Remember me?

I know, I know that I have seriously been lagging in my blogging. In my defense, the last 3 months have been a whirlwind of World Cup, visitors, vacations, and PC trainings. And just as the storm settled and I began to get things moving on my first official project, the OVC drop-in center (more on that later), the school educators went on a nationwide strike, along with many government workers, and, for some reason unbeknownst to me, my organization. PC encouraged us to stay out of the schools and even away from any projects involving students during the day; this is apparently a preemptive move to dispel any ideas that we may be anti-strike that would therefore foster ill-will against us in the community. So, since I am dependant on both the school and the clinic to work with my organization on this project, I am basically SOL for now, but will attempt to do what I can regardless. At least I now have the free time to do all of the things I was too lazy to do these past 3 months (laundry, blog, actually play the guitar that I purchased 3 months ago).

So, what can I say? I don’t even know where to start. World Cup was, in a word, AMAZING. Had I known how easy it was going to be to get around, etc I would have tried to go to more games than I did attend. But even by just watching a game in a bar filled to capacity by screaming nationals of one of the teams or learning the dance to Waka Waka (the official WC song performed by Shakira) and doing it over and over (and over and over) with my girls club in the village, I had an extremely fun and incredibly exhausting 5 weeks. It was a slow and quiet week that ensued after the final (during which I completely forgot my Dutch ancestry and rooted for Spain), a period we referred to as the World Cup hangover. Coming from a large, sports-obsessed (first to 100 national championships!) university, for me there isn’t a lot that compares to watching a game live in the stands amidst incessant cheering, heckling, vuvuzelas, and patriotism. It was definitely a once and a lifetime experience and if I’m able, will try my best to get to Brazil in 2014.

After World Cup, I started to lay the groundwork for some of my projects, and then we had a PC training which signified the official end of our ‘community integration (aka don’t do anything)’ period. It was another fun and exhausting week (I’m not used to talking that much anymore) of catching up with other volunteers that I hadn’t seen in 4 months, talking about successes and failures at our respective sites, and discussing future projects with each other, our supervisors, and PC staff. The best part (for me) of that week however, was that my family came to visit at the end! I was able to travel with them to visit their various partner churches and organizations that they have here in South Africa, and we even squeezed in a little time for fun at the end. My parents and another mission partner even stayed in my village for a couple of days—braving the pit toilets and the roosters which NEVER shut up, though they successfully avoided use of the bucket bath. I can’t express the joy and excitement that comes along with seeing my family after 6 months apart, or how sad I was to see them go. Even though I fortunately already have had this ‘aha moment’, being so far away from loved ones really makes me appreciate where I come from and the support that I have waiting for me back at home. After my parents went back home, my sister stayed with me in the village for another 10 days, hanging out with my peeps and helping me with one of my projects. During the time my sister was here I celebrated my 23^rd birthday with her, another PCV, and some of my girls. They brought over presents (chocolate and lollipops from the tuck shop) and cards that they had handwritten. Though my host sister had probably prompted them to do this for me, I was really touched by their actions and excitement to give the presents to me. It’s hard to explain how nice it feels to read a card that says “you are a great sister and friend, and everybody likes you; thank you so much for coming to South Africa” when I sometimes feel like nobody really cares if I am there or not.

This project that we are currently working on is a result of both my community needs assessment and my personal views and desires about what my village needs. In conjunction with the schools and the clinic, we are working to open a drop-in center for orphans and vulnerable children (at-risk youth) to come after school each day for food and programming. Once we get the actual food scheme up and running, we plan to have daily activities ranging from homework help, sports and fitness, arts and crafts, and lifeskills education. There are currently no programs or help readily available for OVCs, or any youth at all, so I and the community really saw a need for the implementation of this program. I have the obvious concerns about how long this will take to get funding, open, and function properly, as well as the motivation of the staff and the sustainability of it after I leave, but I’ve got to at least try. And in my opinion, even if the OVCs have the program available to them for a year longer than they would have if I had never come, I can leave satisfied with that.

So my next four months will be devoted to the completion of this, as well as the start of a formal girls’ club and hopefully girls’ soccer league. My organization also asked me to do a weekly training about anything I feel like teaching them. This probably sounds like “isn’t that what you are supposed to do in the Peace Corps?”, but I was actually really excited that they asked me that. I know my organization likes and appreciates me, but I honestly didn’t think that they took me so seriously, probably as a result of my age and gender, and hadn’t shown any desire to let me transfer any limited skills and knowledge that I had to them. Peace Corps has told us multiple times to adjust your expectations and take pride in the small accomplishments…I never fully understood that until now.

I plan to “go village” for as long as I can during these four months. We use the term “going village” to signify being completely immersed in the village and our projects, not leaving for vacation but only for grocery shopping, work-related trips, and Peace Corps trainings, etc. I do still have a week of in-country vacation to use before the end of the year (and four months is a LONG time to stay in the village) so we’ll see what ends up happening, but my intentions are pure. I know these projects and these upcoming months will be slow, so slow that I can’t even walk fast. Last week I went around the village with my caregivers to do home visits. During the walk all of my caregivers looked at me with exasperated faces and said, “SLOW DOWN SBONGILE, YOU ARE RUNNING!”. We were walking so slowly that I thought I would fall over due to lack of momentum. Welcome to Africa.

I have a new and permanent mailing address, so PLEASE continue to send me letters and packages. I enjoy honey bunches of oats cereal, anything that resembles something that looks or tastes like Mexican food, and dunkin’ donuts coffee.

Sbongile Thubana (or Emily Birchfield)

PO Box 4565

Empumalanga, 0458

South Africa

I will leave you all with this: Last week I was grocery shopping in town when some random lady (who somehow knew me and my name) came up to me and excitedly talked to me about nothing in particular. She then kept asking me to squeeze her while she simultaneously pointed to her breast. I stood there awkwardly for about a minute until another PCV said, “I think she wants a hug”. Turns out that was exactly what she wanted…but had there been no interpretation, things could have gone south very quickly.