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-Tristan

I was sitting at home the other day, filling out some paperwork to complete our kitchen project. Tristan was meeting with some community members who recently expressed interest in painting the Gogo Center (the community center where most events and activities are held). When I texted him to ask if they wanted to paint that day, he responded with, “No. Watching an NGO lady give orphans depressing black pilgrim shoes.”

If you accept a job working in a second or third world country, you’re going to witness a lot of aid work. If you spend two years working in a second or third world country, you’re going to become at least a little critical of that aid work.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some organizations do amazing work in the field of community development. The problem is that a lot of them just swoop into poor communities, build something or throw around some food or money, and swoop back out, without actually communicating with the people in the community or involving them in the project. As a result, you get people (especially kids) who chase around foreigners, asking for money, food, candy, etc, because so many groups of foreigners have just given them these things in response to the guilt they feel over the overwhelming poverty they witness during their visits. This creates a dependency, which is the exact opposite of what needs to happen in order for second and third world countries to progress.

This particular organization gave shoes, which is good because kids need shoes in order to attend school. Most children in our community run around without shoes. If they own shoes, they own one pair that is used for school only, and that one pair is used for many years. When kids show up to school without shoes, they are beaten and belittled by their teachers and their classmates.

When the children were given the shoes, the organization took pictures of them, urging them to smile and look happy. It occurred to us that the attention they were receiving from this NGO woman is probably the most attention those children have received in months. These particular kids have lost both their mothers and their fathers to AIDS. They live either alone, on child headed homesteads, or with neighbors or extended family members who rarely pay attention to them. They are underfed, malnourished, and typically treated like slaves in their new adoptive homes, tasked with doing the majority of the household chores. In the worst cases, they are beaten and insulted on a regular basis due to the stigma associated with their HIV positive parents.

They’ve had rough lives. They’ve witnessed death, loss, hunger, and desperation at an early age. Some are HIV positive. They are ignored, with the exception of the occasional kind community member who barely has enough food to feed her own family, but manages to pull together a bundle of spinach to share; or the NGO worker who comes through, all smiles, yelling “Smile! Look happy! You are blessed!” as she snaps pictures to put on the website so donors can gawk at pictures of the “poor African children.” I imagine it has to be humiliating and dehumanizing. But when we ask these children how they are, they nod, pull a smile, and say, “I. Am. Fine!” in the best English they can muster. They don’t understand the definitions of the words “humiliating” or “dehumanizing.” They, like most rural Swazis, don’t understand the phrase “human rights” or the liberties to which every person on earth should be entitled. They just know they’re sad.

The woman taking the pictures inquired about the ages of each child. Most of them were around 10, 11, or 12. They all looked closer to 4, 5, or 6, and certainly no older than 7. This is due to stunted growth resulting from years of malnutrition. Shoes are fantastic. But food is vital.

Everyone watches the NGO woman drive away in her pristine, white SUV, the red dirt rising around the huge, shiny tires, and covering everyone in a fine coat of filth.

What’s the solution? We keep thinking about it. There are a couple organizations that donate food to orphans and vulnerable children. Unfortunately, the process of getting the food to the communities is often corrupt, mismanaged, and convoluted. Records are outdated and/or incorrect and kitchens (like the one currently under construction) frequently receive food (cereal, maize, and beans or peas) to feed 50 when the kitchen is actually feeding 150. So, children only receive miniscule rations of food and their daily caloric needs are rarely met. People have tried on many occasions to inform the organizations of their errors, but to very limited success. My opinion is that many organizations are willing to receive comments and criticism, but they have to go through several people before reaching someone of “importance.” It’s a telephone effect and comments are lost or misunderstood along the way.

There is so much we can’t touch as volunteers. So many needs we can’t meet. It’s a rough reality because we all so desperately want to meet those needs.

I often think of my first day in our community. Thabsile thrust a whining, gasping baby into my arms. He was about 2. His face was covered in sores.

“Is he…”

“Yes,” she said. “He has AIDS. His parents just died.”

“Is he on ART?”

“Yes, but he started too late. The doctors say he will die soon. All we can do is love him.”

My first experiences with severely ill, HIV positive children were almost surreal. It’s depressing. I know that’s obvious, kids with AIDS are depressing, but it’s true. The pain in their eyes makes you question everything you know. They don’t cry because they’re too exhausted. They don’t play because it hurts to get up. Instead, they watch the other screaming, running, laughing children. They don’t watch with longing. They seem to have no desire to move. It’s similar with malnourished children. You can see it in their eyes…the look of complete and utter exhaustion, of being completely disengaged from their surroundings. Seeing that look in children has been the most painful part of being here.

What do we do, what do we do, what do we do? We all keep asking ourselves that.

What can we do? They are invisible.

I just spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out how to salvage this entry and imbue some optimism into it because right now, I know it’s pretty depressing. But this is the truth of what we do, and I want people to know it. We have hard days. We see horrible things. We cry. We get angry.

But then we push the sadness to the backs of our minds and we hold on like hell to the goodness we know that exists here. We throw ourselves into work: educating people and initiating the tough, awkward conversations that no one else wants to initiate; cultivating hope and strength in ourselves and trying to teach our friends and neighbors to do the same.

And then we wake up and do it all over again the next day.

“Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” – Mark Jenkins

It looks like we’ll be living in Africa for 2 more years! We were recently offered positions with Peace Corps Rwanda’s newly developed English education program and we’ve decided to accept. We’re very excited about this opportunity and the chance to gain experience working in a post-conflict environment. Additionally, back when we were still in the Peace Corps application process (over 2 years ago), Rwanda was my first choice for placement. :)

We are leaving Swaziland for the US on July 20 (yay, I’ll be home for my birthday!) and we’ll stay with our families in Florida until September 11. On September 12, we’ll have our orientation for Rwanda and fly back to Africa soon after.

I’m not going to talk too much about Rwanda right now, as I still want this journal to be about Swaziland until we finish our service here. So, I’ll just post a few details:

1. Rwanda is safe and stable. They have made very large and impressive strides in the past decade in regard to development, economy, education, and human rights. Rwanda actually has more women in parliament than any other country in the world.

2. Rwanda is in the process of overhauling their education system to make English the official language (in addition to Kinyarwanda), instead of French. Peace Corps Volunteers working with their education sector are assisting them in this process. This change is for a variety of reasons that I’ll talk about later.

3. I’m really hoping to integrate health education into my job, as well as possibly carrying over our health and child development trainings with teachers and community educators.

4. If you’re interested in learning more about Rwanda, I strongly recommend reading We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch.

That’s all for now. We’ll be home in 15 weeks! Can’t wait to see our families and our amazing friends who are making trips across the US to see us.

Also, here is an article about the US Peace Corps, written by Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame for The Huffington Post:

“The United States of America has just sent a small number of its sons and daughters as Peace Corps volunteers to serve as teachers and advisors in Rwanda. They have arrived to assist, and we appreciate that. We are aware that this comes against the backdrop of increasingly scarce resources, of budget discussions and campaign promises, and of tradeoffs between defense and domestic priorities like health care and infrastructure investments. All that said, I believe we need to have a different discussion concerning the potential for bilateral aid.

The Peace Corps have returned to our country after 15 years. They were evacuated in 1994 just a short time before Rwanda collapsed into a genocide that killed over one million people in three months. Things have improved a lot in recent years. There is peace and stability throughout the nation. We have a progressive constitution that is consensus-driven, provides for power sharing, embraces diversity, and promotes the participation of women, who now represent the majority in our parliament. Our economy grew by more than 11% last year, even as the world entered a recession. We have chosen high-end segments of the coffee and tea markets in which to compete, and attract the most demanding world travelers to our tourism experiences. This has enabled us to increase wages by over 20% each year over the last eight years -- sustained by, among other things, investment in education, health and ICT.

We view the return of the Peace Corps as a significant event in Rwanda's recovery. These young men and women represent what is good about America; I have met former volunteers who have run major aid programs here, invested in our businesses, and I even count them among my friends and close advisors.

Peace Corps volunteers are well educated, optimistic, and keen to assist us as we continue to rebuild, but one must also recognize that we have much to offer them as well.

We will, for instance, show them our system of community justice, called Gacaca, where we integrated our need for nationwide reconciliation with our ancient tradition of clemency, and where violators are allowed to reassume their lives by proclaiming their crimes to their neighbors, and asking for forgiveness. We will present to them Rwanda's unique form of absolution, where the individuals who once exacted such harm on their neighbors and ran across national borders to hide from justice are being invited back to resume their farms and homes to live peacefully with those same families.

We will show your sons and daughters our civic tradition of Umuganda, where one day a month, citizens, including myself, congregate in the fields to weed, clean our streets, and build homes for the needy.

We will teach your children to prepare and enjoy our foods and speak our language. We will invite them to our weddings and funerals, and out into the communities to observe our traditions. We will teach them that in Africa, family is a broad and all-encompassing concept, and that an entire generation treats the next as its own children.

And we will have discussions in the restaurants, and debates in our staff rooms and classrooms where we will learn from one another: What is the nature of prosperity? Is it subsoil assets, location and sunshine, or is it based on human initiative, the productivity of our firms, the foresight of our entrepreneurs? What is a cohesive society, and how can we strengthen it? How can we improve tolerance and build a common vision between people who perceive differences in one another, increase civic engagement, interpersonal trust, and self-esteem? How does a nation recognize and develop the leaders of future generations? What is the relationship between humans and the earth? And how are we to meet our needs while revering the earth as the womb of humankind? These are the questions of our time.

While some consider development mostly in terms of infusion of capital, budgets and head counts, we in Rwanda place equal importance to relationships between peoples who have a passion to learn from one another, preparing the next generation of teachers, administrators and CEOs to see the exchange of values and ideas as the way to build the competencies of our people, and to create a prosperous nation.

We will do this because we see that the only investment with the possibility of infinite returns is in our children, and because after a couple of years in Rwanda, working and learning with our people, these Peace Corps volunteers will be our sons and daughters, too.”

--Rachel

Today is one of those days where I really don’t want to be here. Not as in, I want to leave and never come back, but as in, I want to magically Harry Potter apparate to a first world country and spend a week clearing my brain before returning back to site. I have days like this rarely (Except for the apparating part. I frequently find myself wishing to be a Hogwarts alumnus), and typically don’t discuss them with anyone except Tristan and other PCVs.

I arrived home last night covered from knee to toe in mud and cow shit. It finally rained (yay!) for the first time in months, and I’m so grateful because the water system is broken, all of the crops are dead, and we were in desperate need of a good shower. During the rainy season, rain tends to fall all around us, but never directly on us. So, it rained and the dirt roads flooded and the ground sucked my feet down like quicksand. Laughing children ran around in the rain, their feet significantly cleaner than mine despite their bare feet.

The storm cracked our window and knocked more holes into our walls, so our house was covered in rain, mud, and dirt. Sleep didn’t come easily because of the intense heat and humidity, which became even stronger when the sun rose again this morning. Tristan described it very well when he said he felt like we were living in hot soup.

So, we got up and left. We’re sitting in the closest climate controlled location with refrigeration and an internet connection because I’m fairly positive if we spent the hottest part of the day in our soup house constructed of rocks and full of mud, we would have turned into crazy people. This is probably the first time I’ve woken up and said, “We need to leave. I can’t be here today.” I think it actually freaked Tristan out a bit because I typically lean toward almost manic optimism during times of stress.

And, yes, it’s times like this where I think long and hard about the fact that my neighbors can’t escape when it’s generally miserable outside and their homes are full of mud and animal poop. They can’t afford the transport fare to get out of the community (especially with the recent increase in transport costs due to the recent increase in gas due to the government’s declining economy), and they just…remain. They deal with it and they don’t complain, except to occasionally exclaim, “EISH, LIYASHISA!” (It’s hot!), as they trudge the many kilometers to the nearest water source (a retention pond, which they refer to as “the dam”) to collect water. I sit here in the air conditioning, I drink a beer, and I feel a strange combination of gratitude, guilt, and awe over all the luck in my life. Lucky to be born in a country where I have rights. Lucky because I was born to parents who fed me, sent me to school, enrolled me in ballet, spent ridiculous amounts of money on clothes and electronics, and acted as my personal chauffeurs in high school. Lucky because I never dated a man who beat me, talked down to me, or treated me like a child. Lucky because I can leave whenever I want, lucky because I can see the world, and lucky because when I return home, I can go back to school and have a career and a lifespan over 40. Lucky because I have choices and the people (primarily the women and girls) in my community do not.

Peace Corps has altered me in a way that can never be reversed. Altered in a good way, yes, but now I am also saddled with the curse of knowing that in order to be content and fulfilled in my life, I need to have a job that involves constantly learning about, serving, and seeking justice for other people.

So, thanks, Peace Corps. I mean this both sarcastically and sincerely.

We have roughly four months of service left in Swaziland. Four months. 16 weeks. That freaks me out. We spent such a long time in the application phase and such a long time planning and working for this, I can’t believe the experience is almost over. It’s all passed so quickly. There have been some ridiculously long days, yes, but like everyone says, it’s the weeks and months that fly by. Our time with the people of Swaziland and this strange little group of Americans who we met for the first time in a DC hotel conference room is almost over.

Feelings? I’m happy. Happy that we’ve come this far. Sad that we’re leaving people who have grown to be our family and friends, and who have referred to us as sister, brother, daughter, son, and friend for the past several months. Excited to see our family and friends and pets and stuff ourselves with American food and have constant access to flush toilets and running water. Excited for what’s to come.

We have three projects we’re working on for the remainder of our service:

1. The kitchen (obviously). We expect it to be finished by next month. The caregivers are very, very excited about it, and the community has put a lot of time and effort into the construction. While visiting the kitchen the other day, we were thrilled to discover the community had recently built a new latrine directly next it, for use by the children and caregivers. The latrine wasn’t in the original plans, nor was it funded by the generous donors who gave money for the kitchen. The community obtained the materials on their own, dug and constructed the latrine without telling us, and even painted the outside. Yes, I’m excited about a hole to store poop, but I’m more excited about the initiative they demonstrated in getting the supplies and putting it together. During our recent health workshop with the caregivers, I repeatedly stressed the importance of having latrines at every homestead and neighborhood care point. Additionally, we talked a lot about malnutrition in children, and I learned that a few weeks later, the caregivers were in the process of planning sorghum to supplement the diets of the kiddos they’re feeding at the kitchens. It’s a wonderful high note on which to close our service.

2. A supplemental first aid training to follow up the previous health education workshop. We’re working with one of our counterparts to write and translate materials on basic first aid (abrasions, burns, recognizing warning signs, etc).

3. Continuing our training with primary school teachers on psychosocial support for vulnerable children, recognizing and reporting abuse, alternatives to corporal punishment, and health education.

With the kitchen almost finished, I’m starting to feel a sense of closure in my service. I know we’re almost done and I feel good about it. But, I also know leaving is going to be hard. Our friends and inner council have started planning a going away braai (think bbq). Thabsile keeps asking what she’s going to do without us and saying things like, “I hope my children are like you,” which would choke me up if she didn’t follow those statements with loudly threatening to beat one of the many children who frequents her home for breaking something/screaming/running into walls/punching each other/throwing chickens. No, she doesn’t beat her kids, but yelling at people that you’re going to beat them is common in Swaziland. The exact phrase is Ngitawukushaya (I will beat you) [pronounced neetawoogooshyah], but has become shortened to sound like “D’ukshaya” [pronounced dockshyah] when they yell it at children, babies, dogs, cows, each other, etc.

Yes, I’m aware Tristan hasn’t updated in a while. I think he needs his parents to bug him about it so he does. :)

--Rachel

Just popping in to say hello. I'm stuck in Mbabane with either giardia, aboebas, schistosomiasis, or a viral infection. And I have to stay here till they figure it out.

They put me up at a lovely guest house where I have my own room, running water, and the nicest woman who cook 3 meals a day for me, so I'm being very well taken care of.

I'm alternating between reading and having mild panic attacks about the fact that we are closing our service in 4 months and going back to America. We are hoping to continue working overseas, and it's looking like we'll probably end up in Africa again (we just don't feel "done" yet). We have a very exciting possibility in the works, but we're waiting until it's finalized to post about it here. In terms of future plans, I think I've decided I would like to go back to school, and I'm considering graduate programs in international development, public policy, social work, or public health. At this point in time, I'm leaning more toward international development or social work. Tristan is still deciding what he wants to pursue.

OK, I have to go. They want to take me back to the guest house, but I hope to post more within the next couple days.

--R

The internet hates me and cut off my last entry. I have to finish typing it on my phone, which only holds 5000 characters, so this has to go in a new entry. Ugh. ANYWAY. Over 40% of children in our community have lost at least one parent (usually to AIDS.) Some of these children are cared for by the remaining parent, other children who have lost both parents are taken by aunts, uncles, grandparents, or neighbors, and a few end up caring for their siblings and heading their own homesteads. The majority of kids who have lost a parent rely on neighborhood care points for at least one, normally 2 meals per day. All of the caregivers who cook at these carepoints were present at the training, and expressed a special interest in providing support and counseling to the children they feed almost every day. We went over basic things they could do to give these kids some stabilization, love, and confidence in their lives, such as active listening, how to be a mentor, self-esteem building activities, helping to set achievable goals, and knowing how to recognize and report abuse. Yes, it's extremely simple, but also extremely important in the life of a child who has already lived through a great deal of pain and suffering, and doesn't have any role models or guidance in his/her life.

The community was buzzing about the training for weeks after it was completed, and I still have women coming up to thank me and tell me exactly how they've used what they learned. They were so excited to learn, and even more excited to have lessons they helped plan, based on what they told me they wanted to learn, and also what was important to the community. We're planning a follow up first aid workshop in the coming months.

OK, that's it for now. Expect another post in a couple days (we'll be at a restaurant with internet to meet a good friend's mother who is visiting from the US) from Tristan, about our lovely Mozambique adventure.

Thanks for the FANTASTIC packages, Mom and Nicole! You both are so wonderful. And congrats to one of my BFFs on her med school acceptance. So proud of you.

--R

2/27/10

I keep thinking, “Oh hey, we should update the journal.” But, summer makes my brain shut down.

So, let’s see. Kitchen construction is going along swimmingly. The walls are going up right now. I wish I could supply pictures, but I sort of drowned my camera while we were on vacation in Mozambique. My mother generously purchased another, which is en route as I type, so I should be able to resume documentation soon.

The last time we posted, I mentioned that we were planning a week-long training with 30 community health workers, caregivers, and teachers. This ended up being one of the most stressful and time consuming things I’ve done during my service thus far. But, in my opinion, it has also been the most rewarding. I worked with several of our counterparts to write curriculums on breastfeeding, prevention of mother to child transmission, nutrition, child development, providing counseling and support to vulnerable children, basic first aid, the link between TB and HIV, how ARVs work, breast cancer, malaria, and home-based patient care. We wrote all of the lessons in siSwati and distributed them to everyone at the workshop. They were really excited about this, as most published materials are written in English and not siSwati. Most people , which means most people just don’t read. We’ve found that our lessons are being read quite often, and on a regular basis, because people are so excited to be able to read something in their own language. The total process of assembling the lessons in simple English and then translating them into siSwati with my counterparts took a ridiculous amount of time. And let me tell you, typing in siSwati is PAINFUL. Well, typing in any language that features 4 consonants directly next to each other without any sort of vowel separation is probably painful. Microsoft Word was kind enough to underline every single thing I typed in bright red and green jagged lines, informing me that EVERYTHING in my document was incorrect and made absolutely no sense.

The training ended up extending from 4 days to one week because there were so many questions and a lot of open discussion during the lessons. The section on home-based care was especially important, as the closest hospital is a 76 rand (roughly $12) trip away, which is what most people in our community make in about 2 weeks. The majority of the community relies on the local clinic, which has only 3 nurses, no water, and very few supplies. Because all of the people at the training were service providers, they are able to take the knowledge we provided them and use it to train others in the community. We had an impressive level of participation, and everyone was really engaged. A couple of my favorite topics included:

How ARVs work- Swaziland has a huge problem with ARV adherence, especially in children. I think part of this can be explained by many people not understanding how ARVs work in their bodies or why it is important to take them at the same times every day. Doctors and nurses in this country are severely understaffed and overworked (that’s an understatement, really), so they don’t necessarily have the time to clearly explain things to every patient. When we went over the lesson on how ARVs work, I could almost see the huge, hypothetical light bulbs turn on over everyone’s heads. A huge wave of questions followed, with people openly discussing their HIV statuses, how and when they took their pills, and how and when their family members took their pills. This was truly extraordinary, as HIV in Swaziland is completely drowned in stigma. People just don’t discuss their statuses, and there is technically only one person in our community who is open about being HIV positive. And here were 30 people, sitting in front of me, talking about their statuses and ARVs. It was one of those moments of my service where I felt on top of the world and as high as a kite, one of those moments that I’ll always remember and cherish, and one of those moments where the realization of “THAT’S why I’m here!” slaps me in the face.

Contraception- Many Swazi women are opposed to and/or frightened by contraception, especially in the forms of pills, implants, and shots. It’s seen as unnatural. But, it can be a very positive thing in this country, as numerous families cannot afford to feed their children and the gender inequality makes it so that most women are unable to say “no” or decide when they want to have sex. We discussed the different options available in Swaziland (pills, implants, shots, and IUDs are all available here for free or at low cost), and I was surprised and happy to discover that many women at the training were already using birth control. They talked to the other women about their experiences with it, and several were convinced to make a trip to the local clinic to try it out for themselves.

Providing counseling and support to vulnerable children- Over 40% of children in our community have lost at least one parent (usually to AIDS). Some of these children are cared for by the remaining parent, other children who have lost both parents are taken by aunts, uncles, grandparents, or neighbors, and a few children end up caring for their siblings and heading their own homesteads. The majority of kids who have lost a parent rely on neighborhood care points for at least one, normally two meals per day. All of the caregivers who cook at these care points were present at the training, and expressed a special interest in providing support and counseling to the children they feed almost every day. We went over basic things they could do to give these kids some stabilization, love, and confidence in their lives, such as listening techniques, self-esteem building games and exercises, helping to set achievable goals, and knowing how to recognize and report abuse. Yes, it’s extremely simple, but also extremely important in the life of a child who has already lived through a lot of pain and suffering and doesn’t have any role models or guidance in his or her life.

The community was buzzing about the training for weeks after it was completed, and I still have women coming up to thank me and tell me exactly how they’ve used what they learned. They were so excited to learn, and even more excited to have lessons based on what they wanted to learn and what was important to the community. We’re planning a follow up first aid workshop in the coming months.

OK, that’s it for now. Expect another post in a couple days (we’ll be at a restaurant with internet to meet a good friend’s mother who is visiting from America) from Tristan, about our lovely Mozambique adventure.

Ps- Thanks for the HUGE, FANTASTIC packages, Mom and Nicole! They made our week. And we’re still cleaning fake snow out of our house.

Pps- Congrats to one of my best friends in the universe who was accepted to med school today. ☺

--Rachel

1/26/11

Hey, everyone. Sorry it’s been a while. We get asked fairly often why we don’t update our journal as often as other PC Swaziland volunteers. Back when we first arrived at site, we were within close proximity to fairly decent internet. As you may recall, that internet was shut down some months ago, so our closest internet is about 2 and a half hours away. Not bad, but not worth the trip unless we have something else to do in town. We typically only go to town when we need a med refill or to turn in a grant proposal, thus the infrequent updates. Plus, public transport is obnoxious and we like to hide out in our community.

I’ve received a few messages asking what I think about the ABC report on the Peace Corps. I heard about this for the first time when my mother emailed me and asked if I’d seen it or read any of the news coverage, saying “I think the writer might be a disgruntled previous applicant who was turned down for service, because the report was very negative.”

I haven’t seen the show, but I have read most of the transcripts on my internet phone.

My impressions (By the way, I’m just a volunteer, and my views do not reflect those of the US Peace Corps blahblahblahblah, OK):

1. I don’t know the entire story about the PCV who was killed. 20/20 does not know the entire story, nor does anyone else who watched the program, because the Peace Corps is bound to adhere to privacy laws surrounding the case. This is important to keep in mind. I believe Kate’s death was horribly tragic and if the report is to be believed, her family was not treated with the respect they deserve. I do not think it is right to continue operations in a country where a PCV is killed and the killer is not tried in a timely manner. But, once again, I’m not entitled to all of the information surrounding the case. Perhaps there is a valid reason the trial hasn’t happened yet. I don’t know.

2. I admire the courage of the women who spoke about their rape experiences. It’s a horrific thing that I can’t even imagine going through. They deserved more than they received, and should have been entitled to long term therapy. But, once again, as viewers of media, we are not entitled to the full stories. I do truly believe that if something that like happened at the post I’m currently serving, the staff would respond quickly, professionally, and compassionately.

3. People don’t realize how much your Peace Corps experience depends on the office staff employed in your country of service. Ideally, Peace Corps Washington would make sure that every country has a professional and dedicated office staff. But, this is understandably difficult with a program that is insufficiently funded and operates in over 70 countries. I am frequently impressed with the Peace Corps Swaziland staff and their commitment to volunteer safety, and I am positive that many other volunteers around the world feel the same way about their office staff. Pre service training consisted of so many safety and security sessions, we were completely sick of them by the end. Many people in my training group felt that our office was too strict and almost parental in the way they treated us at times. Our safety/security officer, country director, and numerous other staff members put in long hours and work their butts off for us, and the generalizations I am seeing in news stories and online message boards about how Peace Corps is unsafe and doesn’t care about its volunteers is downright insulting to employees like them, who are constantly working to keep volunteers safe. Peace Corps Swaziland has gone above and beyond their normal duties on several occasions to provide support to me, Tristan, and other volunteers. When I was home in August, I remember my mother remarking on how happy she was that we are working for people who genuinely care about us.

4. Several of the comments I read online referred to Peace Corps Volunteers as naïve, starry eyed kids who think they’re invincible and have no idea what they’re doing. I’m not naïve. Hopeful, but not naïve. I’ve witnessed too much death, abuse, suffering, poverty, and apathy here to be naïve. I know a child who was tied to the back of her uncle’s pick up truck and dragged naked around her homestead until the skin was ripped off her back. I know children who contracted AIDS from being raped by their relatives. I see children with distended stomachs because all they get to eat is a bowl of porridge a day. I have friends who are wasting into fragile, skeletal frames, and who will probably die of AIDS and/or TB next year. I know people who don’t even care if they have HIV because they don’t see anything wrong with dying at the age of 30.

I was aware that I was taking a risk in applying for a position to live in a second or third world country. But, it is a risk I’m glad I took. In spite of all the “bad” I just mentioned, I’m glad I came here, and I feel that I’ve encountered just as much, if not more “good” in Swaziland. Our community takes care of us, and I feel safer on my homestead than I did in the apartment we rented our senior year of college. Do I get harassed? Yes. But, never in my community. I’d say that I get grabbed by men at least twice a month (usually on public transport). Grabbed in a sexually, not violently. And that counts as most of the assaults ABC was reporting on, by the way. Have I reported every time I’ve been “assaulted”? No. I’m not going to call my office every time some guy I’m never going to see again grabs my boob on public transport, although our safety and security officer does strongly encourage us to report any and all harassment. Unfortunately, I’ve accepted the harassment as part of living in Swaziland as an American woman. No, there’s nothing the Peace Corps can do about it, as they can’t control the behavior of every Swazi man who thinks it is OK to grab me and demand that I marry him. Yes, it sucks. I hate feeling disempowered and objectified. But, for every man who is disgusting to me, there is a man in my community who isn’t disgusting to me, and some men who are actually interested in change and development for the good of their country and their people.

I don’t really talk about the negative things in this journal very often because I don’t want my family members or friends to worry. I also think that if I shared every single negative thing I’ve encountered since being in Swaziland, people would ask, “Why the heck are you still there?”

I’m still here because I like what I do. This job isn’t for everyone. It takes endless amounts of patience, maturity, strength, confidence, and humor to be a Peace Corps Volunteer. It’s uncomfortable, it’s messy, it can be a giant pain the butt, we get sick a lot because we’re constantly around sick people with compromised immune systems, the summer can be completely miserable in the lowveld (Seriously. Everything in our community shuts down for about 3 months, and no one leaves their homesteads because it’s too freaking hot to function. Our host mother spends the summer lounging topless on a grass mat under our acacia tree, with all the dogs sprawled out motionless around her), and I get frustrated. I get frustrated a lot. I’ve had days where I think, “Screw this and get me back to America.” But, most of those days have occurred in 120 degree heat while rocking back in forth in my pit latrine with the worst diarrhea of my life. (Sorry. Peace Corps Volunteers talk about poop a lot.)

However, I can honestly say that early terminating my service has never seriously crossed my mind because I know I’m where I want to be at this point in my life. My bad days are balanced by the good days I spend connecting with my neighbors and friends, and conversations like one I recently had with Thabsile where she asked out of the blue, “Sihle. Do you think my children might grow up to act like you?”

“I think your children will grow up to act how they decide to act. But, I think they’ll be strong and generous like you.”

“Because I would be very proud if they could be like you.”

I believe in the organization that I work for, and I’m proud to be a part of the Peace Corps. The volunteers in this country are strong, tenacious, amazing individuals who shine in the face of adversity. They live to serve people and try to make positive differences in the lives of others. And that’s pretty darned awesome.

Thanks. I’ll get off my soapbox now.

October 9, 2010

We haven’t written in a while. I keep meaning to, but something else will come up, or we’re busy, or just not in the mood. But, I’ve been keeping a list of things I want to write about, so I’ll try to get it all down now.

We flew back to Africa from our leave in the US around the beginning of August. We landed in Johannesburg, and stayed overnight in the same place we stayed when we arrived in Johannesburg last year, at the very beginning of training. It felt completely bizarre. We flew into Swaziland the next day, and Peace Corps picked us up.

As we were leaving the airport, we received a phone call from our host brother. He said our little sister had died while we were away. I think that moment was probably the lowest point of my entire life. To return from emergency leave after the death of my father, only to find out my first day back in country that my 6-year-old sister had died was….really, really hard, for lack of a better way to describe it. We got back to site, and our host mother approached us, with tears in her eyes. The driver spoke to her about the situation. When he returned, he was also crying. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Your sister is dead. I can’t tell you how…it’s too horrible to say. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

I held our host mother and apologized, over and over again. I didn’t know what else to do. It’s still a raw subject, and I still can’t talk about it without crying. The death was so unexpected. Siko (our sister) wasn’t sick. She wasn’t HIV positive. She was healthy and happy. She was in her first year of school. On her way home one day, she was hit and killed by a truck. Our brother said she died instantly. The chief’s wife identified the body, and she told us it was the worst thing she’s ever had to do.

Shortly after we arrived back at site, our brother had a conversation with Tristan about the funeral. I remember Tristan telling me that he was going to have to struggle not to cry, because men don’t often cry here, and he wanted to stay composed in front of our brother. While they were talking, our brother started to cry.

Things on the homestead were difficult for a while. It is so much quieter without Siko running around, laughing and screaming, and yelling at our older sister “EY, NOMFUNDOOOOOOOOOOO!”

I remember unpacking our things, finding some sparkly pencils I’d brought home for Siko, and bursting into tears. Our mother was very sad and listless for a while. She spent a lot of time away from home, with her pastor and at church functions. Nomfundo, seemed to be taking it the hardest. She used to tease and torture Siko, the way older siblings always do with younger siblings. There was a long period of silence.

Things have gradually started to heal and get back to “normal.” The girls laugh and sing while they cook dinner. Our mother spends more time at home. She smiles when she sees us, and chuckles whenever the dogs jump on us, and try to follow us into our house. Our brother found a spitting cobra curled up in the family’s cooking area. Tristan helped him kill it while everyone laughed hysterically. Nomfundo spends a lot of time with Khetselo, our brother’s baby, strapped to her back. Whenever she’s not at school, she’s with him. The puppy is getting huge, and still tries to jump into my lap. It’s getting hot again.

Death is such a frequent thing here. There are funerals every weekend, and people are always sick. I think PCVs in Swaziland probably have more experience with death than PCVs in many other posts because of the impact HIV/AIDS has on this country. I’ve noticed that people get upset over death, but I think a lot of people are getting numb to it because it happens so often.

Siko was a different story. She was so young, and so unexpected, and the mourning period was long. I always knew that Siko was lucky. She was a double orphan, adopted by my host mother. Many orphans in Swaziland end up with abusive families, or in child headed homesteads, struggling to find food. Our sister was treated so well, that I didn’t know she was adopted until someone told me. She went to school, and she always had enough to eat. She was allowed to run around and be a kid. She followed our mother around like a little shadow. They had a special bond. Her death showed me how much the family truly loved her. And if nothing else, I’m grateful that she was able to spend part of her life in a nurturing environment, with people who appreciated her.

We miss her a lot.

//

We’ve been here for a year. It’s been one of the hardest and most memorable years of my life. I still love what I’m doing here, and I still maintain that joining the Peace Corps is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

When we first saw where we were going to spend two years of our lives, we were a little hesitant and very freaked out. It was toward the end of training, and we were spending 4 days in our community for OJT (on the job training), which I think is Peace Corps’ way of saying, “Hey…this is what we picked out for you. If you don’t like it, tough crap, and please leave now, before we spend lots more money on you.” We left the beautiful, lush, green, hilly training location in Northern Swaziland for the harsh, arid, flat, and brown community Peace Corps selected as our home. We knew it was one of the more impoverished areas of the country, but we didn’t actually realize what we had signed up for until Thabsile led us off public transport, and we stepped into the community. My first thought: Oh my God…what have I done. Also, it’s flat and…brown. Everything is dead. Tristan looks equally terrified. Oh….shit….

We met with the inner council. We were terrified, I think they sensed it, and I think they probably wondered, “What the heck is the matter with these kids?” and “Um…can we get some new ones that aren’t broken?” Our family wasn’t really sure how to act around us. They brought food to our door, wouldn’t look us in the eye, the girls held up their hands to Tristan every time they saw him (in the traditional way of greeting an elder), and it was all very…quiet. We would bring the food back out, sit on the family’s porch to eat, ask nine million questions in bad siSwati about the weather, everyone’s names, everyone’s ages, and so on, and they would shyly answer, with downcast eyes. It was a very different experience from our exuberant training host family, who wanted to spend as much time with us as possible, and the kids, who were constantly hanging off of me, and running in and out of our house at all times.

We left our community to finish training, not really sure what to think. We knew we were in it for the long run, and we weren’t going anywhere. We knew we wanted to see what this community had in store for us. So, we swore in as volunteers, and returned to our site shortly after. And I’m really glad we did. Our community is hot and dry. It rains for maybe 10 days out of the entire year. Food insecurity is a huge issue, there are terrifying bugs that look like aliens, and I’m always covered in red dirt. I got swine flu, I lost my toenail to swelling induced by a spider bite, kids have given me ringworm, and I spend a lot of time feeling dirty and uncomfortable. Swazis in Mbabane and Manzini hear where we live and respond in shocked laughter or say things like, “It is not possible to live there,” “How…I lived there once and I will never return,” “Why would you live there,” and (my favorite), “People are not meant to live there.” When our training host father found out about our permanent placement, he approached the Peace Corps training manager and said, “My children can’t live there. You must find somewhere else for them.”

But, I wouldn’t trade my experience here for anything. Living here has completely changed me as a person. I’ve met people who inspire me, and who I love dearly. I’ve had my attitudes change. I’ve been touched, challenged, amazed, frustrated, angry, on top of the world, and sad. I’ve had my highest highs and lowest lows. I’ve learned so much. I’ve worked with the community to produce plans for development, and workshops, dialogues, and meetings about HIV/AIDS, youth development, care for orphans and vulnerable children, human rights, gender inequality, abuse, food insecurity, and STI prevention. I often think that right now…this is the best I’m ever going to be. This is it. I’m having the time of my life. I look at my community and see beauty. It’s still a desert set in front of a lovely green mountain (guess which part gets the rain). But, I’ve fallen in love with the acacia trees and the dark red color of everything. We have the best sunset I’ve ever seen. Whenever we walk around the community, our neighbors call after us and demand to know when we’re coming to visit them. And when it does rain, we’ll get some green, and the cows look like cows instead of walking bags of bones.

The 1-year mark is nice, because we’re to the point of where our community, family, and counterparts are completely comfortable with us. We’re not really as much of a novelty anymore (expect for the 2, 3, and 4-year-olds that still parade behind us, yelling, “HOW ARE YOU? HOW ARE YOU? I AM FINE. I. AM. FINE!!!”).

When we first got here, many of our counterparts were more reserved and quiet during meetings, and hesitant to speak in front of us. I thought about this the other day, as we arrived to our weekly meeting with our community’s peer facilitators to be greeted with “HEY. YOU ARE LATE,” by Make Ndlovu, with a huge grin on her face. Most of the meetings now consist of 40% community gossip, 40% raucous laughter, and 20% getting things done, where-as when we first arrived, the meetings consisted of about 60% awkward silence, 30% staring at Tristan and Rachel, and 10% talking.

I’m really impressed with the facilitators’ improvements in English. They’re usually more interested in speaking English with us, which we’re willing to do, as most decent jobs in Swaziland require a certain level of English proficiency. Most of what we do is grammar and writing. A few months ago, we were working with them to compose a proposal to fund a youth event. Thabsile was glaring at Ncobani, as usual, for not doing something she was demanding of him (as usual).

He lets out a laugh, poses, and says in perfect English, “What? Do you think I’m ssssssssssexyyyyyyyyy?”.

“WHAT?! NO. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!” Thabsile yells, kicking at him, and glaring at me.

“….I didn’t teach him that,” I try to say, but I’m laughing so hard, I’m choking, and all of the facilitators are laughing so hard, they’re crying.

I pull tootsie pops out of my bag during one meeting. I place them on the table, and the facilitators practically leap on the table, grabbing at them, laughing, and shouting. For some reason, no one wants the purple one, and Ncobani gets stuck with it. I tell him it’s my favorite flavor, and two of the facilitators tackle him for it.

I always leave our meetings feeling good.

Lately, there have been more moments that make me feel like we’ve been here for a while. During a recent community workshop, all of the forks and spoons were gone. Instead of a flurry of women searching frantically for other utensils or ripping utensils out of the hands of someone else mid-bite (which happens often), we are told we’re allowed to eat with our hands like everyone else.

“Are you sure you can eat with your hands, Sihle?”

“Yes. Do it all the time. I’m REALLY GOOD at it.” Everyone thinks this is hilarious.

Babe Gina walks casually past Tristan, who has miraculously obtained a fork, takes a sip of Tristan’s drink, steals his fork, and immediately starts eating with it.

Other moments make me realize just how short a year is. We’re constantly learning new things about the community, and I’m often surprised by some of the conversations we have with the facilitators, and the questions they ask us (What? How could we not have talked about that yet?). During a walk to one of the neighborhood care points, Thabsile asked me if the United States had communities and regions like Swaziland. We explained states and she was in awe of the size of the US, and I was completely floored that we hadn’t talked about that before. So, we just discussed states for the first time yesterday, yet I remember having previous conversations with her about the civil rights movement, bubonic plague, and 9 bajillion other random things. We’re bringing one of our inflatable globes to our meeting this week, so the facilitators can see it, as they expressed an interest in knowing exactly where England and the US are (both countries provide a great deal of funding to Swaziland). We’re pretty sure the states of Alaska and Hawaii are going to rock their world, since one is barely physically attached to the US, and the other isn’t continental.

//

October 25, 2010

Ncobani, Dumisa, and Thabsile asked me the other day if we have black people in the United States.

“Of course we do. Two Peace Corps Volunteers in my group are black. Our president is black.”

“No. He’s colored.” (This is how Swazis typically describe lighter skinned people who appear to have a parent of a different race)

“Oh. Well, yes, his mother was white. But, his father was Kenyan.”

“So…you think he is black?”

“Yes. In the United States, he is black.”

“But, when he speaks, he sounds white.”

“…What do you mean?”

“When he speaks, he speaks like you speak. He’s not black.”

“…um…I think he probably speaks much better than I speak. He spent a while speaking for a living, so he’s really good at it. We’re both Americans and we both went to college, so that might be why we both sound alike. But, he spent a lot more time in college than I did. And there are other black people in the United States who speak as well as he speaks.”

“You said he was Kenyan.”

“No. His father was Kenyan. He is American.”

“If his father is Kenyan, then he is Kenyan.”

“There were actually several people working for the US government who kept trying to say that too.”

“What?”

“…nevermind.”

“Ok. So, you think he is black?”

“Yes.”

“Whatever you say, Sihle.”

We talked about the civil rights movement and slavery after that, which moved into talking about the women’s rights movement. They listened very attentively, and seemed very surprised. I think a lot of Swazis believe that America is a perfect place, where everyone is healthy, employed, and happy. At first, I didn’t want to skew that view for them. But, then I decided that helping them get to know me and my culture meant letting them get to know a bigger picture of the United States; not just the good parts. I think they need to understand that America isn’t perfect. We did some horrible things, we went through adversity, and we’re still going through some adversity.

They asked how much it cost to go to school in the United States (students in Swaziland have to pay fees to attend school).

“We have public school and private school. Public school is free, and that’s where kids like me went. If you want to go to private school, you have to pay for it. So, families with money will sometimes send their kids to private school.”

“You can go to school for free? That is so good. I wish we could have that here.”

“Yes, but you have to pay for college. I owe my government over 70,000 rand ($10,000).”

“HOW. They let you go to school for free and then charge you that much for college?! How does anyone go to college?!”

“You take out loans, go into debt, and hopefully get a good job so you can pay off the debt. Or you have a rich family member who will pay for your college. I’m lucky. A lot of people my age have a lot more debt than that.”

“What about clinics? How much does it cost you to see a clinic?”

“…well…in America, we have this thing called health insurance. It costs a lot of money, and you must have it in order to get medical treatment. A lot of Americans can’t afford insurance, so they can’t go to a clinic or a hospital when they’re sick.”

“But, what do they do?”

“They have to hope they can get better by themselves. If they can’t, they have to pay thousands of rand to see a doctor.”

“But why?”

“It’s about money. Healthcare and insurance became sort of like a business in the United States. There’s a lot of money in it. And if you don’t have that money, you can’t have medical treatment.”

“…so your government will send money to other countries like Swaziland to help other people. But, it won’t help its own people? Sihle, we don’t understand.”

“Neither do I.”

//

In work related news:

-Our kitchen is fully funded. Yay! We recently got the donor list, and as I already suspected, our friends are some of the most amazing people in the world. Over half of our donor list consisted of friends who are in the middle of paying off their college loans. Holy cow. Additionally, there were parents of friends we’re currently serving with, and parents of friends from high school and college. To everyone who donated- THANK YOU!!! The community is so excited, and we all appreciate your generosity and words of encouragement. The construction area was already cleared before the project was funded, and the actual building should start very soon. We’ll post pictures, updates, and send out personalized thank you messages once the project is underway. Thanks again!

-We just finished up a 2-day youth camp with our peer facilitators and 100 kids from the community. The camp focused on puberty and development, reporting abuse, human rights and gender equality, HIV and STD prevention and abstinence, condom use, HIV and stigma, male circumcision, peer pressure, and setting goals. It ended up going really well, and we were all very happy with it. ☺

-Tristan and I have spent the past few months working on planning a 4-day training with 30 community health workers and caregivers on home based care and first aid. The training begins next week (unfortunately, Tristan will miss it because he is in Pretoria recovering from hernia surgery), and will cover breastfeeding, prevention of mother to child transmission, nutrition, child development, basic first aid, the link between TB and HIV, how ARVs work, breast cancer, malaria, and patient care.

-Several people in our community have asked us to teach them how to type and use the internet, so we'll be getting more involved with that soon. I brought my computer over to Thabsile's last night to work on some of our translations for the training I just mentioned. I was surrounded by about 10 people the entire time, and when I turned the computer on and the apple logo lit up, they all said, "Oooooooooooooooh. Aaaaaaaaahhhhhple!" at the same time.

-We’ve also made the decision to apply for a third year extension of service with the Peace Corps.

We’re hoping to transfer to another country and work in health, youth development, or community development. It will probably be a while before we know anything for certain, but we’ll let you know when we do.

--Rachel

ps- Miss everyone. :)

It's been a while. Sorry. Rachel has a really long and detailed post that I'm sure she'll update with when she gets to internet at the end of the month. As for me, I guess I'll update about the wonders of being med-evac-ed to South Africa.

During mid-service medical exams last month, it was confirmed that I had a hernia. I've been up in Pretoria since Oct. 18, had my surgery the 22nd, and am now hobbling around like an old man. But I am getting better.

Pretoria is a beautiful city. Jacaranda trees line the streets, and they're in bloom, so everything is purple. Staying here is completely jarring with live back in lowveld Swaz. I am within walking distance of two malls and countless movie theaters. That just shouldn't happen. Even so, it gets boring pretty quick. I miss Rachel, and now I can't much leave the guest house. The best comparison I've been able to come up with is that it's like being stuck in the exposition of a Fitzgerald book.

I'm set to get my stitches out the 2nd so hopefully I'll be back at site around then. And then we can finally start on the NCP.

Yes, we are funded, have been for a while. Thank you to everyone who donated/spread the word/wrote newspaper articles. The community is very excited to get started. The architect is back in community. Now I just need to get back, and we can get this building up.

I'll post more later, since I will be around stable internet for a few weeks.

&

African Studies Give Women Hope in H.I.V. Fight

"Two new studies found different ways to sharply cut H.I.V. infections among women: a vaginal gel and a system of cash payments."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/world/africa/20safrica.html

This is an excellent article. Especially the following section, as it provides a tangible link between poverty and HIV/AIDS. There are so many people who blame promiscuity for the high rates of HIV infection in Africa, when poverty, food insecurity, and gender inequality are actually the driving forces:

"In another piece of progress against AIDS, a separate, large study in Malawi sponsored by the World Bank, and made public on Sunday, found that if poor schoolgirls and their families received small monthly cash payments, the girls had sex later, less often and with fewer partners.

A year and a half after the program started, the girls were less than half as likely to be infected with the AIDS or herpes viruses than were girls whose families got no payments. The likelihood that the girls would agree to sex in return for gifts and cash declined as the size of the payments from the program rose, suggesting the central role of extreme poverty in sexual choices.

“Maybe we can combine these behavioral and biomedical interventions,” said Dr. Tim Farley, a scientist with the World Health Organization involved in H.I.V. prevention research. “We need to pursue both avenues.”

At a time of intensifying competition for global health dollars, when the number of people who contract H.I.V. is outstripping those put on treatment each year, pressure is mounting on African countries and donors to focus more heavily on prevention. Male circumcision is one method proven to at least halve a man’s chances of H.I.V. infection.

Scientists say the success of the $18 million microbicide trial, largely paid for by the United States Agency for International Development, and the study on cash payments offer hope to girls and women in Africa, who have higher rates of H.I.V. infection than their male counterparts and often less power in relationships to protect themselves.

...In the $400,000 trial in Malawi, 3,800 teenage girls and young women, ages 13 to 22, were randomly assigned to two groups. Half the girls received no cash payments. The parents of the other half were paid $4 to $10 a month while the girls themselves received $1 to $5 a month if they attended school regularly.

After 18 months, the H.I.V. prevalence among the girls who got the cash was 1.2 percent, compared with 3 percent for the others. “The program empowered these girls to make better choices,” said Berk Ozler, a senior economist with the World Bank’s Development Research Group."

We are back in the US till the beginning of August. My father died a few days ago, so we were granted emergency leave to come home and support my family.

We're coping...taking it a day at a time and spending a lot of time with my little brother and sister. My amazing friends are flying in tomorrow to spend the weekend with us, and everyone (especially Peace Corps) is being very supportive and generally wonderful. Things are hard, but I keep hoping things will be OK.

Right now, I am drinking coffee with too much milk and sugar. Mom is feeding me oppressive amounts of good food (that's not a complaint) and my aunt is under the impression that I'm too skinny (also not a complaint).

Target and Taco Bell almost made me pass out from instant gratification overload. Noel and I are going to bake cookies with peanut butter and chocolate M&Ms and play approximately 9 million board games today.

We're missing Swaziland. My family has requested that donations be made to our Peace Corps kitchen project in lieu of flowers in my father's memory.

--Rachel

Hey guys,

We are in town to celebrate the 4th of July and meet the new group (which feels really weird, by the way). This is just a quick update to share some pictures of our community's care point where the new kitchen will be constructed once our project is fully funded. :)

Here is the location, along with some of the children. The area with the large pot and corrugated iron is where the women cook.

Caregivers, Thabsile, and Rachel

That kid in the Cosby sweater started screaming like crazy after this picture was taken.

Caregivers handing out meals.

//

Oh, and The Daytona Beach News-Journal is working on a story that will feature a section about our community's kitchen project, so keep your eyes peeled!

http://www.news-journalonline.com/

What is a neighborhood care point/What are neighborhood caregivers?

A neighborhood care point is a location in a community where women (neighborhood caregivers) volunteer their time to cook and sometimes grow vegetables/fruits for orphans and vulnerable children (children suffering from food insecurity). About 40% of the children in our community are orphaned or vulnerable due to the frequency of AIDS related deaths.

What is the goal of this project?

To construct a kitchen for one of the neighborhood care points in our community that is currently lacking one. Caregivers and children cook and eat in the dirt, with no protection from the elements (temperatures often reach 110-115 F in the summer here). Heavy food bags and cast iron pots are hauled between caregiver homes and neighborhood care points every cooking day because there is no structure to provide storage space. Caregivers also walk long distances to collect water, which is sometimes unclean, for food preparation. This project will provide one community neighborhood care point with:

-A kitchen, consisting of a corrugated iron roof and cement floor, to protect the 151 children and 3 caregivers at that care point

-Ventilated concrete stove and cooking pots

-Lockable and ventilated storage area for food and kitchen utensils

-Plates and cups

-Rainwater retention system, to improve hygiene, promote hand washing, reduce waterborne illness, and provide water for caregiver gardens

-Bucket, basin, dishrags, and soap

For more details, please see the previous journal entry or visit our Peace Corps Partnership donation page at https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=645-083

What is the total cost of your project/How much money do you need to raise?

$7039 USD (In case you’re curious, that is 52789 emalangeni/rand)

Do 100% of all donations go directly to your Peace Corps Partnership Project?

Yes, 100% of all donations go directly to our project. The US Government handles all donations. Once our project is fully funded, Peace Corps will transfer the donated funds into Rachel’s Swazi bank account. From there, we can work with community members to begin the construction of our project.

Does the US Government/Peace Corps match donations or provide additional funding help to your project?

Peace Corps will donate the final $2000 to the funding of our project after the initial $5039 is raised.

Are you depending entirely on people you know to help fund your project?

The funding for this project is not entirely reliant on donations from friends, family, and acquaintances, although those donations do often make up a significant chunk of Peace Corps Partnership Project funding. Non-governmental organizations and private donors often make significant contributions, which is what we’re hoping for, as our project is somewhat costly.

Note: We are NOT expecting all friends and family members to donate. It’s a difficult time for our economy right now, and we realize that. Most of our friends are still paying back thousands of dollars in college loans (and so are we). But, if you could spread the word to people you know who might be able to donate, we would appreciate that very much.

Every little bit helps.

A $10 donation can purchase 1 bag of cement

$50 can purchase the gutter materials for the kitchen’s water retention system

$100 can purchase plates for all of the children at this care point

$500 can purchase the corrugated iron for the kitchen roof

$1000 can purchase enough concrete blocks for the construction of the entire kitchen

Can I donate directly to you/your parents?

You can only donate to our project on the US Peace Corps website. Whenever someone donates, the amount of money will be automatically deducted from the "Funds Still Needed" section, located on the right hand side of the page.

Are all donations/donors public?

Identities of donors are not listed on the website. After the project is fully funded, we receive a list of donors who have helped to fund our project. Anonymous donors are listed as such.

What does the $6120 listed under "Community Contribution" on your Peace Corps Partnership Project page mean? Is that how much the community donated?

That is the monetary value of the services/in-kind contributions our community is providing for the project. Unfortunately, our community is not in the position to be able to donate actual money to the project. But, the community contribution is 46% of the total project cost, which demonstrates how much the community truly wants to work for the construction of this kitchen.

Services and in-kind contributions our community is donating to their project include:

-Unpaid labor for the volunteer architect—an amazing man who lives in our community, and graciously donated hours of his time to help the community plan and design this neighborhood care point kitchen, and who will continue to donate his time during the construction of the kitchen.

-Unpaid labor for the construction of the neighborhood care point kitchen

-Unpaid labor for the food preparation for volunteer laborers

-Use of a cooking area and kitchen utensils to cook for volunteer laborers

-Storage of project and construction materials on a secure homestead

-Tools

-Water for cooking and construction

Additionally, neighborhood care point caregivers and numerous other community members were involved in the planning and design of this project. Tristan and I will be working with our community inner council to select a community project committee, which will oversee the construction of this project, in addition to ensuring that it is properly maintained in the future.

Why should I donate to your project?

No one has asked us this yet, but I’ll tell you anyway.

1. 100% of your proceeds go directly to the project.

2. You can see what you’re paying for. We’ll take pictures during and after the construction of the kitchen, so you can see the work as it progresses.

3. The majority of children at this care point have lost one or both parents to AIDS related deaths. They are often neglected, and their main source of nutrition comes from care point feedings. This kitchen will provide a comfortable sanctuary for both the children and the three women who volunteer their time and love to care for them. Supporting this project is supporting the fight against HIV/AIDS and the future of Africa.

4. As I’ve already mentioned, the community has put a tremendous amount of work into this project, and will continue to provide the majority of the work during the construction phase. This is less charity and more helping a community to help itself in a sustainable and educational way. Development for Africa by Africa.

If you have any questions, feel free to email us: rachelmanring(at)gmail.com or tristanrobertestes(at)gmail.com.

Siyabonga! (Thanks!)

Our Peace Corps Partnership Project was posted!

Visit https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=645-083 for details/to help out! Pass it along! <3

Several community members donated their time and skills to help us plan and design this project. We're all very excited about it.

About our project:

This rural community is located in the hot and dry southern region of Swaziland. Major problems include high rates of HIV and tuberculosis, food insecurity, low employment, and poor access to clean water. Due to the frequency of AIDS related deaths, about 40% of this community’s children are orphaned or vulnerable.

Because most orphans and vulnerable children do not have family members with the resources to care for them, they are usually unable to afford to feed themselves. This can lead to malnutrition, low self-esteem, poor performance in school and destructive behavior.

In order to help local orphaned and vulnerable children, a group of motivated community women volunteer their time as neighborhood caregivers. These caregivers prepare meals twice a day and grow vegetables for children suffering from food insecurity. Neighborhood care point feedings are often the only source of nutrition for the majority of these children. Four of five of these neighborhood care points do not have buildings. Caregivers and children cook and eat in the dirt with no protection from the elements. Heavy food bags and cast iron pots are hauled between caregiver homes and neighborhood care points every cooking day because there is no storage space. Caregivers also walk long distances to collect water which is sometimes unclean, for food preparation.

This project will supply one neighborhood care point with:

• A kitchen, consisting of a corrugated iron roof and cement floor, to protect 151 children and 3 caregivers.

• Ventilated concrete stove and cooking pots • Lockable and ventilated storage area for food and kitchen utensils.

• Plates and cups

• Rainwater retention system, to improve hygiene, promote hand washing, reduce waterborne illness, and provide water for caregiver gardens

• Bucket, basin, dishrags, and soap

The community is dedicated to improving the lives of their neighbors and bettering the future of their children. Several community members have volunteered their time and skills to the planning of this project, and will continue to donate their time through project construction and cooking for volunteer laborers. Caregivers plan to lead hand washing lessons with care point children immediately following the completion of this project.

June 9, 2010

We’re back from our mid-service conference. Yes, mid-service conference. We’ve lived here for almost one year, which completely weirds me out, because I remember the night before we flew to staging last year like it was yesterday. We were so freaked out and full of champagne and Italian food, and wow…I really want champagne and Italian food.

Anyway. Back from mid-service, and I’m sick. I know you’re surprised. But, in my own defense, I usually only get sick after Peace Corps events and conferences when I’m around other volunteers. One person always arrives sick, and then everyone gets sick because we share everything…beverages, snacks, media, clothes, care packages, stories from site, nail polish, make up, infectious diseases…

It’s not bad. And it seems to be clearing up on it’s own. Currently, it feels completely gorgeous outside: breezy and lower 80’s (anything below 80 makes me cold, which reminds me of my father’s bizarre habit of wearing sweaters and hiking the heater at home up to 90 whenever the temperature dips below 75). I spent the day resting, and decided to get up and sweep, which is required every day when the walls in your house are crumbling and dirt seems to seep in from every existing crevice. Farmers are burning the sugar cane fields right now, which means little burnt pieces of sugar cane are flying into the house with the wind, which is rather aggravating. I spend a decent amount of time piling all of the dirt and charred sugar cane pieces in front of the door, open my burglar bars to sweep it all out, and the puppy comes flying into the house (as he has a tendency to do, whenever he sees the door open), slips on the waxed floors, and tumbles headfirst into my dirt pile, sending the filth flying EVERYWHERE. He looks at me sheepishly as I contemplate hurling him into the branches of the acacia tree in front of my house.

He’s way too cute to actually inspire any true rage, so I kick him out by his butt and resume sweeping. As I try, a second time, to push the crap out of my house, a huge gust blows it all back in my face. And I’m done sweeping.

Random happenings of the past month or so, in no particular order:

Tristan and I are leaving the homestead one day. Our host mother calls to us from one of her huts. She is brandishing a stick, and the dogs are crowded around her. She raises the stick and bludgeons something underneath her.

“Look,” she says, pointing to it.

A puff adder is sprawled out under her, it’s head flattened to about the width of a sheet of paper. It’s still twitching. She looks at our faces, cackles, and bludgeons it again. The puppy runs up and tries to eat it.

//

Our host sister (our host brother’s wife) is about to give birth. We’ve seen our bhuti (brother) around town with his wife, picking out baby clothes, and doing other things that males in this society typically don’t do. He approaches us one day, and asks us to name the baby. We spend the next few days pouring over our siSwati dictionary, and decide on “Khetselo,” which means “the chosen one” or “the best one”. We call bhuti to tell him the name we picked. He has just finished work and is at a bar with friends. He laughs uproariously when we tell him, spreads the news to everyone in the bar, and responds with, “Yahyahyahyah. I LIKE it!” The baby was born a couple weeks ago, and that’s his name. Our bhuti is a very proud father.

//

The chief’s wife requests a meeting with us. We sit in front of the new hut she just had built, the hut she has declared is for us and any family members that might want to move in. She offers boiled sweet potatoes. I know better than to refuse, as she never allows us to leave her homestead without eating something. She talks with her head down.

“Everyone is sick or dying. Everyone is hungry. I don’t know what to do. I’m sorry to burden you with this, but please, please, tell me what to do.”

I have no idea what to say, and I feel completely helpless. So, I just ask her to talk. And she does.

She spends a lot of time talking about my neighbors, the woman who can’t walk.

“I hate to pay visits when I can’t do anything,” she says.

“When I have nothing to bring, nothing to do, I just can’t visit them.”

After she gets everything out, she seems to feel better. She apologizes again.

“It’s OK, it’s fine,” I say. “Sometimes we just need someone to hear us. Sometimes we need to talk to other people to help us find solutions.”

She asks me to cut her pills for her. She’s just returned from the clinic with blood pressure medication. The pills are tiny things, about 1/3 the size of my pinky nail, and her dose is to take half of the pill twice daily. Obviously, most homes here don’t have pill cutters, and I wonder how an older man or woman with poor vision and no children to help would manage to cut the pills. She hands me a dull knife, which makes the pill halves fly across the room with every cut. Tristan scrambles around, catching them, as they bounce off the walls.

I give her the number to an NGO that might be able to help my neighbor. And I leave feeling exhausted, but also feeling like what I’ve done isn’t enough. The longer I’m here, the more I learn, but the more I realize how much more I have to learn.

And I know that my community is invisible to the eyes of the world. I live with them, I know them, and I work with them. I see them and I hear them. But outside of this country, no one else does.

//

I am sitting with the community peer facilitators. They are chattering in siSwati so fast that I barely understand anything (as usual). During the conversation, one of the facilitators makes a vigorous jerking motion with his hand and mimes what looks like throwing a baseball. Thabsile looks at me. “We are discussing wet dreams,” she says.

//

One of the private schools close to our village randomly travels to “needy communities” to dispense food and clothing items to orphans and their caregivers. This school paid a visit to our community and brought food for our neighborhood care points, as well as clothing for care point children and caregivers. The headmaster decided to use the opportunity to mercilessly hit on me.

“You. You are beautiful. I am coming home with you and you will be my wife.”

“No. I’m married.”

“I will tell your husband to go home to America without you and leave you here.”

“…I’m not sure he’d listen to you.”

“Tell me where you live. I will visit you.”

(The women sitting next to me whispers in my ear: “Don’t tell him.”)

“No, I don’t think so.”

“I will find out. And I will visit you.”

“…I don’t think that would work out very well for you.”

He starts to say completely grotesque things in siSwati, thinking that I don’t understand. I resist the overwhelming urge to yell at him.

//

Abnormal things that are normalized here:

1. Abuse and sexual molestation of women. A local newspaper recently published an article about how “Swazi women are the happiest women in the world,” and “Swaziland does not have problems with human rights.” This was weeks ago, and I’m still ridiculously pissed off about it.

2. Babies taking care of babies. I usually see this at care points or with children who have lost one or both parents. A baby starts crying, another child (usually around 3 or 4) picks up the baby and rocks him gently while singing or humming until the baby falls asleep or stops crying. Small children are often seen carrying around their baby brothers or sisters on their backs. This makes me think back to my brother’s birth when I was 8. Torturing him was a hobby for me because, well, that’s what you do to your younger siblings. Responsibility already hits at a young age here, without taking into regard how much younger it hits for children without parents. I wonder about the psychological repercussions of a child, still grieving the loss of her parents, and forced to take on the role of caregiver at a ridiculously young age.

3. Death. Although I’ve talked this over with several volunteers, and we seem to have come to the conclusion that Swaziland hasn’t quite…absorbed just how much of their population they are losing on a regular basis. Thousands of people are probably suffering from undiagnosed PTSD brought on by the constant waves of death and disease. I know what I’m doing here…I know that my job title is “HIV/health educator, yaddayaddayadda,” but I can’t actually THINK in depth about HIV in conjunction with the future of this country very often, because it terrifies me. If I contemplated the future of this country every day, I think I would have a panic attack.

4. Tuberculosis. It’s socially more acceptable to have tuberculosis than it is to have HIV. Despite the fact that clinics and health centers tell their patients that HIV and tuberculosis more often than not go hand in hand, the majority of people in my community treat them as separate things.

//

My cell phone, another friend’s cell phone and wallet, and another friend’s jacket were all stolen while we were in Mbabane. It’s the first thing I’ve had stolen in Swaziland. While we searched for the missing items, a man told my friend to “get raped and learn what it’s really like here.” It was probably one of the most discouraging evenings I’ve had here.

I got another cell phone. Same number.

Oh, and if anyone sees a man sporting a beaten up Nokia with Hello Kitty stickers, THAT PHONE IS MINE.

A couple days after returning to the homestead from mid-service, our host family was robbed. A man broke in, ignored my family’s television and radio, and stole meat, a bag of potatoes, and some fabric. Poverty is a strange, sad, and desperate thing. He ignored the things in my family’s house that could have actually sold for profit, and instead, stole lower cost items to satisfy basic needs.

//

Dear Ali’s Mom,

THANK YOU for letting me have my contact lenses shipped to your house so your darling daughter can bring them back to me! You are a lifesaver.

//

I’ll be making trips to Manzini once a month to work with Baylor and some other PCVs on a teen club for HIV positive children. This means that I should be able to update the journal on a fairly regular monthly basis now.

//

And Hi to anyone from Group 8 who might be reading! We’re really excited to meet you! Swaziland is a great place to do your service, and you’re going to have an amazing experience. You should already have or will be soon receiving a comprehensive packing list that we helped the office put together, so I won’t post about any of the prep and packing stuff here. But, if you have any questions, feel free to email me at Rachelmanring (at) gmail.com or message me on facebook. See you soon!

//

Hi, Mom, I love you!

//

We made condom dispensers for the public latrines in our community. I had a hard time writing "Free Condoms" in siSwati.

What we do when we're bored.

It's a busy time for Peace Corps Swaziland, so this will be short. 11 of the group 6 volunteers closed their service. Our trimester report was due, we had our midservice, and there was a major music festival.

Our Peace Corps Partnership went through and should be up on the website soon. More details to come.

The music festival, Bushfire was everything you'd expect. Lots of drunk foreigners, music, and food. It felt more like Florida than Swaziland.

Midservice went smoothly except now I am sick and Rachel's internet phone was stolen. So we will be in less contact with the mysterious interwebs until July when we are paid. It might be nice.

When the Partnership goes through, we'll (hopefully) update with more info.

And that'll do for now.

-Tristan

April 23, 2010

An angry wasp flew out of the latrine while I was using it. He bounced off my butt. It was a horrifying experience.

We’ve been ridiculously busy and haven’t had much time to write, although there have been times where we’ve both thought, “We should journal this.” So, I’m going to try and recall some of those instances now. This will probably be a short entry, but we'll try to post a longer one later in the month. We've been receiving a lot of emails lately, but are having problems responding to them because of our limited internet access. So, if you emailed and haven't received a response back, we're not ignoring you and we promise to get back to you. Email has been really difficult for us to load lately. We appreciate the kind words and support.

To the people asking if we've received your packages: Not yet. But, mail has been taking a lot longer to arrive lately, and we think the volcanic ash in Europe caused some delays. We'll let you know when we receive mail from you. Thank you for thinking of us!

//

Wednesday afternoon: Thabsile and the community peer facilitators wanted to know more about how HIV was transmitted through breast milk. Swazi mothers are urged to breastfeed, even if they are HIV positive, as formula feeding is costly and requires clean and boiled water. Breast fed children are more likely to survive. Children who receive formula/mixed feedings, especially in poor communities, are often malnourished and sickly. I talked about mother to child transmission, the dangers of mixed feeding at an early age, and viral loads and how ART helps to reduce them.

“Most women don’t do PMTCT (prevention of mother to child transmission) here,” Thabsile says.

“Why?”

“Eish, I don’t know. It is expensive (the government doesn't pay for c-sections) and they worry what other people will think. Their husbands don’t let them.”

“Yes, it is hard. People who are HIV positive can lead fulfilling lives if they are on ART. But, to tell people you are HIV positive…they are afraid to lose their friends and loved ones because of stigma.”

“Stigma. YES, but what is more IMPORTANT?!” Thabsile demands. “Your friends or your LIFE?!”

“I know, I know. It is frustrating. But, your friends are part of what makes up your life. To lose people you love is to lose a part of your life. Although, if the people you love can give you up because you have HIV, maybe they aren’t worth loving. It takes a lot of courage.”

Thabsile is quiet for a minute. “There is a baby. She is on formula, but she is very sick. What should we do?”

“Is her mother boiling the water for the formula and for cleaning the bottles?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why is she formula feeding? Is she positive?”

“Yes. An NGO gives her the formula. I will tell her to boil the water, but I don’t know. The baby, she has thrush and sores and cannot even eat.”

“…is the baby HIV positive?”

“Yes, and on treatment.”

“If the baby is HIV positive, sick, and only receiving formula, she may be sick for a while.”

“Yes, Sihle, I think she will die soon.”

“I’m sorry, Thabsile. You’re right. The baby will probably die soon. But, please, make sure the mother is boiling the water and taking the baby to the clinic.”

There was nothing else to say. Everyone already knew it.

The two other facilitators in the small office look completely crestfallen. One is sitting next to the open window because his TB has given him a severe cough. Another sits next to me, sick with a secondary infection, sores covering his legs. He shrinks more and more every day. His arms are about the size of my 12-year-old sister’s (and she’s small for her age). His body is that of a child, yet he’s probably in his late 30’s. I realize that of the 3 Swazis in the room, 2 are HIV positive, and no one else in the community knows except for their families, Tristan, Thabsile, and me. These are people I see every day; Men who don’t treat me like I’m less because I’m a woman and don’t feel ashamed coming to me with questions about the community, HIV, or English grammar. I work with them on events and projects, we laugh together, share raisins during meetings, make fun of each other, and yet, I can’t post their names publicly because of the stigma here (although chances are extraordinarily slim that anyone in my community would be surfing the internet). These men live relatively normal lives because no one knows their status. They counsel and talk publicly about HIV prevention and treatment, and I respect them so much for it. I imagine it must be empowering and I’m grateful for the NGO that provides them with this opportunity.

//

Things I like about Maputo (most of this will probably involve food):

I can walk down the street without random men grabbing at me and propositioning me for sex (In Manzini, Piggs Peak, and Mbabane, this is a normal occurrence…especially with public transport).

International food. We went to a fabulous Thai restaurant and I had delicious prawn, lemongrass, and coconut milk soup.

Pizza topped with rocket (arugula), figs, and gorgonzola

Giant containers of queen green olives available at all stores, including gas stations

Gelato

Everything is cheaper because of the instability of the Mozambican meticais (probably not the best thing for the country, but it made for an inexpensive weekend getaway)

We met a Peace Corps Mozambique Volunteer and had a nice chat.

The civilians are very kind, eager to provide directions to confused tourists, and willing to put up with heinous attempts at Portuguese.

Things I didn’t like about Maputo:

All cops and many security officers are armed with automatic weapons. A drunk and belligerent cop with an AK47 demanded through unintelligible slurs to have our passports. He wouldn’t accept copies.

Mosquitoes. Holy crap. I came back to Swaziland with a total of 34 bites on my legs alone (and I slept under a mosquito net). If you ever visit Mozambique, TAKE ANTIMALARIALS.

--Rachel

Note: Most entries will probably be posted in this manner, long and once a month. We're not able to access internet very often, and when we can, it's a pain in the butt.

March:

1.

“80 Kids Raped Since January,” a local headline announced. Another mentioned a man hacking his girlfriend to pieces.

Swazis are an inherently peaceful people. They pride themselves on their peaceful country, grateful for the fact that they haven’t needed to cope with the civil wars and ethnic tension of their neighbors. I feel safer in my rural Swazi community than I did in the states.

So, what the hell is up with all of the violence, especially directed toward women and children? I’m not entirely sure. But, it’s growing. Swaziland ranks depressingly low on human index reports in regard to gender equality.

The sad thing is that the “80 Kids…” headline only refers to official reports. The vast majority of child abuse here goes unreported. This is mainly because:

a. They expect it. So many people, especially females, just accept abuse as part of their lives or as an aspect of growing up. 1 in 3 Swazi women are sexually abused at some point in their lives.

b. Abuse often happens at home. If the caregivers deny the abuse, the case is ignored and the child falls through the cracks.

c. Children are absolutely terrified of reporting abuse. Children without caregivers are children without food.

When I accepted this placement, I expected to experience both amazing and horrific things.

In terms of population growth (or lack thereof; Swaziland is experiencing a stagnant population growth), the country ranks close to nations that are currently or were just recently involved in violent conflicts. And yet, there is no fighting here. Their war is private, silent and stigmatized. The casualties too often consist of victims wasting away to nothing, dying before their time, and leaving behind orphaned children, grieving relatives, and a constant stream of funerals. There are funerals in my community almost every day. Obituaries are spread throughout the newspapers, instead of located together in one section, because there are simply too many to list. Obituaries almost never link AIDS in relation to the deaths. People often die “mysteriously” in Swaziland.

Before I was issued an invitation, I was drilled on my ability to handle grief and loss.

This post is “hard corps” not because some of us are without electricity or running water. It isn’t because some of us live in extreme heat or reside in communities where people routinely don’t get enough to eat. It is because the majority of volunteers placed here have to cope with at least one death of a close friend of homestead family member during service. It is because we’re surrounded by parentless children, many who don’t get enough to eat, and who are ignored and resented by their teachers and substitute caregivers; many of who contracted HIV from their deceased parents, so they will probably not live past the age of 10 or 15. This is the “hard” part of this post, and it is something we all have to deal with, regardless of whether we have water or wealthier host families or larger living spaces or moderate temperatures.

2.

Do you know what I’m tired of? Well, that’s a loaded question with way too many answers, so I’ll just focus on one thing. I’m tired of people asking where I stay, and hearing them respond with, “WHY?! It is too hot and there is no water!”

Yeah, thanks, I noticed.

During in service training, I chatted with a very nice and exuberant gentleman who works for a local NGO on training orphans and vulnerable children to create and maintain their own small gardens. We discussed him working with some of the children in my community and he asked where I stayed.

“OH!” he exclaimed, when I told him. “Oh, no no no no no no no. I can’t go there. No water. Nothing grows.”

That was the end of the conversation. I hear that a lot. When discussing how to solve this problem, I’m often given the answer of, “They should move.”

Yeah, OK. Not helpful and not easy, because the majority of land in this country is Swazi Nation Land, meaning it cannot be sold for profit by the inhabitants.

So, in short, people keep telling me we’re screwed. Thabsile has taken to openly referring to our community as a “deprivation trap.” I laughed hard the first time I heard her say it.

“Where on earth did you get that?”

“It’s true,” she said, seriously. “This is our life.”

3.

The story of how our community gave us something they can’t give themselves:

Whenever we would trek off of our homestead, wheelbarrow in tow, to gather water, we were always the main attraction. People came out of their houses to stare. Children ran behind, singing impromptu songs about the white people going to fetch water. Because there is only one borehole in our large community, it takes quite a long walk (about 2 km) to reach it. And that’s just from where we are. For most of our neighbors, it takes longer. The late chief’s wife insisted on us using the water tank on her homestead, which provided a significantly shorter walk (note: shorter does not=less deadly. Black mambas like to chill out under her water tanks). Every time we attempt to pay for the water, she waves us away, proclaiming, “No, no, no, you are my children, NO MONEY,” and refuses to hear anything else on the issue. (This is also the reaction we get whenever we try to pay our family or counterparts for using their electricity to charge our cell phones.)

One day, a 4500 liter water tank mysteriously appeared on our homestead. The next day, a huge water truck is filling it with glorious, clear water.

We prepare for the argument that will ensure over paying our host mother for our share of the water.

“Nothing,” she says, when we ask about payment. “No money.”

“Make, please, we want to pay.”

“No,” she insists, pulling her stubborn face. “No cost. Government pays.”

“WHAT?!”

She cackles at our reaction.

The community and inner council apparently came to the conclusion (without our input, which we think may have been intentional, as they probably know us well enough at this point to know we wouldn’t have accepted it) that they didn’t like making us walk to collect our water.

The community’s elected official, with whom we have a very good relationship, took the community’s thoughts to the regional government. And, voila, a water tank, complete with regular fillings via water truck magically appeared.

I’m grateful. Really, I am. But, I’m also perturbed. This community gets maybe…10 days of decent rain a year. Most residents are too far away to actually utilize the borehole. The red dirt ground is compacted to hard, rocky cement from lack of water. And they use government funding to furnish US with a water tank. We can’t refuse it. I know that. It would be considered insulting, and our host family is able to benefit from it, so that’s something.

I try to explain my feelings to Thabsile. “YOU need the water. This community needs the water, not us. We can walk. If you can walk, we can walk.”

She laughs. “Sihle. You are special to us. We want to take care of you.”

4.

“JESUS CHRIST!” exclaims a visiting Swazi who works at a local NGO.

I gape at him. This is my first time hearing a Swazi swear.

“HOW DO YOU DO THIS?!” he asks me, desperately fanning himself.

“Excuse me?”

“Live….here,” he pants, sweat pouring off his face. “HOW?!”

“Um…it hasn’t been as hot lately. And I like the people.”

“LATELY? How hot is it usually?”

“Um…around 43 in the summer…”

“JESUS CHRIST!”

(Now community women are alternately staring at him and looking at me, as if he’s my responsibility.)

“OKAY. IT’S. OKAY.”

My nerves are frayed. I’m sunburned, sore, fighting off a flu or another lung infection or God knows what, and just spent 6 hours working at a youth abstinence and healthy living event I helped plan with the community peer facilitators, and of course, almost nothing went as planned.

The event is running late, which is normal here. A sound system has been borrowed from an NGO and they can’t get it to work.

“Is the sound system REALLY necessary to start this event?” I ask Thabsile

She looks at me like I’ve just asked her if she’ll sprout wings and turn into a dinosaur.

Alrighty.

A white woman walks briskly toward me. She introduces herself and says she works for a local NGO. “We’re here to see what you do. We’ve heard about you in this community.”

“….oh?”

“Yes. So, we want to see how you do it.”

“Do it?”

“Yes.”

“…okay”

I explain the event to her, tell her it was the idea of the community peer facilitators, initiated and carried out by them. I look at my watch, silently curse the sound system, there’s no hurry in Swaziland, blahblahblahblahblahblahblah, OK. Several other NGO representatives show up. We are literally swarming with them. Thabsile has invited all of them, and we are now bordering on a 4-hour late start.

They look out of place next to my neighbors. They’re all dressed neatly, expensively, polo shirts, high heels, pressed khakis, jewelry; all reminders of what the people in my community will probably never have.

Their feet are clean. Mine are quite literally covered in black dust and red clay dirt, from traipsing back and forth from the event location to my house no less than 10 times. (Thabsile is amazingly motivated, but also somewhat scatterbrained. I’m famously absentminded. This makes for a lot of trips back home on both of our parts, to retrieve forgotten materials.)

The event finally gets up and running. Some of our planned lessons on abstinence, self-esteem, and peer pressure are cut dramatically because of the time constraints. I’m frustrated. The day isn’t what I wanted it to be. The teenagers are quiet and unwilling to talk during the educational section and games because some of the prior activities were cut so much, there was little time for any sort of structure or trust to be built.

The peer facilitators are looking at me helplessly, not understanding why the lessons they’re directing are receiving little response from the older youth. They’re working on a game about responding to peer pressure.

“A boy tells you he will marry you, so why can’t you have sex now? What is your response?” asks a facilitator.

The girls write the response on their sheets. “Noooooooooo,” they say, in a bored chorus.

I walk over. “That is all you have to say?!” I exclaim. He is asking you, “why,” and looking for an explanation. He is saying, “BABYYYYY, you are BEAUTFUL. I LOVE you, LOVE YOU SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH, I want to MARRY YOU, PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE BE WITH ME, I NEEEEEEEEEEEEED YOOOOOUUUUU, and all you have to say is No?! He is trying to convince you!”

The girls are laughing hard, holding their sides. It’s true. They know it is, and I know they’ve heard it. They adjust the answers on their sheets.

“What’s the next one?” I ask

“If you don’t have sex with me, I will have sex with someone else,”

Once again, it is met with a droning, “Nooooooooooo,” but this time, the girls are looking at me, smiles on their faces, waiting to see what my response is.

“What do you think of a man who says this to you?” I demand

“He is bad,” a girl says quietly, looking the ground.

“What?”

“He is bad,” she whispers.

“I can’t hear you!”

“HE IS BAD. LET HIM GO,” she yells, eyes wide, surprised at her own volume.

“Why is he bad?”

Once again, silence.

“Someone tell me why he is bad.”

“Because we want to wait for marriage,” says another girl.

“Yes. But, he is also bad because he does not respect what you have to say. He does not respect that NO means NO. Anyone who says he will leave you if you don’t do what he wants does not deserve you! He does not deserve you or your beauty and he does not love you. And there is someone else for you out there who will.”

The peer facilitator continues from there, the girls slightly more open to communication. I’m not entirely sure the activity is accomplishing anything. I look around. Thabsile is doing an amazing job with the little ones. She has taken courses on child welfare, is constantly surrounded by children, and right now, she is in her element. The exercise consists of basic information on saying “no," “bad” touches, being nice to friends, and respect.

“Excuse me,” says one of the women with the NGOs. “Do you have anything for the adults here?”

“Well, this is a youth event. When groups plan activities, we usually try to encourage them to target a certain population and stick to it, so we’re not spread too thin. But, our last event was for adults, and it focused on multiple concurrent partnerships and faithfulness in relationships.”

“Oh. Well, can you come talk to this group over here, so they’re not bored?”

And so, Rachel goes to attempt to entertain the masses. They are talking amongst themselves, as their brothers/sisters/children participate in the activities. It’s obvious that some people have just showed up to wait for the food to be served.

I am led over to a group of young mothers, sitting with their babies on their backs.

“Let’s talk to them,” the woman says.

I greet them. And then, I crash and burn.

“Is everyone married here?” I ask

“No. We are single parents.”

“Tell me about that. What challenges do you face?”

Silence.

“What is hard for you?”

Silence.

“…how do you think your challenges now are different from the ones you faced when you were younger?”

Silence.

NGO woman also gives it a try.

Silence.

The single mothers are peering at us, with looks of “Why are you talking to us? You don’t know us and you can’t ever relate to us,” on their faces.

And they’re right. I can’t. And neither can the snazzily dressed woman who is also trying to talk to them.

For the first time since I’ve gotten here, I feel the sting of failure.

NGO woman shrugs. “These women are not very talkative.”

I am mortified. I hold back the automatic sarcastic response that has formed in my brain.

The day continues, consisting of food and games. We are congratulated on the success of our event. I direct the congratulations toward the peer facilitators, but still, I’m not feeling the “success.” I’m jaded and frustrated.

The crowd of 320 breaks around 5, and people start to walk home. Thabsile is smiling. She takes my hand, and gestures to the massive group of children on the soccer field. They are hyped up on sugar and a meal that was full of oil. Their bellies are full for the first time in I-don’t-know-how-long, and they’re running around, yelling, laughing, and wrestling.

“Look at them. None of them want to go home,” she says.

The kids are enjoying their precious free time, obtained from the inner council’s permission for the event, which meant parents and caregivers allowed their children to leave the chores and act like children.

And then, it clicks. This is not MINE. It is THEIRS. And it is a success. Some of our plans went down the drain, but that’s fine. It worked. "Success" is different in different places.

5.

March 23, 2010

There’s an excitement in the air among the volunteers here. They are making plans to visit home, plans for relatives to visit, and plans to soak up as much Americana as they possibly can through their trips/visiting family members.

Tristan and I probably won’t be seeing our families until we close our service and go home. That’s more than 2 years. That’s really, really difficult.

I hadn’t given it much thought. Maybe because part of me knew I didn’t want to think about it because I’d feel depressed. But, the longer I’m here, the more I wish for just a piece of familiarity and family. It’s not that I don’t love it here. I do. I love my community, my host family, and the other volunteers here are amazing. I love this experience, and I wouldn’t exchange it for anything. But, this environment, the culture shock, and the stress of disease and poverty wears on you after while, and you find yourself desperately wanting a small, temporary escape, with people who knew you before you lived in Swaziland, peed in a bucket, bathed in a basin, and spent your days sweating and speaking a language other than your own.

I haven’t cried much here. Some volunteers (understandably) have a really tough time with adjustment. I had a pretty OK time with it. I’m naturally extroverted, and I didn’t mind the exhausting days of running around the community, introducing myself to everything that moved, and constantly making a fool of myself by speaking siSwati with the proficiency of a toddler. I welcome the chaos, I don’t mind feeling overwhelmed, and I’ve gotten accustomed to feeling perpetually frustrated. I don’t think serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer makes you stronger…I just think it makes you realize how much strength you have within yourself. But, yesterday was probably one of the hardest days I’ve had so far. For some completely asinine reason, I decided to think about things I was missing, things I was wishing, and it turned me into a blubbering fool. When I do feel upset or sad, I have a tendency to think of EVERYTHING in my life that is making me upset, instead of just the issue at hand. That’s a really bad idea, by the way. The day ended in me sending in a weepy email to my mother on my crappy cell phone and crying myself to sleep. Both my mother and my husband probably think I’m out of my mind now.

I woke up this morning, immediately thought of Easter candy for some reason (specifically reese eggs and sweet tart jelly beans), and burst into tears. Good grief.

Leave it to me for grief and stress to manifest itself through crying over candy.

I’m OK. No, seriously, I am. Maybe I’m just going through a weird, emotional transitional period. I spent the remainder of the day watching season 2 of Arrested Development and eating dry cereal, which made me feel better.

It’s strange to live here and not be able to truly share this experience with our families and friends. It’s strange to know my little brother and sister are going to look so different when I finally do see them again. It’s strange when friends from home email, call, and write to me, saying, “I know you’re following your dream, but I really want you here.” It’s strange when my Swazi friends and neighbors keep telling me they want to meet my family, and I know that will probably never happen. It’s strange when a Swazi woman about the same age as my mother randomly approaches me, puts her hand on my shoulder, and says, “You must be missing your mother.”

6.

In work related news...

Tristan used his theatre tech and scenic design skillz (yes, with a z) to draw the plans for our NCP (neighborhood care point) project*. A community contractor volunteered to look over the design to make sure the structure would be stable. After a few updates to the roof, he took the plans to be redrawn and to get quotes on materials. The basic structure of the building consists of two breezeway areas with a corrugated iron roof, held up by two walls. One area will be for cooking, and another for the children to sit. There will also be a closet space for the storage of food and cooking materials. We planned for the design to provide both protection from the elements and an open area to keep the women cooler on the 115-degree days we sometimes have in this part of Swaziland.

We'll probably be submitting a Peace Corps Partnership fairly soon to fund this project. The information will be posted on the website (http://www.peacecorps.gov) and we'll post about it once it's up. I'll wait until then to tell you about the amazing, sustainable benefits this project will bring the community, how it will (and has already started to) build capacity, and how you should tell everyone you know about it. :)

*I can't remember if I've defined "neighborhood care point" in previous entries. But, basically, it's a location where community women volunteer (they are not paid) to cook/care for community orphans and vulnerable children. 23% of children in our community are single or double orphans, and hundreds more are considered vulnerable, which means they're not receiving adequate food/care due to lack of money (and the fact that it's nearly impossible to garden in our community because of the low rainfall).

We're also in the process of working with the community sewing association on a roadside market, a caregiver savings and credit group on proposal writing and business classes, an ex-miners association on obtaining a fence for their cattle project, and our community peer facilitators on planning, organization, and targeting specific audiences.

We'll be visiting Mozambique for Easter weekend, which we're excited about.

(From our youth abstinence and healthy living day)

A billboard in Manzini:

Permaculture training:

(Really horrendous red ants were devouring my feet, causing me to dance like a spaz to get them off and keep them off. Musa, one of the PC Swaziland training managers, was making fun of me.)

Clearly, Tristan is STOKED about making compost.

(Ok, so this one has nothing to do with permaculture training. Tristan threw our room key on the roof after our training one day. I don't remember how or why.

Homestead:

This puppy chewed a hole in our door screen, in order to sleep inside of the screen. I think the DEET might be getting him stoned, because he's always really tired and sluggish when he's there.

This is how you know it's hot.

Community:

Neighborhood care point (the only one with a structure)

He told me he was my model and ordered me to take a picture of him. The sewing association made this shirt.

Youth Abstinence and Healthy Living Day:

(Thabsile is in the middle, with the red hat)

Remember what I said about our feet?

Missing all of you and continuing to be spoiled by amazing friends who send letters, American magazines, and packages. You're the greatest. Love.

--Rachel

//

The magic of electricity. An amazing thing is happening right now. I’m in our house, on the computer, but instead of the battery going down, it’s going up. And there’s a fan. A glorious, glorious fan.

Originally, we weren’t going to get electricity for two main reasons. One, we thought the cost would be too high. Two, we had a café down the road where we could charge electronics, go on the internet, and bask in wonderful air-conditioning once a week. Once a week for electricity was enough. Well, the café decided to start charging exorbitant fees for internet, and we discovered that installing electricity wouldn’t cost nearly as much as we thought.

It turns out our community’s bucopho (elected official, 5 year terms, the go-between the community and higher levels of government, gets funding, ours does remarkably well despite some less than wonderful views on gender equality) also has a degree in electrical engineering. He came over the day after I called him, gave me a list of materials to get from town, and within the week, with only two minor delays, we had a nice, clean wire running from our family’s house to ours, with a plug in each room. All in all, pretty damn quick.

That’s not to say it was without its snags. His first estimation of how much wire would be needed was grossly under. He said we’d need 15 meters, I thought more than 30, but didn’t feel right pushing it. He has the degree, and maybe he has some extra wire. Even so, I bought 20 because I thought that’d be enough for one room.

The first day he canceled. The second day he came and set to work. They were starting about 5 meters back from where I thought, so even the 20 didn’t reach. Always resourceful, he made up the difference on either side of the new wire with some old telephone wire. This was the wire our family had used to put a light in their kitchen. They stopped using it in favor of candles. That should have been a warning sign. As he was splicing the wires and hooking them into the plugs, I asked the obvious question.

“Babe, can this wire handle steady electricity?”

“Oh yes, they are nearly the same.”

“Can it handle a computer?”

“Yes.”

“A fan?”

“Yes.”

“A refrigerator?”

(Pause) “No, I wouldn’t do that.”

That settled whether or not to get a fridge at any rate. After it was all hooked up, he flipped the circuit in the main house and simultaneously the telephone wire on his side and my side caught fire. My new wire handled the current flawlessly, but it was designed to. Probably should have seen that coming. I walked over to the house where he was.

“So, we’re going to need more wire, babe.”

“Yes.”

I looked at the dilapidated plug that the telephone wire was originally attached to,

“We’re going to need a new plug too I suppose.”

“Oh no, we can still use this one. It’s fine.”

The casing is burnt and falling off, the wires frayed.

“Actually, I think I’ll just get a new one, babe. Rather be safe than sorry.”

He laughs at this. I’m starting to wonder if maybe electricity might be a bad idea. After another night’s delay, he came set it up, dug a trench for the wire to go in, made it look remarkably clean, and it works.

While he worked on it, we talked. He’s always been kind of quiet around me, but when he was working he opened up. We talked about religion. He didn’t know what to make of Rachel’s and mine absence of church services. He asked me if I was going to the World Cup, and if I’d see my brother David Beckham. He thought I was English (American is usually the last nationality I get pegged for. Finnish is currently the frontrunner). I told him I wished Beckham were my brother. He asked if I would teach him higher-level English. Most people ask me this. He didn’t want to learn ‘American English’ though, just ‘Standard English.’ Oh, and we talked about the Beatles. He saw a massive poster of Lennon (thanks to Cameron for leaving that in my box) on our bedroom door:

“Ah, so this is a picture of you, isn’t it?”

Chuckling a little, “No. That’s not me, that’s John Lennon.”

“Oh.”

“You know, the Beatle?”

Turns out he didn’t know who the Beatles were.

------

In Swaziland a strange thing happens often. You’re walking through the community, you see someone you know and they see you. You are 100+ meter away from each other. Do you walk toward each other, then once at a closer distance, talk? No, you hold on a conversation that moment, making no effort to close the gap. Swazis like to project their voices.

While walking home, a hundred or so meters ahead was a man who the day before had a long conversation with me about a job in America. He wanted one, I was American, ergo I could get him a job in America. Hard to argue with that logic. After about 45 minutes of explaining why I couldn’t, he laughed, said he was joking and walked away.

I feared today might be round two. He spotted me, but instead of approaching or even standing still, he kept walking away from me, backwards, and started talking:

“Sawubona, Buhle!

“Yebo!”

“Unjani?!”

“Siyaphila, unjani?!”

“I am fine!”

At this point he begins pointing, somewhat frantically, behind me yelling something I can’t understand. I look, but there is literally only a blue sky, a lot of red dirt, and some browning brush.

“What?!” I am kind of curious what he’s going on about.

“The sun!” The sun is actually above him, not behind me, but whatever.

“What about it!?”

“It’s hot!”

“I know!” And then, the conversation ended and he walked away. He really, really wanted me to know the sun was in fact, hot.

--Tristan

Wednesday, 2/10/10

“We must tell the indvuna about ema-plans,” Thabsile tells us, after we’ve met with one of the NCP chairwomen to discuss the construction of a new neighborhood care point.

I am glad for this. The community must seek support from the inner council before starting a project. The inner council has the ability to recruit able-bodied men and women to obtain quotes and construct the building.

I don’t know if Thabsile is telepathic, but all of a sudden, the indvuna appears during our conversation. He sits down and stares at us.

“Sihle, tell him.”

I ask if she can translate for me.

“No. You say it in siSwati. I will talk when you don’t make sense.”

Great. My siSwati is sufficient for basic daily use, but when it comes to major discussions regarding projects and events, I am woefully unprepared. Delivering the swear-in speech in siSwati was an honor, but it also shot me in the foot. Everyone in my community with access to a television assumed I was completely fluent in siSwati.

“Er…babe…sifuna kusebenta e…NCP caregivers na Gamula to…uh..construct NCP. Sifuna a meeting kukhulma about it.”

Two of our peer facilitators, Dumisa and Mduduzi, are peering over the wall like children, clutching themselves, and laughing hysterically.

“Sihle…BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, siSwati….indvuna…BAHAHAHAHA.”

I laugh. A lot of volunteers strongly dislike being laughed at, but I welcome it. Maybe it’s because I’m used to doing stupid things that make people laugh, but it’s just…comforting. Their laughter breaks the tension.

The indvuna is an elderly man. He watches me attentively, trying desperately to keep a straight expression on his face. He nods when I finish, babbles something to Thabsile, and walks away.”

“Ok. The meeting is Tuesday,” she says.

Ok, then. That was easy. “Siyabongaaaaaaaaa, babeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” I yell after him.

Everyone laughs.

//

Friday, 2/12/10

I am coming home from Lavumisa, packed into a kombi with mostly women, children, live chickens, and bags of maize meal. My seat is next to the driver. He is texting and barely misses running us into a huge, horned cow. The passengers gasp, chicken squawk, I feel like vomiting.

“Please, Babe,” I saw, “You must stop using the phone.”

He laughs and continues texting and driving erratically. I can’t tell if he is drunk. Lately, I’ve had the unlucky experience of being stuck with wasted public transport drivers.

The driver is tailgating the truck in front of us, and weaving dangerously from lane to lane, laughing like a lunatic.

‘I’m going to die,’ I think. ‘I’m going to die, along with these women, children, and chickens. And I am going to be so pissed.’

So, I take his phone.

“HOW!” he yells, as I snatch it out of his grip. I mime throwing it out of the window.

“If you keep using this while you drive, I WILL throw your phone out of the window.”

His eyes widen. Everyone is quiet for a while.

And then, he asks me to marry him. The kombi erupts in laughter.

I keep his cell phone until I disembark.

//

Monday, 2/15/10

HIV is a shadow- a constant shadow cast over life in Swaziland. No matter what we do, the presence is always there.

I watch our community struggle to feed and clothe children who are missing parents and/or missing the money and ability to feed themselves. I watch children become caregivers for their perpetually sick parents.

My neighbor can’t walk. People tell me she lost the ability about 5 years ago. No one knows what the problem is- they just know the clinics have said there is nothing that can be done for her. So, she sits all day, inside of a house that is half the size of mine. She sits with the door ajar and waves at me as I pass. She asks how I am. She tells me I need an umbrella. She says I am out in the sun too much.

Her children come home from school every day and fetch water, clean, feed the chickens, wash the laundry, prepare dinner, and help their mother. Both children are under 12.

When I visit her, she sits on a straw mat and babbles in a consistent stream of siSwati. She knows no English, but she doesn’t seem to care that I have no idea what she is saying. I sit helplessly and I listen to her.

Some women I know clear her yard to keep the snakes and scorpions away. These are the same women who I always see everywhere. They are present at community events, participate in community committees, belong to the sewing association, and are followed by a constant stream of children without parents.

One of the women is named Joyce. I tell her that is also my mother’s name. She says that makes me her daughter. She uses her own money to buy snacks in bulk and arranges them into little bundles for children at our neighborhood care point feedings. Other than the vegetables that caregivers occasionally take from their own gardens to supplement the diets of the children, the snacks are the only variation they get from the World Food Programme donated corn/soya blend, maize meal, and split peas that make up their daily meals.

A girl I know was raped about a week ago. The man broke into her hut, which is located in the farthest and poorest sub-area of our community.

I met her while I was working with Thabsile on a community census. This girl lives in a small reed house with a dirt floor. Her husband is dead. She takes care of her blind mother and a baby. Both she and her baby are very ill with AIDS, although she would never admit it. She looks ashamed and won’t meet my gaze, as she spreads out a straw mat and offers water. When she speaks, it is merely a whisper. Her baby is constantly howling with sickness.

When we get up to leave, I notice that I’ve been sitting next to a bucket full of human feces. About half of the homesteads in our community do not have pit latrines.

I don’t know why I’m sharing this, or really what to do with it. Things like that question what on earth I can do here…what am I actually accomplishing, what is the point? Things like that stomp out my stupid idealism and optimism and make me feel like a silly child. Things like that make me angry and make me question our existence. I already think too much, and this community makes me think even more. I look at the misery composing that girl’s life, and I know that other women and girls are living through the same thing. It makes me wonder what on earth kind of higher power we have, because I’ve seen some pretty sick things. I’m not bitter…it’s just that the more I’m here, the more I learn, and the more I realize how much I don’t know.

I think of how even though that girl would not meet my gaze, I could still see what was in her eyes. And there was nothing. No brightness, no energy, not even pain. Just sheer exhaustion. What is she now?

How far can a person go and still be brought back? How powerful are we? Do we ever truly break, or is it just a matter of strength, determination, and hope? And how long can you go, living off of only that strength, determination, and hope? Can we determine our own resiliency, or does it need to be cultivated?

I tell the children I work with that hope is everything. They are strong. They are never broken. They are resilient. They are beautiful. They are smart. They are here for a reason.

I’ve watched my father go through his life, struggle, and eventually lose hope and sanity. He is in a constant struggle; a constant pool of pain and anger, and everyone involved with him is a victim of his constant struggle and pain. This is partially due to a mental illness, but he also blames childhood abuse and the people in his life.

I look at the children I work with, and all the pain they’ve seen. Some of them have been through absolute hell. Rape, parents and siblings dying, stigma, sexual abuse, feeling like they don’t matter, living with people who don’t love them and can’t feed them, getting the shit kicked out of them almost every day…

I fear that some of them will take the messages of confidence, hope, and love I am trying to give, and I fear they will live on them, and then get to be adults who are poor or unhappy or ill and who are resentful at the ridiculous American who fed them a diet of dreams that are so difficult to reach, and light that is so hard to find when everything can be so dark sometimes.

My father is lost in the pain of his life. And he’s had access to basic medical care, food, water, and people who try desperately to love him. He’s had a safety net. He’s had what my kids haven’t.

What can I expect out of these children? Apart from a few caregivers, my counterpart, and myself, they have no one willing to put in the effort to love and care about them. They have only themselves, their bodies, their minds, their hearts. No safety net. Is it fair for me to encourage love, hope, and happiness in their futures? Is it fair for me to tell them that things WILL get better, if they only believe, if they only have faith?

I’ve witnessed a downward struggle for faith, hope, and happiness. It sucks.

I don’t want the same for my kids. I don’t want the same for anyone.

I think all we can try to do…STRUGGLE to do, is just refuse to struggle. Struggle to refuse to struggle. Identify and cope with the pain, guilt, madness, and anger we deal with…and then let it go. Choose happiness. Choose to value the people who value us. Choose a life. Choose kindness.

That’s what Thabsile and I tell them…and then we hope with all of our might that it is the “right” thing.

We hope.

Sometimes I am hopeful for the future of Swaziland. Sometimes, I am terrified. In my community, there is laughter, there is life, and there is strength. But, it is all under a constant shadow.

2/16/10

One NCP with an accompanying water system has turned into much more. We had the meeting with our caregivers today. What I thought was going to be a meeting about fleshing out plans for the NCP turned into the women informing me of exactly what they wanted. And that’s water…AND structures.

Let me explain. Only 2 out of the 5 care points in my community have physical structures. And one of these structures is starting to fall over. At the other 3 care points, the women cook and the children eat with no protection from the sun.

The women inform us they want water retention systems to make cooking for the children easier. Right now, the majority of the caregivers have to trek a great distance to the only borehole in our community.

They also tell me they want an area to educate the children. I am so happy and frustrated at the same time. I want to hug these women and sing their praises. Happy because they’re making no money for what they do, and all they’re asking for is more food and water for the children, a structure to keep sunburns away, and even more responsibility…and frustrated because I’ve seen communities with gorgeous NGO constructed NCPs, but very little of that money seems to be making its way to our area.

The women decide to draft a letter to the ministry to request funds for the construction of cooking areas, which will serve as structures to build the water retention systems. No, it doesn’t rain much in our community, but every little bit helps. When there is almost no water, people take what they can get.

The women ask us if we will edit their letter. I tell them I’ll edit as many letters as they want. I also tell them I will type and print their letter, and include space for all of their signatures.

“This is your letter. Your work,” I tell them.

They beam at us…happy to be heard, happy to be working for something, and happy to have something to look forward to.

After we’ve sat and talked for almost 2 hours, the women tell us to go.

“We are making our letter right now. You will have it tomorrow.”

I love these women.

“OUR letter,” they said. And “OUR project.” Not “YOUR letter” or “YOUR project.” This belongs to them. Community initiated (all it took was a push from us to call a meeting and ask them what they wanted) and community constructed. And I’m thrilled.

Once we have a rough draft of the letter, we will have approximately 9 million community meetings to plan our project step by step and find community members to construct, lend supplies, and get quotes for the materials.

From there, we’ll send finished copies to the ministry and inundate every single NGO in the area with our proposal.

It is going to be a giant headache and a ridiculous amount of time, but I’m excited. And so are they.

If you walk into our community and ask a random person what is going on, they’ll probably say, “nothing.” In this assignment, our work is to find work. And it’s exhausting, it’s frustrating, and it can take forever to find the motivated people in your community. We had to come to them…they didn’t come to us. They don’t open up immediately. It takes meeting after meeting after casual encounter and 80 “Sawubonas” and “Unjanis?” to get some people to trust you enough to want to work with you. But, when they finally get to that point, it’s one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had.

I love my job. It’s hard, messy, sweaty, sad, and stressful. But, I love it.

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

2/22/10

Small update: We helped our sewing association draft a letter requesting funding for sewing machines and fabric a couple months ago. Their proposal was accepted and the materials should arrive soon. A couple volunteers have agreed to work with the association on sewing technique, so that should be happening within the next couple months.

Other than that, there’s nothing new. Keeping busy.

We’re doing theatre and drama therapy with our youth group once a week. We're also continuing to work with the community peer facilitators once a week. They've planned health and HIV prevention events to happen once a month, so we'll have a lot going on.

I’ve been helping Thabsile with essay composition and public speaking for a course she is taking on child welfare. I'm working on putting together a sheet of obnoxious English grammatical rules.

Ali got permission from Matata to utilize their stage for our Mr. and Ms. Stigma Free competition, so we’re really excited about that. Apparently, 200 people paid to attend the last staged competition, so we think this could have a lot of potential. We’re planning to get local media involved.

And that's all for today because my brain is frying itself. I've been having trouble sleeping lately for the following reasons:

a) Our house is often over 100 degrees until 4 in the morning

b) Our neighbor's goat likes to stand under my window and cry all night

c) Our family's new puppies also like to stand under my window and cry all night

I'm always a bit reluctant to post after Rachel. I usually read her post, think 'well that covers it nicely,' then sit back and read, do strange word puzzles, or ponder over the complications of disbanding the Electoral College(I wish I were kidding).

But I'm faced with a dilemma. I'm in Matata. I'm alone. They close in a little over four hours, and tomorrow they start charging for the internet. I've exhausted my need of the internet in the last hour and a half. The only thing to do is slowly write an entry over the next couple hours. So watch out, here comes a far more disjointed, less inspirational post than what Rachel usually provides.

To start, yes it's true, the days of free wireless internet in Matata are at an end. It was too good to be true anyway, I just wish they'd do it in a less complicated way. Instead of charging by the hour, or a flat rate for the day(which I'd prefer), they're charging by data used, which I have no idea how that will work. And they haven't mention how much it will cost. If you notice a lack of pictures starting next week, that's why.

On work related news, we are in the infant stages of building another OVC kitchen. We're throwing around design ideas, and sending word out into the community to get a reaction. Next step is a meeting with the caregivers to see that not only they want a new kitchen, but are willing to take the lead in the process. This big of a project won't fly without community support. As Rachel so eloquently put it, "Get ready for a headache."

If this project does get sufficient support and moves on the planning stage, it'll will be our sole concern. One thing we've noticed is that it is very easy to get caught up in all that could be done and spread yourself too thin. If it gets the green light, it gets all the focus so it gets done right.

The reason this became a sudden forefront issue, is we were shown the current 'kitchen' in the subarea not 15 to 20 minutes from our homestead. It consists of a couple of pieces of corrugated iron, shin high, bent into a semicircle with another smaller piece to cover the pot. And this is one of the high traffic kitchens. They've identified it as something they want. I'm hoping this project takes, but I'm not going to force it.

That is perhaps the hardest part of Peace Corps service so far. I look around, spend a few months getting to know the community, listen to what people want and so desperately want to just do it. Build a new kitchen in each sub-area. There's definitely a need. But if I'm honest with myself I read the last volunteer's description of service, see all they did, and look to see how much of it is still active. The answer is, not much. For whatever reason a great deal of their projects didn't stick. The only permanent thing that remains is the first OVC kitchen they built across from the KaGogo Center. And even that is weathered, with broken windows and chipping paint, and the cooking facility isn't utilized how it was designed because of the heat. The bomake cook outside of it. The kitchen is essentially a big storage room with a surface to prep food.

I'm not trying to pass judgment, and say 'How silly, this is where you went wrong' but if we're going to go down this path again, we need to know where the last one went wrong. There was a need for the kitchen, the community help with its construction, but for whatever reason the ownership of it still rested on the volunteers. "The last volunteers gave us that," is what we hear when the structure is brought up.

Ideally, we'd like the community involved in every aspect of the building, from the design to the price quotes to the construction. That's what we're aiming for. If this happens, by the end of it, I hope they look at that kitchen and think 'this is ours, we did this.'

And I think it can happen. The community members know what's what. From what I can figure, it's about extracting the ingenuity and resources that already exist in this community and country(not pretending we twenty somethings hold some mystical fix-all), and through working together discover what we can improve on. And I know our community is up to it.

Reading over that makes me want to vomit a little. I meant to make a rambling post about whatever sparked my fancy, and that came out. I shouldn't be left alone with a computer.

Living here is a constant education, and some days I feel mercilessly ill-equipped.

-Tristan

Hey, guys. Internet day is happening early because we have 29347892347398 appointments this week. Sarah, I just got your letter! About to read it right now. <3

Also: stepped in giant, freshly laid pile of cow shit on way to town today. Submerged one entire foot and half of my other foot in it. Walked all the way to community tap with poop squished between toes. Of course, community tap is off today. Walked home, holding skirt above knees (which is completely not modest and culturally inappropriate), to keep it from getting covered in cow poo.

Sunday, February 9, 2010

The Heat

The heat in this part of the country is oppressive at this time of year. Intense, unrelenting, and oppressive. It's amazing- the range in temperatures and rainfall among the different areas of this tiny country. We are about to be at the end of the rainy season, yet we receive rainfall no more than once or twice a week at most. When it does rain, we usually only receive a few small, lazy drops. We've experienced a couple storms with intense rain, the most frightening lightning I've ever seen, thunder that shakes the little cement hut, and wind that sounds like it could tear off the corrugated iron roof. After these storms, the fields are crowded with cattle, goats, and chickens, taking advantage of the growing grass and the unearthed insects. You can always gauge the amount of rainfall a community receives by looking at its cows.

Temperatures here often exceed 105 and 110 F. Women rise before the sun to tend the fields, sweep their homes, and form a long line in front of the community's maize grinding machine. By 10 am, they are finished for the day, exhausted by the heat. Make (host mother), a very hardworking woman, spends the duration of these days on a straw mat under one of our acacia trees, the dogs panting madly beside her, the newly born puppies wailing out at the injustice of their discomfort ("WHY the HELL do we have FUR in this weather?!").

It is simply too hot to move or be inside of the house. The homes on my family's homestead have very thick cement walls, which gives the effect of living inside of a pizza oven. The heat is weight you can feel bearing down, making it difficult to breathe sometimes with the thickness and heaviness of it all. The sun is intense, burning as soon as you set foot under it. My hair is several shades lighter, my skin several shades darker. Community members chase me around with umbrellas and try to put their hats on my head. "Sihle. I remember when your skin was lighter," a neighbor tells me, wistfully.

When I pass other people, I always hear, "Liyashiiiiisaaaaaaaaaaaaaa (It's hot), Sihleeeeeeeeeeeeeee," as they walk by, slowly and sleepily.

My patience runs thin with this heat. I can take heat...and I can take bugs...and I can take stress...but all three together makes me crazy. Because of the close proximity of the hut to my family's cattle area, the flies buzz around my head as I make pancakes. I swat at them wildly, sending pancake batter soaring into the wall. The flies here are miraculously good at avoiding the fly strips set up around the cooking area. A sweat bead drops in the batter. A fly lands on my shoulder and darts away. Another fly lands on my nose. "GO AWAAAAAAAAY," I shriek, as I pick up a frying pan and throw it across the room at the first fly. My sisi (sister) is watching from outside my window with raised eyebrows. She laughs.

Thabsile and our youth group

My counterpart (Thabsile) started a group of single and double orphaned children in our community. We try to meet every Sunday. We started out with about 15 kids, and the number has increased to 45.

Today is our first meeting of the new year (school just started again). I am one of the first to show up (as usual), so I sit on the floor of our Gogo Centre.*

*Our Gogo Centre (Gogo translates to Grandmother. Homesteads have gogo huts, which is where the gogo of the family resides, where important family discussions take place, and where children go to hide from their parents/discipline/chores) is a meeting space/office area constructed by NERCHA (National Emergency Response Council on HIV/AIDS) for the purpose of community mobilization, HIV awareness and education, and OVC evaluation and monitoring, in case you're wondering. We are lucky in that our Gogo Centre is utilized often for meetings and activities...although I suspect this may have something to do with the breezeway attached to the office space, making the Gogo Centre the coolest area in the community.

I am surrounded by bomake (women/mothers), taking refuge from the heat. They instantly recruit their children to grab a seat for me. "Cha, Cha, Ngiyabonga, Ngiyaphila." (No, no, thank you, I'm fine) "It is much cooler down here!"

"Oooooooooh," they all say together, and proceed to laugh at my strangeness.

Thabsile arrives later, with a hoard of children behind her (Sorry, sorry, I am always, ALWAYS late. But...there is no hurry in Swaziland!" she laughs). When people are late to meetings where she is already present, she barks, "HEY. TIME IS MONEY!" while jabbing at an invisible watch.

We sit with the kids (ranging from 5-16) in a large circle, and I ask them what they would like to do with the group this year. I tell them the group belongs to them, so we can do whatever they want. They are baffled at this, as the schools here are very strict and structured, and children rarely get any freedom of choice at home or school. This is their place: no chores, no beatings, no lectures. As we talk, more children trickle in ("YOU. HEY, YOU. TIME IS MONEY!"), and they vote on activities. Drama, games, and conversations about challenges they are facing are the winners. We work together to establish ground rules for our gatherings (once again, general amazement ensues over the opportunity to take control of something). These children are shy, reserved, and toughened by their experiences...manual labor, abuse, watching their parents lose their lives to a disease that kills slowly and brutally, and often times living with people who would rather not have them. But, there is something there: the desire for freedom, expression, and love. They laugh, play, hold hands, chase each other with sticks, and act like kids because they can right now. In spite of everything they've been through, they are not broken. There is light.

The group takes turns at leading conversation. We are trying to get them (especially the girls) out of the habit of looking at the ground and hiding behind their hands when they talk. We are trying to grow confidence, hope, and strength.

Nearly all of the clothing they wear is donated- a mass of children in shirts several sizes too big and bottoms held up with pins and twine. The ones who have shoes wear them broken and several sizes too big or small. Some wear their school uniform shoes, covered with plastic bags to keep the dirt away (children are sometimes beaten at school for dirty uniforms). A 12-year-old boy sitting across from me wears a Winnie-the-Pooh sweatshirt identical in design to one my brother wore as a baby. A girl next to me has a Hollister shirt, stretched and torn from so many washings by hand. Another boy wears a noisily bright shirt with "CHINATOWN!" embroidered across the chest, and the boy next to him has a faded Lacoste polo, the hem drooping below his knees, at least 10 sizes too big for him. Little bits of America donated from families overseas in a different hemisphere, a different life, a different world.

Sometimes at the end of our meetings, Thabsile produces a large sack of clothing donations. The children swarm her, competing for the items without holes, items with the nicest colors and patterns, until Thabsile yells, "Hey. HEEEEEEEEEEEEEY!!!!!" until they back away.

She makes sure every child receives something- even the girls who remain sitting next to me silently, beaming up at me with wide eyes, scooting closer and closer to me (slyly, they think), almost in my lap. They pet my hair, link their matchstick arms through mine, and find the weird foreign girl much more entertaining than the prospect of clothing.

Thabsile calls them by name, holding up shirts and skirts to their little bodies. She remembers who got the nicer items of clothing during the last distribution, and makes sure everyone is treated fairly.

I watch her, proud of the way she is with them, the way she knows the name of every child in the community, the way she loudly pokes fun at them whenever she sees them. This woman, who tries to feed me every time she sees me because I am "too thin" for her, and yells, "PRAISE GOD, you're eating!" whenever I take her up on the offer...who takes care of 6 children by herself, yet is always full of energy...who sings praise songs to herself in Zulu while she works. I'm proud of how happy she always seems and how much she enjoys life, in spite of her rough past...proud that she trusts me enough to confide in me...proud to know her and work with her.

She makes me a better person.

--Rachel

Thursday, Feb 4

I spent the day sweating and acquiring a painful sunburn that I’m fairly positive will blister in a couple of days. But I’m very content. And I’ll tell you why:

We’ve been working with our counterpart to plan a workshop on multiple concurrent partnerships and behavior change. We knew we wanted to have a lot of public community dialogue and we knew we wanted men to be in attendance, as men are the main ones who engage in relationships outside of marriage. Our counterpart and community peer facilitators really took the initiative to run with the ideas we all put together, and we ended up with a great event.

We have a group of about 70 community members who have shown up for the workshop. Half of them are male, which is both surprising and exciting.

The group sets up boundaries and ground rules for the conversations we are about to have. From there, they are separated into men, women, and youth for focus groups, followed by a presentation of their conversations. Women and men are openly talking about sex and the importance of being open about those discussions with one another. In a culture where sexuality is taboo, it’s a wonderful thing. My host mother stands up and talks about the importance of foreplay and how women don’t appreciate having sex demanded of them. She tells men that if a woman isn’t “ready,” it hurts them both emotionally and physically. “That is no good for anyone,” she says.

Way to go, make.

The group discusses how they think women in “improper dress” (ex-jeans and tight skirts…so glad I don’t wear pants in my community) cause men to be “naughty”. Men inform their wives that if they’re:

a. not having sex whenever they want

b. not birthing sons

then they are free to seek other partners. Women tell them they need to have open communication in their relationships.

It’s not a lot, but it’s something. Thoughts lead to conversation. Conversation leads to action. Action leads to change. Ripples in water. Baby steps.

One of the guest NGO speakers informs everyone that if they are engaging in relationships outside of marriage, it is impossible for them to love their wives.

“HOME IS THE TRAINING CENTER FOR RESPECT,” she yells. “WE MUST TEACH OUR CHILDREN.”

Tristan works with the men and I work with the youth. The groups are having dialogue on negative behavior they engage in, reasons why, and possible solutions.

The youth and I talk about the abuse they’ve been subjected to, and the violence they’ve witnessed between their parents. We talk about poverty, crime, alcoholism, depression, HIV, disease, multiple concurrent partnerships, oppression, human rights and breaking the cycle of pain and abuse. We discuss culture.

One of the girls asks me to “tell how multiple concurrent partnerships are in America.”

“Well….multiple concurrent partnerships don’t happen the same way in America. When people go outside of marriage, they usually only do it with one person at a time, and they’re usually using a condom. A lot of these marriages also often end in divorce because there is no trust in the relationship. Trust and respect are important in relationships. Without them, there can be no love.”

I used the world “usually” a lot. Speaking about a group of people is full of generalizations.

“Oh,” the group says. “Ok. Tell us how to be more like America.”

“It isn’t that easy,” I start. “Swaziland must find its own way. The cultures are different and you can’t compare—“

“No, Sihle,” I am interrupted. “This is important. We NEED YOU to tell us.”

I hesitate. I can’t tell them the real reason Swaziland CAN’T be like America right now. I’m obligated to be apolitical.

I tell them it’s a long road and it took America a long time to get to where they are. I tell them the journey to human rights is often full of sadness and anger and violence. But, it’s also full of determination and courage. I tell them to be stronger than the bad things they’ve been through…to take personal responsibility and value their lives and their loved ones. I tell them to talk to their children. They have the power to be the change and impact others. I tell them to have hope.

I feel ridiculous afterward because no matter what I say or do, I often feel like it isn’t enough. Development work doesn’t provide you with a boss telling you the things you’re doing right and wrong. There is no how-to book.

I’m 23. Who am I to tell them how things are and why things are the way they are?

The same girl takes my hand. “Thank you for saying that,” she says. As she is talking, she reaches in my ear with a long fingernail, and pulls out a scab from a bug bite. I just met her today.

Friday, February 5, 2010

I am on public transport and talking to a woman about her savings and loan co-op. The man behind her taps her on the shoulder and says he needs a loan because he has 3 wives and he has to give them each 500 emalangeni a month (roughly 66 USD) to care for their children.

“500 EMALANGENI,” she yells. “That is not enough for school fees. That is all you give them?”

He sneers. “That is all they need.”

“YOU ARE NOT A MAN!” she yells again, and ignores him for the duration of the ride.

I’m happy for the rest of the day.

Additionally:

My aunt, uncle, and cousin sent us the most amazing care package. This thing is so huge, the mail clerk had trouble holding it while she opened the door to hand it to me. Thank you so, so much, you guys are amazing! All of my favorite things in one gigantic box, and yes, I've already started on the cakes and pop-tarts. Love you!

--Rachel

January 20th, 2010

I'm continually impressed with the coincidental way things run in Swaziland. We scheduled a meeting today with the women's co-op group, basically to understand what they wanted to do and how they were going about it. Unfortunately, a sudden cyclonic type storm set up shop and didn't peter out until about 9:30 this morning, a half hour after the meeting was supposed to have started.

Meetings are very fragile things around here. If it's too hot, too rainy, too windy, a meeting is liable to get canceled. Sometimes, for no apparent reason at all. After this storm, the cell service was cut, and the ground was a nice muddy lake, so we assumed this meeting wasn't going to happen. Which kinda bummed us out. It's frustrating.

I had to go to Matata anyway, to pick up some laundry (yes, there is a laundromat in Matata, kind of expensive, but oh my god so much easier) and hopefully use the internet for a while. Hauled everything out to the siteshi, and waited for a kombi to pass. I started thinking about the missed meeting, the projects we wanted to do, and wondering how successful we'd be. And every so often the car accident would slip in and I'd start wondering how Rachel(granted I had just left the house, so I kind of knew), Ali, and Darryn were doing. Which I do on a fairly regular basis now. It was one of those vicious cycles. About the only nice thing was the temperature which was pleasantly cooler because of the rain and lack of a giant fiery sun.

After a while a car came out of my community and and the driver asked me where I was going. She wasn't going to Matata it turned out, but she offered to drive me up to the road to Matata, leaving me with about a half kilometer walk after that. So I threw my bags in and hoped in the back seat. On the way she struck up conversation, which is inevitable. Usually it's the basics, 'where are you from, why are you here, how do you like it?' But this nice woman instead soared right into what she was doing. Working with a women's savings and loan, and basically problem solving group. This sounded surprisingly like the group we were supposed to meet with so I perked up immediately, asking questions when I could, watching the road when I couldn't because she spoke with a certain gusto, occasionally turning around to look me in the eye. Driving had taken a back seat (it's too easy) to her conversation with me.

She talked about how the group was a shared responsibility, everyone took turns leading the meetings, how they discussed problems and what they could do to fix them. She talked of a desperate need, not of money, but skills. To roughly quote her, 'People want money now, but they don't think about tomorrow. I could give you twenty thousand, but where would that get you? Nowhere." She talked about the future, which is a remarkably foreign concept here.

This woman, was quite simply a rare and refreshing change. Granted it could still be talk, but even that, a passionate viewpoint is so hard to come by. Before we parted, I grabbed her number, and thanked her for the ride.

And just like that, a purely chance hitchhike later, and I found I was that much happier as I set to walk the rest of the way. As I walked I thought about it, and I'm fairly sure she's connected to a group Ali told us is in her community. The woman had mentioned the community, which is all the better, because I know that one is active.

When I got into town, I checked the mail, picked up the laundry, and caught my reflection. I looked like a haggard Final Fantasy character, hair sticking up every which way speckled with sweat and grease. It's a wonder she decided to pick me up at all.

--Tristan

//

One person in our entire community of roughly 2000 admits to being HIV positive. One.

We were talking about HIV when my counterpart told me this. After our meeting, I went home. Ranted and raved, drank a glass of wine, while yelling (with the windows closed, mind you), "One. ONE. ONE PERSON. ONE. ONE. ONEONEONEONEONEONEONEONEONE PERSON, GOOD GOD," until Tristan was probably at the point of thinking that I'd truly lost my shit.(I'm particularly good at looking like I'm listening)

From national figures, I know the actual number of HIV positive people in our community has to be somewhere around 700-800 people.

Our community wants a support group. Supposedly. But, no one wants to attend a support group, for fear of people thinking they have HIV.

There is an amazing peer education organization in our community. They receive training on peer education, facilitation, and counseling from a local NGO. In my opinion, they are one of our community's strongest assets, and they make me proud. Two days a week, they walk from homestead to homestead, talking to families about testing, treatment, abstinence, faithfulness, HIV prevention, male circumcision, and condoms (depending on the audience).

Over the past month, I've watched one of the educators (We'll call him Jack, just because it's the most un-Swazi name I can think of at the moment,) lose a significant amount of weight. During our meetings, I notice sores on his legs and abrasions under his nails. He continues to get thinner, still. I talk to my counterpart, just to see if she has previously talked to him about testing, as his job is to talk to others about testing and prevention.

She looks baffled. "He's been on treatment. 5 years. How did you know?"

"He's so thin. But, he's taking treatment?"

"Yes. And his wife and child. But, he doesn't want anyone to know. No one knows. You can't tell."

Jack is one of my favorite educators in the group. He is loud and rambunctious and energetic and friendly. He teases the others, and translates for me when I have no idea what the heck I'm talking about (which is probably most of the time).

It frustrates me that he lives in a society where he can't reveal his status, for fear of the stigma surrounding the virus. It is not his fault. I hate it.

Just like every other health volunteer in Swaziland, I think in vain of a way to make coming forward with a positive HIV status an empowering thing. An "I'm taking control of my life, taking treatment, living, spending time with loved ones, and creating plans and ambitions for my future" kind of empowering thing.

I went to school for this. I'm supposed to be able to sell crap with a message. And convince people.

I come up with nothing.

Some people in our community decide they want to paint a huge community map. We help them compose a rough sketch. Most participants are occupied with my Mr. Sketch smelly markers. They throw them to each other, sticking them up their noses, and exclaiming, "How?!" after smelling each one.

"These came from Florida, yes? We have nothing like this here."

They color on their skin, one man branding himself with a large, mint scented "I <3 M" declaration on his arm.

They laugh like children, as they decide which colors should represent which structures on the map. It makes my day. All of these people are at least 23-years-old. Some are over 40. And they're having the time of their lives with non-toxic, scented markers.

Jack is the main person working on drawing. I've noticed him sketching before, which is unusual, as drawing and sketching just isn't a typical activity here. As all of the marker commotion is going on, he is bent over the large pad of paper, with a look of intense concentration on his face, as he draws, erases, and redraws the lines composing the dirt paths of our village. Occasionally, someone will shove a marker under his nose.

I notice that he has an eye for drawing, and his lines are surprisingly steady.

"You're good at drawing," I tell him. "It's hard. I can't do it."

He takes the compliment on his work without a word. Rural Swazis aren't encouraged to pursue art, and they certainly aren't used to compliments on it. But, he smiles as he continues, and works on the map with the most concentration I've seen since I was in college. I wonder what he could have done, if he'd had the opportunity to pursue art as a child.

When he finishes, he sighs, and drops his pens.

"Good," Tristan tells him, in siSwati.

"Yes. It is good, isn't it?" He says, in English.

--Rachel

//

Upcoming plans:

-We're meeting with community members to plan a "Caring for Caregivers" day. All people who work in the areas of health, HIV, and care giving in the community will be invited. The idea is to have a day dedicated to the people who dedicate their time to the fight against HIV/AIDS. We will talk about hopes and fears, challenges, prevention and treatment, and caring for sick people. We also plan to include food, games, and community written skits.

-Meeting with NCP caregivers (the women who feed the orphans and vulnerable children in our community) to discuss what they need in terms of support. We're hoping to acquire more cooking materials (pots, pans, plates, etc) and possibly renovate one of the roofless cooking structures. Ideally, we'd also like to build a play area near one of the NCP cooking structures, in order to occupy the children while the women are preparing their food. But, these are BIG, EXPENSIVE plans, so we'll see. Stay tuned.

-Possibly connecting the women who are interested in the savings and loan co-op to the already existing savings and loan co-op. There is apparently a feud between some of the women of the not yet in existence co-op and the already existing co-op. So...yeah. We'll see where that goes. Doesn't make sense? Don't worry. Most things don't. :)

If you're considering donating to relief efforts in Haiti, look into World Vision.

http://www.wvi.org/

They know their stuff, they do amazing work in Swaziland, and I believe they're doing amazing work in Haiti.

Things we do in Swaziland that we never (or very rarely) did in the US:

Check around the toilet for snakes before using it

Fear snake attack while hanging laundry, as our clothes line has a decent amount of plant life underneath it. Chickens also like to hang out there. Snakes like chickens.

Chase chickens

Get charged by a horned cow while walking to the latrine

Sleep under a net (Wake up and say, "I love this net," after observing the variety of wildlife that has dropped on top of net during the night)

Discover that quite a lot of things can be eaten without refrigeration. This includes mayonnaise, cheese (but only for a couple of days), mustard, some vegetables, eggs, and margarine. Don't judge us. We need protein.

Skip coffee some mornings because it's just too hot

Enjoy cold water bucket baths

Live in a house that is hotter than the temperature outside

Sweat while sleeping

Occasionally only sleep 2-4 hours during the nights where it's too hot to do anything except toss and turn and curse the heat

Fantasize about air conditioning

Fantasize about American food and beer...and movie theaters and grocery stores, and you get the picture

Walk around the house all day with no shirt on (Tristan, not Rachel. Although there are some days where Rachel will close the door and boycott skirts and pants because it's too hot to wear them).

Wax the floors

Sweep the floors every day

Ride on public transport consisting of 16 to 20+ people shoved into a vehicle the size of a VW bus

Accept rides with people we don't know (at least that way, we get seat belts. And after our recent car adventure, we REALLY LIKE seat belts)

Cook on a gas stove

Haul massive gas canister resembling a torpedo to town to be refilled and back to our community, by public transport...and hope while on public transport that we don't wreck/nothing ignites...because that would hurt.

Live by candlelight

Wear shoes in the house to avoid stepping on scorpions

See warthogs and monkeys casually crossing the road

Have a pretty decent tan

Get chased around by community members wielding hats and umbrellas because they don't want us to be tan

Use a wheelbarrow to fetch water (when there is water)

Bathe in less than 2 liters of water

Own a variety of different sized basins and buckets for household tasks, in order to conserve water

Not understand about 2/3 of what is being said to us

Use yebo (or yes) as a response to everything we don't understand

Have LOTS of time to read...even on our busiest days

See women and children carrying heavy things on their heads and babies on their backs

(Rachel) Get proposed to by people I don't know on a fairly regular basis, even if they know I'm married. Sometimes they'll offer to be my second spouse. Luckily, this only happens outside of the community.

(Rachel) Make a point of avoiding eye contact with random males, in order to avoid marriage propositions or, "Heyyyyyyyy, babyyyyyyyy, I LOVE you."

Get stared at wherever we go (although this is the part where Rachel's mother would say that she's so loud, she gets stared at wherever she goes in the US too)

Greet every single person we pass

Have a pretty consistent bug bite collection

Routinely say, while examining said bug bite collection, "Ew, what is this? Hope it's not infected/poisonous/swollen."

See bugs bigger than our hands

Hand wash all of our clothes and dishes

Go to sleep before 10 pm

//

ps- Rachel really misses pop-tarts. And, no, she doesn't care that they have no nutritional value. So, if someone wants to send cherry, raspberry, strawberry, or blueberry frosted pop-tarts, she will be very happy and will probably be indebted to you for the rest of her life.

pps- Frequent updates will soon be dwindling down to once a week or once every two weeks. We've had to make it a point of checking the internet quite frequently lately, in order to make sure that jerks aren't illegally sucking money out of Rachel's credit card. Don't ask. It's a long story, and you don't want to know.

December, 2009

I meet a girl during our community's AIDS Day event. She sits next to me and asks to look at my program. She looks to be around 16. She is participating in a skit a few community members put together for the event, depicting the dangers of multiple concurrent partnerships. She is quite outgoing, which can be unusual for rural Swazi women. She is also beautiful and constantly surrounded by men. She has nice looking clothing and a cell phone, although she claims her family is poor. I worry about what she's doing to have such nice things, although I already have a feeling, because poverty makes transactional sex a common thing in Swaziland. I try to put that out of my mind because judgments get us no where...especially here.

She introduces herself and we chat.

"I go to school here. My mother got married and moved to South Africa. They left me here because they don't want me," she said, in a very matter of fact way. "I live with my grandmother in Lavumisa when I'm not in school. But, I know I am blessed."

"Yes, you are blessed," I tell her. "You are strong and healthy and you can go to school."

"I am worried about the play. I will be bad."

"No. You will be great."

"How?"

"Because. You have to believe in yourself. You will tell yourself that you are great, and that will make you great. I believe in you, and I know you will be great. I've watched you."

"Ok," she says. "I believe. I will be great."

She is silent for a little while, clearly thinking over something.

"Are there sick people where you come from?" she asks. "Because everyone here is dying. Do Americans have the cure for AIDS?"

She is shocked that Americans do not have the cure for HIV/AIDS. So many people automatically assume America MUST have the cure, because America is "so powerful." She is even more shocked to learn that yes, there are sick people where I am from.

I ask her what she wants to be when she grows up.

She looks surprised. "I don't know. I don't think about that."

"Why not?"

"No one has ever asked."

"Well, what do you like to do?"

"I like to be around people. And I like you. You are nice and you are beautiful and you care. Will you be my friend?"

"Of course."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Good," she says, sounding satisfied.

I tell her I'll be working at her high school at the start of the new term.

"Come to the school's health club when you are back from Lavumisa. I will see you there."

I hope I do.

--Rachel

//

"As a woman living with HIV, I am often asked whether there will ever be a cure for HIV/AIDS, and my answer is that there is already a cure. It lies in the strength of women, families, and communities who support and empower each other to break the silence around AIDS and take control of their sexual lives."

- Beatrice Were, founder of the National Community of Women Living With HIV/AIDS (Uganda)

The best way I can describe not only our vacation, but our entire service thus far, is that it is like a Tolkien novel. Lots of slow bits, punctuated by a chapter of dramatic goings on.

So the vacation. We spent Christmas and Christmas Eve in Nhlangano (I think I'm spelling that right) lounging around, exchanging secret Santa gifts, watching movies and music videos, eating delicious food, nearly blowing ourselves up via gas stove, and quietly managing a flooding house. It was relaxing and as un-Christmas-y a Christmas as I've ever had.

After that we set off for the border and eventually Piet Retief to pick up our rental cars which proved a blessing and a burden. Looking back, the renting of the cars was bar none, the least professional it could have been. So the lone man at the car rental place gave us the two cars closest to the gate, a Toyota and Renault Sandero. Cameron took the Toyota and stuck me with that damn French car.

Even knowing how that car would meet its end, I'm glad we rented. The freedom of being able to drive where we wanted, when we wanted, listening to what we wanted, in air-conditioning. It was like being 16 again.

(I would not have rented. Concussions suck. --Rachel)

We had a nice uneventful ride down, drove through a game park on the way down, thoroughly tested Cameron and my abilities to drive manual cars up hills while looking for animals, and saw an assortment of your typical African animals: zebras, rhinos, hippos, crocodiles, giraffes, and a gazelle type thing that I can't remember the name of. No elephants. They are apparently adept at hiding.

We stayed at a lovely lodge in Mntubatuba, went to the beach at St. Lucia and lounged around reading and drinking and generally enjoying the Indian Ocean. The innkeeper (I love that word) told us about a private beach perfect for snorkeling. So we went to St. Lucia to rent the snorkels (no fins, people don't use them for some odd reason) and were informed that the beach was exclusive. We'd have to wake up at some ungodly hour to get in the queue to get in. So we did, because we're just that into snorkeling. Got up at 3:00 AM, Got into the queue at 4:15ish, were cars 4 & 5 in line. They might have over-exaggerated the drawing power of Cape Vidal. Snorkeling was wonderful, freezing, but wonderful. Somewhere in there I lost my wedding ring, and really figured I wouldn't see it again, because what are the odds of finding a dull ring in a reef in the Indian Ocean? Good enough, because Cameron found it about an hour later.

Oh, I nearly forgot, we went to a cat rehabilitation center, where we were introduced to African cats (they look surprisingly like house cats, which dulled the excitement), lynxes, servals, and last but not least cheetahs! Our guide nearly got himself mauled by a cheetah named Shadow. Then, because apparently lawsuit cases aren't prevalent in Africa and this center hadn't had an incident in 4 years, we got to go into the cheetah area, with a wild cheetah. I like how casual the guide was about the children, "Kids are about the height of their prey, so put them on your shoulders." After that, just to make the day even better, we pet and played with baby cheetahs. (Note: most baby cheetahs at the center are naturally mothered and released back into the wild once they are full grown. These cheetahs were abandoned by their mother, so they will be at the center for life. ...but they were REALLY cute. My little sister, Noel would have LOVED the experience. I thought about her a lot while we were there. --Rachel)

I'm running a bit low on time so I'll run through Durban quick. Durban, in a nut shell, is the most unorganized large city in the world. Every street has two names, both are not always visible on maps or street signs. You will, without warning, be in a grouping of lanes turning right, and signs don't always point where they should. When we weren't driving, Durban was fine. We stayed within sight of uShaka Marine World which is creepily like Seaworld, and were a block or so from the ocean. The girls went about town and shopped and such, while the boys swam, body surfed, and drank beers on the pier (with Cameron jumping off very suddenly to hilarious reactions). Of course we watched movies, New Moon, Sherlock Holmes, & Avatar, ate astoundingly American style food, and spent our last day swimming and being attacked by jellyfish.

Then we ended the trip with McDonald's and a car crash, which, I really don't feel like elaborating on right now. Sorry.

And now we're back. Safe, and getting back to our quiet routine in Swaziland, which is just fine with me. Without further adieu, photographs!

(PS- It's also worth mentioning that the PC office was absolutely AMAZING in helping us with our car accident situation. Our country director had us stay the evening at her house after we were escorted back to Swaziland. She cooked us a massive dinner at 11 pm, a beautiful breakfast the next morning (she even steamed milk for lattes, guys), and our safety and security officer personally came to the Durban area to pick us up (along with a very dedicated and kind PC driver who took us all the way back to Mbabane). We received extraordinarily good care. --Rachel)

So much for the 'further adieu' bit.

(Shut up, Tristan.)

And this is how it ended. We went to McDonalds before the accident. French fries were flying through the air as the car was rolling. After it was towed, there was a pile of broken glass and french fries on the road.

This furry thing was waiting for us when we got home.

Posted by Tristan

We're back at site and very happy about it. The temperature has finally dropped to below 100 in the evenings, which I am SO THANKFUL for, holy crap. Sleeping is much easier when I'm not pissed off and sweating all over myself.

Unfortunately, our community hasn't received much rain in the past few weeks. The surrounding areas are apparently flourishing, but the position of our community in relation to the nearby mountain makes rain a rare thing. So, all of the crops are dead, the plants are brown, people are hungry and still having to rely on traveling to the closest river or shopping center to fill their barrels with water, as the system is still out.

I love my job. Development work is a massive, gigantic headache, but I wouldn't have it any other way (well...I might take the heat down a few degrees...and remove some of the bugs...and have a washing machine...and a flush toilet).

However, sometimes I get really depressed and massively frustrated. I know I don't mention that often. But, it's true.

When we received our invitations, our job titles informed us we would be "HIV/AIDS and health educators." Our actual positions in Peace Corps Swaziland are very loosely defined, which I was kind-of expecting, as during the application process, we were drilled about whether we were self motivated and flexible (Peace Corps applicants get to the point where they HATE hearing the word, "flexible").

Most of the time, I really enjoy that flexibility. We're pretty much free to work in whichever development areas we choose, as nearly everything can be tied to HIV/AIDS in Swaziland. I love having the freedom to work in schools, on income generation with women, self confidence building with children, in the clinic, and the other things we're planning.

What I don't love is the difficulty and sadness that comes with working in a health and HIV/AIDS context in a community where many people are not receiving adequate nutrition and there is no water.

It's a shame, because the soil in our region is SO fertile. When it does rain, crops shoot up in record time. But, that rain is absolutely crucial.

We're grateful for all of the work that can be done in our community. We often feel almost overwhelmed at all of the possible avenues we could take for projects. There is so much to be done...and we can't do it all in two years. Our plates are quite full.

Luckily, we have community members who are caring and motivated. While out walking today, we passed our neighbors' small house, and found three other community members clearing out her yard. Our neighbor has not been able to walk for several years. She lives alone with her two small children. The community takes care of her the best they can.

In terms of projects, we've decided to start with these:

- Continued sessions with our OVC committee. We hope to find a motivated teen who would be willing to take over these sessions when we leave. We also hope to organize a boys camp/girls camp with these kids.

- We have a meeting this Wednesday with the women who hope to start a loan co-op.

- School starts again soon, and I'll be working with the primary school anti-AIDS club and the high school health club.

- Continued work with our community's Family Life Association peer facilitators.

- Getting a professional to analyze our water situation...and decide from there if a project is feasible.

- We're also thinking about setting up a Mr. And Miss Anti-Stigma competition with Ali, our closest PCV. We hope to have it around the Matata/Big Bend area. Participants will be on stage, talking about what they're doing to fight stigma and help people with HIV/AIDS. We still have to hammer out a ton of details, and planning will probably take a while. But, we're really excited about it. Ali came up with the initial idea because she's a genius.

My computer is probably going to kill itself soon. We had to reformat it again, and it keeps telling me the hard drive is failing. So, if updates abruptly stop one day, that is why.

There is also a spitting cobra somewhere on our homestead. Our bhuti (brother) shot it, but missed it. So, there is a really agitated spitting cobra somewhere on our homestead. Bhuti casually mentioned that it is "about 3 meters long". Ugh.

Our holiday vacation was beautiful...until a crazy man ran our rental car into incoming traffic (opposing lanes of traffic, thankfully there was no actual oncoming traffic), causing us to swerve, spin, and flip. And then he sped away. Yep.

At least it happened on the last day of vacation.

Thankfully, we were all wearing seatbelts, so we are safe and relatively unharmed. I have a mild concussion, so I have to stay in Mbabane (yes, again) until we're sure that my head isn't going to fall off. Or something.

Our regional safety and security officer is in the process of pursuing prosecution for the man who ran into us. We're hoping the police are able to catch him.

Ok, so Rachel had to go talk to the med office, so I guess I'll take this opportunity to type. Our vacation was wonderful and eventful. We laid on the beach, we snorkeled, I lost my wedding ring in the Indian Ocean, we snorkeled some more, Cameron found my wedding ring an hour later, we read, we ate... a lot, we hung out with adult cheetahs and pet baby cheetahs, drove through a game park seeing all sorts of fun African animals who all posed remarkably well for pictures, drove around Durban the most unorganized major city to drive in ever, saw Avatar(the boys only), Sherlock Holmes, and New Moon(the girls only), ate some more, watched a car slowly burst into flames, celebrated the new year in Taco Zulu on Florida Rd, stopped at McDonald's, left Durban, while driving around 140kph(about 85mph)got slammed into opposing lanes by a mad Mozambican, got turned around, hit the guardrail, caught the concrete bridge barrier, rolled onto our roof, french fries everywhere, many many selfless people stopping to help, stayed with the nicest couple at their house while we waited for Peace Corps to drive down, watched the Rose Bowl, drove back, stayed at the country director's(unbelievably nice and accommodating) house where we had the best food of vacation, and came to stay at Mbabane. That brings us to now, where we wait for, once again, Rachel to be medically cleared.

Rachel will probably elaborate on our fantastic adventure, at a later date. Make it more coherent. It's mostly in chronological order.

It has been completely, ridiculously, mercilessly, uncomfortably hot lately. Seriously, the temperature of our house is above 100 F more often than it is not.

I thought I was used to fairly intense heat from summers spent living in Florida and Alabama. I was mistaken. Very, very mistaken. Adjusting to this is one of the most difficult parts of living in Swaziland so far, and we keep on hearing that it just keeps on getting hotter until February or so. I've been spending a lot of time sweating, desperately fanning myself with a cutting board, and fantasizing about the drastically cooler temperatures in the mid and high veld areas of the country.

We still love our site...but the heat is brutal.

Our community's AIDS Day event was last Thursday. Lots of singing and dancing and blistering sunburns, but overall, we had a good time.

We leave for our South African holiday vacay on the 26th with a group of 5 other PCVs. We're planning a trip to an amazing reserve, days of hibernating on the beach, lots of swimming in the ocean, snorkeling, and movies (in a real movie theater, woohoo).

We had a BEAUTIFUL sunset last night:

And our amusing moment of the day:

Watching Ali unwrap a Christmas package that I'm pretty sure was secured with an entire roll of packing tape. Or 5. Very noisy. Very humorous. :)

ps- HAPPY 12TH BIRTHDAY, NOEL! Your birthday gift should get there sometime in January. Same with the Christmas gifts to family and friends.

pps- Yes, the water is still off. We also haven't been getting a lot of rain over the past week.

OK, Tristan's turn.

Yes, very very hot. It's our house's fault though, because it's usually cooler outside. I've begun planning a simple & cheap way of insulating the outside of the house so the damned walls don't store up the heat. It would probably make our house look like a gypsy tent of some sort, but I beyond caring what our house looks like as long as it's livable. We now understand why you don't start/work projects in December/January. Too hot to care.

Thank you to those who sent us packages. Enjoying our expanded book selection.

I feel like there should be more to say, but there really isn't much going on. Reading, planning projects, sweating, writing, sweating, eating, and more sweating.

Hopefully we'll update while we're in South Africa, but if we don't it's because we're too busy laying on the beach, and watching movies, in an air-conditioned movie theater, or possibly punching great white sharks. Merry Christmas, happy new year, now get off the computer and enjoy your northern hemisphere winter!

Friday, December 11, 2009

So, after almost two weeks away from site due to sickness (again), we’re finally both back and healthy.

Right now, it is Friday, about 8 pm. I’m sitting at our candlelit table, drinking tea, and listening to a CD, both sent to us by one of our best friends, Brad. The CD was made by him, and includes two songs that he wrote for us, one being a Christmas song. The rest of the tracks are Christmas songs, some of which are sung by his nieces and nephews. I cried/laughed and Tristan made fun of Brad’s lyrics (but, secretly, he was touched). Oh, and listening to Christmas carols in 110 degree heat feels really bizarre.

It made me think of college and all of the stupid things we used to do, and how the group of us usually managed to entertain ourselves without really going anywhere or doing anything. I thought about graduation, and the day Brad went back to New York. Brad, Emily (another one of our best friends), Tristan, and I sat at the fort in St. Augustine, overlooking the water, and cried like a bunch of 5-year-olds.

Not really sure where I’m going with this, but what I’m GETTING AT is that we have some amazing, talented, big hearted, inspiring, strong people in our lives (both here and overseas). And we’re so grateful for that. Every letter/phone call/package/comment/email makes us feel so special and loved, and helps us get through the hard times. So, thanks, guys. You’re incredible.

Getting back to site feels lovely, especially after speaking to our host mother, host brother, counterpart, and chief’s wife on the phone, and hearing from all of them that they miss us and want us to come home. Unfortunately, I think all of our sick days have started to freak them out. BUT, I’ve noticed that I only get sick when we leave site. So….I guess we’re never leaving site again?

When we walked into our community, our host mother spotted us and met us at the gate to our homestead. She was beaming, with a huge smile on her face, and it gave me the most amazing feeling. I love that woman. She’s a very quiet and reserved person, and she is equally quiet and reserved in the way she expresses emotion. Which means that when she does express emotion, it really stands out. Just knowing that people want us here is enough for me. And I’m so glad we have that. We lucked out with our community and our host family.

With that said, the water is still off…it’s been 8 weeks. But, we were told that it has rained every day for the past two weeks or so, thank goodness. Everything was bigger and greener upon our return to the community. The pathway to our pit latrine has become overgrown, and I’m pretty paranoid about being attacked by a black mamba while in route to the latrine. We’re going to have to sprinkle some cape aloe crystals, which supposedly keep the snakes away.

Now that we’re back, we hope to schedule a community meeting (not actually hold the meeting…December isn’t a good month to accomplish things in Swaziland because of Incwala) for when we get back from our holiday vacation. We want our community members to decide amongst themselves what they think are the biggest priorities in the community, and vote on possible projects. We’ll still be doing our weekly meetings with our OVC committee, and supposedly some people want us to show them how to paint (they want to paint their new public latrine, and community meeting hall, which is still in construction).

Sunday, December 13, 2009

So, we’ve lost our minds and have decided to pursue the one project that many people advised us against, due to stress and lack of funds. We are going to attempt a community water project. We’ve never been very good at doing what other people say, anyway.

NOT to say that we don’t appreciate the input, because we do. And we also believe it. And we’re fairly positive that in the middle of this project, we’ll want to pull our hair out and jump off the mountain behind our house. But, if we don’t TRY to do this, we’re not going to be satisfied.

Everything in our community goes back to water. It’s what they need, and it’s what they want the most. And, we’re going to try our best to get it to them. Clean water is something that everyone should have the right to access. Clean water would also enable community members to grow crops easily and more efficiently, which would (ideally and optimistically) reduce the great number of consistently hungry people in our community. And it would also make the community’s vision for an OVC garden much easier to shape into a reality.

We’ll see.

Several women who are interested in establishing a community loan co-op also approached us. We think that if combined with some workshops featuring lessons in basic finance, money management, and loans, it could be a really good thing.

Monday, December 14, 2009

On Optimism…

People often refer to Peace Corps Volunteers as optimistic and/or idealistic. Which, to an extent, is true. This line of work requires optimism. Without it, I’m not sure how effectively we could function as volunteers. We NEED to keep bouncing back.

I don’t consider myself the most optimistic person in the world. The glass isn’t half empty or half full for me. It’s just…there. It’s there, if it has liquid in it, I’m probably going to drink it. And eventually, I’m going to find more.

As a collective whole, Peace Corps Volunteers could probably be considered “optimistic”. But, we also discuss the screwed up things we’ve been through, our obstacles and frustrations at site, we laugh, we cry, we get extremely angry, sometimes we lose a bit of faith, and other times we’re inspired by the world around us.

Instead of optimistic, I’d say we are hopeful. We’re hopeful for the future of humanity. We know there is a lot of bad, some good, and a hell of a lot of grey areas in the world. We know things often can’t be clearly defined, labeled, and neatly shelved. We know there is a lot of hatred, greed, pain, and confusion. But, we’re hopeful…because without hope, there is nothing.

posted by Rachel

ps- Here are a few recent pictures

And from Thanksgiving...

(This was before the massive spread of food)

Groups 6, 7, and our response volunteers

I love these lovely ladies.

My friend, Laura, took this. It's good to know that service hasn't made me more mature. I was pretty worried about that. (Sarah, I thought of you when I saw how this picture turned out).

Back to site tomorrow. I've been deemed healthy and normal (as normal as I get), and I can breathe again, which is always a good thing.

It occurred to me that we've never posted a picture of our pit latrine. It's not really that exciting, but if you don't have electricity or running water, and you're pooping in something other than a toilet, you ought to take a picture of it. ...the structure. Not the poop. ...I'm going to end this train of thought now.

Sorry. PCVs feel disturbingly comfortable discussing their bodily functions. And, seeing as how I spent a good chunk of my life involved with theatre, and I get laughed/stared at by Swazis on a daily basis, embarrassment isn't really something I'm capable of feeling anymore.

Anyway. We are going to post a section entitled, "This is what I ______ in" (or the more grammatically correct, "This is where I ________")

Stay tuned.

Dear Mom, or whoever else loves me,

Will someone please send me the book, House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski? Mom, I think it is in that massive pile of books that Tristan and I left behind. ...maybe. You know how organized I am.

I'll buy a beautiful bag handmade by the sewing association in our community and pay to have it shipped to the door (how convenient) of whoever sends me this book. ...unless you're my Mom. I know Mom won't use the bag, because she's picky and prefers leather. And because I already got her a Christmas gift. And I've graced her life with my presence for the past 23 years. :D

Love,

Rachel

ps- Yes, I'm still in Mbabane. Yes, I still have an infection and am stuck here until the end of the week. But, I'm OK. Lucky Tristan gets to return to site tomorrow. Yay!

So, I didn't post as promised. But, I have a good excuse. We're stuck in Mbabane. Sick. Again. Because that's just how things go for us.

We're ready to get back to site and get to work. We hate staying here, feeling useless. I will say that PC provides excellent medical care to volunteers. So, at least there's that.

Tristan was having some pretty unpleasant stomach issues and I'm having complications arising from the lovely H1N1. I have an upper respiratory infection and we spent IST (in service training) in a structure that apparently has mold problems, which seems to have made my breathing a bit worse. I've switched inhalers and I've had to resume the breathing treatments that I was doing when I had the lung infection/H1N1. The breathing treatments require electricity, which our site doesn't have, so I'm stuck in Mbabane.

Our host family members and counterpart keep calling us. I feel awful, because we've been sick so much, that they have to be kind of freaked out. We also missed spending World AIDS Day in our community, which sucks. Hard.

I did manage to squeeze in a measly status update on facebook, in honor of the occasion:

"World AIDS Day. Roughly 1 in 3 Swazis are HIV positive, making Swaziland the country with the highest rate in the world. Trying to build hope, kill stigma, fight poverty, and battle gender inequality...grateful for my community members and fellow PCVs who are doing the same, and who inspire me every day. Stop AIDS. Keep the promise."

And I also watched Rent (my fav). In bed. How lame.

This was posted in the New York Times on World Aids Day. It's quite relevant.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/world/africa/02safrica.html

"Breaking With Past, South Africa Issues Broad AIDS Policy"

I suppose I should post about Thanksgiving. Pictures will be on their way once we're back at site. It was beautiful. Basically, all Americans working for the U.S. Government in Swaziland were invited to the ambassador's gorgeous, amazing house. The ambassador is very kind, and actually seemed to enjoy having us there. He had a banner with a poster that read, "Happy Thanksgiving, Peace Corps Volunteers!" over the most massive spread of food I've ever seen in my life. I stuffed myself full of salad, veggie lasagna, cheese cake, freshly baked bread, cheese, spiced nuts, and nine bajillion other things. We were very spoiled, and all VERY thankful. :)

One of my best friends' birthdays was yesterday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HANNAH! I LOVE YOU AND I MISS YOU TONS and I should stop typing in all caps now, and I wish I could be there with you, but I know that Andrew and Katie and Anna and probably tons of other people made things special for you. Your gift should hopefully reach you within the next 5 years. Maybe. We are relying on the mail system...

Sorry. My writing/typing has become completely disjointed since moving to Swaziland, because I'm always in a hurry, and the internet is always slow and unreliable. And I'm spastic. And, this isn't an article. Or a press release. :)

Entries are much more cohesive when Tristan types (INSERT MEANINGFUL LOOK AT TRISTAN HERE).

posted by Rachel (clearly)

We got back to site from IST two days ago. ...only to have to come back to Mbabane today. Tristan has allergies, I'm having trouble breathing (again), and I have either pink eye or a scratched cornea (will find out at eye appointment later today).

I'm apparently asthmatic now. When I told our PCMO that I'd never had asthma before, she said, "Oh. You don't like that word. Ok. You have agitated airways resulting from your H1N1. How's that?"

So, two inhalers and some eye drops for me, a nose spray and some allergy pills for Tristan, and we should HOPEFULLY be back to site tomorrow. We're pretty sick of being away.

Gotta run to my appointment. Will type more kusasa (tomorrow) hopefully.

ps- Anyone waiting on an email from me, I'm sorry! Africa hates gmail and gmail hates me, and I can't seem to make any outgoing mail. I'm working on it, though. Everything I "send" refuses to actually load.

pps- GOT YOUR LETTER TODAY, SAM! I read it on the bus on the way to Mbabane, and I thought of all the times I got pink eye back when I was living in the Flagler dorms, and how all of us used to laugh at how gross it was, and our late night trips to Taco Bell, and exercising to Rammstein, and yeah...I got a little teary.

ppps- Storms blew the door off of our pit latrine on our homestead. It's a good thing we have no modesty.

So, roughly 923847238974893274238947 things have happened since our last entry. But, I'm not going to talk about all of them because it would take too long.

Right now, we are in Manzini for IST (in service training). Some days are slightly mind numbing, but it's good to have a chance to see the other volunteers and recharge our batteries before going back to site.

We finished our monster report of 68 pages, and finding places to type when we have no electricity and the electricity is out in our community is REALLY FUN.

Before leaving site for IST, we were helping our counterpart organize games and activities for our community's AIDS Day event.

Funny story- Tristan and I were eating breakfast one morning, when a pack of about 10 kids (not related to us) ran up to our door, and stared at us. This gradually turned into a pack of 10 kids singing random songs in siSwati, their ABCs, and telling us exactly what they want to be when they grow up. They stayed for about an hour before handing me a notebook and running away. Our counterpart had apparently sent the notebook over with the children, because she wanted help on putting together a conclusion for a paper she was writing for her child welfare/psychosocial support class.

Our community is (still) without water, but at least we received a lot of rain. The only bad part about the rain- it floods our floors and makes the walls of our house crumble. We've been using a LOT of wall sealant lately.

I spent the night with Ali (our closest PCV) about a week or so ago, and we almost got struck by lightning. That was fun. The lightning here is seriously the most freaky, vicious lightning I've ever seen in my life.

One of our IST activities consisted of talking to various NGOs around the area. I ended up having a wonderful conversation with an exuberant man from Junior Achievement.

http://www.ja.org/

He was pretty excited, as he likes working with PCVs, and hasn't been able to generate much of an interest in our area of Swaziland. It's great, because a lot of PCVs have noticed a lack of career education/guidance for life after high school, especially in southeastern Swaziland. This organization has job shadowing and a program where interested kids are educated in business and finance. They actually put together and liquidate their own business. We're really looking forward to getting involved.

Additionally, these are our plans for when we get back to site:

-Tristan wants to work with the clinic and the preschool

-I plan on working with the high school health club and the primary school anti-AIDS club

-Trying to put together a water catchment workshop

-Trying to put together an OVC operated and maintained garden

-Working with NCP caregivers on childcare and possible income generation

-Putting together a workshop focusing on healthy eating, and getting community members who are maintaining successful gardens (like our host mother) to share their tips

-Trying to put together a support group for HIV positive people and their family/friends

-Workshops with our RHMS (rural health motivators), and trying to recruit more community members to get involved with home based care.

-Continuing our self confidence building workshops with the OVC committee

This list will almost definitely be added to/reduced, depending on community reaction. We ONLY want projects that will be owned by the community and cared for when we leave.

And, our counterpart wants to work with us to hold more community events promoting HIV prevention messages of partner reduction and zero grazing (cutting down on sexual partners/not actively pursuing more sexual partners) in adults. We're working mainly with abstinence messages when kids are involved, although I do plan to discuss condom use with the teenagers.

We are missing home, but we'll be doing Thanksgiving at the ambassador's house, which is pretty sweet. My family is going through some rough times right now, and they're constantly in my thoughts. Mom, can you please email me Garrett and Noel's email addresses?

Love you all. Wish I could be trashy and watch New Moon and eat popcorn and ogle the vampires and wolves. A couple lady PCVs and I are in the market for a copy, once it is released in 9 million years.

OH. AND I HEAR STAR TREK IS BEING RELEASED FOR CHRISTMAS, HINTHINT NUDGENUDGE WINKWINK.

ps- Do you want to see where we, along with some other PCVs, are going for Christmas/New Year's?

http://www.maputaland.net/kosi-bay-beaches.html

Kosi Bay. :) Indian Ocean, I can't wait.

- posted by Rachel

Our family's new puppy

Our kitchen

The clinic

Our family's homestead

Our family's cooking area

Laundry, rural African style (using very little water).

Peace Corps doesn't want us to get electrocuted. Thanks, guys.

Our neighbors like to blare Boyz II Men.

Other neighbors

HI, IT'S US, WE'RE REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY HOT. (My head is covered because we had a meeting with the inner council that morning. We asked them about the history of our community, and they were really, visibly excited about it. It was an amazing meeting...one of our favorites so far.)

Pigs like our trash.

Primary school

We celebrated Halloween with this pumpkin. And 923749823743928 tootsie pops.

Our family's dog is our BFF.

Our family's home, and their attempts to collect water. Yes, the community water tap is still broken. Yes, it's been a month. Yes, it really sucks.

ps- We're tired and too lazy to type an entry today (we'll make a better one next week). We had about 83398274983274 appointments this week, visited the school a few times, conducted an HIV/AIDS educational assessment survey with some of the students, and I finished reading The Kite Runner. I'd never read it before, and I cried like a baby. What a phenomenal book. I'm in the market for the other book he wrote...the one about yaddayadda Splendid Suns. If anyone has it, I'd love to borrow it!

-Rachel

Hey, guys,

We are doing well. Healthy, flu free, and all of those good things. Well, relatively. Tristan accidentally punched himself in the eye with a broom handle while trying to repair our broken makeshift closet (You can laugh. I did too. Well, after I made sure he hadn’t gouged his eye out or caused permanent damage). But, he’s OK.

Home life is great. We love our family. Our make brought me an onion the size of a grapefruit the other day. I told her it was the biggest onion I’d ever seen. “I grew it myself. In MY garden. It is my biggest one. I grew it for you.”

Our youngest sisi is about 5. She lost both of her parents, so our make is now her primary caregiver. She is very reserved and quiet. I rarely hear anything out of her, but she’ll always wave at me. She follows make around like a little shadow. She had the flu for a while, and a horrible cough that sounded too big to come out of her body. Make laid with her on the porch, every day, until she felt better. Make treats her like her own daughter, and the relationship they have is very endearing. I love watching them.

I also love the relationship our bhuti has with his wife. They are newly married. He always sits with her while she prepares their dinner. Their laughter is one of the first things I hear in the morning when I wake up, and when of the last things I hear when I go to sleep. Bhuti’s wife is a bit younger than me. She is in high school, and is still attending, even though she is married (which is quite impressive, as many rural women quit school after they marry). When she’s at school, bhuti amuses himself by blasting Akon as loud as he can, and he whistles/sings Lady Gaga songs while he washes and hangs his clothes.

We’re in the final stages of our report. We completed our homestead census. We managed to gather information for 110 homesteads. Just a few interviews left to complete before we type the beast.

It’s interesting…almost every single homestead in our census had at least one child with a deceased parent. HIV is the underlying current in almost all facets of life here.

We spent yesterday with the primary and high schools, as well as the clinic. The clinic visit was somewhat of a rough one, as they see around 150 patients a day with no doctor, and less than 3 nurses on duty at any given time. And, there’s no water. Our clinic holds educational workshops every morning, which we think we’re going to start getting involved with.

Speaking of no water, this marks week 2 that our community has been without water. We use water as little as possible, and when we run out, Tristan hauls a wheelbarrow over to the chief’s homestead to collect some (they have their water brought in from the neighboring town, and stored in a large tank). The chief’s wife refuses to let us pay her for water because she says we are “her children”. She is also trying to get us to move into a newly built hut on her property.

(Most people in our community rely on rain tanks or the retention pond for water when the outdoor communal taps are faulty.)

We were recently invited to hold self confidence building/life skills workshops every Sunday with our OVC committee. This makes me really happy, as this is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind when I applied for PC service.

And, we’re currently in the process of organizing activities for this year’s AIDS day. Our community has put together an event aimed at youth. We’re hoping for funding from NERCHA to provide refreshments and t-shirts, and we’re going to put together some HIV/AIDS education/positive living games and presentations.

It was 110 F the other day. That was fun. But, as another PCV here noted, 110 is starting to feel normal.

We’re going to spend the next week polishing our report and seeking out more meetings with the Gamula Sewing Association and our NCP caregivers, as we hope to do work with both of these groups.

If anyone wants to throw Mr. Sketch smelly markers in a care package, I’d love you forever. They’re bright and kids love them, and I brought some with me, but we used them in the last activity we did and one of us (not me…ahem) didn’t collect the markers his/her group used…so we are now down 6 markers.

Oh, and Mom taught herself how to call from skype using her phone. Yay! By the way, it kept cutting out because it was storming here. Not because of you.

Holidays are coming up, which are probably going to be a little hard. We’re really, really wishing we were able to visit home for Christmas. I have little gifts to send home for everyone. :)

Hey, guys. Sorry it's been a while, we've been super busy, and we spent the day that we normally spend at Matata in Mbabane last week to pick up meds/celebrate Tristan's birthday, etc, etc.

We're spending all day today in Matata, working on typing up our monster of a community report.

Can someone please teach my parents to use skype? Because skype apparently hates them. Mom, you are using the computer to call, right? I hear if you use a landline phone to call us, using skype, the connection works out better. But, yeah...I miss talking to you guys! If you're not able to call, you can try emailing me at rachelmanring@gmail.com. I'm able to check that one fairly often using my phone. The reason my phone has been off lately is because it's been too cloudy to fully charge our solios. But, at least ONE of us has a working phone at all times, and I think you have Tristan's number now.

AND, we got your packages yesterday. You all used rush shipping and it got here in 8 days. Haha.

But, yeah. You know my preferences in junk food WAY too well. Yesterday was like opening Christmas presents...full of fat. And, holy crap, those packets of nacho cheese are AMAZING!

Oh, and Kelley, thanks for the package! I appreciate the pig card...he is on my wall right now. And, Tristan didn't believe the wipes you sent were butt wipes. I had to explain them to him.

Package opening frenzy

So, run down of what we've been up to lately:

-administering more HIV education surveys to adult community members

-working on the homestead census...we've found that several homesteads do not have pit latrines

-working on the daily activity schedules and seasonal calendar

-editing a letter from the Gamula Sewing Association to obtain more funding

-walking... a lot...and getting really brown (Well, I am. Tristan is still transparent)

-asking nine million questions

-attending 4 hour long community meetings...entirely in siSwati

-being told over and over again that we are "walking and working too much" and we need to rest

-being told over and over again by community women that I am getting too brown and they don't like it

What we're doing this week:

-interviewing headmasters at the primary and secondary schools

-interviewing people who work at the clinic

-interviewing police men

-meeting with our training manager and hoping he doesn't think we suck at siSwati

-baking for the chief's wife...and for the training manager, to bribe him into thinking we don't suck at siSwati

-visiting Lutheran Development Services and the WFP distribution site

-OVC committee meeting

Our community has also been without water for about a week now. Depending on who you ask, one of the following is the problem:

the pump is broken

the transformer is down

the "engine" is not working

We may need to start temporarily getting water from Matata, as our reserves are starting to run low. We need to do laundry, and I haven't washed my hair in...I'm not going to tell you how long.

The good news is that the water system is going to be renovated in November, so the water will go through a tank instead of a pump, before it goes to the community outdoor taps, so that should (in theory) solve the problem.

Community members building our new community meeting hall, next to the umphakatsi (chief's homestead)

Getting rid of garbage, Swazi style

One of the other OVC kitchens. There are 5 in the community, and most of them look like this.

Our family's dog, after a heavy rainstorm. The dog was not amused.

Doing an activity with our OVC committee for our report. They wrote out examples of their daily schedules, according to gender and school days vs non-school days. Afterwards, we held a debate on gender roles and work loads.

We found a wine called St. Augustine. :)

ps- Hi, Ali's mom! Your daughter is sitting across from me right now, drinking a coke float and typing on her computer.

pps- The pay toilet in Matata is a wonderful thing. I will gladly pay 2E once a week to use a clean flush toilet.

I want to throw this stupid piece of crap laptop off of the top of the tallest building I can find. I think I have one of the only macbooks that crashes at random...and gives me the rainbow ball of death every five minutes.

So. How are all of you? We're doing well, still healthy (despite the fact that our community deemed today a good day to burn as much plastic as they could get their hands on...lovely smell), and working our butts off. We've spent the past week in a seemingly never ending series of meetings, and going back and forth between "holy crap, I'm so stressed" to "I love this job."

For the next few weeks, we'll be spending most of our time working on our community report. We spent yesterday administering an HIV/AIDS knowledge and attitudes survey to some of the adults in our community (we'll administer a similar survey at the primary and secondary schools). The adult survey was originally meant to be written, but because of the illiteracy in our community, we decided to present the surveys orally... entirely in siSwati. Well, excuse me. Tristan got the luxury of a translator.(Yes yes, the luxury of translating my questions. He didn't translate the long ramblings of the bobabe I was talking to. Well one babe actually, the others realized they were yes or no questions. The fourth one had to go on and on about each question. He used many strange hand signals. And I think he called me a squid.) I administered the surveys entirely in broken siSwati, and had someone near to clear up any questions, usually arising from my ridiculous accent.

I FRIED myself because yesterday was very bright and hot and I didn't wear sunscreen because I'm a moron. Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm going to wear sunscreen from now on. I'm wearing it right now.(No burn for me. I'm so pale the sun goes right through.)

We've also been doing homestead surveys and gathering information on basic community demographics. We're putting together a seasonal calendar for the community, which will illustrate religious/cultural events, harvest/planting seasons, the hungry season/drought season, times when water is low, times when people have more money, and the prevalence of seasonal illnesses. We're in the process of putting together a sample "daily schedules" of the lives of the "average" man, woman, boy, and girl in our community. Tristan is going to make a community map, because I'm visually inept when it comes to things like that. We're conducting numerous interviews, and our "needs assessment" list gets larger every day. There is definitely no shortage of work, and I think we'll find our plates quite full for the next two years.

I was thinking last night that it is such a COOL feeling, when you actually feel yourself becoming a member of your community. We've been attending church, to try and meet as many people as possible. We attended the church of our counterpart last Sunday, and it was one of the warmest welcomes we've received so far. One of our USAID community peer facilitators wants to take us to his Zionist church next Sunday. After he announced this, one of the other CPFs exclaimed, "The Zionist church? They will bite them. BAHAHAHAHAHAHA." Zionists are known for their... very physical ways of "feeling" the presence of "God."(The church we went to instead had a babe who ran his fingers through my arm hair as he translated the sermon to me. Relativity.)

So, before I prattle on for 923749238473 more paragraphs, here are some pictures:

This is where we live. Those mountains are the ones I can see from our pit latrine.

Our house... and the mosquito netting I rigged to the front door burglar bars. Yes, I know it looks like a crappy Halloween decoration. Most houses in our community are smaller than this, as most people in our community are unemployed, and rely on farming/agriculture for their livelihoods.

My favorite tree, right outside of our front door. The sky over this tree at night is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

OVC meeting. The other adult in the picture, besides Tristan, is our counterpart, Thabsile. She organized the meeting as a way to get interested OVCs to put together a small scale income generating project for themselves.

The girl to Tristan's right is our sisi (host sister). The little girl with her back to the camera in the blue/green sweater is also our sisi, although she is technically the grandchild of our Make. They are both OVCs (Make's husband passed away a few years ago), but they are very lucky, because our Make is extraordinarily gentle, loving, and caring. Many OVCs do not live with kind caregivers.

I took these today.

OVCs, waiting for lunch at the kaGogo centre. The OVC kitchen is the white and black building behind them. The kitchen feeds our community OVCs breakfast and lunch 5 days a week. The big yellow house is the homestead of the chief's wife (our chief passed away a few years ago). It is the largest house in our community (obviously).

Many of these kids are not receiving adequate nutrition, as the donated food they eat does not have enough fat or protein. We want to work on a project to supplement their diets. Some of these children are currently on ARVs. Unfortunately, once a young child is on ARVs, he/she does not live more than a few more years, because children are already fragile anyway, and the weakened immune system is very difficult to boost. This is probably one of the most difficult parts of our community. We have a very large OVC population, and watching a small child who almost consistently feels too sick to laugh and play like other children can be really heartbreakingly rough.

But, on the flip side, watching single parents like our Make work their butts off so they can send their children to school is very inspiring. Likewise, the amount of courage, strength, and work ethic many of the OVCS have makes me feel good about being here.

I promise to post pictures of our host family soon. They're quite shy and reserved and quiet (except for our bhuti) and I would feel weird sticking a camera in their faces right now.

OH. AND I LOVE YAMS, HOLY CRAP. At least, I think it's a yam. It's sort of shaped like a sweet potato, but the inside is white. Make and our bhuti's fiance will randomly smoke them (our family cooks over an open fire) and bring them to us. They taste JUST like roasted chestnuts.

Oh, and Mom, one of our traditional healers was talking to me the other day, and she informed me that she loves my nose. (She liked my nose too, thank you very much)And she also asked, "Aren't you missing your mother?"

Something I LOVE about our community- Most of the traditional healers (there are 5) encourage sick community members to test for HIV at the local clinic. This is AMAZING, as many traditional healers in Swaziland do not acknowledge the existence of HIV, or they claim to have the ability to "cure" it.

This is getting long...and no matter how much I type, I could never really and truly express what it is to be here.

Till next week.

posted by Rachel. Tristan says he has "nothing to say." I even offered to share. He says he will post next week. I have plenty of things to say, but my brain. It no work good right now. And I'm more than half way through the Lord of the Rings. Anything I type now will run on and on and involve Hobbites and my precious.)

ps- These are the things that come out at night and try to run into our house. They are HUGE and SCARY and RED and they BITE and they make me scream.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solifugae

OK, so I'm trying to upload pictures, but the internet hates me, and I have no idea what I'm doing (what else is new, right?), so pictures may not work out.

We're back at site after being stuck in solitary confinement for about 2 weeks. Short version of a long, obnoxious story...I had swine flu. I hope I'm allowed to put that in my blog. If not, I guess I'll probably hear from someone with PC fairly quickly. The actual flu wasn't that big of a deal...BUT, we're living somewhere where a great deal of people have compromised immune systems, so we needed to stay away from people for a while.

I also had a lung infection, so I wasn't allowed back to site until it cleared up.

Tristan was also sick, so he was kept in Mbabane with me until his symptoms cleared up. Meanwhile, the rest of the PC volunteers here are stuck on lock down at their sites until October, and we are all supposed to avoid public transportation.

During our 2 weeks of being sick and bored out of our minds, we learned the following:

1. 2 weeks of doing nothing really isn't as fun as it sounds. We missed our site and felt completely useless during a time (integration) where our constant presence in the community is really important.

2. We really, really, really like our boss. Our CD (country director) totally went above and beyond what she had to do while we were sick. She brought us her own dvd player and several shows on dvd to help tame the boredom. She checked on us on a fairly regular basis, and she even brought Tristan some cans of coke.

3. Free government healthcare is a wonderful, beautiful thing.

4. Our PCMO works her butt off.

5. Warm showers are some of the best things in the world.

We got back to site on Saturday. That following Sunday was the HOTTEST DAY I HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED, HOLY CRAP. No, seriously. I lived in the southern U.S. for the majority of my life. THIS IS WAY HOTTER. The sun was so intense that our laundry dried itself in about an hour and a half. I've come to the conclusion that for about 6-7 months out of the year, I am going to be constantly covered in sweat.

Now that we're back, we're trying to make up for the time we spent away. We have meetings this week with our community's UNAIDS group, as well as the development committee. We are also going to start homestead visits and try to meet with our local Lutheran Development Services and World Food Programme (about half of our community receives food aid from the government and WFP).

We've identified possible projects in the following areas:

-Help the Gamula Sewing Association find a larger audience/expand upon their skills (right now, they're just making bags). Additionally, they need help on troubleshooting their sewing machines.

-The community wants more OVC kitchens

-Community gardens for NCP caregivers to feed OVCs (their diets are severely lacking in fresh fruits and vegetables)

-Introducing drought resistant moringa trees into the community, using a local workshop (gram for gram, moringa leaves contain 7x the vitamin C in oranges, 4x the calcium in milk, 4x the vitamin A in carrots, 3x the potassium in bananas, and 2x the protein in milk...excellent for children, pregnant/breast feeding women, and people with compromised immune systems, who often are not able to get the nutrition they need).

-Many members of the community have expressed an interest in starting a support group for HIV positive people/family members and friends of HIV positive people.

I'm also hoping to get involved with the schools, and Tristan wants to work with the clinic.

So, we have a lot on our plates.

I checked our friends page today. I only get to check it once a week (sometimes less if the internet is down). I LOVE hearing about what is going on in your lives, so if you get bored or want to procrastinate, PLEASE email me about how you're doing, how your day went, etc (even if it is just copied/pasted from your blog). I'm able to check my email on my phone on a fairly regular basis. I miss being involved in your lives and I feel like a cruddy friend because I don't know what you ate for dinner last night or what color you dyed your hair or how your job is going or how your family is doing.

We really appreciate everyone's thoughts/prayers/comments/calls while we were sick. We are lucky to have so many wonderful people thinking about us.

ALSO, we are lucky to have so many wonderful people who send us goodies, holy crap.

LAURA, YOU ARE AMAZING. We just got your packages, and I'm porking out on all of the candy. How did you know I have a ridiculously disgusting obsession with nacho cheese? We ate it last night with homemade tortillas and beans and carrots and cucumber and pretzels and it was LOVELY. Thank you SO, SO, SO MUCH. It was so thoughtful, and filled with all of our favorite things. I'll be sending you something pretty in the mail soon, so keep a watch for it. :)

To my fan-freaking-tastic aunt, uncle, and cousin: Thank you for the care package! I'm building up a nice army of sour patch kids. Seriously, opening that package was like Christmas. Speaking of Christmas, be expecting something from us around then (because the mail system takes so long, that's probably when it will get there).

To our family/friends (who I consider family anyway): Thank you for your letters/phone calls/packages. You spoil us rotten. I miss you all and think of you constantly.

-Rachel

ps- Tristan says, "Hi." :)

Hey, ladies and gents. The internet was down the other day, so you're about to get a whole bunch of entries all at once. I also managed to save some more of the pictures from swear in off of one of my computer's data files. Unfortunately, I can't get them any bigger than they are right now.

Pictures first, because they're more fun.

Me, along with some of my favorite gals.

Group 7 gals, in traditional attire.

A somewhat creepy picture of some of our guys. I prompted them to do something when I took this, but now I can't remember what I told them to do.

Another of us with our LCF. For some reason, I was able to get this one bigger. ...

Darryn and I. Probably one of the sweetest people I've ever met in my entire life.

Ozi and I. She delivered the English version of our speech at swear in.

And onto the entries:

Friday, September 4

Well, I finally have possession of the computer. I owe this to Rachel still feeling sick and me needing the computer to look for ways around the server's blocked website list. I successfully got the facebook login screen. Not much further though.

We're still setting up the house. It's slow going, but with the two bookcases I brought home yesterday, it's starting to feel more homey. We're probably going to bring home another table and organize everything this weekend, so we can start branching out in the community next week.

I had the pleasure of burning trash for the first time last night. There is something eerily comforting about a sawed-off oil drum burning the night outside your front door. I don't know what that says about me.

The strangest side-effect of living here is that I constantly have a sense of deja-vu. It's making it hard to write, because I can't shake the feeling that I've already written it before. Well, I'm going to pass the computer over to Rachel, who is never at a loss for words, spoken or written.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Here's Rachel

While watching Rachel type, the idea to sprinkle my own little asides in her update came to me. It'll give the appearance that I type in this journal too.[I'll put them in brackets and italics to be clear]

--------

Wow. Thanks, Tristan.

I've been sick since Sunday, which is really no fun.[It really isn't. It's like I'm sleeping next to a zombie with all that moaning in her sleep] If I don't get over it soon, I'll drag myself to the PCMO in Mbabane, but I'm really hoping I don't have to do that.

Highlights of the week:

-Balancing on a chair, sweating because I had a fever of 100 F and it's ridiculously hot here, trying to tie a makeshift mosquito net screen to our burglar bars on the front door. I was successful. It looks like a spider web Halloween decoration, but I WAS SUCCESSFUL.

-Watching Tristan rig our mosquito net and bucket bath curtains to the ceiling...and burning his hand on our tin roof in the process, because, yes, it was just that hot.[24 pieces of twine. Looks like a giant jellyfish is hanging upside down from our ceiling]

-While Tristan was rigging said contraptions, lizards bigger than my hand were jumping in terror off of their refuge on top of our roof because of the commotion Tristan was causing.

-Using my miserable sick time to read 3 books. I've just started Twilight again because I'm lame.

-Phone time with my mom AND Sarah AND Hannah in the same week.

We're still running around, trying to get our house together. We ordered a bed in Manzini on Tuesday, so we are waiting for that to arrive. We hope to start our community census report next week.

I was telling Tristan the other day that so many things that were a concern in my life in the states really don't apply here:

1. I hated being hot. Hated it. I was an angry, uncomfortable meanie whenever I was hot, eager to jump into AC whenever I could. Needless to say, I've gotten over that quickly. Because all you can do here is sweat and deal with it. There are also so many other odd and wonderful and ridiculous and uncomfortable things going on at the same time, that heat doesn't seem as big of a deal.

2. Lack of electricity and running water are some of the easiest things to adjust to...mainly for the same reasons that I previously stated.

3. There are some other things too, but I'm bored with this list.

I'll give you another list.

Reasons I like my pit latrine:

1. It's not as stinky as the pit latrine we used during training.

2. It's relatively clean

3. It's cool and ventilated.

4. There's a hole in the concrete, and I can see the mountains (which serve as the border to South Africa).

5. It locks. What a novelty.

Reasons I do not like my pit latrine:

1. You have to have perfect aim, because the seat contraption isn't fully secured over the hole. If your aim isn't perfect, your pee will seep out from under the seat.

2. There's a concrete ledge, under the seat, surrounding the pit of doom. If you don't have perfect aim in throwing out your TP (Yes, we use TP. Our family does not because it is relatively[We use the word relative a lot] expensive, but PC is nice enough to put a small amount of money into our budget for toiletries), it will get caught on this ledge, and it will stink.

3. It's really scary if you look inside of it with your flashlight or headlamp.[But why would you?] Think giant poop monster.

4. I found a black mamba outside of it.

5. There are dead lizards inside, with their eyes gouged out. How or why, I'm not sure.[I've got my theories... and suspects]

That's about it. As Tristan mentioned, we still cannot access FB from the cafe. I can update my status from my phone, and read comments to my page, but that's about all I can do. So, if I don't respond to you, it's not because I hate you. It's because the internet hates me.

Love and miss you all. I've got letters coming to people soon, keep me updated on your lives and what you're up to![I would type more of these, but Rachel is glaring at me.]

//

Monday, September 7, 2009

I’m listening to Akon right now. Tristan is still sleeping, which means Tristan is probably going to wake up to Akon. We’ll see how he feels about that.

Would you believe that I’m still sick? Yeah, I know. It’s ridiculous. And I also burst a blood vessel in my eye from coughing so much. I look really attractive right now. I've put myself into a state of voluntary confinement because I don't want my first community project to be giving half of my community the flu.

I’m happy to report that most of our home improvement projects are finished. In the past week we:

- set up our mosquito net

- set up our solar shower and curtain

- rigged mosquito net screens to all of our windows and doors

- purchased shelves and tables, so our stove and clothes are no longer on the floor

- filled the cracks in our walls

- made hanging nets to store our luggage

- washed SO MUCH LAUNDRY (when you’re hand washing everything in buckets, laundry is an all day affair)

Now we’re just waiting for our bed to be delivered.

We’ve also learned to function using even less water than we used during training. Our first day at site, we walked to collect some water, and were informed that there was no water that day. The land here is very flat, but we have mountains within close proximity of us. As a result, there is limited rainfall here.

Our community has water days and no water days. Water days are

3-4 days a week. So, we collect what we can on those days and try to conserve as much as possible.

Luckily, the solar shower is excellent for water conservation. We have it tied from one of the beams in our home. It’s cold, which usually feels amazing on hot days. Because our ceiling is low, we have to crouch and hold the nozzle over our heads.

I’ll try to include a picture of our house soon, but it’s fairly similar to our training house. The ceiling is significantly lower, and it’s smaller, but it has 2 rooms. The first room has 1 window, and it’s used for cooking/eating/water storage. The second room, which has 2 windows, is our bedroom/solar shower/pee bucket room.

We have a full week this week, which may or may not have to be adjusted around a surprise trip to Mbabane to pick up something for my eyeball. We want to start attending our community’s UNAIDS meetings on a regular basis. We were invited to a Lubombo regional meeting with NERCHA, and there’s a PC get together at the end of the week to celebrate one of our APCDs, who will be going back to the states soon.

I’m eager to start on our community report, which will need to be submitted before IST, but I want this awful cough to go away first, as I don’t want to hack my germs all over other people’s homesteads. Our community report has no word/page requirement, but I can already tell that ours is going to be a beast. The quality of the report can help with funding projects. I’ll go into more detail once we start really working on it.

Tuesday, September 8

Hey hey, I get to post again. Craziness. Well, Rachel has covered the business end of everything quite well. There’s no sense in repeating it; I’m going to repeat bits anyway, because I prepared a little entry with pen and paper last night.

We blitzed the house Saturday and set up the majority of our things. The one major lesson we learned: hang everything. Twine and rope are among the most useful things I’ve bought. There are storage containers hanging everywhere. The shower curtains are hung from the rafters in a semi-elaborate way with 24 pieces of twine. They resemble a giant upside down jellyfish. I even made three little nets in the rafters to store our suitcases, duffle bag, and extra bedding.

Our mosquito net is hanging where our bed will eventually be. Our mosquito net is hanging where our bed will eventually be one day. Hopefully. It just won’t feel like home until we have a bed. Until then we are just squatters.

I don’t think I mentioned this, but during training I had the brilliant idea of buying a violin and learning to play it during integration. I’d have plenty of time to learn, and I’d get to make the neighbor’s ears bleed. Unfortunately, the best I could find was a violin case, which I would think means that violins occasionally frequent this country.

No violin for me. Oh well. Last Thursday I went to Matata alone (Rachel was still sick) to find a dresser or permanent shelves of some sort to get our things out of suitcases. I ended up going into Build It, the hardware store, for nails and instead I find a glass case on the wall with a trombone in it and a guitar on top. It was the cheapest guitar I’d seen in country, it looked nice, and from what I could tell it played nice. I have no idea why a trombone and a guitar were in a hardware store, but I did know that if I came home with a guitar instead of shelves, Rachel would be a few shades angrier. I left town with two bookshelves and minus a guitar and headed home. I offhandedly mentioned the guitar to Rachel. I thought she would say something along the lines of ‘Thanks for not buying that’ or ‘I would have murdered you in your sleep if you bought that’ but no, she said ‘you should have bought that.’ Back in the states if I came home unannounced with a guitar Rachel would have killed me. But here, on a more restrictive budget, I get the green light. The southern hemisphere does strange things to people.

The next day we both headed back to Matata and ended up buying a hefty, disassembled table, pillows, curtains, and a Bomake bag full of assorted goodies. We’re heading to the bus rink, arms full, and I decide that I must buy the guitar, this moment. So I did, and with even fuller arms, we head toward the fleet of khombis only to find that the only transport going our way is a big bus the sputtered in out of the 50’s. We’re the first ones on, so we squeeze in to some seats and I find myself sandwiched between Rachel and an open window with a lap full of bags and a guitar.

And we sit there for an hour and a half while a cadre of merchants with corn, oranges, apples, bananas, chips, and bags of juice in wooden bowls perched on their heads pop in and out of the windows. There was one man in particular who kept singing to me, probably because of the guitar.

Finally, we start heading out, people still jumping on and standing up and down the aisle. We head away from the bus rink. Away from the setting sun, away from the stench of sweat, gasoline, and fruit. Away from the countless people running up to the window pretending to strum a guitar then pointing at me, and me feebly trying to explain that it is out of tune and even if it weren’t my arms are pinned. Away from the chaos, slowly home.

I’m looking through the swaying mass of people and bags, through a narrow gap hoping to distinguish our little patch of savannah from the countless nearly identical pieces of savannah so I can call our stop, and haul all this home.

Yeah, it was a pretty good day. Vivid and smelly, but a good day, nonetheless.

We will hopefully be posting pictures of our finished house, bed included, Friday in Mbabane.

Well that’s enough rambling out of me. Miss and love you all,

Tristan

P.S. I named the guitar Regina because the whole day reminded me of a Regina Spektor song.

OH. And here is our new address. It's a pain in the butt to get to Mbabane, so we opened a PO Box near our site:

Rachel Manring/Tristan Estes, Peace Corps Volunteers

P.O. Box 351

Matata, L 312

Swaziland, Africa

Make sure you write "Peace Corps Volunteers" so we won't have to pay customs fees. Also, make sure you write, "Africa," as one of the packages from Tristan's parents was accidentally re-routed to Switzerland. :)

So, we're officially volunteers. We swore in on Thursday in Mbabane. I ended up delivering our group's swear-in speech in siSwati...in front of the news and important people and I was generally terrified, but I am told that it sounded OK. The newspaper here did a report on it and called me "fluent", which is hilarious, because I'm really not. Here are some pictures:

I have about 2893479823749823 more, but my computer is being a giant piece of poop and it won't let me access all of them. And the internet here has flickr and facebook blocked, so most pictures will probably be posted here. I'll try to post more pictures on Tuesday, when I'm in the city.

Here is our entire group (yay for no ETs during training!), along with our CD + important people + embassy people. Most of us dressed in traditional attire. Tristan did not, because he is no fun.

This is what I look like when I'm about to pee my pants. Well, not pants. Skirt. Skirt that was precariously tied on. The chargé d'affaires and the director of NERCHA (National Emergency Response Council on HIV/AIDS) are next to me. They're pretty nifty.

Here's a really horrendous picture of me, but we're with our LCF (language/cultural facilitator) and I love this woman, so you should see her. She translated the speech that I helped write into siSwati and she's just generally amazing.

I'd like to add that my top is tied on by a small knot. There are no ties or buttons. And there was no bra. And it was COLD COLD COLD.

//

HANNAH, I MISSED YOUR PHONE CALL LAST NIGHT AND I ALMOST DIED. But, I'm OK now. I was passed out because we moved to site yesterday, along with all of our crap.

Hannah and Anna, THANK YOU FOR YOUR LETTERS! They made me the happiest person ever and I'll be writing both of you back soon, as I actually have time on my hands now.

I'm lucky to have the most supportive friends in the entire freakin' universe.

So, yeah. We're at site and this is where we'll be for the next 2 years. We're trying to get our house in order, buying important things like a bed and shelves and tables, etc.

Yesterday was a bit emotional, as we all said, "goodbye" and left for our respective sites. We won't actually be together as a big group again until IST (in service training) in three months.

Oh, and Tristan and I passed our language tests, so yay for that. If you don't pass it the first time, you have to keep retaking it over and over again, until you do pass.

Alrighty. Time to work on purchasing home things and putting our crap away. We miss everyone like crazy, but we're doing great. Swaziland says, "Hi."

I gave my WWS teacher my blog address, so if you're reading this, HI to Mr. Bloom and his class. :)

posted by Rachel

More pictures

http://pics.livejournal.com/rachandtre/gallery/000037s4

The pictures of the school children are from our community training project. We initiated an HIV/AIDS education assessment survey, to give the teachers an idea of the level of knowledge of the students. We also had an anti-stigma activity, and gifted the school with soccer balls and a pump for recess.

They're all holding up their hands to show off the woven red and white yarn bracelets we made (red for awareness and white for hope).

Visiting the schools is always such a surreal experience- I'm constantly surrounded by children murmuring and dancing and laughing and touching my hair.

We probably won't be able to update regularly until we get to site permanently (in 2 weeks). By then, we'll be official volunteers, woohoo!

Gotta run. OJT is over, and we're about to take a 4 hour kombi ride back up north to finish training.

ps- here are pictures!

The internet tells me flickr and facebook are porn, so I had to upload them to lj.

http://pics.livejournal.com/rachandtre/gallery/00002kw1

I FOUND INTERNET. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

I LOVE YOU, MATATA. MARRY ME.

Ok. So, approx. 9824892748923748923794823 things have happened since our last blog entry. We're both doing a lot of writing, but honestly...there's no earthly way I can describe Swaziland to you. It's happy and sad and laughing and crying and beautiful and heartbreaking, all at once.

We got our permanent site, just as Mbasheni was starting to feel like home. Our family there is very large, very kind, and very loud. Our make walks to our doorstep every day at 6 am, yelling, "KUSILE, SANIBONANI BOBABIES!!!!!! MY BABIES!!!!!!!"

adding -bo to a word is a way to make some words plural in siSwati. Kusile=good morning, and sanibonani=a greeting directed at more than one person.

We train every day, 6 days a week, and spend Sunday hand washing our laundry in big, blue basins.

We've become very close with our training group, almost to the point of where I feel as if I'm forgetting something if they're not around.

I've found people (mostly guys, but also a couple girls) who share my 8th grade humor.

I love listening to Akon. Love. Because whenever I hear Akon, no matter how old I am, I'll always think of Swaziland. A kombi ride isn't a kombi ride without Akon.

I had to receive an emergency rabies vaccine because my good friend tried to rescue a puppy that was thrown in a trash heap, and said puppy died of rabies 48 hours later.

I've fallen in love with my LCF (language and cultural facilitator), Tembeghile. She is so kind and graceful and strong and beautiful and full of humor and hope and endless amounts of patience. I genuinely enjoy conversations with her, and our small language class of 5 spends a ridiculous amount of time laughing over completely asinine things because we all get along so well (for the most part).

Our permanent site is located in Gamula, Swaziland. If you google it, a couple articles will pop up. Gamula is located in Lubombo, which is the poorest, and most drought stricken region of the country. It is also the region with the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence.

Our home does not have electricity, which I'm actually sort-of enjoying. And, our site is a 10 minute kombi ride from Matata, which has INTERNET.

Right now, we're in the middle of OJT, which lasts six days. OJT is spent getting to know our community and host family and asking important questions, such as, "Peace Corps wants to install a lightning rod. Is this OK?"

I suppose I can thank Justine for the lightning rod? :) Southern Swaziland is apparently very prone to LOTS OF LIGHTNING ZOMG.

After OJT, we finish training, have language exams, and hopefully swear in as volunteers, before we head to our communities for 2 years.

Our counterpart in Gamula, Thabsile, has been showing us around. So far, we've met the inner council, the site coordinator for Lutheran Development Services, the headmasters of the primary and secondary schools, as well as some of the staff at the clinic. Tomorrow, we'll meet with the chief (who is a female!).

Thabsile seems to be very involved with the community. She holds workshops on HIV/AIDS education, life skills for youth, PMTCT (prevention of mother to child transmission), and faithfulness, among other things. She is a widow, raising her children by herself, and working her butt off for her community, and so far, I'm really inspired by her.

When we first saw Gamula, we were a bit...shocked. Well, first off, we were exhausted because it took 4 hours and 4 different kombis (one of which enjoyed racing other kombis, and I was grateful to still be alive when we finally stepped off) to get here. Gamula is very....poor. Obviously. And brown. We're next to the Lubombo mountains, which are beautiful, and there are some mango trees, as well as other trees than I can only describe as African trees, because I'm positive they probably don't exist in a natural state outside of this continent.

Our community has three schools (pre, primary, and secondary), a clinic, a few churches, and five OVC kitchens. OVC=orphans and vulnerable children. There are several child run homes in Gamula.

The community has just short of 200 homesteads. I'm hoping to do a lot of work with OVCs and the schools. There is also a community garden, which Tristan is really happy about.

We've tried to do a lot of walking around the community, introducing ourselves to as many people as possible. There is a lot of poverty, but also a lot of work to be done.

Our new family is very small and quiet. It is an all female family, consisting of a mother, two sisters (both secondary school age), and girl around 4, who is our mother's grand daughter. There are no males...even the dog is female (and strangely friendly and well fed for a Swazi dog). There is very little English in our community, especially in our family, so we're going to need to study our butts off.

Sifundza siSwati kakhulu. (We study LOTS of siSwati).

Make (Our mother) and Thabsile changed our names because they say Tristan's name is a girl's name. So, now, MY name is Sihle (meaning beautiful girl) and Tristan's name is Buhle (meaning beautiful boy).

Sihle is pronounced Seehlay

Buhle is pronounced Boohlay.

Gotta run. But, we should be able to update this thing once a week. Love you all, THANK YOU SO MUCH for the packages, letters, and phone calls. Miss you all.

-Rachel <3

ps- We swear in as volunteers in about 2 weeks!

7/13, 5:30 am

I’m up early and I can’t get back to sleep. We don’t have to be up until 6, so I’m using our mini LED lantern for light while Tristan sleeps. We don’t have electricity in our living room (we have 2 rooms, a bedroom and a living room), so I take the lantern with me to boil water for coffee on our gas stove.

I spent 2 years working for Starbucks, but my clearance Maxwell House tastes pretty good in my French press.

Yes, I’m putting Maxwell House in a French press. Oh, the irony. And, for the record, I miss Starbucks like a fat kid on a diet misses cake.

Oh, and FYI—Tristan accidentally broke the mini lantern one of our first nights in Swaziland. It is now held together with duct tape. We like to joke that we’ve traded places in the new hemisphere—Tristan drops things and accidentally injures himself like it’s his job. I’m able to boil water on a gas stove without setting myself on fire. THAT is an accomplishment.

It’s funny how the smallest thing can make you homesick. When I took out our lantern, I thought of the book light my parents tried to get me to bring, which I accidentally left at home. I keep listening to the RENT soundtrack a lot, and thinking of the stupid things Brad would always say, and how they would always make me laugh.

I think I’m just afraid I’m going to miss something important in the lives of my family and friends back home. FYI, no one is allowed to procreate or marry until I’m back in the states.

We’re lucky in that our training group is really close. We’ve all pretty much completely lost all modesty around each other…constant lectures on pooping, bleeding, and infectious diseases will do that to you.

Speaking of modesty: some people have been complaining about the odors of their pee buckets. More bleach, people. I pee in water and lots of bleach. My bucket smells like an over-chlorinated swimming pool.

7/17

We got the package from Tristan’s parents. Thank you!

If anyone wants care package ideas, we’re dying for the following:

A plug adaptor that actually works...ours does not. And our transformer killed itself.

Sour patch kids

A huge bag of tootsie pops (I love them, and Laura, another trainee, loves ‘em too)

Vitamins

Cheese that doesn’t have to be refrigerated

7/18

Just a few quick words...we're being timed (again). We're happy and healthy. Over the past couple of weeks, we've made trips to a health clinic and a primary school. We're in the middle of programming our community project, which will also be involved with the primary schools. We have mid language proficiency exams and our site interviews next week.

Public transportation=cramming 18+ people into a kombi, which is the size of a mini van.

I have so much to say and not enough time to put it all into words. We've been doing a lot of writing, and I plan on compiling 2873489237 entries once we're at site (in August) and have the time to do so. The Swaz is beautiful. We love you all.

-Rachel