So I know I have been super lame about posting on here. There is so much to tell that it is overwhelming. Truly, truly I am so happy here. Derek is too, but I cannot speak for him, only myself. My greatest fear was coming here and finding it a challenge to stay busy. Luckily it has been quite the opposite. Often days I am so busy at work that I don’t have time to take a lunch break – Derek thinks this is ridiculous, but many of you will know that I am happiest when busy and needed. So, happy I am. Lots of you ask for details about what our days are like (or at least our families do) so I thought I would give you all a rundown of an average week so far. Once again, I cannot speak for Derek, but will fill in for him as I can.
Here goes....
Between 4:00 and 5:00 we wake up before my alarm (see bedtime) and, depending on the temperature, I either lie in bed until I build up the courage to face the cold air/last minute or get up and do random things around our little home like fill up our water buckets, dump out the face washing water from the night before (I have come to find the act of throwing water out of a bucket to be very therapeutic) or put the dishes that were left to dry next to our counter-top oven away. By 6:30 I have heated up a kettle of hot water to add to the cold bucket of water to take a bath with. At 7:30 we head out to catch a koombi by walking across our lawn, behind Nontomiso's house and across the lawn of Nonhlanhla and Victoria, our Gogo, where we are always asked if we are going to work, Uyasebenza, and how we slept, ulale kanjani? Then it is out the back gate to be greeted, on most mornings, by our apparently Jamaican neighbor, Vusi (same name as Derek). Vu-si. Sim-phi-we. Howzit? This is sad in a very Rastafarian way and I often suspect he is having his first joint of the day when we see him standing out behind his house at 7:30 in the morning. On the taxi, we once again go through the greeting process, often several times, and enjoy the ride as we circle our village until the koombi is full and we head the 10 kilometers to town.
Around 8:00 (if everything goes smoothly, which is only about 60% of the time) I am in Philakahle’s boardroom ready for devotions. We sing a song. I ask for a translation after the first stanza so we all stop while I get it down and then we start again. We read a passage from the Bible. We pray and then we have announcements. I have found devotional time to be a great way to learn the language and so my plan to not attend every morning was quickly abandoned. I think my original decision had come from my whole separation of church and state up bringing! Often the songs are very repetitive so I have the chance to really get the word or phrase drilled in and everyone speaks nice and calmly so I can use all my brainpower to listen and pick up familiar phrases. A month ago the board asked me to be the operational manager of Philakahle and so after announcements I will usually ask everyone what they are doing for the day. At first this seemed to really agitate people, but now if I don’t do it, the person who has led devotions that morning will. I still think it is a good idea for us to tell each other what we have planned, but I fully understand that the plan stated at 8:30 will be completely different than what actually takes place. After devotions I do one of several things:
1. One of the Community Support Project field facilitators and I and maybe Mummsy, the garden facilitator (this women is so great in so many ways – whenever she sees me getting frazzled she gets a serious look on her face and says, “Simphiwe, I love you.” She doesn’t speak English very well, but we are actually able to communicate fairly well. I owe much of my Zulu speaking ability to her actually because she just keeps talking and I am kinda just forced to figure out what is going on. For example, Tuesday I got out of the car at a clinic in a very bad mood because Phumelela had just eaten most of the cheese that we bring for the volunteer referral network/community health worker’s lunch. True to Scarlet Ohara I stormed off to the meeting area, but didn’t make it far before I hear Mummsy’s high-pitched voice calling me back. She goes on and on about something until I realize she is telling me to stop acting a fool and help carry the bread and huge slab of polony!) Wow. That was a long tangent. So, we head off to a Referral Network Monthly Workshop at one of the clinics we work with nine times a month. I will not be going to these for my whole two years, but right now I am going to better understand what we are attempting to do with our 200 health volunteers, implement the monitoring, reporting and evaluation system we need at the clinics and organize the many volunteers that are not getting a stipend into groups that can operate as non-profits and thus apply for grants from the Department of Health. Ah! These meetings are supposed to start at 9:00, but never get going until around 11:00. We don’t help the situation as we usually spend the 9:00 hour fetching the car, going to the bank, going to the gas station to get change (we pay the referral network volunteers for their taxi fare) and going to Spar, the local grocery store, to get lunch – the bread, polony, Rama and cheese mentioned earlier. The meeting lasts three hours and consists of us listening to the challenges the women face as they visit patients in their homes to encourage treatment adherence and general health. The field facilitator provides support and I attempt to get the whole thing documented so we have something to report. Then I try to move on to the NPO process which never goes very far (this week I was told it was too cold to talk about that. Seriously!) Then we take an hour to pay transport money out and make crazy sandwiches! After the meetings we go with one or two of the volunteers to follow-up on difficult patients (TB or HIV). This is always an adventure with too many stories and once again I am trying to document what we do so that we can show that we actually work! We usually get back to the office right at 4:30 so all the plans I had for the afternoon after the meeting which was suppose to be over at 12:00 are postponed. Again.
2. Lately I have been trying to get the assessment of our 114 home gardens done so that we can begin using money given to us by Canada and Australia to plant more gardens in patient’s homes. These gardens are meant to encourage healthy living and treatment adherence (TB treatment and ARVs make you very hungry and so often people will stop taking the medication – this is very, very bad!!!!) As of this posting we only have 3 assessments left! That is a serious accomplishment – so big in fact that I am bringing a treat to work tomorrow! It sounds like a lovely task: go out and check on the state of the gardens, fill in a form and then when you are done, plant more. But it is not so simple. These homes are often very difficult to get to and so we can drive around for a whole day and only see four gardens. Also, the families want you to spend the afternoon with them, which Mummsy is often willing to do. The other day it was raining and so cold but we pushed on and managed to see nine gardens and I was so proud of us I almost cried.
3. Attend some nuts-o-meetings with ridiculous agendas and minute taking requirements which invariably leave me in a frustrated and frazzled state because so much time was just wasted. On these days I attempt to work on the monitoring and reporting system in the three projects (Life skills, Community Support, and Asset Based Community Development) which is sometimes a lovely way to spend the day and sometimes leaves me in tears. Literally. But who I am kidding, even when the frustration drives me to tears, I am loving it. Lately the manager, Mlekeleli, has been gone much of the time, so I end of dealing with all matters of things like moving phone lines, writing proposals and trying to figure out what to do about staff members who go for lunch and never come back.
4. Plan or help facilitate a workshop on one of the many, many topics we give workshops on. No matter how many good intentions I have to plan these things to run smoothly, I have already come to realize that chaos is expected and so I should just go with the flow. One workshop that we are funded to run which is something I am very passionate about is on gender inequality and how it contributes greatly to the high rate of TB and HIV in this country. I am excited to do this one, but getting it organized is proving to be a fiasco.
While I am doing these things, Derek is having a nice time in his quite office over at World Vision. At least that is what I imagine. He was recently asked to manage the agriculture project and so is trying to find a way to successfully use the entire budget for the year in the next 6 months because up until now nothing has really been accomplished! He also spends much of his time in long, drawn out meetings and, often times, I fear his might be worse than mine.
At 4:30 Derek walks across the street to Philakahle to pick me up and we head out, often stopping by Spar for some last minute groceries and the bottle store for a Milk Stout on the way to the taxi rank. Up until this past week or so I would give Derek my bag and run home three times a week. Lately these runs take place either in the morning and end at a warm shower of one of our friends in town or are forced to wait for the weekend when I can run during the day because it is too cold by 5:00 and it gets dark very early now that we are in winter. Once home Derek usually cooks and I clean up. Once or twice a week we play Scrabble or Phase 10 (thanks mom), but usually I read while Derek writes and plays guitar. By 8:00 I am in bed and on my way to sleep. Seriously! I blame it on the cold because it forces me to hide under the blankets. It is so flipping cold!
So that is a normal day. Kinda.
On the weekends I will usually participate in some activity in one of the communities (a wedding, a graduation party, a labolla ceremony) when we are not going away, in order to experience what is going on around me and to give Derek some space to be alone and paint. Yep, he has started painting again! I love going to this functions! On either Saturday or Sunday we hand wash all our clothes, which takes a few hours from start to finish and do other chores in our little abode such as mop our red floor or burn trash!
