family day

last saturday (sept. 8) was the first time i'd spent any time with my family without one of my host sisters who speaks english. the rest of my family kind of does but not really. here is a journal excerpt.
i had a big bowlful of oatmeal for breakfast. well, i saw njabuliso (my host brother, age 12) putting lemon on his cereal, so i asked him to get me a lemon from the tree outside so i could try it. little catch - he was eating "emabele" (sorghum) not oatmeal. the lemon in oatmeal was nasty! i was going to suck it up and eat it anyway, but zinhle tasted it and wouldn't let me. she dumped a whole bunch of sugar in it and gave it to the kids, and dished me up a fresh bowlful. when make and gogo heard about this, they thought it was hilarious! and they were still chuckling about it at supper time. just one example of a willingness to try new things gone slightly too far - but as long as you can laugh about it, it's all good!
[after zinhle left]
so i wandered around and found the back gate, put it together with the knowledge of a river somewhere and seeing the kids race in with wheelbarrows carrying waterdrums, and decided to go exploring. i found a cow path (with some cows on it, whom i disturbed) leading down to a trickle of muddy water (the river) and some men mixing cement to build a dam (for what water?) and eventually notsopi (host sister age 9) discovered me and rescued me from the men, who were getting a little too curious. i helped notsopi and wandile (brother age 9) fill their water drums and push them back along the cow path in the wheelbarrow. then repeat X 2! it was fun to be able to do something. and the kids loved it!
by the last time, everyone was along, including tema (sister age 3, zinhle's daughter) riding on top of the drum in the wheelbarrow like a little princess, and njabuliso, who is so much stronger than he looks! he pushed a wheel barrow with two huge containers halfway, and i did the other half. and he carries them up the steep riverbank - what a machine. we took numerous rest stops along the way though. while we were down waiting for the waterhose to fill the containers, the kids were teaching me siswati for hill/grass/monkey/river/soil etc. and laughing incredulously when they'd quiz me on a word they'd just told me and yet i couldn't remember it. this evening i got them to do it again when i had my vocab sheets out, so maybe i'll nail them this time. i just have to see them written down, or the words go in one ear and out the other.
but i felt like this afternoon finally broke down a wall with them. before they were so shy and wouldn't even look at me when i spoke to them, and my early attempts to use them as language teachers were futile. but today they couldn't do enough of it! i think making a fool of myself imitating their devotional song & dance routine helped, as well as making ridiculous animal noises to help in learning common livestock - moo! baaa! woof woof! meow! cook-a-doodle-doo! no holds barred. and make and gogo were impressed at my wheelbarrowing skills ("oh, you know how to push a wheelbarrow!") and then, since we were getting this water for the garden, i helped make water the onions and lettuce and tomatoes and carrots as the sun disappeared behind the mountain peaks and the dusky night spilled into our valley. i can't communicate too much with make, but i did manage to convey that i like gardening and that i had been hlping my mkhulu (grandpa) with his in america.
so today, of course everybody could have gotten by just fine without my help. but this is what i need to do to figure people and places out-get involved with whatever's going on. and it helps to build relationships and shows them that i'm interested in their lives. and i get to find out a little more about what it takes to keep this homestead running. so my arms are sore and my feet are dirty, but it was definitely a day well spent