Tzaneen

Time for another quick update. I have been in my permanent site now for 10 days doing what Peace Corps calls a "Site Orientation." My site is approximately 80km southeast of Tzaneen and approximately 40km west of Hoedspruit. Although I cannot reveal the exact location of my village publicly, I can say that I am up in the Klien Drakensburg mountains: the very northern terminus of the Drakensburg range that starts in Lesotho. I have been assigned to a community organization that has four main focuses: home based care for sick and injured community members (including those suffering from HIV/AIDS), services for Orphans and Vulnerable Children, including a drop-in center where kids can get a hot meal and play games/get help on homework after school, HIV Counseling and Testing, including door to door testing, mass campaigns, and multi-session counseling following a positive diagnosis, and finally, a greenery/poultry project that gives jobs to community members, provides healthy food to bedridden patients, and sells chicken and vegetables to provide income to the organization. 

Tomorrow we head back to our training villages for 2 final weeks of training, focusing on what we learned during our orientations to build a plan for our first three months at site. 

At the moment, I am in Tzaneen with 4 other members of SA29 and a few other Peace Corps Volunteers that live around us, enjoying the first world amenities of a city: wifi, flushing toilets, safe drinking establishments, ya know, the usual stuff.