No Running Water?! This is the life in Africa!

FYI: This is STILL not Erin, I am just the sister doing what I know best and that is updating my sisters blog as information is received. I promise, the one you truly want to hear from will eventually be updating her own blog. Until then you will just have to deal with me (the lovely sister).

It should also be noted this update comes from my parents (she doesn't love me enough to call me even though I update her blog, haha, JUST KIDDING, she hasn't had more than a few minutes in the last month to talk so obviously my parents get to speak with her).

My parents received the second phone call from Erin on Friday morning 2/12. The Peace Corp members (SA21 as in the 21st group of peace corps members to enter South Africa) are now living with their African families. The families live near the reserve where Erin will be training for the next two months. I believe the pictures on an earlier blog entry are of this reserve not the women’s college.

Erin’s African mom and dad are in their fifties and have no biological children. Other members in the household are a mentally disabled girl that is 19 yrs old with her 3 month old baby and also a 9 year old boy (Erin thinks he would be their great nephew but there are no words for niece and nephew in the culture it is all sister and brother). The boy’s mother also lives there on weekends.

Erin said the house is nice but there is no running water. That of course, means the bathroom is out back (as you can tell my younger sister is much more adventurous than I. I might run if you told me I had to live for more than a few days without running water!) Anyway, I digress, the house has 3 bedrooms, Erin has one, the parents have another and she said up to 5 others could be sleeping in the third bedroom.

Learning the language has been a little difficult because English is also one of the languages spoken in South Africa so they are not forced to speak in IsiZulu.

Some of the funny asides: During lunch at the reserve monkeys try to grab your food and one day while in class they turned around to see a baboon looking in the window at them.

Again the conversation was rather brief, she was at a pay phone with others waiting in line.

Erin said she just mailed some letters(didn’t have postage before). So hopefully, we will have some more information when we receive her letters.

Until next time...... (I don't know, I really have nothing clever to say as it is far to late for me to be thinking!)