Africa 3Deep

New website at www.Africa3Deep.com

Cross Cultural Exchange

Peace Corps Goal #2: To help promote a better understanding of America on the part of other people.
Peace Corps Goal #3: To help promote a better understanding of other people on the part of Americans.

I taught my teachers the word “fart” today. Previously they used the term “make carbon.” They have now moved onto fart, which has led to such memorable lines as “The Form B’s are farting a lot and their whole classroom smells like one giant fart and it is now starting to make the Form C classroom also smell like a fart.” Consider yourselves better understood, America.

In exchange for this valuable piece of vocabulary, I was taught the Sesotho word for fart. It is penia. I’m not sure if that is spelled right, but it is pronounced like “Wily Mo Pena” (the Wily Mo part is silent). I hope you all learned something today.

Peace Corps goals #2 and #3? Check. And. Check

Change of Plans

I was planning on putting up a series about my travels from June and July, but things have changed and it doesn’t seem appropriate right now. I’ll do my best to get something on Mozambique up in the next few days. But now, just this.

Questions 5

What do you do during your down time

Right now, in the winter, I am gone from before sun up until after sun down so there isn’t much to do during the week. I get home, cook something, clean up some, maybe do some other random chores or little things around the house. Sometimes I read or do crosswords while it is still light out. Other times some kids will come and we might play cards or different dice games or maraba-raba (kind of a local combination of tic-tac-toe and some other game that I can’t decide on. Tough to explain)

Weekends I am usually pretty busy also. I always go to Sunday study which runs from about 9 until 11 or 12. Church follows it and I go once a month when my students are supposed to be leading mass, although recently not many have been showing so the quality of the singing has dropped and the drum doesn’t come out as much. Saturdays have been fairly busy lately as well. Lots of meetings or sports days or studying for exams, a funeral here or there, so not much free time.

I do have a lot of downtime when I am trapped in the office at school during my off periods. I do a lot of reading (I’ve gone through 30 something books by now) and have started to really concentrate on learning Sesotho, although both have taken a back seat recently with exams and all the work that goes into that.

When it was warmer and the days longer, I wandered around the village and the neighboring villages and mountains more often, but I’ll have to wait until spring to do more of that.

With the solar panel up, I now watch movies and TV shows or just play around on the computer in general for an hour or so every night.

E-mail

Good news everyone. I have bought a new phone that can read g-mail so I can now get all your e-mails at my house. Since I am reading them on my phone there are some rules. 1) No attachments. This means any thing with pictures or other documents attached I can not see unti I go to town. 2) No formatting. I can read maybe 100 words at a time and any kind of table or weird spacing gets all mixed up. So try to keep most emails as straight text. I will try to respond as they come in but typing on a phone is difficult so they will probably be short and longer replies will come when I go to town.

Questions Part 4

What do you do during your down time

Right now, in the winter, I am gone from before sun up until after sun down so there isn’t much to do during the week. I get home, cook something, clean up some, maybe do some other random chores or little things around the house. Sometimes I read or do crosswords while it is still light out. Other times some kids will come and we might play cards or different dice games or maraba-raba (kind of a local combination of tic-tac-toe and some other game that I can’t decide on. Tough to explain)

Weekends I am usually pretty busy also. I always go to Sunday study which runs from about 9 until 11 or 12. Church follows it and I go once a month when my students are supposed to be leading mass, although recently not many have been showing so the quality of the singing has dropped and the drum doesn’t come out as much. Saturdays have been fairly busy lately as well. Lots of meetings or sports days or studying for exams, a funeral here or there, so not much free time.

I do have a lot of downtime when I am trapped in the office at school during my off periods. I do a lot of reading (I’ve gone through 30 something books by now) and have started to really concentrate on learning Sesotho, although both have taken a back seat recently with exams and all the work that goes into that.

When it was warmer and the days longer, I wandered around the village and the neighboring villages and mountains more often, but I’ll have to wait until spring to do more of that.

With the solar panel up, I now watch movies and TV shows or just play around on the computer in general for an hour or so every night.

Questions Part 3

What is your favorite and least favorite part of every day?
The least favorite part of the day is easy. Right now it is winter and it is cold. Getting out of my warm bed and walking to school is less than fun. It is even worse since my destination is actually colder than the walk. Once the sun is out I walk around outside the classrooms to get the feeling back in my fingers.

The Great Mabuleng Walking Tour

It’s a small village with my house just about at one end and the school at the far edge, so this gives a pretty good idea of the size and what is actually here. All these photos were taken on Tuesday June 1st, starting at approximately 7:30am.

In the first photo, we have the two latrines on the compound. Mine is the short, skinny tin one. Sun still hasn’t reached my house yet. Also notice the frost on the grass. This was the first real cold week we had.

Goats, Snow, and Breadbowls

From Friday June 4

Easily one of my favorite days in this country so far. We are one week into exams and I caught up on all my grading on Thursday, plus had no exam to give this morning, so I could go in late.

One of the other teachers, Ntate Kao, and I have been trying to buy a goat since Memorial Day weekend. Unfortunately selling a goat for the equivalent of about $25 requires more paper work than buying a used car in the States. The goat registration wasn’t in order (seriously), so we had to go through a different seller.

Picture Post 1

I sent home about 3GB of pictures back home a few weeks ago. My mom picked out a sampling and there are about 140 at the link below. I haven’t been able to go through them yet so I’m not really sure what is in there. It is also on a Shutterfly album and I have no idea how it works. You might have to request permission or have an account. Any problems, post them in the comments.

I’ve had requests for more pictures of the exterior of my house (there is a video of the inside that I am working on getting up), the walk to my school, some students, and the school itself. I’ll try to get those mixed in with my next time shipment. Also, if there are any other requests, make them here and I’ll try to get to as many as I can.

Pictures