I’m still a slacker: 20/12/08

So, I’m getting really bad with this blog thing. I think it’s been about a month and a half since I last wrote. In that time we’ve elected a new president (hooray), had Thanksgiving (we had stuffing – someone’s mother sent it from the states), and I’ve been to my second Cherryfest, among other things. Cherryfest was, once again, a bunch of boers with mullets, women with crazy make-up, and other such classiness. Seriously, a woman standing in line in front of me to get into the festival had bright purple eyeshadow all the way up to her eyebrows. Does that ever look good? But there was a lot of free samples of alcohol, and I got my hazelnut liqueur and some cherry liqueur, which is exciting. And I found tapenade, which I haven’t had in FOREVER. It was really exciting. Food generally excites me. Well, good food at least. While up north for cherryfest, I stayed at a volunteer’s house, which was cool because I really like her and don’t get to see her too much. Traveling north is a pain, and expensive. Taxi drivers are really annoying. On the way back down I had two taxi conductors fighting over who got to take me in their taxis. My arms were literally being pulled in different directions. But I made it home, so that’s good.
I’ve also been working at mant’sase Children’s home in qhalasi for the past couple months, trying to get their library functional. Mant’sase is an orphanage run by an ngo, and so it actually does get funding for things, and they have a new director who seems really cool, so I’ve got a lot of hope for the library. I have a lot of ideas of what I want to do with it, and I might actually be able to get them done. And there will definitely be someone there to run the library. I might also help with the eccd there. The new director was a teacher at a Montessori school, so she’s really focused on getting the school working well.
Things at my actual site aren’t so successful. People in my village are kinda lazy, and I honestly have no idea why they wanted a volunteer other than as a status symbol, unless they were hoping to get money out of me. This is actually a big problem with volunteers. Organizations apply for volunteers in the hope that 1. they will fix all problems without asking the locals to actually do any work 2. give a bunch of money or 3. will be status symbols to make them look good. It’s kinda reverse racism, and it makes me feel really awkward, “look at us, we have a white person here.” In short, I’m not sure how much work I’m going to be doing in the future with my village. I’m having a meeting with my support group about this hopefully tomorrow, and I’ve talked with peace corps and they might be coming out after the holidays to talk with my village. Basically this all started because I have been trying to hold meetings to get the library in my village functional, to find someone to run the library, and no one is coming to the meetings. On top of that, my support group said they wanted an organization called new start to come out for an hiv education and testing day. So I met with the organization, spent a couple weeks getting things organized, talking with my support group, getting them to make announcements in the village, etc. and after all that no one, not even my support group members who originally said they wanted new start to come, showed up. And I’m getting tired of working when no one else wants to put in the effort. The one exception was the kids in the village. I wanted to put on a play about hiv and aids for the education day, and so my ‘m’e helped me to translate an applicable story into Sesotho and I had my kids act out the play. They got really excited about it, memorized their lines, came to rehearsals, got costumes, and even began to write their own play. And that’s great. So I might try to organize another hiv education day in January (with the help of the ministry of health) for them if nothing else, because they should be able to show off their work.
I spent a few days this past week at a friend’s site helping to paint a map of the world on the wall of a school. I actually got to draw northern Russia onto the wall because no one else would both draw and get up on the slightly sketchy ladder. I’ll just say that Russia now looks a little unique. But, as most kids here can’t even find Lesotho on a map I guess it doesn’t matter too much.
And I had to buy a dress for a wedding I’m going to on the 27th. My host sister invited me to her friend’s wedding. I’m a little nervous about going because apparently the friend is really excited about me coming and keeps asking if I’m really going to show up. I’m worried I’m going to be put on show as the honorary white girl. Hopefully not. And I loathe shopping. To anyone who knows me, that shouldn’t come as a surprise, but shopping for a dress was a wretched experience. I found one that was ok, and only r110 (about $11) but was strapless, and I was really going for something kinda conservative, as I figure I’m going to attract enough attention anyways. And I have a hilarious tan line. So then I had to find a wrap of some sort, and one that would match my slippers, which are silver (and my favorite part of the outfit). I’m sure there will be pictures of this monstrosity. So yeah, I’m going to the wedding for Christmas. It’s actually in south Africa, in qwaqwa (sp?) just north of Lesotho. Wish me luck

ann