Slowly growing gills!

It's late Thursday afternoon, and I have Josh Groban playing to drown out the sounds of children and pouring rain.  Both of those are lovely sounds...in moderation!  We have been told that this year "rainy season" has been unusually wet and cool.  We usually have one hot day, and then 2 or 3 wet ones.  Getting laundry to dry is still a challenge, and it's amazing the sense of accomplishment that comes from getting just one load washed AND dried!

 

I just arrived "home" from "work" at the "office" (all words in quotes should not be interpreted with a typical North American mindset), and transportation continues to be interesting.  I am at the mercy of whoever might be travelling back and forth, so I often ride in the back of a truck or squished into a combie with dozens of children or Gogos who also need transport.  The rain and fog make the roads even more perilous, as do herds of cows and deep ruts.  I usually just pray I'll come out alive.  It still bothers me to have our kids ride that way, but seatbelts (and seats!) are a very rare luxury.  However, there just isn't the congestion on the roads here that there is in Calgary, and I haven't seen evidence of any accidents yet.

 

I'm beginning to get used to my job of being the "Administrative Assistant to the Manager of Outreach Initiatives".  This is a title I've made up for myself...like it?  It really means that I'm suppose to try to organize some of the outreach side of this very chaotic organization.  I'm quite sure now that this is an impossible task, much like shovelling the driveway when it's still snowing (thanks for that great analogy, Deb!), but it seems that even my very limited computer knowledge will be able to help in putting some systems into place for the future.  I do a lot of writing and editing funding proposals, creating spread sheets for budgets, and organizing paper files into some useable system.  I also make the occasional trip into the valleys for various reasons, like taking pictures for some funding proposal I'm working on, or just to help in some outreach endeavour.  I enjoy the Zulu people I work with each day, since they provide the inspiration to tackle my daily tasks. 

 

A significant degree of racism is still operational here...more so than we expected.  This racism goes both ways, since the blacks (that's the term used here) are suspicious of the whites, and the whites still have a sense of superiority.  There is also an attitude of entitlement among the blacks, since they feel that the whites now owe them for the years of Apartheid.  This is remarkably similar to the issues in Canada with Native Canadians.  And judging by that situation, there are no quick fixes and attitudes take generations to change.  Here at GGA all of this plays out in subtleties, but is certainly present.  For example, it is common practise here to have the white people ride in the front of a vehicle, and the black people climb into the back.  Dan and I refuse to go along with this, especially if the black individual is older.  The jobs in SA in general are still very divided along racial lines.  Black people almost always hold low-paying jobs doing manual labour or domestic work, or sometimes working in grocery stores or fast food restaurants  I could be wrong, but I think that it's possibly more difficult to "help" blacks in South Africa than in other African countries because they have been taught not to trust, and our white skin doesn't mark us as foreigners, but as white South Africans.

 

Luckily the kids here at GGA don't really see skin color like the adults do.  They are openly curious and affectionate.  They often ask when we will be leaving though, and this shows that they want to be cautious in bonding with us to protect themselves from hurt when we leave.  They are growing up in a curious mixture of Zulu and Western culture, and are sadly used to the transience of their caregivers.  There is permanent Zulu staff here, but they are less involved in the lives of the children than we had imagined before we came.  The Gogos and Aunties clean, cook, and do laundry, but it's the volunteers that play and interact with the kids.  Since the volunteers are limited in disciplinary techniques, we are supposed to take the kids to the Gogos for a "hiding" when they're bad.  The schools here also use corporal punishment, and even the teenagers don't hesitate to whack the younger kids if they misbehave.  In general, Zulu kids in the Valleys are very well behaved and respectful, but the GGA kids know that the volunteers cannot punish them in the ways they're used to, so it's hard to get them to listen and respect.  It's a bit of a vicious circle:  the kids learn to love and respect the volunteers just in time for them to leave, and then find it even more difficult to trust new volunteers coming in.

 

Well, It's one month ago today that we left Canadian soil.  In one way it seems like a lifetime ago, and in other ways the month has flown by.  I think we're all through the worst of the adjustment phase, and are finding new "normals".  We are still in our "temporary" lodgings, where the toilet is in the front entrance, and the ants seem to eat more of our food than we do, but we're strangely content.  Tomorrow we're heading off for a weekend away at a different part of the coast.  The change of scenery will be nice, and it will be great to sleep past 5:30am!

 

Cathy