Getting used

Now that we are in South Africa for already six weeks we slowly start getting used to everything. I think that at Cotlands it’s not even that difficult to settle in, because we don’t have to change our living standard that much: We have got a big bedroom, we get good food, we can use a car and as we are not living in a host family we have got many freedoms that other volunteers don’t have, such as not being told when to be at home for example.

To give you an impression of some things that were sometimes maybe a little bit difficult to arrange with or just unfamiliar, even in a positive way, I collected my top 10 of things to get used to in South Africa.

1. Driving

Back in Germany when I was asked if I could imagine to drive for my project I was at first very enthusiastic about the idea because everything is much easier if you’re allowed to drive and Cotlands is the only project that I know for the moment where the volunteers are allowed to drive. After hearing many stories about the South African driving style - like that no one respects the traffic lights, that are called robots in South Africa, that drunk driving was normal and that it was ok to cross red lights in the dark because it would be too dangerous to stop – I was very curious what driving here would actually be like and expected everything. I was also excited about left-hand driving and imagined it to be very unfamiliar – especially changing gear with the left hand.

But as soon as we started driving here we realized that it is much less difficult than expected. The biggest difficulty was to activate the indicators and at first I always activated the windscreen wiper instead. Our car also was a little bit difficult at first, as it’s a very old bulky truck and parking always is quite some challenge. But all in all we got used to driving very fast.

Unfortunately most of the things that we heard about the South African driving style is true. There really are many people that drive drunk and it’s not rare that you see people ignoring red lights. Another difficulty are the minibus taxis that are driving very unpredictable and reckless. 

2. Typical German?

Something that can sometimes be a little bit frustrating is being asked where you are from as soon as you say something very easy as hello. But most people even here that we are from Germany and then the first thing always is that they try to impress us with the German words they know, such as “Guten Tag”, “Wie geht’s?” or “Was geht?”, “Scheiße” and “Arschloch”. But we didn’t really expect people to know other words, because those are probably the most common words to know in different languages.

Even though I knew that people think Germans would drink a lot of beer I didn’t expect them to have such strange ideas concerning Germans and beer. At least many people here are truly believing us that we always start our day with cereals with bear instead of milk or that we would already feed our babies with beer so that they can get big and strong.

The second thing that many people seem to think of is Hitler. And what’s for us terrifying about that is that some people even had a positive opinion of him because of passionately pursuing his objectives. Most of the time they understood why we don’t like him. But anyway it’s very strange to us if people that we barely know frankly and without hesitating tell you what a great man Hitler was. I don’t think that I’ll get used to that very fast!

3. Walking in the streets

For two weeks now we always have to bring the two older children living at Cotlands to school. The way is not very far but it always takes quite some time. First of all because the two of them like to walk very slowly and stop every ten metres to look at something or pick something up. Secondly because so many people want to talk to you. Most of them are just saying hello but on the first day we were really confused when a horde of children ran towards us and tried to hug us all at the same time. When we looked closer we could recognize some of them from the afternoon care, but it also happens that random children want to hug us – something that never happened to me before in Germany.

4. Hey, how are you?

Something that sounds stupid but was quite difficult in the beginning was the common greeting phrase “how are you”. Of course we know that question from Germany but it’s not used that constantly. At first we always were too slow to ask back because the person had already passed us and we felt quite unfriendly, but now we really got the hang of “Fine. How are you?”

5. South African Rand

Even though I don’t have to calculate that much anymore the translation from Rand to Euro is always a little bit exhausting. In most cases I can judge the prices in Rand but sometimes it’s better to calculate in Euro because then I have a much better feeling for the values. But as 1 Euro is worth about 14 Rand calculating is quite some challenge after almost six months without school!

At least the banknotes look much better than Euro!

6. Food

Our food here is comparatively luxurious and most of the other volunteers are kind of envious of it. In the morning we always eat Cereals with a lot of fresh fruits. We normally get the fruits in our food donations and if we are lucky we get fancy fruits like papaya or guave and other nice things like strawberries, raspberries or blueberries for example.

For lunch we always get food from our Cotlands cook. We often get typical South African things like Pap, a traditional polenta made of ground maize, or rice with chicken and sauce.

Supper is always our favourite meal because that’s when we eat all the stuff that we get in the Woolworth donations. We get the donations twice a week and to see what is in the boxes is always a little bit like Christmas. If we’re lucky we get things like sushi, little sausage or chicken pies, samosas, fish and lots of different things. We still don’t know the whole variety so that it still keeps being exciting.

7. Punctuality

Before we came here we already heard a lot about South African punctuality or, to put it another way, unpunctuality. But as we came here we first were positively surprised because in our project everyone seemed to be in time as we knew it from Germany. But by now we discovered that Cotlands maybe is an exception because in our free time when we’re doing things with friends one of the favourite sayings seems to be: “South Africans don’t follow time, we have time!” That’s why we aren’t surprised anymore when we are invited to a Braai at half past six and we hungrily start eating at about midnight.

8. Security

Security is something that we also got used to very fast. At first it was strange to live behind an electric fence and that almost every house is surrounded by a high wall. It seemed to be annoying to always lock the car from the inside and leave the windows shut or to have a security guard that constantly watches the house. Also not walking in the streets after four o’clock and advices like always walking on the busier side of the road and minding gates because people could just pull you inside sounded strange. But by now all that just feels normal and restricts us much less than it might sound like as we have our car.

9. Afrikaans

As Afrikaans is the first language of most white people in South Africa it happens that people try to speak to us in Afrikaans. At first I always thought that they were speaking English and that it was my fault and I just didn’t understand them. It’s not that exceptional that people talk to us in English and we can’t understand them straightaway because there are so many different accents and sometimes you don’t understand the easiest things just because of the pronunciation.  Again other people’s English is very good to understand and normally I comprehend what people are telling me it sometimes just needs some concentration. But I don’t really understand any Afrikaans, only if it’s written it’s sometimes understandable, but most Afrikaans speaking people seem to understand us talking German quite well.

10. New nicknames

The last thing to get used to is that most people can’t really pronounce my name. At first I always introduced myself as Frederike but no one could pronounce the name and still less remember it. So I started to say that I’m just Rike and that’s much better, even though it sounds more like Rikaa. Another new nickname for me is Frederista. I don’t really know why but somehow two of the children are convinced that that would be my name and don’t believe me if I tell them that it’s not.

But most of the children don’t call us with our names anyway. For the older babies we are Mama, the Early Learning Group children just call us teacher and the afternoon care children call us Mam. Especially being called Mam still sounds very funny.

I hope that I could give you a little impression of life in South Africa especially because my list got much longer than I intended!

Jo’burg, Jozi, eGoli & Co

Even though I’m living in Johannesburg for more than five weeks now, so far I didn’t see a lot of the city. I know some places close to Turffontein, where I live, like the next Spar, a mall, our Gym, the hospital and park station, Johannesburg’s central station. Slowly but surely we don’t need to navigate with GPS on our cellphones everytime that we go somewhere anymore. It feels good to know the most important ways and slowly getting used to our area. But anyway we only knew very few places in Johannesburg because even if we were driving through the city we were always using the same streets. That’s why this weekend we decided to act like real tourists and take place in a tour with the red tourist buses that we had seen driving through the city. Accompanied by five other German volunteers I started my tour at the park station going on to places like Gandhi Square, Gold Reef City and Constitution Hill. During our tour we got a lot of interesting information about Johannesburg – about its foundation in 1886 and its past as gold mining city, about its names origin that isn’t quite sure because Johann was a very common Dutch name, and about its many nicknames like Joburg, Jozi or eGoli, which is Zulu and means place of gold. We also went to the Top Of Africa, a viewing platform on the 50^th floor of the Carlton Centre that was Africa’s tallest building for 41 years. As the weather was very clear we had a great view all over the city.

To complete our tour we went to the Neighbourgoods Market in Braamfontein that offers a lot of fresh food, speciality goods and clothes. Many people meet here every Saturday and it’s in the middle of the cultural centre for arts and entertainment. Even though Johannesburg isn’t very pretty on the first look, it’s places like Braamfontein that characterise the city’s very own flair.

To round off the day we went to a “typical German” Bierfest in Montecasino and it was very funny to see what South Africans think how Germans dress! We also had a lot of fun with songs like “Polonäse Blankenese” and “Viva Colonia” that probably almost no one except us could understand but everyone tried to sing anyway.

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Lion scratches and other premieres

Today I finally got a lot of photos for you, because I think that my weekend can be much better described in pictures than by words. But before that, just a few introducing words:

Even though the spring weather here in Joburg is already very nice – normally at least 25°C and the sun is always shining – I have to spend most of my time during the week inside working. After work, at about 16:30, Stella and I normally go to the gym and after that it’s already dark. That’s why we definitely wanted to do something in the nature and open air this weekend and quickly found our perfect activity: Lion Park.

Lion Park is a small game reserve in the north of Johannesburg. Certainly it’s not comparable to popular reserves like Kruger national park for example – and of course that’s also on my to-do-list – but it’s a good start if you only want to spend one day and not disburse too much money. And even though the name could suggest that, the park is not only home to lions. There are springboks, antelopes, wildebeests, cheetahs, giraffes, wild dogs, ostriches and of course brown and white lions living in separated areas. And what’s probably the highlight: the lion and cheetah cubs.

So we were joining a guided drive through the different areas. Our guide told us a lot about the animals and we had the chance to get really close to them and in the meantime take lots of pictures. But the best is yet to come: the interaction with the lion cubs. The cubs are between three and six months old and live in a separated enclosure. We could stroke them almost like normal cats and they were completely peaceful and so cute. Only one of them was quite playful and that’s how I got my first lion scratches that I would not want to miss anymore. But now see yourself!

Even though I unreasonably didn’t stick to "business before pleasure", I still have to say some words to our project. Because after our one month period of grace we got some new duties: We have to bring the two five- and six-year-old children that are living at Cotlands to school. It’s not far away so that we can walk and even though we have to start work earlier now it’s a pleasant way to stretch our legs and get some fresh air. Furthermore we normally don’t walk around in our area because it’s not that save, especially after four o’clock, so it’s a nice chance to get to know the area a little better.

So far it was always varied to walk them to school, because we always met many other children that are going to our early learning groups or our homework assistance. At first we were a little bit confused when children, that we only met once or twice before, ran across the street, loudly shouting our names and just hugging us. But they are all really sweet and we enjoy having our personal welcoming committee wherever we go.

Last but not least I kept my promise from the last post: I took some pictures of our area and I hope that they can give you a first impression of Turffontein.

That's my project

After two weeks that I’ve spent at Cotlands now I finally feel like I am having an approximate image of all the things that the organisation is involved in. So today I will try to give you a rough review of it and try to show you how I spend my whole blessed day.

In general I am working from Monday to Friday from 8 am to 4 or 5 pm. But as I am also living in my project I often work longer because I see that help is needed somewhere or donations have to be collected at a special time.  For the moment there are three different divisions in that I am working: The Units, the Toy Library and the office.

The Units

Twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays, I am working in the Units. The Units include all the projects where I am directly working with children. In the mornings my work begins in the Early Learning Groups that are comparable to preschool. Here I am working together with Stella and two teachers. Every morning at 8 o’clock children from the neighbourhood at the age of three to six are arriving in our Cotlands classroom. Before the class starts they are all getting porridge for breakfast. After that school can begin! We usually start reading out a story to the children, then review it bit by bit and transfer it to their everyday life. That’s how they should learn from a cute animal story for example to be economical with their food. After the reading session we assemble different play and learning stations where the children can do puzzles, paint, play with dough, play cooking and many other things. The focus of these games is often put on colours, basic shapes or names of animals or food for example. Many things like definitions of shapes (“a square has four equal sides and four corners” etc.) are repeated every day but are still difficult to remember for some of the children.  But sometimes that’s also a linguistic problem because English isn’t their first language. One day for example I was sitting at a table and playing with dough with four little boys. I was already thinking that they didn’t like me or that my English was too bad when I realized that the only English words they knew were: “Yes teacher!” So sometimes it can be difficult to communicate with the smaller ones because my Zulu knowledge isn’t good enough for a real conversation. But most of the children are already quite good at speaking English – many are probably much better than me!

If the weather is good we also go out to play. At the Cotlands property there are several small playgrounds where the children love to play. And it’s an important place for them because it’s one of the very few places here where it is save for them to play. At the playgrounds we try to teach them things like rope skipping, to walk on stilts or playing basketball and cricket.

After playing it is always time to sing – not quite my favourite part because after that I can’t get the melodies out of my head for the whole day – and then it’s already lunchtime. After a short prayer the children get their lunch and Stella and I are also taking our lunch break.

After lunch we are helping with the baby massage or the after-school care. To the after-school care school children from the neighbourhood are coming and we assist them with their homework and supervise those that just come for playing. When the students go home at 4 pm, and also if we got some spare time in between, we usually go and help at the Baby Unit. This unit is the only place that is always manned and it gives home to 11 babies and two older children at the moment. The babies are at the age of two to 18 months and need a lot of care. Our job normally is to play with them, but also to feed them – and that can be the very hardest job! – to change their nappies, to dress them, to do baby massages and anything else that accrues. At about five o’clock when the babies go to bed we normally leave and try to get rid of all the children’s songs that are stuck into our heads!

The Toy Library

On Tuesdays and Thursdays we are working in the Toy Library. That’s a library with many many different toys for children categorized into different learning targets or themes. Children can come here and borrow the toys for two weeks and we also use them in the Early Learning Groups or the Baby Unit. Our Toy Library here in Johannesburg isn’t the only one. There are many more spread all over South Africa and Cotlands founded an own Toy Library association that hosts seminars and workshops for future librarians. Next week a new Toy Library in Pretoria will open so that for the moment there are many trainings for the stuff that will be working there. We are also helping to prepare a lot of things for the new library by making lists of the toys, photographing all of the items, numbering and varnishing them and much more. 

On Monday when the new library is opening we also have to help transporting the toys to Pretoria and are already looking forward to see the opening.

The work that we have to do in the library isn’t very difficult or exciting, but sometimes it is a pleasant variation because even if we love playing with the children sometimes it is nice to recover from all the action and the attention that they need.

The Office

On Fridays we are working in the office. Cotlands’ offices are much bigger than we first thought and there are approximately 25 people working in them. So far we spent only one day in the office so that I can’t say that much about it. We had to do the inventory of a room and prepare Christmas cards for sponsors. This also weren’t very challenging duties but nevertheless most of the time we enjoyed it and are curious what other exercises are waiting for us in the next weeks.

I hope that I could already give you a helpful overview of my work. If you want to see a little bit more just watch the Cotlands video below!

PS: I try to illustrate my posts as good as possible and of course they would be much nicer with pictures of the children but understandably I am not allowed to publish any pictures of them and I will have to adhere to that. Yet I will try to take some pictures of my area in the next days but so far this was not that easy because I’m not quite sure if it is intelligent to walk around with a camera. But I will figure that out!