A Meeting with ‘The King’

Our PST (Pre-Service Training) was unusual because there was a teacher’s strike that messed up the original schedule. We were supposed to do some work in local schools, but were unable to. Two results: we did not have our site visit wherein everybody takes a week in the middle of training to visit the site where they will spend the next two years and then comes back to training. Site visit is useful because it enables you to know what your area is like, what you might want to purchase in Johannesburg and it also affords you the opportunity to share with other trainees and staff alike concerns, questions and insights gathered. The strike ended and we swore in on the intended day, but it also freed up time in our schedule. In an attempt to fill this time, a couple events were planned. One was a trip to a small game reserve where we enjoyed a Braai (a South African BBQ) and a swimming pool as well as the opportunity to see some animals- giraffes, zebras, and antelope (none of the big five). Another outing was to meet the traditional leader of the Ndebele community in which we were staying throughout PST. He is known as the Indula, but was referred to as ‘the king’ on more than one occasion. This guy is not a ‘king’ in the Henry VIII fashion, he lives in a modern house and dresses like everyone else has no political power receives no foreign dignitaries yada yada. The meeting seems to have been arranged at the very last minute. We received a text the evening before that said that dress for the following day would need to be more formal. The men all wore button down dress shirts and formal slacks as we do for formal occasions. Women wore their dresses. The preponderance of us men wore a tie. Some of us did not wear a sports coat. Many trainees informed their host family whom they would be meeting and got confirmation that they were indeed dressed appropriately for the occasion. We all met at the college and were quickly whisked away to see ‘the king’. As we exited the bus, the training manager gathered us into a group outside of the king’s complex and proceeded to give us a full dressing down about our attire. He informed us that everyone should have had sports coats and that it was the king who would decide when he saw us based on our attire how much money he would deem appropriate to extract from Peace Corps for this ‘rare’ opportunity. Oddly enough, although the training manager and staff seemed to all have forgotten their ties, they did have jackets of sorts, e.g. a leather jacket, or a Jordan Marsh spring jacket- nothing any of us would have really met anyone important in. The training technical coordinator- as always- was dressed in jeans and the language teachers were dressed as they are always dressed- casually! Some of us couldn’t help but feel a little insulted by this. At any rate, we met ‘the kings’ envoy who showed up looking very comfortable in sandals, an old baseball cap. In any case, after all this when it came time to meet ‘the king’, he was AWOL! Apparently, the king did not show up for our meeting. So I’m still waiting to meet ‘the king’. It may not be this king and maybe it will be Elvis if he has not just left the building!


Fertility ritual
On a positive note, we were afforded the opportunity to attend a rite of passage ceremony for young women in our village. I wish I could be more specific about exactly what was going on, but I didn’t get all the details. There were a number of women at the age of young adulthood. A cow was slaughtered in the early morning which we witnessed. The knife slid in from behind the head and into the brain and then the neck was cut. I would have assumed that as most of the blood drained from the animal and it became still that it was mostly dead or in a largely unconscious state. The nervous system seems to exert some control beyond this point. It sure seemed to come alive when they gelded/castrated it and prominently propped the fruits of the labor on a nearby tree branch. The slaughter was the men's job. The parts were brought to the woman who put them in the cauldrons to prepare for the feast. Unfortunately, we had to leave and miss a good part of the middle of this ceremony- which is likely why I did not fully come to understand some of the essentials of the ceremony- in order to attend and important Peace Corps session on ‘American diversity’. We returned late afternoon when all the men and women were seated separately. There was dancing and feasting. The woman received gifts. We felt welcome at this event and everyone was extraordinarily gracious and hospitable. We were fortunate to have been invited.
One other interesting feature of our homestay is that we live two houses down from the ‘traditional healer’. As I mentioned we reside in neither a rondaval nor a mud hut. The city is rather modern. This does not mean that older traditions do not continue to exert a strong influence on life here. For some time, we were trying to figure out to what we should attribute all the drumming and hollering that was clockwork at 4am on random days of the week. Turns out it wasn’t an errant group of teens, but the ‘traditional healer’! I finally asked our host ‘uncle’ what was up and he took us down the street early one evening when the drumming began. Apparently, the healer works (heals?) whenever there is need. During the day there are about eight drums displayed proudly outside of this shack evidently expertly constructed with goatskin tightly secured across the drum frames. These drums pack a hell-of-a punch as the sleeping spirits need to hear them clearly. In fact, I have come to realize that I am closer to the spirit world than I had previously imagined. Just as it commands my attention at 4am, it seems that this is the best time to get the spirits attention as well so we have this in common. It does happen during the day too and I have witnessed some of the summoning then. The woman-it’s mostly this one woman- dances and gyrates and occasionally runs to the fence and rolls around for a spell. This healing is not without cost however, and evidently business is booming. Apparently, a different traditional healer informed another volunteer that for a significant amount of Rand (the currency here) he could be made to be black and for yet even additional Rand- the power of flight would be his! The volunteer has opted to hold onto his Rand, but if I reach an impasse with something, I’m not ruling anything out.

Pre-Service Training Mid-August
Well, we’re here! In fact, we’ve been here for about five weeks now and it is truly invigorating to be on the African continent poised to play our part in what is affectionately referred to as the rainbow nation. We met our training group in Philadelphia for staging this time and we are twice as large as the Madagascar group. The dynamic is somewhat different and we have the unusual distinction of being a group in which males predominate! The norm is quite the opposite. Moreover, we have some older volunteers in our group. By comparison I shared this distinction with one other volunteer in Madagascar by whom I was just barely edged out. Three volunteers in their mid to late 60’s! I like the age spread and I feel that it contributes something in addition to 30+ years of teaching experience in some of the cases. This time around we are doing a homestay with a host family, but we were not taken from the plane to their doorstep as in Madagascar. Instead we barracked together for a week and a half at an erstwhile and now defunct teachers college by the name of Ndeblele where the Peace Corps has heretofore taken up residency as a base for training. The homestays are in various satellite villages surrounding the college. The flight was lengthy as before. We left Philly at 2am bound for New York’s JFK. In addition, we had the three hour time change from California on our backs, so we were quite ready for a good night’s rest when we arrived at the college. I must confess that the Zulu lesson they threw at us before permitting this much needed rest was a tad draconian and seemed of limited use between the time we slept and the following day! Zulu is only one of the languages in which our group is receiving instruction. There are five total and ones language group is based upon our eventual site placement. On this note, I am elated that our language is in fact Zulu. It is probably the most widely spoken indigenous language here and is of particular interest to my on the basis that it is a Bantu language and one that is widely studied by linguists. It functions quite differently than the western languages many of us are accustomed to and without getting to technical here, I’ll just say that the nouns hold pride of place in the language. As an English language teaching professional, I could point to some shortcomings in the instruction as it stands, but we have just completed our mid-term orals and we both achieved the ranking of intermediate-low which is the ranking we are expected to have achieved by the end of pre-service training so I guess we are on the right track. Our host family is nice enough consisting of a woman named Mavis, her brother and her daughter. She requested a couple because she works a lot- owns a tavern in fact, for which there is no shortage of clientele here. This is good because we have been afforded a greater deal of personal autonomy than other volunteers. We are able to cook and take care of ourselves as would befit a married couple our age. At the opposite end of this continuum can exist true nightmare scenarios of extreme ‘parenting’ which predictably-if you know us- would not be as suitable. Compared to our last homestay, which was more austere and an experience we value highly, this homestay is virtually Posh Corps. We have running water- not hot- but running water, a stove, microwave, fridge bathtub and our own nice room. There is even a washing machine- not exactly like what we use in the states, but quite adequate for cleaning clothes save the better part of a day’s investment in the operation. I suspect that our permanent site will be more Spartan and rural, but for now this affords us a modicum of comfort as we persevere through PST.