The following cartoon is my first and only attempt at cartooning.

It is in the form of a letter home to my dear friend, Flounder.

From the fall of 2008.

When I was in South Africa.

Enjoy.

“The Capricious Quixotic Quests of Flojo”

Here are the cartoons in their entirety:

July 2007

7/28/07 “My host mother, Dineo, has a husband, but I don’t know where he is.  She said he was not working today – he was fitting carpets for the house.  I’m not sure what his job is exactly – he works in Jo’burg (about 3 hours from here) as a “florist” according to Dineo.  I’m just not sure if that means he works with flowers, or if he works on floors.”

7/28/07 “I already faced some basic church questions – what church do I belong to – how often do you attend church – what do you mean “not often” – when was the last time I was at church… I had to answer them very delicately, yet honestly.  Then, Pako’s cousin, Oarabile asked me straight up, “Do you love Jesus?”  My answer, I think was a rather unconvincing, “Umm… Who doesn’t?”

7/29/07 “I will be the first to admit – I have no idea what the hell is going on.”

7/29/07 “Tomorrow will be interesting… mainly because today was interesting.”

August 2007

8/11/07  “The prospect of ordering food is always enticing, even if it always ends up disappointing in the end.  In your head you think “Oh only 40 Rand, that’s like, 6 bucks.  Not so bad.  R12?  That’s 2 dollars!  That’s awesome!.  But the issue I’m forgetting about is that I’m not longer on an American income… Well, that makes me chuckle a bit – I never really had an income to begin with.”

8/12/07 “I still don’t feel like part of my host family, but I feel like I’m getting closer with every one bit by bit.  I noticed it 3 days ago when I came home, thru the backyard, and my host sisters, Pako (9) and Thato (4) were back there.  Thato came running up to me with a big smile and almost put her arms out for me to pick her up – but I think she had second thoughts because instead of extending her arms out, she just kinda flapped them up and down like a bird.  I threw her up in the air anyway.”

8/19/07 “Hold on.  I have to take my socks and shoes off.  Wow.  That’s a pretty pungent stench.”

“We did the walk to the Botswana border.  We were originally told it would be about 8 km there, and the same back.  I don’t know who started that rumor, because it was way false.  In fact, it was about a 14 km walk there, and obviously, the same back.  We started walking all together at 8:10 am.  We arrived at the border at about 10:30.  And that was a rather quick pace.  There was a bar at the border, and just about every one of us ordered a drink.  It was a funny sight to see all of us volunteers with beers in our hands at 10:45 in the morning, but we were all very happy with the scenario.  The walk back however, was a huge bitch.”

-JoeySee

In the coming weeks and months, I will be going back into my journals from my time as a Peace Corps volunteer in South Africa.

I decided to post excerpts from my journal intermittently as this process goes on.

I hope you’ll enjoy.

Staging, the Flight, and Mankwe – July 2007

“The best part of the past few days – as it should be and as is expected, is the people.  Just stunning how together everyone is, on a mental plane, I guess to some extent a spiritual plane, and now, on an actual plane.”

“My friend Tom Barker has stood out for me in particular.  He has been my roommate, and he has been incredibly open and considerate, not to mention hysterical.  He has an endearing ability to mix up or forget names of people or places.  CVS has become CVC, Rite-Aid has become Rite Stuff, and Carrie Underwood has become Carrie Underpants.  It’s wonderful.”

“The stewardess on this flight is a beautiful dark haired German girl – or at least I assume she’s German.  She has those very identifiable “piercing” eyes.  I haven’t spoken to her yet though.  She’ll be coming down shortly with drinks.  Oh – here’s the flight attendant now.  She has nice hands I can see.”

“There was an attempted Toga Party tonite that didn’t really get off the ground, but I still wore my sleeping bag and danced for a spit.  Me, Ben Barr-Wilson, and Craig also had a mini spur of the moment dance party with Craig’s hand cranked short wave radio.  Don’t know what it was, but we danced to it.”

“I talked to one of our South African LCFs (Language and Culture Facilitator) today about Afrikaans as a language, and the protests that took place in the 70s over it being forced as the main language of instruction.  Mama Cecilia said they were protesting against Afrikaans being used as the means to teach content subjects like science, math and history.  The black South Africans believed it would hold them back from the rest of the world even more because no one spoke Afrikaans outside of South Africa and parts of Namibia.  She said they didn’t have anything against the language itself though, which, incidentally is the language group she is teaching.  Oh, she also said she wanted to spank me for not being in her language group.  I told her she knew I wouldn’t be in her group because I wasn’t part of the Education program.  She said she wanted to spank me anyway.  Just for fun.”

More excerpts to come in the near future…

-JoeySee

]]> http://joeysee.com/blog/2010/11/pcsa-journal-excerpts-staging-flight-mankwe-july-2007/feed/ 0 http://joeysee.com/blog/2010/05/dabrain/ http://joeysee.com/blog/2010/05/dabrain/#comments Wed, 12 May 2010 16:20:08 +0000 JoeySee http://joeysee.com/blog/?p=587 NOTE: the images in this feed have been downsized or removed for copyright reasons. To see them in their unmodified state, please view the original post by clicking here.

DaBRAIN and I have known each other since the fall semester of 2003 at the University of Delaware.  We were in the same vocal studio with our wonderfully fantastic vocal coach, Dr. Evans.  Or, PEV, as we called him.

But at that time, DaBRAIN was simply known as Brian.  We didn’t strongly bond, and he didn’t earn the name DaBRAIN, until January 2006, during a mutual globe-hopping venture that took us to South Africa.  Our trip was of our own making.  We paid our own way to travel halfway across the world with a group of lovable misfits to volunteer at orphanages and hospices in both Kwa-Zulu Natal and in Gauteng.

DaBRAIN and Njebe = So Hungry

We had to move all 1100 of these blocks

Down this big ol’ hill in KZN

It was there that our mutual love for Strong Bad became known.  From the moment the trip started going haywire (which was when our first flight couldn’t land due to bad weather in DC, causing us to miss subsequent flights and delay our arrival in South Africa by almost a whole day – but that’s a whole other story), we used the Strong Bad voice to find comedy in every situation we faced.  Brian became DaBRAIN, which was how his name sounded when speaking Strong-Badian.

Strong Bad

It was also in South Africa, that I convinced Brian that growing a beard was an absolute must for him.  I was known to our Zulu friends as Njebe – which is the Zulu word for “beard”.  I was happy to have a friend with me who also was wearing a beard on his face by the end of the trip.

DaBRAIN and I had a chance to catch up in Delaware last week after a long hiatus apart.  He’s now working in the political arena, working on winning campaigns and more importantly, answering complaints about proposed changes to bow-hunting laws in New Jersey.

Here are some photos we took…