First extended trip out of Joburg. Heading to the mines to do Peer Education, hang out with Ben and hopefully meet some Mozambicans!

In a few hours Ben will come pick me up to drive about two hours to the town of Orkney which is in the heart of a big mining operation in the North West Province. I was in Orkney with Ben a little over two weeks ago when we went to do the “CD4 Game” and have a booth at a mining exposition. I wrote a bit about the experience at the expo on Friday November 3^rd. Ben has been going to Orkney for almost two years now to train and this will be his final trip for the year. Going to a mine to do training in HIV/AIDS has been own of my wishes with this practicum since before I came to South Africa. When Linzi told me about how ETC does training in mines, mainly training HIV/AIDS Peer Educators I was very interested and thus it is excited that in my final few weeks here I will get to spend time at one of the mines. I will do my best to run in to some Mozambicans to speak some Portuguese or Shangaana. I will definitely have many photos to share and stories to tell when I return late Friday. I might sneak into an internet café during the week to post one or two entries but if that is not the case you will just have to wait till next Friday for more thoughts on my time here in South Africa.

Lest I forget, Freshly Ground put on a good show at the Bassline last night and I have many witnesses to testify to the fact that I did dance. Considering the fact that I don’t drink and thus don’t get rid of my inhibitions through alcohol and don’t come from a family of dancers I think I held my own and had fun regardless. There is another concert coming next weekend that I will try and go to if I can just find out the details of when and where.

Three month anniversary!

It is hard to believe that I started my practicum with Education, Training and Counselling almost three months ago on the 13^th of July. Three months ago I was technically in the air on my way here from the States but what is a day in the big scheme of things. If you want to reminisce on celebrating three months feel free to check out my first blog entry just a few days after arriving here that I wrote on the 18^th of July. Amazing to think that in another three months I will done with my practicum and only one step away from completing my Master’s Degree at the School for International Training (SIT). To celebrate this point in time I am busy working on my mid-term report for SIT which is due in the next few days. I really know how to party and there is nothing like a hair raising recap of my first three months as an HIV Consultant while reflecting back on my learning contract to celebrate such a momentous occasion. Sorry Nate I will have to see about tackling the “11 Books” thing tomorrow. I will be going to “Gauteng AIDS Summit 2006” tomorrow which is put on by the Department of Health and Gauteng Provincial Government and I will no doubt have information to share on this in a future blog entry.

More pics of my place....

Here is the office from the outside which I showed a few weeks back when showing pictures from around the property where the Smiths live and ETC is housed. This is the office where I work and live and try not to go stir crazy. My room (which you will see pictures of below is in a loft above the office.

In front of you is Ben’s desk to the left, the stairs that head up to my room/the loft and to the right past the stairs is my desk. Past the stairs and to the right is the kitchen and to my front and then left (in front of Ben’s desk) is Linzi’s office and the bathroom.

Here is Ben sitting at his desk and working hard for sure. Ben is always dressed up whether in the office or out training or doing sales.

Here are Ben's and my desks looking from the door that goes into Linzi's office. On the wall you above my laptop you can just barely make out a women chopping wood with a baby on her back. This is the infamous photo taken by Lazaro Chauke my photography student in Mozambique. He took it while participating in The World Through My Eyes and it was featured in the August section of the 2006 calendar put out by the Returned Peace Corps Volunteer group in Madison, Wisconsin. Marcilio also has a picture on this page but it is a smaller one. It was so great to have it up in August and the June page had two great pics from Tanzania my father and my sister!

Now lets go up the steep and small steps to my room.....be careful not to hit your head.

Here is my bedroom in the loft above the office. You may be saying to yourself nice room and I agree but.....

not necessarily a lot of headroom in my bedroom. That is right I would need about another foot at least to be able to stand up in my room. Yes, I am tall but the ceiling is low and at its highest is just over five feet high.

From my room/loft you get a view of Douglas at his desk working hard or playing cards....he loves Solitaire.

Heading back down the stairs and going under them we get to the kitchen where I fix my 5 Star meals. I do my own cooking and can’t believe how many more options I have here to when I was in Mozambique but yet I still love some of the special dishes from there and most of the fruits and veggies from there were better in my assessment.

Leaving the kitchen and walking across the office we come into Linzi’s office off of which we can get to the bathroom. Linzi has two big dry erase boards on the wall...

of the office which serve as an oversized calendar to help us keep track of coming trainings, sales calls, etc. She only had one when I first arrived and has added another since. I guess my presence has brought in so much business that we are always busy writing on the wall. j/k

I would have put a picture of Linzi here but she is rarely in the office as she is usually out training, doing sales calls, giving a talk or running errands. She is a busy women but in her absence I have elected to put another picture of Douglas so you can our resident Rhodesian...um I mean Zimbabwean up close. Doug was born in Zim but has been in South Africa for over 20 years now.

Finally turning to my left and taking a picture looking out of the windows by Doug’s desk you see his fountain, car and Jared’s car. I will post other pictures taken in and around the area tomorrow.

My Job.

Although my job is still being defined and refined I can tell you a bit about the work that I will do in South Africa over the next six months. I am working with Linzi, Douglas and Ben as an HIV/AIDS consultant for ETC, Education, Training and Counselling which means I will be doing work around the office such as marketing and sales calls, grant writing and research and work in the field (factories, mines, government offices) such as training/facilitating HIV/AIDS

Peer Educator Courses, HIV Committee Development Programmes (I will be using British English for certain terms as that is the English primarily used here) and other knowledge, education and prevention trainings on HIV/AIDS.
I have already had a variety of experiences in my first few days including accompanying Doug on a sales call to a brewery looking to do some HIV/AIDS education with its employees and joined Linzi on a two-day HIV Committee Development Programme with 12 participants at a government office in Tshwane (formerly called Pretoria), which is South Africa’s national capitol and is located 63 kilometers (39 miles) from Joburg. Gauteng Province is one of nine provinces in South Africa is the smallest in terms of km²/mi² but has the second largest population with 8,837,172 about 600,000 people behind KwaZulu-Natal with 9,426,018 inhabitants (2001 Census). Gauteng Province is located in the Northeastern Region of RSA (Republic of South Africa) along with the province of Mpumalanga which is the province nearest to Mozambique and one I visited a few times while in Moz when I wanted to have time in RSA. I will share more about the countries geography, history, culture, etc. in later entries and now want to get back to the training.

Since this was my first time attending one of the many trainings that ETC offers I took this first chance to sit in with the participants and follow through the training manual as they were doing, participate in individual, small and large group activities. I also kept notes on Linzi’s facilitating with questions, compliments and suggestions as well as other questions about material covered, statistics, etc. I will leave you with this for now and return to this training at a later point to tell you more about the attitudes, perceptions, questions and ideas that the participants brought to the training and how these were addressed and hopefully corrected or clarified over the two day training.

Johannesburg or bust.

Hello dear readers,
I created this blog over a month ago after coming up with what I thought was a creative name but never really felt prepared to start it until arriving in Sandringham, South Africa. My arrival was scheduled for 12 noon on Thursday the 13 but when we arrived in Dakar, Senegal (flying from Washington, Dulles) we were informed that due to a fuel shortage we had to go to Ilha do Sal in Cabo Verde (backtracking an hour or so) to get fuel to continue our journey. This meant that I arrived in the Johannesburg International Airport after 2:30 PM and spent 45 minutes going through immigration, collecting my bags and clearing customs. I was met at the airport by Jared Smith, the son of Linzi the women I am working for here, and he drove me the 20 or so minutes to their house. I met Christina, the Smith’s domestic servant and her son Thomas and then headed to the office to get moved in. My bed is in the loft in the office overlooking three desks below.

The rest of the afternoon was spent unpacking my stuff, setting up my “room” and getting settled in. Linzi was out working and came back around 5:30 when it was starting to get dark. What a contrast arriving in 60 degree weather in the middle of South Africa’s winter where it starts getting dark around 5 PM having come from the middle of the summer in Portland where it was in the 70s, 80s and 90s and staying light until 9 PM. I made my own dinner as the Smith’s dinner was prepared with meat and me being a vegetarian I am a bit of an oddity here in South Africa. I will be doing primarily all of my cooking on my own. I was tired around 9 and slept in the next morning.

Friday through Sunday I took time to get to know the family meeting Douglas, the father, Roxy, the Smith’s daughter, Stewart another one of their sons and Christina’s other son John. I also went to the grocery store (two to be exact) with Linzi, set up “my” kitchen in the office, watched rugby with Doug and Stewart, watched TV with the Smiths, went for a walk around the neighborhood, played Scrabble with Linzi, Doug and Stewart and got comfy in my new digs. I did a bit of work too reading a 47 page document from Linzi that gave me an overall orientation of ETC's purpose, process and practice.

All in all it was nice to have a few days to settle in, get an overview of the surroundings, practicum (internship) and people I will be living and working with. Tomorrow I start my first full week of my practicum and I will undoubtedly have more stories to tell.