Mini America, plus some

I'm not entirely sure where I've landed, some place called Pretoria, South Africa. For all intents and purposes, it looks like I'm back in America. Only, it's an America I've never really seen with my own eyes, only in movies and on TV. The America where people live in mini mansions and water their lawns every day and night and have high walls with fancy electric fences running along the top. The America where you never see your neighbors because there's too much protective gating all around. Where shiny shopping malls are filled with thousands of items you actually have no need for (machines to crack your eggs for you, glittering jewelry, thirty different kinds of soap...) all at exhorbetant prices. It's terrifying, really. We're not supposed to walk around by ourselves, especially at night, which seems ridiculous given the wealth of this area. But then you realize that right next door are the "rougher" parts of town, where people kill each other in broad daylight for a petty theft. Certainly a different scene than Rwanda, all around. The initial shock has started to wear off, as I've been here for 5 days now. I still relish in my hot shower and the breakfast served to me at the "guesthouse" that they put all the med evacs in, but I'm itching to get back to Rwanda and my village.

It is really interesting to see a part of South Africa though, and my curiosity about apartheid has been spiked. Our guesthouse is exactly what I've always imagined a colonial era white man's home in Africa to look like (I hope that makes sense?)...its Victorian to a T, lacy curtains and china dishes, manicured lawns and gardens, heavy dark wooden furniture, help staff wearing black dresses and white aprons and caps...you feel like you've stepped back in time. And I don't like it. Almost all the waitstaff or workers I've seen around here are African, and the owners are white. The white kid who drove me from the airport made several racist comments...its definitely a challenging environment. Obviously, this is a small, rich part of the country though, and quite different from the rural areas. I've gotten to talk to several SA volunteers while here, as well as volunteers from Zambia, Burkina Faso, and Swaziland, and problems in rural Africa are problems in rural Africa...there are certainly differences, but for the most part we're all facing similar challenges at site.

On the plus side, our PC doctor here took all the med evacs (who were able) on a "walking safari" over the weekend. It was funny because the reserve is smack between highways on two sides, and the city on one end, so from certain places you could hear cars flying by, or see tall buildings rising up, but it was GREAT to get out of our Victorian prison and walk around. We actually saw most of the wildlife the reserve has to offer too-- giraffes, zebras, impala, wildebeest, birds, etc. I've seen all of that before in the Serengeti, but the rules are a little different over here, and besides the fact that we weren't limited to our safari landrover, its also ok to "offtrail" it here...so we did our best to leave the footpaths and get as close in as we could :-P Our wonderful doctor guide also wisely advised us that if we bent down and acted like we were grazing, we might be able to get in even closer...of course we immediately took his advice, giving him quite the entertaining spectacle, but I do think we got a little closer...:-P I'll attach that picture for y'all, it makes me laugh.

Other than that, I'm just waiting to hear when I get to go back home to Rwanda. Since I only needed one root canal, I didn't expect to be here so long, but with the PC you never know!

Home sweet home

Wait, what season is it?

Naturally, as soon as I wrote the previous post, we had a solid week and a half without any rain, so I began taking the daily trek down the hill to the well with my yellow jerry can in hand, and came huffing and puffing back up the hill with my yellow jerry can on my head. This caused quite a stir with all the locals, and was a huge hit-- As I walked along, usually with my neighboring children, I was met with wide grins, lots of laughs, and my favorite outcry of surprise, "Ye baba we!" (which sounds something like yay baba waaaaaay). I also met a few awesome women during these trips, and have since visited some of them in their homes, teaching them a little English and working on my Kinyarwanda. Needless to say, fetching water from the well is now one of my favorite activities (work and workout and community interaction combined, what could be better?). However, the rains have hit again pretty intensely in the last few days, giving off some excellent lightening shows, making it completely unnecessary to head down to the well, and making me seriously question what season we are in...The line between rainy and dry is much less clear than I had expected :-P

In other news, Rwanda has a community work day one Saturday a month, called umuganda, in which everyone from neighboring villages or towns come together and work on some kind of local project. It's a really unique government initiative, promoting both unity among communities and local development. Umuganda was a few weeks ago, and several hundred people gathered at my school to work on finishing the construction of a new classroom building. I headed over with my next door neighbor, and along the way we joined groups of women wearing bright igitenge (patterned wraps/dresses/etc) and carrying the ever present yellow jerry cans of water. When we got to the school, there was already a big crowd, dozens of jugs sitting on the ground waiting to be used for who knows what (I never did find out...) and a growing pile of rock chunks next to the building. As we stood there awaiting instruction, a long line of people appeared out of the woods, and one by one dropped the large rock chunks they were carrying on their heads onto the pile. I joined them as they headed back for more, and all the way down the hillside into the valley and fields below stretched a long line of brightly dressed women and muscular men, each with one, two, sometimes three large rocks stacked on their heads, slowly making their way uphill to the school. I am continually impressed with how things are done here! Again, I was met with all kinds of reactions (mostly shock, disbelief, and perhaps some excitement, ok lots of excitement) as I had rocks stacked onto my head and started making my way up. I'm pretty sure they were actually trying to test my strength, because the guys kept giving me bigger rocks than all the other women, but I showed them what's what and kept coming back for more :-P It was a great way to hang out with the locals, and to show them that the muzungu can get dirty and do work, too.

Alright, this is getting long, so finally, local elections for all kinds of community-level leaders took place two weeks ago. I got to watch the process, as they were held on a Friday morning right outside of my school. It was very different than elections in America, as you might guess :) But it worked really well from what I could see, and was cool to watch. So, everyone breaks into groups based on their village (umudugudu) and then the people who are nominated stand and say a few words to their group. Then, the nominees spread themselves out in a line, turn around so they can't see, and everyone else lines up behind the one they want to vote for. Officials count how many are in each line, and bam, winner is known instantaneously. Sometimes, there was absolutely no question, with a single file line stretching 80 or 100 people long, and others were more equal. The elections were supposed to be finished around noon, but when I came back around 1pm to see what was going on, they were still going strong, and weren't over when I left again around 3. Mayors, leaders of the youth, news and communications, security, sports, health, women...I didn't catch all the positions but those were a few.

So thats most of the news here. Busy with classes, entertaining my 5 year old neighbor (who is now pretty much a housemate, we feed her at least once a day, usually twice), hanging out with my real housemate (the other female teacher at my school), and still trying to get to know more people in the community...Good and busy :)