Joe’s Birthday: November 7

We celebrated Joe’s birthday with school visits, a principal’s meeting, language class, dinner with the family and a flood. In the spirit of Kitzman, Kelli left Joe happy birthday notes throughout the day and we made plans to celebrate at a later date when we didn’t have school. Joe spent the day in grade R (kindergarden) where he became a human jungle gym and puppet for the singing five and six year olds. As this would be his first day observing grade R, Joe was both excited and a little anxious. Stepping out of the teacher’s office, he was instantly met by a pack of little ones no taller than his knees. They quickly surrounded this giant white man and herded him to their classroom. The classroom teachers politely ushered Joe to a seat in the back of the room and just as his rear made contact with the small plastic chair all 30 of the learners swarmed him. Instantaneously, the singing and dancing began. As the children sang, they inched closer and closer to Joe, urging him to sing along. Joe obliged, desperately hoping that his efforts would be rewarded with increased personal space and a decrease in the volume. However, due to the language barrier, it took Joe awhile to get the hang of the songs.

Even the English songs were disguised by thick accents and slurred pronunciations; on the third time through, Joe finally recognized ‘Bah Bah Black Sheep’. When he was finally able to add his voice to the frenzied chorus, the children’s expectations had risen. It was no longer acceptable to simply sing along, dance moves were now mandatory. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Joe’s dance moves are, well, limited and the children quickly remedied the problem by manually moving Joe’s arms and legs. With three learners on each arm and at least four in charge of each leg, Joe had no choice but to smile and play along. Talk about a classic Peace Corps moment: an hour spent with thirty snot covered little ones singing their hearts out with huge smiles as they manipulated Joe’s arms and legs to mimic the gestures they had spent all year learning. Joe couldn’t have asked for a better birthday present. Thankfully Joe had an incredible school day because the principal’s meeting was a bust. Not one of the six principals showed up, even after a month of reminders and personally speaking with two of the principals only a few hours before the scheduled meeting. The worst part was that the principal of the school where the meeting was to be held had forgotten all about it (even though Kelli had reminded her the previous day) and had not informed anyone we were having a meeting at the school. Frustrations! Joe kept a positive attitude and we picked up some Mayo (delicious yogurt treats) on the way to language class in order to celebrate Joe’s day. In language class we had a lot of fun finishing up our posters to learn our new words and Ma judged them over dinner declaring Joe the winner. Kelli thinks it was rigged because Ma had forgotten about Joe’s birthday =).

During dinner, both the Petricks and the Kramers called to wish Joe a happy birthday which was a nice surprise. Upon returning home that evening, we were greeted with water pouring from underneath our front door. Frantically unlocking the door, we slipped and slided to the sink to turn off the water. Joe had gotten into the habit of turning on the sink so that we could hear when the water was turned back on as it had become more and more sporadic and would sometimes be on for a few hours in the afternoon. We had forgotten that we had left the sink on and for some unknown reason the plug in the drain, causing a massive flood in our house. A half an hour of moping and sweeping later, we had gotten most of the water out of the house. We finished the day by opening two birthday packages that the Kramers had sent, filled with delicious goodies. We were fortunate to have picked them up the previous Saturday on our trip to town. Another eventful birthday in beautiful South Africa!

pictures: grade R friends; one of the village's tuck shops