Bontle's first Holiday in RSA, Part II

The first night we stayed in Clarens, a little Afrikaner town along the Lesotho border. It was incredibly beautiful- an artist community- and very quaint. We ran into some other PCVs from Lesotho staying at the hostel and we took the opportunity to swap stories about our respective PCV experiences and set the record straight about PC South Africa. Let me explain...
For the Sub-Saharan Africa region, South Africa is the 'medical hub' for PCVs with health issues that cannot be resolved in their country of service, because South Africa has excellent hospitals and medical facilities that many African countries don't have. So when PCVs from other African countries come to South Africa, what they see are the big cities, the shopping malls, the McDonald's, people driving BMWs and Mercedes... they stay in nice hotels, particularly if they are sick, and enjoy many of the luxuries that we once enjoyed in our previous lives in the The States. They see that the cities have Internet access, electricity, running water, cell phones, etc., and we have heard that many PCVs in the Sub-Saharan Africa region refer to PC SA as 'Posh Corps' because these things are available in the country that we serve in.... but this could not be farther from the truth... we live in villages just like them, with often have many problems with electricity, Internet, and running water. We deal with many of the same cultural and linguistic barriers that they face. In addition, we deal with the scars of racism that are still fresh- on all sides- resulting from Apartheid and decades of the systematic oppression of over 70 percent of the country's population. We are dealing with one of the world's worst HIV/AIDS crisis, some of the highest incidences of sexual assault and violent crimes, some of the highest unemployment rates, and one of the highest indexes of inequality. ... none of this seems very posh to any of us volunteering here, so its a bit upsetting to hear that fellow PCVs in neighboring countries perceive our experience as such. The Lesotho PCVs, however, were wonderful and we had a lovely time chatting with them and hearing about Lesotho.

The next day we had the longest drive of our trip ahead of us, so we woke up early and headed towards Hogsback, our next destination. We were up before dawn so we decided to stop at the top of a hill along the way to eat breakfast and watch the sunrise. With PB & J in hand and beautiful Lesotho mountains in the distance, we watched the sun rise out of the ground and paint the sky various shades of yellow, red and orange... it was so peaceful.

With Chris in the driver's seat and our trusty former Boy Scout, David, giving directions, we stuck to the dirt roads and took the more scenic route to Hogsback. From time to time there would be a village or two, or a shanty town, with an Afrikaner community directly across the dirt road... its easy to tell where the black South Africans live and where the white South Africans live. One side of the dirt road- where the black South Africans live- there are shacks made of corrugated tin, stacked close together. You can see chickens, cows, goats, donkeys, and various domesticated animals roaming the streets, and pillars of smoke from the burning of trash rise from people's yards. On the other side of the road- where the white South Africans live- tar roads weave in andout and are lined by brick houses, some two stories tall. You see tall, beautiful church steeples in the distance, a pool or two in some back yards.... one side on the dirt road has constantly running electricity and water, one doesn't. One side of the road has well-functioning schools with qualified teachers, the other side doesn't. On one side of the road, the people have access to health care and can visit a doctor and obtain the medicine they need, whenever they want. The other side of the road is devastated by unemployment, HIV/AIDS, and TB. On one side of the road, the children have parents who are still alive and caring for them.On the other side of the road, the 15 year old girl drops out of school to take care of her two younger siblings because both of her parents have died of AIDS... these fellow countrymen's lives and realities are separated by only twenty feel of dirt.

Sometimes we would drive along the divide, and other times there would be nothing but open spaces on either side of the dirt road. On one such stretch, we saw a couple of cars stopped and one or two people standing on the side of the road. We had been the only car on the road for a while at this point so we were a bit surprised to find a couple of cars and people just sitting there. As we got closer we saw a police car slowly driving up. We looked over and there was a little black girl, maybe around 12 or so, lying in the street. She was dead. No one was doing anything. The police car came upon the scene with no sense of urgency.. no sirens.. no flashing lights.. as if he had came upon the girl on accident, like we had. She was lying face down, arms spread out. She must have been hit by a car, her leg was twisted in a funny position and blood was everywhere. The four of us in the car never talked about what we saw...