OVC Workshop

Why I am an African

Is it because of the colour of my skin?
Is it because of the language I speak?
Is it because of the way I speak?
No! I was born and rooted in Africa
I am an African queen
I am mother of all nations
I sing to izintaba zasemgungundbvu
I am a man with a womb
And black is my colour
South Africa my home
Africa my continent Ayanda, 13


My first three days of work at PSA was spent observing and assisting at a three-day workshop on leadership training for 20 teens aged 13 to 16. All participants were orphans and/or vulnerable children through the effects of HIV/AIDS, also known here in South Africa as OVCs. The kids seemed like any teenagers I would meet back home except that some were barefoot and wore hand-me-down clothes (one t-shirt advertised a 2001 festival in Ventura, CA). After introductions, my supervisor, Napoleon, introduced an exercise called “the road map.” I had participated in this exercise as a Peace Corps trainee. Everyone is given a flip chart size piece of paper and told to draw, illustrate, or create a road showing the highlights and important dates of one’s life. This is a helpful way to begin a discussion on identity, values and uniqueness of all participants. I was really unprepared for what happened next. After the kids were finished, they each brought their “map” in front of the room to share with the group who they were and what was important to each one. Most chose Zulu to share their maps, but one young, petite girl, Ayanda, shared hers in English. At first, I thought that the crosses with boxes I saw along her road map were churches. Then she proceeded to clearly and directly share her losses, her grief, her shame....her mother, an alcoholic recently diagnosed with AIDS, her grandmother and aunt who had died within the past 3 or 4 years, her witnessing of a stabbing between her uncle and father. Her tears began to fall but she was stoic in the face of describing her life. She left nothing out. Then one by one, the kids shared their stories, all with so much pain and so recent, that it was hard to imagine how they could be so resilient and forthright in the face of it. A few broke down completely. Many had grief that had not been shared fully,.perhaps because of moving around so often, adjusting to step-families, living with relatives that resented another mouth to feed or becoming head of a child-headed family. Their courage and strength is what impressed me the most.
South Africa, recently passed by India with the most HIV/AIDS victims in the world, is grappling with a brewing catastrophe. The implications of death and lingering illness of parents and breadwinners, resources being spread thinner in an impoverished population are creating a social disaster for many children. Some of the kids in the workshop did not have a permanent place to stay. Some came to the workshop hungry. The drop-in center created in the township that held the workshop was sponsored by PSA, the non-profit organization I work for, the community mothers and grandmothers and local churches and the government. They provide a nutritious lunch daily for the children and try their best, without adequate training, to assess and identify the needs of the children. What South Africans don’t know to date is the extent of the problem,
It was encouraging to me by the end of the workshop, in spite of the everyday trials they face, I did witness in some of the children hope, confidence and a belief that the future held something good for them Ayanda, for example, wrote the poem above and asked to share it with me before I left with my colleagues for home. After I read it, I promised her I would share her thoughts with my friends and family in America. She smiled.

Heritage Day

After the swearing-in ceremony on Sept. 21st, which the U.S. embassy officiated, we Peace Corps trainees were officially designated volunteers, and taken by the director of our NGO (non-profit/non-governmental organization) to our permanent sites. Each of us was matched by Peace Corps with an organization that best fit our skills and desires and the needs of the NGO. I have been placed in the headquarters of a relatively large and well-established organization whose mission is “to create community partnerships that enhance their ability prevent, mitigate, and alleviate the impact of HIV/AIDS.” In the next three months, I will be observing all aspects of the organization, but especially the OVC (orphans and vulnerable children due to the effects of HIV/AIDS) programs. And then the Director, my supervisor and I will evaluate where best to put my skills and energies.
My new home is located in a small, quaint town in the middle of the Mpumalanga province. The town is nestled amid gently rolling hills with agriculture and mining being the economic engines of the area.
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7:00 AM and I am sitting at my dressing table in my bedroom with my laptop. Today is Heritage Day, Sept. 24th, a national holiday which celebrates the diversity, background and history of South Africa’s people. Luckily for me and Aasta (the other volunteer assigned to the NGO), we’ve had a 4 day weekend with nothing to do but relax, settle-in to my new home (she will travel to her rural village work site on Tuesday morning), unpack, wash clothes, and check the town out a bit....and watch TV...Apollo 13 and Bad Boyz 2 (yuk).....and best of all, eat well. We’ve been eating salads and American style breakfasts for every meal and think we’re in heaven. The local produce is so tasty and we have variety, but not as much as in the states and because I’m living in an town that was originally Afrikaans before democracy in 1994 when it was integrated, there is a fabulous bakery within walking distance that could have come straight out of Amsterdam...yum, yum. My work life will begin tomorrow when I accompany my supervisor, Napoleon, to a training which I will assist/observe with (????)

I’ve been waking up with the sun the past 3 days and am beginning to get relaxed enough to pay attention to my natural surroundings. One wall of my bedroom is a window that faces out to the large front yard and then to the street which is lined with huge, leafy trees in our quiet, older, residential neighborhood right in town. Spring is in full season here and the trees are greening up. Lots of birds are congregating in the trees and lawn and I am watching a lesser masked weaver (bright yellow with a black masked face bird) make her nest in one of the trees. The nest hangs on a branch like a pear-shaped basket with an opening on the side. Boy, she sure is industrious and social. Other birds try to steal her nesting material but she is defiantly protecting her nest. She must go back and forth with grass and twigs to her nest 20 times per minute. Check out on the internet the bird called “hoopoe.” I have seen one on our lawn and I suspect if I keep watching I’ll see some more. They are so crazy looking. I have a Lonely Planet guide to East Africa wildlife so I can identify some of the birds.

As you are probably getting the idea anyway, it is true that I will be living with the 15% of the South Africans who are “the haves” instead with the 85% of “the have-nots” as I was doing in the rural village. One moment I am watching every drop of water I use and feeling light-headed from lack of good nutrition and calories and now I can drink water out of the tap and eat European-style pastries anytime I want. I am guessing that perhaps 80% of my fellow volunteers are located in rural villages and will be taking bucket baths and lugging water for the next two years. I know of two volunteers who will not even have electricity. So, it just depended on the job Peace Corps decided you would best match up with and then what kind of housing the organization provided you. Actually, there’s only a few of us who are not in rural locations.....although I was prepared to live in a rural village for two years, I am very happy with the living arrangements and small town atmosphere I have been assigned to.

Pre-Service Training

(Notes from August 12, 2006)....6:30 AM
I lay on my back in my double bed staring at the bare wood beams supporting the corrugated tin roof of my rural African village bedroom. Like other buildings I’ve seen in the village my four bedroom home is in the later stages of completion. It is brick with plastered walls and linoleum floors. We have no in-door plumbing, in fact no municipal water from the spigot much of the time, no car, no balanced nutrition, no paved roads but do have a TV, two cell phones and a VCR. I hear a cacophony of roosters crowing as I lie quietly. It is Saturday morning and I hear more sounds than during the week as village men have returned home from working in Pretoria all week. From a distance barely audible, I can make out the chanting of men, a call and response that sounds ancient and mysterious. I doubt that it is associated with the Ndebele people who several weeks ago welcomed home their four young male family members back from several months in the mountains where they experienced coming -of-age ceremonies, including circumscion. Looking back now, the chanting was probably part of another funeral, a weekly occurrence here and a huge part of everybody’s life in the village. For the seven weeks I lived in Boekenhouthok, funerals were a constant reminder of the ravages of HIV/AIDs which is rampant here, although no one ever seems to know what the deceased died of. There is still so much shame around the subject. I also hear the plaintive mooing of a cow tied to a tree in the front yard of my next door neighbor. It will be slaughtered there later today for the wedding feast that is to take place. Birds are chirping. Early risers stroll by my bedroom window laughing quietly taking advantage of the cool morning to chat in Zulu, Afrikaans, Siswati or one of the other eight official South African languages. Welcome to South Africa.
The U.S. Peace Corps placed me and 33 trainee volunteers with 34 home-stay village families as an integral part of our 2 month cultural/language immersion program that prepares us for our two-year volunteer commitment to a South African NGO (non-governmental/non profit organization). Daily we would meet at the senior center in the village (the only community facility) from 8:00 to 5:00 to train in our target language (mine was Zulu), learn from guest speakers from the United Nations, USAID, experts in HIV/AIDs and then apply our new knowledge in community based group projects in the village.......very exhausting, but stimulating. Our presence in the community caused quite a stir. Many of the children had never seen a white person up close and for those under 3 years old it was quite a frightening experience. Everyone else opened their hearts and homes to us in such a generous, loving way that it was sometimes hard to comprehend that those so poor materially had to so much to give from their hearts. Although this experience was certainly a challenge for me on several levels, I wouldn’t have changed it for the world. It gave me a hands-on understanding of what the world’s poor go through each day in order to survive.
The Peace Corps program provides every necessary training, resource and support to enable each volunteer to have a successful experience. Yet, each of us struggled to adjust to such a bewildering array of changes as we were plopped down in our poor African village after one week total of orientation. It boggles the mind how abrupt and drastic these changes were. We had no land-line telephone access, no public or cell telephone with international access, no internet access other than chance, no mail delivery other than staff coming from Pretoria infrequently..…..the food, the living situation, the daily routine, the separation from family and friends, making new friends, adjusting to language barriers, keeping up with training expectations, the vast cultural differences and coping…… PATIENCE AND FLEXIBILITY. I think I can speak for my group that these two qualities tested each of us to the max. I thought I understood these words until I joined the Peace Corps. As Americans we were used to schedules, structure and clear work objectives that enabled us to have some sense of control and prediction over our lives. Well, that doesn’t happen in rural Africa. Schedules were revised hourly, expectations were dashed frequently and sometimes we would wait for hours for transportation. Much of this has to do with the lack of community resources, but, the important cultural component I learned was the different concept of time. The ideas of “wasting time,” “saving time,” or “free time” have no meaning here. The concept of time relates to the present moment and that’s it! So, we constantly had to remind each other when the day’s structure started to unravel and frustration started to escalate, “remember guys, patience and flexibility…...we’re in the Peace Corps.” I coped better when I let go of the constraints of time.