South African Mornings - a quick note

It's only 6:14 am here - I woke up extremely early this morn. Actually, that's a lie. I'm sorry to start out my first entry in Africa with a lie. It just happened. The truth is, I wake up this early every morning, which might be more surprising if I didn't tel you that I go to bed by 8:30 every nite. The days are long days here - full of language lessons, HIV/AIIDS information, cultural sessions, and learning about how CBO's (community based organizations) and other related organizations operate in South Africa. That's the short version. The long version is longer and not nearly as interesting.

I'm able to compose this entry because I have access to my laptop at my homestay - which I haven't used much up to this point, except to show my family some pictures of back home. So now, whenever I do get to the internet, I will have written this up already, and will simply cut and paste on the computers at some internet cafe, thanks to a super idea by my brotha Dizzy, who got me a nice little flash drive which I expect will come in super handy throughout my time here.

By the way Nathan/Dizzy/Promise/SBG, your damn songs were stuck in my head for the entire first week and a half in South Africa, and for any of you reading this who hasn't heard the music, do it. www.myspace.com/promisesmusic - check back often for new songs, and marvel and the excellent photos of the artist. There Diz. Now you have to put up all your best songs because you now have a wider audience.

Back to South Africa. My homestay situation is great. I'm living in the Northwest Province near the Botswana border. My family is wonderful. Dineo (host mom), Titus (host dad) and their three daughters (my sisters) Pako, 9, Thato, 4, and Thumelo 9 months. Mom, Pops, and Pako all speak English, Thato and Thumelo, not so much - as should be expected by a 4 year old and 9 month old. Everyone here speaks Setswana, which is tough, because I'm not learning Setswana officially anymore. More on that in a sec. My family has the only 2 story house around, and it's a very nice house with an orchard on the property where Titus grows oranges, lemons, peaches, apples, guava, grapes and more according to the season. He grows a few different types of oranges - my favourite of which he called a minala - which is the size of a small grapefruit, extremely dense, and deliciously juicy to the point that if you bite into a slice and you're lucky, you can shoot a stream of orange juice about 4 feet away, completely unintentionally - I've done it twice already. Just ask the people I accidentally squirted. My room is on the second floor here, and one of the walls is all windows and faces east. So while I wake up in the dark, after about 15 minutes, the sun rises and paints a beautiful picture right in front of my eyes that even Bob Ross would envy.

I want to take you all back to kindergarten for a moment, and recall the times when we all read short stories about Old MacDonald and Charlotte's Web and other books about life on the farm. Books such as this usually reference a rooster cock-a-doodle-dooing just as the sun rises, giving the call for all to wake up. I'd like to take this opportunity to slander all the children's books authors who ever put that stupid idea in our heads because as anyone currently in the general presence of roosters, including all of us here can attest to, the roosters around here cock-a-doodle-doo whenever they cock-a-doodle-damn-well-please. Which means AT ALL HOURS OF THE NITE. I've become very upset with the roosters here, and so when I come across one during the day that is cock-a-doodle-dooing, I yell something like, "SHUT UP! YOU'RE 6 HOURS LATE! IT'S ALREADY DAYTIME! ARE YOU FREAKING BLIND?!? I JUST ATE YOUR COUSIN FOR DINNER LAST NITE!" or something to that effect. I think they get the point because they walk away like chickens.

The language situation is a bit tough at the moment. The reason for this is that the area we are in is a dominant Setswana speaking area. I know the basic greetings and a few side comments and questions in Setswana. But for my permanent site placement, I will be speaking Zulu, and therefore have daily lessons in the Zulu language. No one here speaks Zulu, and everyone expects me (and other volunteers here) to learn Setswana. It doesn't bother me very much, but it would make the learning process go much faster if I was living in an area where I had the chance to use the language I'm learning everyday. Such is not the case, and I am over it by now. I am very excited to be learning Zulu.

I will find out about my site placement most likely in about 4 weeks. I expect to be placed either in Mpumalanga or Kwa-Zulu Natal, which would make sense since me and a few other volunteers are learning Zulu, and Zulu is spoken predominantly in the afforementioned provinces.

I don't expect to have regular access to the information super-highway for a while yet. But when things are up and running here, I will be sure to give you a full account of happenings. That includes bath time, which is an experience that words will never do justice describing, but I will try, and I won't even include any graphic details. Trust me, it's for the best.

Don't forget to be awesome. Be back in a few weeks...

P.S. - If all my picture uploads have been successful, you will see that I was the most recent winner in the local Elvis Costello Look-A-Like Contest. In fact, I was the only entry, because no one here knows who the hell Elvis Costello is. It was an easy victory. One which I savour.