Notes from the Field

I haven’t really discussed the work I am doing to this point, but I now feel it is necessary to fill you in as I am sure a number of my experiences will be taken from encounters I have in the field. So here goes…I am working on a Home Based Care study that is seeking to examine the quality of care provided by community care givers to clients.

For those of you that don’t know, home based care organizations provide sick individuals the assistance they need in the home. This requires carers (community care givers) to enter these individuals' houses and provide a variety of services including: washing clothes, counseling, training them on how to take medications, cooking, ect. Basically, anything the person can’t do for themselves or doesn’t know how to do- the carer either shows them how, if they are able, or does it for them. Carers in this area of South Africa provide care to people with TB, malaria, HIV/AIDS, mental health problems, disabilities, chronic illness, and the elderyly. Most of them also care for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC). Basically, the carers support the health system that is already overburden, especially in rural areas.

So my job for the first few months here is to write up an overview of the situation in the area I live. This entails me compiling a list of all the home based care organizations (easier said then done) and then visiting them to talk with them about their organization. This is one of the great parts of my job. For the month of February I will be visiting all 42 organization. Each organization is about a two hour drive since the dirt roads are so bad.

So now that I have given you a very basic picture of what it is I am doing, I of course have to share the most amazing story of the week. First, let me preface by stating each story I hear in the field is more impressive and inspirational than the last. The people I have met here have a sense of selflessness I have never seen. The love and devotion that abounds in the communities I am visiting is awe-inspiring and at times overwhelming.

That being said, I visited a women on Wednesday who was about 60 years old and retired – so she said. As we began talking she told me that her family had kicked her out of the home as a little girl because her father didn’t want her anymore. She was forced to leave her community and settled in with her Aunt and Uncle two hours away. Her Aunt soon became very sick and the family thought a spell had been cast on her. The Uncle sent her Aunt and her away so as not to bewitch the rest of the family.

For the next 15 years she lived taking care of her sick Aunt in a hut she had built for them. She began describing the house she built; “It had four tin walls,” she beamed. “And I lathered the outside of the hut all by myself in two days- with mud from 2 km away since that was strong mud. On my way home one day I decided I could make a door out of small wooden logs people had left behind.” And so she did. “My roof was left over tin I found down the road and I tried my very hardest to lift 4 huge rocks to hold it in place.”

She was six when she built this hut and instead of describing something that sounded like an awful 50 square foot room with no light, you could tell she was full of pride that she could build a house. This house that protected her and her Aunt for the next 9 years. While taking care of all the cooking, cleaning, and her Aunt, she also found the money from a local church to go to school. She said her Aunt always encouraged to get an education.

As her Aunt began getting more and more sick she started taking solace in the other members of the community she had met. Many of these people were also living in similar situations. After her Aunt passed away, she decided to make it her mission to help those who were not provided the type of care she was able to give to her Aunt.

This is how she got the idea of starting a home based care center. With no money and little education, she worked with the community to build a one room building. She then started working with volunteers she recruited to provide services to people in need around the community. To this day, receiving no outside help from funders (only the community), she has managed to keep her organization alive. Pouring everything she has into it, she now has 20 volunteer caregivers and 4 volunteer admin staff that work full time to meet the needs of many of the sick people in her community. They are caring for over 1,000 people in the community- people who would probably end up dying lonely, painful deaths without her assistance.

I asked her how she is able to motivate all 24 of her staff to come to work each day for 8 hours without pay. Her answer was simple - everyone here has been affected by death and grief and if no one is willing to help those who can’t help themselves, who is ever going to help them when they are in need.

These people are amazing! I usually hug every one of the staff members after our visit. Also, they always remind me to come back and visit my new "mom". I then quickly rush out to my car to make sure they are not packing it with the little food they have (they love sending you home with food – it is a cultural thing).

So that is a typical day for me! These individuals are an inspiration to me and really make me stop and reflect on appreciating the small things in life.

Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite!

Perhaps South Africa has a different saying than “don’t let the bed bugs bite?” After a full day out hanging out with new friends, driving around looking at the beautiful countryside, doing laundry (the old fashion way), and cooking, I arrived home to a fully lit house. When I first arrived in Acornhoek this would have been just what I had wished for, since I was so scared of stepping on a scorpion or a snake, but now that I have been here a while I figured out the secret that for some reason folks don’t tell you. I guess it is a live and learn kind of game if you can’t figure the lights out you won’t last that long. Anyways, the secret is that the lights only attract the bugs! Basically, me leaving the lights on all day meant that I was about to be greeted by every type of flying insect that lives here.

I stepped in cautiously, reaching to the right to grab my newly purchased and hung fly swatter and stepping again to the right to grab my new favorite thing…..a can of bug spray, convientely and purposefully placed next to the door for just these occasions. Armed for battle, I stepped forward and slowly looked up to find the most usual thing. You would think since I have been shocked day after day about things here in Acornhoek, I would not be shocked by things anymore...unfortunately, that is not how it works

Anyways, coming from my ceiling were thousands of spiders dropping down about 5 feet (my ceilings are about 15 feet). This would have been kind of a cool sight, if by chance, it wasn’t in my house. At that point, I didn’t even care about the beetles and the mouths flying about. Unfortunately, I also realized that my can of bug spray and my fly swatter were going to be useless.

In fear of all the spiders falling on my head at once, I walked as close to the wall as possible to get to my bedroom. Yes, I know pretty lame sight but you would have totally done it too if you saw how many spiders there were.

I walked in my bedroom flustered since I thought I had just gotten used to the life here and looked up to find another “amazing” site – about 20 flying cockroaches nested on the ceiling surrounding my light. As usual, cockroaches here are not like they are in the states. Here there are hundreds of different kinds and what was on my ceiling where huge cockroaches the size of dates.

Hmm awesome now I had spiders in one room and cockroaches in the other. What a lovely way to end the evening. I quickly turned off the lights not even thinking and the cockroaches swarmed down, causing me to drop to the floor – I know another lovely visually of me freaking out. When I had the nerve to look up I realized that they had only gone in search of new light in the other room. It is then that I realized the true beauty of what I thought were annoying insects. Almost every flying cockroach got stuck in the webs of the spiders that were dropping down from the ceiling. AWESOME! Better than any bug spray I had ever used.

I turned around satisfied and walked three steps to the bathroom to get ready for bed. As I laid down to go to sleep I started to wonder what would happen to the cockroaches, are they slowly going to fall onto the ground, or more likely on to me as I am walking underneath...

Before I could continue with my thoughts my legs started to itch. I turned on my flashlight to find fleas all over my bed. I got up, rather annoyed at this point and sprayed my bed with my favorite bug spray and tiredly laid back down. I fell asleep that night listening to the call of the lions – another thing you would find only in the bush! Night everyone – don’t let the bed bugs bite.

Singing In The Rain

Over the last 3 days it has been pouring rain every morning. While in the States I typically love the rain, in Acornhoek it just makes my life difficult. I woke up the first morning of rainfall to discover my main living area covered in a pool of water. Apparently, the wind was blowing the rain in. Unfortunately for me it is too hot to close the windows so I decided a wet living room was the better idea.

I got in my car to leave for work and found a pool of water on the floor of the back seat – guess my last passenger forgot to roll up the window all the way, which is dangerous for this area because monkey’s love getting into cars and pooping and peeing on everything. It is their way of marking their territory. So in hinds sight water is better than monkeys. Although, I quickly realized that pools of water also attract large numbers of mosquitoes. At least they had a nice meal out of me.

I started the car and found that the wind shield wipers didn’t feel like working that day. So I rolled down the window and tried to drive with my head out the window. That lasted for about 30 seconds till I decided that it was a dumb idea – not being able to see wasn’t that bad. I continued my drive down the now washed out dirt road ridden with potholes the size of small houses and bumps bigger than large tree trunks. I know, I know , I too am waiting for my tires to fall off the car or the engine to just fall out. My car makes such a noise as it is, the bumps are surely not helping things.

As I continued to the tar road (as they like to call it) I picked up my speed to about 60MPH which is really the fastest you can go in this area to make sure you don’t hit an animal or hit a pothole. Oh and yes, people hit animals all the time – not armadillos or squirrels we are used to but real animals, Warthogs, Impalas, Cows, Water Buck and just last week someone hit an elephant! Anyways, I digress. So as I continued down the tar road I noticed a car stopped ahead of me. A stream was now crossing the road. The man was outside his car collecting the water in a huge bin. I slowed down and once I realized the water wasn’t going to wash my car away I continued.

Today I happen to have a meeting about 30minutes away at a home based care organization. Thankfully, I had picked up one of my colleagues for the meeting so I didn’t have to drive alone. As we continued on, I hit pot hole after pot hole just bracing for impact. My windshield wipers were still not working and now the window was completely fogged up. Wow, the luxury of an air conditioner I am starting to miss.

Faith, my colleague, directed me to turn right down a dirt road. I turned right and immediately noticed the terrible shape of the road – there were streams washing away the path and rocks were now exposed that would pop a tire in an instant. As I preceded down the road slower than a turtle, I was just hoping the next road wouldn’t be worse. Of course, it was. This road was not only steep, had potholes, and rocks, but there were random patches of grass so you couldn’t even see where not to drive, a fun guessing game. At this point I had Faith wiping the inside of the window and I had my hand out the window trying to wipe away the rain – as you can imagine extremely productive. We finally arrived at the home based care site.

A meeting was about to start when we walked in. They were just finishing up their prayers (mandatory before any meeting here). We had a two hour meeting with Mama Anna, the head of the home based care organization, after our meeting she walked us through the facility and through the garden. There were over 50 children in the garden smiling and pulling weeds. I asked Faith why the children were so happy to be pulling weeds in the rain. She said that the children were excited for the rain because it would ensure they were feed that week. All the children were orphans and without the garden they would have no food to eat. Mama Anna must have heard me ask such a silly question and made us follow her down the road to the village. All the women were outside washing their clothes. Every container they had in their house was outside to collect the water. She turned to me and told me, “when it rains it is time to rejoice, bath ourselves, clean our clothes, and use everything the sky has to offer.”

Now doesn’t that just put my day into perspective?! Now I understood why the man had stopped to collect the water from the stream that had formed across the road and why the children walking to school without umbrellas were laughing and playing. When it rains again I will be sure to be singing in the rain.

Rabbits Anyone?

A few weekends ago I was called by a friend that lives near me to get ready and he was going to come pick me up. He didn’t tell me why but said it was urgent. I was waiting outside for himwhen he arrived, as I was eager to know what was so urgent.

He said that a house across the way had a little problem he needed to contend with. I asked him why he needed my help and he said he just wanted me not to be scared anymore. I knew this was a bad sign! As we continued along he told me that the little girl that lived in the house across the way went to go feed her bunnies in the coup behind their house. She noticed they weren’t moving and crawled into the cage to investigate. It was then that she saw a black snake pop up from the corner. She backed away without turning (apparently what you are suppose to do) and ran into the house to tell her parents.

Her parents called Tian and Tian called me to come with him. My initial thought was, wow, next time someone says it is urgent it would be smart to get more information before I volunteer to go with them – especially in this place. You never know what is going to happen. They have bigger and badder everything here! They have cockroaches the size of phones and flying ants the size of cockroaches – I mean really!

As we pulled up to the girl’s house they were waiting for us outside. They walked us over to the rabbit coup and Tian went inside with his shovel to try and find the snake. I wasn’t stupid enough to follow him that time around. I thought I would make friends safely outside with the family. Although I must admit I was very aware of my surroundings and was planning every move if I did see a snake.

Tian was in the coup for a good 30mins before he came out with nothing. He then called some friends and in 5mins the reptile control people were there. I thought that was odd considering everything around me is at least a 20 minute drive. The reptile people got out and went in with their shovels, they seemed more excited than they should be to catch a snake. Within 10 minutes they found what they were looking for.

One of the reptile guys carried out the snake with one finger positioned firmly on top of its head and the other under it mouth. They were all laughing and taking pictures. Tian was so excited the snake measured 2.5 meters long! I must have had a look of panic on my face as the reptile guy informed me that they hadn’t caught one of these black mambos in the area for months! My mouth dropped– a black mamba - awesome, great, just my luck. I had been warned several times about the danger of these snakes and here I was right in front of it. They were laughing at me telling me I had nothing to worry about and they started listing over 20 other animals that are more dangerous in this area that I actually should be scared of …..awesome…….doesn’t that always make a girl feel better (the picture on the right is not the snake they caught that day but a different cobra snake I encountered - another story for another day. I didn't have my camera to capture the black mamba unfortunately.)

At least I did learn that the black mambo is actually not the most dangerous snake here and that it only strikes if it feels cornered. Notes to self: never intimidate a snake and never have a bunny here as a pet!

Learning English: AGAIN

While I thought I had mastered the art of English I have recently learned that I am mistaken. While South Africa has 11 official languages most people I work with on a daily basis speak English yet, I still struggle to understand what they are saying. They emphasize different syllables and I have made a fool of myself several times as I was lost in translation (in my own language....is that possible?!)

My boss and I were driving to a meeting the other day and he told me to turn left at the robot. I laughed at his joke and continued driving. Five minutes later he told me I missed the robot. I just ignored him thinking he was trying to be funny again...haha. A second later he told me "turn around, you MISSED the turn". I turned around. Oh and by the way every time you guys make a turn in your car think about the amazing role of power steering….it takes all of my effort to turn the damn car. Again he told me to turn at the robot. I finally turned to him and explained that I didn’t understand the joke. He laughed hysterically again, something that happens to me often here. He then pointed at the light in front of me and said turn. I finally got it, apparently a robot is a traffic light.

Here are some other fun things I have learned:

Serviette – Napkins

Napkins – sanitary napkins (don't want to mess this one up)

Boot – Trunk

Cubby Hole – Glove Box

Truck – Semi-Truck

Braai - BBQ

I will continue to add to these as they come up...ENJOY!

The Funeral

My boss’ father passed away the day I arrived here and the funeral was planned for Saturday, my first weekend in Acornhoek. My boss’ family lives in Hapani a 3 hour drive north of Acornhoek. Seeing as I am the only one at work with a car or who even has a license I was asked to drive.

I was also informed on Friday evening that I would need to pick everyone up at their house because it is unsafe to walk alone at night. I stopped for a second and wondered why on earth they were talking about picking them up at night. It was only then that I found out the funeral started at 6am and we would be leaving Acornhoek at 3:00am – awesome...I have never heard of a funeral that started that early but I quickly realized why.

We arrived safely In Hapani and headed straight to church with 100 other people attending the funeral. The church was packed and we sat 6 to a bench that should fit 4. They had air conditioners on the walls but for some reason no one seems to use them – still working on figuring that out. Regardless, it was already 87 outside and probably hotter in the church. After 2 hours of singing, praying, and talking we left the church for the grave site.

It was a beautiful drive up the steepest mountain I had seen in a while. The mountains in the area are beautiful and the fields of trees and maize go for miles. Unfortunately I also saw something else that I was not so happy to see. On one side of the road there was an enormous house with a huge fence around it and directly across from the house was a structure the size of an outhouse made out of wood, tin, and trash bags. I watched as a women came out of this structure with her baby wrapped around her back and a huge container of water. The disparity was astounding and so sad to see.

As I sat quiet watching the scene I decided to bring it up with my co-workers. They all acknowledge the discrepancies and the discussion soon turned to apartheid. The conversation was interesting as people here are so open and they voice their concerns with the past and their expectations of the future with regards to race relations so openly. They are never scared of offending someone and when they do they talk it through with them. A nice change to what I am used to.

After 30mins we arrived at the top of the mountain and before we finished our conversation a guy knocked on my window. As I cranked my window down it was clear that the man was agitated. I didn’t understand a word he said and the girls in the car quickly intervened. His mood changed quickly and the girls handed me a scarf to put on my head.

When we got out of the car, I was told that this church required people to cover their heads. Christianity is a huge part of people’s lives here. They have uniforms for church and each church has its own costumes, I guess covering heads is one of them. This church also doesn’t allow girls to wear pants – of course I was wearing pants. Fortunately the girls were able to get me in playing the dumb American card. Being an American here is actually quite helpful – they love us.

It was now 95 degrees and we were out in the hot sun – it was then that I realized why the funeral started a 6:00am. For the next hour we stood at the grave site while they completely buried his father one shovel full of dirt at a time. There was more singing and a lot of waiting but all in all the spirit of the day was celebratory – honoring and reflecting on the life of a great man. Hopefully, I will not have to attend any more funeral while I am here but, in reality everyone I have meet has a relative or loved one with HIV and at least one family member in the hospital at this time.

My New Home In Acornhoek

I have only been in South Africa for 5 days now and I have already moved into my new 1 bedroom house, was given a car, started a new job, and had two all staff meetings. Needless to say I have many stories to tell and limited time to tell them, so let me know if you would like me to elaborate on anything.

My house is great - still getting used to the bugs dive bombing me in the middle of the night, but all in all it is good. I have posted some pictures for you to see for yourself. Luckily for me I have running water (hot and cold - a luxury) and I have electricity. This morning as I attempted to leave my house to go pick up a colleague I found three curious monkeys on my porch. They were standing right next to the door so I couldn't get out without them getting in. I tried to scare them away but that only kept them entertained. I had to sit in my house for 15mins staring face to face with these monkeys till they decided they weren't interested. I then got into my 1995 VW bug in an attempt to speed away. Unlikely case, it actually took me another 15mins to get the car started. Although that was the least of my worries as a pack of impalas stood right in front of my path out. The sound of the engine didn't even concern them.

When I finally got the car on and slowly worked my way through the impalas, I proceed down the bumpy, pot hole ridden, dirt path to the guard gate. The guard has laughed at me every morning since my arrival because the first time he saw me I had just been given my car and was trying to drive a stubborn manual car while driving on the left side of the road....lets just say it wasn't pretty...I guess it was funny enough to leave a lasting impression.






My new job is about a 20min drive from where I live. It is at the hospital (The entrance is pictured to the right) and the organization I work with has two "offices" basically some desks in the rooms with chairs. There is no internet although in a way it is nice....they actually communicate in person and by phone rather than email. My tasks of the next year are going to be daunting as I will have to quickly be oriented with the community and try my hardest to pick up some of the local language. I can already understand a few words, but speaking is a whole new ball game.