For the sake of my own dignity and the honor of my family I will not go into extreme detail about the events of Splashy Fen except to say that it was everything a 4-day music festival in the mountains should be and more. I set out with 10,000 of my closest white, South African friends to spend the weekend joeling (partying- afrikkans) and listening to lekkah (great) music. In order to receive free entrance to the festival, our program director had worked out a deal with the people running the festival that we would take turns working an 8-hour shift at the front gate and get an all access pass with zero no-fly zone restrictions for the rest of the weekend. The men we worked the gate with were all from a middle-aged mens fraternity called the round table, a self-proclaimed “drinking club with a community service problem.” These men were hilarious and enjoyed making fun of the “yanks” weak alcohol tolerance. I worked the gate and obviously ran into a girl who I traveled in India with last January, and graduated from Colby. These kinds of thing need to happen to keep life interesting.
Upon my return from exile (Splashy Fen) I FINALLY moved into my own place. Well it’s sort of my own. I share it with two other girls on the program, albeit, by choice. This place has all the luxuries you could ever dream of: carpeted floors, a shower, a refrigerator, soft beds and pillows, matching plate sets (for dinner parties, obv.) more than one fork, walking distance from a coffee shop, a pool in the backyard, unlimited internet, AIRCONDITIONING, really I’m just spoiled. On top of all these princess-style amenities, I was finally able to unpack my suitcase for the first time! When living in homestays, I kept my suitcase locked, because in many cases more than just the family was in the house. It’s not that I didn’t trust them, it’s just that I would have hated myself for not buying a $3 lock (and $2 giraffe beaded keychain) had, say, my ipod gone missing. Also, my Patagonia fleece. Now that I am cooking for myself (and an expert chef) life on the food-blog might get less interesting. We cooked some pesto pasta with hand-roasted red peppers, onions, cherry tomatoes and pecans for dinner the first night, marking my induction into the world of choose what I eat. In other news, I joined a gym and will now be able to exist as anything but a weak, jello-blob of a person. Cheers.
On a note similar to a blog post by the one and only Jacob Marty, I will now attempt to chronicle the slow-paced life here, and how I have (no lies) acquired some serious patience in this country. My independent study will be researching and creating a girls’ group curriculum for a local youth empowerment organization that is lacking in both a) female leadership and b) gender-specific programming. In order to being, it was necessary to engage in a 15 or so minute dialogue with the organization’s leader, which is where the laughable amounts of patience come into play. Here is a synopsis of the events of my life between 09:00 hours and 13:00 hours on Thursday, April 8.
09:00: get picked up by minibus SIT vehicle and transported to program office
09:10: check email and facebook (quickly, duh.)
09:30: depart from SIT office to pre-scheduled meeting with youth club leader
09:40- 11:56: wait in YEP office for group leader to return from… who knows?
12:30: receive transport back to home
And all of this for a 15 minute interview. Here’s the drill. South African time means being within about two hours of a desired meeting. For this 15 minute interview, I needed to budget literally a whole morning, which I think may make research a little more difficult then shacking up in miller library for hours (including 20 minute power naps). On the plus side, following his tardiness to our meeting I received an sms (read: text message, this language is starting to stick) from the youth program director that read “hey sorry makin u wait dat long 2day was’nt too sure wat time u coming, thankx for taking your time out to enriching our community, thankx for your patience. Peace.” Loosely translated it sounds like if I am able to crack through the slow-pace of society, I might actually be able to do something good. Side note: text message lingo infuriates me.
X’s and O’s
Judy
Epilogue: Today I received my very first police escort. The details of the story are pretty insignificant, except to say that I am finally recognized as an international superstar (read: my roommates and I went running in a neighborhood we did not know was safe and a police car drove by and drove next to us until we reached a safe neighborhood).
No comments:
Post a Comment