training is over

We are here in the capital city of Mbabane for the official PC Volunteer swearing-in ceremony, which will take place tomorrow at the US Ambassador’s residence. All 35 of us are staying at a nearby center and it’ll be the last time we’re together in one place for a long, long time: on Friday we’re driven to our permanent sites and dropped off. End of training.

We now speak baby-siSwati and are quite ready to get on with life as full-fledged volunteers (up until now we’ve been Trainees).

Our access to the internet has been pretty bad, but that situation could improve. We’re going to reduce the size of our pics in hopes that we can upload them onto this page—oh the joys of dial-up connections. The nearest internet cafe from Zombodze in Nhlangano, and we'll try to make a regular habit of checking in and saying hi.

Anyway, we are healthy and happy and hope that everyone back home is, too. Our access to US news is spotty but we know the basics and that’ll have to suffice for now. I’m working on getting a new (and much better) shortwave radio, because it’s possible to get VOA and BBC in Zombodze. I’m past the initial stages of information-withdrawal, which were marked by night chills, hand tremors, and hair pulling, and I’m learning to cope with not knowing about things until days (and days) after they happen.

I (he-j) have a confession to make: I lost our brand new iPod. It was taken from the seat-pouch of a bus we were riding-- I left it in there and by the time i remembered, it was too late. no more iPod. So a fellow PCV has kindly loaned us her extra one for the time bieng (thanks, Allie). Time to find out if that property insurance is any good...

We miss our friends and family and think about you often-- especially our pregnant friends! Congratulations to Shawn and Freya on their new Baby boy (thanks for the update, Christi).

Sidzinga kuya nyalo-- salani kahle, nemngani na umndeni! (we need to go now-- goodbye/stay well friends and family!)

our Swazi names

Upon arriving at our training-host family’s homestead a few months ago, we were given Swazi names. And now, upon visiting our permanent host family’s homestead in Zombodze, We’ve been given NEW Swazi names.

I (he-J) am Velaphi Nsibandze, and Jamie- girl is Khetsiwe Nsibandze. Our surname is determined by the homestead in which we live, and the Nsibandze clan is the largest, most powerful family in Zombodze. In fact, the Chief is a Nsibandze—which allows us to meet directly with his inner-council on community matters, as needed. So that’s kind of exciting. The name “Velaphi” literally means, “where are you from.” Pretty hilarious, huh? The question I’ll be asked more than any other—and it’s my new name. That’s how they do it here in Swaziland. People’s first names often translate into things like, “the last one” or “another girl.” The names given to us by our current (training site) host family translate as, “We thank you” and “We are Thankful” Siyabonga and Sibongile, respectively. Jamie’s newest first name, “Khetsiwe,” is really cool. It means “Chosen” or “one who is chosen.” Isn’t that nice? Better than “where are you from,” I think.

It occurs to me that most people reading this will not know how to pronounce these names, so here’s a little guidance for the linguistically curious. The a’s are pronounced like “ahh”, the o’s are like in “bone,” and the –ng is like in “sing.” The capitalized letters indicate stressed sounds.

Siyabonga: sEEya-bonga. That’s my current Swazi name—Siyabonga Ngambule.

Sibongile: see-bong-EElay. That’s Jamie-girl’s current name—Sibongile Ngambule.

Velaphi: vel-A-pee. That’s my new name—Velaphi Nsibandze. The –ph is not an “f” sound.

Khetsiwe: ket-SEE-way. That’s Jamie-girl’s new name—Khetsiwe Nsibandze

Strange but true: more people in Swaziland know us as either Velaphi & Khetsiwe or Siyabonga & Sibongile. Ask for Tim and Jamie and—I’m not kidding—you’ll likely get blank stares.

about our new hometown

We returned from our first visit to Zombodze, the town we’ll call home after training is completed, and we really like it.

We stayed there for 4 days and nights, meeting community members and exploring the area and living in our new home on the Nsibandze homestead. We already have an office at the umpakhasti—which is the Chief’s homestead and which acts as a kind of community center or hub—and we have a great local counterpart named Senzo Nzibandze, a talented young man who’s spent the last few years working hard on community development projects in his hometown. Senzo set up all the introductions for us—school headmasters, nurses and care providers, headmen and community elders, etc—and he spent each day showing us around and introducing us to projects that we might want to get involved in. potential projects include:

water supply and garden development

support for OVCs (orphans and vulnerable children) via the Neighborhood Care Points (NCPs) and their Junior Gardeners program

assisting the health clinic and home-care providers

working in the primary school (they’re trying to get a library) and the high school with student clubs, teacher support and extracurricular activity development

and more. there will be plenty for us to do. In all, I counted about 13 different potential community projects in various stages of development.

All of this is great news for us. As Peace Corps Volunteers, the biggest fear is that you’ll be put in a place where there’s nothing to do, where boredom (and then despair) sets in. To find so many opportunities in Zombodze, as well as a motivated and skillful local counterpart, is what every Peace Corps Volunteer hopes for.

Some highlights of our visit… meeting the chief was cool. It’s a formal affair and somewhat nerve-racking, but things went well. We met our new Swazi family, which is a very large extended family full of children, cousins, aunts, mothers, brothers and sisters. The homestead is very big, with dozens of homes and structures stretched across a hillside. Senzo is both our counterpart and our brother, and he lives just 5 meters from us on the homestead. He took us for a great hike up to a nearby mountaintop—Jamie and I will be going up there a lot. It’s beautiful, and the roundtrip walk from home is maybe 8 kilometers through fields and forests.

Zombodze has two little grocery stores, a carpenter’s workshop, an electronics repairman, a gas station (during plowing when the tractors need fuel), a seamstress, a veggie market, a community garden and a garden run by OVCs, a Neighborhood Care Point (which helps to feed OVCs), a primary school, a high school and a vocational training center. From nearly any hillside in Zombodze, one can see South Africa, marked by the distant cars and trucks traveling along its paved highway. All the roads here are dirt, but they’re in good shape (with some bad spots during heavy rains), and it’s mostly level terrain. There are good jogging routes all over the place, combining trails with dirt roads, and Jamie has already found a few favorite loops. This is a safe, close-knit community, and everyone waves and smiles as we pass by their fences.

Jamie is already famous in Zombodze for her jogging habit. Every other person we met said to her, “oh ya—I saw you running this morning.” I cannot overstate how rare it is in Zombodze for any white people to be visiting—to say nothing of living there—so seeing Jamie run past the fence at 6 in the morning can be a memorable way for these farmers to begin their day. Needless to say, we’re sort of a spectacle in Zombodze, and it’ll take a while for our novelty to wear off. People yell and wave to get our attention, and many are stunned when we answer in their native tongue. Surprised laughter is the most common response, followed by a flood of questions. Even with all the initial stares and attention, I still felt an underlying sense of comfort. Zombodze will make a great home for us.

what we eat

We eat mostly rice or lipalishi (a corn-based staple) or samp (another corn-based staple) with stewed veggies ladled on top—lots of potatoes, squash, sweet potatoes, carrots, celery, onions, spinach, cabbage, beets… your usual winter-crop variety. Delicious and fresh. And of course avocados, but soon they’ll be out of season. Sometimes we’ll have meat, but not very often. Tuna from a can, sometimes chicken. This country really loves to eat beef and chicken and meat in general, but we don’t usually prepare it in our own kitchen (it just doesn’t keep without a fridge). For lunch we’ll usually eat a sandwich—peanut butter and banana, tuna, egg) or rice/stew leftovers, and a piece of fruit. For breakfast we’ll eat oatmeal or cereal (corn flakes, muesli) or boiled eggs. We like to make popcorn in the evenings, and Jamie sometimes bakes something delicious and sweet for me—brownies or cookies. The grocery stores in Nhlangano are well-stocked, and the local gardens/farms are providing our host family with a good, fresh supply of basics (they’re among the fortunate homesteads).

Our diet here is, for the most part, seasonal; it will dramatically change when summer rains bring new and different veggie harvests and a wider variety of fruits. There’s nothing quite as enjoyable as eating from the family’s farm and gardens—when we get to our home in Zombodze, we’ll plant our own garden. In fact, we already have plots waiting for us at both the big community garden and at the OVC garden.

I like our current menu. I do, however, miss pizza. And Mexican food.

care package possibilities

Sorry about not posting any photos yet... the internet connections in Swaziland are dial-up and we rarely even get online at all. We're working on it...

Anyway, We’ve been compiling a list of possible “care package” items. Many of you have been kind enough to inquire about what we’d like to receive in the mail, so here’s a list of ideas.

Real coffee (ground, as we have no grinder)

Splenda

Any DVDs (movies, shows, whatever)

Cds full of music- and blank ones are good too

multi-vitamins

a world map

anything at all from Trader Joe’s— we miss it!

Crystal Light packets

Emergen-C

Travel mugs for coffee/tea

Tom’s of Maine toothpaste

Febreeze (a little goes a long ways here)

US magazines—Harpers, Atlantic Monthly, whatever’s interesting and current.

Books are always great to get, but their weight makes them spendy to ship.

Crossword puzzles

Pictures

This is just a wish list. Don’t feel obligated to send stuff—having sent ourselves a few packages, we know what it costs. We’re quite happy to get a letter or just to see messages in our email inboxes from time to time, and we thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers for us. We’re happy and healthy-- Siyajabula kuba eSwatini! (we are happy to be in Swaziland).

Zombodze

Aug2- Today we found out where our “permanent site” is—the homestead and community we’ll move to on August 29, when our training ends. The place in which we’ll spend the next two years living and working is called Zombodze, a Chiefdom in the Shiselweni region of Swaziland. That’s the same region we’re currently in, and in fact Zombodze isn’t far from Nhlangano, where our training is centered. We were given some basic info about it today (including a picture of our home), so I’ll tell you what I know…
Zombodze is very close to the southernmost Swaziland/South Africa border. Durban, SA, is about 325km away, and the nearest actual coastline is perhaps half that distance from us. Geographically, it’s in the “middle-veld,” which is not as mountainous or cool as the high-veld and not as oppressively hot/arid as the low-veld. It is a rolling, grassy countryside with large tracts of forest (timber farms) interspersed with crops (mostly maize/corn) and pastures. The setting is quite pastoral and serene, with lots of dusty red-dirt roads, grazing cows and goats, barbed-wire fences and hilly horizons in all directions. The night sky is pitch black and full of blazing stars (the cloudy band of the Milky Way has a certain depth to it). The most common sounds are not cars or trucks but roosters and cows, goats and dogs. Hearing a plane fly overhead is rare—I’ve noticed just two since arriving in this region.
Once in Zombodze, we’ll live on the Nsibandze homestead (that’s our new Swazi surname) in a 2-room home with electricity. There is a water tap on the property, somewhere behind the house, so we won’t need to walk far (if at all) for water. In all, it sounds like we’ll be quite comfortable. And we’ll have plenty of work/project opportunities there, including assisting health clinics, schools and education centers, HIV/AIDS care and support groups, orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs), and even some community water and local garden projects. We may even get to make use of an unoccupied office at the community’s kaGogo center—which would be great. We’re relatively close (within a few hours’ travel) to 5 other PCVs, including the Jacksons—good friends and fellow marrieds—which means we’ll see familiar faces in Nhlangano from time to time. Next week we’ll spend 4 or 5 days/nights there for some “on the job training,” so we’ll get to see what our new living and working environment will be like.
Meantime, our training continues—siSwati lessons, cultural training, and technical info sessions. We’re enjoying our time living on the Ngambule farm in the small community of Ekhiza, just outside of Nhlangano. Our life here is simple yet busy. The weather is gradually warming, but the nights are still chilly—and the days never get downright hot. The rains are late again this year and the landscape is dry (dramatically shifting weather patterns over the past 5-10 years have seriously impacted Swaziland’s agricultural schedule, worsening its food shortages and drought durations). The air is commonly tinged with smoke from crop or grass fires, some intentional and some accidental. Jamie jogs nearly everyday and we enjoy the occasional long walk around Ekhiza—along the forest’s edge, or out to a boulder-strewn promontory overlooking crops and pastures on the hills below. The Shiselweni region is perhaps the least visited of Swaziland’s four regions, since it lacks tourist destinations like game parks or cultural centers. But it is certainly beautiful—slow-paced, mostly farming communities with smaller cities and towns. This remote, rural setting in southern Swaziland will be our home for the next few years, and we’re glad to discover that people here are friendly, inviting, and exceedingly generous.

a missing generation

I want to elaborate on the below-noted 43% HIV infection rate for 30-35 year olds here in Swaziland. This, along with the broader figure of 24% for all 15-45 year olds, represents a generational die-off: a huge hole in the demographic composition of the country. And while all age groups of a society play important roles in its functioning, this group is especially critical—these are the workers and innovators in an economy, the parents and breadwinners in an extended family, the emerging community leaders. So as the parents die, it is the grandparents who are left to raise the children, or else siblings oftentimes too young to earn income (child-headed households are all-too common). And with so many workers of the so-called “productive population” sick and/or dying, Swaziland’s economy greatly suffers, unable to produce even enough jobs for the trained and able-bodied (for example, Swaziland currently has throngs of trained yet unemployed teachers).
As one doctor from the Baylor Pediatric Clinic put it, it’s the grandmothers who are “holding this country together right now.” Because more and more, they’re the ones left with the increasingly difficult task of feeding the children on their extended homesteads. The other day Jamie and I visited the kitchen of our new friend, Make Dlamini (mother Dlamini), where a small crowd of little boys and girls played after having just eaten dinner. We asked how many mouths her kitchen fed. Her answer was startling: 23, including herself. Mostly toddlers and young kids—and not her own. She feeds them every single day with food prepared on a big wood-burning stove in a kitchen without electricity or running water—and without hesitation she invited us to come over for dinner when we get the chance.
The Baylor Clinic doctor’s observation is exactly right. Wonderful, hardworking, unflappable matriarchs are holding together the fabric of this paternalistic country. But of course, they are in increasingly short supply—Swaziland’s current life expectancy is around 36 years old.

facts/figures about Swaziland's HIV/AIDS crisis

A few Sundays ago, we were riding back from church in our brother’s car, and we passed the Nhlangano SOS campus—an organization that houses and cares for orphans and vulnerable children. He pointed it out to us. Orphans and vulnerable children— or OVC’s—are among the Peace Corps’ primary concerns here in Swaziland. Currently one-third of all Swazi children are considered OVCs, and by 2010 there may be as many as 200,000 of them (the entire population of Swaziland is around 950,000). I thought of these numbers as we drove by the SOS dormitories and wondered what bhuti (brother) thought or knew of the magnitude of Swaziland’s OVC problem. So I asked a leading question: “are there a lot of orphans in your community?”
“Oh, my friend,” he said, shaking his head, “every single homestead is an orphanage.”
If he exaggerates, it’s not by much. Nearly every home really is caring for orphans, be they the sons of deceased neighbors or the daughters of deceased relatives. Every home, whether well-off or impoverished, has taken in someone else’s children and now feeds them, clothes them, protects them. Our family is no different.
There are a lot of roadside advertisements for coffins and funeral services. A fellow PCT
(Peace Corps Trainee) pointed out that coffin ads are nearly as common here as are beer ads in the US. It’s true. There are a lot of funerals in Swaziland these days. The big killers here are tuberculosis and pneumonia, both of which are opportunistic illnesses that can easily overwhelm the weakened immune systems of HIV-infected peoples. Here are a few HIV-prevalence statistics for Swaziland:

19% of the entire Swazi population is infected by HIV (currently the highest “overall population” infection rate in the world).
43% of all 30-35 year old Swazis are infected with HIV.
24% of all 15-45 year old Swazis (the “productive population”) are infected with HIV.
39% of women tested at antenatal clinics are HIV positive (this is the “ANC rate,” and it tends to skew high because they’re pregnant women—that is, they’ve had unprotected sex).
Swaziland’s HIV-TB co-infection rate is 80%, and it currently has the world’s highest TB rate: 1,100 cases per 100,000 people.

Amazingly, the casual traveler passing through Swaziland would not, I don’t think, detect the disaster that such alarming stats reveal. The cities are bustling, the buses are full and running, the major roads are paved, cell phone ring-tones fill the air, the markets abound with fruits and veggies and even meat, children walk to and from school in prim and proper uniforms… and all appears to be normal. A casual glance at Swaziland would not reveal a pandemic in action. We have only been here for a few weeks upon writing this, and if we left tomorrow I’d be unable to tell you what this health catastrophe “looked” like; I’d have to show you a snapshot of a coffin advertisement, or point out a fresh row of graves on the edge of my village, or a hillside terraced with SOS dormitories, or introduce you to the new young face in the kitchen at dinnertime.
So perhaps this disaster is like an undertow: those who stay on the surface might paddle right over it and never feel the deadly current sweeping beneath them. But it’s there.