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.
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