Journal Entry 6: Omar's Post 1

Here’s an update from Omar, our consummate New Yorker. Omar is loved for his quick wit, and fashion sense - per the female volunteers; he was awarded the honor of “Best Dressed Male PCV, 2005”. (Don’t worry, Jonathan – I hear you're a shoe-in for 2006.) In fact, he’s so retro-fabulous he could just as easily be meandering down a dirt road in Africa as he could be perusing a boutique shop in The Village. International man of mystery, indeed! Lucky for myself, and SA-14, he’s doing the former. Here’s a lightly edited e-mail from Omar to his peeps:

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Hey everyone;

I'm at the internet cafe right now, with some time and a small bit of money, so I can actually write a mass email. Thanks to all of you who have been e-mailing me; it's great to hear from you. Keep it up!

I'm still living in Moletji at the moment; I have one more week left of training. Next Thursday we are all leaving Moletji and going to Pretoria for our swearing-in ceremony, and then we all depart for our individual sites.

Just to give you a geographical perspective, Moletji is about 30km northwest of Polokwane. Someone asked me if Polokwane is anywhere near Cape Town... well, let me say, Polokwane is about as far away from Cape Town as you can get and still be in South Africa. I'm much closer to Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Botswana than I am to the South Africa most people are familiar with. I'm nowhere near the beaches of Durban or the whales and sharks of Cape Town. I'm about 3 1/2 hours north of the ghettoes of Johannesburg, though.

I am pretty close to Kruger National Park; it's one of the most famous safari parks in the world. And once I get to my final site, I will be even closer to the park. [Note: Omar is about 2 hours east of me – Eric – towards Kruger Park and Mozambique; that’s relatively close in South African terms.] I've already had a chance to go there once, and I saw giraffes, water buffalo, impalas, ostriches, crocodiles, hippos, zebras, and a lot of elephants. Very cool stuff.

Training is almost done; it has been interesting. Let me just say that it has prepared me for the frustrations and patience that life in the Peace Corps will require for the next two years. Constantly changing schedules, conflicting information or complete lack thereof, lots of waiting around, and not as much real meaty information as we need. To give an example: we are all learning different languages based on where we will be placed at our final site. Some people are learning SePedi, some are learning SeTswana, IsiZulu, SiSwati, TshiVenda, or XiTsonga. For the first two weeks of training I had been learning TshiVenda [Omar was in my class], and then I arrived at my site, where I realized that they don't actually speak TshiVenda. So I've had to switch into the XiTsonga group and catch up with everyone else. I think I've been doing pretty well with Tsonga though; our final language exams begin tomorrow so I'll know for sure how I'm doing then.

Current Peace Corps Volunteers have been at training with us periodically, and some of them have privately told me how disorganized this training is compared to theirs, in the past. I guess it's because we have a new Country Director, a new Training Manager, new Logistics staff, new Language Coordinators, in addition to this being the largest group to ever arrive in South Africa (all previous groups had been between 30-40 people; ours is over twice that amount).

I will be very sad to see training end, though, and that is because of the people I've been around. One thing I didn't get to talk about much last time was my fellow Peace Corps Trainees. When we got here, there were 88 of us total. Now there are 86 of us [down to 85, now]. About 50 in the Education Group, and the rest in the NGO Group. One of the highlights of my experience so far has definitely been the people I've had the good fortune to be around. I don't think I've been this at home in a group of people since I was at Columbia U; I've definitely made friends that will last a lifetime. There is a lot of diversity in the group, people from all over the country, with all sorts of backgrounds. But there's definitely a common independent, adventurous, easygoing trait that runs through us all... I guess it goes hand in hand with joining the Peace Corps. Part of me is very sad that I won't get to see all of these people every day for the next two years. And this includes not only my fellow trainees, but my host family here and the awesome language trainers we have.

I've started fasting for Ramadan. Yesterday was my first day, and it was pretty tough. Recently, the weather here has been really hot, dry, and sunny, around 30-33 degrees celcius every day. Today is cold, windy, and cloudy though (a welcome change). Thankfully, while I'm fasting I'm getting picked up in Peace Corps transport for training every day; I don't have to ride my bike for miles and miles over bumpy dirt roads in the heat like I have been doing. I'm not fasting alone, though; there are a few other Muslims in the group. In fact, out of the 86 of us here, the most popular last name is "Ahmed"...there are 3 of us. And just to give another idea of how awesome my fellow trainees are, my friend Nichole decided that she would start fasting with me. When I asked her why, she said "We can be each other's support system."

As time has gone by, I've gotten a much clearer idea of what I will be doing here in South Africa. Schools in the rural areas are in bad shape; not enough teachers, not enough materials, not enough anything. Classes are overcrowded, and schools are falling apart. During the Apartheid years, these schools were basically left to rot. Under Bantu Education, education was very limited for the black population; critical thinking was suppressed and memorization was enforced. Blacks were only educated enough so that they could do whatever jobs they were allowed to have: teacher, nurse, etc. And now many who had been educated under that system are teachers at those same schools, teaching in the only way they know how to teach. The government has enacted reform, but there is a lot of work to do. I have spent some time in the rural primary schools during training, and got to see what they are like. I also spent a day at a "Former Model C School" ...basically a former Afrikaaner school. The differences are shocking. It's literally the difference between First World and Third World, just a few kilometers apart. I find that to be the situation with many things here in South Africa ...the proximities of 1st and 3rd worlds, the frustration of those who are so close to the 1st world but not a part of it. No wonder there's so much crime.

I've also had my eyes opened on the real HIV/AIDS situation here. I must say, South Africa is basically the forefront of the world HIV/AIDS battle. It has one of the highest percentages of population infected in any country in the world (I think maybe only Botswana and Swaziland might be higher), and it also has the highest number of HIV positive people out of any country in the world. Just to give some perspective, the country with the second highest number of HIV cases is India, and India has a population of over 1 billion people, whereas South Africa has a population of only 45 million. I think that the percentage country-wide is about 20%, but among the female population of sexually active age, the infection rate is 1 out of 3. That's staggering. And the disease is really stigmatized here. The national government is trying to institute a program of treatment, but it's still having problems. Anti-RetroVirals (ARV's) are in short supply. I think that the timeframe from initial infection to death, here, is between 3 to 5 years, or so I've heard. Compare that to 15 or 20 years people are living in America. A group of us just gave an HIV/AIDS workshop to a small group of local teachers yesterday, so it's pretty heavy in my mind right now.

So the Peace Corps slogan is "The toughest job you'll ever love." I have a tough two years ahead of me, I know it. But, I have to say, I LOVE it here. Coming to South Africa was definitely a great decision.

I'll write again soon. In the meantime, keep sending those emails. I want to hear about life back home. I'd like to post pictures, and hopefully I will soon. In the meantime, one of my friends has posted some pictures on his blog [that’s me!], so I'll link some of those. They're pretty old, though...I think they're from late August.

Take Care,
Omar