Everyday life in Blaauwbosch...

Hello friends and family :)

I hope you are all well and enjoying the English winter! I am settling into an African summer...quite different from what I'm used to. Not only does it get hot suddenly and then cold again, but they have really strong winds and then sharp downpours that flood the pathways. It is strange being in a place where summer means hot and rainy! The hottest so far has been about 32degrees, and the hottest month is not until January. Sometimes you wake up and it looks cloudy so you dress a bit warmer and then by 9am the cloud has burned off and it's boiling! Then by 3pm a big black cloud appears, the wind is rattling the roof and it pours with rain. Then the next morning, bright sunshine again! I am trying not to be vain about clothes here but sometimes I can't help it, I have to change three times in a day to match the weather!!

Anyway, I'm just trying to paint a better picture of everyday life here. The food is not as bad as I remembered...I have basic ingredients but the only meat I like is the chicken. I tried cooking these sausages and they were so disgusting I had to throw them away. I have eaten other meat cooked by the kitchen but it always has bones and grissle in it. They don't seem to mind! I just want a piece of meat where I don't have to spit bits out or gnaw on a bone!! I will never take boneless chicken breasts for granted ever again...What else, breakfast I have peanut butter toast which is nice. Lunch I either eat what the kitchen has prepared for the staff or just some more toast. I tried making French toast and it was quite nice. But the house smelt like burnt food which was a bit embarassing when visitors turned up. They already think I'm a useless housekeeper because I don't know how to polish the floors! Then dinner, I make either roast chicken or chicken curry. Not very adventurous! It's been 4 weeks and I am already kind of sick of chicken and rice...2 years could take its toll, maybe I will have to branch out.

Now to tell you about African food...lots of it is totally alien to me! They ask me what it is called in English and I have to tell them I have no idea because I've never seen it before. Most of the carbohydrates they eat are totally weird...'pap' which they also call 'stiff porridge' but looks nothing like porridge to me! And some bean mushy stuff [actually quite nice] and they eat mashed pumpkin a lot! The worst thing [which I haven't even tried] is called 'sour milk' in English, I can't remember in Zulu. The name is enough to put me off let alone the smell! It comes out kind of thick and then they mix it with something else so it looks a bit like porridge, gross! The other weird thing I had the other day which was actually nice was a fish chilli! I thought it was beef at first then realised I had been eating fish, quite a surprise! They never waste anything here so often you find the meat they are eating is something which you would never see in England...like they had chicken feet for supper! They were actually gnawing on the claws of chickens, it looked so wrong! They said they eat the heads too! I guess all that stuff ends up in mcChicken nuggets and things like that, but here everything is in it's original shape, no hiding what it is! 'Processing' things is definitely not something which really happens in Africa, I've noticed that a lot. It's especially evident when you see the cow being brought in on the back of a truck, tied up and slaughtered, then served on the BBQ [braai] later that day. Freshest meat I've ever had!

What else can I tell you about my life...my house is very comfortable, not really any different to living in England. I have sofas, tv, fridge freezer, microwave, toaster, hot shower...the only thing which is hard work round the house is doing laundry. You have to scrub it all by hand and I always make my knuckles bleed by the end of a load! They you have to rinse it and hang it out. There is a rinsing machine which I can use sometimes, its basically a barrel which fills with water and spins round...pretty oldschool!! O and the toilet paper is really crap! And my electricity is always shutting off because it's too weak round here. So the fridge is turned off most the time, o dear. You have bars on the windows and doors here, and big fences with spikes on top surrounding the Home. That is normal here, houses always have security fences round them, no little picket fences or low walls like in England. At first I found it intimidating but it makes me feel safe now.

The township which I live in is called Blaauwbosch Catholic Mission...you won't find it on a map or on google because it doesn't officially exist. They have been trying to get it under the durastiction of one of two local councils, Madadeni and Osizweni, but neither one will accept responsibility for it. So apart from the Home and the Church which have built their own sanitation, none of the hundreds of homes here have running water or sewage systems. They have to collect water from taps to wash and cook, and they have outdoor hole-in-the-ground loos which are corrugated steel cubicle things that they have fashioned themselves. They do however have electricity...I don't know how or when this came in. It seems crazy to have electricity but no running water! The people living here are desperately poor. About 80% are unemployed and a similar number are HIV positive. The two often go together as they can't hold down a job because they are sick.

I had quite a scary enounter on the way back from church on Sunday which was held at the primary school, a 15min walk into the heart of the township. A crazy old man who was in his garden started talking to me, he was kind of shouting then I realised he was speaking English and was saying don't walk away from me when I'm talking to you! So I stopped and shook his hand and said hello to be polite but he wouldn't let go of my hand. He was kind of talking nonsense, half zulu half english, then he became more coherent and said he wanted my advice. He said he was addicted to drugs and wanted to know what he should do to stop. He kept repeating the question so I tried to make up an answer! I just said that it's a very hard thing to do but he must try to gradually take less and less because you cannot cut off easily in one go. But he must try and get medical help...I don't even know what the drugs were. The thought going through my mind was that they might actually be drugs for HIV which he needs to take. Often they have very anti-drug taking taboo, to do with their cultural opinions and they sometimes choose to stop taking the drugs which they need for HIV in favor of using traditional herbal healers. I was worried that he might be talking about his HIV drugs which ofcourse I want to encourage him to take! It was a very weird encounter...he let me go and said I must go with a smile on my face to eat my lunch! He was crazy but not a bad man...just very sick I think.

I've been thinking a lot about the children in the Home and wondering if they are sick. Details of the HIV status of all the children is completely private to ensure they are not treated differently or discriminated against. Sadly attitudes are still very misunderstood and families even disown family members who have the virus. My attitude is so opposite in that, I also want to treat them differently, because I want to love them MORE and spoil them! And give them more attention and love, and it is because I pity them. I know it's not a nice feeling to think that others pity you, you want to feel like a 'normal' person. But I just want them to have the best, most love-filled life they can. Maybe they will only live to be a young adult...it doesn't really bare thinking about. It is just so sad. As well as the drug treatment they should be undergoing HIV counselling here too I think...I have heard it mentioned, I'm just not sure what it involves or who conducts it. But the idea is to help them come to terms with their illness and realise that they can have a life past being diagnosed. But the resilience of these children is just stunning. If I knew I had HIV I would just curl up and wait to die...I couldn't carry on like they do. But if they are born with the disease...they have never known any different. We must just make sure they don't see that reaction of tragic pity in the way they are treated or spoken too, they must be given hope for their future, because they only have one chance at their future, they only have this one life...