Volunteers at last

Susan and I were sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers on September 21st. We are now official PCVs, proud members of SA15 (the 15th PC cohort in to South Africa). We are situated at our work site for the next two years. The time period from my last blog update to date has been busy. We went to the city of Rustenberg to meet our supervisor, traveled to our work for orientation, visited with a current PCV (from SA14), returned to the training site, had more training, had a going away party with our homestay families, had the swearing-in ceremony, and of course had a couple of braais in the meantime (South Africans seems to look for any excuse to have a braai (celebratory barbeque)).

The supervisor’s meeting in Rustenberg was a welcome if jarring change from the village life at our training site. South Africa is a land of contrasts. After waking in our village to a bucket bath, pit toilet and cautiously boiled water, we arrive at a resort in Rustenberg and are greeted with cream scones and our first cup of brewed coffee in South Africa. The resort was a welcome respite – beautiful grounds, plentiful and delicious meals, hot showers, dependable electricity, and flush toilets. I missed the early morning nature walk but those who made it reported seeing zebra and wildebeest. It was hard for my mind to adjust from village life in early 20th century to 21st century resort living.

From Rustenberg in Northwest province we traveled to our site in KwaZulu-Natal. Our site is a hospital on a mountain ridge. The hospital is surrounded by forest. Our accommodation is a one-room flat adjoining the hospital administration office.

The hospital is small – current census is 92, there is a maximum capacity of 110 but they try to keep at least 10 beds available for emergencies. The hospital was originally build as a TB sanitarium, but now serves as an AIDS hospice, TB treatment center, and emergency care facility for the local area. There is one doctor at the hospital for two days per week and one pharmacist for two days a week. The area is very remote and very rural. The local village has about 10 houses and a tuck shop (the rural South African version of 7-11). The area does not have electricity and water is an occasional event. On the other hand our accommodations are plush – electricity, flush toilets, indoor water, and hot showers – South Africa is a place of jarring contrasts.

Our living area is a one room flat adjoining the hospital administration office, we have a kitchen area, shower and bathroom in what was once a hallway in the administration area. The site is beautiful, at supper time we sit at our dining table and look out at sunset across a broad valley with rough rock formations and cliffs. The Zulu king, Shaka, was reported to have tossed his enemies off these cliffs as a expedient means of gaining concensus in the 1800’s. Being on the hospital grounds, there is a staff of gardeners which maintains the lawn and flowers in our backyard. The back yard is small, but is at the end of the ridge top – there is a steep drop of several hundred meters at the end of our yard. The mountainside is home to lots of birds – all beautiful and exotic to Californians.

After visiting our work site, meeting our supervisor and seeing our assignments, returning to training seemed difficult. The last two weeks of training were informative but there was a sense of impatience and anxiety hanging over all the sessions. Our homestay family held a braai in our honor with our language class, all the language trainers, and lots of neighbors/relatives. Braai’s are wonderful feast – grilled beef, chicken and wors (Afrikaans for wurst = sausage), stew, salads, veggies, and mountains of pap (corn meal mush). The meat is grilled over the embers of branches brought in from the local woods. The branches are cut (broken) long so that the ember end can be under the meat but the branch is still on fire further up. As the ember end dies out the branch is inserted further bringing fresh embers into the broiling area. The result is a very smokey tasting meal.

In final weekend of training all the trainees went to a mall in Pretoria to buy household goods for “settling-in” into our new homes. Shopping day was Susan’s and my anniversary so we spent more time having a celebratory multi-course “Continental” lunch than shopping. The mall in Pretoria was barely distinguishable from Del Amo mall in Torrance, another jarring moment in South Africa – awakened with roosters and goats then off to the mall.

Leah, our Assistant PC Country Director i.e. the boss for NGO’s, had a closing ritual for our final class. She had us write down all our unfulfilled Peace Corps expectations on a piece of paper, and then one by one had us set a match to them and burn them. Then she gave out flowers made of wire and beads, and pieces of paper shaped like petals. We wrote new plans for our two years here and placed them as petals on the wire flowers. We went outside and formed a circle; one by one we said one of our new expectations and planted our flower.

We spent the night before swearing-in at the same rondovaals we stayed in when we first arrived in country. When we arrived we thought the rondovaals were quaint and primitive. By the end of training we looked forward to a night there with the luxury of electricity, flush toilets and hot showers. I suppose that’s what the training was all about.

The swearing-in was held at a resort near our training village and just outside the border of a nature preserve. The ceremony touched me more than I expected. I was proud to have made it through training (even if my Zulu is less that comprehensible), sorry to say good-bye to my fellow trainees and eager to get on with my new life. Like much of Peace Corps – a wild mix of emotions.

I am writing this on Tuesday. Swearing-in was on Thursday, Friday was spent shopping in Vryheid for groceries, household goods and an Internet data card for my PC—we are now connected (sort of). We have intermittent GPRS service at our site, I’m really not complaining – its amazing to have any Internet access when our nearest grocery store is 80 km away.

Saturday and Sunday were spent in Nongoma at church women’s conference that our supervisor was attending. The women at the meeting were dressed in a spectacular array of finery: traditional Zulu dress, “pinafores” (matching head-scarf, apron and full skirted dress, and the occasions modern dress. One session consisted of 4 hours of singing, dancing and marching up to the altar to give offerings – non-stop. These little old ladies have stamina.

Monday was a South African holiday so Susan and I hiked around the area to get our bearings. There is a former tea plantation about 6 to 8 km from us. For reasons not clear to me the plantation ceased operations though there are still people living in the plantation housing.

Today we finally started work. I have a job, my title is Operations Manager. I am not real sure what that entails, but I think it means I am now the assistant hospital administrator. Today I started sorting through human resource processes, procedures and forms, trying to assemble a workable set of HR procedures for the hospital.