Regular things

In a recent email from a dear friend, I received the following request:

I love reading your blog, but tell me about all the regular things! It's all the mundane stuff that I want to hear about - where do you food shop? How's the apartment and your British doctor neighbors? Been cooking much? Reading? How's the car? Been able to travel much?

Seeing as I am making an effort to be more open and honest in what I choose to write about, I think this makes a good subject for a post.

Let me begin by saying, very little is mundane and my perception of what is "regular" has altered dramatically. A sudden outburst of yelling or burping from a traditional healer is regular. Seeing zebra on a run is regular. Broken geysers, flat tires, strawberry juice – all regular.

Contrary to what many of my friends and family at home think, I do not live in a mud hut without electricity or running water. I live in a very nice little cottage (yes, it quite literally is a cottage) up a small hill, on the other side of a garden from the home of Edendale Hospital's head of medicine and his partner, their very cute (hyperactive) adopted 8-year old son, 5 dogs, 3 cats (there might be more), 6 geese, 3 chickens and 1 parrot. Other neighbors include vervet monkeys, who live in the trees above my cottage, hadedas, a kind of ibis that thinks itself a rooster, lizards and bugs of all kinds, including a massive brown huntsman spider that makes regular appearances in my sitting room (we're friends – he eats all of the annoying bugs and leaves me alone). I have electricity, but it goes out during heavy rains. I have running water. I do not have heat, so when it gets really cold (yes, it can get cold in Africa) I fill plastic bottles with hot water and put them in my bed at night. I do not have internet or TV. This is home.

Buyani

Back door

Bubu, the spider

Ra

 
Food shopping is a treat, although I've always loved food shopping. Fruit juice is abundant, delicious and crazy cheap. As are avocados. I was told that it would be difficult to live here as a vegetarian, but that's only because this is such a meat culture; there is certainly no shortage fruits and veggies. I buy the majority of them from a large national grocery chain called Spar. The only major difference between Spar and any large American chain is that it's totally normal and acceptable to walk into Spar without shoes, which I'm a big fan of. Also exciting, gas stations are full service – employees will check your oil, refill wiper fluid, and put air in your tires.

Juice aisle at Spar (heaven)

On the weekends, I go to Albert Falls Dam, where I run and row. I belong to the Midlands Rowing Club, which is a part of the Albert Falls Yacht Club. As a member, I have access to the boats and the club house. The rowing club isn't very big. The only regular rowers are myself, my friend and iTEACH colleague Mary, who introduced me to the club, and Hillary, who runs it and coaches school groups and newbies. The yacht club, oddly named as there are no yachts to speak of, is much larger. Every other weekend, the club house fills up with people who are there to sail, fish or just relax. They play bad music, eat too much and generally believe that the work I'm doing at iTEACH is a waste of time. This crowd is very different than what I am used to – different to me, but regular to South Africa. A reminder that apartheid did not end all that long ago and a reminder of how complex this country is. But despite my harsh words, they are nice people (nice to me anyway). I try to focus on that.

Sunset at the dam

The boathouse

On days when the club house is empty, it's the most peaceful place on the planet. Last Saturday it was empty. I fell asleep reading. When I woke up, there were four zebras grazing just outside the back door; the sound of their chewing woke me up. It's not unusual to see zebra there – I almost always see them when I run – but I have never seen them that close up. My quiet encounter with the zebras was a stark contrast to the raucous party of the previous weekend.

 

 
I end every week by teaching arts and crafts to children at Sthe's house in Imbali J. It has taken many weeks to get this right. Initially, it was very exciting and a lot of fun, then, more and more children started to show up. Word got out that some umlungu came by every Sunday with crayons; the class size became unmanageable. Squeeze 50 kids (who cannot understand a word you say) into a tiny garage and give them glue and scissors, and you've got a problem.

I sat down with Sthe and explained that we had to split the children into two separate groups of limited size, or art class could simply not continue. Three Sundays after that meeting and there are now two groups of 25 children, they all have name tags (that they made and I laminated), labeled with a blue sticker for group A and a red sticker for group B, hanging in the garage for them to claim when they walk in for class. Yesterday, group A recorded their first video message to send to the students in my friend Delilah's class in New York; later this week, a small crew from iTEACH is going to help me clean out Sthe's garage and turn it into a more suitable classroom; and I just received a parcel from my aunt packed full of art supplies – crayons, colored pencils, glue, pipe cleaners... Things are really looking up for my little arts and craft program in Imbali.

Those are all the regular things. I would not consider any of it to be mundane – not yet anyway. And I don't expect it ever will be.