giraffeblogza: April 2008

Monday, April 21, 2008

Rain Rain

First weekend at my site without all the students staying at the house.

Saturday my host mom left me alone in the house almost the entire day. This is quite a change from not leaving me alone for five minutes. While trying to cook dinner, I managed to blow a fuse and shut off all the power to the house. Apparently my host mom has good reason to not leave me alone. I was able to solve the problem though but was then too afraid to try and cook again. Luckily, we have a microwave, and I was able to have something to eat.

Sunday was my first laundry day since moving to site. I had about three weeks worth of laundry saved up. My arms are sore now. I was dressed in my worst clothes because I wanted to wash all my other clothes. My host mom was catering an event and she wanted me to go with her, which to told me after I had all my clothes wet and hanging on the line so I had to wear what I was wearing to do laundry. It was a budget meeting for the municipality in which the whole village was invited to attend. I was the only girl not wearing a skirt, not that it was the only reason I stood out. My host mom is a very good cook, I got to eat some of the food before the big meal. Clouds were looming the entire day and I was concerned about all my wash, i.e. all the clothes I own, out on the line. I managed to get home just as it started pouring and rescue the clothes. I don’t have anywhere to put clothes yet so I am still living out of my bags. I managed to take everything and spread it around the floor. So now I am unpacked but everything is on the floor. It rained all night and is still raining now. The temperature has dropped and I am now wearing all the warm clothes that I brought to South Africa. It is about 60 degrees and all the little children were dressed for a blizzard, hats, scarves, winter coats.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Uno, a simple card game or cross-cultural facilitator?

I broke out the Uno cards this evening while about four of the trainers were watching music videos. They only have a few music videos between them and we watch them over and over and over. So playing Uno was a lot of fun, definitely more fun that just watching the videos. Everyone was crowed around watching, squeezing 20 people in the living room. All the players were so into it, getting really competitive. I soon realized that they were not really playing the “American” way. The purpose was more the prevent someone else from winning than from trying to win yourself. If you needed a red card next and you knew the person next to you could win if you played your red card, you would pick up cards from the draw pile until you got a draw 2 or draw 4. So every round, all the players would have 15-30 cards in their hands at one time, leaving little for the draw pile. This made for some very long games, we played most of the day, with up to 8 players at a time. I can now successfully play Uno using only Zulu.

There is no way one can make beetroot and not have it taste like dirt, end of story. The sad part is that it looks just like cranberry sauce so you think you are getting a treat, then you take a bite, dirt.

One of the girls at the house had a hair dryer and she let me use it. I was so excited. When I looked in the mirror, I though, wow, this is what I use to look like.

After one week, I feel I am a pro at taking the public taxis. I have successfully made it to work every morning and this weekend I went to St. Lucia.