I thought for a change I’d send you an update on a more personal note, and as my friend Tim found the tales of my living situations to be so interesting, I thought I’d write a little about that for a change. At the bottom you’ll see the biggest news of all… so don’t miss the “Life in LOVE!” section at the bottom!
On a brief Thembalethu note… Training, training, training! Yesterday was the final day of a long string of them, it’s nice to have a rest from the meetings, coordination, catering, etc. We’ve just finished multiple trainings over the past couple weeks: 3 days on Tuberculosis, 3 days on Counseling and ARV Adherence training, and a 2.5 day foundational course called Learning to Listen by Christian Listeners. They all went very well, and although they ended up being a bit bunched together, the HBC attended in great numbers and the courses were each a great success!
Life and Water
Today’s another day without water. I learned years ago in Ecuador how essential water is to accomplish the most basic daily tasks. How easily I had previously taken it for granted, never having gone without in surburban and rural America. I remember hearing how amazing it is how adaptable humans are. Being without water isn’t a big emergency for me anymore like it used to be. The great thing is that Sofi, next door, has a bit Jojo water tank full of water that fills up our water storage containers when ours run out. Today, it sounds like either a pipe has burst or the pipes have clogged up with mud.
You see, we and two other farms as well as a small Zulu farm village get our water from an underground stream up the hill from here. Not only is our water system very hand-done, a botch-job as Sofi would call it – 1km of low pressure plastic pipes dug about a foot under the surface, running from the dam they built to catch mountain stream water and take it down the hill to our farm, Cosmos Farm. High pressures from the stream cause them to burst, or in the dry winters (coming soon), wandering cows (of which there are MANY in the land of the Zulus) step on the pipe and burst it, smelling the water inside. And the time-share development up the hill, and their dumping of topsoil has filled our water source with LOTS of sediment. Making it brown and chunky on the best of days. I’m so grateful for our little countertop filter!
So, now it’s a waiting game. Waiting to see if this great fix-it guy over in the village will sort it out before we need to, as we’re at the end of the line.
[The next day]…It’s another day, and the water’s back on! Many thanks to Derek and his quick-acting Mr. Fix-It helpfulness! Oh, how I appreciate a nice hot shower in the morning! Not to be compared with a sponge-bath over a large round basin, what the Zulus call to “geza ngendish.”
Being at Cosmos with a nice-working gas geyser (hot water heater) is certainly simpler than my last year’s water-heating situation. I was living on a farm named Meadowsweet Herb Farm just down the road, which still had an earlier form of water heater that is affectionately known as a ‘donkey.’ I suppose it got its name from its stubbornness, and I learned to understand with use. A donkey is a primitive homemade water-heating system whereby, in this case, a large metal drum is turned on its side, mounted in a cement/brick structure, and a fire is lit underneath to warm the water. The donkey at Meadowsweet required a lot of work to get the fire started, a lot of wood to keep it going, a lot of time with a roaring fire (at least 3 hours), and only gave a couple of hours of hot water as an end result. Coming back from a long day at work, or a day hike in the Berg and wanting a warm-up or clean-off shower took a lot of coordination and patience to say the least!
Life and Power
This past year at Cosmos Farm is the most rustic of my living situations so far in South Africa. But even this is nothing in comparison to many of my Zulu neighbors, which is why I appreciate the basicness of it all – it makes me feel less removed from the people I work with and serve.
Here at Cosmos Farm, I live in a three bedroom volunteer house with a large communal kitchen/living space. I’m the most permanent resident here, and as I write this it’s the first stretch in the past seven months that I have the place to myself. Slindile (18, orphaned, with two young kids) stayed here with me for almost six months, and then we’ve had various volunteers, interns and visitors also staying here. My good friend and landlord, Sofi Ntshalintshali-Cogley is about 100 yards away, so I get frequent visits from her two young kids Doong (officially it’s Lungelo), aged 6 and Miya, almost 3, and we often share meals and life together. It’s been such a blessing being able to live in community and having their friendship and family!
The volunteer house has a long-drop toilet (think outhouse) which we recently moved outside, accessed by a door in the bathroom. It has greatly improved the general house smell since then… wouldn’t recommend an indoor outhouse! Yet the bees have moved in, thinking it a good home, and flies and mosquitos love to breed in the depths. Naja, in the scheme of things these are just small adventures in Africa. The house runs off solar with natural gas for the stove, fridge and water heaters. The two solar panels on top of the house charge during the day and we can keep high-efficiency lights burning until late at night, and still have a little power left to charge our laptops. We monitor the battery life by beeps of the regulator.
One beep: means you’re starting to use the battery’s power (maybe something like 10% used),
Then it beeps three times: (which I guess is 30% battery drained) sometimes it does this a couple of times, depending on what we unplug along the way, it can move to
Five beeps: the regulator is telling you the battery is almost gone (it’s hard on the battery if it goes dry). At that point, you stop everything for a moment to switch off all non-essential power. If the charge was low (lots of electricity out for charging a laptop or a cloudy day), it can quickly move into
Seven-plus beeps: At this point, you get up QUICKLY and look for the closest matches and candles as the electricity will be going out within the next 60 seconds or so.
I’ve like to think I’ve mastered the system by now – I can say for sure that with a good system up (ours isn’t in the best state at the moment, unfortunately), it is definitely VERY feasible to live off solar power. It’s cool to use the power of the sun, to not be affected by the frequent South Africa nationwide energy shortages. (Nationwide people have “load sharing” two hours a day three days a week where their electricity is turned off completely. While it isn’t in nearly the crisis stage it was a couple months ago, it continues to disrupt a lot of people’s daily transactions and business operations, and the sale of generators has boomed since it started.)
Life in LOVE!
The big news is that I’m engaged to be married! I’ve known this great Afrikaans South African guy named Eugene Meyer for almost three years now, and have been dating him for almost 8 months now. (I’ve attached a couple pics.) Eugene is a strong Christian leader originally from Cape Town who is committed to serving God’s servants around the world. He is currently working for a Christian NGO named Philanjalo that also supports Home-Based Caregivers (300 to our 35), has an HIV/AIDS Care Centre for adults, and another one for children, does residential and community-based orphan care, and does HIV/AIDS and TB research with various US universities (Yale, Harvard, Brown, Albert Einstein). Eugene has been working with Philanjalo, through the Church of Scotland Hospital in Tugela Ferry (1 ¾ hour drive from here) for four years and is now their financial and office manager.
The natural next-question is what this means for me. Well, first off, we’re in the midst of planning an August wedding in Tacoma, Washington. After that, the plans are for me to move in with Eugene in the sprawling Zulu metropolis (hahaha ;) of Tugela Ferry. (I’ve attached a picture of the hospital – the company house he’s in is just behind the complex, just against their back fence.) My plan from the start of Thembalethu was to get it to a place where it wasn’t dependent on my daily presence to continue and thrive. Being just under two hours away from Amangwe/Winterton, I’ll be able to support Xoli as she takes on the primary management responsibilities, by working back in the Berg two days a week, taking on fundraising and administrative roles. It’s such important work and as a board member and co-founder I’m committed to seeing the work go on! Xoli’s been such a Godsend to Thembalethu and the community and is already a great asset, and is in fact already gracefully leading most relationships with the Caregivers, patients and orphans. With the rest of my time, there are multiple opportunities already presenting themselves for me to continue serving HIV/AIDS infected and affected adults and children in the Tugela Ferry area. I envision that the next couple of years will be spent between Tugela Ferry and Amangwe/Loskop/Drakensberg, with the possibility of returning to the Seattle area sometime in the future.
As for Thembalethu, our funding with the Winterton Methodist church (and some generous contributions from UPC) will be running dry about September this year. Yet, a church member and friend has helped signed us up to be the charity of choice for a Golf Day in Durban that her brother is planning for late August. They normally raise about R100,000 to R120,000 ($13,500 to $16,000) for the charity, which would go a long way to allowing Thembalethu’s work to continue. Please join us in praying that this funding opportunity will come through!
Love to you all!
Betsy
On a brief Thembalethu note… Training, training, training! Yesterday was the final day of a long string of them, it’s nice to have a rest from the meetings, coordination, catering, etc. We’ve just finished multiple trainings over the past couple weeks: 3 days on Tuberculosis, 3 days on Counseling and ARV Adherence training, and a 2.5 day foundational course called Learning to Listen by Christian Listeners. They all went very well, and although they ended up being a bit bunched together, the HBC attended in great numbers and the courses were each a great success!
Life and Water
Today’s another day without water. I learned years ago in Ecuador how essential water is to accomplish the most basic daily tasks. How easily I had previously taken it for granted, never having gone without in surburban and rural America. I remember hearing how amazing it is how adaptable humans are. Being without water isn’t a big emergency for me anymore like it used to be. The great thing is that Sofi, next door, has a bit Jojo water tank full of water that fills up our water storage containers when ours run out. Today, it sounds like either a pipe has burst or the pipes have clogged up with mud.
You see, we and two other farms as well as a small Zulu farm village get our water from an underground stream up the hill from here. Not only is our water system very hand-done, a botch-job as Sofi would call it – 1km of low pressure plastic pipes dug about a foot under the surface, running from the dam they built to catch mountain stream water and take it down the hill to our farm, Cosmos Farm. High pressures from the stream cause them to burst, or in the dry winters (coming soon), wandering cows (of which there are MANY in the land of the Zulus) step on the pipe and burst it, smelling the water inside. And the time-share development up the hill, and their dumping of topsoil has filled our water source with LOTS of sediment. Making it brown and chunky on the best of days. I’m so grateful for our little countertop filter!
So, now it’s a waiting game. Waiting to see if this great fix-it guy over in the village will sort it out before we need to, as we’re at the end of the line.
[The next day]…It’s another day, and the water’s back on! Many thanks to Derek and his quick-acting Mr. Fix-It helpfulness! Oh, how I appreciate a nice hot shower in the morning! Not to be compared with a sponge-bath over a large round basin, what the Zulus call to “geza ngendish.”
Being at Cosmos with a nice-working gas geyser (hot water heater) is certainly simpler than my last year’s water-heating situation. I was living on a farm named Meadowsweet Herb Farm just down the road, which still had an earlier form of water heater that is affectionately known as a ‘donkey.’ I suppose it got its name from its stubbornness, and I learned to understand with use. A donkey is a primitive homemade water-heating system whereby, in this case, a large metal drum is turned on its side, mounted in a cement/brick structure, and a fire is lit underneath to warm the water. The donkey at Meadowsweet required a lot of work to get the fire started, a lot of wood to keep it going, a lot of time with a roaring fire (at least 3 hours), and only gave a couple of hours of hot water as an end result. Coming back from a long day at work, or a day hike in the Berg and wanting a warm-up or clean-off shower took a lot of coordination and patience to say the least!
Life and Power
This past year at Cosmos Farm is the most rustic of my living situations so far in South Africa. But even this is nothing in comparison to many of my Zulu neighbors, which is why I appreciate the basicness of it all – it makes me feel less removed from the people I work with and serve.
Here at Cosmos Farm, I live in a three bedroom volunteer house with a large communal kitchen/living space. I’m the most permanent resident here, and as I write this it’s the first stretch in the past seven months that I have the place to myself. Slindile (18, orphaned, with two young kids) stayed here with me for almost six months, and then we’ve had various volunteers, interns and visitors also staying here. My good friend and landlord, Sofi Ntshalintshali-Cogley is about 100 yards away, so I get frequent visits from her two young kids Doong (officially it’s Lungelo), aged 6 and Miya, almost 3, and we often share meals and life together. It’s been such a blessing being able to live in community and having their friendship and family!
The volunteer house has a long-drop toilet (think outhouse) which we recently moved outside, accessed by a door in the bathroom. It has greatly improved the general house smell since then… wouldn’t recommend an indoor outhouse! Yet the bees have moved in, thinking it a good home, and flies and mosquitos love to breed in the depths. Naja, in the scheme of things these are just small adventures in Africa. The house runs off solar with natural gas for the stove, fridge and water heaters. The two solar panels on top of the house charge during the day and we can keep high-efficiency lights burning until late at night, and still have a little power left to charge our laptops. We monitor the battery life by beeps of the regulator.
One beep: means you’re starting to use the battery’s power (maybe something like 10% used),
Then it beeps three times: (which I guess is 30% battery drained) sometimes it does this a couple of times, depending on what we unplug along the way, it can move to
Five beeps: the regulator is telling you the battery is almost gone (it’s hard on the battery if it goes dry). At that point, you stop everything for a moment to switch off all non-essential power. If the charge was low (lots of electricity out for charging a laptop or a cloudy day), it can quickly move into
Seven-plus beeps: At this point, you get up QUICKLY and look for the closest matches and candles as the electricity will be going out within the next 60 seconds or so.
I’ve like to think I’ve mastered the system by now – I can say for sure that with a good system up (ours isn’t in the best state at the moment, unfortunately), it is definitely VERY feasible to live off solar power. It’s cool to use the power of the sun, to not be affected by the frequent South Africa nationwide energy shortages. (Nationwide people have “load sharing” two hours a day three days a week where their electricity is turned off completely. While it isn’t in nearly the crisis stage it was a couple months ago, it continues to disrupt a lot of people’s daily transactions and business operations, and the sale of generators has boomed since it started.)
Life in LOVE!
The big news is that I’m engaged to be married! I’ve known this great Afrikaans South African guy named Eugene Meyer for almost three years now, and have been dating him for almost 8 months now. (I’ve attached a couple pics.) Eugene is a strong Christian leader originally from Cape Town who is committed to serving God’s servants around the world. He is currently working for a Christian NGO named Philanjalo that also supports Home-Based Caregivers (300 to our 35), has an HIV/AIDS Care Centre for adults, and another one for children, does residential and community-based orphan care, and does HIV/AIDS and TB research with various US universities (Yale, Harvard, Brown, Albert Einstein). Eugene has been working with Philanjalo, through the Church of Scotland Hospital in Tugela Ferry (1 ¾ hour drive from here) for four years and is now their financial and office manager.
The natural next-question is what this means for me. Well, first off, we’re in the midst of planning an August wedding in Tacoma, Washington. After that, the plans are for me to move in with Eugene in the sprawling Zulu metropolis (hahaha ;) of Tugela Ferry. (I’ve attached a picture of the hospital – the company house he’s in is just behind the complex, just against their back fence.) My plan from the start of Thembalethu was to get it to a place where it wasn’t dependent on my daily presence to continue and thrive. Being just under two hours away from Amangwe/Winterton, I’ll be able to support Xoli as she takes on the primary management responsibilities, by working back in the Berg two days a week, taking on fundraising and administrative roles. It’s such important work and as a board member and co-founder I’m committed to seeing the work go on! Xoli’s been such a Godsend to Thembalethu and the community and is already a great asset, and is in fact already gracefully leading most relationships with the Caregivers, patients and orphans. With the rest of my time, there are multiple opportunities already presenting themselves for me to continue serving HIV/AIDS infected and affected adults and children in the Tugela Ferry area. I envision that the next couple of years will be spent between Tugela Ferry and Amangwe/Loskop/Drakensberg, with the possibility of returning to the Seattle area sometime in the future.
As for Thembalethu, our funding with the Winterton Methodist church (and some generous contributions from UPC) will be running dry about September this year. Yet, a church member and friend has helped signed us up to be the charity of choice for a Golf Day in Durban that her brother is planning for late August. They normally raise about R100,000 to R120,000 ($13,500 to $16,000) for the charity, which would go a long way to allowing Thembalethu’s work to continue. Please join us in praying that this funding opportunity will come through!
Love to you all!
Betsy
