|an tcaka

It has been somewhat of a slow week but
next week the kids are going return to school
after their week vacation. So it should pick
up a bit.

In the picture is David and his brother Paulus
( left to right ). It is obvious that they are working
some beehives. They harvested and processed
a few liters of honey last week. They have been
working the hives for about 4 years and the progress
is kind of slow. I believe that now they have 6
beehives producing. That is 2 more than they had
last year so it is going in the right direction.

Looking at the honey in those plain jars made
us to decide that it would be better if it had
a label. So we got together and as you can
see below …

put our effort to produce the '|an tcaka dini' label.
The '|' is one of the San (Khwe) language clicks
and I guess the best way I can describe to
replicate the sound is to put one's tongue to the
roof and front of the mouth and pronounce 'ta'
and with an 's' slur to it. Don't know if I described
it to the point that it makes any sense.

As can be seen on the label it means 'very good
honey'. |an = very … tcaka = good and dini is
honey in their San language. I am not sure if they
are totally happy with the name but that is
something that can be changed in minutes. We
are also going to make the label with a yellow
background and black print. The idea is to flow
with the orangy colored cap.

Of yeah, David and Paulus are also the leaders of the
Young San Cultural Group. We also put together a
little DVD of songs to give to David's boss who will
be leaving his organization soon. The boss really
supported the group over the years and the best going
away gift we could think of was the DVD.

Also received a visit from the volunteer who left
as I arrived last year. She was stationed about 80 km
from the village but she did do some work here. She
also rcommended a volunteer be here in the village.
She did say she thought the village had improved
some since she was last here. She said that she
didn't see drunken ladies laying around the side
of the road like before.

She came at a good time as for a few days prior and
with things slow, I was resigning myself to the fact
that despite trying that nothing changed and that it
was better to just accept it. Just keep trying but
don't get any hopes up.

So, her words gave me some rejuvenation to continue
on and let the chips fall where they may so to speak.

Hopefully this week we are back in business and can
work on getting the drunken men off the side of the road.
I think that could be considered working on gender
equality, don't you think?