Today I was called: LEKGOA ?

Today I ran out of school instantly over to the tuck shop, just down the street, and bought my fav soda, Stoney. It’s this ginger beer with a lot of kick made by Coca Cola and the village people (and I) love it here! “Cold drink” so they say. When it’s summer here, it’s all about The Cold Drink, that could be any Fanta, Coke, Sprite, Twizza, i.e. any cold liquid carbonated drink you can get your hands on that is not alcoholic.

With my Stoney in hand and umbrella open to cover me up from the hot African sun, I headed down the dirt road to my Barbie pink house. I came across a small group of neighborhood kids playing on one of the public taps and I waved and smiled and said, “hello!”

Their response: “LEKGOA! LEKGOA!”

My response, I said jokingly: “Lekgoa?? Do I look white to you??” as I held out my arm from under my umbrella.

I laughed and smiled and just walked on….AND then thought, hey that is the FIRST time I was called that. All the other Peace Corps volunteers (the majority of them being what I would call "white" – but is “Caucasian” more PC these day? ) always complain of this ongoing pestering from locals - it being most likely the first time in their life to be pointed out for the color of their skin. Our training manager Victor talked to us about this during pre-service saying he's had past volunteers come up to him and say, some of self discovery to their actual skin color having come out of such a color-blind society never having to deal with their own race before. I think I this before how race is huge here in South Africa, given the history of Apartheid. Either way that’s their own inner challenge dealing with that, but I just thought water off a duck’s back, but wow….how long have I been in South Afrika anyways? AND when was the last time I really wrote on my blog, apparently too long!

So here’s a small description of why the “white” people can take offense to this word Lekgoa and will hear it perpetually throughout their 2 years of service (talk about annoying):

“In Southern Africa, Lekgoa is often considered a contemporary racial slur for people of European descent. However, usage of the term actually derives from historical racial power relationships and is not a stereotype, but rather a description of disrespectful behaviour patterns associated with whites.

Many expatriates in Southern Africa report that they are called 'lekgoa' - spelling 'lekgoa' (Tswana) 'lekgowa' (Northern Sotho), 'lekhoa' (Southern Sotho) - by the approximately 15-million indigenous black inhabitants of certain countries, namely Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho.”

Get the full story on LEKGOA at http://www.enotes.com/topic/Lekgoa

I guess I should feel blessed that I fall somewhere in between where people do not know what I am and assuming I’m just “coloured” (i.e. mixed race, which is basically true, a little indigenous mountain and jungle native, and then some Spanish blood, and hey throw in some true Indian blood there given my grandfather on my birth mom’s side is a “Gringo de La India” = light-skinned one from India). There’s no Tswana term or slur I’ve heard yelled out to me yelling “Coloured! Coloured!” so looks like I might be in luck and will not have any derogatory slurs yelled at me for the next 2 years (NOW less than 2 years, look at how time flies, it’s now only 20 months or so left).

I’m already thinking of ways that I could maybe stay in South Africa for another year but in one of the major cities (given out release date is at such an awkward time, being September 2013 - after grad schools have started). This is a pretty amazing country in terms of what it has to offer and I just feel like after 2 years, which are already flying by, how can I even have time to see the rest of the country. My dream is to befriend the ambassador’s wife who works at USAID in Pretoria, and have her offer me a job. We did have a really nice long chat at my swearing in ceremony back in September and I do go into Pretoria enough to maybe weasel my way into getting an informative interview. I’d be really curious to see what it’d be like to work at one of the American governmental offices abroad. But maybe I should hit up the Peruvian embassy while I’m at it haha.

Mma Susana doing what she does best: playing hand games with the kiddies

Bottom line, I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned over these last several months is that time flies! Just look at my past month at site since school started up in the beginning of January.

Today I left school at about 4 PM, an ungodly hour for staying at school to do work; however, I had been asked by my principal to help out with the data entry for our learners’ registration for some regional test. I don’t think it was for all 700 learners but we (me and the 2 other admin assistants) stayed in school from 9 AM to 4 PM doing 7 solid hours of data entry. My eyes kill from looking at all the small lettering and numbers all day. I was told that it was due today at the district office, so I forfeited my 2 Life Orientation classes to pitch in and help, yet by the end of day all the information wasn’t even finish. Apparently it’s ok to hand things in late. Our school’s Improvement Plan (SIP) and Development Plan (SDP) which I helped pull together before I left on vacation in the first week of December was due sometime then, yet the first week I got to school in January my principal was asking me what I ever did with all the SIP and SDP information. I thought, “Are you kidding me? Was it not passed into the Department already?”

Since I’ve been working at school I’ve come across so many moments where deadlines are not even paid attention to, and the learner classes are compromised for teachers to go to workshops or finish busy work, like grading papers or filing Department of Education stuff. It irritates me. I think of myself as being very on top of things, however, when information is not properly communicated and deadlines are not even held, I often feel like it’s hard to do my job. So in the midst of all this chaos I have been assigned to work with two 7th grade classes in English (which they call “First Addition Language”) and Life Orientation, so 4 classes in total. On top of that I’ve begun working with one of the community’s home based care groups and already helped them write and submit a PEPFAR grant application. I’ve been told at the school that I am a track coach and sports team manager, but I have done thus far is hold a stopwatch and take all the top 3 times for all age groups at the school and then root on all the kids as they run in their track competition for which they did not even really trained. But can't complain...I love being their cheerleader!

My little track cadets age group 7+ years at their first track meet!

But I always try to keep a big smile on my face and when in doubt ALWAYS ALWAYS stay positive and keep my energy high, which at time has been really hard. Speaking of energy, I have never felt sooooooo tired in my entire life. Always feeling like I needed a nap or a cup of coffee, but then realized that I think it’s the heat here, NOT a sign of depression haha. IT IS HOT HERE. REALLLLLY HOT. I don't even want to know was the real temperature is outside so try to not pay attention to the degree but it will be in the 30s Celcius regularly. I will come home to my concrete little room with its tin roof and I unlock my door and out pours the heat as if it was its own Easy Bake Oven. I then run to open all the windows that “have to remain shut” while I’m away and open up my curtains and door to let the breeze roll through, which is quite effective but come nighttime when the temperature will have plummeted and it’s cool outside the walls will still be warm and retain the heat. And then my room will be rampant with mosquitos, and of course I still have yet to put up my mosquitero, principally because there are no good beams to hang it to. So I will spend the majority of the night swatting the mosquitos and itching in my sleep.

Then, of course there are the animal sounds, donkeys screaming and doing their odd mating ritual, which sound like someone getting jumped (but that is what is going on anyway). Also, there are my newest neighbors, the herd of I’d say of about 50 cows and there little baby calves. I awoke the other night to what I thought was some little boy getting attacked outside my house. I jumped out of bed and threw open my curtains and looked out to the sandy, barely lit street and saw a small cow having what looked like a temper tantrum or what my host mom describe as “the baby cow crying for its mother” the next morning. Ugh…I just rolled back into my bed, I should have known better to think it was anything really important, just another animal assault by noise.

So my goal is to get a fan finally this week and beat the heat and then start sleeping with ear phones in, since this lack of sleep is messing up my half-marathon training (21.1 km)! I will be running my 1st marathon in Mpumalanga in the end of March. I’ll be joining a huge group of PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) who will all be running and raising money for a local charity to fund college education for some very lucky students. It’s actually for an NGO started by a few PCVs called the KLM Foundation and the biggest fundraiser for them is the Longtom Marathon where every PCV who runs is required to raise $100.

Check out the KLM website for more detailed information on what exactly I am raising money for: www.klm-foundation.org for the general organization site, and to meet the learners currently being funded through KLM and the Longtom fundraiser:

I will leave you all with a short video of what my life is like here in my biggish village in Northern Cape: Beauty and the Beast, “This little town.”

Belle’s life just reminds me so much in this first part of what my mornings are like, walking through the village not on my way to a bookstore but to the school. It’s so me to be stopping to say to everyone who passes, “Dumela…..Dumela…Dumela!” which is “good morning” in Tswana. I’ve had even a friend say to me, “why do you say hi to everyone? You know you don’t have to do that.” And there her dress is just like mine, completely covered from head to toe as to try to not get too much attention. Though I was called out the other day for wearing a “mini dress” to school. The dress came to my knees and I made sure I came into school with my arms and shoulders covered. Sometimes you can’t please everyone, plus these days its crazy hot – so as little clothing that you can wear and get away with is necessary!

And then spot on me is this lines: “That girl is so strange! No question!” said a few time and then this is said as well, “Behind that fair façade, I’m afraid she’s rather odd…very different from the rest of us! ” Because I run through the village like a true Peruvian hooligan.

“I want much more than this provincial life” is me and trying to build the dreams of these kids in my school to expand their world view to beyond their rural life – we are ALL global citizens, Tufts taught me that one. But also encouraging them to believe in their community and to make it shine…that would be great if I can just get that into my 83 minds of my 7th graders.

My little village buddies here riding a bike with no chain.