COS Conference

May 6^th – 9^th, 2013

Close of Service (COS) Conference… can’t believe it’s that time in my service already. 

Just one day after Camp GLOW ended, all of the Mighty Fine Group 9 met at our Peace Corps Office.  We were then bused to the nice Forester Arms Hotel, tucked away in the forests of the Hhohho region.

We spent 3 glorious days sleeping in really comfortable beds, loving indoor plumbing (that we only had to share with one other person), eating buffets for breakfast and lunch, and four course dinners.  When we weren’t enjoying these fine things, we were being prepared for what comes next.  How do we rap up two years in Swaziland? How do we go back to America and re-assimilate? How do we get a job?  And how do we talk about Swaziland in five minutes to people who simply don’t care?

To help fuel the excitement about what comes after Peace Corps we were all given our official Close of Service dates.  So here it is…  I am officially COSing on July 18^th!!!  I will do a bit of traveling before coming stateside again, but plan to be back in MN mid-August.

For the three days we also reflected on our last two years, hardly believing that we made it through.  Granted we are much smaller then when we came.  We started with 39 in our group and are down to 23 for various reasons, but despite our dwindling numbers we are still mighty fine!  We have become so close over the last two years; it’s hard to think that when I go back to MN I won’t have my G9 PCVs there with me when I get off the plane.  Good thing airtime (cell phone minutes) is much more cheap (see I can’t even speak proper English anymore) in America.

As we left the conference, we celebrated our 23^rd month anniversary.  Then it was back to site, after two weeks away.  No matter how integrated you feel, it’s always a transition back to hut life, but I was also returning with the heavy task of having to start packing, getting rid of things, and saying goodbye.  Two months is going to go by very fast.

The Mighty Fine G9!!!

GLOWing brightly at Camp GLOW

April 29^th – May 4^th, 2013

GLOW camp finally came and went with huge success!!!

The week started when, Nosipho (my counterpart and sisi) and I drug our bags and bedding to the bus stop where we met with the two girls we had selected to attend the camp.  From there we got on a bus and picked up Addy, her counterpart Zandie, and four other campers from our community in Mpaka then we were all off to Siteki where Camp GLOW was being held at the primary school for the deaf.

Once in Siteki we met up with many other PCVs, counselors and campers at the bus rank.  Soon after a bus with balloons and posters advertising itself as the GLOW bus pulled up and loaded us all up to take us to the campus.  A whirlwind of checking in, saying hellos to old and new friends, getting beds assigned and Camp GLOW finally began.

We had a weekend filled with knowledge, fun, empowerment, and food.  The girls were taught mostly by our trained counterparts who were serving as counselors and by us PCVs.  Day one was all welcomes and ground rules, and getting to know each other activities.  Day two was all about health.  Girls attended sessions on HIV and STI knowledge, contraceptives, personal hygiene, male and female bodies, emotional health, having a child by choice not chance, alternatives to sex, and abstinence.  Day three was art day.  A local art gallery called Yebo Art came as part of their art outreach program.  The campers each were taught how to screen print and designed something personal to be printed on their GLOW t-shirt.  They also got a chance to paint portraits and learned about expressing themselves through poetry, lead by a local poet named Black Note.

One of my GLOW girls Landiwe making her
screenprint on her t-shirt.

 Day Four was all about getting out and about.  We took a walk to a beautiful private farm nearby and held sessions on volunteerism, leadership, and team building.  I taught about leadership in an orange grove, and then we ate lunch by a lily-pad pond.  Beautiful day!  Day Five was all about learning more about the resources around Swaziland that can help empower women.  We had a career fair, a male and female panel made up of successful men and women from Swaziland, and national organizations supporting women’s right were there to talk with girls about how they are there to help empower young women.

The week ended with an epic talent show.  We had 20 acts that covered all topics of women’s empowerment.  Songs, dances, poems, dramas (skits) and even a thrown together dance number performed by us PCVs to Beyonce’s “Girls run the World.”  I lost my voice cheering on the girl power that was happening in that room.  We expended all the energy we had left in a dance party where my campers taught me how to move like a true Swazi.  Get ready America; I have some awesome new dance moves to show you.

A week after we arrived we sadly had to say goodbye.  The shy greetings that started the camp was replaced with cheering goodbyes and promises to stay in touch on facebook and whats app.

Hurray for GLOW!!

The Malindza/Mpaka crew!

 Us PCVs needed to do a debrief after camp so we stayed an extra night after sending the girls and counselors on their way.  We stayed at the private farm we walked to earlier that week.  After reviewing the week and making suggestions for next year, we celebrated our huge success with Mexican food, cocktails, and another dance party.  Sadly it was all over by 8:30pm and we were in bed by 9pm all super exhausted from the week.  It was nice to sleep in a normal bed again.  We PCV took the brunt of the sleeping accommodations at the school and stayed in the preschool dorms, with preschool sized beds, preschool sized toilets, and low level sinks. 

The PCV GLOW executive council!

Can’t wait to see how GLOW will continue to grow in my community and excited to hear how camp will be even bigger and better next year!

A huge THANK YOU to everyone at home who contributed to GLOW, with donations, monetary or in-kind.  This would not have been at all possible if we didn’t have your support and donations.  We were able to give each girl a goody bag with personal toiletries and fun stuff that are novelties to them.  They also got a week away from the confines of the role of girls in a traditional Swazi homestead.  They got a taste of what life could hold for them and received some tools and knowledge to get to wherever they dream of going!  Giver yourself a pat on the back for making all of that a possibility, your donation may have been just the thing to change a girls life forever!  

Lusuku Lwenkutalwa lwenkhosi: The King’s Birthday

April 19th, 2013

I have officially been to a royal birthday party.  Cross that one off the bucket list, although I have to admit it was not the glamorous event my imagination dreamed up.  My participation resembled more of a 16^th century royal outing from the perspective of a peasant.

Every year the King hosts a birthday party in a different region of the country.  This year, for his 45^th birthday, he held it in Siteki, the closest town to my community, so I decided to put on my party clothes and go.  It was a rainy day so I didn’t go full out in Swazi attire, which leaves a women fairly exposed to the elements, rather I donned modern clothes plus a lihiya as a skirt and a traditional necklace to show I had some Swazi spirit. 

Catching a very crowed, standing room only bus to Siteki I practiced how to say “King’s Birthday” in siSwati, which provided a lot of entertainment to those around me.  A stadium had been erected in a muddy field, much like a jousting tournament, and we (the public) were admitted and squished into stadium benches to view the events of the day. 

So we were there, we were excited to see what a King’s Birthday Party looked like.  We arrived just in time for the scheduled events to start and in true Swazi style they didn’t start for 2 more hours.  Siteki sits on a plateau and its significantly colder then down in the area where I live.  It was cold and rainy, sitting and waiting was miserable.  I was sitting in the student section with my PCV friend Ryan’s primary school.  I recruited the students to sit around my in a circle, we created a huddle of warmth to pass the time.  We waited and waited and then we saw just about nothing. 

Before the King arrived a very heavy fog descended on the Siteki plateau making it impossible to see past 25 feet in front of you, let alone across a stadium field.  Despite being very late for his own party, the King made an exciting entrance.  The army provided guard and he inspected them to kick-start the events, which got him within 30 feet of me!  A few singings of the national anthem later it seems things were getting started.  The army guard did some really cool silent marching that got the crowd cheering, despite the fact we could all barely see through the fog.  Then someone talked for an hour announcing new titles people were getting and then the King left and it was over. 

There was supposed to be hours of entertainment that was prepared by various school groups and performance arts groups from the area, including Ryan’s students.  It all got canceled because time was up.  One good thing to come out of the day was that the students, after sitting in the cold all day, got their free gift for “participating,” which ironically was a jacket that they received upon leaving the event.

Frozen, we made our way back to the bus rank to try and get home.  This proved to be the most exciting part of the day.  Since everyone was trying to head west, as were we, the demand for getting on transport was insane.  Finally a bus willing to stop at all our little places along the main road came and it was a mad dash to get on.  All etiquette was thrown out the window, pushing and shoving were the tools needed to get on the bus and I did and I got a seat.  I’d say that means I’m fully integrated.

All in all, an interesting way to spend the day and its one more cultural event under my belt.

The End of an Era

April 16^th, 2013

My Peace Corps service is rapidly coming closer and closer to the end, and today marked the end of a project that has truly defined my service. 

We held out very last ESL (English as a Second Language) class at the Refugee Camp.  Technically it wasn’t even class, it was a certificate ceremony that we have after every completed 12-week term.  This was our fourth and final term.  We wont be able to start and complete another before our service is over.

It didn’t feel like the end, but I am sure it will soon enough.  No more trips to Mpaka every week.  No more meeting to plan our lessons with our co-teachers.  No more assessing new students and re-assessing current students to mark their progress.  As much as I will get sentimental about this project ending it feels like the right time for it to end. 

It was a great project, but all of our students are moving on in life.  Working with refugees we got used to our class roster changing every term.  Students would leave for new places or home countries and as of last term students were getting jobs in Manzini.  I like to think we helped with that, giving them more confidence with speaking English.  My co-teacher Amnesty even got his official refugee status and got a job.  Everyone is starting to move on to better things so it feels right that classes are over and I’m moving on to.

All in all I think this is the project I am most proud of here in Swaziland.  We listened to what a community needed.  We found ambitious, hard-working, motivated counterparts, we reached out to get them trained and together created, developed, and implemented a English language class that taught people of various proficiency levels.  We had no idea what we were getting into that first day we gathered everyone, but we figured it out, and it was a success.  Students that would not even say hello to us on the first day are now having a conversation with us every time we see them.  Down caste eyes and embarrassed mumbles have turned into proud handshakes and greetings with a smile.

It makes being here that much easier when you can see the difference you have made.  And to top it all off, we know that this learning can continue after we leave.  There are trained people who can write a lesson plan and implement it.  The Refugee Camp will be getting a library full of books within the next few months to help with continued language learning, and we have shown the refugees that they can use each other as teachers.  Yay for sustainability!  Yay for English language learning!  Yay for successfully completed projects!

On The Sani Pass!

April 8-11th^th, 2013

To try and use up some of my well-earned vacation days (seriously I have enough to take vacation for month), I planned a trip into South Africa with a few of my PCV friends.

It was so Amazing!!  I spent the first 3.5 days on the Sani Pass, in the Drakensburg area of the Kwazulu-Natal region, which is the southeastern part of South Africa; from the bottom of Swaziland to the bottom of Lesotho.

At this point there were three of us and like the public transportation rock stars that we are, we made it from the center of Swaziland to the Sani Pass in one day.  It took a total of 5 different transportation changeovers, and we were in transit from 6am to 7:30pm, but we made it, cutting our costs by several hundred rand because we took public rather then a backpacker’s bus.

We stayed at the Sani Pass Backpacker’s Lodge, which I give a 5 star rating, because it is the best backpackers I have ever stayed at!  Best staff, best view, and best shower and all for the same price as most of the questionable backpackers out there.  They have free milk from the diary cow that is milked daily, guided tours into Lesotho, unguided day hikes, a warm fireplace, 2 fully stocked kitchens, drinkable tap water that is the freshest I’ve ever tasted, and they make your bed everyday, adding extra blankets when the nights get colder.  It doesn’t sound like much, but when I am used to paying the same price at most backpackers and getting very basic accomadations, musty bedding, a cold shower, and a kitchen you’d rather not cook in, it felt like the Sani Pass Lodge was a high class hotel.

Day one on the Pass, we took ourselves on a 4-5 hour day hike, which took us 8 hours.  We weren’t slow, we just got caught up in the views, and a very fun cave we had to walk through.  It is so beautiful in this region.  Mountains in every direction you look.  On our hike they just engulfed us from all sides.  We ate lunch by a blue lagoon, but I didn’t swim as it was very cold water.  Then we found the waterfall, which required us to stand on the very edge of a cliff to look down on it.  Very scary, very awesome!  The hike became more adventurous and less fun after the waterfall.  Two wrong trail turns (let led us on some very narrow paths along a steep mountain before we realized we needed to turn back to get to the real trail) and three awful walks through the cold river later we finished the hike.

Pool along the hike

The very clear spring water

Day Two we took a guided day trip into Lesotho.  The Sani Pass into Lesotho is crazy scary and can only be done by a 4x4 vehicle.  A heavy fog descended on the Pass during the night so I couldn’t really get the whole effect of the dirt roat, but it included 14 switchbacks to get up into Lesotho.  Some requiring a three-point turn they are so narrow.  Once up, we decided that it was too foggy and cold to do the scheduled hike up the Hodgeson’s peak (the highest point in SA), so we went further into Lesotho and did a hike just up one of the mountains.  It was so cool, but so cold.  I was unprepared for winter like temperatures and was freezing.  We were hiking over 3,000 meters so altitude made it hard to function, but we finally made it to the top just as it started to snow.  Well it wasn’t really snow yet, more like ice chunks and it was super windy so were actually just getting pelted in the face with pea size hail (not fun).  But the view was great.  We could see the tallest point in Lesotho, and the mountains that stretch forever with the sun peaking through and highlighting further away ridges.  We had lunch briefly as to not let our body temps drop and then headed back down.  We met some shepherds along the way.  This area of Lesotho is very unpopulated; only the Shepherds that bring their flocks of sheep and goats up during the summer to graze.  They build little stone huts and carry everything on horseback.  Aside from them there is a tiny village of a few women we brew beer and make bread to sell to the shepherds.  There are no schools, no stores, no clinics, nothing but views and a sheep-shearing shack. 

up in the mountains

A shepherd

 We headed to the village after the hike and watched them sheer the angora goats.  This wool gets exported out everywhere and ironically gets sold back to the shepherds in the form of blankets.  Then we visited with one of the women in the village and she made us some bread.  They use cow dung as a fire source and cook inside their stone and cow dung huts.  The huts have no windows to try and preserve the heat during the winter.  The lady we visited runs the village pub.  She sells homebrewed maize/sorghum beer and bread and plays a radio that is powered by a solar panel. 

We soon left her because it started to actually snow and we needed to make time for one last stop before heading down.  The last stop being the one and only real pub up here.  In fact it is the highest pub in Africa, and they make a deliciously warm mulled wine that was wonderful to drink after a day in the snow.  The ground was completely white now and I was so happy.  It felt like home, breathing in the cold air.  We descended the pass back into South Africa slowly, now we had the extra challenge of doing the pass in winter conditions, but we made it no problems.  We spent the evening eating our poor PCV meal of beans and rice by the fire, defrosting before heating up hot water bottles to snuggle with in bed.

We slept-in our last morning there, it was too cold to leave the comforts of our warm beds.  The fog had lifted and the sun was out again, but it was still frosty out.  We had the lodge to ourselves, which was nice compared to the night before.  The lodge was packed when we got back from our trip into Lesotho with a new wave of backpackers.  It was overwhelming, so many people wanting to chat, I’m no longer used to that.  We enjoyed a makeshift rice porridge breakfast by the fire and then set out for transport back to Durban.  Despite the 2 hours we had to wait in a khumbi for it to fill up, we made it to Durban by dusk.  

Durban!

April 11-13^th, 2013

Our last two night of vacation were spent in Durban.  An actual city!!!  It was a short two days, but the best two days!  Here in Durban we met up with 4 more PCVs from Swaziland.  It was great to expand our group a bit, and even though there were only 7 of us, this is now 1/3 of our group that’s left in country.  It was fun to be on a Group 9 only vacation.

Night one, after reuniting, we all went out for a nice meal.  A real meal, it was amazing.  We went to an Italian restaurant in walking distance of our backpackers.  It had gluten free options so I had real pizza for the first time in 22 months.  Thankfully g-free pizza only came in one size – large, and I ate the whole thing not feeing one bit of guilt.  It was great being with my Peace Crops friends in a modern environment.  We had so much fun at dinner!  I felt we were that table that people wanted to be with, our happiness for being surrounded by good friends, food, wine, and having gotten a shower that day was radiating.  We felt alive!

For our only full day in Durban we spent the whole day at the waterfront.  We leisurely walked along the entire beachfront, toes in the sand, sun on my back, and the smell of water in the air.  It was so relaxing.  The afternoon we spent eating of course (my one an only plan for Durban…eat, eat, and eat some more) looking over the water, and shopping!  We headed back to the backpackers and got all glam-ed up for a Friday night out on the town.  We started with a sushi dinner, which spanned 3 hours and several bottles of wine, simply perfect.  Then we hit a rough spot trying to find a place to go dancing, but after walking off the sushi for a while we found a place called Tiger Tiger.  Best night out of my Peace Corps Service.  We spent the entire night dancing and singing our hearts out to the best music.  We closed down the dance floor around 4am, and then in pure American style had our cab drive-through McDonalds (we don’t have them in Swaziland).

After one hour of sleep, I roused everyone and we packed up the best we could and half functioning got ourselves to the bus rank.  Seven uncomfortable hours later we were back in Swaziland.  We all grudgingly crossed the border with the fuzzy memories and the faded entry stamp from the night before to remind us of our fabulous weekend in Durban!  

PCV girls:  Emma, Me, Mia, Kelly

Library Complete!

April 5^th, 2013

The Malindza High School Library is officially complete…well as complete as far as my participation goes.  All 1000 donated books are out of their boxes and labeled and shelved with the existing books.  If I had to guess I would say we labeled around 5000 books total.  Each book got categorized with a color by topic and have been placed in numerical order according to their subject number.  The library looks so beautiful now and useable!

The system isn’t quite sticking with the students yet, I find pinks in the blues, and greens in the reds, but the point is there is a system.  The students are already really enjoying the new selection of fiction books that came in the donation boxes, and there are desks now for the students to work on.  Its just amazing to look back at what it was before, a disorganized mess.  Granted there are still about 2000 books that need to be labeled, and some shelves still need fixing, and the teachers resource room needs to be finished, but there are plans for these and that’s all I can ask for.  The technology and design class is helping every Friday to fix up the teachers resource room, which will also serve as the check-in/out desk.  It’s a slow process, and for a while I wasn’t sure we would see the end, but I am glad I was able to witness the progress to the point we are at.  I look forward to the day when I can return and see the library even more functional!

The Library Before

Library After

With the Librarian David

Easter Sunday

March 31^st, 2013

I learned about and attended an interesting Swazi event today.  I can’t remember the name of the event, but it is a celebration that a family has when the price of 5 cows has been paid in order to acknowledge a pregnancy out of wedlock.  Someone in the Dube Family was in this situation and her boyfriend’s family paid the 5 cows to honor her.  Eventually those cows will be included in the Lobola price if she gets teka (traditional engagement) in the future.

Traditionally only married women and women with children are suppose to attend, but I was invited along as a guest.  Only these women attend because one of the cows is slaughtered and eaten to celebrate.  It is thought that by eating this cow you are welcoming children into your life there fore only married women or women already with children should eat it.  They let me eat the cow anyways and take annoying photos of the men eating the cow’s head.  The cow’s head is always reserved for the men only.  I did get offered some intestines however, which I gracefully declined.

It’s amazing that 21 months here and I am still learning the intricate workings of this culture.  I was happy to be invited along to participate in this event.  It took place on Easter Sunday, so in a way it just felt like a nice family get-together for brunch.  We ate not just the cow, but chicken, and salads, and of course pap (maize meal porridge), and drank Coke-a-Cola.  One of my older host sisters and her two sons came over for the event so it was really nice to see her.

If Books Could Talk

March 15^th, 2013

I am currently opening and shelving 16 boxes of donated books to the High School library from the Books for Africa project.  As I examine each book for cataloguing I am having a great time discovering the remains of many book exchanges.  Its just amazing how much information a book can leave behind from its onetime owners.  I have found so many things within the pages of these books, its like buried treasure: receipts, greeting cards, scratch paper with scribbled notes, and even a dollar bill (I pocketed that one).  And of course there are all the messages scrolled on the first pages that caption a moment in a person’s life; birthdays, Christmases, graduations, deaths, its seems anything can be said with a book.  It’s sad, in a way to think, about these one-time gifts no longer holding meaning to the receiver.

Today I was reading a message from Jon to Karen in a book that was given by Jon to Karen for her birthday with many XOs after his signature.  I read the message out loud to Addy and we quickly developed an entire plot line of Karen and Jon’s life; what significance the book meant and why it ended up in a donation box in Southern Africa.  Basically Jon did Karen wrong and the book was too painful for her to keep, all those XOs were just too powerful. 

It really makes you think twice before writing that nice, private, message in a gifted book.  Someday, somewhere, someone else is going to read it.  Probably a Peace Corps Volunteer, so feel free to keep forgetting your buried away dollars, and know that out of sheer boredom and craziness from high heat exposure, we will over analyze your message.  I only have 6 more boxes to go, and one is textbooks so that will be no fun, but I can’t wait for what else I find within the pages to come!  

Consolidation Drill

March 14^th, 2013

Every Peace Corps Country has an emergency action plan to keep volunteers safe during times of turmoil within a country.  Each stage increases the severity of the security threat and gives us instructions to follow.

Today at the first light of 5:45am I received a SMS (text message) that said we were in a code orange and I needed to get to my consolidation point as soon as possible.  At the time I didn’t know this was drill (had an inkling, but didn’t know for sure) so I diligently packed my emergency bag – clothes, food, water, medicine, Emergency Action Plan guide, both passports, id card, phone, and South African Rand in case we needed to cross a border out of Swaziland.  I told my family I was going to the town my consolidation point is in and didn’t know when I would be back.  As I walked away, I realized that if this weren’t a drill this would be last time I saw them.  That was a sad moment, I almost ran back to hug my Make. 

Thankfully it was 6am so transport to Siteki, where I consolidate, was easy to get.  I met all the other PCVs in my area and we all figured out that this was just a drill.  Members from our Peace Corps office arrived a few hours later and checked to see how long it took us all to get there, if there were problems, and if we all packed what we needed.  I passed with flying colors.  Nice to know if stuff is going down I can get all packed and to my consolidation point within an hour, even when I am half asleep.

I was home by 10:30am and explained the whole thing to my Make.  She thought I was acting really weird as I left in the morning so it was nice to clear the air.  She didn’t even tell my Babe (host dad) I had left because I didn’t give her an explanation.  Overall I am glad it was just a drill.  It was an exciting hour until I found out, but also a nervous hour.  Being forced home with no notice at this point in my service would be hard.  Being evacuated would be hard period having to return to America with only the stuff in my emergency bag, but even harder would not being able to say goodbye to my friends and family here.