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.