Dumelang - Welcome to Life Without Zip Codes

Off to Tulane

2007-05-24T08:25:00.001-07:00

Yes, it is true. I'm moving to New Orleans. How cool is that? I'm going to Tulane to study public health and infectous diseases. A continuation of the Peace Corps work but now at a more intense and professional level.

What about music you ask? Well, I'm writing more music now than I have since I left school. As my brother put it "You now have a 60,000 dollar hobby". It does feel nice to write for the fun of it and not for the money or scholarship of it. I think that its the first time I have written for myself.

2006-06-29T11:21:00.000-07:00

This is the front of the house I was stazing at in South Africa

Actually I was staying arroud back in the shack

It is a standard issue Aparthied era abode, there are literally

millions of these arround the RSA

This is the street in the township that our house was located.
Sebenzisa Street or in English : Make it work Street

The first weekend I was in the RSA I went on a trip to the Kingdom of Swaziland
with the Gauteng Choristers. Its a beautiful country surrounded by
huge mountain ranges.

Greetings from World Cup Land!

2006-06-29T11:13:00.000-07:00

So I have arrived in Germany. A week of traveling since I left Afrika. I'm with the sisters south east of Darmstat. I came via Frankfurt via Zurich via Rome via Johannesburg. Rome is wonderful if dreadfully hot now. Switzerland is beautiful and cool this time of year and Germany is not too bad. I go back to Rome on the 6th and back to the states on the 20th. Tommrow I go out of the convent for a trip arround Germany. A nice break from the music writing for the nuns. I will post again when I get to Rome.

Geting ready to go again

2006-06-09T06:46:00.000-07:00

In a week my time will be up in South Africa and I will be off to Rome. I have been in touch with the sisters these past months and it would seem that there is quite a bit of work to be done that side. But there will be time to see Rome and the Vatican and there will be a trip to the convent in Germany. I'm tremendously excited.

South Africa has been intresting.
I have learned much about music here.
I have gathered the material for my next two pieces.
But at the same time some of these projects have gone quite wrong.
But that is Africa.

Right now I'm on a small vacation in Botswana visiting people but I leave for South Africa on Sunday. Then I will have a week to wrap things up there. I have to register some of my Zulu/Xhosa/Setswana music in Johannesburg so that it will be open for people to sing in SA. If things go well we will make a recording of my arrangement of Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika next week. I'm also hoping to set up a few commissions that I can fulfill when I leave SA. I'm hoping to visit the Soweto String Quartet and see if we might beable to strike a deal. We shall see. At least the last few days will be productive ones.

Well, as I was typing this I tried to upload the pictures but blogger crapped out. Or rather the ISP in Africa crapped out, God knows. The internet is such a headache here. Lets just say I'll post when I get to Rome.

Hello again

2006-05-19T03:02:00.000-07:00

I have some wonderful images to post but the internet cafe that i'm at wont support my flash disk so we will have to wait... Sorry.

Some things have worked out quite well and other things have failed miserably. I did get to adjudacate in a national choir competition. It was about 40 choirs singing western, african, and gospel music. It was quite an earful but a very intereting experience. Right now I'm finshing a piece that I was commissioned to write for the Twelve Apostles Church national assembly that happens next week. Its one of those deals where the choir is already rehersing the begining and the end is still being written. They only asked me to write something for them 5 days before they wanted to reherse! The audience will be well over 5,000 when they pergorm the piece. We are renting out a whole stadium...

The text for the work comes from 1 Cor. 13:
Love is patient and kind, Love is never angry or spiteful...

People in South Africa use the word 'love' 5 min. after they meet you. That's not love.
I thought that it wold be a good text to set for SA. Its in Zulu, Setswana, and Xhosa. I'll post it when I get a recording.

My music classes failed entirely though. Its quite sad, I did quite a bit of prepatory work back in the states to make these classes the best I could. Well, thats africa. I have lived here long enough to know thats how these things go.

I'm going to try and find a different internet cafe that can take my flash disc or I'll put the images on CD and do it that way.

Peace.

Greetings from Botswana

2006-05-08T01:15:00.000-07:00

Its been a very fast two weeks. The first weekend down here I traveled to the Kingdom of Swaziland with the Gauteng Corristers (the premirere semi-professional choir in Johannesburg). They were invited to come and sing at a big music celebration of traditional African Music in Swaziland. It was quite amazing, the music was wonderful (even if the ear tires of tonic-dominant harmony), the country was beautiful, majestic even... deep ravines, sharp mountinans, all very dramatic.

This weekend I'm in Botswana touching base with my host family and letting them know of my plans. Life continues in Botswana much as it has for time out of memory. The country is modernizing but the basic day to day life remains unchanged for the masses of Batswana. And for the most part they are content. Life just is. I think that is one of the elements that I find attractive in this counrty. Everything remains simple.

So, I go back to South Africa on tuesday and I will post some pictures and recordings I have collected. Now, that I'm established here it shouldnt take so long to get to my next post.

I have arrived...

2006-04-22T01:19:00.000-07:00

Just to let everyone know that I arrived safely to South Africa. The flight was long but I got bumped to first class for the first half. The second half I had four seats to my self - no complaints!!!!! I will update soon. Peace.

Time to go

2006-04-19T09:45:00.000-07:00

Ka mosso, ke a tsamaya.

Tommrow, I leave.

For the Republic of South Afrika

Rephaboliki ya Afrika-Borwa

And the townships of Johannesburg,

Stay tuned and I will update you all when I arrive.

on the ordinary and extraordinary

2006-04-04T20:36:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about this subject of ordinary vs. extraordinary again as I prepare to return to Africa. Over the new year in 2004 I got to go on my first Peace Corps vacation. Some friends of mine wanted to go up to Victoria Falls so I joined in. It was fabulous. We went white water rafting (as pictured here) below the falls down the zambezi. It was the most exhilarating experiences of my life. During the kombi (minivan) ride back to the hotel I chatted with our guide. For him it was another day on the job. Nothing special. I started thinking about my Peace Corps experience. To those at home it was extraordinary to an incomprehensive level. And it was for me at first as well. But the extraordinary has a way of slowly turning into ordinary. I suppose familiarity and repetition turn the extraordinary into routine. But, interestingly it doesn't diminish the profundity of an experience. Perhaps the ordinary can expand upon the profound by bringing it down to a level in which we can more easily comprehend.

I imagine that the job of president of the United States would make the perfect case study. They must make world altering decisions daily as a matter of course. Extraordinary by our count. But at the same time we expect our president to be able to handle hundreds of domestic/international issues daily as a matter of routine. The country would collapse if the president could not perform his tasks with the ease that the ordinary brings. At the same time the profundity of the decisions is never far away. Compare a first term and last term picture of any president who has been in office for eight years. They look 20 years older from the weight.

I digress.

This trip to Africa is far from routine, but there is nothing extraordinary about it. Its not a matter of "Wow, look at the woman with the sticks piled on her head". That's infatuation with something extraordinary. Its a matter of the warmth of something real. Just a guy returning once more to a land he loves. Hope you enjoy the reports that come out.

Oh, my goodness

2006-03-29T20:35:00.000-08:00

Where has all the time gone?

A trip to Austin
A trip to New Orleans
1 week
then I'm off!

I'm suddenly hit with this.
Thank God that I don't have to drive a car back from Hartford.

There are so many little things to do before I go.
I'm actually packing for two different trips.
1. Southern Africa
2. Liturgical/Monastic Europe
Both requiring different not only different packing but also a different Michael.

I was looking at the celing and then I saw the sky.

Well, now I have to go finsh a Zulu Hymn I'm working on. The first attempt at an ending failed. I let the bottom voices go one by one and left the soprano hanging on the last note. It was kind of a long shot any way. I want to get this done before I sleep.

So here we go!

2006-03-17T08:04:00.000-08:00

The previous post has been confirmed and plane tickets have been purchased! I leave for South Africa on the 20th of April.

The Plan

2006-03-13T08:24:00.000-08:00

I was in Austin this weekend with Jeremy trying to flix my laptop. We took some time out on Sat. to scout a location for the film project he is working on. The two photos in this post are from that shoot. While I was in Austin the plan for the next few months fell into place. The idea is to go to South Africa and teach and research my next composition for 2 months or so. Then go to Rome and Germany to work on some translations of my music for the nuns. Then back to Texas to work on a flim score.

Mid April- Fly to Connecticut pick up my
brohters car and drive it back to Houston

April 20th- Fly to Johannesburg, South Africa

Late April to Late June - Teaching music in South Africa

Late June - Fly to Rome

Late June to Late July - Work on Italian and German editions of the music for the english prayer manual I wrote.

Late July - Begin film score for project with Jeremy

Thats the plan for now. I'm waiting on exact dates from the nuns in Rome so as soon as I have those I will book the flights. In the mean time things are going to get bit crazy. I have 5 weeks to get everything ready to go overseas and teach ...as well as drive a car halfway across the US.... and earn a few more bucks for the bank account.

So what happens now?

2006-02-27T16:24:00.000-08:00

With the Francistown Gym project in this protracted cycle of delay, I have been looking at possible alternatives. I have put out feelers to see what projects I can devlop both in Rome and Johannesburg. The nuns I have been working with for these past few years have been asking me to come out to Rome for a while so I think that we can get something together in that department. The sister incarge of the German translation of my music is now in Rome and since we are now publishing our third English edition she could use some help in puting together the eqv. German and Italian editions. The Mothers are in full support of the trip and so we are working out the details.

In Johannesburg I have a musician friend looking into projects in townships of Kagiso and Soweto. When I was in the Peace Corps I did some work there with local choral directors and their chiors. They were the best music students I ever had. They wanted to asorb everything that they possibly could from the short time I spent with them. They were so happy to have me with them that they offered what little money they had between them to come and stay with them and set up some formal classes. While I could never take their money I'm looking into what we might be able to set up. Here the Mothers have come to my help by asking the community to pray for my return to Africa. The sisters have been very supportive my projects over the years.

Time will say...

What is it like?

2006-02-24T12:39:00.000-08:00

What is it like to be a Peace Corps volunteer?

On Returning Home- Notes from a Peace Corps Volunteer:

From the Savvy Travler comes an clip aired on NPR about a PCV (Peace Corps lingo for a volunteer) in Benin. She is preparing to end her service and discusses what its like to be a volunteer in Africa and the difficulties of ending her service and returning home. I have never been to west Africa but what she says is amazing- it could have been my service she was talking about.

Visiting with a Peace Corps Volunteer

A Day with Sister Agnes:

Check out this radio diary / flash presentation about a HIV/AIDS nurse in the Soweto hospital. Soweto stands for the south west townships and is one of the largest townships in South Africa. The hospital, Baragwanath Hospital, is the largest in the world. They can see 2,000 AIDS paitents in a day. Often there is little they can do. The drugs to treat HIV are not free and hardly anyone can afford them.

The NPR Web Page - Audio and Flash Virtual Tour

Direct to the Real Audio from NPR

Delays, Delays

2006-02-21T14:00:00.000-08:00

On the issue of returning to Africa we have reached a critical junction. The board of directors for the devlopment agecny has voted not to approve. There is an appeals process and the branch manager and the project supervisor from the devlopment agency reccomend that the project be taken down that path. They still very much want the project to move forward. I cannot speculate on the reasons for denial but the report should be out tommrow. When I was in Botswana the national devlopment agency and the national devlopment bank we accused of not approving good business plans so that they could pass them off to friends. I dont know what happened but the though has crossed my mind. Everyone so far involved in the project is convinced of its viability... even those with MBAs who work at the branch and district level. Time will tell. For the mean time I shall continue to prepare for my return to the music school world.

Welcome

2006-02-20T09:29:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the blog that I should have started before I joined the Peace Corps!! Well, at least I figured out how to do this before I head back to Africa. I have been backloading it with pictures and stories from the past two years so you can see what I have been up to.

Self Portrait

2005-12-23T16:25:00.000-08:00

Oh, my goodness! What a hot day that was. I still remember it over a year later. I was going out from the clinic and it was so opressive out that I had to stop at the bar to buy a coke. By the time I made it half way to the friend I was visiting I had to stop again. I'm sitting on the wooden railing that makes up the cheif's 'official' kraal (where the cows go... like the infamous OK). In African tradition it is the most sacred of places- you depend on your kraals to protect your animals. Traditional african life hangs in the balance arround healthy animals. Setswana customs dictate that the chief be buried in the kraal so that his spirit may linger and watch over the cattle. This rarely happens in modern Botswana. Our village kraal is (by the great mystery of cel phone technology) the only place you might pick up a cel signal. At this time of the day you can usually find half a dozen people sitting on the fence searching for a signal. Mabye those old bones down there in the dirt brought in a signal for us. But the heat today kept everyone away (well, at least at the bar seeking refreshment). I think that with everyone gone I noticed my long shadow for the first time and took this shot.

Home

2005-12-21T10:25:00.000-08:00

Yes, that yellow brick building with the tin roof was my home for two years. I had no electricity in the house or running water. I did have have a tap in the yard, so water was at least fairly close at hand. I kept large buckets of water in the kitchen so that when the tap went dry I could still cook and drink.

My yard was dirt (I called it my little sand box) but you still had to sweep the dirt and make it look nice. The best women could sweep the dirt with different strokes and create a patterend masterpiece. I was lucky if I could get all of the little plant pods and stuff out of the yard in one go.

A tin roof in summer = hot.
A tin roof in the rain = loud.
I will say no more on that subject.

On candles
Candels cease to be romantic lighting when you have nothing else to use. If you have no candles you can find a small neighbor or boy roaming arrond the village and send them to go buy some. They always bring back back exact change. I think that in the summer candles put out more heat than light. One part candle wax mixed with one part paraffin (thats kerosene for you crazy Westerners) slowly heated makes a good floor polish. In the classroom a candle makes a good phallus for demonstrating proper condom use.

The Perfect African Sport

2005-12-16T17:26:00.000-08:00

Every evening, like clockwork, the village kids would come out to the the field in front of my house and play football. You don't need anything to play football. A ball can be made from threading together plastic bags untill you have enough to wrap around into a hard ball. Martha would be proud. The kids play untill dark then go home and attend to household duties like bringing in the goats, washing and pressing school clothes for the next day, or cuting firewood.

Out in the Bush

2005-12-14T20:12:00.000-08:00

Out in the middle of the Kalahari Desert along a strech of land that looks like the middle of nowhere is one of the coolest places in Southern Africa. Planet Baobob. On the Francistown-Maun road in Botswana is a little camp off the main road in what looks like nothing but Kgalhadi scrub brush. But upon closer inspection this little camp is situated right in a virtual forest of Baobob trees. The sunest picture on this page (down at the bottom) has one of these trees in the foreground. Pictured here is the reception desk/bar for the site. It is aslo the base camp for adventures out onto the salt pan (see the picture of nothing but perfectly flat ground and a jeep). A wonderful treasure that I cant wait to get back to.

Getting the message out

2005-12-05T15:02:00.000-08:00

As a Peace Corps Volunteer working in HIV you are always asking your self: "How can we better present this message and get it out there?" One of the things that we did was to create a district HIV/AIDS newsletter. We had a print run of 3,000 copies that went out to all of the clinics, schools, and hospitals. In it we ran indepth articles about HIV, stories about people with HIV, and information about support groups. It became quite popular and the copies got passed arround quite a bit. To the left is a small selection from one of the issues. you can click on it and make it bigger to see it.

The ambulance

2005-12-04T10:24:00.000-08:00

This, ladies and gentle men was our clinic ambulance. A pickup truck with a flashy light and a big "A". We didnt really cary any medications in the ambulance with us. It didnt have any special devices in there. Not even O2 or IVs. But it did have superb 4 wheel drive and could get to the hospital no matter what the conditions on the dirt roads might be. Any medical supplies we needed would be in the clinic and we would take only what was needed by that specific patient. The African sun would bake any drugs left in the ambulace and render them useless.

on delivering babies

2005-12-03T08:44:00.000-08:00

In this room I have delivered more babies than I can count. Spartan by western standards, the room seems to trouble health professionals in the US. But, the truth is that infant mortatility in Botswana is one of the lowest in Africa. And, this is a vast leap forward from what little the country had 25 years ago. This is a standard delivery room at a rural clinic. We can handle uncomplicated pregnancies here. All of the hospitals have much more at their disposals and are equipped surgical level delivery rooms for c-sections and have units for critical care neonates. If at the clinic any abnormalities are discovered during prenatal care, we send them to the hospital to deliver. If there is trouble at the clinic during delivery we have an ambulance and driver on stand by to transport the patient to the hospital. More often than not clinic level deliveries go according to plan. Actually, what is keeping the infant mortatility rate elevated in Botswana is not the level of health care but the prevalence of HIV and AIDS.

Our clinic staff

2005-12-02T15:17:00.000-08:00

The Ramokgonami Clinic Staff

(its winter, thus the sweaters)

(yes, winter can be cold in Africa)

(its a desert where I live, deserts get cold)

(very cold when you dont have a heater at night)

on very rural health care

2005-12-02T08:39:00.000-08:00

Location:
Moshopa Health Post
Mahalapye Sub District
Republic of Botswana

What you are seeing is the pharmacy for a public healh post in a village that has no more than 1,000 residents. The clinic that I worked at oversaw this and several other health posts in the area. Think of it as a minor emergency clinic. Here you can acess (for free) wound care, basic drugs- antibiotics, anelgesics, antihypertensives, vaccines, pre and post natal care, for non emergenccy cases you can schedule an appointment with the doctor when he comes (about one every three weeks), for more serious cases we have an ambulance with a nurse and driver on call. For ease of distribution the drugs are prepackeged in plastic bags and set in the trays on the top shelf (we do this when nobody is at the clinic so that when patients come we can get them in and out faster). The middle shelf has containers of basic oral drugs- pills for adults and liquids for the kids.

on the weather

2005-12-02T08:06:00.000-08:00

Of all the different kinds of weather I face in Botswana the dust storm tends to be my least favorite. Now, its not the kind of dust storm that can sweep across northern Africa but, a Kalahari dust storm or a phefo e e matsubutsubu in setswana - a storm of winds is not a fun event. Generally, they strike up when I leave my windows open at home and have walked to a remote end of the village. It then involves a several kilometer run to my house at top speeds while I silently shout oh god, the windows! SHIT! the pot of lentels will be sandy (who shouts about their lentels?) Dammit, my bed is going to be a fucking beach. Even when you get the windows closed the dust still gets in. After the storm abides I have to spend the rest of the day geting sand out of everything. Yes, dinner was ruined. So, now that I'm tired I will have a sandwich. And beer, beer is good.

Me, Myself, and I

2005-12-01T21:17:00.000-08:00

On vacation along the lower Okavongo river. Namibia is on the far side of the river, I'm standing on the Botswana side. What a truely lovely day that was. The weather was perfect. The country was beautiful. And above all I was in the best company one could hope for.

Its never what you think

2005-12-01T19:19:00.000-08:00

This is the Riverwalk mall in the capital of Botswana. Not everything in that small African country you never heard of before is cows, dirt, and mud huts. Many of the places that were called third world in the past are now a mixture of first and third world. The restaurant below is fabulous.

on the setting of the sun

2005-12-01T19:09:00.000-08:00

Location:
20° 11' 51" S
25° 18' 15" E

Why is it that a common event such as the setting or rising of the sun can strike us with such emotional force? I took this picture while on vacation with a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer over the 2005 independence holidays in Botswana. The sunrises and sunsets in Africa always grab me. On my first flight to Africa I was told by an old Afrikaaner that the zonsondergang (sunsets) out in the bush would stay with me forever. He was right, but not in the way I thought. It is not an image that stays with you but rather a rhythm. The passing of light, the comming of stars, the rise of the moon. It is a daily cycle that transformes over the course of the year. In the west, we hardly notice these things in our daily life. When do notice them they tend to be singular events- an extra special sunset on vacation, perhaps. In rural Africa you can't help but notice. Over there you always know when the sun sets, when the moon rises, and in what phase. If the sun is down and the moon is not up its much harder to find your way.

on facing isolation

2005-12-01T15:52:00.000-08:00

Location:
Ntwetwe Pan-

Makgadikgadi Salt Pans

Kalahari Desert

In the Middle of the Kalahri Desert there is a vast nothingness the size of Switzerland. Yea, big. Geologically, its a salt bed that remainis from an ancient superlake that covered over 30,000 sq. miles. Personally, it is the most profoundly desolate place I have ever been. No roads, no plants, no animals, no, people, not even any insects. It is a place where you come face to face with true isolation. 360 degrees of featurelessness, yet one of the most fascinating places I have ever been. The first time I went out on the pans we spent the night in sleeping bags 100 yards out from the vechicles. It is a rare luxury to experience the dance of the night sky from such a vantage. It is a place where you feel small, but where being small is not a bad thing.

I learn the art of painting posters

2005-12-01T15:25:00.000-08:00

A drama group came to our district to perform plays about how mothers can avoid transmitting the HIV virus to their unborn children. Sounds dreadful but the group made a great play out of it. I got the task of making the posters to go up and advertise the events. Its a lot harder than one might think.

on evenings

2005-12-01T12:18:00.000-08:00

I took this photo during one of those splendid electric sunsets we had in Botswana. The man pictured is Godfrey Sekgabo, teacher of Math and Computer studies and coach of the chess team at Ramokgnami CJSS. We were in his garden in the school compound that evening (as we so often were). We had no water for the garden so we were sparingly using the last bit of water from the watertank in the yard. After the work in the garden we would harvest what we wanted for dinner and SK (thats what we called Sekgabo) would usually make dinner. That is unless he was in the mood for one of my American concoctions. Then I would cook. We would then usually watch the news in setswana and play a game of chess. If it was time for the newspapers to come out we would go buy all of them from the general store and then sit and read them. Lively and heated discussions followed about the articles... the government of botswana, the removal of the bushmen from the CKGR, the banning of a University of Botswana for criticizing the government (he was kicked out of the country), the Thokolosi (gosts haunting someone or other), elections, Zimbabwe and its president Uncle Bob...

In a country of only 2 million there is always something to talk about. The whole country is like a small town- everybody knows everybodies business.

Outside the West

2005-11-29T18:15:00.000-08:00

In the rest of the world this is actually a common scene. This could be Africa as easily as it could be South America. Domesticated animals clogging up the road is one of the universal themes in developing countries. I like the contrast with the high voltage powerlines in the background.

on the nature of African dirt roads

2005-11-28T19:10:00.000-08:00

Where does this road go?

The funny thing is that this road is in the capital of Botswana (just just next to downtown). Looking at it you might think that you are in the middle of the Kalahari. But, just down the road a bit you will find this restruant. The great Sanitas. A gem of the capital city. Its a plant/outdoor stuff/herb store and restruant. Fabulous. Everything here is fresh. And inexpensive. You never know where that little dirt road goes!

The Ramokgonami Table Tennis Team

2005-11-18T19:49:00.000-08:00

On vacation

2005-11-17T19:46:00.000-08:00

Sterilization

2005-11-15T20:26:00.000-08:00

I took this picture with my mom when she came to visit me in Botswana. She was positively overcome by the sight of our autoclaves. "Michael, take a picture, oh, they will never believe this back in the US!" I had never given them a second look. But then I have never worked in a western hospital. To me, they did their job and that was that. To my mom, well, just look!