Less than one week to go at this point, and I’ll say that the past few days have been some of the most fun. With things in the village winding down, we’ve all been able to let loose and just take in the experience for what it is, rather than worry so much about what we have to get done. Our big community meeting was a huge success, and though I’d been feeling like we hadn’t made as much of a difference as we would have liked, the meeting on Saturday made me realize that we truly inspired something in this community. I was surprised at how many of the group members showed up, and we probably had at least 50-60 folks show up despite the cold to discuss their dreams for the community. We were also lucky enough to have convinced the Chief to come, which solidified for the community that their dreams and ideas were being heard by not only UVA and Univen, but by the Chief as well. They prioritized community needs in order of importance, and decided as a group that the number one priority was water access, which was to be expected. Their second was to have a community farm. Their third priority was to have a community marketplace. Their fourth was a crèche, and their fifth was more support for Home Based Care. Based on the meetings I attended with several of the groups, this seemed to be a pretty accurate and fair representation of what the community felt was needed overall, and these are all things that are certainly possibilities for Tshapasha if the community members work together, as they have been for the past several weeks, to put these ideas into action. It is unfortunate, however, that despite telling the community members on numerous occasions that we did not come here to fund these projects right away, that many of them still seem to believe that we will be giving them money in which to put these ideas into action. Though funding in some capacity in the future is not out of the question, it is certainly not a given, so we hope that the community works together in the meantime to raise funds to make their dreams a reality.

After our day in the village, we spent Saturday afternoon and evening watching the Olympics and the Chiefs vs. Pirates soccer game, which is a HUGE rivalry around here. Cassie and I also finally decided to attempt tortilla chips and guacamole, as the abundance of avocados has gotten out-of-control with the nurses at Julie’s clinic giving her bags of them all the time. Apparently, the thought around here is that a plump wife means a successful husband, so the nurses keep telling Julie (who is very tall and thin), that she needs to eat a lot of bread and avocados so her husband ‘looks good’.

Yesterday was a lazy day around Acacia until 16h00, when our local friend Marcus had us over to his home for a braai. It was fantastic! He lives in a small 2-room house with a kitchen attached. As many of the homes outside of the city of Thohoyandou where we are staying, he has no running water and no indoor plumbing, so the water must be fetched from a tap down the street and the toilet is in an outhouse in the back yard. In addition to the outhouse, his yard is also equipped with a lemon tree, an avocado tree, and a HUGE mango tree. His home is very typical of the area and, compared to most of the homes in Tshapasha, he’s doing extremely well.  He lives there with his wife (who he explained he is legally married to though he hasn’t finished ‘paying her family’ yet—they have a kind of reverse-dowry system here), and his 4-month old son, Lufuno. We brought chakalaka wors, Russian sausages, and the beer. Marcus and his wife prepared pap, rice, gravy, and pumpkin for us, and it was a perfect South African braai meal. We all had a blast, and truly enjoyed getting to know Marcus and his family. It was so nice of them to invite 6 Americans over to their home to eat their food and obsess over their beautiful baby. I was also lucky enough to have Marcus and his wife show me how the women around here carry their babies around, which is on their backs. I have yet to see a stroller or any baby-carrying contraption in South Africa, and these women use simply two pieces of cloth. They throw their babies on their backs while bent over, wrap a towel around themselves and the baby, and voila! They go about all of their daily activities like this, including carrying huge buckets of water on their heads, cooking, doing dishes, etc. Did I mention that when I say they showed me how they do it, I mean that I had them attach Lufuno to me, South African style? He remained there for a good 10-15 minutes until the towel started to loosen and I worried he would fall. Another thing to point out is that one of the reasons they’re able to do this without the towel slipping down is that most of the women around here are much more well-endowed than I. They got a kick out of it, I think, or were maybe just being polite. Either way, it was a blast and was one of the most fun nights that we’ve had in SA thus far.

Plans for this week are coming together, and I was worried that since we were done in Tshapasha that we’d have nothing to do. Not the case! Today we meet with our Univen partners to get our last little bit of official work done, and tomorrow we have been invited to the local “Science Center”, which is having a big conference/exhibition. It will be a great opportunity to network, as well as to see the kinds of things that are being done to improve educational opportunities for local youth. We also plan to go to another village, Masisi, to see our new local contact Vince’s after school community center that he built. I’ve only met Vince once, but from what I can tell he is incredible. He is from England, and just moved himself and his wife over here a couple of years ago to build this center and help the community. I should note that he and his wife just had a baby about a week ago, and he’s still taken the time to meet with Sid and to attend our big community meeting last Saturday. I’m excited to see what he’s done in Masisi and to see how that might translate to something that can be done in Tshapasha in the future.

Wow. Less than one week to go! Enjoy the pictures! The first one is some village kids that were excited to see our bus pull up, to say the least. The next is Cassie, Myself, Mariam, and Joe while walking around the village after a meeting. The next is some of the community members after our big Saturday meeting after they got their certificates we presented. Next is our group with the Chief. The "Abortion" photo is from the market, but those flyers are literally EVERYWHERE around here, from town to remote village. It's insane.  The next few are pretty self-explanatory, and are from last night at the braai at Marcus's house.