Des pays et des gares...

Perry and I took our GRS Student Leaders out for pizza last weekend. We had a blast! Our friend and fellow volunteer, Sipho, joined us. We had three pizzas: one topped with the American pepperoni my mom brought over, one topped with steak and feta, and the last mushroom and peppadews. It turns out that this was the first time either of these kids had ever tried pizza! Sadly, we were so busy eating that we didn't get any pictures of the pizza. Afterwards, we played Uno…Philile won by a landslide! Nice group shot by Sipho Waiting for our pizza!   Playing Uno Elections I forgot to mention the big election…mostly because nothing very exciting happened! Our village's election center was our school and the presiding official was our principal, Mrs. Busi. Everything was orderly, the ballot boxes seemed well-secured, and there were no toi-tois. Despite "appropriating" 208 or so million of taxpayer rand for "upgrades" to his presidential abode ...

Student leader Nkosingiphile On May 27 , 2014, team Super Strikers had their Grassroot Soccer/PC Skillz graduation celebration. Fifteen learners earned a certificate of achievement by attending eight or more GRS practices. Additionally, two learners (who graduated from the program last year) became certified student leaders! Grassroot Soccer, for those who missed  my previous post about it, is a soccer-themed curriculum that teaches kids about HIV/AIDS. It's also a lot of fun! The Super Strikers put together a schedule of events for our celebration: Welcome to Super Strikers' Graduation! Mini-Practice a. Energizer (one coffee, two sugar) b. HIV Limbo c. Kilos (coca-cola kilo, NJ kilo, and kilo kilo) d. Drama (skit about gender-based violence) Awards Ceremony Celebration! Bobet, my counterpart, helps explain GRS "One coffee!" First, we described to our guests (we had a great turnout, including a few...

Today I took a few photos of my Dash girls (a couple of boys come to play occasionally, but mostly it's these girls :)). They are hooked on Scrabble Dash! This game is played with three decks of cards. Dark green cards are consonants, light green cards are vowels, and red cards are instructional. Players hold seven cards at a time, just like regular Scrabble, and are initially dealt five consonants and two vowels. When a word is successfully played, players select new cards equal to the number of letters in the word played – either consonants, vowels, or a mix. Dash Girls! To begin, the first player flips a red card over and everyone scrambles to put down an English word. Red cards contain instructions such as “Verb,” “Four Letter Word,” “Three Letter Word,” “Has a ____,” and “Starts with ____.” So, if a red card that says “Has a ____” is turned over, the player who turned the card over must name a letter. Then the first person to place a correctly spelled English word ...

The Post Office strike finally ended and my new Wonderbag finally arrived! I decided to try a beef curry recipe first. The Wonderbag is kind of like an electricity free slow cooker. You begin your dish on the stove, simmer it for a bit, and then put it in the Wonderbag to finish. In all, my curry spent about 45 minutes on the burner, then 3 1/2 hours in the Wonderbag. After I took the curry out, I put in a pot of brown basmati. I simmered the curry on the stove while the rice cooked, because the curry needed more cooking time. Overall, I was quite pleased with the results -- and Perry was, too! Next time I'll adjust the curry's cooking time upward by a couple hours. Part of the problem, I think, stemmed from the fact that I had to cook the curry on a hotplate, because our stove is broken again. The hotplate just couldn't get the curry as hot and simmering as the stove could've. Next time I'll Wonderbag the curry for 5-6 hours. For the rice, I added a cup of brown...

I'm a posting machine this week. :) With fewer duties this year, I have extra time on my hands. This is a series of photos I took to try and use for one of my MatadorU photography assignments.  Money was found to build a new kitchen. Yay! Our new building has four solid, plastered walls, a tin roof, and unglazed windows for ventilation. Prep and cleanup is still an outdoor affair. The most commonly prepared meals are pap (corn meal porridge) and stewed chicken feet, pap and pilchards (canned sardines in tomato sauce), samp (kind of like hominy) and beans, and butternut. Sometimes we get roasted mealies -- roasted ears of field corn. In season, large cases of oranges will appear at school and get doled out. At other times, bananas will arrive. When the lunch ladies have finished preparing the day's meal, they portion it into large, repurposed plastic buckets and place these at intervals along the walkways in front of the school's classrooms. It's served at 10AM and t...