LISTS

I’ve always been a big fan of lists.  My college dorm rooms were always scattered with post-notes of to-do lists.  Until recently, to-do lists weren’t really relevant to my life here.  “Spend 8 hours in my hammock, finish Cowboys Are My Weakness, check, check!”   So, in the countless hours spent waiting for meetings to begin, I’ve compiled a more diverse set of lists.  Here’s a sample:

Things I miss about America – in no particular order (my personal favorite list, also a favorite topic of conversation among PCVs)

• Family and friends
• Timeliness
• EFFICIENCY
• Fro yo, chai lattes, prosciutto, baby spinach, berries, Greek yogurt, Alon’s French Connection salad, Flying Buscuit, Farm Burger, ATL dining in general
• Unlimited calls and texts
• The green couch
• Bosley and the cats
• Country radio
• Respect for personal space
• Customer service
• Free wifi/fast internet
• Showers
• Washing machines
• Grace Midtown Church
• Running without being harassed
• Not being asked where I’m going 24/7
• Pumpkin-flavored everything
• Driving
• BLENDING IN
• Free public restrooms/toilet paper
• Complimentary water at restaurants
• Air conditioning

Things I’ll miss about Swaziland (judging my the length of these first two lists, I think its safe to say America wins)

• Sunrises and sunsets
• Walking everywhere
• Greeting everyone/general friendliness
• Slower pace of life
• Sounds of singing at night
• The stars
• Chicken dust (half a BBQ chicken with maize porridge and salad for $1.50)

Things that got me through my mid-service crisis

• Phone calls with my mom
• Running
• Justin Timberlake’s 20/20 Experience
• Text messages from friends at home that could not been better timed
• prayer
• Watching seasons 1 and 2 of New Girl…on repeat
• Cowboy romance novels…new low
• Lazy afternoons spent laughing with my neighbor and Basanda
• Listening to Sugarland, particularly the song “It Happens” (Ain’t no rhyme or reason, no complicated meaning, ain’t no need to overthink it, let go laughing, life don’t go quite as you planned it, we try so hard to understand it, the irrefutable indisputable fact is, **it happens) – I like to jam to this song every time a meeting gets cancelled or things don’t go as planned…so like every day
• EMILY’S VISIT

Sounds of Swaziland

• Goats, dogs, chickens, cows
• My Babe barking orders to the young boys around the homestead
• The whistle and singing of traditional songs in the distance at night
• Kids singing during weekends and school break
• The electric keyboard at church
• Wails of women at funerals
• Bus preachers
• Gospel music blaring from my neighbor’s car at 6 AM every morning
• Sugar cane trucks barreling down the dirt road outside my window
• Swazi House music blasting from cell phones of teenagers passing by outside
• Women singing praise songs at the beginning of meetings
• Pitch Perfect songs on repeat

Quality knowledge I’ve gained throughout my time here

• Rule #1: Never trust a fart
• The trick to capturing guinea fowl is liquoring them up
• Dreaming about rivers means you’re pregnant
• When you wear your shoes on the wrong feet, you are wearing “banana shoes”
• Buckets can double as washing machines, dishwashers, bathtubs, and toilets
• Striped knee high socks with fluffy ankle socks and flip flops are so in right now.  Oh yea, slinkies also make stylish bracelets and deodorant is overrated.
• When being chased by a hippo, run in a zig zag
• Knees are sexy – cover up!
• Reasons to cancel meetings include: slight drizzle, temperatures about 80 degrees, temperatures below 65 degrees, laundry day, clinic day, firewood collection day, last minute plans, exhaustion from a two hour meeting…three days ago, forgetfulness, lack of desire to attend
• Mosquito net covering on burglar bars

Most commonly heard Swazi phrases

• “Ngiyacela ______” (imali, emaswidi, kudla, emanti, etc.) – I am asking money, sweets, food, water, anything visible on my body
• “Uyaphi?” – Where are you going?
• “Uhamba leni etinyamo? Hamba gibela libhasi!” – Why are you walking?  Take the bus!
• “I want to teka you” – In other words, I want to throw you in the kraal where the cows sleep in the middle of the night while you stand there naked and cry as my relatives shout insults at you.  In Swazi culture, “teka”-ing is part of the marriage process in which the female wails for the loss of her former life as she prepares to move onto her husband’s homestead.  I think it goes without saying that I will not be marrying a Swazi…
• “How are you? I am fine. How are you? I am fine. X50” – This is the only English many young kids know.  What teachers forget to explain is that a single greeting is sufficient, but instead the kids continue to ask “ How are you?” until you’re out of earshot. 
• “Unemanga!” – you are lying!
• “Inkingake” – the problem is…

I think these lists do a decent job summarizing my time thus far in Swaziland.  Here’s to another year of list making..

Airport Reflections

I’ve been travelling on airplanes since before I could walk.  At the age of seven I took my first flight alone.  I’ve been blessed with a family who has the means and passion to see the world.  My mom knew the moment that I left for college that I wouldn’t be back.  Throughout college volleyball season, we travelled nearly every other weekend, logging quality hours in the C terminal of the Atlanta airport, spending our entire meal per diem on Swedish fish and trail mix from The Grove.  I spent most summers during college traipsing around Latin America studying Spanish or volunteering.  Six weeks after graduating college, I boarded a plane to Swaziland.  At the airport, my mom dropped me off at the curb, hugged me goodbye, and drove off.  Needless to say, I have been beyond blessed that travel has been such a monumental, yet routine, aspect of my life. 

            For most Swazis, travel is a luxury few can afford.  In a country the size of New Jersey, many have not travelled outside the border into neighboring South Africa.  I am regularly asked which khumbi (mini-bus) I take to America.  As I explain the logistics of travel to America, I receive the same response: pointing to the sky as they gaze into the clouds, “Hawu!  18 hours?  Up there?  Above the clouds?  Will you hit a mountain?  Hawu!”  For many of the people I interact with regularly, their world spans only as wide as the community. 

            So, it goes without saying, that a trip to the airport is a pretty big deal around here.  Schools take field trips to the airport just to watch the planes take off.  I only just recently grasped the novelty of travel for Swazis as I joined my host family to bid farewell to my host brother who will be studying in Taiwan for the next four years.  As my alarm went off at 5:00 am on the morning of his departure, I contemplated forming some sort of excuse (a “very important meeting”…with my bed, a warm cup of coffee, and some episodes of New Girl…).  What difference would a goodbye make if it were at our homestead or at the airport?  Reluctantly, I dragged myself out of bed and piled into the backseat of the car with my Babe and sisi.  We arrived at the airport to find my bhuti, dressed in a fresh new outfit and looking more confident than ever, surrounded by the rest of the extended families who greeted us with tears in their eyes.  The actual goodbye was anticlimactic, as my family is relatively unsentimental, a stark contrast from most overly dramatic Swazis. 

            The true beauty of the event came as we stepped outside to join the other families watch the plane take off.  I can’t ever remember being fascinated with observing this process.  To me, it was just something that happened, planes were a means of travel from point A to B, but the journey in itself was nothing worthy of admiration.  As I stood among the crowds of extended family members, church pastors, teachers, and coaches who had come to this monumental sendoff, I realized how blessed I am to take travel for granted. People stood on benches to glimpse over the crowds of people huddling around the lookout area.  As the passengers stepped out onto the airstrip, they waved to the crowd, who erupted into cheers and cries of praise.  As the plane slowly started its way down the runway to turn around, the crowd followed intently, and family members disputed which route it would take to Johannesburg and whether or not it would turn around to take off.  The moment the wheels left the ground, the true commotion began as women began crying out songs of praise to their loved ones and then men waved vigorously, fighting to hold back tears.  Words don’t do justice to the beauty of the moment and I felt blessed to be a part of it.   My eyes filled with tears as I recognized the implications of this departure.  For those fortunate few inside the plane, this marked the beginning of a new life, a life beyond the confines of their small Kingdom and most likely a ticket out of poverty.  For those left behind, it meant the loss of their loved ones as they remained behind, returning to their small worlds within the limits of their chiefdoms.  I feel that often we, as Americans, fail to celebrate these monumental life transitions.  Sure, we host the obligatory baby shower and bring miniature Converse shoes or designer car seats, but we don’t freely sing out joyous praises or wail in the misery of a goodbye.  I often complain that those that I work with here make a big deal about the things that don’t really matter (i.e. washing your clothes with the proper technique) and fail to prioritize those things that, in my eyes, do matter (i.e. attending the business workshop that will teach you how to make money).  In this case, however, Swazis have it right.  Their ability to fully feel with every ounce of their being is both inspiring and terrifying and I think we would all benefit from occasionally allowing ourselves to let our emotions take over without restriction.  So next time you board an airplane, remember how blessed you are that your world is bigger than your hometown.  And remember that it’s okay to celebrate those monumental moments in your life.  And its okay to celebrate those moments that aren’t so monumental too.  Like when a meeting I plan actually begins on time, or when the kids at the school call me “sisi Nosipho” instead of “umlungu.”  If my time in Swaziland has taught me anything, it has been that life is much more fruitful when you celebrate the simple, everyday victories.

The days following my bhuti’s departure have been filled with much discussion of the time difference between Swaziland and Taiwan.  Nearly every day I receive a knock at my door from my sisi asking, “Nosipho, Make is wondering what is the time in China?”  Every day when I return home, Make and Babe greet me on the porch with a discussion of what my bhuti is doing at that moment, what the weather is like in Taiwan, and whether my bhuti will have to subsist on a diet of frogs…

Making Moves...One Year In

As the first school term came to an end in early May, I gave myself an ultimatum: if I was still feeling equally as useless come the end of the second term (mid-August), I’d call it quits.  As a determined, goal-oriented person this was difficult to come to terms with.  Peace Corps had been my dream for so long and returning home early would haunt me for years.  However, I realized that my mental health was suffering and that if I was going to be depressed, I might as well do so comfortably, close to my family and while enjoying the luxuries of showers and washing machines.  Thankfully, it never came to that.  Here I am, second term complete, and finally feeling like myself again.  I’ve retired from my brief addiction to cowboy romance novels and have rediscovered my passion for non-fiction, my dreams have shifted from settling down in a quiet, rural community to traveling the world, and while I am counting down the days until my visit home in December, I am finally feeling content with my life here in Swaziland.  That doesn’t mean I don’t spend countless hours whatsapping with other volunteers about all the wonderful things we miss about America, but I am finally feeling that my time here is not a complete waste (if anything, I’m becoming well-read, logging some quality hours in my hammock, and finally catching up on all the movies and TV I’ve missed in the past 22 years of my life). 

            Within the past several months, many of the projects I’d been trying to get off the ground since January have finally fallen into place.  This by no means suggests that this falling into place has been smooth sailing, but it’s certainly a start.  Finally, one year later, I finally have an answer to “What are you doing in Swaziland?”  So, in an attempt to shed light on this mystery, here’s a bit on what I’ve been up to over the past few months:

• Library Project:  Thanks to generous donations from many of you, I’ve been working with the local high school to improve the functionality of the school library.  This experience has been an eye-opener, to say the least.  Students in the area have a choice of attending three different high schools, and Siphofaneni HS is by far the least competitive.  Among the 55 students in last year’s graduating class, only 3 of them had the grades that would even qualify them to apply to university.  Education is simply not valued in the community and this apathy towards learning permeates the attitudes of both students and teachers.  In an effort to inspire a culture of reading at the school, I have been working with the deputy (vice-principal) to transform the existing library into a space that would encourage students to become invested in learning.  The school currently has a beautiful library space, complete with tables, chairs and many shelves of books that have been donated from the States.  From a distance, the school appears well-off, library-wise.  Yet the majority of the donated books that fill the shelves are college-level textbooks.  Call me crazy, but kids who can barely get through Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys aren’t going to be fighting over who gets to check out Biochemical Engineering Volume 1 or The History of the State of Virginia…Through the generosity of friends and family at home, we have been purchasing a significant number of age- and content-appropriate reading material for the students.  Many of these books are short chapter books with illustrations that tell stories of African children with lives similar to their own.  Our hope is that these short stories would help foster a passion for reading as students will be able to relate to the characters in the books.  However, convincing the kids to choose reading over soccer is no small feat.  We still have a long way to go and will spend the next school term designing programs (reading competitions, class visits to the library, etc.) to encourage use of the new library books.  The money we raised was also used to purchase three computers, which were originally intended to be used to teach students internet-research skills.  The school had agreed to install internet as their contribution to the project, yet unsurprisingly this promise has yet to be fulfilled.  Thanks to rapid inflation over the period between when I applied for funding and when the grant was fully funded, we ended up with more money than we anticipated.  I’m hoping to purchase some educational computer games to install on these computers to prevent them from accumulating dust in a closet as the school waits for the arrival of internet.  The logistics of collecting the books and computers has been a bit of a nightmare and, in typical Swazi fashion, has taken two months longer than anticipated.  As school resumes for the third term in September, I’ll be working more closely with the librarian and teachers to ensure that the new resources are being fully taken advantage of.  Thank you to all who donated to this project – you are making a huge difference for these kids!
• Reading Club:  In conjunction with the library project, I’ve been working to start a reading club at the high school.  My American Gogo (thank you Gamby!) was generous enough to send about 15 copies of The Heaven Shop, a story about a Malawian girl and her struggle as she loses her parents to AIDS.  While attendance has been low and our meetings often cancelled due to a plethora of excuses (sports competitions, after-school meetings, cultural field trips, etc.), the few meetings that did actually take place were relatively successful.  The students seem to be enjoying the story and have begged me for permission to take the books home.  They returned the following week having already completed the book and even the macho older boys reported that “it was a touching story.”  The other teachers see the club as a failure due to the low attendance, but to me it seems worth it for the impact that it has on the five students who do attend.  I’m hoping to encourage more teacher participation in the club during the next term in an effort to make this club sustainable, although I have a feeling that this may be one of those things that I’ll have to accept will cease to exist when I leave.  However, for the next year I’ll keep on pushing for it.
• Life Skills Classes: Since January, I have been hounding the principal of the high school to allow me to teach life skills, yet he has always dismissed the idea, asking me to come back the following week.  Finally, one day in June, he pulls me into his office and begins to enthusiastically share with me his brilliant idea to “fully utilize me as a resource” by placing me in the classroom to teach life skills.  Conveniently these also happen to be his classes, which he has failed to teach all year, leaving the kids with a free period to flirt and goof off.  Whatever, I don’t care if he’s buttering me up and pawning off his work on me, I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to work with the kids.  I’m teaching three classes of “Career Guidance” at the high school.  While it has been a fiasco trying to find a teacher that can tell me which day on the ever-changing, rotating schedule I will be teaching, it has been a blessing to have a chance to interact with the kids, who are much more malleable and eager to learn. 
• GLOW Club: entry coming soon with more about GLOW
• Condom Distribution:  When I got my assignment to be an “HIV/AIDS Community Health Educator,” this is exactly what I envisioned future life – toting around the big black penis model and tossing out condoms like confetti on a parade float.  Too shy to do so alone, I have been working with another volunteer who lives close by to distribute condoms throughout our local shopping town.  We’ve only done so a couple times and plan to resume a more regular schedule in September.  My friend, Christine, is fearless and on our first outing we headed straight for the sketchy part of town where all the locals hang out and drink, joining drunk old men and women as they gathered in mud huts and downed cup after cup of putrid-smelling maize beer.  Handing out condoms like candy may not have been the most effective means of sex education, but it was good for some laughs to say the least.  You know things have changed when your texts with your friend read, “Hey, can you bring the vagina model today?” or “How many boxes of condoms should I bring with me?” As we move forward, we’re planning on having a more structured plan to distribute boxes of condoms to local bars and restaurants and to couple this distribution with education sessions with the help of a local Swazi counterpart.  I’m excited to see where this leads and am thankful for the opportunity to work more closely with Christine, who has become a close friend. 
  
• Handicraft Market Project:  In my last entry, I used the handicraft market project as a representation of the speed of progress here.  And yes, the saga continues.  Since I last wrote, here’s what has been going on.  After finally gaining ownership of the land, the next step is to hold a three-day workshop to teach bomake some basic business skills.  I had originally been counting on bringing in a local NGO to do the teachings, but recently discovered that they lack funding to do so.  So, Plan B: frantically scour the Peace Corps office for any income generating manuals in an effort to teach myself as much as possible about running a business in order to fool the women into believing that I know what I’m doing.  Thanks to help from my dad (the recent graduate and business guru), PC staff, and the internet, I think I’m in a place where I can at least convince bomake that I have an inkling of an idea of how to run a business… Next issue: setting a date for the workshop.  Every year, Swaziland hosts its biggest holiday, the Reed Dance, during which scantily-clad young virgins spend a week trekking across Swaziland to cut a reed to deliver to the King (I seriously need to brush up on my Swazi cultural history…that was an embarrassingly poor description of the event).  One of the members of our group is a member of the inner council and may or may not have to accompany the girls on their journey.  So, not only are we unsure of whether this lady will be able to attend the workshop, we are also unsure of the official date of the Reed Dance, which was announced a mere two weeks prior to the event.  As of now, our workshop is planned for the first week in September, giving me a good amount of time to read up on the logistics of starting a business.  In preparation for the workshop, I’ve been meeting with the women to teach them how to make their own personal budgets, hoping to instill some basic financial management skills.  During one lesson I asked them to write down their financial goals.  One woman responded, “What should I do if I can’t write?”  Needless to say, we’ve got a long way to go, but I’m excited to watch these women grow throughout our journey.
  

When I write it all out, it looks like I’m doing a lot.  For the last two weeks of school break, I have been enjoying a rigorous routine of running, reading in the hammock, watching an entire season of New Girl in one sitting, reading some more, replaying the singing scenes of Pitch Perfect with my sisi, whatsapping with Jami about sustainable agriculture and the top 20 cities to meet men in your twenties, and then reading some more.  As the third term of school begins, I am ready to gear up for actual busyness, something I have yet to experience during my time here.  Life here is still full of ups and downs and vacillating feelings of hopefulness and hopelessness.  Yesterday, the women for the handicraft market cancelled the workshop for the third time.  Yet, this morning a Portuguese man from the European Union agreed to fund a World AIDS Day Event that I’m planning with some other volunteers.  Each day brings new challenges and unexpected victories, often back to back.  Cancelled meetings and disappointments will never get easier, but the tide seems to be turning as I head into Year 2.