Catching Up

Finally found time to write more! I spent the weekend in the township of Nyanga with friends. Friday night we prepared lots of food for a braai - a barbeque - on Saturday. I grated carrots and chopped vegetables for chakalaka! Chopped cabbage for umfino! Prepared spicy marinade for meat! I was so impressed with my friend's 4 year old son, who helped with the vegetables and the housecleaning for hours! Oh, and the power went out, so some of this we did by candlelight. Saturday was a beautiful warm day for Cape Town winter. And we had a small jazz band - local guys - playing in the street outside the house. It was great fun watching people dance to the music - and watching the children push each other down the street in a makeshift car made from a plastic crate, scraps of wood, and small wheels off an old cart. The creativity in making toys and games from what you can find in the neighborhood is amazing! Why do we at home just run to the store to buy our kids another toy? By late afternoon older kids and adults had a soccer game going in the middle of the street. Cars simply had to wait or go around another way! South Africa is mad for soccer, and almost everyone has a bright yellow Bafana Bafana shirt. Everyone is to show their support for the team on Friday, so I had better buy myself a t-shirt! World Cup 2010 is just days away!
The curriculum for parent training is shaping up! We just keep expanding the things we need to cover - guidance, supporting children's development at home, handling emotional crises, parenting hot spots like biting, toilet training, sick children, and more! The plan for a weekend pilot of the training is going to have to be expanded to 2 weekends to get it all in! This weekend we'll need to get lots of feedback from the parents on what is helpful so that we can fine-tune it before training counselors to take over the sessions. We met with a young Xhosa man today who is also a psychologist and doctoral student. It was a very informative lesson for me on language translation. There is no Xhosa word exactly for anxiety or worry. The translation is literally "my hands are sweating." This is true for many words that we have in English regarding feelings.
Last night I attended Ivy's Xhosa conversation class. She's a talented teacher! Molo! Unjani?
Ngubani igama lakho? Igama lam ngu Jan. Of course we sang the South African national anthem - Nkosi Sikele Afrika! Oh, we were feeling it! So patriotic! We had a lesson on marriage traditions. To marry a woman a man must pay Ilobola to her family. Guys, if you get a girl pregnant you pay damages to her family and also support the child. We're talking 4 to 8 cows or money to equal that value. If you then marry her, you must still pay Ilobola - more money or cows. A meeting with the bride's uncles with a bottle of whiskey (weather you drink it or not) is necessary to seal the deal. It's much more complicated than this in all the details in reality. How much you pay depends on her education, if her job contributes funds for the family, how many siblings she has. I learned of very similar traditions from a medical student from Botswana last week as well. I truly learn more and more every day! What an opportunity just to be here!