ON BEING REFILWE

August 11, 2007. As of today I’ve been in my training village for two weeks - in South Africa for three. I feel like I am finally beginning to get over my initial culture shock. By this I suppose I mean I’m no longer overwhelmed by daily tasks like going to the bathroom, bathing, cooking, and drinking water. [for those of you who are interested…I go to the bathroom in a pit toilet in my host family’s yard.] (don’t get wild ideas – it’s just an outhouse.) I take bucket baths & I’m still working on perfecting my hair washing technique. I cook with my “Mma” almost every evening (more on cooking and food later). I boil water before I drink it to be careful but the water here tastes great [is very clean]. It’s beginning to set in that South Africa is my (temporary) home. That idea stills blows me away a little!

I am living in a small village outside of Zeerust in the Northwest Province near the Botswana border. I will be here for six more weeks of training and then I will move to my permanent site where I will live and serve for two years. The people who live here are Motswana. They speak Setswana – a language that is spoken in Northern South Africa, Botswana, and parts of Namibia. I am trying desperately to learn Setswana and so far, I’m doing pretty well (meaning I understand about 5% of the conversations around me). The people here are so friendly and kind! I never go anywhere without being greeted.

The village itself is really beautiful. It is in the mountains so the views of the hilly village are impressive. The soil here is red & sandy with lots of rocks. Everything is coated in a thin coat of red dust. Here are small, scrubby trees and little thorny bushes. The houses are concrete or brick, single story with tin roofs. Almost everyone in the village (including my host family) has electricity. The “rich” people (everything is relative) in the village (excluding my host family) have running water. We get our water from the community tap & store it in huge barrels in the kitchen & in the yard. Rural South Africa is pretty segregated and our village is no exception. I’m pretty sure Peace Corps trainees are the first white/Asian/not black African people to be here.

My host family is a HUGE part of why I am so happy here. I live with my host mom & my 14 year-old host brother. I call my host mom “Mma” (the Setswana word for mother). She is a super kind, funny little woman who speaks a little English and who I really love spending time with. My host brother is like most fourteen year-olds – he spends most of his time trying to be cool – but he’s also great fun to be around and he’s teaching me to dance! Like many rural South African families, the rest of my host family (my host dad, host sister, and four other brothers) live and work four hours away in Johannesburg (Jo’Burg to every South African) because there is very little work in the villages. My host family is loving and a lot of fun. They have been helping me learn Setswana & avoid embarrassing myself in the village. I feel so lucky to live with my “African family”. Sure, often we can’t really talk because of my pitiful Setswana an my Mma’s broken English but still I love living here with this wonderful family.

One of my favorite parts of every day is cooking dinner. I usually get gome from training around five and I’ll study for awhile & then cook dinner with Mma. Almost every meal involves pap – the staple food here. Pap is kind of hard to equate to anything in America – it is made of maize meal and it’s a little like very thick, stiff grits. Many trainees fail to recognize the culinary genius of this starchy, tasteless blob-food but I have a corner of my heart (and at least ¾ of my stomach) reserved for it. I cook on of the three vegetables cooked n Motswana homes: “pumpkin” (butternut squash), cabbage, or beetroot. I was never overly fond of any of these before I came here but considering they are my only options, I have decided to embrace them whole heartedly. South Africans LOVE meat and my vegetarianism has become a curiosity that is accepted in a “crazy American” sort of way. Often I’m introduced (in Setswana) with the qualifier “she only eats vegetables! NO MEAT!” All of you reading this should ready yourselves – I’ve promised Mma I would “cook African” for everyone when I get back to the US.

I’ve also learned to “clean African”. Tomorrow I will do laundry which is a three hour ordeal involving hauling bucket after bucket of water from the community tap, scrubbing every inch of each article of clothing while trying to avoid rubbing my knuckles raw, rinsing each article of clothes in a basin of clean water, hanging everything inside out (to protect it from the sun), and lastly ironing each item (including undies!) because: a. South Africans really care about wrinkly clothes and b. it kills a burrowing parasite that sometimes lays eggs on drying clothes (How’s that for motivation to iron?!) Tomorrow we’ll also sweep and shine the concrete floors with a homemade broom, a dry scrub brush and a rag. If I’m feeling really wild/vain, Ill even take a bucket bath and actually wash my hair! Keep in mind all of our water is heated on a fire or in an electric kettle (our “stove” is a pitifully slow hotplate) so even bathing becomes a chore. Don’t get me wrong- I’m not complaining – these choices are part of my new life and learning to do them has helped me to better understand what it means to live in rural South Africa.

Another new part of my new life is my new name. I have been given an African name – Refilwe – it translates (loosely) to “we have been given” – an appropriate name if you ask me. So this is my new life – where I give myself freely to an adventure, to the work ahead of me and to the people I meet.

P.S.: To all of you who have written me: THANK YOU! It has been great to get mail and to remember that although I am on the other side of the world, under the stars of the Southern Hemisphere, six hours ahead of most of you (nine hours ahead of some of you), and a long time from seeing you again, I am still a part of your life and you are part of mine.

it's time to go.

Matt took this picture of me at Great Sand Dunes but it seems appropriate for this post.

I'm leaving in the morning. First to Philly and then to South Africa. It still seems a bit surreal. I'm really excited and still minorly overwhelmed because I have yet to finish packing but overall I'm not even sure how to feel exactly.

I know this is huge. Rationally, I know that it is silly to even speculate on how my life will be different because I am completely lacking in the framework to understand the change that is about to happen in my life. Maybe my quest for more rationality in my life has led me to the point where I feel calm and ready and not much beyond that.

I am really going to miss people. The focused time I've had with my friends and my family lately has just magnified my awareness of what I am leaving behind. At the same time I feel like this choice is really right for me. I can't wait to meet people tomorrow, I can't wait to be in South Africa, I can't wait to stumble through language training... this anticipation is what is reminding me that it is totally worth leaving behind people I love for twenty seven months.

I bristle at all of the implications of most romantic movies but I feel like I've been socialized to swoon at the idea of someone leaving behind the life that they love for someone they love... the old "he moved across the country to be with me" fantasy. This is my version. I'm leaving behind the life that I love for myself because I love myself.

It's time to put not being afraid to live into action. It's time to share what I worked so hard to learn. It's time to go out into the world and live.

I am so ready.

p.s. I won't have Internet access for a long time... hopefully I will be sending posts home for my dad to post for me but please be patient. If you're wishing you were reading about my life send me a letter and maybe my response will beat my next post!

One Week!

In seven days I'll be on a plane, headed for Philadelphia for two days and then I will be off to South Africa! I cannot even imagine the ways my life is about to change... but I feel as ready as I can be.

Yesterday I was driving around our suburb, through the urban sprawl that even in it's homogeneous anonymity has a familiarity to it, and it was evening and even Target looked a little beautiful in golden light. I was struck by the idea of dusk, when everything is lovely. These last few weeks have been like a dusk on my time in the US. The beauty and fun and wildness of the times I have spent with family and friends has been illuminated by my waning time here. Okay, so this is a little more romantic than I usually venture to be but really, there has been something really special about the last few weeks.

I took the train to Denver to attend the wedding of my friends Matt and Amanda. It was a really fun wedding and a celebration of two really amazing people having a go at married life. I saw friends who I don't see enough which was a good reminder that distance and time do not always cancel friendships. Matt and Amanda are friends from high school and it was fun to look around and realize how a wild group of oddball teenage punks turned into a wild group of oddball adults.

After Denver Matt, Matto and I drove across the middle of the country back to Cincinnati. Before the long haul home we camped in Colorado above Golden and down at the Great Sand Dunes National Park. Both places were beautiful (although notably different). Golden Gate State Park is full of vistas and views of far off fourteeners. We camped in a grove of aspens that seemed to glow in the twilight (I couldn't resist bringing it back to that) and stretched conversation past the limits of the absurd. Great Sand Dunes is exactly what it sounds like. The Dunes are appropriately identified as "great", they are huge and surreal in a basin between two mountain ranges. Matt, Matto and I stretched our bodies past the limits and climbed the dunes in an effort that surpassed absurd. It was sandy and wonderful. The drive back was marked by a visit to an abandoned state park (which was bordered by a non-existent town), being harassed by some very shady police in Kansas (because we were going to OHIO which made us suspected drug runners), a visit to Columbia MO (good times with Matt's friend Steve and a little too much whiskey), and listening to the Clash for hours. I live for these times with my friends, especially good friends like Matt and Matto, especially time on the road.

When I got back to Cincinnati I arrived home to find my maniac aunts cleaning my parents' house. My parents were headed for the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to attend my older brother Michael's wedding. My plan was to sleep for a few hours and follow them up. My aunts had come down to be with my mom during her last minute back surgery (there is never a dull moment in the life of a Gannon) and, inspired by the unending need of the women in my family to do SOMETHING to help, they had decided to stay and clean the house so it would be nice when my parents came home from the wedding. Although I had expected to come home to an empty house and a few hours of privacy, it was nice to come home to a very real example of how my family sticks together.

(I know this entry is getting long but it's been awhile since I posted anything and I have a lot to document!)

My brother's wedding was really amazing. It was held at the Hiram College field station in Wetmore, Michigan. It was wonderfully isolated and the whole weekend was full of quiet peaceful moments and raucous times with family and friends. The ceremony itself was really nice, designed by Michael and Julie (my new sister in law... weird) to honor who they are and how they see the world. The reception was punctuated by SIXTEEN total toasts which was a little out of control but fun none the less. My mom, with her back brace and her incredible smile, hardly appeared to be in any pain which is notable for a woman who had been hospitalized for pain for three days and then had back surgery less than 48 hours before the wedding! Although the decision on the "wedding ass" (a distinction given at every Gannon wedding) is still out my vote is for my sister's boyfriend who, at 7:45, was so drunk he tried to walk twelve miles back to the hotel on dirt roads despite the fact that we had shuttle vans available.

On the way home from the UP I picked up my friend Kevin in Cadillac, Michigan and we playfully argued all the way back to Cincinnati. It was a nice trip down and it reaffirmed (again) my guilty love for road trips. When we got back to Cincinnati we met up with Matt and Matto for more good times (always good times).

Roza and Jesse, my friends from Akron, came in for the fourth of July which was not only fun but it gave me renewed faith in my ability to have lasting friendships with my friends from college. On the night of the third we went to a basement show and spent hours "shortcutting" through Burnett Woods. We saw Heart play on the fourth for free they were amazing and kind of crappy and the crowd was old and not very rocking but in the end it was great fun and a hilarious foil to the metal show we went to directly afterwards. It was so good to see the two of them and share some of the craziness of Cincinnati with them.

THEN my dad and I went to Graceland. Yes, Graceland. It was like the ultimate American Pilgrimage. For me it was more about Paul Simon and less about Elvis. We saw crappy country in Nashville, we took pictures at Elvis' grave, we met the "first lady of Beale Street" in Memphis, we stayed in a town called Paris in the middle of nowhere that had a tiny Eiffel Tower, and we had some really good father/daughter time. I would recommend everyone take a road trip to Graceland with their father.

Now I'm back home trying to get my act together and start packing. It's a little bit less exciting than what I have been doing for the last few weeks but I suppose it's important. To take the metaphor too far... the sun is setting. I won't really take it to the "dawn of the new day" next logical step but you can...

My reality is really awesome.

one month!

Today (actually, tonight... actually, this morning at 1:15am) I returned home to Cincinnati a whole lot closer to being Erin Gannon, MA.
In the last three days I "finished up" all of the little things I have inexplicably been putting off for the last four months. I had to drive across the state to finish which I had been convincing myself I didn't have to do, but in the end it's out of my hands so I suppose it was worth it.
I spent hours at a print shop pretending to not freak out as we worked through problems printing my final copy of my thesis. I talked to multiple university employees in multiple offices while I smelled strongly of my own sweat and thinly veiled panic. I found secret joy in turning the final copy in while wearing my favorite Pogues shirt with a great Fugazi song running through my head. I had a few smiling-like-an-idiot-in-my-car-alone moments. Tonight, to finish off the victory lap of Ohio, I gave my dad a copy as a father's day gift.
In a few months you will be able to check my thesis out of the Kent State library. I bet it'll be FLYING off the shelf so you may want to reserve your copy early.

I leave in a month. I've already started awkwardly saying goodbye to people, although some of those goodbyes proved to be premature because of the aforementioned unexpected return trip to Northern Ohio. I'm incredibly bad at saying goodbye. I just keep saying "see you later" or my new fallback, "see you when I'm almost thirty" which is the adult version of the old "see you next year" said by soon-to-be clever third graders as they leave for their two week winter holiday break.
I will always remember pulling out of the Everett driveway with my motley friends singing to me and waving like fools. It was beautifully strange and wonderful. I suppose I'm lucky to have friends who are more adept at saying goodbye than I am.

buy, buy, buy, sell, sell, sell, trash, trash, trash

I know, you (the imaginary "others" who are reading this) are dying to know what is new in my little world. Mostly I've become someone I hardly recognize, some consumerist wild woman buying and selling and (worst of all) throwing things away. I have been spending most of my waning time here in Akron thinking about what I need, what I don't need, what I really want, and wondering what made me such a hoarder of junk. In the past few years I've tried to be really conscious of what I consume but recently it has set in that I was not conscious enough! I am still really overwhelmed by all the stuff I own and hopefully will not own soon.

On the positive side, I made $55 selling a bunch of my stuff last weekend at a garage sale. Plus, I've been able to give a lot of my stuff to friends who "need" it. And, if I am going to be honest I also need to admit I have acquired some pretty sweet stuff recently. I bought a new backpack, a sleeping bag, TWO new pairs of shorts, TWO new shirts, TWO new pairs of pants, and TEN new pairs of underpants! This is like a major shopping spree for me. In my own defense, for those of you who haven't seen me in awhile, I've lost some weight and none of my summer clothes fit me anymore.

I'm not sure if I should put the buying in the "on the positive side" paragraph because I feel pretty uncomfortable about spending that much money but I'm trying to be excited about all my new stuff.

My invitation is officially accepted, my passport is applied for, my visa is applied for, I've applied for graduation, I'm approaching the state I would identify as "packed and ready to move to Cincinnati", I have a dress for the weddings I'm attending this summer ($6 at a thrift store... SCORE), I have a bus ticket/train ticket TO Denver (who knows how I'm getting home), I'm really pumped for my road trip to Graceland with my dad, and I'm ready for some weird and aggressive times before I leave.

it's not even official

I admit it is not official that I am going to South Africa because I have yet to actually see my invitation and thus I have not accepted the invitation but I am so excited I'm starting a blog. I'm already ahead of myself, forgetting not everyone spends their days obsessing over my impending Peace Corps assignment... so I'll begin by explaining what an invitation is and why I have yet to accept it.

Applying to Peace Corps is a lengthy process. Applying to Peace Corps while simultaneously finishing a thesis, working in cities all over the country, traveling and trying to maintain my reputation as a minor maniac has resulted in a lengthier process. I initially submitted my application for Peace Corps a year and a half ago. After that I went through medical tests, very expensive dental work, eye exams, waiting rooms at the VA hospital (where I received my blood tests for free... thanks US government!), three very lengthy phone interviews, and lots of waiting. The waiting is for the invitation which tells you in what program and what country you are being invited to serve. The invitation is a packet of information which informs you (loosely) what your life will be like for the next two years.

My invitation... the holy grail of the Peace Corps nominee's life... is in the hands of my parents. It ended up in Cincinnati as a result of an unknown sequence of events which have had me shooting the very innocent mail carrier in my Akron neighborhood dirty looks all week. It is so very close to being in my possession. Although I gave them permission, my parents have declined to open it and peek before I see them (and more importantly IT) on Friday but they did see through the window of the envelope a confirmation of my suspicion that I am headed to South Africa!

Now I have to get rid of pretty much everything I own, move home to Cincinnati, complete the next load of paperwork Peace Corps sends my way, attend two amazing weddings, go on a road trip to Graceland, finally submit my thesis to Kent and try and learn as much about South Africa as I can. So far I'm pretty overwhelmed, but I'm using my ability to convince myself things are not as big a deal as they are to cope.

I want to keep a blog so I can keep my friends and family posted on my adventures, my great love of hand written letters, my general whereabouts, and my clever wit (humor me). I think this is a pretty cool way for me to share my life with the people I love. I hope you enjoy reading about my increasingly crazy life.