Whirrrrrrrr

Last two weeks we've had about 3 major assignments due and have had to figure out all the final logistics for our ISPs. This has made my brain very tired and me and my body very stressed. I think I will watch Superbad tonight.

Had a good weekend though. Big party at a club with some new friends Friday- we finally met people outside of the group of 22!! Then a Relay for Life Saturday where we sold coffee and tea all night to raise money for the South African cancer society. Pretty fun. Sunday, very sleep deprived, my roommates and I went to a concert for a pretty popular (deservingly so) local band called Freshly Ground. Awesome band, really cool girl as a lead singer. It was a picnic concert in a park so we brought our mats/blankets/towels and a basket of food and relaxed in the sun. I'm getting an awesome tan here, by the way. 

New pictures up soon. Hopefully it will satiate you as I will be leaving Wednesday until April 17th and have no internet! Or indoor plumbing! The horrors! No, sarcasm there, I really like Impendle and I am looking forward to it, I do have phone service for those of you concerned. I'll be in a room with two of the other Americans, fairly nice with electricity and plentiful food.

Wish me luck on my photo project... I'll be working with pregnant mothers to document antenatal care. Yay! Like most other things here before they happen, I'm excited, but nervous.

One of my old blog posts has been published in the Tartan as part of their Tartans abroad series: thetartan.org/2009/3/30/pillbox/abroad

All for now, see you in a couple weeks!

Beds

(I actually wrote this a few days ago, but didn't have consistent internet access. Changed a couple relevant details but here ya go.)

Maybe it’s only because I hold sleep very dear, but beds are strongly tied to sense of home for me. When I think of Nashville, I think of my comfortable room, melting into by soft pillowy bed, relaxing with family nearby. For Pittsburgh, I think of lying down beside Nik with my head on his chest. The places here have had their own character as well. In Cato Manor, my bed was pristine and soft, nearly as large as the room, while Mama slept on a thin mattress on the floor. In Windemere there is usually sand in the sheets and we wake up to the hot sun reflecting off the ocean. There’s sort of a cheap surfer feel, priorities lie with the view, not décor or comfort of the bed.

 

This sounds so nostalgic. I think it’s because I didn’t sleep well last night. I’m nostalgic in general lately.

I’m also figuring out that America won’t look quite the same to me when I get back. I didn’t fully realize how much of an impact this experience would have on me. Hm.

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Otherwise, we just finished a 20 page (minimum) paper, and independent study starts in a week (on April 1^st).  Still have a fair amount to get done before then, plus I’ll be without much contact with the outside world for two weeks. Sorta nervous, but not actually all that worried about things. 

About the sangoma

Henry asked about the sangoma we spoke with while in Amatikulu, so I though I'd share my response.

It was very interesting, he is actually a sangoma (traditional diagnostician who divines the health problem), inyanga (traditional pharmacist, uses "muthi" or herbal medicines), as well as a Zionist priest. It's pretty rare for someone to be one of those, much less any of them in combination. We didn't get to see a healing ritual or anything, but through a translator we asked him all kinds of questions and he told us his story. To become a sangoma, you don't just choose it as if you would choose to become a doctor. Instead you are "called," and have all kinds of dreams, and you cannot refuse the call. If you were to try, he says, you would "go crazy or die." He is a Christian, and has been since childhood, and didn't want to be a sangoma because he didn't see them as compatible. People in the church told him he was going to be a sangoma and he was afraid, but had no choice.
Many African Christians do not visit sangomas because they see it as wrong. He described the relationship between the ancestors, which African tradition is focused on, and God. The sangoma serves as a link and a translator to the world of the ancestors. Ancestors will sometimes cause illness if they have not been paid proper respect, and as such they (and elders in general) are due much respect in African culture. The ancestors, then, serve as a line back to God. 
Now as a healer he travels all over the province to see patients. He accepts whatever payment the patient can afford, sometimes a goat or a chicken, sometimes nothing at all, depending on the ailment. He was dressed in a button down shirt and trousers, though dress for sangomas varies from this through traditional healer dress (including most importantly, the gallbladders of chickens). He will treat anyone of any race, though I doubt he's ever treated anyone but a Zulu (or other Ngoni-speaking, that is, same ethnic family) person.
I'll answer any questions to the best of my ability!

Good things.

Sorry for the sparseness in posts, things have been very busy here. 

But there are some happy coincidences! So I want to do my Independent Study in Impendle, the first rural stay I was on, near the Drakensberg Mountains. I haven't totally worked that out yet (sort of stressful, but I have faith that things will work out like they're supposed to), but some good coincidences:

-the photographer I want to be my advisor happens to live about 30 miles from the village

-Heard about this awesome music festival that happens over the long Easter weekend that is only about 40 miles from the village

-Unrelated, but I have an actual, written out, firmed up position for the summer and it is exactly what I wanted! I'm gonna teach photography to some kids/youth and have a part in developing the curriculum. This will be really challenging and I can't wait. The whole payment thing hasn't come through yet, though... 

Otherwise:

Our last rural homestay went well. Learned Zulu beading from a woman who didn't speak English and I have a whole new respect for the coordination and eyesight required. Went on rounds with my homestay mama who is a community health worker. My friend Laura and I shared a single bed in the one room rented by my mama, so she and I, my mama and one of her daughters all stayed together. And FYI, kids everywhere love bubbles. A lot. 

Moved into our apartment for the last 2 weeks of lecture. We have a balcony overlooking the ocean and the sound of waves (and the beachside nightclub...) rock me to sleep at night. I think my favorite detail is that off on the horizon, you can see big barges, which sometimes come in to dock at night. There are also lots of surfers to watch, wipe outs are pretty amusing. The waves are gigantic so they happen a lot. 

I've been feeling sort of adrift lately. I think it's because I don't feel very anchored. We spent a fair amount of time in Cato Manor, but for the rest of the program, I won't spend longer than 2 weeks in any one place. Makes me long for home a little more, I know I have a home base (or two) there, but they're far and remote feeling. Just a weird feeling. I think that's also amplified by what stage I'm at, and everyone at home is at, in the whole "adaptation cycle." According to one of my lecturers, week 6-7 (the last couple of weeks) are when people start to forget about you, stop writing and calling, forget your birthday, etc etc. Hm. Not a plea for attention, and I don't feel neglected, just thinking about it lately. 

Out of Cato Manor

We moved out of Cato Manor on Saturday morning. I think I'm going to miss it a lot. I had come to know it as my home, and I can't tell you how much my mama means to me. My bed there is what I missed when I was sick, I missed mama when I wanted companionship and a fresh perspective, I even missed the TV and all its soapies. I think I'll welcome the time to myself and the ability to get some work done, but honestly I've gotten way more out of my homestay and my experience outside of the classroom than any class I've had so far.

 

This weekend I went to the flea market on the beach. Good day. Sunny and full of people. I got two skirts (one super cheap, one very pretty and Indian wrap-around like) and a comfy plastic replacement for my broken flip flops. Also Saturday night a few friends and I went to a gay bar/club that was playing techno remixes of Bollywood songs all night. So random but really fun. Nice not to get hit on constantly. Everyone was super nice, we had lots of conversations about politics and race and religion... It was a good night. 

 

We're off to the rural areas again today. We'll be there until Thursday and will be staying with Community Health Workers. We'll be doing rounds with them tomorrow, learning traditional Zulu beading on Wednesday as well as seeing a sangoma (traditional African healer). Lectures Thursday I think (blah. Like I said, I get way more out of my time outside the classroom), and then back. I desperately need to do laundry. Oops.

"What are you guys so excited about?"

"We're making an assembly line!"

This is how most of our trips begin. Last Friday we left for the Drakensberg Mountains. I was still under the weather with stomach issues, doctor thinks perhaps some bacteria, which is finally going away with some Cipro, thank God, so I did not participate in the assembly line action. But water bottles and hot dogs and s'more fixin's were passed down until the trailer was unloaded and our lovely camp site (a building with dorm rooms lit by candles!) was all ready. We sat around and watched the rain, lots and lots of rain, for the evening. Oh- we also roasted marshmallows over charcoal. 

The next day was our hike through the mountains up to see the Khoi-Sans rock art. The rain had all cleared up and the scenery was so, so pretty. I can't even put it into words, but there were mountains on all sides, crumbled and eroded, with tops fading into the clouds. Our path, sometimes over streams, sometimes through reeds taller than we were, but mostly through knee-high grass and mud, snaked around the mountains. There was a range of colors from blue, blue sky to gauzy clouds to white rushing streams, and of course green- everywhere green, in different shades at different layers of the mountain. We got to a stream after about an hour, then began the climb upward. This was a grueling, but much needed endeavor. It felt good to sweat and get my heart beating fast after the monotony of Cato Manor. As we climbed, the air thankfully got cooler, though thinner. We eventually found our way to the rock art, still on the rock walls after about 200 years. Much of it depicted cows and horses, as well as a few battle scenes. It was wonderful, painted with such detail, and sometimes with several layers of shading. No one really knows about the individuals within the Khoi-Sans community who painted the art, or for what reasons, or really what all of it depicted. A mystery! 

We ate chocolate and cheese sandwiches and hiked back. Afterwards we bathed and swam in a river (cold and spring-fed with a swinging bridge over it!), which made me very clean-feeling, peppermint-smelling, and relaxed. Dinner and various other niceties made for a wonderful day. The next day was nearly better.  We walked out past some baboons up on a ridge, about 30 of them, to spring that formed a waterfall. We were afraid that, due to baboon's aggressive nature, they'd attack us when we jumping into their watering hole, but were just being paranoid because all they did was look at us. We all stripped down to sports bras and such (perks of being on an all-girl trip) and jumped into the very, VERY cold pool at the base of the waterfall (think NaCoMe for those of you who've been). We dubbed the pool Baboon Lagoon and hiked back, with a short sunbathing diversion by the same now rain-swollen rapids of the river. 

Mid-day we left for Impendle for our rural homestays. On the drive there it rained again for about 4th time- things were getting muddy. We got there and my friend Laura and I (who were rooming together) met our mama, who was awesome. She spoke very little English, and we spoke very little Zulu, so there was a lot of gesturing and more laughing. We met more neighbors and friends and family throughout the weekend. We were staying nearby two other girls from our program, as well as a few hippies, a couple who were cool and one who was new to the country, a little spacey, and oh yeah- and wore ENTIRELY purple. 

The following morning we went on home visits with home-based care workers. There were a couple of TB patients and a diabetes patient and 2/3 were bedridden. They lived in rondoval huts with their families looking after them. Poverty... well it sucks. A lot. The last patient needed to go to the doctor for a visit, but her father couldn't afford the fare to get her there. Also the closest hospital was an hour away, meaning that if you need an ambulance for any reason you are pretty much out of luck.  There was a bright note, one of the patients we walked past was busy hanging laundry and said she was near finishing her meds and would soon be moving back to Jo'burg to work!

Relapsed with getting sick at about 3:30 AM... with a long-drop toilet (think wooden port-a-potty). Thank goodness for my headlamp. Got driven back to Durban in the morning, saw a doctor and am now well for good, after two courses of different antibacterials. Take that weird germs. Please please don't worry about me with the whole sickness thing, it's pretty common here and I knew what I was getting into. Way worth it for the experience I'm having.

Otherwise I've been very busy lately figuring out things stateside. I have housing (hooray), have been invited to apply to the Senior Honors program to pursue my thesis (awesome), and various other things. I'm also figuring out contacts and specifics for my Independent Study Project for my last month here. Busy busy... Hope you all are well.