Weeks two and three: Township gossip, White photoshoots, big burn, robbery and shoot outs

It’s been two weeks so I have a lot to report on. The volunteers arrived three Saturdays ago and so we embarked on a whole week of training (yawn). The training wasn’t too bad as it allowed us to meet a bunch of characters. We had our good friend Sydney teaching us Siswati (the local language), who is one of our project partners. Sydney is unlike most South Africans, he’s lived in Indonesia for three years, speaks over 15 languages, has no plans on settling down and in his own words is out ‘for political power.’ He often wears a triangular Indonesian hat around town and greets confused south Africans in Indonesian. He’s that sort of guy. We’ve been enjoying teaching him about our culture and learning about his. He’s established that is not okay to call your friend ‘sexy’ or a random person on the street ‘beautiful’ in the UK.  And we’ve learnt that he seeks life advice about his relationships from Danielle Steel novels.  However, we’ve not managed to convince him yet that dinosaurs did exist and that aliens didn’t build the pyramids.  He’s one of the funniest people we’ve met so far and we’re really enjoying working with him.

During training week we also met an NGO called Love Life. They began with a really serious talk about their work in the community until Chaos broke out. They started by teaching us some ice breaker activities we could use with the kids at school which involved an inappropriate amount of thrusting. One of the guys was an inspiring DJ/RA PER/SINGER/MUSIC WRITER and provided us with a few samples from his up and coming album, which were actually quite good. However, it got weird when he forced us to record him on our cameras and was making direct eye contact with the lenses. After the singing the photo shoot began. You know when girls get ready for a night out, there is the standard half an hour picture session. THIS WAS WORSE. IT WAS THE MOTHER OF ALL PHOTOSHOOTS. The rationale was that they had ‘never had a picture with a white person before’, so decided to have us arranged in every position possible. We had the peace sign, the gangsta fingers, the kicking of legs in the air. At one point some of the girls had to squat down and stick their bums out with an array of expressions. However, the climax of the photo-shoot was where we all had to stand in a line with our hands on our hips in the classic girl pose. Head back, bum out, chest out. It was surreal, however it got more strange when two seventy year old men asked ‘if they could join in’ and stood hand on hip with their walking sticks at the back and front of the line (Photos hopefully to follow- however our cameras got stolen).

That evening we also got invited to our first BRI (no idea how to spell it- but it is basically a BBQ). We had already been planning and counting down the days till we could celebrate the end of the week with our newly christened weekly holiday, wine Friday. But we decided to throw it off and go to the BRI. It was an amazing evening as our friend lives in an actual mansion right at the foot of the mountains. There was sausages, there was chicken, there was lamb steak and best of all there was cheesy garlic bread. We made some good friends at the BRI and we were also introduced to our arch nemesis, Big Burn. Big Burn is an aerobics class which is ran in the community three times a week.  Our first big burn session was cruel, it lured us in with the promise of it being easy, relaxing, fun. We had in total six breaks and whenever our hearts would start to race the session would be cut to an abrupt halt where everyone would take five. We were making the predictable jokes, little burn, mediocre burn. We weren’t impressed. However this week it can only be described as hideous. The instructor is a machine. I didn’t know people’s limbs could even move that fast.

So down to work. The volunteers have been working in the schools and I’m looking at some other aspects of the project, like how we can improve and expand it. However, I have had the opportunity to go into school a couple of days a week. It was a shock. Let’s just say that. Sixty kids to one teacher, and the teaching techniques are so different from what we have in the UK.  The standard formula is to read a passage out the book and answer the questions below. This rarely deviates and their taught in a chalk and talk fashion. If they can recite the words it’s assumed they know the meaning, which is where the teaching appears to need support. There are also kids that are 16,17 ,18 and even a 22 year old who are still in primary school. It’s quite sad really. The concept of time in Africa also makes getting work done hard and affects the education system. For example, last week I had a meeting which ran FOUR HOURS late.  

Nevertheless, it’s been fun in the schools and the volunteers are making really good progress. At one school we have become quite the BNOCS with the grade sevens. In fact I received a card from one student last week. It was the standard formula you use when you want to make friends, the check box. “Do you want to be my friend”, tick for yes, cross for NO. Blunt and to the point. She also wrote that she loves me and that ‘ Preia (that’s me)Is just like the black people’. Quite the compliment. The big name fame has also spread to break time. Last Thursday Bridie and I started out playing a small game of splat with around 15 students which soon escalated to a game of ladders. Involving eleven people, but an audience of over 60 students cheering the teams on. On Friday, the word had spread and when Birdie tried to instigate a game of tig with two people it ended up with half the school joining in, running around with no idea of the rules.

Being in my homestay has been fun. Sato, the little boy, never leaves my side and now cries when I leave the house which is adorable. The legacy of aforementioned shepherd’s pie lives on. I’ve made it three times in the last two weeks and Mama Eliza has been telling all her neighbours the recipe. Who knew cottage pie could provoke such a reaction. In fact Bridie and Lucy arrived home one day to their house mother forcing them to make the famous dish. There is a lot of gossip that seems to spread around our town.  For example, I’ve found out there’s a self-proclaimed playboy called DRC Love who lives in the community.

However, perhaps the best gossip to hit Barberton was when the volunteers and I got robbed last week. We were all fine, but we did lose a lot of our valuables. It happened on a Friday night and we had come to terms with it by Sunday. However, our SA mothers were not going to let it go. The interrogation lasted at least fifteen minutes where in the meantime she rang all of her family in Pretoria and Johannesburg and then I was to force to recount the event to them all. The principle took it more dramatically and started to ring the UK embassy despite our protests and has even sent private investigators to Graskop with the sole task of finding our items. Others have tried to find similarities with our experience. Our friend consoled us with the story that last week the same thing happened to him. He casually told us that he ran after the culprit and shot him. Luckily he missed.

We had another drama last week when the volunteers had to move homestays. The women arranging the move moved in packs of three and we like to refer to them as the south African mean girls.  They had many meetings at my home where they would first sit down and discuss their task with a cup of tea and biscuits. They would then get to the task itself before debriefing with a cup of tea and biscuits. I was normally the waitress. However, they weren't best impressed with my tea making skills and would often ask me to 'just bring out the sugar bowl' because the three sugars I had just stirred into the tea weren't satisfactory.  The evening of the move was dramatic with a grand total of five people crying. At one point we had thirteen spectators crammed into a tiny kitchen. It was quite the event to the extent that my house mother felt the need to ring Pretoria again to retell the story.

We had a really good weekend apart from the robbery. We got to tour the Panorama route and see the Blyde Canyon which is the second biggest canyon in the world. We got some great pictures and had a lot of fun. At times we had to physically wrestle South Africans out of our photographs and there was a lot of British anger at the lack of queuing. This was particularly heightened when a drunk choir group kept jumping in our photos. Lucy and I eventually made ‘friends’ with the group and got involved in some South African songs and dancing. One song was about downing a beer and then feeling ‘high’ which was accompanied by them all downing their drinks. It was weird. That evening Bridie cooked us a Brie and we ate like kings.  All in all its going bloody well.

 

 

NB: For Tony Vouru. Penny is doing fine and she’s doing really well at school. Last week she attended a cross dressing disco and she is currently residing with a man called DR Love.  She’s organising a sports and culture day which is proving to be difficult, but we have decided as a group we must do a dance to represent British culture. We are being the spice girls and unfortunately Penny got the role as Scary (pick of the draw, not a reflection on her character nor your parenting). Despite these strange events she is safe, healthy and happy.