Visiting the Eastern Cape

Last week was the much anticipated, exciting, and extremely overwhelming SITE VISITS!! My Xhosa-learning friends and I boarded the 15 hour overnight Greyhound to the Eastern Cape to meet with our Supervisors, and visit our permanent sites for a couple days. A lot happened on this site visit and it was information overload so I was mentally and physically exhausted afterwards, but I can’t wait to go back and actually get started!

Here are some details of my site visit:
Organization: I will be working with the Ikhwezi Support Group. I was able to meet everyone, and I really like my supervisor(s)! They work with OVCs (orphans and vulnerable children), provide food to families living with HIV/AIDS, and other services that I have yet to observe. It was hard to grasp everything they do in the two days that I was with them. I’m looking forward to my first three months at site that are meant to be the time where we get orientated to our organization and don’t start any projects. I’m expecting that it will take me a while to be aware of everything that they are doing in the community.

Site Location: If you look on a map of South Africa, find Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, go to the right along the coast, you will find the small town of Alexandria. That is where I am! Very coastal, I’m only about 25 minutes away from a little beach town called Kenton-on-Sea. I am SO excited about this! Because there are only five other volunteers going to the Eastern Cape with me, and we are the first ones to ever be placed there we are all pretty spread out from each other. The closest volunteer to me is Will, and he is about an hour away staying in Paterson. He is very close to Addo Elephant National Park which is really cool! My “shopping town” is supposed to be Port Alfred, but there isn’t really regular transport there so I’ll probably be meeting up with Will in Port Elizabeth for any big shopping trips I may have to make.

Housing: Where to begin? To explain briefly, the organizations that we work with are responsible for finding and arranging our housing. They have guidelines that they are required to follow when it comes to this. I stayed in the second house they had arranged for me, because the first had been rejected by the Peace Corps. I will preface this by saying that this housing has also been rejected – so I am currently homeless when I arrive to site. As nerve-racking as this new development is, I am extremely relieved that my housing was rejected.

There were several reasons why the housing was rejected. For Peace Corps the biggest requirement is that a volunteer is safe. Their basic requirements are that our housing be “burglar proof”, have a locking door/windows, be private, have a separate entrance to the area (so you don’t have to enter a main house to enter your space), and a clean toilet/pit latrine. They do not require that we have running water or electricity. This house did have a clean, flushing toilet in an outhouse structure, a tap with running water in the front yard, and electricity so I was good on those counts. It was not secure however. When I arrive the door was only able to be locked from the outside (but my host dad fashioned me a temporary solution), and the windows had no locks whatsoever. It wasn’t quite private because the wall that separated my room from the renters room next to me didn’t actually go all the way up to the roof (there was no ceiling). This led to light/music/cooking sounds/smells being shared between the two rooms as though we were in the same room. We could hear everything that the other one was doing, and light went between the rooms. This was another issue Peace Corps had – the fact that there were renters and it wasn’t a family. My host dad rented a room in his house to a male high school teacher, and the room next to me to a female security guard.

Something that made me very uncomfortable was not something that Peace Corps has any requirements on but the fact that my room had an ant infestation, and at night was overrun with large and small cockroaches. I was unaware of the cockroaches on the first night, but woke up the second night to a bizarre sound. I could hear something scurrying around my room, in multiple directions. It sounded to me like mice. I turned my flashlight on and it immediately showed a large cockroach on the wall at the foot of my bed. I jumped up, turned the light on and went on a cockroach killing spree. There is this wonderful product called DOOM which kills any and all bugs. This was reserved for the large cockroaches which I didn’t want to kill with the bottom of my flip flop.

After killing all cockroaches in sight, I turned off the light and attempted to fall asleep again with my headphones on. At this point my brain was obsessed with the cockroach noises though and I could hear them moving despite the music. I was fully awake, completely terrified of cockroaches walking on me as I slept (two were spotted on my bed!) and turned the light on, killed a few more that had come out with the light being off for five minutes, and decided to read. I read until about 3am when I finally fell asleep with the light on. It was horrible.

The next night was fine because that day some of my new friends helped me hang my mosquito net which tucks under the mattress so I had a cockroach proof bed. I did wake up and hear the lovely sounds of scattering cockroaches, but was able to fall asleep knowing they were unable to reach me. (I’m sorry, but I feel like I shouldn’t be able to HEAR a bug walking around my room. That may give you some indication of their sizes). I have struggled with if I’m being high maintenance about this particular subject. I mean, I’m in Africa in the Peace Corps after all...but I’ve decided I am fine with the fact that I DO NOT want to have cockroaches wherever I am living.

Anyway it’s irrelevant now because I’m moving somewhere else. Well, it probably won’t be irrelevant and I’ll probably have to use my cockroach net wherever I am but at least now I know to set it up from day one. As long as I’m protected I’m fine! I’m not the only one who's homeless for now though. In the Eastern Cape alone only half of us have housing that has been approved. For many PCTs in my group things are up in the air as we finish our last week of training. Several people are having to switch housing, or have to get completely new sites altogether (new organization and housing).

Now to the positive! The Eastern Cape is beautiful…where I am it’s very coastal, and kind of reminded me of the Northern California/Oregon Coasts (minus the big trees).


There are so many cool things in the Eastern Cape! Third to Cape Town, Kruger National Park, the EC is the place where tourists go! I’m part of the Sunshine Coast (supposedly because it sees more sunshine than anywhere else in South Africa…which I actually find hard to believe since it rained every day I was there…). There is also the Wild Coast (which sounds AMAZING), the worlds highest commercial bungee jump in one of the National Parks, lots of National Parks, lots of historical sites, some of the best surfing beaches in SA/world, it is the birthplace of Nelson Mandela, where he went to college, etc. Also, for all you nerds out there we have Hogsback which is right between me and the three volunteers that were placed around Queenstown north of me. Hogsback is the exact place that inspired Tolkien’s “The Hobbit”. It has mountains and an ancient forest and is apparently a magical place! So you “Lord of the Rings” fans now have an excuse to come visit me. I would love to write more but I’m on a restricted time limit! I will be getting my own internet (YAY!) within the next two weeks so anticipate me actually being able to reply to you’re e-mails and facebook messages (which I LOVE getting by the way!). ALSO. I have a phone!!!!! I of course have forgotten my number so I can’t post it now. The next time I’m on the internet I will let you know both my phone number (and cheap ways to call me!) and my new address.

Stay well!

ps. I didn't have time to edit this so if there are lots of errors don't judge me!