Goodbye roomies!

There was a another set of tearful goodbyes a couple of days ago when the last two of my amazing roommates left for home. So amazing in fact, that they took my bags with them so that I wouldn't have to haul them all over Kenya and Tanzania in the next couple of weeks. (Notice them straining above - I didn't exactly pack light this year). My roommates have been my link to - EVERYTHING here - they have taught me about everything that comes with living in South Africa - the good, the bad and of course the ugly. We have been through so much together this year - from long talks about politics and religion, boys and families, ridiculousness and sorrow - and everything in between. Without them my year would have been so much less rich. Honestly, I can't imagine my year without them. My heart beats a little harder when I think of them, and I know that they too will be my friends for life. Here are some pictures from our last night together in the 5 Gilbert House. I miss these girls SO much! However, I am also looking forward to the day that I can host them in the USA - they have given me big shoes to fill (especially Estelle - haha). Love you love you love you.

Twenty-five

I am now - officially a quarter of a century old. And I have loved every second - I wouldn't give a minute of it back. I have been pretty inundated with my thesis lately, so I expected to have a very low-key birthday this year... but I was in for quite the surprise. Victor drove in from Cape Town, COMPLETELY catching me off guard (I had NO idea) and surprised me!!!! In addition, my parents tracked down the owner of a pizza restaurant in town (we stayed at a guesthouse owned by the same people when they were here in June), and arranged for pizza-dinner party with my friends. This has been a tradition since I was in middle school - my birthday always used to fall on a basketball game, so my parents would always bring pizza for my team, and put up banners and such in the stands (love them). When I left for college, the kept the tradition going by tracking me down WHEREVER I am and having pizza delivered to me and my friends....So far, this has meant that they have delivered pizza to:

• 2002 - A random hotel in California where I was recruiting for Rice's swim team (yes, this is my other life I lived somewhere back there)
• 2003 - A history class in a university in Sevilla, Spain (this one was a MIRACLE considering they don't speak Spanish and until that point I had never seen a pizza restaurant in our town)
• 2004 - hmmm - I must have been at Rice in Houston.
• 2005 - YES Prep Public School in Houston, TX - The whole staff ate pizza with me (apparently they tried to deliver it to my house but no pizza place would deliver to my house in the ghetto!! haha)
• 2006 - Again at YES Prep in Houston, but this time I ate with my students as well.
  
• 2007 - My house in Denver where I was in the middle of my first graduate-school finals.
• 2008 - Grahamstown, South Africa! - this year's pizza was a chicken and avocado dream, of course with hot sauce (thanks Brenda!).

They are amazing AND diligent. And it always makes my birthday so special knowing they have put in all of that effort to keep the tradition alive (I bet they weren't counting on all of the international trips when they started it!!)

It was also WONDERFUL to read all of the messages from friends and family - it is such a reminder of how loved I am. !!!! So blessed.

PS - please notice the blatantly phallic dessert they served me after dinner (pictured below).

Last Rotary Presentation

As part of the terms of the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship, we are required to give 10-15 presentations at different Rotary clubs and/or schools/organizations during our year abroad. Last Thursday, I gave my farewell presentation at my host club, the Grahamstown Rotary Club.

Our presentations are a way for us to share our experience with our audience - and my farewell presentation was essentially a 'report' of what my year has meant to me, as well as a thank you to my host club.
Pictured below is me exchanging club banners with Harry Rama, this year's club President. The club banner exchange is a tradition in Rotary, and I will bring my sponsor club (in Houston) this banner as a sign of friendship from the Grahamstown club.
The picture below is of Sandy, a wonderful and supportive Rotarian who I am so thankful I got the chance to meet this year. The picture is of her thanking me for my speech on behalf of the club.
And this picture is of Rotarian Robin - who graciously invited all of the scholars into his home earlier this year for dinner. While we were there I noticed he had a love of American sports tee-shirts, so I kept this one from Houston to give to him at the end of the year. :)
Thank you Grahamstown Rotary - this year literally was the gift of a lifetime.

My Host Counselors

The lovely Vivian and Billy de Klerk.

A (very) tearful goodbye.

There have been SO many times over the last year that I have stopped dead in my tracks in awe of how utterly and completely blessed I am.

Let's just stop there for a minute.

ok.

One of the most incredible blessings this year has been the fact that I was placed in this little town in the middle of nowhere South Africa with 3 of the most fantastic other people in the world.

The other Ambassadorial scholars have literally become my family in this country. We all came to South Africa with absolutely no intention of meeting other Americans, but... we all just fell hopelessly in love with each other, and it would be hard not to - these people would be amazing ANYWHERE in the world, in ANY context. Which, I assume, is why they were all chosen in the first place.

All of that aside, I. love. them.

Now - on to the tears.

Last week, Rosa went home. It was one of the most heartbreaking days of my time here. Rosa has been my constant companion this year, and from the very first time that we met when she took the bus to Cape Town (while I was still there taking Xhosa lessons) I knew she would be a friend for life. Together, we shared WAY more than our fair share of adventures, including a phenomenal backpacking trip (all planned on the plane ride there) through Uganda, Rwanda, and the DRC. We also helped each other survive this year - we analyzed our little lives to death, talked of loves and trials, and endless hilarious and embarrassing stories. In short - we lived this amazing year together, and her departure was my first dose of reality that it is almost all over.

Our goodbye was probably hysterical (or painful) to watch - we sobbed like little babies for what seemed like hours - so hard, in fact, that my face was puffy for three straight days.

I miss her endlessly, but I also know that we will be friends until we are old and feeble, and will always have a spectacular wealth of memories together. Love you Rosa.

Here are some pictures from the last day or so that Rosa was here:

One last visit to Cape Town

Grahamstown Traditions: Steak night

One of the many food-related traditions that the other Amb. Scholars and I have established/participated in Grahamstown has been that of Steak Night. The last Wednesday of every month, the local grocery store, Pick and Pay, sponsors a steak night at the golf club, where they sell meat (they cut it right off the cow... more or less) and grill it up for you. This makes for a very yummy and a very CHEAP steak dinner. And I mean SERIOUSLY yummy (they put a lemon marinade on it, but I think it is all of the MSG they add that really gives it a kick - ha!) and SERIOUSLY cheap - we are talking 15 Rand for the lovely hunk of cow you see in the picture there - at the current exchange rate, that is $1.50. Yes, that's right - a dollar and a half for a steak dinner. Thanks Pick and Pay, and thank you Grahamstown.

PS - this has to be one of the best fundraising ideas I've ever heard - get a grocery store to sponsor (or sell at a discount) a whole bunch of raw meat, and then sell plates of food to everyone at a little more upped price. It is a RAGING success in Grahamstown. They sell the sides (see pics below) for about 20 rand (2 dollars) and dessert is a little extra too. Keep it in the files for future fundraising needs....

Reading Camp

A few weeks ago, one of my teacher friends here allowed me to get back into the 'classroom' for a few hours. On a Saturday morning, I got the chance to work with about 14 kids on some basic reading skills. It was so much fun but was an aching reminder of how much I miss working with kids on a day to day basis. It also gave me the chance to read a story aloud about a very sleepy sheep about 14 times, a wonderful activity for any Saturday morning. :) Thanks Matt for letting me participate!!!

In the presence of fame...

Eben has certainly become a local celebrity in Grahamstown. Whenever people hear that I'm an Amb. Scholar from America, one of their first questions (after whether I voted for Obama) is whether I know Eben Cathey. And then they ask if we are related (all curly-haired Americans look alike). I like to think its a compliment to him - but then again, he is the famous one. :)

Just doing my ambassadorial duties...

That's right - I taught my roommate, Cilnette, how to change her own car tire. Some may say it would have been kinder for me to change it for her... but like they say... you give a man a fish .... you know the rest. :) YAY Cilnette!!!

PS - I actually just stood there and dictated. I am not sure if that counts exactly as 'teaching' - or if it just allowed me to do what I do best and be bossy - but at least I was moral support. ;)

yes that's right - its World Toilet Day.

I'm not lying - it seriously is World Toilet Day.
So in honor - I am going to post some pictures from the archives - from the summer of 2006.

These pictures were all taken in El Salvador, where we took 10 students and 3 teachers from YES to work with a Peace Corps volunteer for two weeks.

The job: build 7 dual-composting latrines. What this means in English - build outhouses that wouldn't fill up (many of the members of the community either had overfilled pit latrines - yes - imagine it - or no latrines. That's right - nothing. That meant that they... just went.) The picture on the right is of one of our students teaching community members how to use the new latrines.

Brian Walsh from TIME explains the situation well: "Toilets are a privilege that nearly half the world lacks. At least 2.6 billion people around the planet have no access to a toilet -- and that doesn't just mean that they don't have a nice, heated indoor bathroom. It means they have nothing -- not a public toilet, not an outhouse, not even a bucket. They defecate in public, contaminating food and drinking water, and the disease toll due to unsanitized human waste is staggering. ...

But despite the horrific fate of the toiletless masses across much of South America, Africa and Asia, sanitation has never been high on the world's development agenda. NGOs and governments focus on making sure the poor have access to enough clean drinking water, but comparatively little funding goes into sanitation, even though the two are sometimes inextricable: Untreated sewage often ends up poisoning the available clean water in developing nations."

We definitely saw this first hand in El Salvador - and I've seen it across the world in my travels. Things like hunger and clean water are 'sexy' subjects - people seem to be willing to donate time and resources to these issues (and thank God for that - don't get me wrong - that is a beautiful thing that those important issues tug at people's hearts).

However, sewage.... sewage doesn't seem to inspire people in quite the same way. Unfortunately, it is just as or more important that providing clean water and food.... Ever had a stomach bug? Guess what that's often from? That's right - ingesting bacteria from feces. No matter how much nutritious food and clean water people are able to consume, if they then defecate on their hand or touch someone else's sewage - and either haven't been educated about hygiene or don't have a way to clean... well, I'm sure you can imagine. According to UNICEF, Diarrhea account for 17 per cent of deaths among children under five years of age worldwide, or nearly 2 million child deaths every year - making them the second most common cause of child deaths globally.

A Global President..

Here is more on the South African perception of the U.S. election of Barack Obama:
This cartoon is by the most famous South African political cartoonist - Zapiro. It ran today in the Mail and Guardian.
I am continually amazed at the enormous amount of attention that is being paid to this election here. People have approached me almost incessantly since Tuesday to congratulate me, tell me how excited they are, and share the news of what they were doing when they heard the news. It is truly an unparalleled phenomenon. I had a girl tell me yesterday how jealous she is that I get to have Obama be my president. And many people have told me how much better they feel knowing that someone will be in the White House who has a 'global vision'. I am still humbled by how affected people's everyday lives are all of the way across the world by what happens in the United States. It puts in perspective the enormous responsibility our nation holds not only regarding what happens within our own borders, but in a way, what happens to every person on this planet.

My prayers are certainly with the Obamas as they take on the symbolic role of 'global president.'

Mandela hails Obama after election victory

Mail and Guardian:

Anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela on Wednesday congratulated United States president-elect Barack Obama on his election victory, saying he was an inspiration to people all over the world.

"Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place," Mandela said in a letter to Obama.

See rest of story here.