Hello all,
I know it’s been forever since I’ve written anything in my blog. The closest Internet cafe is 46k from me, so I only go there a few times a month (if even). Anyhow, things have been fine, the weather started cooling off, but now it’s warm again, and I’m sure it’ll cool off again.
I’m getting used to my village and some faces are starting to become familiar to me. My typical day starts out with me walking 10 minutes to work, and greeting a few people as I go along. There are some “regulars” I tend to see quite a bit, but there are others that just seem to pop up out of nowhere. Most people are kind and just say “hello” back to me and try to speak to me in Afrikaans or SiSwati. Sometimes I try to work on my broken Zulu, other times I just use English (especially with the younger ones.) The children typically laugh at me and ask, “HOW ARE YOU?” and then respond with, “”I’M FINE!” With the youngest ones, this is about all of the English they know at this point. It’s very cute.
Of course, like many other American women here, I get proposed to all the time. The other day a taxi driver told me that he loves me with all of his liver and that he can’t spend one more night without me. Sometimes it’s really awkward, but most of the time I just laugh. Although, recently this one guy would not quit following me so I saw two girls standing out in their yard and I went over to talked to them. They promptly shooed him away for me.
Life is pretty slow over all. I wake up and go to work and at ten they have tea, and at noon they eat, and at two they eat again and then I’m home by dark. I do a lot of reading, so if you feel sorry for me please send books.
I have an Internet phone out here, and I use it for basic emails and surfing things like Facebook, but there are a lot of times that the connection just stops. Sometimes this happens for days at a time.
I live in a fairly modern house. We have a shower with running hot and cold water (that works sometimes). It’s amazing we even have running water. It runs from 7 a.m. until someone decides to shut it off. I’m thankful I don’t have to trek for a long distance to get water. At my original host family’s house I had to use an outside tap and lug water inside for bucket baths, etc. I still wash my clothes by hand like I did at the other place.
I have to go grocery shopping pretty often, because I have to drag my bags from the taxi to home (about ten minutes) so I can’t fill them too full due to the simple fact I can’t carry it all.
I wish I had more of an update, but there’s nothing going on right at this moment, so I’ll aim to update either mid-May or the end of May.
