Hospice, Weddings and the Beach

Well, it has been quite a while since my last post. I have been busy with school, mostly trying to work on my Zulu. Last weekend I was home with my family in cato manor. On Friday night there was a braai for one of the girls in the program’s birthday, and I got intimate with several more of the local sausages that are specific to the region. I also tried Cane, which is a local vodka-like drink made from sugarcane, but different than white rum. It smells and tastes like straight rubbing alcohol. On Saturday I went to another girls birthday. Her family had braai’d some very tasty inkomo (cow), and I had my first taste of Zulu beer, or besiZulu. It is made from fermented sorgum and milk, and tastes kind of sweet and salty, with the consistency of thick cream. I cant say that I am too much of a fan, but the locals seem to love it.

This week was a little bit more stressful, our Zulu final was on Friday, and I spent the week studying for it. We had a written and an oral examination, and as I am (apparently) not very gifted with languages, Zulu has been a bit more trying for me. On Monday we had a great lecture with a man who has been highly involved in rural healthcare for the last 20 years. He spoke about some of the needs of rural healthcare, and about rural health practices.

On Tuesday I went to an NGO with a couple of other students. We went to the Hillcrest Aids Trust Center. It was an amazing place, the people there were simply incredible. It is a Methodist organization founded in the 1970s. This NGO was really cool in the holistic attitude that it took towards greeting HIV/AIDS as a community disease, helping those who were affected by aids as well as those who are living with it. The center does food distribution, support groups, home visits, help the families to raise gardens, and supports 350 families directly through facilitating access to world markets for their bead workers. They also have a hospice center that they built to support those patients whose families cant look after them, or have no families to care for them.

Friday was the Zulu final, which went on all day. Afterwardson we headed into town for a weekend out. Friday night we had a mixer with a few of the medical students from the local university, which was fun. We braai’d and mingled, and talked, and afterwards headed to a club called 80’s. Saturday I went to the beach, swam in the Indian ocean and built a pretty cool sand castle. I got a touch of sunburn, and went out for pizza for lunch. Afterwards, a bunch of us caught a taxi to the Sharks stadium, where there was a professional rugby game. It was great to get to some sporting events, and the Sharks won, which made it even better! From the game I went with some friends to dinner at a thai restaurant. I had some tasty Pad Thai (not quite as good as Ring of Fire, but you cant have everything) and went back to our hostel. Later that evening I got dragged to another club, the Mansion. It was quite different from 80’s more a young black professionals club, but it was pretty nice.

Sunday I came back home to Cato and went to a traditional wedding. It was different than I expected, it took forever and there was lots of drinking of zulu beer. I talked to old zulu men for about 4 hours, and watched them slaughter the traditional wedding goat. Eventually I got hungry and walked home (the food was taking forever, they call it “African Time” here, if something is done within an hour of when it is supposed to it is incredible) I fell asleep at home, got up for dinner, and then went to bed again. All in all, a good weekend. This week is going to be a little bit more relaxed hopefully, it is Heritage Day on Thursday, so there is no school and we are going to the beach with our families.

Until next time,

Sala Kashe

-Ben

a week of school and a weekend out!

Wow, I can’t believe that it has been a week since I posted, so much has happened over this past week. It was my first full week of real classes here, which has been pretty intense just in terms of time spent in the seat. On an average day, I get up at 630 to be on a bus at 7, class starts at 8 and I am in classes until 5. It is weird because there are usually only a couple or three lectures a day, but just being in the house with 30 people all day wipes me out.

Last week we had a couple of really good lectures from guests. We went to a special needs school and spent the day there, then talked about the context of education and special needs education. It was strange, there were children there at a special needs school that would have been mainstream in the states. For example, albinism is classified as a disability here, and albinos cant go to regular school because they would be beaten. The same for people with any kind of physical disabilities, the regular schools here just are not very accommodating to needs. We talked a lot about the level of funding that education has here, and the failings of the education system. It is very well funded, but the teaching is way under par, and there is no way to fire teachers because they are unionized. Everything in this country since the appartide seems to be unionized in one-way or another; the army was just on strike, as was the post office and the bus system.

We also went to a cultural lecture on the Zulu people that was pretty interesting. The lecturer was a Zulu historian who answered questions that we had about past and present Zulu lifestyle. I went to an open-air market, which was very cool, lots of crafts and knock-off sunglasses and sports apparel. I also talked to a couple of professors about the topic that I will be studying. I am thinking about doing a practicum in a rural area clinic, but that would mean that I would be just kind of there for a month and a half or so, and I wouldn’t be able to come back to Durban for that time. The other option that I am thinking about is researching and learning more about a study at a hospital about an hour away. The study is doing trials to determine if there are adverse effects to taking both traditional healer remedies and ARV treatments at the same time. Either way, it should be pretty interesting stuff.

This weekend we got to have a town weekend and booked into a backpackers. On Friday night we all went to a local club called joe cools, and got our chilling on. There were mainly funky looking white dudes there, the euro-trash look is apparently in among the youth of SA. Before Friday I didn’t realize that a mullet and a fauxhawk could be sported simultaneously.

Saturday I went to the beach for the first time!! It was beautiful, the water was cool but not cold, and it should get really nice as we get into spring and summer. I brought my stick and played on the beach with Katie, and swam and went for a run on the beach with my friend Karthik. Saturday night some of us went out with one of our home stay brothers, Thando and his friend Tubs (Thubisa). We went to an abanlungu (white people) party up in a really nice neighborhood. There was a great view of the skyline, and I talked to a bunch of interesting people. We left and went to another party, one of Tub’s friends was having a 21^st. This party was a little bit down the hill, and was more like a block party. The birthday boy was really excited to have Americans at his party, we went through and met his family and his mamma sat us all down and fed us (it was like 12 at night) there was chicken and beef and a bean dish called chakalaka, which was spicy and had a medley of veggies in it. There was an angry drunk who kept yelling at us, he said “Americans!! Follow me!” and we went through the party to a back room, through security. He told us to come in and shut the door, and it was just he and we in this tiny room. We were a bit nervous, but then he busted out the cooler and started passing out Heinekens. The party was fun, but when we were there I noticed a security guard with an Uzi. Just kind of chilling. The host told us not to worry, that he was just there for security, but it was slightly unnerving.

Sunday we all studied for a Zulu test on Monday (which I bombed. Time to start studying harder) I went to the beach again and went out for ice cream with Ujin and Karthik. The last couple of days have just been class, which is getting progressively harder, and hanging out at home. I had a really good talk with my brother Brian last night, he is 25, and he told me about growing up under appartide, and being the only black kid in his model c school. He played rugby in high school, and we talked about working out and sports. I really like my family here.

Until next time,

Sala Kashe

-Ben

School

Well, a lot has happened since my last post. The days here start at about 7, when we all get picked up from our homestays. Then we have Zulu lessons for about 2 hours, which move very fast. I am still not exactly sure about the schedule/ assignments ect, things seem to move fast and loose in this program.

The weekend came up and I went out to what I thought was a braai (bbq) at another homestay. We ended up at a huge house in the suburbs with a bunch of white S africans (the first that I have talked to of my age since coming here) they were pretty nice, but I was struck by the undertones of race that seemed evident in their words and their actions. The two homestay brothers that brought us seemed to stay on the outskirts of the group, and the girls that were there in particular seemed to not want to even talk to them. Part of it may also have been class, the whites mostly didn’t have much in the way of jobs, but they all had fairly wealthy parents, and what jobs they had were sort of more playboy jobs (one was a pro motocross racer). We asked them if they spoke zulu, and they told us that they didn’t need to know much, because the only zulu person that they talked to was the housekeeper. It was definitely an interesting experience, getting the other end of the spectrum in terms of class and race. Living in a township with zulu seems normal to me, and it is how most of the country lives. It was kind of an awakening to realize that there is still a highly social elite that doesn’t have much to do with the rest of the population of the country.

That night I got really sick (as did about half of our group, I later discovered). I was up all night sick and I got up the next morning and didn’t feel much better. My brother took me to town in a minibus, which was quite an adventure, they make the cabbies in NYC seem like great drivers. We went and he got his haircut, while I had a milkshake for lunch. We were going to go out and about, but I felt sick and we went back home. I slept for about 8 hours, woke up at 930pm to my omamma knocking on my door. She made me eat some mashed pumpkin, then I slept until 11 the next morning.

Sunday my brother had a ceremony to thank his ancestors and his deceased father for guidance and his new job. They prepared an alter with his fathers favorite foods and prayed (guided by a sort of medium, a traditional spiritual healer) Then they had a braai, where they cooked a piece of meat for his father and put it on the alter. My brother and I then cooked literally a bucket of meat for lunch (it took 3 hours) and there were some community members that came over to help eat.

The last couple of days have been school and home for homework and sleep. My omamma is gone on business (selling life insurance) till Thursday, so it has been just my brothers and I. Good times.

Sala Kashe

-Ben