3/12/2010

By ourselves, we got up at 6. The family, who had stayed up way past us the night before, was already up doing household work (collecting water, sweeping, etc). We all got up and dressed and went outside. Everyone got a chance to sweep, but that is where the equalities ended. We talked to the family after breakfast (VERY sweet coffee and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches) about their resource usage and wealth status. This family consisted of two 30-year-old parents and two kids, a 12-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl. They lived completely off of child grants, as neither parent worked, though the dad did odd jobs for friends sometimes. All food that could be collected they collected, and they relied on the generosity of friends for that which they couldn’t afford. They own a stereo and very broken down tv (not sure if it even works or not), but not a stove or fridge.
After we talked to the family, we started doing the housework. We washed dishes, cooked, cleaned, prepared more food, and made pap (which sort of falls in with cooking, but its so hard!). For lunch today, we had a pumpkin leaf dish and mopane worms. The worms were alright; a little mushy, and tasted mostly like chicken. Not the greatest. After lunch we played some games with the kids (jump rope for girls, soccer for boys), then learned some venda words, not that I remember any of them. Then we went to the river to swim for a bit, and also to the bore hole (an artesian pump that just flows onto the ground all the time) to collect water. I have now carried water on my head, although I wouldn’t say I did it well. We got back, and were told that we needed to go collect wood. When we asked our host mother, though, she said it was too hot and we would go later. So we relaxed in the hut for a while, feeling a little strange that we weren’t doing any work. We then went to play with the kids, and learned a bunch of their games. They all seemed like games I had played when I was a kid, except for EXTREME. There was extreme monkey in the middle, extreme duck duck goose, extreme blob tag, extreme London bridge, and extreme spud. Hannah and I played these games while Jay and Benjy played soccer with the older boys. We then cooked dinner (MORE PAP), which was a potato and tomato dish. It was extremely delicious. Probably going to make it again sometime soon. Our treat tonight was orange soda and corn. The corn tasted like feed corn made out of glue. It was gross. But, I didn’t want to be rude, so I just made a big deal out of it, and ate most of it.