Beginnings...

From the streets of Philadelphia to the tracks of Ntwane.

Philly at night…a nice launch pad.

After two days of staging in Philadelphia, like so many adventures this one began on an airplane and, at 14.5 hours, this was about the longest flight that I’d ever endured. Upon arrival and, after a night to sleep off the jet-lag in Johannesburg, we were shuttled to our training site at Loskop Dam where we were to spend the the next 13-weeks preparing for service — yes, every 2-year Peace Corps assignment begins with a mandatory three month training program, regardless of your age, level of experience, language ability, etc.

15 hours in a middle seat and my first glimpse of S.A. by daylight.

And for the most part this pre-training training regimen was both necessary and helpful. We spent entire days divided into different sessions on topics ranging from local language to health and safety to technical skills and cultural adaptation. Providing some nice and needed balance to the rigor of the program was the venue that Peace Corps arranged: the Loskop Dam conference center and resort is set on a reservoir in the valley of the Olifants River in western Mpumalanga. This created opportunities for some diverting, albeit short, getaways down to the lake -- or up the hill to a communications tower — between or after sessions. And getting to watch the antics of the resident baboons and vervet monkeys often added some welcome levity to the grind as well.

Diversions at training.

A trademark of Peace Corps training is that it features village-based home-stays for the duration. This of course is helpful for a variety of reasons — foremost to facilitate language immersion and cultural assimilation. So, for three months, we got to live in the small village of Ntwane, situated about 30 minutes from the training center. For me this turned out to be great; I had a lovely host family that treated me royally (sometimes it doesn’t hurt to be a little long in the tooth) and a comfortable house, replete with a big screen T.V. and hot shower, in a bucolic village setting. I spent many hours trundling up and down the surrounding hills, trying to catch sunsets in that fleeting sliver of time between training and dinner; this was always a nice way to clear the head after an intense day of sessions.

One of many Setswana grammar charts.

Finally, after 13-weeks of shuttling between the village and conference center — and seemingly countless hours of drilling on the likes of Setswana concords, phonemic awareness, and how to avoid such nuisances as malaria, diarrhea, and taxi stand robberies — we were given some perfunctory assessments. Not until then did we receive tickets to our “permanent sites” and invitations to swear in as volunteers at the American Cultural Center in Pretoria.

At last, the real adventure was about to start…

Scenes from Ntwane village.