Impressionable students

I'm exhausted today. Not sure if it's just the middle of the week or the heat getting to me, but I'm ending this day pretty drained. I'm also starting to feel a bit sick, scratchy throat, my allergies are reacting to something in the summer air. I've had a productive day with the department, however, so I have no complaints. We got through a few meetings successfully and even finally completed, printed, distributed, and posted a contact list for everyone in the department.

One of the pleasures of this opportunity for me is that in addition to the department manager and officers, there are 3 students who are currently here doing their equivalent to a field study or a practicuum. They are all students in university in East London, and two of them are born and raised here in Bizana, so they know the community well. One is a student majoring in marketing, another in tourism, and the third in small business/enterprise development... each no older than 20.

I'm really enjoying working with them and helping them find ways to contribute to the department, putting their knowledge from university into practice. Plus they've all grown comfortable with me and now approach me to ask me questions, ask for my help. We're always kidding around, and for each of the stories I tell them about my life in the States, they usually teach me a new Xhosa word or two - and laugh at me hysterically when I try to pronounce back what they teach me.

I bet they think I am older than I really am, but they show me a level of respect which I appreciate. I find that in some ways, they are the 3 I can make the most personal impact on. They want to improve their computer skills, they want to improve their speaking and presentation skills. One of them has an interview upcoming for a job that he'll take on when he is done here, do part time while back at school. He excitedly came to me Tuesday morning to tell me, and then he asked me if I could help him prepare... telling he'd never done an interview before, asking what they were going to ask him. So we walked through some questions, talked about his answers, and over the last two days I've seen him preparing and doing some internet research on the organization he is interviewing with. I like to see that initiative - let's hope he gets the position!

My weekend in Kruger

Monday… another scorching hot day here in Bizana. Trying to stay cool to start the week off. Time is winding down for the Bizana 4, Mike and Cathy are done on Feb 28, and this is actually their last full week at the Municipality. Soon it will soon be down to the Bizana 2 (Heather and me).

Amazing and unforgettable weekend for me. Mini vacation of sorts as we took an extra day. First we flew into Johannesburg and then drove out to Kruger through Blyde River Canyon, the 3rd largest canyon in the world behind the Grand Canyon and Fish River Canyon in Namibia. It was good to see since it was on the way of our journey, and at points spectacular, but nothing so amazing that it would have warranted its own trip there.

The landscape on the drive out to Blyde and Kruger has so many parts that reminded me of driving at home in the States. Unlike the Eastern Cape (where I work) that is just so hilly and green for miles… the first few hours out of Jo-burg was pretty flat, much like driving from Chicago to St. Louis. There were also some parts that reminded me of driving through the middle portion of California by San Luis Obispo or in the Santa Barbara region… and there was also the portion of the drive the looked much like my driving through southern Oregon on route to Crater Lake and then out to the Oregon Coast.

Through Blyde River, we headed up to Kruger National Park, which is in the northeast section of the country. A colleague once told me that all of Kruger is about the size of the entire state of Massachusetts, and after going there, I’d believe it. This was my first safari/game viewing experience since coming to Africa, and it was incredible. For me, it was jaw dropping – within the first 20 minutes of driving into the park, we had packs of impala running along side the car, saw a herd elephants crossing the road, were less than 50 yards from giraffes snacking on the trees and popping out onto the road.

A few zebra out for a morning walk

One of the thousands of packs of impala you see in the Park

We saw so many wild animals roaming the plains and in the brush, hanging from trees. The safari “Big Five” are listed as the elephant, rhino, lion, water buffalo, and leopard. Successfully, we saw all but the leopard. And so much more… some animals I didn’t even know of. Best of all, going on some of the game drives with the guides, when you see an animal, you get an earful about its mating habits, life span, patterns and traits, how to pick out the animal by its looks, etc. So it’s definitely a learning experience.

There are so many exquisite birds in Kruger too – large and small, just vivid colors. What I thought was most interesting was that when you sit and watch some of the bigger animals, like the water buffalo or the giraffe, you see birds sitting on the animals backs, apparently to eat off bugs and parasites.

By quick recount, these are some of the animals that we saw that I can remember off the top of my head: giraffe, elephant, black rhino, white rhino, hippo, impala (there are so many impala in the park… apparently 150,000), kudu (pictured right), water buffalo, zebra, lion, eagle, condor, chacma baboon, crocodile, leather-backed turtle, spotted hyena, klipslinger, water buck, springbok, owl, vervet monkey, bats, all sorts of birds that I don’t even know.

After the enjoyable and relaxing weekend , it was back to the grind today… and a lot to get done this week. Having been at the Growth and Development Summit last week, Department Manager and I were out of the office for most of it. I am catching up and planning out what opportunities we can accomplish with the department for the week. I called a meeting of everyone this morning – basically an open forum to hear what everyone had been working on, status of their projects, how I could help them – and nobody spoke up! It can get frustrating that the people in my department are just not used to speaking aloud in a meeting forum and confidently expressing themselves. So there’s just silence and they just sit there and look away hoping not to get address – so it’s sometimes easier to meet with each one on one, I guess. They were excited about more MS Excel training on Wednesday though…

Last day of the Summit... and off to Kruger!

I'm sitting in the Summit right now, it's the last day of what seems to be a productive 3 days for the OR Tambo District... And I love this place! One of the speakers just took the podium and started his speech by breaking into song. The whole auditorium got up and started clapping and singing. I don't understand the words as the song is in Xhosa, but I always feel passion, see the smiles, and join in by clapping along. When the song ended, everyone started chanting and praising 'Thandizolo' (sp?) who is the king of the Amapondo tribe that has attended the summit for the last 3 days. Each day when he has walked into the summit, regardless of what is going on or who is speaking, all stops and people greet him until he takes his seat.

Sports Day yesterday was fantastic. It was really great to interact with my coworkers and the people of the municipality outside of the office. It was a beautiful day - sun shining, nice breeze - and everyone just seemed so happy. We braaied, we talked, we sang, we all watched the soccer match of the Officers v. Councilors. All in all, quite enjoyable. It's nice to see everyone on a social level. Everyone was so excited that I had my camera and I got some good photos and video footage everyone singing.

Am signing off for the week tonight as I am traveling this weekend up to Kruger National Park, which is supposed to be one of the best game reserves in the world. Doing safari drives and walks on Saturday and Sunday.

Sometimes reality sets in

Today was the first day of the Growth and Development Summit. Overall, it was informative to attend, and there were probably over 500 people there from the 7 different Local Municipalities that make up the OR Tambo District Municipality. The Mayor from each municipality gave a presentation on what his/her respective municipality was doing toward Local Economic Development. I need to always remember that there is such a long way to go… but most of the talk today revolved around “We need to do…” rather than “We are doing…” or “We have done…”

Tomorrow at the Municipality itself, it is Health and HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. From what I understand, there are going to be a series of meetings in the morning, then in the afternoon it will be Sports Day (all going out for some sports and activities), followed by a braai.

HIV/AIDS is such a prevalent issue here, and you hear it discussed in meetings and in the open more often. For example, I understand there is a list that is kept confidential of those working in the Municipality who suffer from the disease – so it is understood why/when they stop showing up to work – or to anticipate when they will be off the payroll. Some of the statistics about average life expectancy and rising percentages of HIV/AIDS in South Africa (and Africa overall) are a staggering reality, but really about all the people with major health issues in general. It’s sad to see all the funerals that these people go to – there are days when people don’t show up to work because a family member or friend has died, and that is just understood. Sometimes when you ask someone how their weekend was, you get responses that they went to a funeral or two.

I had my own encounter this week. One of the workers in my department has been sick, and she was out a few days last week. She has had an ongoing cough, claims to be sweating a lot more than normal, and has some other sick symptoms. She went to see a doctor last week, so when I asked her yesterday morning how she was feeling, she told me she thought that she was better, but that her doctor told her she “should go get tested.” Tough to react when someone tells you that, and I wasn’t quite sure what to say. But I just told her that we are there to help her in any way and would support her, to let us know what we could do. And so I asked her if she would get tested and she just kept repeating “It’s too hard, Brian. It’s too hard…” I’m finding that facing some of the realities here really can be difficult at times, and it took me a little time to get back into gear and be able to focus on starting my Monday morning.

State of the Union

Last Friday, South African President Thabo Mbeki gave his State of the Union Address from Cape Town. Unlike at home in the U.S., Mbeki's address was held at 11:00 AM. What was interesting to us was how at 11:00, basically everyone in the Municipality stopped working and proceeded to the Mayor's Boardroom to watch the address. Now, granted, I'm working in the Municipal government, so everyone here takes a bit more interest and holds Mbeki in such high regard. But I wondered if everyone working at that time - government or non-government - stopped their work to watch the President's speech. I started talking to some of the my teammates and the other Americans about it - and we all agreed we wondered that if the U.S. President's State of the Union address were during the day rather than at night, would the viewership increase? I feel like sometimes at home, people are more upset that their prime-time TV shows are delayed or cancelled.

Mbeki spoke a lot about the development in South Africa, gave statistics about health and wellness, economic advancement and improvements, his visions for ongoing growth. He also happened to mention UNDP a few times - not specifically about our Municipal Capacity Development Support Initiative project - but about UNDP's greater work in South Africa or UNDP derived statistics. One interesting one that provoked applause in the President's audience was SA's status in spending more money on water and sanitation development than on military.

Another topic he mentioned which struck on a personal level - that each District Municipality would be holding a Growth and Development Summit this month. I'll be attending OR Tambo D.M.'s Summit starting this week with the Development and Planning Manager and a few of the councilors. I look forward to it and hope to learn a great deal about how the growth of the local and district municipalities matches the growth and vision of South Africa overall.

Car batteries

Had to tell this story that happened to us the other day...

Our car battery died in the Municipality parking lot. One of the Councilors pulled his car around and tried to jumpstart our battery. No luck. So here are the 4 Americans fairly clueless about cars (we have our AAA and roadside assistance...). And we’ve got some of the Municipality workers, the Mayor (in his suit), etc all out looking under the hood.

Both cars are shut off, and they begin to unscrew the battery from our car and from the Councilor’s car. They put Councilor’s battery in our car and get the car started... then as the car is running, they unscrew that battery and remove it, put our dead battery back in while the car is running, and of course there was a pretty big spark, to which they all just laughed… then the car ran fine and we drove it home.

You couldn’t have paid me money to touch anything under the hood of a running car! And we all expressed we'd never seen that done before. They all wrote it off as normal practice, and they were all cracking up. And the Mayor just says with a big grin “Welcome to Africa!” We laughed... Everyday, something new.

One month in

Pretty quick week here so far, work plugging along. I was away at an all day event yesterday with DEAT (Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism) and SANBI (South African Biodiversity National Institute). I had a low key weekend this past one – stayed in Port Edward and went fishing, fired up a braii with some of my team and a few other UNDP volunteers on Saturday night, then Sunday went mountain biking… there are some unbelievable trails and views right here in my own backyard.

Actually we recently found out that the movie Blood Diamond, which is out right now, filmed a lot of its parts right here in the Umtamvuna/Mzamba region. We went and saw it one night last week, more to see the scenery and how much we recognized – good story, much better movie than I expected – but it was funny to see it over here. If you haven’t seen it, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character is supposed to be from South Africa – so when he first spoke in the movie, everyone in the theater started laughing at his attempt of a South African accent.

Hard to believe that I’ve been here a month already… but so much, so quickly has become normal and routine for me that I feel well settled in. I’ve even wondered if 3.5 months will really be enough time… Here, in no particular order are some things I’ve just gotten used to:

The sun rising so early every morning… a clear night sky with more stars than I’ve ever seen… incredibly welcoming and passionate people at work at the Municipality … continual progress and confidence with my municipal colleagues as they’ve become more comfortable with me… KFC in seemingly every town here… Port Edward locals… malva pudding… watching cricket and rugby on TV… plug adaptor plugged into plug adaptor plugged into plug adaptor to match my US plug… traffic signals called robots… meetings that never start on time at work… group song in meetings and large events… prayer to open and close meetings… people walking on the sides of major roads… using a pre-paid cell phone/buying airtime/international calling cards… not talking on my phone as much as normal (without free nights and weekends!)… cows, goats, sheep, horses along the way of R61… various roadkill along R61 (mostly stray dogs)… large potholes… peri-peri sauce… driving on the opposite side of the road… meetings and speeches at work varying between English and Xhosa… successfully pronouncing co-workers names that have click sounds in them… greeting people, replying, saying thank you in Xhosa, as well as various other words… Hansa, Castle, and Carling Black Label beers… monkey and baboon sightings… incredible natural beauty in so many shapes and forms… dealing with and adjusting to municipal budget constraints daily…rolling brownouts and losses of electricity… EVERYONE has a cell phone or two (even the most rural of farmers!)… accounting for the time difference with calls or emails back home… having roommates again… doing basically everything with my team… coffee by French press… rondeval huts… a lot of various bugs… the poverty and labor I see on the ride to work each day… late 80s/early 90s music being big on the radio… eating samp (maize meal and beans)…pickup trucks and minibus taxi vans driving R61 overfilled with people… the sight and smell of burning wood and/or trash… long, challenging, and fulfilling days at work, and good nights of sleep…