We Are Officially Volunteers

Sorry it's been so long since we last posted. Jennie and I drafted a
post a few days ago and were transfering it to the phone, but the
phone cut me off at 1294 characters. Then we were going to break it
up into multiple posts of 1000 characters or so, but I lost the
notebook. That's okay though, because so much has happened in the
last four days.

We've finished what Peace Corps here calls Phase I Training, which is
basically all the classroom sessions. The next three months are Phase
II, where we begin to integrate into the community and complete
assignments that apply the skills we learned. Phase III is in January
where we come back together to share our experiences and successful
practices.

The exciting news is on September 20th we were sworn in as Peace Corps
volunteers at a ceremony at the ambassador's house. We also have a
new address:

Ben & Jennie Bleckley, PCVs
PO Box 870
Nebo
1059
South Africa

More about our new home, jobs, and host family in our next post.

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Teal Rondaval Here are some long overdue pictures of the rondaval we've been living in during training.

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Greetings from South Africa!

Dumelang! Re dula South Africa!
Greetings! We are living in South Africa!

We haven't had access to the internet since we left Colorado. Today we are at an undisclosed town near our village close the the Botswana border (Peace Corps asks us not to post our specific location for security purposes).

Our eight hour flight from New York has a 12 hour layover in Frankfurt, Germany where coincidentally, Jennie's uncle Rans was on a business trip. He met us at our day hotel for some schnitzel (we'd never had any - it was pretty good). Everyone was talking about my cool Uncle Rans!!

That evening we flew for 11 hours from Frankfurt to Johannesburg, where we were greeted by Peace Corps country staff and driven on buses to an educational center in the Northwest Province.

We were welcomed at the college by our Language and Cross-cultural Facilitators (LCFs). They are native South Africans responsible for language training. They greeted us with traditional South African singing and dancing. It was pretty cool.

Training took place at the college for the first week, before we climbed on the buses again to ride to our training village and move in with our host family.

We live in a rondaval separate from our family's main house. It has teal walls and a thatch roof - very stereotypically African. Our training schedule is fairly rigorous, so we get to see the sun rise and set every day. Each morning begins with one of us fetching the water for our bucket baths. We then heat up some of the water in an electric tea kettle and mix it in with our cold water, then bathe and clean our shoes before dumping the water out. Then we eat breakfast (usually corn flakes or porridge) and head to training. Lunch often consists of peanut butter and jelly and some fruit.

Dinner consists of rice or a staple food called bogobe or pap. It's made to a stiff mashed potato consistency from cornmeal and water. It's pretty good, especially when you cover it with meat or chicken and gravy. This week we also sampled a South African delicacy - mala, or cow intestines. They were actually pretty good, we would compare them to a chewy noodle.

Laundry is done in a bucket as well, by hand without a wash board or anything like that. It's kind of hard work and many of the trainees have sore on their hands. We have a group of neighbor boys who come over every week to play games and help with laundry.

We went to a funeral the first Sunday that were here which was pretty intense. There is a funeral pretty much every weekend. One of the traditions is for men and boys of the village to help put the sand over the casket during the service and Ben went up to partake in this.

We have met so many wonderful people in the last couple of weeks who we are very excited to continue to work with. There is another couple who lives just up the dirt path from us and they come over on the weekends to play cards and to go on walks.

The weather has been nice. It is usually cold in the mornings but a very pleasant temperature for the rest of the day.

We are running out of time on the computer! We have really appreciated the letters we have received so far (I have read each one at least three times). Please keep sending letters, they mean the world to us right now. (It is also helpful if you write airmail on them).
We love you all. Thank you for your support!

Ben and Jennie

Update 7/27/07

Latest update from Jennie & Ben (they do not have email access so Mother Olson is trying to do this!)
"Things in South Africa are wonderful so far! We have met so many wonderful people & this is just the beginning. When we arrived at the school our language & cultural trainers were singing & dancing to welcome us to South Africa. Myself (along with many others) had tears in our eyes. I am already blown away by the strength, compassion and wisdom of the people I have met so far. All of them have been through so much yet they are always willing to give whenever there is a need. We are leaving in the morning (7/28) to meet the family that will host us over the next two months. We have learned that we will be learning Sepedi (language). We have also learned that we will be moving to Limpopo after training. We have broken into small groups to learn culture and language. I have a wonderful trainer who knows a lot about language and culture."

We're leaving on a jet plane!

It is almost 9p on July 15th and we are almost completely packed. We have had a great (but sad) time saying our "see you in two years." Our families and friends have been so supportive of our decision to join the Peace Corps and we really appreciate it.

We may not be able to update our blog for a while but please keep us in your thoughts.



Here is a picture of Ben and I enjoying a rootbeer float toast:

Update: audio podcast of pouring the root beer float with Jennie and her brother Matt singing in the background.

Cheers!

Love,
Jennie and Ben

Training Itinerary

We put together a map of our current training itinerary - as we're beginning to learn, however, any of this could be subject to change. We're definitely not picky when the government is sending us to Africa and footing the bill for us to live there for two years.

In less than 24 hours, we leave for Philadelphia. Probably one last post from both of us tonight, but if not, we'll try to send something from there.

New Address, more information on training

Hello everyone!

I know you were hoping that we would change the address that you could send letters to one more time so here you are:

Jennie and Ben Bleckley
Peace Corps
PO Box 9536
Pretoria 0001
South Africa

This address should be good until around September 20th and then we will send word with a new address.

I received an email today telling us more about training (July-September) so I thought I would share that with you.

A little bit of information about South Africa and the Peace Corps program there:

"South Africa is a country going through an enormous transition. It is a First World-Third World country. The government and private sector have created a robust, First World economy. However a large segment of the population still lives in a Third World economy. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, you will be addressing the needs of those still living in a Third World society, threatened by AIDS and enrolled in an educational system that still does not adequately meet the needs of learners.

This year Peace Corps will celebrate its 10th anniversary in the country. On the day of your swearing-in to become a Volunteer, 140 currently serving Volunteers and numerous dignitaries will be present to recognize a decade of Peace Corps Volunteer service in the country."

My dad said that when we received our new placement (we were not able to go to the first place we were nominated for due to restrictions after a rough medical clearance process) we would be blown away. He sure was right!

We will arrive in Johannesburg on Saturday July 21st in the morning. We will then be driven to Mankwe Education Center in Rustenburg. We will stay there for one week "being oriented to Peace Corps and South Africa." After that week we will move into the home of a South African family who will help us learn the ropes from July- September.

This family will live in the Zeerust area (approx. 120 kilometers from the Botswana border). They will be responsible for helping us with language, teaching us how to cook, wash clothes, etc. We will be eating all of our meals with our host family. The staple food is maize (corn meal), prepared as a thick porridge called "pap" and eaten with vegetables or a sauce.

During our training six languages will be taught: Sepedi, SeTswana, IsiZulu, IsiSwati, Xitsonga and Afrikaans. Every volunteer will take an oral language proficiency exam near the end of training.

Needless to say I am getting very excited and nervous! Any warm thoughts are appreciated.

Love,
Jennie

Two Weeks to Go

Last Saturday we recieved our staging packet which contains our flight information and staging assignment. At 10 am on July 16th we will leave Denver for Phillidelphia, PA. Staging will begin the following day at 1 pm, so we will have some time to spend exploring the city and visiting my Aunt Leslie who recently took a trip to South Africa. She's worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for a number of years, is an avid world traveler, and was a major influence in shaping my world view.

In the meantime I'm working at Peaceful Valley Scout Ranch for one final summer. I worked there from 1998 to 2003 and decided to go back for one final year. I'll leave there on July 12th. Jennie and I are both working on learning Setswana, a common language in northern South Africa, where a large part of our training will take place (or so we are told).

It still doesn't seem real to me that in two weeks I'm leaving to live in South Africa. Crazy.

Thanks for all your support!

Address change

Hello everyone!
I just wanted to let everyone know that our address during training has changed to :

Ben and Jennie Bleckley, PCT
Peace Corps
126 Verdoon Street
Sunnyside
Pretoria, South Africa

We recently received an email with language lessons that we need to work on, so we are in the beginning stages of learning Setswana (and by beginning, I really mean beginning!). We will have language lessons for several hours every day during training. We do not know for sure if we will be speaking Setswana during our service, but we will be place with a family who speakes Setswana during our training in July, August and September.
We are getting very excited for our upcoming adventure ( a little over three weeks left until we leave for staging).

Thank you everyone for your support!
Love,
Jennie

Uncle Rans and Aunt Pati's

Here is the next installment of the farewell tour edition!

We arrived at Rans and Pati's house around 3p on Friday May 25th. Pati was still at work so we went to surprise her and then we took a scenic ride back to their house.

We could not have planned the trip better if we had tried because we were able to spend the entire Memorial Day weekend with them. We went on some scenic walks/hikes around the island, played board games, went to point-no-point, the seashell museum, and relaxed on the deck. Here are some pictures from our adventures.

A deer that spent much time munching greens in their forest:

The light house at Point-no-Point

A fish in blue jeans who was kind enough to pose with Ben and I:

Starfish on the pier:

Uncle Rans, Aunt Pati, Me, Ben

After much discussion, we decided that it would be best to leave on the 5:20 ferry to Seattle to avoid commuter traffic. This ended up working really well as we were able to see the sunrise on the ferry.

We made it back into Denver on Wednesday May 30th after spending a night camping near the Great Salt Lake in Utah.