Inhlikani (good afternoon) everybody! Things are still going great in SA and it’s hard to believe that I have nearly completed my pre-service training. Our swearing in ceremony is just 3 weeks away and then I will officially become a Peace Corps Volunteer. I spent this past week visiting my official site, where I will move after training. My village is located in the northern part of Mpumalanga Province, just west of Kruger National Park. During my visit, I was introduced to different members of my community, my host family, and become aquatinted with the organizations I’ll be working with. I am the first Peace Corps volunteer at this site, and my partner NGO’s are a Home Based Care and Youth Center. My village is rich in guava, mango, and orange trees and on a clear day, you can see the Drakensberg Mountains towering in the distance. A room in this building is the Home Based Care office while the rest is used for a primary school. They currently have no electricity and these barrels collect rain water for us to use. The best part of the visit was to finally use my Xitsonga. I was typically greeted in English or Afrikaans, but when I would reply back in Xitsonga, the mixed look of confusion and excitement on peoples face was priceless. Nelson Mandela’s quote "If you talk to a man in a language he understand, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart” proved to be extremely true. This week was also a dose of reality of what life will be like for the next two years, away from the comfort of my fellow trainees and Peace Corps staff. With all the excitement of a new area, I was also exposed to the unwanted attention, marriage proposals, and harassment that accompanies being a obvious foreigner in a rural village. I am eager to continue building relationships around the community to make this new place my home. My fellow 7 Xitsonga - learning trainees and 2 teachers; Rivo and Miyalani. All us will be serving amongst the Tsonga tribe, dispersed in different villages across the region. I have also now experience the transportation system that I will rely on during my service- the infamous taxi’s. It is a unique system that was originally created during Apartheid by black South Africans, when the government made it illegal for them to use the white South African’s transportation system. It became a informal network of bus routes, and although legal today, there is still no time table, no reliability that the transportation will come, and few official pick up location (typically you just stand on the side of the road with your arm out). It is a system with no system, but I am trying to learn it. Needless to say every ride is a adventure in itself; dodging pot holes, cows, and speed bumps, it kindof feels like a roller coaster. Other then that, things are better then ever in Dihekeng. Having to spend a week away from my family made it hard to imagine the day that I have to leave them. My family and I recently attended a party in my village which was a blast and culturally educational. The women and men were separated the entire party, only meeting in the middle, on the dance floor. The dancing was a mix of traditional Zulu to Africa house music (check out the song Imali by: Black Motion if you want one of the most popular song in SA right now). A cow was slaughtered to celebrate and I was generously given cow intestine as a delicacy, with pap of course. The children who attended love dancing with us, teaching us games and touching our hair, always saying how soft it is. That’s all for now! I've got some major changes in the near future, but that just seems to be the theme so far; as soon as I’m comfortable somewhere, it is time to change things up. But, I am still excited for what lies ahead.
-Josie
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AuthorJosie Petersson Archives
October 2018
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