Beginnings

Disclaimer: I’m sorry for the lack of updates – the internet situation has been fairly intermittent, but as of yesterday we have cell phones with internet access, so I have a chance to upload some blog entries from a while back.  As of now, this entry is old news - sorry for the couple week delay – there will be more to come, I promise!

July 5, 2012

Sanibonani and greetings from Swaziland!

I’ve officially been in Swaziland for a full week and I can honestly say that the next two years are going to be incredible.  My initial angst about leaving quickly subsided soon after landing in Africa.  After a few tearful goodbye phone calls from JFK, I popped some Excedrin PM (thank you blue pills) and passed out for the majority of the 15 hour flight to Johannesburg. 

We spent our first few nights in Swaziland together as a group, sleeping at the campus where our training is held.  On Monday, the true African adventure began as we moved in with our host families, who we will stay with for the duration of training until we are officially sworn in as volunteers at the end of August.  Up until that point, we were confined to the campus where we are training and had not gotten to truly experience the culture, but on Monday we were thrown head first into the reality of life for the Swazi people.  Well, perhaps not “reality” seeing that my homestead is fully equipped with running water, electricity, an indoor flush toilet, and a shower that drips hot water.  So, you could say I’m not exactly roughin’ it quite yet.  I still get to bathe in a bucket with water from the shower and I still have to boil, filter, and bleach my water.  But for now, I’m delaying my pit latrine, water-fetching, late night pee bucket, and bucket-bathing-in-room experience.  I am sure that my permanent placement will be a bit of a shock, but for now, I am appreciative of these luxuries. 

More important than the amenities though, my host family is wonderful!  I have a sisi who is 23 and has a 20-month-old daughter.  She lives with her Make (mother) and Babe (father) and her bobhuti (brothers) live in different towns nearby.  Ironically, my babe actually studied at Cal State Pomona for four years (like I said, my family doesn’t exactly represent reality for most Swazis).  My sisi just finished her studies at the university and spends most of her day helping around the house and preparing meals, while her mother goes to work in town and her father does work around the house.  They are all extremely welcoming and friendly and thankfully they speak English because my siSwati is limited to say the least.  My sisi is teaching me how to prepare traditional Swazi meals, so soon enough I’ll be able to cook my own lipalishi (corn porridge) – yay!  The past week has been pretty hectic and we are all relieved to finally have moved in with our families and settled down for at least a couple months.  The next couple months will continue to be busy as we have training from 8 until 4 or 5, after which we return home to help prepare meals and spend time with our families.  Personal space and/or down time has been limited because by the time I sit down to study around 9 pm I have trouble keeping my eyes open for longer than 5 minutes.  I’m sure I’ll be dying to be busy come integration, when we are all alone in our communities for the first three months, but right now that looks pretty nice!

Overall, I am absolutely loving it here.  I have to keep reminding myself that this is actually happening – I am in AFRICA!  It’s hard to believe that less than two weeks ago, I was sitting in my backyard, being prayed over by a group of my closest family friends, surrounded by everything familiar to me.  Here I am, just 10 days later, living in the African countryside, watching the sun rise over the beautiful rolling hills and red dirt roads as I wait for the bus in the morning.  It’s moments when I am walking home and taking in the beautiful African countryside and then coming home to prepare dinner with my sisi that I remember why I wanted to do Peace Corps in the first place.  I have craved the opportunity to experience another culture for so long and I feel so blessed that for the next two years, I get to soak it all in.  Peace Corps stresses the importance not only of sustainable skill transfer to the people of impoverished areas, but also the importance of cultural exchange on both the Swazi and American ends.  I believe that this is such an important aspect of development and I am so blessed to get to take part in this exchange. 

The more volunteers I talk to, the more apparent it becomes that while the next two years are certainly going to be trying, they will also be filled with plenty of laughs as well.  My group of 41 volunteers is full of so many interesting people from such diverse backgrounds.  Only a week has passed and we have quickly started to lay the foundations for lifelong friendships.  Not to mention the fact that the past week has been filled with plenty of laughs as we are exploring our newfound humor in bucket baths, pee buckets, pit latrines, and everything Peace Corps.  Today we got to meet all of the other current volunteers at a 4^th of July party at the Country Director’s house and it is clear that the good times are only going to continue. 

I miss all of you at home and wish that you could all be here to experience life in Africa with me.  More to come soon!