Chuck's Organization went to Durban for a night of 'Team Appreciation'. 17 people in a van outfitted for 15, lots of beer and watering breaks, eardrum splitting music and no hotel reservations made for a very interesting experience. Our patience just about ran out on several occasions, but we survived partly because our PCV friends were staying at a Backpackers in the hills (which had one room available)

This photo is one of 10 taken in front of the Toll into the city. Very exciting to have your photo taken in front of the toll! I had no idea!

 

Traditional Zulu dancers practicing their routines before the hordes of tourists take over Durban in 12 days!

What do you pack when spending the day in the big city? Your traditional outfits, of course! 

View of Durban from the hills.

 We spent the night in Durban with Chuck's organization.  Durban is really a fascinating city. We've been there a couple of times and I, particularly love it. It is very diverse, but somewhat segregated, of course. The beach front is like a trashy Atlantic City, but they're trying to revitalize it with new beach front promenades, seaside amusement parks and restaurants, etc... They're also planting thousands of trees and flowers, building parking lots and general upkeep in preparation for World Cup. The white area of the city is up in the hills with gorgeous views of the Indian Ocean. Our Backpackers are in this area, and the two we've stayed at are quite pretty with meandering gardens and natural swimming pools. This area is filled with outside cafes, weekend farmer's markets, botanical gardens.
The black and Indian areas are closer to the port and beaches. These areas are very dynamic with thousands of people shopping and conducting their trades.  Durban is the hub of the Indian population in S. Africa, and appears to have the most religious diversity from other areas we've visited. We love walking around here and people watching all the Christian preachers, the traditional woman coming in for shopping, mixing with big city young girls in high fashion.
Just a few blocks away is the glorious beach.  Miles of wide sandy beaches and warm, clear ocean, but with high waves, not ideal for swimming, but great for surfing.
And ALL of this is in stark contrast with our rural village. No goats and cows and chickens milling about with the vegetable sellers lined up on the road!
Durban is just less than 3 hours from Tugela Ferry, many of the MDs and nurses who work at the hospital and clinics in TF also have homes and families there. It's very handy for us to have Durban so close, but we are happier here in Tugela Ferry. Chuck has become very well acquainted with all the trails in the mountains. He runs for hours and hours up in the mountains.
And, I love my organization and work. We're in the right place for us.

More photos of Daily Life in Zululand

Braiding hair can take all day.

Babies are harnessed on their mama's backs with a towel and a knot. Married women traditionally wear a shawl, knotted at their neck and cover their heads. This is not mandatory, but shows society they are spoken for. 

The girls always appear more stoic, are they trying to appear more mature, or are they indeed wiser with the burden they carry at a young age? 

Not sure what the white paste is on the boy on the right, he obviously didn't mind being photographed with it covering his face. 

Photos for Daily Life in Zululand

Crossing the Tugela River is harrowing without carrying something on your head.  This narrow bridge with ceaseless, gusty winds requires that you keep your elbows close to your body and have good balance. It takes a bit of nerve.  We have to cross the river regularly since all the municipal offices, the library, and a huge secondary school are on the other side.  Plus, Sipho's favorite morning run is a trail leading straight up the mountain on the other side.

Zulu family compound on Msinga Top. The nearest road from this compound is miles away on either side of the mountain.

Playing hide and seek with our rural photographer, Sipho.

Wash day by the river. Most of the washing is done close to community water taps which are sprinkled throughout the mountain side. One day there will be taps in each home, as they continue to build new water towers and pipes, but it's a long way away.

Daily Life in Zululand

After nearly four months in South Africa, Michelle and I are now understanding what a day in the life of most South Africans or Zulus is like. We see people's daily life in and around Tugela Ferry and in the mountains on our weekend hikes. First off, African life is at a much, much slower pace than American life. If you are a professional, which most people are not, meetings are always on "African time", which means that meetings can start an hour to 2 1/2 hours late. Believe us, we have both been invited to meetings that have started more than 2 hours late!  There are some organizations who have a lot of professionals, like Michelle's NGO, that do operate much like an American company and start on time but that is rare.

Since more than 76% of the people in our region are unemployed, there really isn't much of a rush to do anything. Also, more than 97% of the population is rural which means that the average day starts when the sun comes up since more than 92% of the homes do not have electricity. It is Fall here in South Africa so the days are getting shorter with sunrise at 7:00am and sunset at 5:00pm. This means that most families are getting up in the dark using candles and paraffin oil lamps to get dressed and bathed. If kids go to school, schools often start at 7:00am or 7:30am  so kids have to get up early, especially since most  walk long distances to the nearest school.  What amazes both of us is how families, especially the children, who are living in homes made mostly of mud, without running water or electricity, can still be so clean. I see school kids coming out of mud homes with clean, pressed school uniforms looking like they have just stepped out of any of our modern American home. Most Africans take great pride in looking clean and wearing "pressed" clothes and polished shoes.

When we have hiked in the mountains, clothes, however, are not so clean since water sources are as far as 5 kilometers away and water is a premium, especially for clothes washing. School kids here usually walk long distances to school first on rocky mountain path and then on dirt roads. We have seen kids walk as far as 10 kilometers or 6-7 miles.  Many of the schools do not have water which means that students have to begin the school day by "fetching" water for the school. Michelle visited a school last week where students early in the morning walked to a farmers yard to fetch the water for the school that day. By 1:00 that day, all the water in the barrel for drinking or cleaning was gone. There are no "Nalgene" bottles in this part of Africa! Imagine asking our kids to walk  6-7 miles to school each day and then asking them to walk across a field to fetch the water for the school. Oh by the way, girls or women never carry water by hand, since everything is carried on the head by a woman or girl. I have seen women carry remarkable loads of groceries, wood, water on their heads, including "purses". This "carrying things on the head"  is an African skill learned very early by all women!

If you are a woman in Africa, you do all the work! This means all child rearing, fetching the water, washing the clothes, going into the mountains to chop wood for cooking, walking miles and miles to the closest village to buy essentials, cooking the food, growing the food in the garden, fetching water for watering whatever is planted in the garden, and going to market to sell whatever you grow or make. All of this work, of course, is done with a baby or toddler strapped with a towel to her back. Women, here, often have 5-10 children. Men, unfortunately, in South Africa, are comfortable with women doing all the work around the house, or should I say, "hut". This is not true of all men but it is the majority. More than 75% of men are unemployed so this means men are usually sitting under trees or going to the closest "shabeen", to drink all day on the government pensions. It is very common to see men sitting under trees talking, drinking, and hanging out while women are chopping wood in the dense mountains or hoeing the family garden.

In Tugela Ferry, hundreds of women each day line the streets selling vegetables from community gardens or their own private garden. This means that they wake up extremely early, make Pap (corn meal) for the family breakfast, fetch the daily water, and then walk or find a ride to town with all of their vegetables. The women sit out in the hot sun all day, often painted with a chalky substance to protect their faces from the sun, and try to sell whatever they can. Needless to say, we buy a lot of local, fresh vegetables each day to support these women. Most families, however, cannot grow any extra vegetables and use all that they grow to survive. This is called "subsistence" farming or living which means that families try to grow or raise everything that they need to live on. Most families try to have gardens if there is water, and all raise goats, chickens, and cows. There are many families that rarely go to town and may go to a village like Tugela Ferry once a month. I know of several families or clusters of Zulu homes that are miles from the nearest road and then walk 7-8 miles on the road to the village one way! A trip to town is a full day of travel, usually by foot. No malls or super box stores here! By the way, I haven't seen a "drive-thru" or Starbucks either.

Weekends are filled with chores, church, funerals and hanging out. Zulus are quite religious so a lot of families go to church. Church services here are all in Zulu and last anywhere from 2-5 hours. It is not uncommon for families to bring a bite to eat since the services go for 5 hours. There are also lot of funerals on Sunday due to all the people dying of AIDS and Tuberculosis. Since the infection rate here in KwaZulu-Natal and Tugela Ferry is 36% and the average life expectancy is 43, people do not live long. Kids do not have much to do on weekends except to play whatever games they can with sticks and cans and balls if the family can afford one. All boys like soccer but very few families can afford a soccer ball. Since the terrain is very mountainous around us, there aren't a lot of level play areas for sports like soccer or netball. Netball is a game like basketball which a lot of girls play here. There are baskets at both ends of a court, usually in a field, and the ball is passed around without dribbling. It is fast pace and girls love the game. Many of the boys make small cars out of wire, with a long handle to control the steering. They race them up and down roads or on made up tracks.

On a typical weekend, the women and girls fetch lots of water for doing the laundry. Since over 50% of the water still comes from rivers or streams, laundry is often done on the riverside which means that the laundry has to be carried to the river. The rivers here are not clean since there is a lot of erosion, run off from cow and goat manure, and also human waste. Over 50%of the homes still do not have pit toilets. Since only 2% of the homes have water, that means that there are a lot of homes with pit toilets or no toilets. You can figure out for yourself where people go to the bathroom when there isn't a pit toilet!
The average day of an African or Zulu is simple but this is what people have been doing for centuries!  Due to all the poverty, this is all that people can also afford to do!  We continue to be amazed how people accept this standard of living and still remain happy, especially the children! You will see photos of children that will steal your heart away!
Well, enough for now. Very soon, we will share you the live in the day of Sphiwe (Michelle) and Sipho (Chuck). Believe it or not, we are both quite busy!

Sala Kahle, which in Zulu, is "Stay Well", Miss you all, Chuck and Michelle

Izindaba zase Zululand (Stories from Zululand)

Msinga Top, overlooking the Tugela River Valley.

We arrived in South Africa in January and completed our Peace Corps training in a small village, called Bundu in the province of Mpumulanga. We stayed with a Zulu host family in a small tin roofed house. It was quite an experience since we had to fetch our water daily, do bucket baths, wash our clothes in a bucket, and yes at night, pee in a bucket since one never knows what creatures lurk on the way to the pit toilet! During training, we spent 4 hours a day learning Zulu which isn't the easiest language on Earth to learn. But after much tribulation, both Michelle and I passed our language proficiency test and are now speaking Zulu like a Zulu!! ( haha)

In March, we were permanently placed in the village of Tugela Ferry in the province of KwaZulu-Natal for the next two years. It is an intriguing place since it is the second poorest region of all of South Africa, is the epicenter for HIV/AIDS and resistant strains of TB, and in one of the most remote, rural areas of all of South Africa. To give you a picture of the poverty, it is a region of over 200,000 square miles with 180,000 people scattered in mountainous terrain. Only 2 % of the homes have water, 11% have electricity, and people walk 5 miles on the average to the nearest source of healthcare. The incidence of HIV/AIDS is 36% and the average life expectancy is 43 years. Tugela Ferry is also famous for its high incidence of drug resistant TB which is an opportunistic disease of AIDS. Believe it or not, there are researchers from all over the world in this very small rural village. You can google Tugela Ferry and www.tfcares.org for some of the story on this.

We are now living in a house trailer (called Park Homes in South Africa) owned by the non-profit organization (NGO) that Michelle works for. We are in a park home since all of the homes around us do not meet Peace Corps standards. Since Peace Corps allows volunteers to live in homes without water or electricity, you can imagine what the homes are like. Most are Zulu mud huts called rounduvals with thatched roofs that leak. Our housing is temporary until either of our organizations find something that can accommodate two people with some security.

Tugela Ferry is like a "wild west" town since all of the mountain Zulus travel to it for trading and shopping. As you stroll the one Main Street, you will see lots of vendors, markets, drunken men, traditionally dressed women, cows, goats, turkeys, and more. It is like walking through a place of chaos which makes sense to everyone. We both love the chaos and the energy of the place!

As far as geography, Tugela Ferry is in a basin surrounded by mountains. It is gorgeous although very arid and hot. The temps when we first arrived were in the 100's and now have moderated to the 80's and 90's. This part of Africa is opposite in seasons with the US and we are now moving into Fall. They say that it gets cold here in June and July but I will believe it when I feel it. 

Each morning, I try to run a different trail out of the village and have found some amazing sights and remote villages, especially on my longer weekend runs. Most people live off trails and not roads due to the remoteness of the region and Zulu people's desire to live with nature.

My volunteer work is with a small NGO which runs a center for orphans and vulnerable children and works with volunteers in delivering community home-based care, especially to HIV/AIDS patients. Volunteers visit over 560 homes with over 50% of the patients infected with HIV/AIDS. Another 30% have TB which is probably terminal as well. My NGO also cares for and feeds orphans since parents die of HIV/AIDS. There are over 500 orphans around Tugela Ferry and a lot of chid-headed households. I have seen some pathetic households where there is only children who are starving and poorly clothed. We have adopted one family living near the top of a mountain that literally has nothing and is miles from the nearest road. I found them one weekend on a climb up a mountain and was shocked that people lived so far away from water, electricity, and source of support. Michelle works with another NGO which provides hospice care to dying HIV/AIDS/TB patients and also does home-based care. Her organization also supports amazing research in TB (philanjalo.org and tfcares.org). She is assisting in strengthening their Human Resources and Administration structure as the organization has seen tremendous growth in the last few years. She loves her work, but often spends long days in front of the computer.

Africa is a vast place where terrain changes in hours or every 100 kilometers. We have not been to any of the big preserves but have seen a lot of monkeys, baboons, hippos, giraffes, gazelles, wildebeast, and crocodiles. On my runs and hikes, I have also unfortunately run into some nasty spiders and African ticks. These African spiders and ticks really seem more vicious than those in America.

While there are modern cities in South Africa just like those in the US (Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, Cape Town, there is severe, severe poverty as you travel into the country. This disparity is really hard on the mind since one sees all the wealth in the cities and the poverty just miles away. 

We've learned a lot about Apartheid which is another long story or email.

All in all, the Peace Corps has been an adventure and a real learning experience. We both hope to leave with a feeling that we have made a difference in the lives of those people whom we have helped. 

That's Skubusko, a colleague of Chuck's, walking in downtown Tugela Ferry.

Our new favorite hiking companions. We've encountered them on three hikes so far. When they see us coming, they run for their homes to grab shoes, jackets, whatever they need to accompany us.

Many of the women wear a mixture of mud and lotion on the faces to protect their skin from the harsh sun. 

Chuck spends every Thursday at a Municipal event. They typically have many traditional dances featuring the costumes of the local area.

The cows and goats and chickens and donkeys have full rights on main street, more than pedestrians. 

Traditional Zulu family compound.

View of Church of Scotland Hospital, our home is just to the right, outside the frame.

Home for now!

Our dear friend and fellow Peace Corps Volunteer, Alena and her host sister, Zindla.