Sunday, October 7, 2007

Doors

Today, Saturday, was a day of doors. I got a new door and we took the car to the car guy (really not sure what to call him). He promptly disassembled the door, worked with some wires and in the end the door worked as good as new. No ordering of parts, no waiting in a building, no offering to change the oil/windshield wiper fluid/ brake fluid/suspension/ catalytic converter etc.

I didn’t realize installing my new house door would take all day. Why a new door? Peace Corps likes to keep us safe, and so when the door wouldn’t shut because it had gotten bigger during the rains, it was time to take a trip to the only place in town that sells doors. (I also ripped the handle off trying to close the door)


The store is an Afrikaaner-run (Afrikaaner = descendent of the Dutch settlers that colonized South Africa back in the day) hardware store in the main shopping district. And by main shopping district, I mean the clinic, a tavern, the post office, gas station, etc. only two real stores. One is the hardware store, the other is a Chinese shop run by the only two Chinese gentlemen in town. We’re are not quite sure how they ended up here, but until my communication skills improve (I think they speak broken Setswana) I won’t be able to find out. There has got to be a good story there. To clarify, the town where I live is nearly all Black South African. The exceptions could be counted on my fingers in a village of upwards of 10,000.

Upon first asking they said they were out of doors (no pun intended), but as I was asked by another cashier what I would like someone remembered they had two doors left. So I got one, along with the necessary equipment and then spoke with the owner, who was delighted to have a visitor from Texas. He was even more delighted when he found out that I spoke German, as he was of German-descent himself and spoke German. (Afrikaans is somewhat like German, so he could converse in both languages). He invited me and the other volunteer out to his farm for beers and steaks. We've decided to wait a bit before taking him up on the offer because we don't really know our schedules and we don't want to appear to be preferring the company of the better-off people in the village, as we are here for the entire village.

When we brought the door back, is wasn’t quite what my host mother had in mind… she had wanted something fancier, but I told her we could make it fancy later, let’s put it in before the next storm.

Of course it wasn’t the right size. I found out that power tools would really save time. Everything we did was done by hand. What would have taken 15 minutes with a circular saw took at least two hours as we had a conventional saw and a plane. As we were working on the door, we had visitors, and I divided my time between working on the door with the ranch-hand, getting visitors drinks, and cleaning up my room since I had unexpected visitors. The work took all day, but in the end I added a coat of varnish and let it dry before closing the door… and the door closed, it was great.

I’ve been doing a lot of settling in here in my permanent site. I live with a host family of a married couple and their ten-year-old daughter. The ten-year old goes to one of the schools I work with and my host mother teaches at that very same school. They have a daughter that goes to boarding school and another daughter that is already out of school. They also have a dog, cows, sheep, and goats. Since it is spring, it’s great to see the lambs, kids, and calves running after their respective parents. Part of this settling in has been pointing out the leaks in my tin roof, which ended up in a trip to that very same roof where I found the problem, an exposed beam. While I was up there, I also spotted a birds nest. The eggs were still warm, but I didn’t have the heart to cook them, but I did end up cooking dinner for the family because my host mom was tired. While I was cooking, the family in Texas called. It was great. After dinner I managed to chat with many of you, and Julie sent me songs, which were amazing. ( I can’t get “Come back to Texas” by Bowling for Soup out of my head). A great end to the day of the door.

Interspersed with these current episodes will be flashbacks to earlier, when I didn’t have a blog. I’ll try to make sure to label which entry is which, but just thought I’d give ya’ll a heads up.

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