Update on my life: My two and a half weeks journey in Bushbuckridge has officially come to an end, and now I am on my way to cape town for vacation before heading to Hanoi!
Some highlights since I last wrote:

1. Safari! I went on an awesome safari with the group in Kruger National Park. I really felt like I was in the Lion King as I saw elephants, lions, giraffes, zebras, baboons, hippos, wildabeasts, impalas, wart hogs, exotic birds ruling the land.

2. Traditional beers - our two new village friends, Professor and Cyril, took Sara, Lan, and I to this Mozambique woman who brews traditional beers. The two we sampled were both thick and grainy, and after we learned that they are made from Maize meal, no surprise there! I definitely prefer the more local marula beer that they make here from the marula fruit!

3. Maize meal lesson - the boys also took us to meet elderly women who make maize meal that is used to make pap. I got to do a demonstration and basically they husk the corn, pick off all the kernels and then crush them to a powder in a giant mortal and pestle looking instrument.


4. Party and police - this past Saturday night, one of the host families in a different village threw a party for IHP ers and their host siblings. After convincing Mama Ivy to let us go and take the car (which we never use), we headed to pick up the other five Ihp students that live in Welverdind. In a small car with only two front seats, four piled into the front and nine of us managed to squeeze into the trunk with sitting on laps and a few legs hanging out the back of the car. The party was awesome and great to be with my host sisters and friends! Low and behold, with not another car on the road, we were the lucky ones to get pulled over by the cops for overcrowding the car. They made us go to the police station and then interrogated us on who we were and what we were doing. In the end, my host sister negotiated a 500 Rand ticket ($70) which for the majority of unemployed people here can't pay. Although this was just a wild experience and luckily not a serious offense, I witnessed the corruption of people in power here that I have heard a lot about. And in the end, they allowed us to drive home all packed up, under the condition that no legs were hanging out the back of the car and one less person in the front - so we drove home with ten in the back and more smushed than ever!


5. Music! The two most popular songs in the village right now are:
Lesson number one by Rhythmic Elements and Oh my luv by Bojo Mojo. They also love little Wayne here.

6. Eco foot print - during these last two weeks, I have consumed less resources than ever before solely by living the way the family does. I used very little water and electricity, ate mostly locally grown food, and created very little waste. Awesome.




7. Food and meals - I am sure by now you are curious as to what I have been eating here. In one sentence I would say a lot of mushy vegetables, beans, and pap (corn meal hard porrige). They mostly eat what can grow in the area: tomatoes, beets, cabbage, carrots, mangos, onion, squash, guava, bananas, peppers, potatoes, tons of corn and peanuts. They cook with a lot of soy, beans, and rice. most of the food mama prepares is cooked over an outdoor fire at high temperatures (I assume for hygienic reasons) and on the fire as opposed to the stove inside which is never used to consume less electricity. Breakfasts can be: soft corn meal porrige, oatmeal, biscuits, bread, or eggs. Lunch or dinner always has pap at it and can include: chopped beet salad, coleslaw, sauté cabbage and onions, creamy onion soup, bean stews, sauté chopped spinach, mashed squash, slimy green vegetable, mushy noodles, rice, chicken, and fish. usually there is two to three side dishes for the pap. The coleslaw, beets, beans and eggs were my favorite dishes. Sometimes, we eat frozen mangos for dessert (especially delicious because there are no sweets!) So far, I've helped mama make beet salad and roast peanuts. We melted sugar over the peanuts and now everyone thinks they are an American delicacy. Over all I really enjoyed the good but I am very excited for some fresh produce meals over vacation!

8. We cook for you, the last family supper - Sara, Lan and I cooked dinner for the family (and in the end for half of the village so they could try what we made) on our second to last night with the family. We made stir fry vegetables, brown rice, roasted potatoes, and muffins (vanilla and chocolate) for dessert. We used a lot more spices that they usually do, and I'm my opinion everything turned out delicious, especially considering we cooked it all on an open outdoor fire. The whole time we cooked, they all stood around staring at us and were asking about recipes. The family kind of liked the meal, muffins the most (because they never get sweets so this was a big treat) and vegetables the least. We presented the family with a small home made photo album we put together from pictures we developed during our time together. They actually have no pictures, mostly because they don't have a camera and the only place to develop photos is half an hour away and very expensive - so they especially appreciated the gesture and have had fun showing it to everyone. Mama then presented us with mugs, with 'Jessica Masuku' (their last name) engraved in it. Each member of their family has this mug and it really was the perfect gift to us showing that we are now apart of their family. In broken English, Mama told us that she will remember us forever.



9. Farewell Braai - we had a goodbye braai for our group and host families at the wild life college, where we take our classes. We invited the whole extended family and friends to join us, and in the end, we had the biggest entourage joining us. We enjoyed a traditional dance and song show, which then turned into a traditional dance party for the group. The night was so fun and I was so happy all of our favorite people could join us. Seeing eveyone else with their families - I realized that I lucked out so much and got the best host family! The Masuku's are so wonderful and I got so lucky to have sisters my agea. Back at the house, all of the girls (Mama, karula, eulandah, amu and us) sat around laughing about first impressions and about all of the fun times we shared together.

It is crazy to realize how attached to this family and community I have gotten in just 2 1/2 weeks and how now it will be so difficult to stay in touch. I now have tons of pen pals!!! I really will cherish and remember fondly the experience I just had becoming a part of the masuku family. I can't believe I still have three more homestays ahead of me! This is too emotionally draining.

I am now off to cape town for my week vacation which I am so excited about! Stay tuned to hear all about it and for lots of pictures that I will post over break!

Happy readings!
Jess

RIP baby calf

Today when I got home from class, I sat outside with the family doing laundry and eating mangos. Then, I look toward the gate to see Mama wheeling the wheel barrel toward the cow pen. she called Sara and me over to watch... And low and behold one of the baby cows died. Mama dragged the baby cow onto the barrel and instructed me to begin wheeling it down the dirt road. With no shoes on, I began wheeling the dead baby cow away toward the bush. After a very long walk in the sun, mama took over and discarded the cow in a small ditch in the middle of no where. We offered to make a little funeral but they just laughed. Oh well, its Just another day in the life of a Welverdind villager.

The stars are so beautiful in Bushbuckridge!

Happy Wednesday!

On Saturday, I went with the group to Blyde river canyon which is the 3rd largest canyon in the world. I saw some beautiful views, amazing rock formations, and got to swim in waterfalls there too! For dinner, we ate at a 'pancake' place that is very popular in the area. The pancakes are kind of a mix of a crepe and a pancake stuffed with either sweets or savory treats. I got one stuffed with butter nut squash and feta. Yum!
Church! So great. This week I went with Eulanda, my older host sister, to her church (a different one from last week) called Zion. Again, I dress extremely modestly - hair covered, long sleeve shirt and long skirt. Most people dressed in the church colors, blue and white, however, we did not get the memo. As soon as we entered the church, the pastor welcomed us and thanked us for joining them as the first white people to pray with Zion ever. He told us that we are like angels to them and that we (Lan Sara and I) are lights on to the world. I felt extremely flattered despite the slight discomfort of so much praise.

A passage from the bible about love was read in Tsonga and translated to English for us. The remainder of the service consisted of various church members rising and sharing what their interpretation of the passage was...and low and behold most people drew connections to Valentine’s Day! (everyone is obsessed with Valentine’s Day here!) At the end of the service, they did a prayer for the sick where everyone formed a circle around the periphery of the church and in the center the pastors blessed the sick. During this time, all of the little kids came to stand near us, so we chose to play with them and hold their hands to make them feel comfortable with seeing white people probably for the first time. As we left, tons of church members approached us to shake our hands.

In the afternoon, I went with my host family to a traditional tribal dance festival. It was awesome and cool to be part of a local festival.
I've made quite a few observations about the Shangan community I'm living with from conversations with family and hearing from speakers.

According to my host sister, 3/4 of all girls here get pregnant out of wedlock - which is totally acceptable and due to many factors. Some girls do this to receive a money stipend from the government for each child they have (about $35 / month). Some get pregnant because many boy-friends refuse to use condoms in order to make sure their girl friends are faithful -which many times leads to pregnancy and spreading disease - another reason why the prevalence of HIV is so high here. Despite the high rates, there are many stigmas for HIV and few people get tested and disclose their status in fear of social discrimination.

Many interesting gender roles exist in the community. Polygamy is a widely accepted practice and many men have multiple wives that live in separate homes (usually without the husband at all). Many other men leave the village to find work elsewhere in order to support the family. The combination of the two factors, leave the village with very few male figures. The women raise the children and completely run the home, and family friends and neighbors play a large role in helping one another out. Especially in such a poverty-stricken area, families who have more food feed others and grandparents often look after the young. Mama Ivy is constantly feeding tons of people and cares for babies of villagers who need help. Because of this, there is s strong sense of social parenting in which all members of the community contribute to disciplining and raising a child.

The primary school system has much to be improved which is currently in the works of reform. There are no newspapers, no library, no internet café, and no community center. If anyone would like to have any of these resources, they must take a taxi to a bigger town 30 minutes away – which most people cannot afford. All politics are run by councilmen who are very stuck in the past and do little work for the underserved village people, and the chief is born into the position so there is no democratic process in choosing him. A lot of people I’ve spoken to think these men are corrupt. I have also been learning more about the resources here. Water is very scarce and not enough to support any large scale agricultural industry. Also this season it has not rained enough and consequently many of the crops have died. Yesterday, the group went to the district hospital about thirty minutes from the village. The road to get there was extremely bumpy and not super accessible. The hospital is highly understaffed, underfunded and with little resources. In the whole hospital, there are only 8 doctors! While touring around, I noticed so much overcrowding in the rooms. Many of the patients are there for TB, HIV, malaria, and chronic illnesses, and for the children, many suffer from diarrhea and respiratory infection. They claimed that the average stay of women in the maternity ward is 8 hours, including entering the hospital, birth, and post birth.

On a more positive note - I am treated more like a daughter now. I helped fetch water from the bore hole with a wheel barrel, helped mama cook, helped with the laundry... And now I am in the process of getting my hair braided from my host cousin Carola! Each day I love the family more and more. They are so wonderful and I really respect Mama and the daughters as being such kind and strong women.

Shab! (bye!)

Jess or Sinhle (my Tsonga name meaning beauty, also Eulandah's first name) or Jeska (my Tsongalized name, given by my host sisiters)

Mijani,

Home stay time!
Wow. So much to say!

I will start this post by sharing that every morning I wake up to cow bells, moo's, and cock-a-doodle-doo's. And yesterday I almost got run over by a cow in the middle of the road!

I moved into my home stay on Thursday. I am staying with my friends Sara and Lan. We are living with the Masuku family - with mama Ivy, and her two daughters eulandah (22) and Amu (18). Their husband and father passed away in 2007. Both ivy and eulandah are currently unemployed and amu is a senior in high school at a private boarding school in acornhook, a town about an hour away. She was the one who decided to host us and she has amazing English so we can communicate most easily with her. She keeps saying over and over again how happy she is to host wonderful white people (Valungo).

when we arrived to our village, all of the relatives and neighbors came over to greet us! The whole community is truly so excited to have us.

The house grows mango trees and peach trees and peanut plants, corn, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, onions and spinach. And we have 15 cows and a couple of chicken!!! This is all so cool - I'm loving it! This morning we all just picked mangos off the trees and ate them...I could really get used to this!

Breakfast consisted of pap - a soft porridge (it will take some getting used to). They don't really understand me being a vegetarian but are very accommodating.

I took my first of many bucket showers (which I will be doing for the next three weeks because there is no running water)! Also - going to the bathroom consists of the outhouse or in a bucket for the middle of the night.

the people in the village rarely interact with white people so it is an especially big deal that we are walking the streets and talking villagers. as you can imagine - all of the boys are trying to hang out with us and coming over to visit, and all of the grandmas want to set us up with boy-friends so we will stay!

I am already learning tsonga - the language the shangan people speak here. Its a challenge but I want to communicate with mama Ivy and it is really fun to impress the locals with a few words!

Yesterday, I went to church with the girls and the Masuku's. I had to cover my hair knees and shoulders. Amu wrapped my hair so I would fit in. though we were told that church began at 230, we arrived at 1. Little did we know, singing and dancing in circles of women and men separate took place from 12 to 2. After a few minutes of watching on the side, we joined in the dancing circle and tried our best to sing along. At a certain point, we lined up so the priest could sprinkle holy water on us. It felt great because we were dancing outside in the boiling sun. We were then introduced to a priest as visitors. Once we entered the open roofed church, women sat on the ground on the left and men on the right. The priest translated the whole service for us to make us feel welcome. He read a passage from the bible about the importance of welcoming visitors to your home because you never know if they will be angels. He then introduced each of us and asked us to wave when he called our name. Everyone was clapping and truly so happy to have us. It was such a wonderful experience.

I've loved playing with all of the little kids in the village (who keep coming over to see the white people) and talking to people my age and older. I'm slowly getting the hang of life here and really appreciate how communal it is. Everyone welcomes everyone else and feeds all visitors. All people treat each other as family (which I noticed when no one knows exactly how they are related, or if they're related!) I believe much of the community and sharing and taking responsibility of one another stems from the poverty present in the community. Because of the poverty, the people live much more sustainable lives.

Although this is only my fourth real day in the community, I already feel the warmth and comfort of living here, and am greatly enjoying changing the conception of whites to the village people. Maybe I will help them realize that in the end skin color is just skin and deep down we are all just people.

oh yeah- I saw elephants and giraffes on the way to class today!!!!

ayoba, cool. I hope you enjoy!

Shabb (bye in slang )

Jess

Lion King Style

I went on a 6 am run this morning along side zebras and baboons! Love rural SA.
:)

On my way to Bushbuckridge!

Hey all!

Currently, I am on an eight hour drive up north to Bushbuckridge..so long joburg! Since I last wrote, so much has happened in traveling and with in the group! Over the past few days, we've learned more and more about wilgespruit, the town we are living in. It played a huge role in the anti apartheid movement, and during the apartheid served as the only multi racial institution in all of south Africa. Many refugees and activist groups were based in wilgespruit. It was wild to hear some of the stories from the anti apartheid struggle and from members of the black consciousness movement. our group visited soweto, the largest black township in all of Africa, and the area that all many blacks had to move to during the apartheid. The houses are tiny and all packed together, and as we walked around the streets I could feel the strong sense of community amongst the people. During the day, I spoke with Shakes for a few hours about his experience growing up in an integrated society and how his generation feels about the apartheid. He also taught me a lot about Zulu culture and traditions and i realized that many of his traditions are similar to that of Judaism. So cool! At night, he took our group to a club in joburg to experience some of the night life, which was great.

On Sunday morning I went with some friends to the Rose Bank flea market - so amazing! Filled with tons of beautiful art work, jewelry, delicious local foods, and fun crafts. I hope to find many more craft markets here in sa and in the other countries as well. In the evening, we had a panel with 4 people who played very different roles in the apartheid - a black reverend, a member from the black consciousness movement, a white woman who fought with the anti apartheid movement in black neighborhoods, and the former minister of defense from the apartheid govt. Hearing from all four of them was fascinating. One thing they mentioned that really affected me was that when most of us walk around the streets here, no one can tell were American, we will just be seen as descendants of oppressors solely based on the color of our skin. It is very evident how clearly many people view everything as black and white here. At the end of the panel, rev Trevor challenged us as Americans to be more humble and evaluate why we are oppressing so many in the world and occupying countries and consuming 60 percent of the worlds resources. This was really heavy and provoked a lot of thoughts on what my role and all others in my groups role is in all of this.

Two nights ago, our group did an activity where we each shared our 'river of life', the story of how we got to where we are now, in small groups. My group of six ended up speaking for over three hours and I was so impressed with how open and willing everyone was to share with each other. It was a really special experience and I can tell that everyone feels much closer now from this.

Yesterday we watched an extremely powerful film 'long night's journey into day' which depicted four out of the thousands of trials during the 90s held by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. These personal stories brought various sides of the apartheid more alive for me and made me think a lot about the process of healing and forgiveness. At night, the staff of wilgespruit made a Braai, festive south African bbq, for us as a last night celebration before we left for the north. All of the meat eaters said it was delicious (and the veggies were great too) and we had a great time dancing to local music outside. As a group, we presented a song to the staff to say thank you for hosting us -which they loved! And this morning, they prepared a song and sang back for us.

All in all, my week in south Africa has been wonderful, very eye opening, thought provoking, and filled with many intense conversations. The hospitality is amazing and everyone is so kind and happy to have us in their country. I am so excited to meet my host family and live in the very rural and tribal Bushbuckridge, and experience another side of south Africa.

Stay tuned!

Jess