
Tesoriere
The pool where I swim. It is still pretty empty because the water isnt heated so its about 65 degrees in the winter! The first few laps take your breath away but after that its really refreshing!working for likes my writing enough to give me the freedom to write entire sections of the paper she is working on. I have also found a new church that is very dynamic and diverse. Our service and worship is conducted in several of South Africa’s 11 official languages. With this young new church has come a new group of friends which has been a lot of fun and a great support through stressful times. I have started going to a weekly bible study and on Sunday I survived my first day as a caregiver/teacher at what we call Hope Kids, which is basically Sunday school. I say survived because there were three of us teachers and 18 kids age 2-4. It was a lot of fun, and I loved going back into teacher mode, singing songs and such, but after almost 2 hours I was exhausted!
With all this free time I have had lately, and after sorting out my health problems, I have started running or swimming every afternoon which is the best stress buster I know. I also have learned some new lessons on what is actually gluten free in South Africa so I have changed
the way I cook a bit, and after 2 years reintroduced a bit of meat into my diet. I am not ready to eat a steak, but living gluten free is a bit tougher over here so I decided to make it easier by learning to cook chicken again! I have also had a lot more time to go to Rotary events and hang out with my host counselor Carolyn. I went to a retirement village last week which is one of our largest Rotary projects but unfortunately didn’t bring my camera, so when I return for a Halloween festival I will take some photos. The place is incredibly beautiful, I asked them if I could move in, it is just so peaceful! I also went to a Rotary fundraiser which was a food and wine tasting. I had planned to put up some new photos last week but we have been having unusual rain the past couple weeks and all my weekend plans to go to a market, horse race and braai were canceled. I do know I have been terrible about putting up blogs and photos and I promise to try harder, but to be honest if I
took photos of my life this past month all you would see is my desk, my study carrel and my bed! I am also currently working on a new blog about living gluten free in South Africa. I have had a hard time finding GF information that isn’t written by super fancy food gurus. So I thought I would create a blog that has information about what is GF and what claims to be but is not. I also wanted to look at a lot of international food and write about things from the standpoint of a single student who is not cooking for huge fancy dinner parties! When I get that blog up and going I will attach the site address on here so you can see what I mean about when I talk about the joys of being gluten free
I have had some emails asking if I’m coming home for the holidays, and unfortunately I will be staying here in Durban for the Christmas season. I am thinking about volunteering at a local hospital on Christmas day. I am already looking for jobs for next year. I figure with this economy it’s never too early
Corner Cafe
A great place to get good food and free wireless internet! to start! While I love South Africa and I would consider a job here I have been spending a lot of time looking at jobs in Seattle. Maybe all I need is a vacation but I am starting to slightly tire of my daily (and nightly) bug issues, and I had to laugh the other day when I did the super fast jump out of bed, put on my pj pants, grab my cell phone and flashlight because I heard what sounded like close and rapid gunfire. I had ignored the first few shots, as sadly that is not that uncommon here, but then when they got more frequent I began to worry. After a few minutes I went back to bed feeling ridiculous as I remembered it was Diwali the Hindu festival of lights, what I had heard was fireworks. But the constant consciousness that I am living in what is now the most unequal country in the world and still boasts one of the highest levels of violent crime does start to weigh on you after a while, so with that said I am opening up the possibility of moving back stateside. I probably shouldn’t put the bad
The all boys boarding school
My attempts at drive by photography were a bit off! stuff at the end of my blog, so to finish with something nice a friend from church just offered her home to me so we can co-host a thanksgiving dinner. I think Rotary made the right decision to make me an ambassadorial scholar because if I have accomplished anything this year I definitely have shown South Africans the wonders of American holidays such as the 4th of July and soon to be Thanksgiving, as well as the amazing food that accompanies them! I hope everyone is doing well. I love hearing from you. I am making a goal to take more photos but as I write this from school I think I only have one new photo of myself and a few others at the Rotary wine tasting. I did have a photo in the local paper last week of myself and others at the same event, I will scan that this week and add it to my next blog.
Lots of love
Kayse
Oh I almost forgot, my new thesis topic. The title of my thesis is “An assessment of the role of social insurance funds in micro-savings: the case of SAVEAct.” It is similar to what I
said before in that it is with the same organization and still looks at the savings and credit groups. As I said before savings and credit groups focus on promoting savings before credit which has a higher chance of sustainability than programs that just give credit. So people in the groups contribute to the savings every month and then they are able to take loans out of the savings. At the end they receive a lump sum of the money they put in as well as the interest earned on all the loans that each member took out. This helps people to have access to large sums of money when it is needed and teaches them to save. I believe that this model has a huge chance of being a very successful poverty reduction strategy but there is a problem. The people in these groups are poor, because they are poor they are more vulnerable to natural disasters and illnesses among other crisis. They are also excluded from services such as access to insurance because of their lack of money or assets. So the problem is when these poor people experience a crisis such as a fire or family death
My favorite drive home
Just after pigeon park you crest the hill and see the harbor, I love this drive after a long day at school! they have no safety net and they have to use their savings or sell off some of their assets in order to cope. This cripples the success of the savings and credit program. So what the group SAVEAct has done is implement a grant called a Social Fund. Every member puts in a small amount each month into the Social Fund and then when a member experiences a crisis they get a grant from the fund. It is essentially an alternative to insurance. I am really excited about it since I think without a safety net such as the social fund, the success of savings and credit groups will not be realized. Anyway there are lots of other problems with the process, but my research is looking at how the social fund is implemented, how it used if it is enough, and if it helps people to recover. I hope that all made sense; I am so excited about my research which is a blessing since I spend a lot of time reading and working on it!
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