More reasons to leave South Africa........

1) I ate my own body weight in highly salted, barbeque'd meat at the weekend. My digestive system is confused.
2) After six months of driving on SA roads I still manage to find every pothole going and test my tyres on it.
3) I have grown a grey hair that sticks STRAIGHT up from my head.
4) I keep on tossing and turning at night thinking about all the things that I have to at work. When I get here I can't remember what they were.
5) I want to kill my regional manager

How to protect your employees from violent crime

Last night everyone in Mthatha seemed to be preoccupied with crime. Its in the press a lot at the moment and the government are supposed to be coming up with new ways of tackling it.
My evening started with my landlady and her friend ranting about how its not fair that you can be charged with beating the crap out of someone who (you think) has committed a crime against you.
Then I went to the golf club with Kenny where we met up with a couple of other people. Once again the conversation turned to crime. Gary told a story about someone who works for him being mugged on payday (the incident involved the tip of the victim's thumb being bitten off- eugh)
Kenny listened to the story carefully and then made his point "That's exactly why we don't pay our staff on a regular basis......."*
If only more South African employers had thought of that!



* I'm sure Kenny was going to end with an explanation of exactly when the staff get paid but he didn't get the chance to.

Like the littlest hobo......

This is my charming landlord's motorbike. He took me for a ride on it on Sunday! (Check out the registration plate)

I went to Coffee Bay on Saturday for a drumming festival. I got scared by the dirty tranced out backpackers and decided to play pool at the local hotel instead. Coffee Bay is very pretty:

Now this is a real test to see who actually reads my blog!
I have an announcement to make....................................................
I'm coming home!!!! (to stay)
I have decided that it's time to admit defeat and throw in the towel. Whilst I'm not completely miserable here, nor am I happy. The work that I'm doing here is very office based and I really don't feel that I'm doing a good job of it. They are going to replace me with someone from within the the team here which makes me feel as if I've been depriving a South African of a job all along!
So, if things go according to plan, I'll be back to stay on 12th August. Whoop whoop and hurrah!

Pleased be warned: although I have given up early I have still become a serious do-gooder. I shall be living my life by the following rules:
No alcohol shall pass my lips
I shall wear tie-dye and/or hessian at all times
I will speak with a slightly odd accent in a patronising tone.
I shall refuse to pay for anything that isn't "for a good cause" but will take anything I can get for free (no change there).
I will fill my house with African tat
I will wear sandals in all weathers.
I WILL bore everyone with "When I was in South Africa" stories
I will ALWAYS have the moral high ground

Is he dead or alive?

My first circumcision party

Last weekend I went to my first ever circumcision party at the house of the local HIV/AIDS co-ordinator. Her son is 18 and has just completed his initiation. This is a traditional ceremony which is the rite of passage to becoming a Xhosa man. I tried to be open minded about the process before I went but now I think it may be wrong!

Groups of boys and young men go off to live in the bush where they have their foreskin removed by someone who is not medically qualified. In theory boys are supposed to be checked over by a doctor and get their parents consent before they go.
I'm not sure exactly what happens in the bush but 8 boys have died in Eastern Cape in the past 3 weeks. Scary.
Anyways, NoXholisoi's son survived (not completely) intact so there was a big party.
Gifts were given to mother and son and there was much eating, drinking and dancing. Serious amounts of meat were eaten. A cow and a sheep were slaughtered before hand and there was another sheep lined up ready to go .

A week of much brain churning........

Last week I visited a school who are working with British teachers to write a play about HIV/AIDS. The play is in English- I'm not sure that the young people understand the script very well! The girls pictured above are the evil henchmen of Aids Man (below). They get the villagers of Ntafufu drunk and give them HIV (represented by the ribbons).
The only way that the villagers can protect themselves from the virus is by abstaining (the preferred method of the Department of Education) or wrapping themselves in a big white sheet that is doled out by Condom Man and his helpers (pictured below). Obviously the guy in the black mask shaking his fists is a baddy!

The kids were great, particularly when it came to singing and dancing. The British teacher working with them couldn't get over how obedient and keen they were. Obviously her first experience of South African children! I've sat through entire days of training where children don't speak, serve all the adults with food before they eat and carry everything for their teachers. Being a child in rural South Africa isn't much fun........

Apart form that my week was very dull. I was collecting and organising data for a meeting that didn't happen.....I amused myself by having a HUGE stress about whether I am doing the right thing by being here! I think I've decided in favour of staying, but I seem to be the queen of faff at the moment! The things that make me want to leave are:
Missing people
I think a South African could do my job
Office Politics
Politics in general ie the horrible racism and associated segregation that still exists here- it gets me down.

But:
I want to make a good go of this
I can really see the need for the work when I go out into the rural areas.
The coastline near here is really beautiful.
I have no idea what I would do if I went home! (Suggestions welcome)

Thank you to everyone who has been on the receiving end of my ranting so far.

Oh! News flash: Brownie (my furry companion of 26 years) stowed away in my washing last week. He seems be ok. I think his eyes look a bit glazed. Does that mean he's dead?? Maybe he hates it here and deliberately took his own life..........

The Sarnie Passes

Greetings blog readers! It seems that my head has grown and y arms have got more stick like in the past few months. Not a result I'd expect from the high protein diet (kind of like the Atkins Diet) that I am now eating. Last week was fairly peaceful. Three colleagues including the manager are in the UK at the moment. I went to observe some training that didn't happen due to poor attendance . That was slightly disappointing after a 3 hour drive starting at 6 in the morning. However, I did get to chat to some of the teachers who are taking part in the programme. Its frustrating because none of them seem to know what they should be doing (ie creating HIV/AIDS policies and action plans). They decided to go off and sort themselves out a bit before the next workshop......
I'm currently trying to work out the best way of evaluating the project, but there don't seem to be any clear aims and objectives. More than slightly frustrating..........
Last weekend was a long weekend due to "Youth Day" on Friday. This is to mark the 1976 youth uprisings when lots of people (around 700) were killed by the cruelty men (the police). They were protesting about being taught in Afrikans rather than their mother tongue. All quite scarey.
Anyway, I went to Underberg which is by the mountains bordering Lesotho. I met up with Rachel who is a volunteer working in Durban. She is lovely, but talks about work A LOT!
On Saturday we went up the Sani (pronounced Sarnie) Pass into Lesotho. The road is terrible- you have to go in a 4x4. We went on an organised toour. It was quite entertaining watching all the wealthy white South Africans showing complete inability to drive their very expensive cars properly.


What we saw of Lesotho was pretty depressing. We went and visited a village where we sat in a hut. The homeowner lady gave us some (nice) bread and some (horrible) beer. All the children of the village appeared to pose for photo's and then fought to look at their pictures (that's why Rachel is wrestling with several small children.)


That's all really. I should go and do some work!