These are a few of my favorite things

Oh hi! Times are still moving here in Southern Africa. The hot has come. It's alright with me. I was going to make blogging more often one of my new years resolutions, but if I wait until the new year to post again, it will go down as a blogging disaster. In contrast to my traditional blog posts narratives due to the large gap in time, i'm gonna throw down a list of some of my favorite things about this place.

My favorite things about South Africa:

1. Free range chickens- I usually wake up in the morning to one of two things, the loud rooster that believes 4:30am is time to get up or the mother hen and three chicks rustling through the leaves below my window. Chickens are everywhere here in the rural locations. If you own chickens, you wake up in the morning,open the gate, and know that they will be home at dark. Its that simple. The honor code is that basically you dont kill another man's chicken, and it seems to work. Other than the hungry dogs that sometimes catch a slow one, these chickens seem to roam free with no problems. I love the fact that in america free range chickens is kind of like a buzz word. It basically means that those expensive chickens you were eating from whole foods did not spend their whole lives in a cage. Here, they provide entertainment, alarm clocks, and insect repellant. Now if i could just get them from eating my garden.

2. Taxi rides- I live outside of a large township. The way they classify places people live here is very confusion. Some of my friends might say its not a township and is actually a location. Still, it is a large town with a mini-mall type complex with a grocery store. I dont have any of this in my village, so i need to travel up to two times a week to get to this town. The procedure goes as follows: stand by the road, point the direction you want to go, and hope and pray that the next mini-bus/koombie isn't full to the brim, or only has the back row seat between two fat people available. I love taxi rides because its always an adventure. Whether i am taking the 30 minute ride to my closest town or traveling for 8 hours straight to a distant city, its always gonna be an exciting ride.

3. Xitsonga- The language that I hear, and try to speak every day is called Xitsonga, or Shangaan depending on the location. The region i am in is more accustomed to calling it Shangaan, mainly because it is a mix of pure tsonga from the Giyani Region of South Africa and Mozambique along with Swati, English and Afrikaan. I live in the border of Kruger National Park, which borders Mozambique. Many people from my area have immigrated to South Africa from Mozambique, bringing their own customs, culture, and language. The English and Afrikaan mix came during the Apartheid era when many white farmers used this fertile land as farms. The language is fairly simple in its basic form, but when you mix these languages together it creates moments of hilarity on my part of understanding, and pure joy when i get something right to those around me.

4. Gogos (grandmothers)- I live with a gogo, i work with some gogos, and every time when i take the aforementioned taxi rides, i look to chum it up with some gogos. I remember during training another volunteer telling our group that she thinks gogos and middle age women run this country, after nearly ten months in this country i could never disagree with this statement. They care for the sick, feed orphans, cook, clean, and maintain order in place where a traditional family dynamic is rare at best.

5. Children- I may be a spectacle to many children i meet, and to others i am simply a scary bearded man, but when i have interacted and speak with the children of this country i have grown to love and cherish the time we are together. While the school system continues to differentiate between social classes, the children of the village i live in are eager to learn, easily adapt to change, and are curious of the world around them. They are witty, and strong willed, and even the young ones get used to me and arent so scared after a while.

This list could go on and on, but i still do need to take a taxi today, speak some Tsonga, scare some chickens, talk to some gogos and play soccer with some children.

I will get back to blogging more often. I've been staying busy with Peace Corps Trainings and plenty of work at my organization, but sharing what i have experienced about this beautiful country with those of you back home should definitely be one of my priorities. Stay well.