My Community

Saturday June 15th

In the morning we drove through the reserve for a bit and saw some waterbucks and impalas. Jimmy was also quick to point out all the elephant dung on road. “Elephant dung but no ellies.” HA!

Then we made our way to the communities…

I am staying in the community of Gottenburg. (Pronounced Goat – in-burg)

With Papa Elvis (yes like Elvis Presley – no joke!) & Mama Sisanda, my homestay parents. My brothers are Sema who is 8 years old & Shannon who is 4. Shannon loves to jump and pull me by the hand from place to place. Him and Sema are always fighting for my attention. Sema is quieter. He’ll whisper things to me under his breath like “yes” or “that one.” My sister’s name is Molina, she immediately hugged me and told me how happy she was to have a sister because she never had a sister, only brothers. She’s quiet but funny. She told me she liked my hair and that you never see any white people with their hair cut like that. I invited her to touch it and when she did she squealed “Wow, it’s SO soft!” Her and Elvis speak the best English.

They taught me a card game that I know I’ve played before but I just can’t remember the name. I taught them the card game “Speed.” Explaining a game when neither parties speak each other’s language perfectly can be rather difficult but you’d be surprised of how you manage to communicate in different ways other than verbally when you have to. They got the hang of it and I suspect they’ll be beating me at it by the end of the summer.

We have some piggies in our backyard and a family dog Maja. He’s only 3 years old but he seems so old and sick and sad. It makes me sad and then I think of my mommy’s puppies, Leeloo and Dext.

Elvis is one of the community leaders in the Community Development Forum. The community comes together once a week to discuss issues going on in the community and make decisions about them.

The community is much more modern than from what I have seen in my prior experience of traveling in Africa. South Africa is the only country in the program which has electricity in the homestays. And all of our homestays that I’ve seen so far have TV’s, usually with bad Soap Operas going on in the background. Helen and April’s homestays even have indoor flushing toilets and running water, but alas mine does not.

It’s crazy how much we take for granted something as simple as being able to walk two steps and turn on the faucet to instantly to wash our hands, dishes, teeth, etc. And not having to wear a headlamp when you have to go outside to go to the bathroom. Just in a few days it has already made me more conscious and cautious of how much water I use when it’s not pouring from a seemingly bottomless source.

The weather is perfect here. Better than Los Angeles when I left. I expected the worse because the last two times I visited Africa in the summer it was unbearably hot but ‘tis the winter in South Africa and ‘tis wonderful.