CHINA! oh, and election day

I found out this morning I've been accepted to transfer/extend to China for a year... this means I'll serve another year in Peace Corps but I'm moving to China to do it. I'm excited. I'm overwhelmed. I have a lot to think about. I'm really looking forward to the new challenge.

It has been interesting to hear South African's views on China and Chinese people today, as I told people what was happening. My students all insisted on saying "ching chong ching chong" imitating spoken Mandarin... which gave me an opportunity to gently challenge them by impersonating what Setswana sounded like to me before I understood it (and they enjoyed impersonating the American English on t.v. that they cannot understand). One of my principals gave me a twenty minute lecture on how the Chinese people are harder workers than anyone else in the world (this was all based on the fact that many things in his home were made in China). Many people just commented on how far away I was going, which I thought was a little charming because they don't seem to realize that I'm already pretty far from home. All in all, I was really pleased with how excited people in my village are for me, how supportive they are of my going and how sweet they have been about me leaving early. It won't be easy to leave the people I care about here.

In other news, the South African elections were held yesterday. My host sister Barbara was the presiding officer at the polling station and my friend Nono was also a volunteer worker at the station so I went to visit them. Across South Africa there were long lines and some reports of voting not going smoothly but the polling station in my village (a classroom in our school) was running like a well-oiled machine. This is a result of two major factors: 1) Barbara is not someone you choose not to listen to and 2) there were about twenty five people working the poll and about three voters. It was touching to see how excited the people in my village were about voting and about democracy, and it was a good reminder of how hard South Africans fought for the right to pick their own president.

Thutlwane

Today, on the way to school, I was thinking for millionth time about how beautiful my village is and how lucky I am to be living this life. I looked down at the sandy path and realized that amongst the bare footprints, the bootprints, and the ubiqutious generic converse prints were my shoeprints from yesterday. I don't know why this struck me but it did, it led me to think about my place in this place.

Thutlwane Village is beautiful. It sits on the edge of an expanse of flat bush that seems to go on forever. The sunrises and sunsets are lovely every single day, without fail. There is a sleepy windmill at the center of the village, a gathering place for kids to hang out (sometimes they literally hang from the windmill) and adults to collect water. There are sleepy cows and ornery donkeys in every open space. Dogs run free, and unlike the dogs in Megan's village they are friendly or shy or both. Old women work to keep their yards neat and old men heard the livestock and drive on ancient tractors. It's a farming community, but the fields are shrinking and the younger generation are striking out to find a different fortune or quietly sitting with their sickness behind closed doors. There are kids everywhere: laughing, fighting, playing soccer with homemade balls, and doing all those things kids everywhere do to amuse themselves and grow their little brains.

In the midst of all of this there is a white woman. I walk around with a level of comfort no white person has probably ever had in this place. I greet people and I'm greeted back. I get scolded for not using my umbrella to protect me from the sun. I get stared at for reading in my yard. I send the whole shop full of people into giggles when I scoff at the advances of drunk men. I live here. I am not of the community, and I am not exactly in the community, but I am somehow a part of this community.

This weekend our little village will have four funerals. Three of the dead are young people. Earlier this week Kgosi mused, "who will bury the old ones?" The friends and family of the dead, the city people who have never been here or more likely have not been here in a long time, will return to pay their respects and help these four people pass on. They will gawk at me. Saturday night, as they move into the "after tears" parties, they may even harass. They will not understand the fragile but very real position I hold as a somehow part of this community. But I will pass their confusion and even their possible harassment off as a misunderstanding because I know that somehow this is my place for right now and I'm incredibly grateful for that place, even if it is hard for people to understand.