Mother Boy

I am sitting in my freshly cleaned room, all packed and ready to be picked up to be taken to the college where we will be swearing in tomorrow. I arrived with a couple cases and intense emotions. I’m leaving with approximately eight bags and bitter-sweet emotions. I will be leaving the host family I’ve been living with for the last ten weeks. The family that has so selflessly taken care of me and made my experience during Pre Service Training (PST) so much better. From peanut butter and polony sandwiches to the progress Gogo and I have made in our ability to communicate, I will forever be indebted to this family.

PST has been a continuation of the Emotional Rollercoaster. I was able to visit my permanent site for ten days, and it is a very cool and beautiful community in southern Limpopo province. Also during PST, I’ve taken two language proficiency tests and performed well at both. I’ve strengthened the relationships with fellow trainees, and will greatly miss our weekend get-togethers, which are always an adventure in and of themselves. I also ate a dried caterpillar or “Mopane Worm” complete with head, spines and legs. It was as awful as it sounds. I’ve heard they’re better when fried or cooked in a sauce, so I’m open to the Mopane Worm redeeming itself.

Since returning to PST, I have been anxious to get back to my permanent site where I will be working with a Home Based Care/Orphan and Vulnerable Children Drop-in Center. I still don’t know exactly what it is that I will be doing. The next three months are supposed to be spent assessing my community and org. for possible projects. One of the things I’m most excited about is the Sporting Grounds near my house. They have a tennis court and volleyball court: my two favorite sports. And it’s a really natural place to interact with the community and develop relationships. My permanent host family consists of a single woman, her elderly brother and her two-year-old grand niece “Lerato” who is adorable and ridiculous. One day, during the 10-day visit, I was outside my room reading when Lerato began marching around the yard chanting something in Zulu. She was very serious and evoked as much authority as any two-year-old, with hair in pompoms, possibly can. I asked my host mom to interpret and she told me that she was chanting “In the name of Jesus! In the name of Jesus! In the name of Jesus!” Ridiculous. During the site visit I ate meals with my host family. I had the pleasure of feasting on chicken gizzards which were chewy-I pretended they were clams. I also ate cow heels which can be described as a mildy beef flavored hunks of gelatin attached to a cross-section of the cow’s severed hoof. Remember when I was vegan?

We had a farewell function to thank all of our host families. The day before, we slaughtered a cow and two sheep. Put yourself in my position: an obnoxiously liberal vegan who started eating meat 1.5 months before coming to South Africa. I watched as the cow was murdered, skinned and butchered. I watched as fellow trainees slit the throats of the sheep with zeal. A few of the other trainees participated, but I was content to watch.

“Thabiso!” I heard while watching the sheep spurt blood to the beat of their still pumping hearts. “Come look at the bible.” The cow’s stomach had been cut open and the contents hand-raked out onto the grass. “The Bible” referred to the chambers in the cow’s stomach. They call it the bible because you turn the chambers like pages in the bible to scrape out digested grass. “Oh…cool.” I replied while slowing backing away for fear that I would be invited to participate in the bible scraping.

The farewell function went great. A lot of trainees were decked out in traditional Sepedi, Tsonga and Venda dresses. My family surprised me with a shirt, which looked like a South African flag to match Gogo’s South African themed dress. She sewed it herself and it was amazing. Someone later compared it to Lucile and Buster dressing up for Motherboy on Arrested Development, which described it perfectly. I am so happy to be the Buster to Gogo’s Lucile.