Really? All this for a cell phone?

I nearly tore into a run the other day when I was walking home from work, readin’ a letter, and passed a house playing, yes, Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”. I could hear people singing along. It, seriously, took everything I had not to run in the house and dance like crazy. Since I missed that opportunity, I just spent the last 15 minutes or so dancing around my room to good ol’ Cyndi. Makes me smile. Makes me think of 80’s dancing, Inside Books benefits, my record player and “She’s So Unusual” on vinyl, and how awesome it is that there are girls in a village in South Africa getting’ down to some good stuff. And yeah, I passed two boys coming from school, listening to Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer”, was on the koombi yesterday when the radio was tuned to a station that was having a “Springsteen” weekend, and on the way back to the village this afternoon heard Maria le Maria in the koombi…my favorite South African group right now.
My mind has been swimming with all kinds of things I want to remember, little details that make up long days in the village. I can’t report doing much in the way of work last week, but I was busy, exhausted once the weekend was here. I went to a few meetings, learned more about the transportation system, started a good book (“Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert), sent a couple of letters, and discovered a few more ideas about projects I could work on while here. I have to say it’s the little details that make me tired, exhaust me.
On Tuesday my cell phone decided to stop working properly. Now, it’s sad to say, that, in the States, even if I wasn’t particularly busy, I probably would have felt so put out by having to go take care of getting it fixed. There’s a string of reasons why this is annoying: the phone is only a couple of months old, I paid a good chunk out of my monthly allowance to acquire such a phone, it’s the most direct way people in the States and in South Africa can get a hold of me, and I really didn’t have enough money to take a trip to town to get it taken care of. My first reaction was just to shrug. Oh well. The phone’s broken. Guess eventually I’ll have to do something about it. Guess if someone needs to get a hold of me they’ll have to figure out another way. Funny. I eventually went into action mode a couple of days later and showed my coworkers the problem…. it was working but no graphics were showing up on the screen. After a few practice calls (making sure to hang up before people actually answered… don’t want to use airtime!) and repeatedly turning the power off and on, taking the battery out, and shaking it pretty vigorously, we came to a general consensus: the phone was not working properly. I asked when a good time for me to go to town would be and my question was answered with “Be Free, Mmapula, when do you feel would be a good time for you to go to town?”. That day would be the day to go. Ke tla go bona gosasa. See you tomorrow coworkers! I’ll be back with a brand spankin’ new phone! It was 9:30am and I was going to town. Folks, let’s remember that the day has been in full effect for, at least, a good 4 hours by this point… my day and time were burning away. I was in search of the receipt for the phone and then I would be on my way to town. Simple. I would catch a taxi, get off at my stop, walk the 20 minutes to my house, get the receipt, walk the 20 minutes back to the taxi stop, catch another taxi to the taxi rank, catch the taxi to Tzaneen, and be in town by, what?, 11:30? Noon? Simple. Ha. I left the office and was hit with the heat. Geez that sun was blazin’. Should have brought my umbrella. I sweat across the bakery parking lot, across the crossroads (where the tar road and the main road for my village intersect), and catch a taxi, thanking the driver profusely for coming just at the right time. He drops me off, not at my taxi stop, but close enough to it, and RIGHT in front of the primary school, RIGHT in time for morning break and all the kids to scream and wave. I walk home after screaming and waving back… Duuuuuuumelang! Le Kae?! Sweating. Unlock the gate, unlock the burglar bars, unlock the door, unlock my door, shuffle through my wardrobe, and find that, yes, the receipt is nowhere to be found. The receipt for my 2 month old phone, the freakin’ guarantee that I can exchange my phone for a new one without having to pay any money, is no longer in my wardrobe, no longer in my room, no longer a freakin’ receipt. In a cleaning frenzy a couple of weeks ago that important little piece of paper went up in flames with all the other trash from my house while the neighbor kids and I looked on in fascination (we watched the fire for a good hour). No receipt. Shrug. Locked my door, locked the door, locked the burglar bars, filled my water bottle from the rainwater tank, locked the gate, and walked back to my taxi stop. No taxis. It’s 10:30, one will come soon. Maybe. Thobela boMma. Le Kae? I greet all the women selling Simbas (chips and Cheet-O type snacks) and airtime at little tables shaded by umbrellas. I wait for the taxi. I remember I brought my new book. I start to read, trying to forget about the fact that I’m waiting, that time is burning away, that it’s hot, hot, hot. Hello! Hello? I look up, Hello! A nice man has stopped his Toyota Corolla right in front of me and offered a ride. Heeeellllllo. I situate myself in the passenger seat, greet, and realize that my body temperature is dropping because, yes, this man has air conditioning in his Toyota Corolla. I nearly cry. Amazing. Just when things seem to be building up and I feel as though frustration might show its face, a nice man offers me a ride and has air conditioning. He’s a teacher and is taking one of his students home. Yes, I’m from America. Yes, it’s hot in America. Yes, just like it’s hot in South Africa. I’m a volunteer. I’m here for two years. I work with a home based care. I do love it here. I do miss certain things about America. Thank you so much for giving me a ride. You came at just the right time. I will see you soon. Yes. Thank you. Have a good day. He flags a taxi for me. And then, I’m on a taxi! We’re heading for the taxi rank and the taxi to Tzaneen! I might just make it to town by noon. Or not. We pull into the taxi rank and every taxi I see is empty. Thobela Mma. Which is the taxi to Tzaneen? Ah, that one. I walk to a taxi that has a sleeping driver and is completely empty. It is in that taxi that I sit for over an hour while it fills, one or two people at a time. I shrug. I wait. I eat an ear of roasted corn. I read. It fills, slowly, but surely, and we’re off to town, off to where they sell cell phones. My taxi is carrying 17 people. 4 in the very back row, 3 in the next row, 4 in my row (it holds 3), 3 in the front row, and 2 people plus the driver in front. It’s hot. The window latch is broken and I am sticking to the woman next to me. My arm is stuck to her’s, there is no space between our bodies. I have to breathe. Have to keep telling myself not to flip out. I’m stuck. I’m on my way to town in a taxi that took an hour to fill up. I can’t really afford this trip. I can’t really afford a new phone. My sandals are too tight. I can’t open a window. I can’t bend over to loosen my sandals. When I start to head back later in the afternoon it will take me forever to get home because I live so far from the main road. I am so far from town. If I needed to get out of this taxi I couldn’t. Will she just move a little? Just scoot over? Phil Collins’ Best of album is pulsing through every inch of my trapped body. I read. The feelings pass, I manage to get my mind on my book. As we get closer to town people get off the taxi, but my row still manages to hold 4. We’re approaching the outskirts, we stop, and the man in my row, closest to the door, gets off. The woman slides over a little, air passes between us, the claustrophobic feelings subside, I feel some relief, and the breeze against my sweat feels so, so good. We get to town. Tzaneen is a 45-minute drive from my village and I managed to make it in 4 hours. I thank the driver and kind of stumble out of the taxi, I’m starving, and seriously feel like I’ve spent the morning doing something strenuous; my body aches, I’m tired, and I just want to keep shrugging things off, but it’s getting harder to do. I walk to the mall. Calvin, the cell phone guy at Game (like a Target), tells me I look like I’ve had a rough day. I ask him if I can just purchase a phone exactly like the one I have. He wants to identify the problem, wants to send it away. I explain I don’t have a receipt. There aren’t many options. He steers me towards the display case. In a matter of minutes I have purchased a new phone (with some US savings) and Calvin has winked at me 3 times, telling me to keep my head up, and pointing out that there are positives: I get to keep my old number, I have an extra battery, and I have a new receipt. Thanks Calvin. I walk to the coffee shop, order a huge salad and pot of tea to calm my nerves. I sit in a booth, all the way at the back, read, and calm myself. In the span of the next hour I’m busy with refueling my body, speaking Sotho with my waiter and the man occupying the booth in front of me (to their shock. Most white people, it is assumed, don’t speak any African languages, white people speak Afrikaans.), and get somewhat defensive when I discuss village life with the manager (who is an Afrikaner). I get defensive because he asks how life in the village is and proceeds to continuously be shocked by everything I say. You have electricity? Why would you choose to live with those people? Isn’t it hard? Don’t you miss a flush toilet? No running water?! Why are you speaking that language? I know he wasn’t trying to be rude or insensitive, he seemed genuinely concerned and curious, but I was tired. Such a conversation was making me weary. I HATE, absolutely HATE, the “us and them” conversations. I live in a village, with other people, other people who happen to be black and I am white. Yes, most people do have electricity. I choose to live here for many reasons, some of which are: I want to learn from people, learn about who they are, I want to teach people about where I come from, who I am, I want to attempt to make small changes. It is hard, but the reasons it’s hard are so much deeper and more complicated than missing flush toilets and M&M’s (peanut, please). I, honestly, don’t think about flush toilets, I’m happy to have a place to pee. No running water, but there is water. I speak the language because I want to communicate, want to learn one more piece of the people I live with and around. Conversation over, I feel sick, and once again, time is burning away. I hike up the hill through town to get my water bottle from some other PCVs (I left it last time I was in town). By the time everything is said and done, there is no way I am going to catch a taxi to my village, then a taxi to my taxi stop, and then make it home before dark, so I stay in town. I fall asleep, in my clothes, to the ticking and humming of a ceiling fan. In the morning, I wake up, as always, a little after 6. Take a shower (a shower!!!!) and at 7 make my way down to the taxi rank, greetin’ everyone headin’ to work the whole way. I want to catch the very first taxi back to my village, think maybe I’ll make it to work by 8:30. Ha. I am the first one on the taxi, again. There is one major advantage to this, you get to pick where you would like to sit (preferably by a window that I can open, please). I SMS (text message) my supervisor and tell her what happened. I wait. I read 30 pages. I get an SMS from a coworker about getting her some chicken from Hungry Lion, her favorite fast food chicken place. I get off the taxi to see if Hungry Lion is open. It’s not. I go back to the taxi and I wait some more. I read 25 pages. I go check Hungry Lion again. Still closed. I try to translate the conversation in Sotho in the seat behind me. I watch my seatmate drink half his cold drink (Coke) and then fill the can with Brandy, tasting it a few times to see if the drink is mixed enough for our ride home. The taxi leaves the rank at 10:30. 10:30. 3 hours after I got on it. I shrug. I think how happy I am that we’re finally moving. I make a mental note that if there is a next time I will get a cup of coffee and sit somewhere until midmorning and then head to the taxi rank. On the ride home, while our taxi weaves its way in and out of villages between my village and town (about 4) I put my hair back in pigtails. Fixing my hair in such a way reminds me of a black and white picture of my mom I had on my wall in high school. In the picture, Mom’s in her early 20’s, looking off, away from the camera, and smiling, her hair is in pigtails. Mom. I tear up. Don’t cry, Megan. If you start crying, if you cry as hard as you would like to right now, no one will know what the hell to do with you, people already don’t know what to do with you. I shrug. I switch gears and think of something else, laugh at how ridiculously long my trip to town has turned out to be, all for my phone, the phone I will place on a satin pillow every night if it means I can have it work for forever. I walk into work at 11:45am, about 4 hours after I got on the taxi. I apologize to my coworkers. They tell me to rest. I spend the afternoon reading and sitting in the shade, under a tree outside, with everyone, because it is so hot in the office.
Oh it’s the little things. It’s craving a fresh baked bun from the bakery next door, smelling them all day long, and after work walking in to see that they have a 4 pack right on the top shelf, still warm, with my name written all over it. It’s a rainstorm, in the middle of the hottest part of the day, that lasts long enough to soak the ground and drop the temperature a few degrees. It’s going to a meeting and having a conversation with one of my coworkers and a guy from another NGO about how frustrated they get with meetings starting late (It’s not just me!!!!!!). It’s walking home, having a woman smile and clap her hands when I greet her, asking me for R5 (rand), and looking at me warily when I tell her I don’t have the money she needs. It’s knocking off of work early and having enough time to not only wash all my clothes, but also enough time to clean my room and read. It’s having a 14 year old boy walk part of the way home with me, insist that he is a man, and tell me that he wants to come visit me and be my friend (which actually means be my “special friend”, which actually means be my something between a boyfriend, lover, and husband), all while he is avoiding eye contact and biting his thumb. It’s buying fresh peaches, a big bag of avocados (the last of the season!), and an ear of corn roasted over an outdoor fire with a good, new friend after a great weekend of exploring the area around the village. It’s greeting someone on the road and hearing some people in a nearby yard make fun of the way I said my greeting. It’s waking up to rain hitting the tin roof, knowing that that means there’s more water for drinking, cooking, and irrigating, and that I’ll be slugging through the mud on the way to work. It’s seeing and hearing a HUGE spider, about 3 inches legs and all, scrambling all over my walls the other night, taking a deep breath, and getting it out of my room without totally losing it. It’s giving my phone number to someone and them laughing because the way I say my 4’s makes me sound like a Nigerian speaking English (this is an insult)…WHAT?! It’s riding in a koombi where the sliding door is actually wired to the rest of the taxi’s body and the driver is hittin’ every bump in the dirt road, even if he’s trying his hardest to make his way around them. It’s visiting a coworker in the maternity ward of the hospital and welcoming little Mashego into the world. It’s my coworker getting mad when people stare at me or don’t respond to my greetings because I am no different than anyone else (well, certainly no different than her, we came from the same womb). It’s neighbor kids weaving thin palm leaves together to stick in the holes of the tree where magoro (termites) live and watching them pull the leaves, covered with the bugs, out and emptying their treat into cups they’re taking home. (I learned the ones with the darker heads are the ones you want to eat.) It’s being asked to lead the morning prayer in our office, feeling a little flustered, and coming up with, “Thanks for this day, Thanks for all the people in this room. Amen.”… Oh Mmapula that was a beautiful prayer! It’s being warned by an Afrikaner man that the taxi rank I’m standing near is not safe (it’s MY taxi rank) and that if he were me he wouldn’t hang around such places (oh, mister, how do I explain that I live here?) It’s requesting “Oh L’Amour” by Erasure, explaining who The Kinks are to a fellow PCV, and splurging on lunch at a pub in Hoedspruit. It’s getting good emails and letters from friends and family far away that say I am loved and missed very much. It’s thinking about birthdays, weddings, holidays, and anniversaries that are big celebrations in some very important peoples’ lives (occasions I wish, very much, I could be around for). It’s thinking about the places I can travel and see. It’s waking up and realizing exactly where I am.