language

For three days, all of the trainees left the comforts of Moletji for a hotel to meet with our supervisors. For me, that meant going to a conference at Oasis and meeting three principals. The principal's initial reaction was to ask how old I am, their guess was 16.
Respect is assigned based on age and gender. As a young woman, the only people that I do not have to show respect to are children. If I was a black South African living here, I would probably still be in high school and have a child of my own. I would cook, clean, and fetch anything for the men and women who are older than me. Because I'm not South African, I do get out of some of the fetching and cleaning but I still end up thinking things like, "get your own water," and "spread your own margarine" too often for my liking.
The host family here consists of a grandmother and grandfather, and so far the grandmother is providing a lot of the cooking and cleaning but that will probably change as I become integrated into their lives. Both are kind individuals. Language is my first and largest barrier. English is spoken specially for me and few individuals in the community know it. Almost all of the conversations at my home and in the schools are in SePedi with bits of Afrikaans and Setswana thrown in. When I meet new people, they start talking in Afrikaans and whomever I'm with has to explain that I'm an American and don't understand. The grandmother knows as much English as I know SePedi while the grandfather knows enough for us to communicate generally but not enough to carry what I would call an intelligent conversation. Mma (mother in SePedi) will usually talk to me in SePedi and when I ask her to repeat what she said she will repeat it in Setswana, confusing me much more than is necessary. The community is convinced that I will be speaking like a native speaker in three months, SePedi, Setswana, and Afrikaans are easy to learn, and that English is the only difficult language.
As usual, I'm out of time. I've spent eight days here in Shongoane 3, and I'll go back to Moletji to finish training tomorrow. I'm looking forward to coming back and starting work, establishing myself as a community member and as an individual. Thanks for all of the comments and I miss you all!