Corn on the Cob

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  Barberton, South Africa
Friday, February 16, 2007

It turns out there is another way to eat corn on the cob other than the way we do it at home. Binki and her grandmother gave me two pieces of corn on the cob during snack time, so obviously I picked it up and started biting chunks out of it. This lead to some laughter from Binki's family, and they showed me the way they eat corn here. They bite just one line of corn out, somehow they pull the whole kernel out, I actually couldn't do it myself. And from there they just snap about ten kernels off at a time and eat from their hands. I couldn't do it that efficiently, but its just as fast and a lot cleaner.

There has been a change in my daily routine now, I help Binki in the classroom in the morning and then sit out with her and the students until 11:30. Usually whoever is in the house comes and sits with us, or neighbors that are passing. Most of the time they are speaking Setswatzi, but they make an effort to incorporate me, and sometimes Binki will translate. A lot of the women here wear their hair in corn rows, which are called plaits here, Margaret, Binki's Aunt plaits hair all the time, and early in the week she braided mine while I was sitting outside with the family. Unfortunatly they didn't stay in because without a band at the end my hair will just fall out of the braid. I'm in the market for tiny hair bands, I would like her to braid it again and then be able to leave the braids in for awhile.

So, now at 11:30 I leave and walk to the Disabled Center. The people there are mentally and physically handicapped with a range of abilities. The center is run by a couple who are themselves physically handicapped, and from what I have gathered they have opened up a classroom and yard where people who are interested in staying their during the day are welcome. Compared to some other volunteer work I have done with the disabled these people are actually rather well off, and I think all of them are capable of taking care of themselves on their own. They all have notebooks and when I walk in, they all pull them out of their bags, and I walk around and correct their work and then give them more math problems and words games to do. Since I am the only volunteer that goes in the afternoon I'm pretty overwhelmed with people looking for new tasks to do in their notebooks. They all are eager to learn and work in their notebooks, although some of them just start copying the answers from the charts on the wall. I'm not sure if I should be marking things wrong if I don't have the time to teach them the right way to do it. I could sit all day with one person and talk about multiplication to them, but there are about 15 people looking for work so I end up just walking in a circle around the table giving them more work.

I really enjoy my time there, because the people are always so happy when I come in the door.  I think that's because for the rest of the day they just sort of sit around and do other projects like sewing. There are two deaf people that stay there during the day, one of them is a man, who just wants to count circles in his notebook. I don't know anything about his story, just that I will indulge myself by sitting next to him for five minutes and nodding as he counts. My new mission is to teach him how to count past ten, I'm going to look that up online today.

The other exciting thing about my changed schedule is that I walk through the township for maybe four or five blocks to the Disabled Center. I have never been starred at so much in my life. A white person walking through the township is just something that isn't done, I have never been so aware of the color of my skin. The first day Binki's cousin, who is 18 or so, walked me to the Disabled Center, and I think he took me the longer way so he could wave to some of his friends, and show off the fact he was walking around with a white woman. There is some weird cultural capital for a black man to be seen with a white woman in the township. His friends were clearly shocked.

Not only was this a shocking sight, but this is also a small town. The same taxi driver drives all the volunteers around in Barberton, today he asked me who the man was that I was walking with yesterday, and if I had "already found somebody". Ridiculous. I did the best to defend my name, but the only time my story gained any authority was when I inserted the fact that I have a boyfriend. Apparently here it doesn't matter that much what I think, but as long as I say I have a boyfriend and he wouldn't be okay with me "finding someone" this is an acceptable answer. The boyfriend card has been a wonderful way to tell men to leave me alone when I start talking to them, white or black. I'm not interested, doesn't mean anything unless it's attached to my boyfriend indirectly telling them so, and it would probably be more effective if my boyfriend were on the same continent, but whatever works I guess. Patriarchy.

The house is empty for the weekend and the only other volunteer and I are going to Nelspruitt to watch his students play soccer and go through the city center. Sunday I will be going to church with Binki and her family, for over three hours. Monday the library will be closed for some unknown reason, so I'm not sure when the next update will be.

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