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.