And the Winner is...FSP Rustenburg

FSP-Family Strengthening Programme- is a component of SOS Children's Villages that attempts to assist families taking care of orphans and/or vulnerable children with training, food parcels, referrals to social services, fuel, prepaid electricity, etc, rather than taking children out of their biological families. A couple of months ago, I was asked by the FSP team (Hophney, Mpho, and Emmanuel) to help them come up with a poster presentation of their activities. The poster would be taken to an all-FSP meeting in Pietermaritzburg and entered into a competition. Immediately, I started dreaming up what the poster would look like. I had Hophney take me around to just about every office supply store in Rustenburg looking for poster presentation board (you know the ones students use for their science fair projects...the three sided cardboard thingy?) with no avail. I guess those things haven't hit South African shores just yet. Well anyway, the team worked very hard on coming up with and arranging their ideas in just the right way...resulting in me staying at work until 7:30 pm on a Friday! I told Hophney and Emmanuel that if the prize for first place was an all-expense paid trip to Mauritius, it was mine! Hard work paid off, because I received a phone call a week later saying that it was unanimously decided that FSP-Rustenburg was by far the best poster presentation of them all...no luck on that trip to Mauritius...a box of chocolates was as good as it gets! Congratulations FSP-Rustenburg!

Poor chicken!

The reality of life is that, in this vast animal kingdom of ours, there is something called a food chain. Another reality of life is that those nice cuts of chicken, beef, fish, etc. that lay and wait at the grocery store, in their pretty packaging, used to be, before all of the processing and what-nots, real animals. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a BIG meat eater. In fact, I believe that a meal is not a meal without meat, so this is not going to be a story about to eat meat or not to eat meat, but rather about dignity.

My experience serving in Peace Corps-South Africa, has brought me closer to reality, with respect to where my meat comes from than ever before. In South Africa, mala magodu (cow stomach and intestines) is served at funerals, weddings, and any other traditional function you can think of. Plus, my local grocery store always has a surplus stockpile of it, just in case you have that craving. At my local grocery store, you can also find pig feet, pig knuckles, and "Walk-y Talk-y"...can you guess what that is...packaged chicken heads and feet. Grilled chicken feet in particular are a favorite snack that can be readily found on a nice, hot braai stand (grill) at the Rustenburg taxi rank or any other street corner. On just about every other corner, you can find someone with a cage full of live chickens for sale. Personally, I don't want to know the intimate details of what I'm eating: it's mug shot, shoe size, last meal, etc., but hey, that's the reality of eating meat, right? I just prefer the packaged meat...a generic leg, thigh, breast, rump, etc...no face, no name, just...meat.

Well, today, on the way to Tapologo (a really cool and innovative hospice for terminal HIV positive individuals) to drop the SOS mothers off for their practicals, we dropped another mother off at a hatchery about 15 minutes away so that she could get some eggs. On the way back from Tapologo, we stopped to pick the mother up at the hatchery. Instead of the three passengers I was expecting to ride with, there was a surprise 4th passenger, a live chicken looking mighty resigned to the path his life was inevitably headed towards. I immediately became tense and was ready to get back to the Village so that I would not have to serve as the Grim Reaper's usher for longer than I had to! To add insult to injury, to mock the dignity of the soon-to-be dead, this poor, poor chicken, with his wings stretched back farther than I think they're supposed to go, the last thing he was ever going to listen to in his short chicken life was "This is how we do it" by Montell Jordan...Poor Chicken!

Winding down, saying goodbye!

Sorry for taking so long to post on my blog. As you could probably tell from the last post, I've been busy contemplating the next stage of my life. After much consideration, I have decided to and have received approval to end my service (COS) on July 18th. Yes, July 18th! That's next month! Oh, so you want to know why? I guess the simple answer is that I'm just ready to go home. Keep in mind, however, that there are no simple answers, or at least not this one. I've certainly had my fair share of fun in Peace Corps- from my first few months of service living in Bhoek (as it is affectionately called)with my host family and their pit latrine, working at LifeLine, trips to Sun City and else where, the Rusty Dusty, meeting people and doing things that I will never forget, experiencing many "firsts", falling down and picking myself up again, making life long friends amongst my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers and local community members, working at and loving SOS Children's Village Rustenburg, and many, many other things that I cannot possibly fit into this blog. Having said all of that, I have had a "full" experience, nothing that I could have imagined as a 3rd grader looking at Peace Corps brochures. Now that time is winding down, you may be (secretly) wondering if my experience has lived up to the title of this blog...Yes! My Peace Corps Dreams have been realized. I was able to hold on to a dream of serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer for nearly 16 years. I studied, volunteered, worked, etc. along the way, preparing myself for turning my dream into a reality. Now, I am nearly at the end of that dream, or rather, just the beginning. Peace Corps Service might be nearing the end for me, but the lessons I've learned and adventures that I've had have forever shaped my perspective on life: change is not always immediate; people (cultures, societies, outlooks on life, experiences, etc.) are different, but for as much as we are different, we are all of the same...we all want the same thing: to be accepted, to be loved and to love, and to be successful (the definition changes with the individual).

I know that my reflections seem to be incomplete, but I'll continue to work on this rough draft for your sake and mine!

So what does my schedule look like until the 18th?

Pending the travel restrictions to Lesotho are lifted, I'll head there for a couple of days- pony trekking in the cold!

The day before my Close of Service Conference, me and my fellow Setswana-2-Setswana (plus 1) members will get together for our final meeting- almost the entire crew will be ending service early.

The COS Conference- where volunteers get together to talk about...what else...ending service and tying up loose ends.

My last day at work will be the 14th of July, and I'll head to Pretoria the next day in preparation for leaving the country.

Yes, there will be plenty of "goodbye" parties in between. I'm still trying to figure out how you say goodbye to a place that has become home...to people who have become family...plus packing up 2 years worth of memories into 2 bags (weighing under 60 lbs of course). I'm working on it, but the process is challenging...

In my next post, I'll be sure to post plenty of pictures...

Working on it...