Election season in Swaziland is over

Sept. 21- jamie-girl, here...

Life here is Zombodze has undergone a few changes this past week. The last school term of the year started on Monday. Groups of maroon-uniformed boys and girls are walking to class every morning while I am out jogging. The term began a week later than planned due to recent celebrations on September 6th marking Swaziland and the King’s 40th birthdays. As a result of the school children’s return to class, the bo-make market near school has increased their supply of chips, emaswidi (candies), and frozen juice, i.e. colored sugar water, sort of like a snow cone, which they sell in sandwich bags. The children bite a small hole in the corner of the bag to carefully suck the liquid on their lunch break or their long walk home. Children frequently ask Tim and I to give them “emaswidi”—even adults boldly make the request. I suppress the urge to say, “I can’t give you emaswidi, but I can give you information about HIV/AIDS, support groups, and where to get tested. All you are asking of me is for candy-- really? I haven’t done a very good job explaining to you why I am here. Please, ask me for more.” Zombodze has a history of outsiders coming into their community, and recently, much of that relationship has been centered on food handouts and other foreign aid reliefs as drought and poverty have hit Swaziland. So, the concept of us facilitating community driven improvements and building their capacity is something we will need to explain as we continue to interact with community members.
Elections, which take place on a 5-year cycle, were also held this past week across Swaziland. It has been exciting to be here during this time. Swazis are increasingly vocal about their struggle with unemployment, rising food prices, and growing numbers of orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs). They are definitely demanding the government’s attention. People lined up for at least 200 meters to vote in Zombodze on Friday. Police officers were present to monitor peaceful protesters, but otherwise the day was without incident in our community. From our standpoint, the completion of elections provides us with the person we will be partnering with as we propose community development projects during our service.
Zombodze elected the first disabled representative in the country’s history. He is a T12 paraplegic who was injured about 20 years ago in a mining accident in South Africa. He recovered for a year in Pretoria before returning to Swaziland. He has devoted his life to advocating for the marginalized disabled population of Swaziland and actively partnered with many organizations to secure equipment and wheelchairs for the disabled. He has formed a group of nearly 300 people with disabilities. Incredibly, I am the first physical therapist he has ever met in Swaziland. I’m planning to make myself available to his group when they meet to help in any way I can. It’s amazing to me that of all the places in the world, Peace Corps sent us to Swaziland, and of all the sites in Swaziland, we were assigned to a community in which a community leader has an organized group of people with disabilities that I am in a position to help. I have to believe that is not just coincidence. I wasn’t anticipating doing much work directly related to physical therapy, but now that the opportunity has presented itself, I am wishing I had brought more materials!
Also this past week, we finished planting our second garden with the bo-make and joined the struggle to water our seeds. We have trenches of cabbage, onion, carrot, beet and tomato, as well as individual holes with green peppers. Tim and I are withholding our enthusiasm at this point until we actually see sprouts of green poke up from the soil. We don’t have much confidence in our gardening capabilities. We have faithfully done what we were instructed to do by knowledgeable Swazis: form trenches, sprinkle manure and fertilizer in them along with the seeds, cover the seeds with long bunches of dried grass to retain the scarce moisture we are providing them, and water everyday. It sounds relatively simple, but we remain doubtful. Providing water everyday has been our challenge. We are learning that the trench system that supplies water to our two gardens is not regulated between the OVC and bo-make groups. There appears to be no schedule to allow either reservoir to adequately fill up, leaving lots of water stranded in the trench and wasting the valuable, scarce resource of water that each of them is depending upon. We are hoping that our involvement in both places will help us to be viewed as neutral as we work toward a solution to allocate the water effectively.
Finally, the weather has also been unpredictable and changing. I guess Spring usually is. The sky fluctuates from hot and sunny to cloudy and rainy in a matter of hours. The wind is our one constant, but even it is erratic, blowing from various directions each time we venture outside. Truth be told, we’ve been experiencing more dreary days with thunderstorms or drizzle than anything else the past few weeks. It is more pacific northwest than the pacific northwest, if that is possible (On this point, my husband respectfully disagrees. I am not qualified to make such a statement). The difference being that the muddy ground is mixed with animal waste and the temperature outside is the same as indoors. I’ve been drinking more hot drinks than I probably should and we crawl into bed early to take advantage of our blankets. On the up side, watering the garden has been easier.