It's the Final Countdown

Okay so sorry I haven't posted in a while. One night this week the security gaurd at Manyangana has thieves break in with guns and steal the computers from the lab by breaking the windows and pulling the metal bars out so we haven't had internet all week. The security gaurd went and got Elvis, the principal and Elvis chased them in his car. When the thieves noticed they were being followed they ditched the truck w. all the CPUs in the back and took off into the bush. So, Elvis stayed with the computers and the police followed the men into the bush and caught them. Craziness right!??! Elvis is like the batman of Utah.

Besides that excitement we went to the Zipline in Hazyview at the beginning of the week which was soooo much fun. It's the longest zipline in all of Africa, 1.2 km. That's pretty far but not nearly as far as the 12 km that Nowell and I have been running to the Gowrie Gate of Sabi Sand this week. It's by far the biggest achievement of the trip haha. I've also been teaching computers at the primary school and English class to the 8th graders at Manyangana.

The soccer tournament is coming together sooo well. The community memebers on the coordinating committee are awesome and get like all the work done. Angie(my recruit from Utah) might be my favorite person in the whole world, she always tells me exactly what she thinks about absolutely anything; so her own woman. Coke is coming out for the second day of the tournament so that was a major sponsorship score. They are bringing this huge truck that rolls out into a dance floor and has a huge sound system.

The Final Countdown: 14 days!

The Turning Point

In the last 24hrs Team Utah has managed to rebound from what was a really bad beginning of the week. We struggled to get members of the community to show up for meetings and just got blown off entirely for some. It's frustrating because you are trying to understand the best way to go about things through cultural norms; like the fact that everyone runs on Africa time-at least 30 mins late for anything. Global Development is a slow process to begin with and I think we all know that I am not a patient person, it's just one of the many things I am learning this summer.

As of yesterday meetings started going better, our host sisters came home from their grandmothers and they are completely comfortable with us now so they asked all sorts of questions and I helped Melbourne read a book and write her numbers out to 100. It's so nice to have some noise in the house again.

Dear Dad,
I do my own laundry! I actually did it this morning and almost rubbed my hands raw in the process. It's actually kind of suprising how clean you can get things.

The Turning Point

In the last 24hrs Team Utah has managed to rebound from what was a really bad beginning of the week. We struggled to get members of the community to show up for meetings and just got blown off entirely for some. It's frustrating because you are trying to understand the best way to go about things through cultural norms; like the fact that everyone runs on Africa time-at least 30 mins late for anything. Global Development is a slow process to begin with and I think we all know that I am not a patient person, it's just one of the many things I am learning this summer.

As of yesterday meetings started going better, our host sisters came home from their grandmothers and they are completely comfortable with us now so they asked all sorts of questions and I helped Melbourne read a book and write her numbers out to 100. It's so nice to have some noise in the house again.

Dear Dad,
I do my own laundry! I actually did it this morning and almost rubbed my hands raw in the process. It's actually kind of suprising how clean you can get things.

4 weeks in

It's been 4 weeks since I left the U.S., it doesn't seem like that long at all right? We are making more progress on the soccer tournament. It's looking like we will definitely have soccer balls, food, water, and teams are already signing up. Thanks to Robert AKA DJ Bravo we are also going to have a couple performers.

Last night a group of us went to dinner at Sidney's private lodge. His mom, wife, and two daughters were there are they were all so nice. His staff and his family made the best dinner for us. The main dish was sausage, beef sausage and wild game sausage, which I tried and actually liked. Everything was awesome, we saw and elephant while we were eating dinner.

Today we have some evaluating meetings with the Manyangana soccer team and KD. Xitsonga lessons are tonight and we are breaking up for the first time into faster and slower paced class, I'm thinking I'm going to do the faster paced class but I'm not really looking forward to the homework that goes along with it.

I hope everyone is doing well!

Pension Day

It's Pension Day here in Utah which means that the government is handing out their aid to everyone in the village. So, of course now that everyone has money to spend they are having this huge market that lines the streets of uptah ( the hillside of town). There is like chickens, water, potatoes, tomatoes, clothes, scarves, electronics, tons of stuff for sale and that is literally where everyone is. We had like 20 kids at camp this morning because everyone else was at pension day. Besides that we have more soccer/health day planning to do today and Xitsonga lessons are tonight. Hope everyone is having an awesome summer.

So much to do!

So, we had a meeting last night about soccer day/health tournament stuff and 3 people from the interns had to be on the coordinating committee to act as the in between of the soccer committee and the health committee. So, I volunteered to do it and the tournament is only 3 weeks away so there is so much to get done. We need major sponsors and things donated, I barely know where to start. Besides that monitoring is still going on, we have to start evaluations, day camps are until the end of this week and we are doing other little things here there.

Safari

Okay so the day here at Djuma has only gotten better since I last posted. Safari was amazing we saw all of the big five except elephants so tmrw on safari I want to see them and giraffes. Dinner was better than anything I will ever be able to make in the villages but I was once again reminded of the disparity that exists 5km down the road; the chef working in our kitchen is from Utah. I interviewed her last week as part of our capacity inventories. I felt kind of awkward having her serve me, this sure as hell isn't shared austerity. Don't get me wrong I am soooo glad I came but one day is enough then back to the villages.

Djuma!

so, we just got to the five star game reserve that we get to spend a night at and I am like giddy with the ridiculousness of this place. It is sooooo nice! I just had the most amazing meal, Dena and I are sharing like our own compound area with an outdoor shower and a little pool, it's crazy.

The hard part is I know the reality that just minutes away there are impoverished living conditions that the tourists that stay here don't even think about. Djuma trucks drive through our village all the time and stop and take pictures of the kids like they are a show or something, it's really frustrating.

Camps are still going on this week along with computers, but instead of interviews in the afternoon we have moved on to monitoring and evaluation of past SMRC projects. This can be really exciting in some cases when projects have taken off and really depressing in others when they have failed.

Overall, everything is still going really well. I want to adopt this 10 yr old girl that hangs out with me at camp everyday, her name is mpfuneko. She is adorable! She can barely say my name because nobody can say my name here so i've tried to get them to call me Nat but somehow it comes out Nata? I'm not really sure how that happened at soccer the other day but I'll answer to whatever works for them.

Safari is at 4!

Week 2 in Utah

So, this week has flown by. We are doing summer camps for the kids because they are on a three week recess by now. They are absolutely exhausting! We do computer training for the older kids in the afternoon and we've been doing interviews with community members to identify skills in the evening. We also started taking Xitsonga lessons from Deppa this week, I'm a pro already.

Last night we went to an ANC meeting at the high school. I was so pumped to see that most of the room was women and 3 of the 4 leaders were women! The girls can sometimes be MIA in this town so it was great to see them involved.

I went for a run in the freezing cold this morning because the off balance diet I have been eating is starting to get to me. Don't worry I went with my team leader and another intern, I'm not running alone.

There's probably tons that I'm forgetting to tell you but next week is just as crazy as this one and I'll be on the computer again Friday hopefully!

-Natalie

P.S. I did hear about Michael Jackson. We were at the local elementary school for opening session the day it happened and the Prinipal Albert made us have a moment of silence for the "fallen American Hero" (his words not mine). The wierd part is we were just talking about him the night before when we were killing the chicken, the kids here love him!