Preparations to Leave South Africa PC

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Peace Corps volunteers are reminded of the value of resiliency in our service, but my resilience has been tested most at the <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">beginning and <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">endof service. After a long application/interview process, I was accepted in 2011 and expected my assignment to begin in October of that year. But in July, I (along with many others) got an email which said that my service had been postponed until the next fiscal year due to budget cuts. I had to find a job and place to live for nine more months since I had already quit my teaching job in Quincy, WA, and made plans to move my belongings into a storage unit. I can lay the blame on the US Congress for that development (they get a lot of blame these days) and now I can lay the blame on the South African legislature for the stress I’ve had the last two months.

Our cohort, SA 26, arrived in July 2012 and was sworn in September for two years of service until Sept 7, 2014. Volunteers may choose to leave up to 90 days early (for those entering grad school, etc), or a few months later than September. (Also six or seven from our group are tacking on a 3^rd year of service, taking new positions with the Peace Corps or NGO’s working with the Peace Corps. Eva is going to work with Grass Roots Soccer which does HIV/AIDS education in the schools; George, Katie, and Shawn are staying to be mentors to the new group of volunteers (SA 30); Vanessa will work with a group of women who sell their stitched creations to tourists. Vanessa will help with the creche (day-care facility) for the women who work there.) I decided to extend my service a few months as Shilpa, the previous PCV at my site, had done. My Gr 10-12 learners start writing their End of Year Exams in November. I wanted to stay so I could work with them until the tests, and also to have a few extra months to finish my art and library projects which didn’t get going until this year. My extension request was OK’d in January and I sent my passport to the office to get my work visa extended . (Our passports had been issued with visas until Oct 30.) Enter the SA lawmakers who passed a law in May intended to regulate those people who come from other countries to find work here. (Sound familiar?) The law requires the person to return to their home country (Zimbabwe, Lesotho, etc) when their visa expires and get the extension processed from there. Obviously, Peace Corps can’t afford to fly us back to the States for this. The 3^rd year extenders can do it, because their extra year of service comes with a one month home leave in which PC pays for a flight home. So they must use their home leave in October to get their visas taken care of.

Our group was told of the new law at our COS (Close of Service) conference, the last week of June. At that time, Peace Corps had lawyers visiting with the Home Office on whether exceptions could be made for volunteers, so there was still hope that it would work out. (We are skilled workers in areas that South Africa has determined would be helped by outside assistance. Besides the US gov’t contribution to my being here, the SA Dept of Education pays a whopping R250 ($25) a month rent to our host family for housing us. So my service does not take away a budgeted math teaching position.) Then, a week after the conference, our supervisor emailed that the lawyers had been unsuccessful helping our Acting Country Director whose visa had expired...so, she advised us to pick COS dates within our original visa date of Oct. 30. Not such a big problem you say, going home only 2 or 3 weeks earlier than I had planned.

Except for the travel plans I’d made for after my Nov 12 COS date. I was to meet Katie Cox and her cousin, Susan, after their safari in early November, take them out to visit my site and then fly to Cape Town for a week, flying back to the States from there. We had flights booked to Cape Town, lodging for a week, and booked our flights home. My supervisor thought it might be possible to get a tourist visa, since I had paperwork proving that I was doing this. PC’s security officer has been in contact with the Home Office for the past two months. He kept emailing me that he would hear within the week, but that went on for at least a month. I ran into him at the PC office last week, and he is still working on it...not so much for me, but so that this doesn’t happen next year. After a month of waiting on news from the security officer, and emailing Katie and Susan that I was still waiting, I had to give up. (Oh yes, there was another option that has been tried before to circumvent the whole extension of visa thing....Go to a border town on the day the work visa on the passport expires, and cross into another country. Stay there a day or two and return with the work visa expired, so that they treat me like a normal US tourist who is allowed 90 days to travel through the country. This has worked before, but there’s no guarantee that there might not be some trouble with this new law in place, and an officer might not be as easygoing as I’d hope...and then where would I be on Oct 30? I decided that that was just too much uncertainty and stress for me to take.) So I set my COS for Oct 29, and changed my flight, hotel booking, etc. I will still be able to take Katie and Susan to my village. They arrive at Johannesberg with a free day before their safari leaves on Oct 28. So I can juggle around my Close of Service appointments for that.

I have told my school and host family and now am settling into realization that the last 10 weeks are going to fly by! There is going to be a mix of emotions. Like pride and amazement at Wilfred Monakedi, Gr 11 learner, who presented a poem in honor of women at our Friday assembly. He got up on stage with Kgaugelo, who assisted by leaning against the wall...but that’s what friends are for. August is Women’s Month; Women’s Day is a national holiday August 9, in honour of an occasion in apartheid times when women protested about conditions in the country. While I can’t remember Wilfred’s words, they were good and respectful, and I will never forget his great smile that included all the listeners and just made you feel glad to be there. I am going to have more and more trouble keeping back the tears at times like these.

My host family had a small family function yesterday. Samuel, Martha’s youngest son in his early 30’s, was bringing his “wife” or fiance to his family home. I hadn’t seen Samuel with his girlfriend for a while now..I think Jan 1 on Martha’s 74^th birthday. I don’t remember her name, but they have been together since I arrived...and lo and behold, a different lady got out of the van and all the singing and dancing around began! She and her sister, and another couple sat quietly in the living room on the new furniture set that Samuel had bought his mother. I went in to the house to take pictures, sat a while and ate some salads. Before I left, I asked Jane, one of Samuel’s sister, what had happened to Samuel’s girlfriend. She said, “The one with the car? They are separate now.” This new woman is pretty, but I could not really see what she and Samuel were like as a couple, because the women were inside the house and the men were outside. When Samuel walked through the house to consult with his brother on the music blaring from the speakers...remember Toto’s song about Africa?..a truly eclectic mix of songs...I never saw Samuel glance at his fiance. But that is the custom. Samuel is an attentive son, but South African marriages..hmmm.... maybe his other girlfriend was too independent for him. She seemed friendly and comfortable with the family. Anyway, I know so little about what goes on, and realize that I don’t want to bother myself much with figuring these things out anymore. It’s interesting...but not,.. if you know what I mean. Now the family needs to store the old couch and loveseat, that were replaced by the new set, in my room. I cleared out my cleaning supply corner, and my lamp oil can developed a leak when I picked it up. That was a mess. I just take a deep breath and think...it’s just a few months more. The ups and downs are going to be more severe, I can tell.

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Comments

[Cynthia Hosick]

Coming home
Oh, Carolyn, what a chaotic time you are having at the end of your service! I have some insight into the African bureaucracy, but none of what I have seen has affected me -- only my Kenyan friends who are trying to get things done. I can imagine your yearning to return to water and ready electricity and all the easy life we have over here -- but I haven't lived two years without!! (I'll very possibly be going back for the third time after Christmas -- but traveling alone this time, because they will already have gone for Christmas, and I want the holiday with my family this year). I'll be thinking about you. I'm so glad you have planned for the big trip across the US seeing all your family! What a glorious treat that will be! Love, Cynthia