The long awaited post

First real blog update…I’ll hopefully get better at this. I am now an official PCV after swearing in on September 20^th. At the ceremony, Adam (runner Adam as we call him) and I, gave a speech. It was mostly Adam’s speech with some of my original speech and a lot of editing. In the end it came out really well. I presented it in Setswana and Adam did it in English. The crowd really responded well. They were audibly responding and laughing and at times even singing along. Once I type up corrections in spelling, I’ll post the speech and the English translation. So let me try to capture the past two months in a nutshell:

Animal count: Saw zebras the first day in South Africa at Mankwe. When we left a week later I saw some wildebeests from the bus too. Apart from sheep, goats, cows, and chickens that was it for a while. Then a month ago I saw some monkeys at Motswedi High School. On the drive returning from site visit to training, I saw a kgopane (crazy big lizard), some geckos, a lot of different birds, some giraffes, and an ostrich. After another lull, we went to the Farm Inn in Pretoria for swearing in where they had lots of fenced in animals including lions outside my room and deer that followed us around and licked our pockets looking for food. Kinda strange and I don’t count that for real animals. Today at site, I saw a ferret like thing with a long tale scurry into the cave. Not bad for the first two months without even going to a game reserve.

One of the coolest sites ever: I live next to a huge salt flat, a big cave, natural springs, and have hills in the distance. I’ll be working with four schools: 1 combined school (grades 7-12) and 3 primary schools (grades 1-6) so I should have my hands full. My host family is wonderful and takes good care of me. I’ll hopefully be getting a bike soon so I’ll have a bit more within travelling distance and be able to explore more. It’s pretty rural but not bad. I have electricity and there is water from a tap in the street. I use a pit latrine and take baths in a little basin.

Ke leka go bua Setswana: Setswana training went well and I got one of the best scores on our test at the end of training. Basically it means I can communicate with some 5 year olds and survive if I’m lost or taking public transport. It’s a beautiful language and I’m happy to learn a non Indo-European language. The structure is very different and in some ways seems to make a lot more sense. Rather than conjugate based on subjects, verbs revolve around a stem that changes suffixes and prefixes to indicate objects, reflexiveness, passive or active, and tense. Nouns are grouped into classes that determine how to make them plural and they have pronouns and prepositions that are alliterative, so easy to remember. There is a lot more but that’s most of what I’ve seen so far.

The kids: Are awesome. Despite the language barrier, I’ve realized that the quickest way to integrate into the community is through kids. I picked up a game of Memory in the Frankfurt airport on the way over and it has been a hit here. They also are great at helping us to learn the language.

The music: House is the biggest thing here. From the taverns you can hear Bob Marley and remixes of Toto’s Africa all the time. Guys also seem to be into divas like Celine Dion (sp?). We listened to her greatest hits 4 times on the all day drive from Pretoria to Kuruman. Fun times.

Pictures coming soon...