Every weekday I drive a few blocks to the post office to collect and drop off mail for the college. I seem to see more strange things in those few blocks than I see anywhere else in South Africa.
Okay, some of it just seems weird because I'm from a not-terribly-poor neighborhood in the US, like the fact that there are a set of twins that look to be about 2 years old playing unsupervised on the side of the road every day. That's weird for the US but not very strange for South Africa.
But some things are weird for anywhere. For example, I went to the post office about 3 weeks ago on trash collection day. There are 2 men that sit in lawn chairs on the sidewalk next to the post office every day. They were there that day, and one of them got up and walked over to the trash bin at the side of the road. He opened it, lifted a toddler out & stood the kid up on the sidewalk while the guy looked in the bin. Then he lifted the kid up & put him back in the bin. The kid (who looked to be about 3) yelled to be let out again, so the man picked him up and put him back on the sidewalk. When I left the post office the kid was playing in the grass. I told Debbie about it & she thought the guy was babysitting but didn't want to actually watch the kid.
Something else happened today. The drive to the post office was normal, but on the way back there was a big fire on the kerb next to the road. That in itself is normal, but from my vantage point it looked like a man was sitting IN the fire. I thought he was self-immolating. I sped up & saw that the man wasn't actually IN the fire, but he was sitting inches away from it. He was so close that the corner of his jacket had caught alight. I rolled down the window & asked if he needed help while frantically searching the bakkie for water. The man looked up and said, "Nah," while casually hitting (more like patting) the flames on his shoulder. I was so surprised that he didn't want help that I said, "Um, okay," and drove off. I didn't have any water anyway so all I could have told him to do was stop, drop & roll.
Weird.
On another note, I'm shooting in the Pan-African World Championships tomorrow and Sunday. Hopefully something strange will happen there- like me not coming in dead last. That wouldn't really be weird though, it'd be more like a miracle.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
A Dispatch Ghost Story
This is the busiest time of the year for the college. I'm the only person working in dispatch at the moment (though others help out when they can) and it's getting hectic in there. I've started locking myself in the dispatch building for a few reasons, so I'm usually the only person in there.
Last week very few people were in dispatch but I kept losing glue sticks. I use them often and I had to keep getting more from the supply closet in the main college building. It was getting irritating to have to stop what I was doing to get glue every day. Friday afternoon I found myself without a glue stick again so I walked to the main building and then straight back to dispatch. I went to the packing table where I'd been moments before and found all 4 glue sticks that had been lost in the previous 4 days lined up on the table.
No one was in dispatch. No one had gone to dispatch. No one has owned up to stealing my glue sticks.
The dispatch ghost is messing with me.
Last week very few people were in dispatch but I kept losing glue sticks. I use them often and I had to keep getting more from the supply closet in the main college building. It was getting irritating to have to stop what I was doing to get glue every day. Friday afternoon I found myself without a glue stick again so I walked to the main building and then straight back to dispatch. I went to the packing table where I'd been moments before and found all 4 glue sticks that had been lost in the previous 4 days lined up on the table.
No one was in dispatch. No one had gone to dispatch. No one has owned up to stealing my glue sticks.
The dispatch ghost is messing with me.
Monday, August 29, 2011
An update on South African happenings:
I’ve been running 5 – 8k races nearly every weekend. They give out medals and it’s no secret that I like shiny things. It’s getting a bit warmer so running in the mornings is nice.
The library is slow this time of the year so I’ve moved to the dispatch department. I make sure the students have all of their course materials. It sounds easier than it is. The job involves driving the college car to and from the post office every day. Wanna see me mad? Mention my having to drive that car. Actually, considering how rarely I drive in RSA and how I’d never driven a manual a year ago, I drive rather well. I have no problems going to or coming from the post office; I just can’t get past the college gate. It’s on uneven ground at a slight incline and there are only two ways my day can go- I can get through the gate on my first try or I can stall that car 20+ times before parking it in the road and making someone else drive 30 meters to its parking spot. And then I’m in a foul mood for the rest of the day.
I’ve had my kitten for a month. She’s being trained like a puppy because I’ve never had a kitten before. She likes having her belly scratched. As I write this she’s planted herself across my arms for a nap. Naming her Mayhem turned out to be a prophetic move on my part. This cat has tried to jump in a hot oven, has escaped the house, has been stepped on when she decided to dart under my boot, and got her head wedged in the bars of a chair so well that I nearly had to break the thing apart to set her loose. She also wakes me up at 5 a.m. EVERY MORNING by attacking my toes. I did not adopt a genius it would seem, but a brilliant troublemaker.
I’ve been saving up for a mountain bike for months and finally got one this month. I’ve been gradually spending more and more time on the bike. I’m going to try the 94.7km Cycle Challenge again this November.
My visa extension request is in and will hopefully be approved very soon. Terri-Lee and I basically own the Germiston Department of Home Affairs we spent so much time there. The first day I waited in line for nearly 2 hours while a random guy sniffed my hair to find out that I needed to get chest x-rays, a physical examination and police clearance before even being able to turn in the application. (Also, I said to the hair sniffer, ‘Come on man, move.’ And he did move. Closer. Specificity would have helped.) The next day Terri-Lee and I showed up again with all of my clearances and waited for nearly 4 hours in line in a room slightly larger than a bathroom. The hair sniffer wasn’t there but I inadvertently almost started a fight when someone tried to jump the line in front of me. I directed the line jumper to the back of the queue and the guy behind me took offense to the response I received. Thankfully there was no actual fight- you don’t wait 4 hours in line to be thrown out when there are only 3 people in front of you. When approved, my visa will be good through June 30, 2013. It’ll be a relief not to have to go through all of this again next year.
If my visa gets sorted by November I’d like to visit the Barnes family in Maputo, Mozambique. They’ve graciously offered to let me stay with them for a few days. Surely Home Affairs won’t take that long but I’m not booking the tickets yet, just in case.
So yeah, that’s about all that has been happening here.
The library is slow this time of the year so I’ve moved to the dispatch department. I make sure the students have all of their course materials. It sounds easier than it is. The job involves driving the college car to and from the post office every day. Wanna see me mad? Mention my having to drive that car. Actually, considering how rarely I drive in RSA and how I’d never driven a manual a year ago, I drive rather well. I have no problems going to or coming from the post office; I just can’t get past the college gate. It’s on uneven ground at a slight incline and there are only two ways my day can go- I can get through the gate on my first try or I can stall that car 20+ times before parking it in the road and making someone else drive 30 meters to its parking spot. And then I’m in a foul mood for the rest of the day.
I’ve had my kitten for a month. She’s being trained like a puppy because I’ve never had a kitten before. She likes having her belly scratched. As I write this she’s planted herself across my arms for a nap. Naming her Mayhem turned out to be a prophetic move on my part. This cat has tried to jump in a hot oven, has escaped the house, has been stepped on when she decided to dart under my boot, and got her head wedged in the bars of a chair so well that I nearly had to break the thing apart to set her loose. She also wakes me up at 5 a.m. EVERY MORNING by attacking my toes. I did not adopt a genius it would seem, but a brilliant troublemaker.
I’ve been saving up for a mountain bike for months and finally got one this month. I’ve been gradually spending more and more time on the bike. I’m going to try the 94.7km Cycle Challenge again this November.
My visa extension request is in and will hopefully be approved very soon. Terri-Lee and I basically own the Germiston Department of Home Affairs we spent so much time there. The first day I waited in line for nearly 2 hours while a random guy sniffed my hair to find out that I needed to get chest x-rays, a physical examination and police clearance before even being able to turn in the application. (Also, I said to the hair sniffer, ‘Come on man, move.’ And he did move. Closer. Specificity would have helped.) The next day Terri-Lee and I showed up again with all of my clearances and waited for nearly 4 hours in line in a room slightly larger than a bathroom. The hair sniffer wasn’t there but I inadvertently almost started a fight when someone tried to jump the line in front of me. I directed the line jumper to the back of the queue and the guy behind me took offense to the response I received. Thankfully there was no actual fight- you don’t wait 4 hours in line to be thrown out when there are only 3 people in front of you. When approved, my visa will be good through June 30, 2013. It’ll be a relief not to have to go through all of this again next year.
If my visa gets sorted by November I’d like to visit the Barnes family in Maputo, Mozambique. They’ve graciously offered to let me stay with them for a few days. Surely Home Affairs won’t take that long but I’m not booking the tickets yet, just in case.
So yeah, that’s about all that has been happening here.
Monday, August 15, 2011
A Year in the Emerald City
Terri-Lee periodically reminds me that I’m not in Kansas anymore. This usually comes after I admit to doing something stupid without realizing that it may not have been a good idea. You would think that eventually the message would sink in, but it doesn’t.
I never understood why Dorothy wouldn’t want to stay in Oz. Sure, it was dangerous- there were wicked witches, flying monkeys, megalomaniac wizards, and at any given moment a house could mysteriously fall from the sky and smoosh you. But it was so beautiful there. Kansas had all its shades of gray, but Oz was in Technicolor. And, with the exception of what- three people, everyone she met was so friendly. If Dorothy was homesick she could just conjure up her aunt’s face in the Witch’s crystal ball and have a kind of alternate-reality bridging form of Skype. Besides, Kansas had its own problems, too. There were pigs that would eat you if you fell in their pen, nasty neighbors that wanted to kill your dog, and tornado-initiated concussions.
Maybe she needed to go back to Kansas because the rules and dangers were more familiar (or maybe she missed eating corn?). If so, Dorothy is more practical and more boring than I am. There’s a Shel Silverstein poem called “Alice” that I have loved since I was about 8 years old. It goes:
She drank from a bottle called DRINK ME
And up she grew so tall,
She ate from a plate called TASTE ME
And down she shrank so small.
And so she changed, while other folks
Never tried nothin’ at all.
Johannesburg can be dangerous- that’s why we have electric fences, security gates, bars on doors and windows. It’s why we put bags and purses in the trunk of the car rather than on the seat next to us, why we don’t go out alone at night, why Michael was so angry and worried that he drove to the restaurant where Terri and I were having dinner when he couldn’t reach us on our phones to find out if we made it safely there. It can be overwhelming at first. After adjusting to the additional security precautions it’s wonderful. The people are generous and friendly, the country is beautiful and there are so many new things to see and do.
I am so, so glad that I came to live in Oz. As of August 8th I've been here a year- I still have another two to look forward to.
I never understood why Dorothy wouldn’t want to stay in Oz. Sure, it was dangerous- there were wicked witches, flying monkeys, megalomaniac wizards, and at any given moment a house could mysteriously fall from the sky and smoosh you. But it was so beautiful there. Kansas had all its shades of gray, but Oz was in Technicolor. And, with the exception of what- three people, everyone she met was so friendly. If Dorothy was homesick she could just conjure up her aunt’s face in the Witch’s crystal ball and have a kind of alternate-reality bridging form of Skype. Besides, Kansas had its own problems, too. There were pigs that would eat you if you fell in their pen, nasty neighbors that wanted to kill your dog, and tornado-initiated concussions.
Maybe she needed to go back to Kansas because the rules and dangers were more familiar (or maybe she missed eating corn?). If so, Dorothy is more practical and more boring than I am. There’s a Shel Silverstein poem called “Alice” that I have loved since I was about 8 years old. It goes:
She drank from a bottle called DRINK ME
And up she grew so tall,
She ate from a plate called TASTE ME
And down she shrank so small.
And so she changed, while other folks
Never tried nothin’ at all.
Johannesburg can be dangerous- that’s why we have electric fences, security gates, bars on doors and windows. It’s why we put bags and purses in the trunk of the car rather than on the seat next to us, why we don’t go out alone at night, why Michael was so angry and worried that he drove to the restaurant where Terri and I were having dinner when he couldn’t reach us on our phones to find out if we made it safely there. It can be overwhelming at first. After adjusting to the additional security precautions it’s wonderful. The people are generous and friendly, the country is beautiful and there are so many new things to see and do.
I am so, so glad that I came to live in Oz. As of August 8th I've been here a year- I still have another two to look forward to.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Mayhem the Kitten
Yesterday was Nelson Mandela's 93rd birthday. It was also the day I adopted an adorable little grey kitten. Her name is Mayhem and she's about 11 weeks old. I got her from the Animal Anti-Cruelty League.
She wouldn't sit still long enough for me to take a decent picture. She follows me everywhere. I think she's quite cute, but I may be biased.
She wouldn't sit still long enough for me to take a decent picture. She follows me everywhere. I think she's quite cute, but I may be biased.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
My first rugby game
My camera broke while I was visiting Port Alfred in April and I haven’t gone out to get a new one yet. Since I have no photos to include in this post and since I love Hyperbole and a Half (www.hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com) I decided to whip up a few illustrations in MS Paint.
Terri-Lee, Denise and I went to see the new 3D Pirates of the Caribbean movie a few weeks ago. Both Terri and Denise had just finished writing their exams and wanted to do something fun, so we went back to Terri-Lee and Michael’s house to figure out what.
When we got there we found Nick and Michael watching rugby, which turned the conversation to how “we” are going to the rugby on Saturday. I had thought that Michael and Terri-Lee were going alone, but I learned that she had bought 10 tickets for Michael’s anniversary present and a bus had been rented to chauffer everyone to and from the game.
I was confused about the “we” as this was the first time I’d heard about any of this. It turns out I wasn’t the only one that was confused- at one point there had been more people coming than there were tickets.
By Friday I was starting to get a cold and I hadn’t heard anything about rugby or bus times, so I figured I definitely wasn’t going. I stayed up until 1:45 a.m. rereading The Hunger Games and didn’t wake up until 10:57 a.m.
Three minutes later I was brushing my teeth when I heard the first honk at the gate. And the second. And the third. I thought, ‘Surely that’s not someone at my gate’ but I checked anyway. Indeed, there was a silver car there. I figured Craig had somehow locked himself out and needed the gate opened for him. I grabbed the remote from the kitchen and opened the gate from my bedroom window. But the car didn’t move. I decided to leave the gate open so whoever it was could figure out what they were doing.
A few minutes later I heard someone walking around my house. Sometimes Craig has meals delivered to the house- I wondered if they had come to deliver but he wasn’t home. I grudgingly opened my front door.
And there was Denise. We stared at each other for a few moments. I’m sure she was shocked into silence by how magnificent I look after rolling out of bed.
“Um, hi, Denise,” I said.
“Hey… we’re here to pick you up,” she replied.
“Pick me up… for what?”
“For the rugby.”
“What?”
“We’re here to pick you up for the rugby. It’s today.”
“Uh, I didn’t know I was going to the rugby.”
“What?”
“No one told me.”
“Crap. Let me phone and see how much time we have.”
“Okay. I’m gonna go put on some clothes.”
Denise called out from the front door that I had 3 minutes to get ready. I grabbed the first blue clothes that I saw. In reality, it was more like 15 minutes. It turned out that Terri-Lee and Michael were also running late so I had some extra time.
We were on the bus by 11:30 a.m. and stopped by BesTec to pick up everyone else.
Michael had booked a few tables for the day at a bar and grill across the street from the stadium in Pretoria. My food was the last to come out and Denise said they probably thought I was joking about ordering the vegetarian platter. The waitress came out a while later and told me that the cooks had forgotten about my order. Denise then predicted that they would just run through the kitchen and throw all the side dishes together and bring it out. Five minutes later, that’s what was in front of me. All the side dishes. Luckily I like South African side dishes.
Loftus Stadium is the Bulls’ home field, so everything was blue. There were quite a few Sharks fans, though, so it looked like there were black specks floating around in all the blue. There was a particularly annoying Sharks fan sitting in front of Terri-Lee and Michael. He made obscene gestures and screamed whenever they scored, showering everyone and everything around him in spittle. Elisna taught me Afrikaans words to yell with her. I yelled so much that I lost my voice the next day.
It was a fairly close game from the beginning, but the Sharks ended up winning by 3 points.
We walked back to our tables at the restaurant for some snacks and drinks. It wasn’t even 8 p.m. and the bus was scheduled to pick us up at 10. Each snack tray had french fries, samoosas, chicken nuggets, chicken wings, and some other meaty things that I didn’t really pay attention to.
I was wondering if the samoosas were vegetarian but we couldn’t find our waitress. Terri-Lee tried one and confirmed that it was, in fact, vegetarian. I took a bite of one and tasted meat. But I ate it anyway because, well, I’d already had one bite. Around that time our waitress showed up and informed us that the samoosas did in fact have meat. Michael promised not to bug me about eating meat anymore if I would eat another, so I did. It was disgusting. I have no regrets about being a vegetarian. Terri-Lee grabbed another samoosa from another tray and found that one to be vegetarian as well. All the meaty ones just came to me.
We were all exhausted by the time the bus came to pick us up, but everyone was in a good mood. The guys were at the front of the bus talking about rugby and listening to the music they brought. Elisna, Terri-Lee, Denise and I were at the back talking and telling bad jokes. Inevitably Terri-Lee wound up on the autocorrect site (www.damnyouautocorrect.com) and read all of the funny ones to us.
I didn’t get home until around 11:30 p.m. I went straight to bed because the next morning Terri was coming to pick me up for Father’s Day lunch with her family. I really enjoyed the rugby game- the entire day was a pleasant although completely unexpected surprise.
Terri-Lee, Denise and I went to see the new 3D Pirates of the Caribbean movie a few weeks ago. Both Terri and Denise had just finished writing their exams and wanted to do something fun, so we went back to Terri-Lee and Michael’s house to figure out what.
When we got there we found Nick and Michael watching rugby, which turned the conversation to how “we” are going to the rugby on Saturday. I had thought that Michael and Terri-Lee were going alone, but I learned that she had bought 10 tickets for Michael’s anniversary present and a bus had been rented to chauffer everyone to and from the game.
I was confused about the “we” as this was the first time I’d heard about any of this. It turns out I wasn’t the only one that was confused- at one point there had been more people coming than there were tickets.
By Friday I was starting to get a cold and I hadn’t heard anything about rugby or bus times, so I figured I definitely wasn’t going. I stayed up until 1:45 a.m. rereading The Hunger Games and didn’t wake up until 10:57 a.m.
Three minutes later I was brushing my teeth when I heard the first honk at the gate. And the second. And the third. I thought, ‘Surely that’s not someone at my gate’ but I checked anyway. Indeed, there was a silver car there. I figured Craig had somehow locked himself out and needed the gate opened for him. I grabbed the remote from the kitchen and opened the gate from my bedroom window. But the car didn’t move. I decided to leave the gate open so whoever it was could figure out what they were doing.
A few minutes later I heard someone walking around my house. Sometimes Craig has meals delivered to the house- I wondered if they had come to deliver but he wasn’t home. I grudgingly opened my front door.
And there was Denise. We stared at each other for a few moments. I’m sure she was shocked into silence by how magnificent I look after rolling out of bed.
“Um, hi, Denise,” I said.
“Hey… we’re here to pick you up,” she replied.
“Pick me up… for what?”
“For the rugby.”
“What?”
“We’re here to pick you up for the rugby. It’s today.”
“Uh, I didn’t know I was going to the rugby.”
“What?”
“No one told me.”
“Crap. Let me phone and see how much time we have.”
“Okay. I’m gonna go put on some clothes.”
Denise called out from the front door that I had 3 minutes to get ready. I grabbed the first blue clothes that I saw. In reality, it was more like 15 minutes. It turned out that Terri-Lee and Michael were also running late so I had some extra time.
We were on the bus by 11:30 a.m. and stopped by BesTec to pick up everyone else.
Michael had booked a few tables for the day at a bar and grill across the street from the stadium in Pretoria. My food was the last to come out and Denise said they probably thought I was joking about ordering the vegetarian platter. The waitress came out a while later and told me that the cooks had forgotten about my order. Denise then predicted that they would just run through the kitchen and throw all the side dishes together and bring it out. Five minutes later, that’s what was in front of me. All the side dishes. Luckily I like South African side dishes.
Loftus Stadium is the Bulls’ home field, so everything was blue. There were quite a few Sharks fans, though, so it looked like there were black specks floating around in all the blue. There was a particularly annoying Sharks fan sitting in front of Terri-Lee and Michael. He made obscene gestures and screamed whenever they scored, showering everyone and everything around him in spittle. Elisna taught me Afrikaans words to yell with her. I yelled so much that I lost my voice the next day.
It was a fairly close game from the beginning, but the Sharks ended up winning by 3 points.
We walked back to our tables at the restaurant for some snacks and drinks. It wasn’t even 8 p.m. and the bus was scheduled to pick us up at 10. Each snack tray had french fries, samoosas, chicken nuggets, chicken wings, and some other meaty things that I didn’t really pay attention to.
I was wondering if the samoosas were vegetarian but we couldn’t find our waitress. Terri-Lee tried one and confirmed that it was, in fact, vegetarian. I took a bite of one and tasted meat. But I ate it anyway because, well, I’d already had one bite. Around that time our waitress showed up and informed us that the samoosas did in fact have meat. Michael promised not to bug me about eating meat anymore if I would eat another, so I did. It was disgusting. I have no regrets about being a vegetarian. Terri-Lee grabbed another samoosa from another tray and found that one to be vegetarian as well. All the meaty ones just came to me.
We were all exhausted by the time the bus came to pick us up, but everyone was in a good mood. The guys were at the front of the bus talking about rugby and listening to the music they brought. Elisna, Terri-Lee, Denise and I were at the back talking and telling bad jokes. Inevitably Terri-Lee wound up on the autocorrect site (www.damnyouautocorrect.com) and read all of the funny ones to us.
I didn’t get home until around 11:30 p.m. I went straight to bed because the next morning Terri was coming to pick me up for Father’s Day lunch with her family. I really enjoyed the rugby game- the entire day was a pleasant although completely unexpected surprise.
Friday, May 6, 2011
I'm still alive, fyi.
I’ve recently received a few emails from people in the U.S. checking to make sure I’m still alive. I am. (Ta-da!)
I’ve just been really super ridiculously busy. January – March was a blur with registrations and filling dispatch orders. I did have a nice little break at the end of March when Terri-Lee and Michael’s friend Sharon invited us to her family’s chalet on the Vaal Dam. April was full of shopping and parties (Talia’s 21st birthday and Terri-Lee and Denise’s joint birthday party) and I was in Port Alfred for almost half of the month staying with Hester and her husband at their beach house. That’s where a lot of these photos came from.
Exactly 9 months ago today I got on a plane to come to South Africa. I’m waiting to officially hear from Global Ministries about whether I’ll be able to stay in South Africa for another 2 years, but it looks promising. To renew my visa I’ll need to leave the country for a few days, so I’d like to visit the Barnes family in Maputo, Mozambique.
So, yes, I’m still here and hopefully I’ll be here for a very long time. :)
I’ve just been really super ridiculously busy. January – March was a blur with registrations and filling dispatch orders. I did have a nice little break at the end of March when Terri-Lee and Michael’s friend Sharon invited us to her family’s chalet on the Vaal Dam. April was full of shopping and parties (Talia’s 21st birthday and Terri-Lee and Denise’s joint birthday party) and I was in Port Alfred for almost half of the month staying with Hester and her husband at their beach house. That’s where a lot of these photos came from.
Exactly 9 months ago today I got on a plane to come to South Africa. I’m waiting to officially hear from Global Ministries about whether I’ll be able to stay in South Africa for another 2 years, but it looks promising. To renew my visa I’ll need to leave the country for a few days, so I’d like to visit the Barnes family in Maputo, Mozambique.
So, yes, I’m still here and hopefully I’ll be here for a very long time. :)
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