This is the last post I can write while here since I have to give the modem back tomorrow and will be without internet until Friday night.
We went to the field today with one of our advisors to
assist with some quality assessment and check up on some children I pegged as
not growing correctly from their data. The participants in the study are in
several villages and we visited a good number of them including Pile,
Tshandama, Dzimauli, and Tshibvumo. Instead of just observing this time, I got
to help with all aspects except communicating with the mothers. I was even
recruited by a mother to hold a smiley naked infant while she got him a diaper
and one father tried to get his clingy little boy to transfer to my lap after
we traumatized him by putting him on a scale.
As much as I claim to hate children and avoid them and
their noise when I’m in the states, I can’t help but enjoy the children I’ve
met here. They’re generally quiet and well-behaved, which is good because they
are everywhere, and when they are making noise it’s usually because they’re
excited to see a white person. We went to two creches (daycares) to measure some
participants and at the first the children started crowding at the fence and
pointing at us. They started chanting “Makuah!” and then made it a more
elaborate song once I’d started filming it that was translated to mean “two
white people and one just pulled out a camera.” They formed a semicircle around
us and every time I looked down they were closer and jostling each other to be
in front. We measured the children we needed in a room separate from the
others, but there was always a solid mass of children pressing as far as they
dared through the doorway and against the windows.
People keep asking me if I could live here permanently
and one of my reasons why I don’t think I can handle much more than the time I’ve
already been here is all the dirt. All
the children are dusty, the cows are dusty, everyone’s belongings are
permanently stained red, and I have to constantly dig dust out of my ears. I
can actually scrub my face clean before going to bed and find that my cloth is
completely red again as soon as I wake up in the morning and my clothes are
never clean. I’ve noticed that a lot of households try to keep their living
areas cleaner by laying concrete or something I assumed was mud mixed with
grass. We were chastised by one woman for walking too close to where she was
spreading the mud when it was explained that the mud was actually cow dung. It
dries to a decently resilient, but easily replaceable, solid layer over the
dirt and can be swept clean. The source explains the fine plant particles that
make it soft to touch. It’s also cheaper than concrete and easier to work with
since it can just be spread on the ground by hand in the exact design one
wants.
The household complexes generally consist of a few round
huts and one brick house connected by concrete or dung walkways. My roommate asked
what the round huts were used for when there was an actual house available and
we were told that they’re the original dwellings of the families. Apparently
families will settle on a plot and use the round huts while they save money and
prepare for the larger, more permanent house. A couple places we visited didn’t
have a house, but had half-finished foundations for one. Once they move into
the house, they can let other people use the huts, use them as sitting rooms,
or keep their kitchen in one. In the villages, a lot of people still have
outdoor “kitchens” which consist only of a place for a fire on the ground. Some
are just out in the open or have a makeshift shelter over them. Then we went to
a house that was furnished so richly that I couldn’t believe I was just
watching a mother sit in the dirt in a dark unfurnished hut to feed her child.
The gap between the average and the wealthy on the same road in the villages
was astounding.
At the first house we went to I noticed a dog that was
limping on two legs. He had a huge tear in his skin in the pit between his
chest and one of his front legs, so deep that the muscle was exposed. My first impulse
was to snatch him away and find a vet, but animals aren’t valued the same way here
as they are in the U.S. and I wouldn’t have been able to find a vet anyways.
Dogs aren’t considered companions and friends as much as they’re seen to be a
part of the land or vermin. Some of the Univen students were appalled that
people let dogs sleep in their beds with them and would never consider toting
one around. Cats aren’t pets at all and exist as feral animals that we’re
warned to avoid. The poor dog didn’t look like he’d been in a fight, so I
guessed that he’d caught himself on one of the barbed wire fences that surround
nearly every plot. He didn’t seem to be in any horrible pain and was getting
around fine on two legs, so I begrudgingly left him. Nearly every house we
visited after that had at least one scruffy dog sleeping in the sun, which was
bad news for my advisor’s fear of dogs. They all seemed to be of the same breed
and I could see some African wild dog in their faces. Most of them, despite
looking like they’ve never been clean in their lives, were adequately fed.
There were a few, however, that were legitimately emaciated, scrounging for
bugs and scraps in the house’s trash pile. I’ve seen plenty of skinny strays,
but I don’t understand keeping a dog around the house and not feeding it. One
puppy, not more than a couple months old, was so wasted I could make out
individual bones. It and its mother were so scared of being hit that when I
gently put my hand out for it to sniff, they jumped away in fear. One of the
last houses we were at had some particularly vocal dogs and the first I’d seen
with cropped tails. When the owner was chasing them away from us by hitting
them with rocks, I noticed that the tails had been recently cropped and the
stumps were open wounds. It took a lot of willpower to just walk away from a
lot of the animals and I was wishing desperately that I’d had a bag of beef jerky
to hand out to the starving puppies. I’m going to give my dog extra attention
when I get back.
My roommate and I are going to make no-bake cookies (the
only “pastry” we can make with our one working burner and no stove) for the
office tonight since tomorrow is our last day there. I expect we’ll spend most
of it saying goodbye to people and then I want to knock off early to replace
some of the chocolate that I’d bought to take back but ate already and start
packing.
It’s hard to believe that the entire summer is gone
already and I spent it living in South Africa. I know that trips abroad are
common for college students, but I think that this kind of experience is a lot
more valuable than the tourist trips that are usually available. Aside from the
research I’ve been involved in, which is eye-opening in itself, I got a chance
to live among the Venda people in an area that is radically different from what
I know. Instead of staying in a tourist-friendly hotel, I stayed in a cabin where
the kitchen is dark, the doors don’t close, and lizards live in the ceiling.
Instead of sticking to “safe” tourist sites, I followed a man to a forbidden
lake and wandered around in the bush with my knife out. If I wanted to eat, I
had to cook it myself or hope that the restaurant food wasn’t tainted. If I
wanted to get to work or the store, I had to walk and run across streets between
moving cars. I was given the very unique opportunity to become part of a foreign
community for two months and get to know the people as people just like me, but
with a greater affinity for pap and Mopani worms, rather than seeing them as
objects to be photographed and viewed from outside. I have a family half a
world away, now, from whom I’ve learned so much. I definitely would not have
given up this experience for anything.
We had some issues figuring out how my roommate and I are
getting back to Johannesburg on Thursday for our flight, but Univen is kindly providing
transportation. We’re flying out of O.R. Tambo on Thursday night, will layover
in London for a few hours Friday morning, and then I’ll reach Dulles around 3
p.m. Friday afternoon. I hope the night flight will make adjusting to regaining
six hours easier and I know the triple venti white mocha I plan to get at the first
coffee shop I can find in London will definitely help.
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