THE PARTICULARS

For those of you interested in the particulars of my placement site…

Carolina is a small town in rural South Africa. The geography and landscape looks a lot to my eyes like South Dakota, with its expansive grazing land for cattle and numerous grain elevators. The town itself has one main street that contains three grocery stores, banks, multiple fresh fruit vendors, cell phone repair shops, hardware stores, a few clothing stores, a petrol station, post office, and municipal buildings (including library). Off the main street there are also two schools, a hospital, and lots of churches. The largest community in the area is Ermelo, a 45 minute drive away, which has more services and entertainment options. So Carolina is really a pretty self-contained little town; there aren’t even public transportation options here, unless you count hitchhiking as public transportation!

View from my front door

My host parents live on the outskirts of town in a neighborhood formerly reserved for whites. Under apartheid, blacks and coloureds (typically people of Indian or Asian descent) lived in townships built about 1km away from towns in an attempt to keep races separated. Although apartheid has been abolished and townships are no longer regulated by law, its effects are still very much a reality; most blacks and coloureds still live in designated township areas. Carolina has two such townships, a black and a coloured. My family lives between the black township of Silobela and Carolina proper in what is now a racially mixed community that is neither town, township, or country. [interactive moment- find Carolina, South Africa on GoogleMaps and you’ll see Silobela outside it’s southeastern boundary] Also, I still haven’t found anyone who can tell me what the population of Carolina is, mainly because I’ve discovered it’s not that straightforward of a question, given the presence of two townships. By my guesstimate Carolina alone probably has a population of 1,000 residents or so, but I’m going to continue to ask! I haven’t explored Silobela enough to understand its overall size.



The back door, which is the unofficial "front door"


 Thus far I am enjoying the rural setting; one of the first phrases I learned in Zulu was ‘Ngisahamba ngi ya edolobheni’, which means ‘I am going to town’. It is safe for me to walk around by myself here, something for which I am very thankful for! However, being in a rural area means that while I can walk around freely in town, we usually have to drive everywhere else. Rev. Absalom is also the Dean of the Igwa Circuit of the ELCSA, which covers almost the entire Mpumalanga province. His duties to preach around the circuit every Sunday means we often travel great distances to go to church. I enjoy meeting people in each congregation as much as I enjoy getting to see different towns and areas in the circuit.

As for my job here, right now it’s Anything Goes. I have been assisting the Dean and his full-time Clerk Lindiwe with various church tasks (typically involving the computer) and whatever else needs to be done around the house. I work in the garden, wash dishes, visit sick community members, and assist neighbors with homework for their adult education classes. I am also doing a bit of architectural drawing for a church centre in Ermelo that contains a conference center, housing, and HIV/AIDS counseling center. I will visit with the Principal for a local primary school this week to see if I can help there as well.

I am discovering something new each day about myself and the global world we live in. I am also learning to not worry about not knowing all the particulars! I’ll do my best to share the particulars I do know with you, but let me know if I’ve left out one you’re interested in and I’ll respond as best I can!