training woes

For interest of time, I won’t write about how my permanent site is. It’s nice, but it’s not perfect. I’m really looking forward to working there for the next two years. You’ll probably read more about it then you’ll ever want to know! Instead, I will devote this post to talking more about training or the lack thereof.
During the supervisor's training, Kedibone (the training manager) gave me back my iPod. She said that my host mother apologizes for everything and asked if it was ok. I said, "It's fine."
When I came back to Moletji after visiting my site, I went to Joel’s home because he could tell me where my new host family lives. Unfortunately, I did not have a new host family and I started to prepare myself to spend the night at Joel’s house and figure it out in the morning. At about 7:30, Joel receives a call from Kedibone asking where I was and why wasn’t I with my host family. After explaining that I didn’t think I had a host family, I was told to walk to her home with Joel and all my stuff. Unfortunately for me, this ended up being a 40 minute walk in the dark. I felt like a walking target. Once I arrived at her home, I still didn't know what was going on and instead of explaining what was happening, I was interviewed and asked questions about whether I'm still committed to serving in the Peace Corps. At about 10 o'clock the interview was done and I finally figured out why I didn't have a new host family. When I said, "it's fine," Kedibone understood it to mean that I would live with that host family while I understood it as accepting her apology. Once the communication issue was explained, I was asked to write what I imagine my ideal host family to be (trustworthy) and told that my iPod disappearing is cultural, ie, I should get over it and live there any way. I kindly explained that I understood that if I leave my door open things might disappear into the four-year-old’s hands, but things disappearing from my locked room and locked bag was not a cultural occurrence. It doesn’t help that my host mother told me that money disappears out of her locked room all of the time. I finished my paper, and spent the night on sofa in Kedibone’s house. Luckily for me, I moved into a very nice family’s home the next day.

Training, in general, is not going well. We’ve been told very little new information and it seems that we’re going to be going into our villages knowing what we knew when we left for the Peace Corps. Nothing happens as it’s scheduled and we often do not have the information that we need. For a month the language trainers were not paid when they’re supposed to be paid biweekly, and it took four trips to Pretoria to figure out how much money we needed to travel to our permanent sites for a week. Almost all of the staff that work with us are new and the few language trainers that aren’t new say that this is the worst training they’ve ever encountered. While we were gone at our supervisor’s workshop, two people were fired from the training staff. People in our group that have served in the Peace Corps before say that it’s only Peace Corps South Africa that is this disorganized. I’m looking forward to going to my site and forgetting that the Peace Corps exists for awhile.
The one amazing thing is that although we’re not learning anything but spend all day doing it most people are in good spirits and all of the trainees are amazing people. I may forget about the Peace Corps staff for awhile, but I definitely plan on visiting the other future volunteers as much as I can.