Things That Make Me Laugh - African Version

• When people bring up colonialism in Africa …. and then all look right at me
  
• When my training village host mother drunk dials me at night (seriously)
  
• When really professional people’s cell phones ring and it’s a 50 Cent rap about “bein’ up in da club, doin’ my thing” … and then return to work-related conversation like a gansta rap was not just on their phone
  
• When my coworkers tell me I must give them American money when I leave
  
• When a guy at the taxi rank yells "I like your figure! Yrrr!" and then is surprised when I don't stop to chat...

My New Mecca

Splish Splash Laundromat in Mafikeng

You know what they say, cleanliness is godliness, right? : )

Is It Appropriate To Wear White Face Paint After Labor Day?

I’m not a fan of putting lengthy journal-type entries on my blog because, honestly, I feel like if it’s too long people won’t read it. But, I like this story and wanted to share : )

So, like the title says, I try to make my first response funny to everything I encounter. It’s so easy to find the funny when you just look for it.

This weekend I was at Spar, a local supermarket, and they just opened this particular location. I have to admit, I was pretty bummed because the café I typically visit was closed, so I had to go to Spar to get some lunch (they have a really great buffet!). I also don’t really buy or cook meat since I’ve lived in South Africa (too expensive) so I eat meat on the weekends when I can go out and have someone else make it for me. (Haha, I hope that doesn’t sound too stereotypical-American.)

Since this is the Spar Superstore grand opening weekend, it’s crazy! There are tons of kids, the local radio station is blasting music and there are these guys on stilts who remind me of, gulp, clowns. (They even have their faces painted white!) And for those of you who know me, I am like deathly afraid of clowns (thanks mom, dad and Stephen King).

So I’m standing in line at the buffet figuring out what I want when I see – out of the corner of my eye – the stilt guy is walking towards me! Yikes! I think. What does he want? I’m not a kid; I don’t want to talk to a skinny clown on stilts. But, then, as I’m about to have a panic attack because he’s getting ever-closer to me, he says in a thick Afrikaaner accent, “It smells like burning.”

I try to bite my lip to keep from laughing (since said clown who smells burning is still right behind me), but I can’t. I just bust-out laughing. In my head, I keep hearing him say “It smells like buuuurning.” In his accent, the ‘u’ in burning is really drawn out and the ‘g’ goes up at the end – like it’s burning but it ends on a happy note. He’s not trying to be funny, it’s just the accent. Afrikaans is the language created by the old Dutch settlers and it's sort of Dutch/German/Swedish sounding. (Say it out loud, you’ll hear it - or in case you need the audio, here's a clip of my re-enactment:)

Casey's janky re-enactment

I have a flashback to when my cousin Patrick and I were kids and used to watch the Simpsons. We’d quote everything Ralph said, like on his Valentine’s Day card to Lisa: “I cho-cho-choose you!” And I swear one episode he says “It tastes like burning” in that dumb sweet kid voice of his.

Now a conversation ensues of where the burning is coming from and the stilt-guy is insistent that the chef go check it out. By this point, I’ve had enough, I’ve got to go, I don’t want to look too crazy laughing to myself!

I eat my food at the food court area and then leave. Thank God. Oh – and while I’m eating, the radio station plays “Karma Chameleon” by Culture Club*/Boy George and “Man, I Feel Like A Woman” by Shania Twain. Where am I?

Ahhh, so anyway.

This is why I love the balance of life. Just when there’s a bad day (café closed) something good or funny will happen (skinny stilt-clown smells burning).

I really do love my life. I never know what’s going to happen!

Sala sentle,

Casey

* I was part of starting the Culture Club at my high school. We went to plays and art museums. I thought it was awesome! But I think it folded the year I graduated. Heck, I went to a high school out towards the sticks. Football and confederate flags were much more popular than the Culture Club that the art teacher started. This side note has nothing to do with anything, other than the band Culture Club reminded me of this fun memory of those three or four outings we took before the whole club fell apart. Maybe if we only had a hit song, the club could have made it… : )

But You're So Fair-Skinned

When I told people I'd be living in Africa for two years, I got a lot of "but Casey, you're so fair-skinned..." I then usually made some joke about stocking up on really high SPF (which I did, in special thanks to my Godmother!) and talked about how much I like freckles - which I really do.

Even with SPF though, I've managed to get quite a few new freckles. Most of them came out during training when it was still summer (February and March). I thought I'd do a classic Before & After to show you some of my new African Freckles, especially my forehead.

And, yes, sadly my hair also gets frizzy in hot environments, so my pre-PC hair was much smoother. Remember, I moved to Michigan for college for a reason : )

Now that I'm working and not having to tredge through the sandhills everyday in direct sunlight, it's a little easier. The sun is pretty intense here. I pray for cloudy days - even just a little! It's funny because I equate bright sunlight with beaches and I am soooo far away from a beach right now. Thank God vacation is coming! Or, holiday, I guess they say here, thanks to English influence : )

Sala sentle,

Casey

I'm on the South Africa US Embassy Site! (Someone Tell My Grandma!)

I am in the Peace Corps group SA19, the 19th group to volunteer in South Africa. Our swearing-in was 2 April 2009. Representatives from the US Embassy were there and lo and behold they wrote something for their website about it! The article is here.

My hair is in the first one, I'm making a weird face in the bottom-left one (we were singing the American National Anthem) and the other...well, I'm tall and wearing heels, so you can kind of see my head in the back : )

Interesting Tidbits About South Africa

Disclaimer: The following facts were taken from Peace Corps, South African news sources (SABC) and talking to South Africans. Should someone who knows more than me about South Africa see an error, please let me know. None of these facts were blatently made up.*

• South Africa's nickname is The Rainbow Nation due to the mixture of people from various world cultures and religions.
  
  
• South Africa's unemployment rate is 23.5%.
  
  
• South Africa's population is 48 million.
  
  
• There are roughly 5.7 milion cases of HIV in South Africa (approximatly 12%, +/- depending on the study). This compares to the US's population of 400 million with an average of 1.5 million cases of HIV.
  
  
• Same-sex marriage is legal (although not entirely welcomed and de-stigmatized culturally).
  
  
• If a political party gets 2/3 of the public vote in the presidential election, the party has the power to legally change the constitution without going through any other political channel.
  
  
• During Apartheid, black South Africans had to carry passes (like passports/IDs) with them whenever they left their village/town/city to show proof of who they were. They could also be forcibly removed from an area if they were there more than the allotted time (like 2-3 days).
  
  
• Only 35% of South Africa's new entrant workforce (who have passed metric - like a high school diploma) will enter the workforce. Of those, 10% will drop out and 55% will never work. (Courtesy of SABC News)
  
  
• Afrikaans, the language created by European settlers in the 1600s, is the newest world language and is only spoken in South Africa.
  
  
• South Africa provides for 10% of the whole of Africa's GDP. A good portion of that is revenue from the mines of diamonds, gold and platinum. (Side note: I live 200K from a platinum mine).
  
  
• A Google search and leafing of NationalGeographic.com reveal that lion deaths are not very common in South Africa and, in fact, lions outside of game preserves are actually more in danger of being killed by poachers. Lions also do not kill friendly, dark-haired women from America, it goes against The African Lion Code.
  

*Except the last sentence of the last bullet, that's for my dad : )

Side Note

I guess it says something about your less-than-fabulous ability to handwash clothes when your laundry inventory list from the laundromat lists "1 - light pink towel" when you don't own any light pink towels and those used to be purple.

My Life

• 5:45 a.m. - Wake up, get ready, eat breakfast
• 6 a.m. - Do those morning breathing exercises that Dr. Oz on Oprah said to do.
• 7 a.m. - Leave for work with my host family (6 of us squeezed into a Kia Picanto, which is like a clown car - je deteste clowns) and my host mother drops her kids at three different schools, me at work and then goes to work herself

Kia Picanto (very smalll!)

• 7:15 to 4 (ish) - Work - which includes all or none of the following (depending on the day): trying to understand what or who my coworkers are gossiping about (in a mix of Zulu, Xholsa and Tswana), writing reports, reviewing documents, editing grants, going to meetings, doing stuff for Peace Corps, etc.
  
  Work Side Note: It's especially funny at work when I hear my coworkers gossiping and then I'll hear 'Kess-ee', which is how they pronounce my name, or 'lekgoa' which means white person. 'Lekgoa' it's usually followed by screaming or really loud laughing. I know some lekgoas, and we can be funny, but I'm not sure that's why they're laughing...)
• 1 to 2 p.m. - Work lunch break which I use to go get groceries or do other shopping. There's a mall two blocks behind where I work and the Post Office is about 5 blocks. There's a grocery store and my bank about 3 blocks away.
• 4:30 p.m. - Get picked up from work by my host mother
• 5 p.m. - Go for a walk/jog, sometimes with my host sister and host brother
• 6 p.m. - Make dinner (I've upgraded to peri-peri mac-n-cheese, yum : ) My host sister asks me if I can actually make anything other than mac-n-cheese, potatoes & onions or pasta with red sauce. I tell her yes, but I'm a lazy cook. Which isn't really true, I love to cook, I just wish I had my own kitchen space to cook. Sharing a kitchen with a family of 7 makes it hard to move around much.
• 6:30 p.m. - Watch 7 de Laan : ) "dit lekker" (it's nice)
• 7 to 9 (ish) - Write, do work, watch DVDs, plan for vacations, balance my checkbook, watch TV, clean, etc. Sometimes I make short phonecalls to the US since the rates drop drastically at 8:30 p.m. Before 8:30 p.m., it's the equivalent of like $1/minute! Yikes!
• 9 (ish) - Plot out how to kill the next flat spider and do one last spider/bug check of my space before sleep.
• 9 (ish) - Do those evening breathing exercises that Dr. Oz on Oprah said to do.
• 9 or 10 p.m. - Go to bed and most nights include listening to the neighbor's dogfighting at night. There's like a huge doghouse (taller than me!) and who knows how many dogs, but at night, they fight pretty rough. Naive me, the first time I heard it, I thought "good dogs, I bet they are scaring off an intruder," yeah right. It's every night. I'm thinking it's a suburban dogfighting cell.

Weekends

• Hand-wash my laundry - which I'm hoping may change soon b/c I found a laundromat in town and it seems clean and safe enough. It's actually a split Landromat/Tattoo Parlor. Fun combination : )
  
  

  Some of my laundry on the line
  

• Walk to town - it takes me about 45 minutes to walk to town and generally very pretty. There's this cute cafe that one of the volunteers showed me and I love the atmosphere! I sit, read, write letters and drink bottomless tea. I usually also go grocery shopping, go to the bank, etc. in town on the weekend. This weekend I actually ran into people I know! It's weird and exciting to actually recognize people now. But that means I always have to wear make-up when I go to town. Well, win some, lose some : )
  
  
• Hang out with other volunteers - there are a few volunteers arond Mafikeng who are actually leaving between June and September. All the other volunteers from my group are clustered in other provinces, but the closest volunteer to me from our group is maybe 2-3 hours driving. Haha, so since I can't drive, that's like a half-day on a public taxi-bus.
  

That's pretty much my life right now. But I'm continuing to meet people and get the guts to ask for rides (I feel like such a mooch doing that!). This weekend I'm going to take the pilgramage to the laundromat and then check out a pizza place (!!) that I found the other day.

Sala sentle,

Casey