Two Years in South Africa

Last Entry From SA

2006-11-16T23:51:00.000-08:00

Well this is it. Today at 8:00PM I leave for the airport and I fly out just before midnight (see previously posted flight schedule). It will take me about thirty travelling hours to get home including layovers, but as I gain 7 hours in the process of flying West I will actually get home late Saturday night Eastern Standard Time. I guess the long travelling time is the price to pay in order to be home in time for Thanksgiving.

All of my Peace Corps requirements are done now as I had my exit interview with the country director on Wednesday afternoon. Lisa (our country director) was very complimentary about me and my service and I offered her my input to her for future volunteers. Wednesday night we all went as a group to this nice restaurant to have our last meal together and the food was really good and we had some great conversations about everyone's experiences. Yesterday, since I had a free day I booked myself through the backpackers for a trip to the apartheid museum and Soweto. The museum was a really fascinating look at how apartheid started and developed through the last century all the way through its deconstruction and the first democratic elections in 1994. We then went to Soweto where 5 million people live in neighbourhoods ranging from million dollar homes all the way down to squatter camps. It was nice to see signs of the rise of the black middle class, but still a reminder of how much work there is left to be done in South Africa. We also went to the Hector Pieterson museum in honour of one of the students who was killed by police during the 1976 Soweto uprisings in protest against Bantu education (inferior education designed by the apartheid government for blacks). Hector was only 13 years old when he died and the museum is a memorial to him and the other students who died in the uprisings.

I hope that I will be able to post again once I am home, but we'll see how much jetlag I have first before I hake any guarantees. I will see many of you at Thanksgiving in NY, and I also hope to be able to make a trip to Maryland/DC/Virginia sometime to see my ex roommates Kelly and Danielle. I'll keep you notified. Anyway wish me luck on the long journey home and pray that myself and all my baggage gets there in one piece. There have definately been ups and downs, but all in all the past 2 years have been a great experience for me and a wonderful opportunity to gain knowledge about the world. Thank you all for your support during the past 2 years and I will see you soon!

Jennifer

Wrapping Up

2006-11-14T23:39:00.001-08:00

Hi everyone. I almost have everything finished up here in Pretoria. I closed my bank account yesterday and today I finished all my medical requirements. I just have to have my exit interview with my country director this afternoon, and then I will be officially finished. As I don't fly until very late Friday night (see the last entry) I will have a couple of days to relax and hang out in Pretoria before heading on the long trip back home.

I promised last time that I would write more about leaving Potch last week, so here it goes. On Wednesday my roomates "abducted" me after work and blindfolded me. They then put me in the car and when they finally unblindfolded me we were in the park and we had a picnic together, which was really nice. My roomates spent the whole day cooking in order to surprise me. On Friday, my last day at the office, we had a management board meeting, but at the end of the meeting someone came in with plates of snacksin honor of my last day. Alice, Joseph, Liz, our secretary Edith, some of the volunteers and I then took the afternoon of to go to a café for drinks. On saturday I spent the whole day packing and cleaning out my room so that Liz could move in. Finally on Sunday Alice, Megan, and Liz took me to the bus station and hugged me goodbye befoer my bus left for Pretoria. It was very bittersweet as I will miss all of them, but I am also eager to see friends and family in America again and to move on to the next stage in my life. I also told Alice, Megan, and my roommates that they need to come and visit me once they save up some money, so hopefully I will see them all again soon.

I will try to post again on Friday, which will be my last blog entry from South Africa.
Jennifer

Wrapping Up

2006-11-14T23:39:00.000-08:00

My Flight Info.

2006-11-13T00:37:00.000-08:00

Made it to Pretoria safely. Don't have much time to use the computer now, so I will just post my flight info. and will tell you about leaving Potch in a later Blog entry.

Friday 17 November 2006
Northwest Airlines Flight NW8422
Depart Johannesburg, South Africa 23:55 hours
Arrive Amsterdam, Netherlands 10:00 Hours
Arrival Date: 18 November 2006
Flying Time: 11hours 05minutes

Saturday 18 November 2006
Northwest Airlines Flight NW57
Depart Amsterdam, Netherlands 14:00 Hours
Arrive Memphis, USA 17:05 Hours
Flying Time 10Hours 05 minutes

Saturday 18 November 2006
Northwest Airlines Flight NW882
Depart Memphis, USA 19:28 Hours
Arrive Tampa, USA 22:16 Hours
Flying Time: 1hour 48minutes

Its a pretty indirect route, but hey at least I get there. I also get to check out the Netherlands, well at least the airport in Amsterdam. Busy with my COS medical stuff now so I will try to write more later.

Jennifer

Last Week in Potch

2006-11-04T03:02:00.000-08:00

Well this upcoming week will be my last week in Potchefstroom as I am spending my final week of service at Peace Corps headquarters in Pretoria checking out. My last day of work will be this Friday (11/10) and then I am planning on cleaning out my room on saturday and then leaving for Pretoria on Sunday (11/12). As you all now by now my COS (close of service) date is 11/17/2006 exactly 2 years from the date I was sworn in (11/17/2004).

The last few weeks have been pretty busy at Childline. Schools are closing for the summer soon and we are trying to finish up our awareness campaigns at schools before they do. I also had to submit several things to the Peace Corps, including my last quarterly report, my description of service, and my final site report, so a lot of work time was spent typing up Peace Corps paperwork. I also had a training in Khutsong in the eastern part of the Province so I was away from Wed. to Fri. there. This week I will hopefully spend cleaning out my desk and wrapping up everything as well as saying goodbye.

Not really much else to report from here. I will probably write the next update from Pretoria as next weekend I will be busy cleaning out my room and then travelling.

Jennifer

The Final Countdown

2006-10-21T03:30:00.000-07:00

As of now I have three more weeks at Childline and four more weeks in South Africa. Everything has gone by so fast and it really hasn't completely hit me yet that I am that close to leaving. I think one of the reasons is that I still have a lot of work to do in these last few weeks. Liz is in the process of developing an awareness program for high schools that includes skits and discussions and we are going to roll it out in 2 weeks in high schools in Mafikeng (the North West provincial capital). We are working in conjunction with the Red Cross for this project and we spent the last 2 weeks in and out of Mafikeng training the volunteers in the crisis counsellor program and interviewing them. Now we have to go back to Mafikeng for three days next week in order to show the volunteers the scripts for the skits and allow them to practice. I'm looking forward to this program because it will allow me to be out of the office for most of the three weeks I have left, but it is always a bit stressful to roll out a new program, and I hope we will be able to make this one a success.

For all of you that sent me birthday well wishes and gifts thanks so much. Kelly I just got yours this week and we managed to get confetti all over the office. Luckily we have a cleaning lady :-). For those of you asking about my flight details I am not really sure yet because the Peace Corps is responsible for buying my ticket. All I currently know is that I will be flying out on November 17th. Once I get my ticket information I will post the times, carrier, flight number, etc. on this blog, but that probably won't be until my last week when I will be in Pretoria checking out.

That's all for now folks. See you all very soon.
Jennifer

Last birthday in SA

2006-10-07T04:26:00.000-07:00

Hello all,
Only about 1 1/2 months left now! For those of you wondering how my birthday went they had a surprise party for me at work with a huge cake in the shape of the numbers 26 and balloons. Most of the counsellors attended and some even gave me some small presents. The weekend before my birthday I went to my roomates farm in the Free State and we drove aound in the pickup truck inspecting the cattle and we also had a birthday cookout for both of us (her birthday was on the 25th). We also went to Gold Reef city theme park in Johannesburg, which isn't quite as good as US theme parks, but it was a good time and we went on all the rollercoasters as Marizette (my friend) had never been on a roller coaster before. Talitha, another one of my roomates, had her birthday on October 4th, and all of us went out to dinner and walked around the university campus for a bit.

The last week of September was also Aardklop week in Potchefstroom, whitch is this big Afrikaans festival that attracts people from all over. I don't understand the music and the other entertainment much, but I spent several days exploring the clothing and gift stalls and buying food, as the park the festival is in is just down the street from my house.

As far as work is concerned everything is going well and the new volunteer Liz is gradually adjusting to the routine. Due to our awareness campaigns and increased advertisement of the line, the calls per month have increased dramatically, and we are now ahead of several other Provinces in terms of call volume, even though we are one of the least populated Provinces. Next week we are going to Mafikeng for the who week to train community members there in conjunction with the Red Cross, which I am looking forward to as it will be a chance to get out of the office for a week.

Not much else in terms of news from here. Only 5 weeks left in Potchefstroom and 6 weeks left in South Africa. Looking forward to getting home and finally seeing all of you.

Jennifer

The AGM

2006-09-16T03:44:00.000-07:00

As you all know from previous blog entries we held Childline North West's annual general meeting on Tuesday September 12th and I was the guest speaker. The meeting was very well attended by over 100 people from across the Province and things really went very well. My speech was very well received and I acompanied it with a Powerpoint slideshow of pictures from the past year to the song "Seasons of Love" from Rent. The management board gave me flowers and a certificate of merit for my service to the community which really made it very special to me. We also elected some great new management board members including a police superintendant from Schweizer Reneke, a police youth desk member from Khutsong, a young lady who is caring for orphaned children in Itsoseng, and one of the people who helps me deliver soup and bread to the creches - a former minister who now works in the buisness sector.
I wasn't feeling very well on Wednesday as I had a sinus headache so I took the day off and took some medication and am feeling better now. On Thursday and Friday I went to Khutsong with Joseph and two of the counsellors who were doing awareness campaigns there in schools. Meanwhile I was working with the police youth desk member who is now on our management board. He want's to start a safe house for street kids and domestic violence victims, so I was helping him put together a buisnes proposal for him to send to potential funders. That's pretty much it for this week. Next week the new Peace Corps volunteer gets sworn in on Thursday and then I have a three day weekend because Mon. September 25th in Heritage Day in South Africa.
Jennifer

Meeting My Replacement

2006-09-09T03:43:00.000-07:00

So the new Peace Corps volunteer made a site visit to Childline last week and her name is Elizabeth Marchetta from Princeton, NJ. She is more or less my age, maybe a little younger. She also has a Bachelor's degree in public health from UNC Chapel Hill but hasn't gone on to get her Master's yet. Everyone had a very good impression of her and she seems to be really eager to come and start her service. She will be officially sworn in on September 21 and then she will come and begin her two years of service. She will stay in a guest house for awhile until I leave and then she will take my room at my house. She was a bit surprised at how urban Potch is (no lions roaming around here!) but she seems excited about the placement, especially as working at Childline North West allows you to work in locations across the Province and not just stay in one village as other volunteers do. Everyone is looking forward to having her here, but as Alice keeps reminding me "no one will ever replace you". I keep telling them not to say that in front of Elizabeth as I am sure she will find her own niche and place in the organisation soon.

In other news our Annual Meeting will take place on September 12 and as you know I am the keynote speaker. I wrote my speech last week and I hope it's ok, at this point I'm just looking forward to getting the whole thing over with so we can move on to other things Childline has to do. We are expecting an audience of between 100-200 and hopefully out of that crowd we will be able to elect some good people to serve on the management board next year. We will also be presenting certificates to the trainee counsellors who are now ready to work on their own as volunteers and they are all very excited to receive their certificates.

Megan got her wisdom teeth out this week so Alice was home for a couple of days tending to her. She is doing ok and all of her friends keep coming over to see her big cheeks. she has a round face anyway so she really doesn't look that bad though.

Nothing else to really report from here. Will try to write next week after the AGM

Community profile

2006-08-26T03:07:00.000-07:00

This week Joseph and I went out to a small town called Schweizer Reneke about 2 hours west of Potchefstroom. It is a really rural area and there is not a lot there, but we did stay in a very nice guesthouse run by a sweet older lady who is a really good cook. The point of the trip was to interview candidates that had attended the training Joseph and Alice did there in July so that they could get their final certificates as crisis counsellors. Joseph also conducted awareness campaigns for children in 4 schools and he did a really excellent job and the teachers and principals there were really appreciative. The schools there are having a really big problem with their students being abused. One school for grade 1 to 4 students had 4 rape cases in the last 2 years. Another school had a student murdered by her father last year and her younger siblings are still at the school. In the afternoons after school ended we went out with a group of teachers and police oficers into the community so that I could do a community profile highlighting the major problems and neds of the people in the community. This profile will be sent to funders so that we can try to get money to build a safe house for abused children in the community and to build more community and recreation facilities. There are definately some major problems there that need to be addressed. There are not a lot of jobs in the area so many people have to go work on neighboring farms or in other towns monday to friday leaving their children home unsupervised. Many of the houses do not have electricity, running water, or toilets which puts children at risk of being attacked when they go to the fields to do their buisness or to collect sticks to make fire. The houses that do have latrines usually have ones that aren't constructed well and the sewage leaks into the street. There are also high rates of alcoholism, domestic violence, malnutrition, and childhood disease. I am hoping to complete my final written profile of the community within the next couple of weeks as we need to hold a community meting there to present my findings and decide on the next steps we should take to improve the conditions there.

The other big news is that the new Peace Corps volunteer will be coming for a site visit from Wednesday until Saturday, so I will get to meet my replacement and show him/her around. they will then return to their training site on Saturday until they are officially sworn in on September 21, when they will come to Potch permanently. Alice and I know nothing about the new volunteer yet so it will be interesting to see who we get and what they are like.

As I final not I just want to say thank you to Grandma and Grandpa for the birthday money and to Aunt Sue and Uncle Chuck for the lovely book you sent me. It is hard to believe that I will be 26 exacly 1 month from today.

Jennifer

Durban

2006-08-19T04:41:00.000-07:00

I got back from Durban last Saturday so I'm sorry I haven't found time to write about it until now. I stayed in a really cool backpackers in a subburb of Durban and my room had a view of the beach. The beach in fromt of the backpackers is known as a really good surfing beach and you could lie on your towel in the sand and watch the surfers and windsurfers. The waves there were pretty rough though so I just waded and didn't really swim out that far. I got knocked over by the waves a couple of times and am still struggling to get the sand out of my bathing suit. The backpackers was also convenient because it was along the bus route and you could get a cheap ride into central Durban for R3.70. From there you could walk to the "Golden Mile" where they have a promenade along the beaches with shopping and restaurants and you can go swimming at beaches with surf that is less rough. I also went to an aquarium called uShaka marine world and saw the shark feeding and seal and dolphin shows. If you pay extra you also get to go snorkeling with the fish, so I decided to do it and had a really good time. There were lots of incredible multi-colored fish and a really big area to swim around in. There were also two small sharks swimming around. I met a lot of friendly people at the backpackers including Mike who is from Colorado and works there and Simon and Flo (short for Florian) who just arrived from Germany. All in all it was a grat vacation and warm everyday, which was a nice brak from the South African winter.

As of this thurday (August 17) I have three months left as my close of service is on November 17th. It is a Peace Corps rule that you are not allowed to take vacation during your last few three months as you are supposed to stay at your site and "finish your projects" so I'm glad I got my last vacation in. Now that I'm back in Potch I have been busy helping Alice prepare the annual report as our annual General meeting is on September 12. We finally submitted the report to the printers yesterday and it should end up looking pretty good as there are lots of pictures of all the activities we did last year. We were struggling to find a keynote speaker for the Annual General Meeting as we couldn't settle on someone we liked and who was avaialble, so Alice finally asked me to do it. I'm still trying to nail down my topic but I think it will be something on my experiences in South Africa and with the children here etc.

That's all for now. Not too long now until I return to the U.S. It really doesn't feel like I've been away for two years.
Jennifer

Back in Potch and On Leave!!!

2006-07-31T04:28:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,
Sorry there were no updates in a while. I've been back in Potchefstroom for the last 2 1/2 weeks and I have been doing all right. I have had a few minor panic attackes, but nothing in the league of what I was having before, so I think the change in medication has really helped. My roomates are also back for the new term and it's nice to have some other people in the house. The last few weeks have been focused on training community members on child abuse issues, and Alice and I travelled to Itsoseng for three days, which is in the North West of the Province about an houror so away from Botswana. It was a really good training and the community members were so responsive and wonderful. They gave us all hugs when we left. We still have to go back for another 2 days to complete the training and I'm looking forward to seeing them again. In case I forgot to tell you about it (I'm beginning to forget what I have already written about in previous blogs) I wrote a funding proposal to the Human Rights Foundation to get funding for doing trainings and awareness campaigns across the Province. Alice checked over the proposal before it was sent out, but I was the primary author, and they ended up giving us R70,000, which will be enough to fund the entire project. They even gave us more money than I wrote the budget for, because I only requested about R65,000. Anyway doing the awareness campaigns and trainings will fill up the next couple of months and we still have to have our annual general meeting, so the last few months are going to be very busy.

It is now under 4 months until I return home (November 17th!) and Peace Corps has a rule that you cannot take any vacation time during your last 3 months at site because you are supposed to spend the time closing down your projects. This means that after August 17th I'm not allowed to take vacation. Therfore I am taking two weeks vacation now. I'm spending this week relaxing in Potchefstroom with my roommates and next week I am going to Durban and staying in a backpackers on the beach. The Childline board was even nice enough to give me R1000 towards my vacation. So next week I will be swimming in the warm Indian ocean and reading on the beach. Hey, this will be the third ocean I have swam in. Just have the Arctic left now. The backpackers does have an internet connection so I will try to update you from the beach.

Thanks everyone for sending all the packages and e-mails. Danielle I finally got the book after it apparently made a pit stop in Germany and I will start reading it soon. I loved your pictures. You are looking so svelte and fabulous. Keep it up girl. Kelly I got your wonderful package of books and craft supplies. Thanks a lot and I will try to get the supplies out to kids who need them soon.

Thats all for now. My next entry will hopefully be from the beack.
Jennifer

2006-07-07T01:35:00.000-07:00

Hi again everyone,
Thank you all for your overwhelming response to my last entry. I am feeling a lot better now and it was really helpful to know that I have so much love and support from all of you. Thank you Aunt Betty for the nice message, Aunt Sue and Uncle Chuck for the e-card and thank you Mom and Danielle for the pictures. They all helped cheer me up. I have been thinking of all of you too and hopefully I will get to see all of you in November or December.

I haven't had any panic attacks this week, which is obviously a huge relief for me. Peace Corps has been sending me regularly to the counsellor to learn some techniques for managing this and I am also going to see a psychiatrist on Monday to see if I need adjustments to my medication. They will probably let me go back to site on Tuesday. It has been a pretty good stay in Pretoria for me and I have been hanging out with some of the other volunteers who are also here for medical appointments. We went and got pizzas last night and then sat around and talked. Fiona, the Australian girl who manages the backpackers has also been really great to me and she may hang out with us tonight. The one downside to the backpackers this time around is that there are about 30 little girls and their chaperones staying there for a drum majorettes competition and they are turning it into a really loud slumber party that never ends. It's also difficult to take a shower when there are a bunch of 10 year olds banging on the door. Hopefully they leave tomorrow.

Anyway I just wanted to let you all know that I'm all right and coping much better know. Thanks for all of the support and I'll let you know how things go when i get back to site.
Jennifer

Difficult times

2006-07-03T02:27:00.000-07:00

Dear all,
This is probably the hardest blog entry I have had to write this far, but I fell that as you all have been so supportive of me, you should know what has been going on lately. For the past couple of months I have been having some severe panic attacks. They come on very suddenly and before you know it you are just terrified and you can't breathe and are shaking very hard. After a panic attack I pretty much can't do anything except lie on the couch not moving for a while. For me they are worst at night. The past weekend was very bad and I called both my parents and the Peace Corps medical staff in a panic and probably managed to freak everyone out. Peace Corps medical ordered me into Pretoria yesterday and they have scheduled appointments for me with a psychologist and a psychiatrist to see if my medication can be adjusted and to help me learn some techniques to deal with this. I am in Pretoria now at Peace Corps headquarters and am staying at the backpackers for the next week until the Peace Corps doctors clear me to go back to site. Alice has also been very supportive through all of this and has offered to let me stay at her house until the end of school vacation, as I am alone in my house for the next few weeks until the students come back for the new term. As I have free computer access for the next week while I'm at headquarters I'll try and write more regularly to let you all know what's going on and what the doctors are saying. Your letters and e-mails are always a source of support for me and honestly just the fact that anyone is reading this blog at all is helpful for me. I hope you all have a great 4th of July tomorrow and keep me in your thoughts.
Jennifer

COS Conference

2006-06-22T03:25:00.000-07:00

Well its T-minus 5 months now until my close of service (COS) on Novermber 17th, and Peace Corps decided to bring everyone left from my group together to talk about what we needed to do before we leave and what to expect when we go back home (reverse culture shock issues). The best part about the COS conference was undoubtedly that they put us all up in a nice hotel in Rustenburg complete with central heating, showers with lots of water pressure, and a buffet for breakfast, lunch, and dinner that took up a whole room. I guess it's our reward for being pretty darn close to making it through 2 years of service. It was really great to see everyone again and we all had a really good time catching up with one another's activities. Two of the volunteers have become engaged (to each other) and we offered them our congratulations. We had an awards ceremony on the last night and our APCDs gave us silly awards based on things that happened to us during our service. I got the "Animal House" award for surviving two years in student housing.

I am spending the day in Pretoria today. Free Peace Corps computers yay! And tomorrow I will take the bus back to Potch. It was really nice to get away for the week as work has really been stressing me out lately, which explains my long absence from my blog. Leah, my APCD is going to stop by Potch next week to talk to Alice about potentially putting another volunteer there after I leave, and if so what are some things we can do to help make their experience easier.

Thats all for now. Time to surf the internet and plan my August vacation.
Jennifer

Winter Blues

2006-05-27T04:07:00.000-07:00

Well winter has finally hit SA and its predicted to be one of the coldest winters on record. Temperatures regularly drop below freezing at night and for those of you in upstate NY who think that's nothing imagine it if you didn't have central heating in your house. I did try to go to the store and buy a space heater, but the whole shelf was sold out, so I have resorted to unzipping my sleepting bag and using it as a comforter on top of my already existing comforter. Wearing three shirts to bed also helps.

There isn't a lot to update on as far as work is concerned. I spoke to Alice about the one presenter I had problems with, and even though I don't think we will ever see eye to eye on this issue we are still on good terms. My Peace Corps supervisor is also sending me some info. that disputes some of the issues in the presentation, especially whereas the effectiveness of govenment condoms are concerned. The last couple weeks have been focused ongiving the trainee counsellors experience on the line, and I think most of them will eventually make very good counsellors. Most of them still need to work on reflection of feelings and content, and we also have a few that need to develop some computer skills (Childline's call tracking system is computerized). That is one of the biggest issues right now because the calls come in very quickly and if you can't put them into the computer fast enough you get a huge backlog. I was working with one of the counsellors on moving the mouse and learning where the keys are on the keyboard, so you can see that this is going to be an area where some of them need to practice. Fortunately she was doing much better after working with me for a while. Knowing how to type and knowing basic computer skills are definately taken for granted in America. For many South Africans, especially black South Africans, computers are still scary machines that they have never used before.

I have been pretty sick these past couple of weeks, I was throwing up one night, and then I developed a bad cought that is still going away, so I'm going to sign off here and get some rest. Hope everything is well with all of you.

Training Madness

2006-05-13T03:34:00.000-07:00

Well we have finally gotten started with the training of the new crisis counsellors. We trained 22 people this week on the technical issues they will need to know realted to child abuse/neglect etc. and then next week they will start their practical training on the line. Joseph will be working with 1 trainee counsellor on morning shift and I will be working with one trainee counsellor on afternoon shift. Therefore it will take several weeks to go through everyone, and most of them will probably need several sessions before they can work alone on the line. Therefore this will take up a great deal of my time for the next few weeks.

The training went pretty well in my opinion and I presented a couple of topics during training, such as HIV/AIDS and Domestic Violence. There was another presenter who also presented the HIV/AIDS topic after me, however I had some issues about his presentation. Basically I thought it presented some misinformationto the trainees and presented a rather one-sided view of the prevention issues, especially when dealing with the condom topic. As counsellors our goal is to present callers with all the options available to them and them alloe\w them to make their own decisions. In terms of HIV/AIDS prevention we need to cover all of the ABC method (Abstinance, Be faithful to one partner, Correct and Consistant use of Condoms) rather than focusing on our particular opionons about any of these methods. I also thought his presentation was stressing his personal religious opionion in an NGO that is not affiliated with any religion and must counsel callers of all backgrounds. I faxed my concerns about this presentation to my APCD (assistant Peace Corps Director) Leah and the Childline National Coordinator Joan so hopefully they will get back to me on it. I stressed that my goal was not to get anyone in trouble but rather to get the facts along with more information on my role/Childline's role. I haven't told Alice I contacted them yet, so she may be mad at me when she finds out, as this presenter is a friend of hers, but I hope she will realise that my concern is with addressing these issues and not with critisizing and particular person.

In other work-related news Joseph was mugged last week when walking home at night and the muggers knocked him unconscious with some type of object (he was blindsided and didn't see what it was). They took his cell phone, watch, and wedding ring. I didn't know about it until last Monday when he walked in looking like a wreck. His face was so swollen I barely recognized him. We gave him last week off so that he could see a doctor and recover and this week he is looking and feeling much better.

Moving away from the office, I spent a long 5-day weekebnnd at my roomate Marizette's parents farm in the Free StateProvince. It was very relaxing and I dot to use the internet for free and got csught up with reading all the e-mail you guys have been sending. I really enjoyed the Hilton Head Pictures and pictures of Kayley and Ethan (thanks mom and dad and Aunt Sue and Uncle Chuck). Danielle- I finally got your Christmas/Birthday package, sorry you had the wrong address at first and thanks for the stuff! I also have something for you but I'm waiting till I get back home and see you again. Congratulations on your new boyfriend, wink, wink. I'm glad he likes visiting Civil War related historical sites.

I'm going to leave off here as I have a few things to look up on the internet. Hope you all are well and are having a good spring.

Jennifer

Counsellor News and an Office of My Own

2006-04-22T04:58:00.000-07:00

Dear All,

Sorry that its been nearly a month since I've written. The internet cafe that I usually use decided that it would no longer open on weekends so I begged my roommate to sneak me onto the university computer system with her password.

The big news here currently is that we are preparing to train a new group of crisis counsellors. We are currently in the process of interviews, and we have nearly 60 candidates. We will only be able to train 24 in the first training, but we are planning on applying for more funding so that we will be able to train more. Alice and I are so impressed at the quality of candidates that we have been getting, so it will be very hard to choose among them. It has really been heartening for us to see so many members of the community come to us and want to volunteer. We have been getting a lot of applications from young people (20-30ish) and also a surprising amount of applications from men. It really makes me have a lot of pride in the Potch community that so many people want to reach out and help children. After we select the 24 candidates for the first training, they will be in an intense training for a week (all day every day) and then they will be put on the crisis line where Joseph will supervise them until they get the hang of things. This influx of new counsellors will allow us to prevent the situations we have been experiencing in the last few months where no one has been available to work some shifts.

Another piece of really good news as for as staffing is concerned is that the Childline board has approved the hiring of a person to do awareness campaigns in schools and communities across North West Province. This will increase awareness of the line and our services as well as allow abused children to know that there are people who want to help them and care about them. The lady we are hiring is named Florence Boqo. She is about my age and speaks 6 languages and has an undergraduate degree in psychology and is currently studying for her masters. She will be able to use her experience with the awareness campaigns as part of her master's thesis. She is going to take part in the crisis counsellor training and then Alice and I will give her additional training on awareness campaigns and then she will go out to schools and other organisations and conduct the campaigns. She has her own transport, so she can travel all around the Province and we will reimburse her for gas and pay her a stipend for her work. We are hiring her on a 3 month contract, and then at the end of that period we will evaluate her performance and our funding to see if we can extend her contract for a longer period. It will be so exciting to have someone else working full time for us and this outreach is definately needed to children across the Province.

In a piece of extremely upsetting counsellor news our counsellor who was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy turned out not to have breast cancer at all. The biopsy showing that she did not have cancer, and only had subacute eczema, came out 8 days BEFORE she had her mastectomy. She is seeing a lawyer now for legal advice and the lawyer has advised Alice that this is going to be a huge medical malpractice case if it goes to court. Right now the counsellor is still deciding whether she wants to settle of sue but everyone (including me) really wants her to sue the pants off them. Hopefully she will get some good advice from her lawyer and make the best decision for herself.

I want to end this update on a good note, so I will end by telling you that this week the owner of the building where Childline's offices are gave us two additional offices for free. Alice will have one of the new offices and I will have the other one. Alice's old office will then be converted into badly needed storage space and Joseph (who currently doesn't have a desk) will get my old desk. We are obviously thrilled about the news because the three of us have been working on top of each other for a while now and this will give us space to spread out. It feels so nice to have my own office and a gigantic desk.

Hope you are all well and enjoying your spring.
Your e-mails are always appreciated when you have time to write.
Jennifer

A Test of the Peace Corps Emergency Evacuation System

2006-03-25T08:26:00.000-08:00

Ok so the reason I didn't update this blog last weekend was that last Friday I received a text message from Peace Corps headquarters saying that they were testing the emergency evacuation system and I had to go to my emergency evacuation site immediately. For those of you unfamiliar with Peace Corps rules and regs. emergency evacuation sites are sites where several volunteers who live within the same region group together in case there is an emergency in country. You are then supposed to wait at your emergency evacuation site until Peace Corps gives you futher instructions. So after packing an overnight bag I headed out to go to the emergency evacuation site for volunteers in eastern North West Province in Rustenburg, which is probably 2-3 hours drive north of Potchefstroom. Of course since I had no choice but to take the taxi I knew that it would take me much longer. I walked the 45 minutes from my house to the Potch taxi rank and then asked for the taxi to Rustenburg. However they said that there was no direct taxi to Rustenburg so I would have to take the taxi 1 hour west to Klerksdorp and then change taxis for Rustenburg. It took about 45 minutes for the Klerksdorp taxi to fill up, during which I tried to beat my high score at snake on my cell phone. The taxi finally filled and as I got to Klerksdorp the Rustenburg taxi had just filled up and was leaving, so I had to wait for the next taxi to fill, which took another hour. Luckily Phyllis, who is a volunteer from the group that arrived last year arrived and we waited in the taxi together until it filled. After a two hour drive to Rustenburg we then had to take another taxi to the hotel which took about 15 minutes to fill up and then another 30 minutes to get there. It was midafternoon when we finally got there, and I spent the rest of the day realxing by the pool with fellow volunteers and eating and drinking by the poolside. I then had to repeat my treck back to Potchefstroom on Saturday and by the time I got back I was pretty exhausted and spent the rest of my weekend doing laundry and falling asleep while watching cricket on tv.

Things at work continue to be busy. Alice and i put an ad in the local paper this week as we desperately need to train new crisis counsellors as many of our old counsellors are either sick or moving on to other things. Hopefully we will have a good response to the ad. Even so, it will take several months for the new counsellors to go through training before they caqn be put on the line and they will then have to be supervised for their first 6 months on the line so things are still going to be tight for a while. Things with the creches are going all right. there is this really cute baby who is very attached to me and cries my eyes out whenever I put him down. I am really worried about another baby girl there who is 18 months but is still not walking or even crawling. A lot of these kids just don't get the stimulating they need at home and at the creches there is a teacher/child ratio of about 1 to 30 children (all 5 and under), which makes it tough to attend to individual children. I'm going to see if someone has an old walker that we can put this baby in so that she will at least get used to moving her legs around.

I was very excited to get my mom's pictures from the "Southern Nickels Family Reunion". It looks like you guys had a good time. Kayley and Ethan are getting so big and are as cute as ever. It looks like you guys down south are having some gorgeous March weather. We are sliding into winter here. the days are pretty nice but the nights are getting cold - and it continues to rain :-( At least winter will bring the dry season. I've had just about enough of the rainy season thank you very much.

Will write again when I get some time. Have a happy spring.
Jennifer

A Quick Update

2006-03-11T03:16:00.000-08:00

Hey eveyone,

This update won't be very long as the past couple of weeks have been fairly standard in terms of what's been going on. Alice was out for the past two weeks after having an operation on her side, but she will be back on Monday. Joseph and I were in charge of the office, but did not have any major problems and things went farily smoothly. I went to the creches on Thursday and the one I stay at has 32 kids who will be graduating this year already. By the end of the year they will probablyhave over 40 graduates again as parents bring new children to the creche throughout the year. There is one little baby at the creche that is really attached to me. He can't walk yet but he can crawl really fast and whenever I put him down he will crawl after me and cry until I pick him up again.

On Tuesday our counsellor who is HIVpositive and has breast cancer went in to Klerksdorp Hospital to have her mastectomy. They only removed one breast for now, but there is a good chance they will have to remove the other one as well after further tests are done. Joseph and I called her on Friday and she seemed to be in a lot of pain and really upset. I called Alice at home and told her to call her and after talkingto Alice for a long time she seemed to be in better spirits. We are all planning on driving out to Klerksdorp next week to visit her in the hospital. Please keep her in your prayers as she is going through a lot right now and will probably have to have chemo in the near future.

That's all that's news from here. Hopefully I will have a better update next week after Alice returns and things at the office start to get busy again.

Jennifer

The Rain (down in Africa)

2006-02-27T04:25:00.000-08:00

As the title of this post suggests it has not stopped raining here for weeks. Every day we get a couple more inches and the ground is pretty much soaked. It is really bad out in the rural areas where they have no pipe water systems and all the ground water is contaminated. There have been lots of diarrhea outbreaks and the like. Luckily I have piped water, although the water pressure in the shower leaves something to be desired. My roommate Marizette competed in a bike race on saturday where she could barely see a few feet in front of her because of all the rain. She was the top woman finisher though so she thinks that she is going to get a sponsor soon which will really help out her training.

In some very upsetting news our HIV+ counsellor was also diagnosed with breast cancer this week. She had been experiencing bleeding from her breast for several months now and had to travel to Klerksdorp for a mamogram which showed that she had a lump. She is currently waiting for her CD4 count and the results of her biopsy, but it looks like she will need a mastectomy and chemo. She will need to have the mastectomy as soon as possible as if the cancer is allowed to spread beyond her breast she really has no immune system to fight it because of the HIV. Please keep her in your thoughs and prayers during the next few months.
Of course this means that she won't be able to work for a while, which further reduces our pool of counsellors. We have another counsellor who had a premature baby (the baby is fine) who will be out for another week and we have another counsellor who is currently pregnant and will need time off when she has the baby. We also have another counsellor who just came back to work after a year off because she was seriously ill with meningitis. She just got an HIV test and it come back positive which led her boyfriend of 6 years to break up with her (despite the fact that he is likely HIV+ himself). So at last count we are up to 2 HIV+ counsellors, one of whom also has cancer and the other of whom is dealing with the breakup of a long term relationship and we have two counsellors who are either pregnant or recovering from a pregnancy. Because of all of this I have been working shifts on the phone in addition to my other work so it is getting to be a lot to take on. we really need to train another group of counsellors soon, but it has to pass through the management board first and we need funding for training. Anyway I got today off after working the night shift (6PM to 7 AM) last night and Friday night.

On Saturday i went to the Interhigh Track Meet at the Stadium in town and took in some of the races before it started raining. All of the kids from all of the different high schools go and the ones that don't participate in the meet dress up according to a theme and cheer from the stands. There were ancient Egyptians, flappers, clowns, and this group in some wierd metallic pink outfits. It was a good time, but I should have left a little earlier because i got totally drenched riding my bike home in the rain and then spent the rest of Saturday and Sunday inside watching the rain and recovering from working Friday night shift.

That's all for now. Will try to write again when I have some time to spare.
Jennifer

Back to Business

2006-02-11T02:44:00.000-08:00

After the last few hectic weeks of coming back from vacation and then moving and then going to Pretora, it has been good to settle into some sort of a routine again, albeit a very busy one, at work. This week we conducted a training in Klerksdorp for role players in the child protection sector (social workers, police, health workers, NGOs, educators, prosecutors etc.) our goal is to have each of these seperate professions become more coordinated in dealing with cases of child abuse and to have better communication between them. Our National Director Joan van Niekerk came up from her office in Durban to conduct the training in conjunction with Carol Bower from RAPCAN (Recources Aimed at the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect). Everyone there really enjoyed the training and learned a lot. We even had some of the professionals there offer to accompany us on future awareness campaigns at schools, which would obviously help us out a lot.

On Friday I came back to the office and went out with the soup and bread to the creches. Our regular driver was busy this week, so I got the help of my new roommate Marizette to drive me out there. She is a really friendly and bubbly person and I already like her a lot. She really enjoyed going to the creches and playing with the kids as well. She is also a very serious cyclist and is racing in Free State Province this weekend so she left right after we finished going to the creches and won't be back until Monday. Hopefully she does well.

The rainy season really has kicked in this week and it has been pouring every day. Last night I was alone watching TV in the middle of our latest rainstorm when someone started pounding on the door. After jumping three feet I opened the inner door to discover a first year student from the house next door in tears on my front step. I let her in and she said that she had come back from start of the term celebrations at the university to discover that someone had broken into her house and took her cell phone and the radios of all four girls living there. She was in a panic as she had no way to call anyone so I gave her my cell phone to call her parents and her parents then notified our landlord. The landlord came over and saw that the corner of the metal security gate in front of the back door to her house had been pried back. As the back door was not locked and the individual rooms of the students were not locked either, the robber pretty much took anything valuable that would fit through the space in the door. The landlord was of course angry that the students hadn't locked their rooms or the outside door (they were depending on the security gate) and she obviously had a point, but I also felt for the poor girl who had just left home for the first time, as I by now have some experience with being away from home. This put me in the somewhat awkward position of trying to calm them both down, but in the end everyone eventually did and I went back to my house and went to sleep. Luckily I have always made a point of locking the door to my room in all of the houses I have lived in here and I also have been keeping all of the outside doors locked here so my house was not broken into.

In some sad news our HIV positive counsellor has been admitted to the hospital as she has been experiencing bleeding from her breasts. They are going to send her to Klerksdorp for a mamogram and we are supporting her as best we can. She still has a very positive attitude so we hope that everything is ok and that with the ARV medicine she is on she will feel better soon. Hopefully this is just an infection that can be trated and not cancer as obviosly having cancer on top of HIV would be an extremely serious situation. Please pray for her or keep her in your thoughts this week.

Hope everything is well with all of you.
Jennifer

Moving Around S.A.

2006-02-02T01:19:00.000-08:00

The theme for the past few weeks here has definately been moving. The day I got back from Cape Town I learned that the new owners of the house where I stayed for the past year and a half were going to demolish it within two weeks so I had to find a new place quickly. This was in spite of the fact that Alice and I had signed a contact with them requiring a 60 day notification period if someone was going to have to move. We got the deposit on the house back, but we are looking into legal advice to see what can be done about the breach of contact. Anyway the good news is that I found a new place with the help of Alice translating the Afrikaans classified ads for me and I think this new place is a lot better. The landlord is an older lady who also owns a guesthouse where Alice stayed for 1 month when she first came to Potch after getting the job at Childline a few years ago. She says to call her "Tannie Ria" tannie means aunt in Afrikaans, but it is also used as a term of respect and friendship. Ria is short for Maria. Anyway Tannie Ria gave us the room for R900 per month and that includes having the domestic worker clean my room and do my laundry. R900 per month was the same price we would have paid for the old place without those extra services, so we got a really good deal. About 15 students stay there, but they are divided up into seperate houses, so I stay in a house with only 3 other girls. We each have our own rooms and then there is a bathroom and a small kitchen and a lounge. I haven't met the other girls yet as they were out when I moved in, but Tannie Ria told them I was coming (I think this was to warn them that I was American and they would have to speak English to me).

I only got to stay in my new house for 1 night before I headed out the next day (yesterday) to Pretoria. Alice and Rev. Ramalisa (our board chairperson) have to attend a 3 day meeting in Johannesburg so she drove me that far and then I took the bus the rest of the way to Pretoria. The reason I am here is that I have to get a flu shot from Peace Corps medical. The medical team had been going out to our sites to give flu shots, but I missed them when I was in Cape Town so they told me I had to come to headquarters to get one. Anyway its a good excuse to go to the mall and use the free internet at Peace Corps headquarters. Tomorrow (Friday) I will take the bus back to Johannesburg station where Alice will pick me up on the way home from her meeting. I will then go back to my new house and hopefully finally meet the people there.

I'll write you again soon and update you with new developments at Childline.
T-minus 10 1/2 months to go.
Jennifer

Cape Town

2006-01-21T03:47:00.000-08:00

I'm back in Potch now after my 10 day vacation in Cape Town. I left on January 7th and arrived midmorning on January 8th. The overnight bus trip was not very fun as I was sitting by the window and it started raining and the rain was leaking trough onto me. I asked to be transferred onto the other bus that was accompanying us so they gave me a seat on that bus. However that bus broke down about midway through the trip, so I asked to be transferred back to my seat on the first bus, which had luckily dried out by then. I spent my first 2 nights at a place called Long Street backpackers, but I didn't like it there because it was really loud and the air conditioner from the building above us was dripping onto the tin roof of my room all night long. I didn't get to sleep those 2 nights, so I transferred to Long Street Inn, which was much quieter and laid back. I also managed to get my own room for a slightly higher price.

My first day in Cape Town dawned very clear without a cloud in the sky, so I decided to go up to Table Mountain, as its best to go on a clear day when you can see the best views. The taxi dropped me off at the end of this huge line of people, but luckily I was only in line for about 30-45 minutes as they can put about 60 people at a time in the cable lifts that they use to take people to the top of the mountain. Once you get inside the lifts, the floor rotates so you get a 360 degree view just by standing in one place. Once you get to the top you have some really spectacular views of Cape Town and the surrounding areas. The top of the mountain is fairly flat, hence the name Table mountain, so I hiked for about an hour around the top and took some pictures. The next day I was still pretty tires, so I went to one of the beaches and rented an umbrella to read and fall asleep under. I also waded a little in the water, but it is really cold as there is a current coming up from Antarctica that affects the Atlantic ocean side of South Africa. Later on this year I am going to visit some of the beaches on the Indian Ocean side, which are much warmer.

On my third day, I went down to the Victoria and Alfred waterfront, which is the major tourist hotel, restaurant, and shopping area in Cape town. I went to buy my ticket to take the ferry to Robben Island the next day (you have to book tickets a day ahead of time as the ferrys fill up fast). After buying my ticket I wandered around the Robben Island museum for a while and then had a bite to eat while watching the seals in the harbor. I then walked over to the two oceans aquarium, which was a very nice aquarium featuring fish and other sea creatures from the Altantic and Indian oceans. I watched them feed the seals and penguins and the fish in the predators display. The next day I went back to the V&A waterfront to catch the 8:00 ferry to Robben Island. It's about a 30 minute ferry ride to the island and then you are boarded on a bus and shown around the island by a tour guide. The bus stops at the famous prison and you are shown the cell where Nelson Mandela spent most of his 27 years in prison. He spent 19 years at Robben Island and the remainder of the time at 2 other prisons. The cells are very small and are about the size of a walk in closet. You also get to see the limestone quarry where the prisoners worked.

After Robben Island I spent the next couple of days wandering around museums in Cape Town. I went to the S.A. museum, which is sort of like the museum of Natural history in New York, except focusing on the cultures and animal species of South Africa. I also went to the District 6 museum, which celebrates the famous coloured area in cape Town that was bulldozed after it was declared a "whites only" area in the apartheid years. Former district 6 residents sign a huge map of the floor of the museum next to the streets where they formerly lived. The current government is trying to rebuild district 6 now and invite the former residents back, but most of the land is still barren there so they have a long way to go. I next went to the Gold of Africa museaum, which features some pretty spectacular gold items from across Africa. I also went to the castle- the fort that is the oldest building in Cape Town- and saw the military museum there.

On Sunday I took a tour of the Cape peninsula with a tour company and got to see the Cape of Good hope, which is the most southwesterly point in Africa. I also got to see the Cape National Park and the famous penguin colony at Boulders Beach in Simon's Town. I spent the last few days of my trip seeing more of the peninsula and visiting a bird sanctuary which features hundreds of bird species from around the world (as well as monkeys which jump on you), as well as the Kirstenbosh Gardens, which feature miles and miles of plants native to the Cape floral kingdom.

The bus ride home went fairly smoothly and the seat next to me was empty for most of the trip, so I could stretch out a bit. I got back to Potch midday Thursday and now its back to the grind, at least until my next vacation.

Bye for now. More updates to come soon.
Jennifer

Christmas Holidays

2006-01-08T07:53:00.000-08:00

Hello from Cape Town. I'm hitting the beach for my second vacation of my Christmas holidays, but since I just got here a few hours ago there isn't a lot to say about Cape Town yet. Instead, I might as well update all of you on my family's visit to South Africa and what we did on my first Christmas vacation.

My parents and brother arrived at Joburg airport on December 22nd after a long flight out of Atlanta. A representative from the travel company met us and drove us to Potch where we rented a car from AVIS and my father got to experience driving on the left hand side of the road. I think we were the slowest car on the road, but we got where we needed to go and didn't wreck the rental car, which is the important part. I had booked two double rooms for us at a local bed and breakfast, which was fairly nice and had an old-fashioned flavor. Breakfast was not quite what my family is used to in America (fish sticks, cold baked beans, etc.) but there was also toast and eggs and other things that were more in sync with the American pallate and filled us up. I showed my family the Childline office and then we took my coworker Joseph out with us to the informal settlement (squatter camp) areas where we distributed candy that we had bought and bread that Childline had. The kids were so happy to get candy and were a bit hard to control, even with Joseph along as our Tswana translator. Several of the children got more than one piece of candy, but it was all right as they so seldom get sweets in their everyday life and definately won't get anything for Christmas. We also spent some time at Potch's Olypic size pool and went to an Irish pub and an Italian restaurant (I tried to take them to a more traditional South African place but it was closed).

We then returned the rental car and were taken back to Joburg by the travel company where we spent Christmas eve and Christmas day. The hotel we stayed in was called whe Michelangelo hotel and it was pretty ritzy. Definately a lot nicer than I could afford alone with my Peace Corps salary. I should have my parents come and visit more often. Since most of the shops and attractions were closed for Christmas, we mostly spent the two days relaxing by the pool, playing pitch, and going to the movies. The hotel was actually in a suburb of Johannesburg called Sandton, which is a very ritzy area. Our hotel looked out over Nelson Mandela square, and we got a few pictures with the giant statue of Nelson Mandela and explored some of the shops and restaurants, although most were closed.

On December 26, we flew out of Johannesburg and landed in Hoedspruit in the far eastern part of the country. We were picked up at the airport by a representative from Thornybush lodge where we would spend the next four days. Thornybush is a private game reserve and not a national park, however there are no fences between Thorneybush and Kruger national park so the animals can roam freely over an area the size of some small states. There were probably about 20-30 other guests staying with us at Thorneybush, and all of the guests are taken out every morning and evening by the rangers to look for game. This involves getting into a giant open land rover and driving around the reserve looking for game. Ther land rovers typically seat about 6 guests and are driven by the ranger. There is also a seat attached to the front of the car over the grill where the spotter sits. The spotter and the ranger both are very well trained in spotting game and tracking game using prints in the ground. We were very fortunate to have Joseph as our warden and Elphus as our spotter as they were very experienced and could literraly take us right up to an animal hidden in the bush just by looking at its tracks. These guys can track animals for miles and are very ddetermined to get the guests as up close and personal with the animals as is safely possible. We went off-road for several animals and got to see all of the big 5 (elephant, buffalo, rhino, lion, and leopard) free and wild in their natural habitat, as well as hippos, several antelope species, giraffe, baboons, vervet monkeys, warthogs and birds galore. During the heat of the day when there were no game drives your could sit by the pool and watch the animals come to the nearby watering hole. It really was the experience of a lifetime.

On our last two days we took a tour around the lowveld area of South Africa and saw the Blyde River Canyon, the famous "potholes" and a few pretty waterfalls. We also tried to see Gods Window, but it was overcast that day so we didn't get the chance. We stayed overnight in Pilgrim's Rest, which is an old gold mining town preserved as it was at the turn of the last century. We then drove back to Joburg where my parents and brother prepared for their long flight home and I stayed overnight at a backpackers before leaving for Potch the next day.

I'm signing off now as my fingers are tired from typing :-) If you can, please make a trip to Florida to see my parents and watch my dad's vacation video. Just try to ignore the part where he left the camcorder on in the bag for a few hours. For those of you stuck in the snowy north, my brother also has some great pictures of the trip taken on his new super fancy camera.

Happy 2006 y'all.
See you in November.

Jennifer

Thanksgiving and Graduations

2005-12-10T03:20:00.000-08:00

Sorry it has taken so long to update this. The holidays have made things pretty busy around here and money to use the internet cafe is running a little low. Anyway I had a good Thanksgiving in Klerksdorp and got to meet several of the new group of volunteers. We bought two turkeys, as the ones we found were pretty small, and they were delicious.

Last Saturday was the graduation ceremony for the creche I have been working at. There were 40 children graduating to school and they all received pencil cases full of school supplies thanks to the donations of money I have received from home. Four other creches also received pencil cases and supplies for their graduates. Thanks you guys! I am going to send out more formal thank you letters as soon as I get my photos developed, as I'm sure that you would like to see the happy faces of the kids. Just know that typical school children here receive one pencil from the school at the beginning of the year and that is expected to last them for the whole year, so your donations have really made a difference to these children as they now have the supplies they need to get a better quality education.

Yesterday we had the office Christmas party at my house, which was really nice and all of the counsellors enjoyed the chance to celebrate. We cooked steakes and sausages on the grill and Alice made a green salad and potato salad and brought rolls, garlic bread and ice cream. I made baked ziti and chocolate chip cookies, so there was plenty of food to go around and it was a good chance to relax and enjoy ourselves.

I hope your holiday plans are going well. As you know my family will be visiting me here and we will be going on safari, which we are all looking forward to. I hope that your holidays will be equally enjoyable. I am going to log off now as I am feeling a little under the weather (just a cough and a stuffy nose - nothing too major). If I don't get the chance to write again before Christmas have a happy holiday and know that I will be thinking of all of my family and friends back home.

Feliz Navidad
Jennifer

1 YEAR 2 GO

2005-11-19T03:29:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone,

As I mentioned in my last entry, my close of service date is November 17th, 2006, so as of this Thursday I am officially in my second and last year of service. I "celebrated" by going into Peace Corps headquarters in Pretoria for my midway medical checkup. I am apparently in good health and according to the dentist I have no cavities. I also finished up my immunizations with my hepatitis A and B boosters. I'm pretty sure I've now been immunized for just about everything since last September. Pretoria also gave me the opportunity to connect with other volunteers and go to some quality restaurants. We went to a chinese place and a steak grill, both of which were really good and we ordered a slab of chocolate cake for dessert which took 5 people to finish. It was also nice to stay at the backpackers as you get a pool table and a swimming pool and a free breakfast all for R60 ($10) a night.

Alice and I have been busy preparing a funding proposal for the Foundation for Human Rights so that we can do educational campaigns and train lay counsellors in the community on child abuse and domestic violence. They will let us know in january whether we got the money or not. We have also been planning a community march on Novermber 29 against women and child abuse and we have invited several of the creches to march with us as we want children to be involved. We have also been putting together refreshments and entertainment for the children - such as a puppet show and a "bouncing castle". Hopefully this will be a good event with a lot of community participation.

Last night I attended Megan's awards ceremony at her school, which was really nice. She made the honor role and participated in a dance with some of the other students. Her school uses a very interseting format where students have their own cubicle called an office and progress through workbooks and computer learning programmes at their own pace. There are only about 5-10 students per grade and Megan is very happy there as she gets a lot of individual attention and is close to the other kids there.

I hope you all have a very happy Thanksgiving. I will be having Thanksgiving on Saturday in Klerksdorp with some of the other volunteers. Next year I will be home to celebrate with you!

Jennifer

A Tragedy Mobilizes the Community

2005-10-29T05:14:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone and sorry for not writing for a while. The last time I came to this cafe the internet was working very slowly and it didn't seem worth trying to write. First of all I would like to thank all of you who donated to the school supplies fund for the kids here - Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Sue and Uncle Chuck, and Uncle bob and Mara. I'm sure that Alice will be shocked when she hears how much was donated. The number looks pretty spectacular, especially when converted into rand. Thank you also to Grandma and Grandpa for the birthday money, and to Aunt Mary and Uncle Jack for the money for the kids - I'm sorry I overlooked putting your names into my last thank you list.

Well I'm sure that you are curious about the title of this entry by now, so be prepared that its fairly graphic and not for young people.

Last weekend there was a terrible murder in one of the townships outside of Potchefstroom. A seven year old girl left her shack to go use the pit latrine outside. At the latrine she was approached by a neighbor of hers who somehow lured her into the shack of an acquaintance of his who was not at home at the time. He raped her and murdered her, apparently by smothering, and was still raping her dead body when the owner of the shack returned and chased him out. The police caught him a few hours later in another neighborhood. As you may imagine, everyone is pretty upset about this and there was a large demonstration held yesterday outside the court when he was having his bail hearing. Apparently he asked for R1000 bail (about $150) , but the magistrate denied him any bail thank God and as of now he is still in jail awaiting trial in early December. I don't see how he possibly can't be convicted as there is an eyewitness to what happened, not to mention the forensic evidence, but justice sometimes works in mysterious ways in South Africa, so we will have to see. Anyway, Alice and Joseph and I went to the demonstration yesterday to show our support and hand out pamphlets on child abuse. The crowd was pretty big and was taking over the whole street. The press was also there and got a few pictures of us, so we will have to see if they show up in one of the papers. Childline has gotten several calls from people at the protest so far asking what Childline does (the Childline number is on the child abuse pamphlet) so maybe we can make something positive happen from this.

Things otherwise are going pretty well here and it was nice to see all of my fellow volunteers last week at our midservice training. The place where we had training also had a pool, which was a definate plus. Our official COS (close of service) date has been announced for November 17, 2006, so its really only a year from now that I will be getting ready to leave.

Hope you all have a happy Halloween (we don't have it here).

Jennifer

Puppet Shows Continue

2005-10-15T06:15:00.000-07:00

First of all I would like to thank everyone who has sent me or is sending me a birthday present. It's so nice to get things from home. adouble thanks to those of you (Aunt Betty, Kelly, etc.) who sent things for the creches along with the presents. Your generosity is really helping us touch a lot of kids. My birthday went well and I only had to work in the morning as Alice gave me the rest of the day off. I then went out with some of the students at the house and talked and had a few drinks before turning in for the night.

The big highlight at work this week was that we are now reaching out to more creches with the puppet presentations and Alice came along with us to see how they are going. This week's show was about a bird puppet who had a broken wing because a bigger bird had pushed him. the other puppets tell him to tell someone about what happened and to call Childline. The kids then learn Childlines number by jumping from number to number on a gigantic cardboard "phone" I made for that purpose. Everyone had a lot of fun and the creche teachers sent us back some really positive feedback on the show.

Speaking of the creches, they are having their graduations in about a month in a half. We would like to present each child who is graduating with a pencil case full of school supplies. We are putting a sticker with Childline's number on top of the pencil case so it will also be raising awareness for Childline. We are getting donations from the community for this, but there are A LOT of kids graduating so if you would also like to donate some money for this we would really appreciate it. Contact my parents to put money in my account and I will make sure that all of the donated money goes to the school supplies project.

Next week Alice and I are going to my Peace corps midservice training at a conference center in the Magaliesburg mountains, so I will get a chance to get out of Potch and see some people. My mid service medical and dental exams are scheduled for November which is another chance to get out of Potch for a week and a chance to see a doctor and a dentist, since I haven't seen either fior over a year.

Until next time
Jennifer

The one year review

2005-09-24T05:31:00.000-07:00

As most of you know I left for South Africa on 9/27/2004, the day after my 24th birthday. So next week I will celebrate both my 25th birthday and my anniversary of leaving for South Africa. Of course since I wasn't sworn in as an official Peace Corps volunteer until 11/17/2004 my first year of service won't end until November. It's strange because sometimes it seems as if time has flown by incredibly quickly and at other times it seems that I've been here forever. Last week I was visited by our country director for South Africa, Lisa Ellis, and a guy from Peace Corps Washington who is in charge of safety and security. It was nice to have a visit from them and they gave me about 8 chocolate bars for my birthday, some of which I gave to Joseph to take home to his kids. I don't think even I could handle 8 chocolate bars. I really didn't have much to say to the safety and security guy, mostly because I don't feel unsafe here, but it was nice that he came to Africa to visit with volunteers, as sometimes Peace Corps Washington can be a bit out of touch with actual volunteers on the ground. Anyway Alice used the opportunity to brag about me and to beg Lisa for a new volunteer after I leave and I used the opportunity to ask Lisa about who is actually working at Peace Corps nowadays as staff turnover has been very high in the last couple of months. Luckily my APCD (assistant Peace Corps Director) Leah has not left as volunteers report directly to the APCDs, who then report to the country director.
Last weekend I went to a soccer game along with Joseph at the stadium in Potch. It was the finals of the South African Airways cup, so it was a pretty important game, although there are several different cups that the teams in the league compete for, so there are lots of different cup finals throughout the year. Anyway Joseph was rooting for the team that ended up losing, but we had a lot of fun anyway and the winning goal was scored right in from of our seats.
Wel, it's been a good year all in all and I've learned a lot about myself and about South Africa. It can be a bit confusing here as elements of the first world and the third world are mixed together and reside right next to each other and the traces of apartheid have not completely died away, but ultimately it makes working here to build a new South Africa where freedom and opportunity are equally given to all more rewarding and more necessary. Thank you all for writing to me and praying for me during the process. Your support has been invaluable.

Jennifer

The New Trainees are Here

2005-09-10T06:36:00.000-07:00

The big event of the week was that I got to go to Johannesburg to attend a conference on violence against children in schools. Alice was supposed to attend but her daughter was in the hospital feeling dizzy etc. so she sent me instead. The conference was all day on Thurday and Friday, so I took the Wednesday afternoon Greyhound into Joburg and was picked up at the station by the conference organizers and taken to the venue, which was a training center in the Joburg suburbs. I got my own room, which was nice and I spent the rest of that afternoon reading and watching tv from my bed. The conference started on Thursday, and it was really nice and really well organized. The speakers were all excellent. Childline Mpumalanga and Childline Limpopo also brought their new Peace Corps trainees. They are in training right now in a village outside Polokwane in Limpopo, but Peace Corps gave them permission to attend the conference and meet their new supervisors. They should be sworn in in a couple of months and become official volunteers. Anyway both of the trainees were asking me a bunch of questions about my job etc., and it seemed very wierd to me to be the "expert" on South Africa and Childline, but since my group has now graduated to becoming the senior group of volunteers in South Africa I guess I will have to get used to it. They both seemed very eager to get started at their sites, as was I when I was a trainee. Training is very frustrating as your movements are pretty much entirely controlled by Peace Corps, I told them to just be patient until they get sworn in and then they will have a lot more freedom. The trainees I met are Matt from San Diego who will be working with Childline Mpumalanga and Mo (short for Maureen) who will be working with Childline Limpopo (I forgot where she is from). My Peace Corps boss Leah also called me yesterday and requested that I host a safety and security person from Peace Corps Washington for a day next week. I asked if I was in trouble and she laughed and said no, she doesn't even know why these people have come, but they want to meet with volunteers and see what they do and my site is relatively close to the Joburg airport in comparison to some other sites. Also, Leah said that two of the new trainees will be sent to the Klerksdorp area which is about 1 hour from me. One volunteer from my group, Erin, already lives there, so now we will be up to 4 volunteers in this part of S.A.

Thats all for now.
Jennifer

P.S. Mom and Dad - Got the package. Reading Harry Potter now. Best birthday present ever.

Spring has Sprung

2005-09-03T05:18:00.000-07:00

September is turning out to be a really beautiful month in South Africa. The temperatures have warmend up quite a bit, but it is not unberable yet, so I am enjoying spending some time outdoors and walking/biking around town. All we need now is some rain (it hasn't rained since March) but the dry season should end this month and then we can get rid of these terrible dust storms that keep blowing up, especially in the townships.

I apologize once again for not having written in a while. I get paid every three months, and at the end of the three months I get a little low on money. Luckily I got paid on September 1st and I am back to using the internet cafe.

Things here have been pretty busy the last couple of weeks as we have sent out two funding proposals (National Lottery and Nelson Mandela Children's Fund), but we don't expect to hear from them for a while. We still haven't heard from National Lotters on the funding proposal we sent them last year. We have also started the puppet shows at the creches, and the children are really enjoying them. The Game chain of stores has also given us some money to but school uniforms and pay school fees for children in need. The children we have bought uniforms for thus far have been so excited and this program has really been a big highlight for us. One of the mothers even broke down in tears when we brought her child home in her uniform. Unfortunately we don't have enough money to help every child in need, as Alice said it would take millions to provide uniforms for all of the children in need here.

Yesterday we had our first board meeting of the new financial year and we elected our new chairperson, vice-chairperson, secretary and treasurer. The new chairperson is a minister working in one of the townships and i really like him and think that he is going to make a good addition to our board. He even volunteered to drive me out to the creches anytime I need a ride.

I am looking forward to having my birthday this month. For once my birthday is in spring instead of fall! Thank you to Aunt Sue and Uncle Chuck for the beautiful doll they sent me. It now has a prominent place in our office and really inspires all of us to remember that the children are the bottom line when things get hectic here. I am sorry to learn about the big hurricane in the U.S., the photos of New Orleans have been on the news here and it looks really bad. I hope that Dan's apartment is ok and that he will be able to start his new job soon. Luckily he wasn't there when it happened.

Now that I have my Peace Corps salary I will try to write again soon. Bye for now.
Jennifer

A Death in the Childline Family

2005-08-13T06:03:00.000-07:00

As you may have guessed from the title of this entry, my co-workers baby passed away at the end of July. Alice went to the hospital to visit him and she arrived just as they were taking his body out. His mother was not there and she does not have a home phone, so we sent the mother of one of our other counsellors, who is also a nurse at the hospital, to go and tell her. She was very shocked at first, but I think that she is coming to accept the fact that he is at peace now and no longer in pain. He was 13 months old when he died and weighed 4Kg (8 to 9 pounds). He also has very severe wounds on his head and body. I went to the funeral along with Alice and Joseph and the baby's mother put the stuffed teddy bear that I had gotten him for his first birthday on top of his coffin before it was buried, so that was obviously very sad for me.
In happier news, our annual meeting went off without a hitch and we have some good nominations for new board members. We are going to have a training for the nominated board members before deciding on our final board for this year. Our training on Intersectoral management of child abuse also went off well and we had representatives from several government departments there as well as many NGOs. All of the participants said that they got a lot out of it, so hopefully we will be able to follow up the training with better communication between all of the involved stakeholders.
On Thursday, Alice and two of the counsellors and I went to Johannesburg for a training run by one of the other Childlines on preventing bullying in schools, which was presented by a lady from Boston who is part of the safe schools initiative in the U.S. Her presentation was very informative and gave us some good ideas for working with the creches and for counselling children on the phone who are having problems at school.
Sorry that it took so long for me to update this. Hopefully I will be able to put in another entry within a week or so. Hope you are all enjoying your summers.
Jennifer

Meetings Galore

2005-07-16T04:21:00.000-07:00

Well we spent most of this week sending out invitations to two upcoming meetings we are having. The annual general meeting for Childline is on Tuesday, July 26th and we will need to elect a new board and review the annual report - which isn't finished yet. That will be our biggest task for next week. The other meeting we needed to send out invitations too is a training we are holding on child abuse on August 1-3 for various government departments, social service agancies and NGOs. It should be a good and informative meeting once it gets going, it's just making all of the arrangements for it that is stessful.

In some good news, people from Anglo American Gold Mine came to visit us this week as we had sent a funding proposal too them. They were impressed by everything that we were doing, but they won't be able to make a final decision on funding us until their next board meeting in September. Keep your fingers crossed.

We are still very anxious about my co-worker's HIV+ baby. Alice took hime out of the hospital this week and had him evaluated at the private clinic where he was evaluated by the wound specialist at the clinic. She said that his wounds are very serious and she can't understand how they were allowed to get so big as he was already in the care of the hospital when they developed. She said that the hospital should have been more careful about making sure his drip lines didn't get infected and they should of changed his position every hour or so and had him sleep on his stomach with padding underneath to prevent bed sores. He currently has two serious head wounds (you can see the skull) from the old drip lines, and 4-5 deep bed sores on his hips and buttocks (you can see the hip bone and tail bone trough the wounds). We are very worried about these wounds as his body's capacity to heal is already compromised from the HIV. We had to put him back in the public hospital as we can't afford for him to stay at the private clinic. Luckily the wound specialist at the clinic was so touched by his case that she didn't charge us anything for his evaluation.

That's all for now. I'm sure I will have a lot more to tell you after the busy week coming up.
Stay well.
Jennifer

I wish I got American Holidays off.....

2005-07-09T02:48:00.000-07:00

...but I don't so I had to work on the 4th of July. It wasn't so bad though because the weather here is cettainly much cooler on the 4th than it is in the U.S. so you don't really feel like hanging out outside and celebrating. I did bake an American Flag cake with stawawberries and blueberries for the office though, and the counsellors really liked it.
We also had the opportunity to host an American medical student here this week. Her name is Sarah and she is spending the week here before going to another Province where she will spend another 3 weeks. We took her out to the creches and to some of the people we are helping in the townships as well as to hospice and the hospital. At hospice we picked up a 5 year-old girl who is HIV+. She is doing ok, but her mother is dying in the hospital so the hospice workers wanted us to take her into the hospital to see her mother. I'm not so sure that it was such a good idea though, because her mother is not really coherent and can't talk anymore. After her mother dies we may have to admit her into Harvest Land if other relatives don't agree to take her.
My coworker's baby is still in the hospital and he turned one last week. I took him a little stuffed animal and made him a card that I stuck on the edge of his bed. He is stable but still week and very wasted. He may just have turned one, but he can't sit up or roll over and he is not taking any food except the bottle. They were giving him a saline drip, but they had to take it out because he does not have any veins. they had put it in his skull but the line got infected and now he has a pretty big sore on his head. It is wrapped with bandages, but when they take them off you can see his skull, so its not pretty. The hospital is also understaffed so they can't pick up the babies, which means that most of them have bed sores. This baby has three, which we are putting ointment on, but he also has a weakened immune system, so they aren't healing very quickly.
In happier news I now have a space heater in my room courtesy of my landlord, so I don't have to wear three layers of clothes to bed anymore. It's not a great heater, but it's better than the alternative, so I'm happy with it.
Have a great summer. Pray that my parents don't get hit by a hurricane.
Jennifer

Running the Ship - Temporarily

2005-06-25T03:10:00.000-07:00

Well Alice is in Johannesburg next week, so I will be in charge of Childline until she gets back. It's not really that hard, and I can call her if I have any major problems. I spent most of the past week working on developing new skits for the creche project, which we hope to start within the next month or so. We also ran a workshop for all of the creche teachers, with the help of the maths centre across the street. We're hoping that the workshops will now take place every month or so and will help better link Childline to the children in the community.
On a more serious note, my co-workers baby who is HIV+ is still in the hospital and he is not looking good. He will turn a year old next week, but he cannot sit up or roll over and is around the size of a 3 or 4 month old. He is also not eating and will only take formula, so I'm not sure how much longer he will hold out. He also has very bad bruising on his head because the nurses have to insert the IV drip there as he has no useable veins on his arms. I'm just hoping that he holds out through the next week, because Alice would be very upset if he died while she was away.

Here's hoping your summers are going well. There is no central heating here so the temperature inside the house is the same as the temperature outside the house. It can be quite chilly this time of year when the temperatures at night can drop below freezing at night. I try to stay thankful that I am in an actual house with an actual bed in comparison to these poor children who sleep on the ground in poorly-built shacks.

Keep writing me when you have time, I enjoy getting your letters.
Jennifer

Youth Week

2005-06-18T02:13:00.000-07:00

Well this past week was Youth week here in South Africa in commemoration of the Soweto Shootings and Riots back in the apartheid days that claimed the lives of youths protesting the poor quality of black schools. We got the anniversary of the riots (June 16th) off, so it was a four-day week at work. In celebration of youth week, Scooters pizza invited kids from the local schools to come in and make their own pizzas for free. Childline organised the event and I got three free pizzas since I had to go Mon. - Wed. to supervise the pizza making and participate in a skit for the kids. It was lots of fun and I enjoyed my pizzas.

This Thursday on my holiday I watched the annual running of the Comrades Marathon on TV. Actually the word marathon is deceiving since the Comrades is not a standard distance marathon, but rather an ultra distance marathon where over 10,000 people run about 60 miles between Pietermaritzberg and Durban in Kwazulu Natal Province. The top man was actually a South African who finished in about 5 1/2 hours, and the top woman was a Russian who finished in just under 6 hours. Of course for most of the average Joes it took all day and many people had to be carried off of the finish line in stretchers. I think next year I will actually take a week of from work and go down to Durban to watch it because its quite a spectacle and people have picnics by the side of the road while watching the race.

Not much else to say about this week. Next week on Tuesday afternoon we are having a training for the teachers at all the creches we support, and then on Thursday Alice is going to a conference in Johannesburg so I will have to hold down the fort for a week and a half. Hope you guys are having a good summer.

Jennifer

A brief update on things here

2005-06-11T04:51:00.000-07:00

Sorry I didn't update last week. This post will probably be kind of short as well as the last couple of weeks have been fairly boring as far as things here go. Last week I received a package from my mom with a bunch of straight clothespins in it, so I took it to the creches and we made clothespin dolls. The kids think that they are pretty neat and like to point out which one is theirs for visitors. This week was mostly filled up with preparing a funding proposal for Potchefstroom city council so that they will (hopefully) give us some funding. I haven't heard anything from the Jet Competition yet, but I am still hopefull. The next couple of moths will be pretty busy, as we are having out annual general meeting at the end of July, and we still have to finish our annual report as well as send out invitations and finalize the venue and catering. Next week is national youth week, and we have organised an event in coordination with Scooters pizza (a national chain) wherein we will take some kids to Scooters from the local schools every day next week and they will get to make their own pizzas for free. Alice and Josegh and I also get to make our own free pizzas, which saves me a bundle on grocery shopping.

Thats all I have for now. I will report back after the pizza celebration.
Jennifer

Winter is Here

2005-05-28T04:39:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

Yes winter is officially here in South Africa, meaning that getting up in the morning is pretty cold, especially in an unheated house, but by midday it has warmed up to t-shirt weather again, or at least a light long sleeve. People ask me whether it is colder here than where I'm from. I just laugh.

As it turns out the rape case I mentioned last week about the 6 year-old girl was probably a false call. The caller said that he took the girl to both the police and the hospital, and we checked both places, and neither of them have a record of a case like that. The good news is of course that this terrible thing probably didn't happen to a child. The bad news is that this guy keeps calling the office late at night asking to be let in and saying that he is bringing the child. Our counsellors work alone at night and needless to say they are pretty freaked out by these calls. Alice is going to take the case to the police to see if they can figure out who this guy is, since we have his number off of the caller ID.

In the other case I mentioned last week (that of the grandparents and the baby with TB), the social workers at Child and Family Welfare Potchefstroom are going to bring the family weekly food packages as well as TB medicine so that the baby can stay at home.

The big news this week is that I entered a competition sponsored by the JET stores (a South African clothing outlet that sells discount clothes - kind of like K-Mart except it only sells clothes). Anyway, the contest is looking for projects that benefit marginalized children and will award 10,000 rand to one project in each province. I entered my creche project under the title of "Caring for Creches". Alice thinks that I may have a shot at winning the prize for North West Province since the contest wasn't well advertised and we are a poor and rural province. In other words there probably were not a lot of entries from North West. If I do win the provincial prize, I will be entered into the national compitition with all of the other provincial prize winners and the best project at the national level wins 40,000 rand (conversion factor 6 rand = 1 dollar). Its not a ton of money, especially at the provincial compitition level, but money tends to go farther here as things are cheaper here than in America. Nothing is definate yet, but wish me luck as the creches could really use the money, even if it is just the R10,000 provincial prize.

Thats all I have for now. Have a happy Memorial Day weekend and think of me when I'm working on Monday.

Jennifer

My New Pet Project

2005-05-21T04:09:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

As the title to this entry indicates, Alice has said that since I have been working so much in the creches, I should develop an educational program for them about Childline. We have some really nice Sesame Street-type puppets in the office and I have been busy writing some skits using the puppets on topics such as "You are Special", "My body", "No one has the right to hurt you", "Good secrets and bad secrets" etc. Joseph then translates the skits into Tswana and Tswana-speaking volunteers will perform them for the creches. We are also doing little craft projects to go with the skits, for example with "You are Special", we are tracing the children's silhouettes to show them how everyone is unique and different. Since I am now project manager of this particular project, I am really hoping that everything goes well and that the kids learn something.

We had a couple of really sad stories happen here this week. On Wednesday night we received a call from the Klerksorp Police (Klerksdorp is the next town over from Potch). Someone had called them because they had found a six year-old girl along the rural highway that leads from Potchefstrrom to Klerksdorp. The girl was naked and had been raped by eight men. The police took her to the hospital in Klerksdorp, and they discovered that she is actually from one of the neighborhoods outside of Potch where I frequently go to work with the creches. I rally hope that she isn't one of the kids I know. At least she was taken to the hospital immediately, so hopefully they will be able to get some physical evidence against these guys, and also the child said that she knew some of the men, so hopefully we will be able to take these guys to court and get a conviction.

This week we also stopped by Sonderwater to visit one of the needy families we know about. They are really in dire straights right now. The husband had been going to look for food at the garbage dump, but that dump closed down a couple of weeks ago, and no new trash is being taken there. The shach that they live in is also in really bad condition, and they don't even have a praper roof, they just use a tarp instead. One of the couple's daughter's ran off a few months ago and left her daughter with her parents. She hasn't been seen since and now this couple is struggling to take care of their baby grandaughter along with two other grandchildren that another adult daughter left them with. Anyway, the baby just got out of the hospital and has been diagnosed with TB. Since TB is often a sign that the person is HIV positive, especially in children, I wouldn't be surprised if the baby is HIV positive also. We are trying to get the grandparents to send the child to Harvest Land, since the baby needs to take TB medication every day for 6 months straight in order to cure the TB, and the grandparents of the baby won't be able to afford to go to the clinic to get refills of the medication. We are going on Monday to talk with them, but we think that they will consent to placing the baby in Harvest Land, which we think will be the best solution for everyone.

Thats all for now, have a great week.

Love ya,
Jennifer

Boy do I need to update this thing!

2005-05-10T08:07:00.000-07:00

Okay so I haven't updated the blog in a month and I'm really sorry. In my defense I did try to go to the internet cafe two weekends in a row, but they were closed both times. So that's why I'm sitting here on a Tuesday evening trying to think about things to say about the past month. I guess that the big event here was that our national coordinator came up from Durban to visit and to meet with us and the board. The meeting went better than expected, as Alice announced that while she is planning to leave Childline in the long term, she would like to see it on more stable ground first, so for now she is staying put. Also, Joan announced that she has lined up a corporation to start funding us beginning in September, which is definately needed as we have been essentially running on deficit spending since January as we have been borrowing money from the Childline National Office. This new funder will allow us to pay back the national office and will start allowing us to fund our own projects.
Our safe hous for HIV infected/affected children continues to be operational, although there have been some problems there of late. I slept over there one weekend to allow the head caretaker Magda to have a day off to get some rest. It has been very stressful for her to take care of five young children, especially children who are often ill. The day before I came to sleep over 2 sisters ages 12 and 5 came to Harvest Land as their mother had died the week before. For some reason that is incomprehensable to me, the clinic at the children's home decided to shave the girls' heads. I do not know whether the girls had lice or something, but even if they had it would have been easily taken care of with special shampoos. Anyway, they made the 12 year old go to school the next day with a shaved head and she ran away. We found where she was staying but we decided that Harvest Land was not the best placement for her and that she should stay with relatives instead. Her five-year old sister is still at Harvest Land. Alice and I have made an appointment with the powers that be at the Children's home to discuss the situation and why the whold head shaving thing is a violation of children's rights etc., so hopefully we will not have asimilar situation happen again there.
In lighter news I attended the Family Party of one of the creches where all of the parents and sibilngs of the children enrolled there were allowed to come and dance and eat and celebrate with the kids. It was a really fun day and the staff and parents seem to think that I'm a pretty good dancer for a white girl :-).
After two weeks straight after receiving no mail at all, I recived a package yesterday from grandma and granpa filled with magazines. I have been putting some of them on the crisis counsellors desk while I read others at home and then alternating them so thank you for the magazines gram and gramp!

I will try to update again within a week or two. No more long absences I promise.
Jennifer

Two bits of bad news

2005-04-09T05:53:00.000-07:00

1) I had to give up the puppy. I did a lot of hard thinking and decided that my house wouldn't be the best environment for it. A lot of the kids came back from break with pets so we are kind of overloaded with animals right now and the kid in the room next door is thinking about getting a monkey! The puppy was kind of shy, so I didn't think that it was best for it to live there. I also felt that since I have been working pretty heavy hours it was unfair to leave it alone for so long. Anyway it went back to its mother for now, and Alice has another possible family for it lined up.

2) My coworker's 9 month old son has entered the terminal stage of AIDS. He is in the hospital right now and the doctors say that there is no more that they can do, so it is only a matter of time now. When I came to Childline in November the baby was very fat and (we thought) healthy. The baby was diagnosed in December and within the last month it has lost 5 to 10 pounds. Its ribs are now showing and when you pinch his skin it stays pinched and doesn't flatten out again. My coworker was very upset earlier this week, but we think that she is gradually accepting the unavoidable and is just trying to spend as much time with him as she can.

In other news, one of the creches I work with got a new room courtesy of the Rotary Club, bringing its total space to two classrooms and a kitchen. The new room is another tin-platted contaraption, but it appears to be well built and will be warmer than the other room, which is needed since the weather has been cooloing off. In addition, we got word of another creche that needs our help this week. Alice, Joseph and I went out to visit. Their one classroom was actually fairly nice for a creche in the townships, the problem was that it was wall-to-wall kids. I asked the teacher how many kids were enrolled and she said 85 to 90. They are stuggling with providing enough fppd for lunches and they don't have enough blankets and don't have any toys, so hopefully we will be able to help them out at least a little bit.

That's all for now. Hope you are all doing well.

Love,
Jennifer

2005-03-28T05:19:00.000-08:00

The big news from the past couple of weeks is that Alice has announced that she's resigning in order to spend more time with Megan. This means that we will have to find a new director, however Joseph and I may have to be co acting directors until someone suitable is found to replace Alice. Luckily Alice is not leaving for a few months yet until we finish up with the annual report (the fiscal year ends at the end of March). Its going to be kind of a tumultuous time for the next few months, so hopefully we can keep Childline afloat. I'm trying to see this as an opportunity to gain some management experience as well, so mayb e there's still a silver lining.
In other news Alice's dog Fifi surprised everyone by giving birth to a litter of puppies about 7 weeks ago. She offered me one, and I picked out a fluffy white one with black on its head and a couple of black spots on its body. Its heritage is definately unknown, but it looks a little bit like a spaniel/terrier/possibly Corgi mix. I checked the sex of the puppy and I think its male, however Alice thinks its a girl. I don't think she knows what she's talking about though because I was pretty sure that I saw it had a "boy part", I will let the vet decide however when I take it in for its shots and then I can give it a name. The puppy needs another week or so with its mother, and then I will bring it home sometime next week so stay tuned for further puppy developments.
The weather has cooled of a bit, although its still fairly pleasant. I have had to wear long sleeved shirts for the first time since my arrival though. I hope you all had a great Easter and that things are warming up in chilly Syracuse. I'm sure that many of you have heard by now that my parents are moving to Tampa, Florida this summer, so coming home in two years will be kind of wierd as I will be "coming home" to a place I've never lived in before. They are excited about it however and I am happy for them. They are still planning on coming at Christmas however and we are busy researching the best South African vacation spots.
Thats all for now. Hope to hear from all of you soon.

Jennifer

Inservice Training and Kruger Park

2005-03-12T06:19:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

Well I'm back in Potch after two weeks in White River, Mpumalanga Province for my inservice training (IST). Training went well and I have a lot of new ideas for Childline, although sitting in trainings all day from 8:30 to 5:00 can get pretty tedious. I did get a sense of some priority areas for Childline though, including developing a strategic plan for fiscal year 05, expanding our outreach throughout North West Province, improving ongoing training for crisis counsellors and holding more community-based fundraising events. This week I will meet with Alice to go over what I did and to create a work plan.
I was really impressed by the area around White River where we were. It is very hilly and well forested, and we would go on hikes up the mountains after training had finished for the day and be greeted by families of vervet monkeys. Once you were at the top of the mountain you could see for miles up the valley, and it was a truly beautiful view.
On Sunday (our day off), we went into Kruger National Park for the day and drove around in a little minibus for the day with our guide Ed, who pretty much knew everything about every animal in the park. Over the course of the day I saw: lion, elephant, water buffalo, impala, kudu, waterbuck, wildebeast, hippo, giraffe, babbons, nile crocodile, zebra, mongoose, and all sorts of birds of all different colors. It was really neat to see the animals in their natural setting where thay could roam around at will and catch their own prey instead of in a zoo. At one point we were in a traffic jam on the park road because two adult male lions were walking one on each side of the road and no one could get by. We also passed a giraffe who was standing right next to the road doing some "people watching" while munching on leaves. Kruger is also a great place for bird lovers, as you can see tons of different florescent-colored birds everywhere. My favorite bird sightings were the male and female ostritch we saw, along with the hornbills and the different raptors we saw including the fish eagle and the battaleur eagle.
I'm signing off for now, by the way if you see him please wish my dad a happy 52nd birthday on Monday ;-).
Jennifer

Water Fun Day

2005-02-28T02:59:00.000-08:00

Things have been moving along pretty well here, and we had our water fun day fundraiser for Childline on Saturday. A company from Pretoria came down and ran the event for us and teams from around Potch came out to participate. The games were fun to do, and they all involved getting wet in some form. My favorite game was one where they put a rubber ball in the middle of a wet tarp soaped up with dish soap. Three people from different teams then had to sluide down the tarp and the first one to get the ball won. Of course everything was so slippery that it was hard to hang on to the ball and we usually just ended up sliding around a lot. In other news I got two Christmas packages this week, one from my undergrad roommate (Kelly) and one from my grad school roommate (Danielle). Thanks guys, I really appreciate the stuff!
I am currently in Pretoria now as I am going to spent the next 10 days out in White River in Mpumalanga Province for my in-service training. I am going to catch a ride out there with the NGO program coordinator Leah, but for now I get to use the free computers at Peace corps headquarters! White River is pretty close to Kruger park, so I may be able to go one day and see some of the animals, but that is still up in the air.
Thats all for now, I'll write again when I get back to Potch.
Jennifer

Valentine's Day Picnic

2005-02-15T05:20:00.000-08:00

I hope you all had a great Velentine's day. I spent mine in the park with the children from one of the creches I work with. The director had organized taxis to take the kids to the park, and they all had a great time running around and eating candy and ice cream. I also visited another creche last week that is in pretty bad shape. It doesn't even have a yard for the kids to play in, so they just sit in their one room on dirty matresses. We did take them some toys, which made things a little better, but it is still hardly an ideal situation for any child.
In better news are safe house for HIV positive children "Harvest Land" now houses four children and we hope to house 30 children within a few months. We are also planning a water fun day for the end of February where we will raise money for Childline by charging teams of people to compete in different water games involving hoses, slides, etc. It should be a lot of fun.
I also had the opportunity to go to a formal dinner on Friday where Alice received an award for her service to the community. I rented a dress for R250 and we had really good food and I got to meet a lot of nice people. I am sending some film negatives home shortly so you can see pictures of me in my dress.
Well, that's about all for now. I will try to write again this weekend.
Jennifer

A visit from the Childline coordinator

2005-02-05T04:15:00.000-08:00

This Friday the Childline South Africa coordinator Joan van Niekerk visited the Childline North West office to catch up on what has been happening with us. She is stationed in Durban (KwaZulu Natal Province) but gets out to the other provinces periodically to see how we are doing. Another purpose for visiting us on Friday was that Toyota has given Childline North West a new Toyota Tazz and she wanted to be there for the handing over of the keys. I took some pictures of all of us around the car, and it looks really nice with the Childline logo on the side and everything. What's more an organization called round table Potchefstroom has donated gas money for this year. Unfortunately, I won't be able to drive it as I'm not allowed to drive in South Africa. Its bike riding and taxis for me. I have lost a little weight thanks to all the bike riding and walking I do. I'm wearing a pair of Khaki shorts now that fit me in the U.S., but I have to fold the waistband over now in order for them to fit me here.
In other news our safe house for HIV infected and affected children had opened. We are calling it Harvest Land and we hope that within a few months it will house 30 children. Right now there are 2 children there. One is a 5 year old girl named Primrose. After her mother died she went to go live wuth her aunt, however when it was discovered that Primrose was also HIV positive the aunt's boyfriend kicked her out of the house and she came to live at Harvest Land last week. She is really cute, and I bought her a cheap plastic doll which she loves to push around the building in a stroller someone donated. The other child there is Alice's former foster child Georgie, who was discharged from the hospital this week. However we decided that Georgie should stay at Harvest Land for 6 months in order to finish his TB treatment and then gop back to live with his great grandmother. I did a presentation on Georgie's case at the opening of Harvest Land on Tuesday, and Alice told me that it was the best presentation of the day, although she may not be entirely impartial.
I visited Kids Paradise creche again this week and they are up to 29 children who will go to school next year. At the end of the year we try to provide school shoes and a pencil case full of basic school supplies to each child, so we will need your donations more than ever at the end of this year. We made valentines day cards for their parents, which they liked. The Petunias haven't sprouted yet but I'm still hopeful.

Hope you all have a good week and good luck to Donovan and the Eagles on Sunday.
Jennifer

Long time no update

2005-01-31T06:42:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry that its been awhile since my last update. I usually try to update on the weekends, but when I went to the café last weekend the power was out and this weekend my fellow Peace Corps volunteer Erin came and visit me from her site in Klerksdorp which is about an hour away. Erin is from Philly, so we of course talked about the Super Bowl, which were not going to get to see, as compared to cricket which is somehow on tv every weekend and which I am still yet to understand. We also went to the Potchefstroom dam and went down their big waterslide (4 rides for 5 rand) and then went swimming in the dam. We then ate ice cream and read magazines while watching the boats go by.
The house has really filled up in the past few weeks, as most of the students are now back from break even though classes don't officially start until valentines day. Most of the students are first-years, which makes me feel very old. It does take some convincing for them to believe that I'm 24 though.
Work has passed by pretty quickly as of late, and I have been pretty busy between my duties in the office and going out and visiting creches. I usually go and visit one creche on Tuesday morning and another on Thursday morning, although i have been too busy to be able to get to my Thursday creche yet this year. Hopefully I will be able to go this week. Last week at my Tuesday creche we planted petunia seeds in styrofoam cups with some free dirt that one of the florists had lent me. Hopefully the petunias grow or elso my first preschool science activity will be a failure. Pray for my petunias! Anyway that creach currently has 26 five-year olds enrolled who will graduate to school next year. As I primarily work with the oldest ones in order to prepare for them for school, this makes for a pretty big class. Luckily the staff at the creche are great and can translate what I'm saying into Tswana for the kids.
In other news Georgie, Alice's former foster child ended up in the hospital this week. George was born underweight and HIV positive, and also has TB, which is a pretty common "side disease" in HIV positive people. He had been staying with his great-grandmother lately, but she is poor and has an arthritic knee, so she has trouble getting to the clinic to get Georgie's TB medication. When an x-ray was done of his lungs at the hospital it was found that his TB is even worse than before he started treatment as he has not been taking the medicine regularly and has therefore been building resistance. I went to visit Georgie's great-grandmother and brought our administrative assistant Joseph along as my Tswana translator. I told Georgie's great-grandmother that we are opening a temporary safe hose for HIV positive kids where they can receive care and treatment until they are healthy enough to go home. We offered to place Georgie in the safe house for 6 months, so at least he can complete his TB treatment. The great-grandmother agreed and Georgie will enter the safe house this week. Alice and I are going to pick up the great-grandmother on Wed. and take her to visit there so that she can see that it is a good place.
Well, its getting towards dinner time and I also have to prepare materials for the creche tomorrow (the kids are going to make Valentine's day cards to give to their mothers), so I have to sign off. Hopefully I will have a lighter weekend coming up so I will be able to write again. Till then stay safe and stay warm

Jennifer

Thank yous and other news

2005-01-07T03:48:00.000-08:00

First of all I want to thank you all for your generosity to Childline and to me personally this Christmas season. I'm beginning to lose track of all the names, but I believe that Childline has so far received donations from:
-mom and dad
-Matt
-Grandma and Grandpa
-Aunt Sue and Uncle Chuck
-Aunt Mary and Uncle Jack
-Aunt Mara, Uncle Bob and Family
and others who have slipped my mind right now. My mom is sending me an updated list of the donations, so I will hopefully be able to get thank you cards out to all of you soon.
I also want to send big thank yous out to Aunt Margie and Uncle Dick for their box full of wonderful Christmas presents. I wore my shirt on Christmas day and everyone complemented me on it. More thank yous go out to Aunt Betty and Uncle Steve who sent me two Readers Digests which have been circulating around the Childline office this week. I had to read them first though of course :-) Also, I am so grateful for all the family, friends, and St. Pauls members who have been sending letters either by post or by e-mail. There are so many of you now that its hard to keep track of, but each letter is greatly appreciated.

This week has been pretty light as far as work has been concerned, but things are bound to pick up next week when summer break ends and the new school year starts. At my house, my landlord hired a crew of people to paint and clean, so the house is looking better and the new crop of students should move into the house at the end of the month. I am currently spending time in the internet cafe as I had to evacuate my room as my walls are being painted and my carpet is being shampooed today. Lesterday we learned that Nelson Mandela's youngest and only surviving son died in a Johannesburg hospital (his older son died in a traffic accident back in the sixties). His younger son died of AIDS, and the ex-president held a press conference at his home to announce the cause of his son's death. Hopefully this will help wake people up here to the fact that anyone can get AIDS and that people with AIDS should be trated as human beings and not stigmatized. We'll see in the coming week as the funeral arrangements go forward. Mandela also has three daughters who are living.

I hope your New Year got of to a good (if cold) start. The weather here has been sweltering hot and it is hard to sleep even though I put my fan inches away from my bed.

Christmas Festivities

2004-12-27T04:38:00.000-08:00

Well, its been a couple weeks since I have been able to update this blog as things got pretty hectic this past couple of weeks. Luckily Alice gave me this coming week off, so I am using it to read and take long bike rides as well as to get my correspondence in order.
Childline held three Christmas parties this past week. The first Christmas party was in the township of Sonderwater, which is Afrikaans for "without water" which should tell you something about the quality of the neighborhood. We held the part on Thursday and we were forunate to have received donations from the community of 200 plastic buckets and food and clothes to stuff inside of them. Wednesday afternoon Alice and I went to Soderwater with our administrative assistant Joseph -who speaks Tswana- in order to get the word out about the party. Joseph apparently got the news out really well, because when we showed up for the party on Thrusday morning there were twice as many kids as we had presents for. We first staged a skit of the Christmas story, with Joseph reading from the Bible in Tswana, and I played the dual role of angel/wise man. The skit went well, but things started to get chaotic when we started handing out the buckets of presents, because it was obvious that we didn't have enough presents for everyone and the kids started swarming us and crushing us. In order to make sure that no one got hurt, we had to get back in the cars with the remaining buckets of presents and drive off before we could finish the party. We were obviously very saddened and dissapointed by this turn of events, but we really had no choice as our safety and the safety of the kids was being compromised by the swarm.
We also held two Christmas parties on Christmas day, one in the children's wing of the hospital and one at Thakaneng - the shelter for street children. I used the money you donated to supply presents for both of these parties and I baked cookies using my mom's recipe, which went over really well. There were 18 children at the hospital on the day we visited, and 10 of them were babies under age 1. The babies all got small stuffed animals and the older kids got various toys and dolls. When the mothers who were at the hospital with thweir babies saw us they started singing and dancing in the hallways along with the hospital hosekeeping staff. As we were about to leave, a 7 year-old girl was admitted crying and screaming. We gave her a toy and some cookies, and she immediately stopped screaming and settled into her bed.
At Thakaneng we greeted the children who were there and gave out the rest of the cookies. As most of the children there are teens or pre-teens I bought them games such as paddleball and a game where you have to catch balls in cups. I also bought them some board games such as "Guess Who" and "Jenga". The kids had a lot of fun and spent all afternoon playing and one boy was so grateful that he chose to sing a song for us.
As far as Christmas for me personally, I spent Christmas eve at my friend Linda's house as her mom had baked a Christmas dinner and I was invited to come over. The dinner was very good and we had Pap with cheese and spices mixed in which is much, much better than regular Pap. We also had kebobs and sweet and sour pork. After dinner we opened up our "poppers" which is a Christmas tradition here where one person tugs on each end of the popper and then it makes a noise and opens up to reveal a small gift and a paper crown that you wear for the rest of dinner. For dessert we had mince pies and custard which were also excellent. We then left for church which was at 11:15 PM. For those of you who don't already know I have become a temporary Methodist as the Methodist church here is one of three churches with english services. The Lutheran church has services in German only. Anyway, the service was very nice , although some of the traditional Christmas carols have slightly different words here. On Christmas morning I opened my package from Aunt Margie and Uncle Dick and found lots of nice sweets and a t-shirt and magazines - thanks guys! I am still waiting for the rest of my packages as I have been told that there are more on the way.

I hope you are all having a very Merry Christmas. Best wishes for a happy 2005.
Love,
Jennifer

Alone in Potch

2004-12-12T04:08:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,
I was on my own here in Potchefstroom this week, as Alice and Megan spent the week at the beach as part of their Christmas vacation. Alice has this coming week off too, but at least she will be back in Potch, so we can start planning our parties for the kids at Christmas. I am also all alone in the house until mid-January as all of the students are home for Christmas and the housekeeper is on break until January 10th. As for Christmas, I invited my 5 fellow NGO volunteers in the Northwest province to come and help out with out parties, but three of them have gotten back to me and said that they have other plans, so I might just be spending Christmas with Alice, Megan and a whole bunch of kids.
This week was pretty laid back since Alice wasn't there, and I actually missed being so busy. Hopefully things will pick up next week. I made "Christmas chains" with one of the creches I work with, and the kids really enjoyed it. I also used the donations I have received and a little of my own money to purchase Christmas presents for the kids at the street children's shelter and in the hospital. I will try to take a lot of pictures this Christmas, as Alice and I have been very thankful for all of your support.
Until next week,
Jennifer

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas

2004-12-04T04:41:00.000-08:00

Greetings from sunny Potch. Its been seriously hot out lately, as the temperatures have probably been in the 80s or 90s every day. It's hard to tell though because they do everything in Celsius here. It's actually kind of hard to get in the Christmas mood when your slathering sunscreen on and riding your bike everywhere. My boss, Alice is on vacation until December 20th, so I have been spending my time at work helping out at hospice and at the two creches (day-cares) we work at. I have already put your donated money to good use as I bought 15 pairs of school shoes for the children at the creches who will be going to school when the school year starts in late January. A lot of the kids have to go to school barefoot here, so they were really excited about the shoes.
In other news the baby that Alice is going to be fostering for the next three months was born on the night of December 1st and it's a boy. The 15 year-old baby signed away her rights and the court placed the baby with Alice until an adoptive family can be found and the adoption paperwork completed. He is really tiny, even though he was full-term, and Alice is enjoying having a baby in the house. Hopefully we will be able to keep in touch with him even after he is adopted. He doesn't have a name yet, and probably won't get one until he is adopted so right now we are calling him by a bunch of nicknames and the ever popular "the baby".
I also learned this week that one of the children in the baby room in hospice (where I volunteer sometimes) dies last week. I knew that he was very sick, as he never smiled and never played. He did like to sit on my lap though and for me to hold him, so it was a hard loss for me, especially just before Christmas.
I hope that you are enjoying this blog. If you have any comments, you can insert a comment into the blog by clicking on the word comments next to the little pencil at the end of each entry. I will try to write again next weekend. Until then happy holidays.
Jennifer

Swearing in and Moving to Potchefstroom

2004-11-26T05:26:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

I am officially a volunteer now and I have found an internet cafe that is pretty close to my house, so hopefully I will be able to update this at least weekly. The charge is 10 rand per half hour which is a pretty good rate around here (6 rand = 1 dollar). I was officially sworn in as a volunteer on November 17th at the US ambassador's house in Pretoria. The ceremony was very nice and my boss Alice came and took some pictures of me being sworn in so hopefully I will be able to send copies home soon. I have two rolls of film developing as we speak.
Moving to Potch went fairly smoothly and I now live in a privately-owned student compound. I have my own room, and there are two bathrooms, a kitchen, a washer, and a lounge with a tv that I share with 14 other students. I only have two housemates right now however, as most of the students are home for Christmas/summer break.
I spent my first week of service shadowing Alice around and participating in the various activities that Childline is a part of. I have been to the hospital many times, and I just witnessed my first AIDS death, of a 8 month old baby boy named Blessing who weighed less than an average newborn. I visited Blessing several times in the hospital so I was sad when he died, but it is a comfort to know that he is no longer in pain and is now with his mother in heaven. I also visited several creches (day care centers) and I am going to volunteer at one on tuesday mornings now, to to activities with the older children to help prepare them for school.

For those of you who are curious, here is my wish list for Christmas:
-American Magazines (People, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated and/or pretty much any used magazine you have in your possesion).
-"The Economist" magazine: its a bit expensive, but good for people in foreign service
-Classic literature (I have a lot of reading time and I want to get caught up on the classics so I can go on Jeoparady and win millions of dollars like Ken Jennings ha ha).
-Books on world history
-Donations to Childline

Contact my parents (315) 622-1209 for my mailing address.

That's all for now. I will try to write again soon.
Love,
Jenny

Peace Corps Training

2004-11-16T04:31:00.000-08:00

Well it's been a while since I've written in this blog, however there is a good reason for that as I have been living in a village called Swartdam, which doesn't have running water, much less internet access. The plane ride over was long and tedious (15 hours), and when we finally arrived, we were driven to Temba college about an hour north of Pretoria. We stayed at Temba college for one week, and then we were moved to Swartdam, which is realtively close to Temba but a lot more rural. My host family in Swartdam has been very nice and they prepared a really nice room for me with a big bed and lots of cabinet room. The only real difficulties for me there are that there is not running water, intermittant electricity, and it is also really hot (over 90 degrees most days). Training has been very educational, however we are also not allowed a whole lot of freedom, so we are all looking forward to becomming official volunteers tomorrow Noverber 17th. My permanent site which I will move to tomorrow is a city called Potchefstroom in the Northwest Province. The city is actually quite nice and has a large population of college students (mostly Afrikaners). In Potchefstroom, (or Potch as its more commonly known), I will be working with an agency called Childline, which offers a toll-free hotline for children and adults concerned about children in order to prevent child abuse. It also offers several programs in the community aimed at helping the poor children who live in the townships outside Potch. I have been learning a little Setswana in order to better communicate with the black population here. Most of the whites speak Afrikaans, but they also speak some English, so communication with them so far has been all right. The black people in the village where I am living right now also speak English, although sometimes it is difficult to understand.
Well, that is my short little update for now, although I missed a lot of stuff, which I hopefully can fill you in on later. Once I move to my permanent site tomorrow I will be able to access the internet more regularly so keep checking the blog for updates.
Love and peace,
Jennifer

Our 3-day staging event

2004-09-28T09:41:00.000-07:00

Greetings from the city of brotherly love. Today is our last full day in Philly as tomorrow we leave for immunization clinic in the morning and then we will take a charter bus to JFK for our flight to Johannesburg. Staging has gone pretty well so far, although we are all eager to get out of here and on to bigger and better things. It is a bit like first-year college orientations when all of the orientation coordinations make you do group activities and talk about your feelings etc. So far we have had sessions on anxieties and aspirations, basic safety, deflecting unwanted attention, and overcoming cultural barriers. We are actually in training with another group of volunteers that are going to be Stationed in Swaziland. There are about 60-65 of us in all and we are about evenly split between South Africa and Swaziland. The south Africa volunteers are also pretty evenly spit between teaching and NGo development while all of the Swazi volunteers will be working with AIDS education.
So far this is what I know about training in South Africa:
After we arrive in Johannesburg (after a 16 hour plane trip) we will be met by Peace Corps staff and driven to the town of Hammaskraal which is northwest of Pretoria. We will be living in dorms at Temba college in Hammaskraal for a week and then we will begin our stay with our host families. Our host families will all live just outside Hammaskraal (2km to 8km from the college) so that we can get to training easily. During training we will learn about the history and culture of South Africa, our job descriptions and how to get by successfully at work, health and safety strategies and we will also learn a language. The four languages taught at training are SePedi, SiTswana, iSiZulu and Xitsonga. I will only learn the language that will be spoken by the villagers at my permanent site so I won't have to learn all four languages. Upon successful completion of training, I will be sworn in as an official Peace Corps volunteer on November 17th, 2004. Rumor has it that we will not have internet access during training so this may be my last update for awhile. Until then I will try to keep you updated through snail mail and calls home to my parents.

Jennifer

The Journey Begins: Training and Travel Information

2004-09-09T13:27:00.000-07:00

Dear Family and Friends,

As you know I will be leaving the U.S. soon to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer in South Africa. I hope that this blog will allow me to better communicate my experiences to all of you while I am away. I do not know what kind of internet access I will have in South Africa as I am not yet aware of the towns I will be staying in during training and during my service however I have heard that most Peace Corps volunteers find time to go to the cities and larger towns and use Web Cafes. Hopefully I will be able to update this blog on a semiregular basis and I will try to send out an e-mail notice whenever the blog is updated.

My address in South Africa is:
Jennifer Nickels, PCV
U.S. Peace Corps
PO Box 13894
Hatfield 0028
Pretoria, South Africa

My e-mail will continue to be: jenny_nickels@yahoo.com

I am scheduled to leave on September 27th, 2004 (the day after my 24th birthday coincedentally) and will fly to Philadelphia for 3 days of training. On September 29th, 2004 my group and I will fly to JFK and then board Delta Air Lines flight 7796 to Johannesburg. The departure time of the flight is 5:55PM on the 29th and the arrival time is 5:05PM on the 30th. Since we are "travelling forward in time" the flight will actually be less than 24 hours, however it will still be quite long and I'm sure I will be glad to get of the plane and get settled into my 3 month training period in South Africa.

Well that's all for now.
I will write again either from training in the U.S. or from South Africa

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