The Swaziland Cookbook

Our journey by the numbers

2010-12-14T07:08:00.000-08:00

We're in the airport here in Siem Reap, Cambodia, about to board a plane and begin the final leg of our long journey home. After a daylong stopover in Seoul, Korea, we'll arrive in Seattle on Dec. 15th-- first time on American soil since we left for Swaziland back in June 2008. Are we excited? yes, very. Are we a little nervous? yep. Tired? uh huh.

Anyway, it hasn't been easy to update this blog since leaving Ethiopia, and I'm not prepared to attempt any narrative summary of travels-past at this late stage, so I'll not try. After all, we'll soon be seeing everyone in person. So instead, here's a numerical summary; a by-the-numbers look at our trip from Swaziland to this airport in Cambodia... we had some time on our hands while riding a bus yesterday and started counting things.

# of days on the road: 130

# of countries: 12 (including Korea; not including Bahrain 'cause we never left the airport)

# of different motels/guesthouses/hostels: 47

# of different campsites: 11

# of train rides: 6

# of boat rides: 19

# of (large) bus rides: 26

# of motorcycle rides: 2

# of taxi rides (we always try to avoid): 18

# of bicycle-rental days: 5

# of plane rides: 7 (including the 2 we're about to take)

# of packages mailed back to the USA: 8

# of times we got sick (combined): 6

# of sunglasses lost/broken: 5

# of islands visited: 16

# of bribes paid: 0

# of books read: 12 (6 each)

# of Hollywood movies viewed (in theater): 3

Gigabytes of photos taken: about 20

# of bottled-waters purchased (we always try to avoid): 1

# of transports shared with vomiting passengers: 5

# of times the vomiting passenger was one of us: 1

See you all very soon!!

heading to Cairo

2010-10-16T01:34:00.000-07:00

It's our last day in Ethiopia-- been here nearly a month now-- and we are looking forward to Egypt. First stop: Cairo.

Exploring Ethiopia has been very challenging and rewarding. We stuck to what's commonly called the "northern circuit," visiting the towns of Bahir Dar, Gonder, Debark/Simien Mountains, Axum, Lalibela, and of course Addis Ababa. We did it using all public transport, and with mixed success. Sometimes trying to get a public bus or minibus proved really hard, other times it was easy.

Getting harrassed as a foreigner has been as commonplace as anywhere we've ever travelled (it's on the level of India), and that is a pretty big annoyance. But we've also met some great people and forgec genuine friendships. In fact, later today we'll visit the home of our new friends here in Addis, meet their kids, have a meal, etc.

More on Ethiopia later-- just wante to let you all know that we're headed on to Egypt now. New language, new foods, new sites and sounds and adventures...

Visa Talk: Current info on East African Country Visas

2010-09-24T06:36:00.000-07:00

A word about the Sudan visa situation for us lucky Americans...

There's a lot of conflicting info circulating online about what's required and what things cost. This is what we've learned firsthand (and it's been backed up by some other US passport holders in the past few days). First of all, there is currently no cost difference between the transit visa and the single-entry tourist visa. I know-- that makes no sense. But the Embassy made it clear, that is their current policy. Secondly, the cost is USD$200 per visa. I know-- outrageous; no comparison anywhere else in Africa that I'm aware of. We've elected NOT to pay this fee, and are instead spending the money on a flight from Ethiopia straight to Cairo, foregoing Sudan altogether. Which is a bummer, because we badly wanted to travel through Sudan... but not THAT bad. But if you're planning on getting one here in Addis, here's what the Sudan Embassy (here in Addis) told us on Sept. 24th. you'll need:

- 1 passport photo (but bring 2)

- copy of visa from your country of onward travel (if headed north, then they want to see your Egypt visa as evidence that you intend to move on)

-a photocopy of your passport (make it a nice color copy- don't give them any excuse)

- $200, US currency only

Notice that a "letter of introduction" was not mentioned to us, though it may come in handy while transiting through Sudan. I don't know. And also note that you will be expected to "register" once in Sudan proper, which involves a fee as well. So if/when you get your visa, the fun is not over.

And a quick note about acquiring Egyptian visas here in Addis: there is a 15 day processing wait, and apparently no way around it for Americans. UK citizens, Aussies, and plenty of other Western country nationals can get this time down to just a few days, but there is nothing that the helpful Embassy staff can do for us Americans-- we simply must wait. Also, the Egypt visa fee at their Addis Embassy is the same low price you'll find at the airport: US$20.

Lastly, here's what we've experienced regarding Kenya and Tanzania visas for Americans. Tanzania is crazy. each border post seems to give a different price and policy. Most Americans are currently paying US$100 per visa at the borders-- a multiple entry extended stay document. In this scenario the border officials will insist that the US$50 single-entry visa is no longer available to Americans (because the US has made it especially hard for Tanzanians to enter into the US!). At the airport, Americans have recently been paying US$100 as well, but we've heard a few sporadic reports of US$50 at the airport as well. at Tanzanian Embassies abroad, the US$50 single-entry visa seems to be the standard (this is definitely true for the Maputo embassy). What WE did at the Tanzanian border was this: we insisted on a US$30 transit Visa, which gave us 14 days. But be warned: in Zanzibar they'll likely spot this and explain to you that, if you're visiting Zanz, you're not really "in transit." At that point, simply play dumb and insist that you "upgrade" your transit visa to the regular single-entry visa for an additional US$20. This way, you've avoided the US$100 nonsense.

In Kenya, the visa situation for Americans is also variable, depending upon which border post you happen to be crossing. We crossed the Southern border, between Tanga and Mombasa (on the coast), and were charged US$50 for a single-entry 3-month visa. BUT, Americans that crossed in from Uganda have been paying US$25 for the same visa-- and an american that flew into Nairobi paid just US$10 at the airport for it (though her receipt said $25). So there is no consistency at all.

As for Ethiopia... oh boy. where to begin? actually, right now, for Americans, it's quite simple: the ONLY visas they're issuing to us, whether transit or otherwise, is at the airport. Period. No overlanders are being granted visas at the border crossings or neighboring embassies. So currently the only way to get an Ethiopian visa is to fly into Addis. And once you're there, it's very simple: US$20, takes a few minutes in a small office adjoining the Customs gate.

Pictures!

2010-09-24T05:15:00.000-07:00

finally- a few pics from our travels. We're currently in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), and will leave the city tomorrow for some extensive traveling in the north of the country. We're looking forward to leaving Addis: smog, traffic, sidewalk chaos, and not much in the way of sights to see. Though we did enjoy the Ethiopian National Museum, and we are loving the cafe culture-- coffee is amazing, pastries are delicious, and food in general is really great. Oh, and the cost is cheap: coffee for like 25 cents and a fancy lunch for 2-3 bucks. Beers: about 75 cents.

For the first time since June 2008, we're in the Northern Hemisphere.

A cuddly 500-pound kitty we saw along the roadside in Kenya's Maasai Mara National Park.

downtown Mombasa waterfront from the Old Town District's Fort Jesus.

Stone Town, Zanzibar: beautiful doors & alleyways, fascinating people, great street food.

Pangane, a tiny fishing village in N. Mozambique. stayed a few days, could've stayed a few weeks.

The view from our dhow, island-hopping through Mozambique's Quirimbas Archipelago.

Tim atop a giant termite mound on the island of Ibo, Mozambique.

Jamie and Jason checking the trusty Moz guidebook on Ilha de Mozambique.

Hi from Nairobi

2010-09-17T02:44:00.000-07:00

We're in the big city of Nairobi and enjoying the cosmopolitan feel of things. It's been a while since walking down a big, urban sidewalk.

Since last posting, we've spent time in Zanzibar, an island off the coast of Tanzania. It's a fiercely autonomous section of Tanzania, and its cultural influence is more rooted in the Middle East than the interior of Africa. It's 99% Muslim, and we were there for the big festival that marks the end of Ramadan-- Eid al Fitr. That was great: lots of good food and families dressed up and enjoying the cool night air.

Zanzibar is a totally unique place, blending Arab, Indian, and Swahili cultures. In fact, it's the birthplace of the Swahili language. Fascinating history to this island, and overall it's one of the highlights of our trip so far.

After spending 5 days there, we took an overnight ferry north to the neighboring island of Pemba, but we didn't get off the boat until it landed back on the mainland in Tanga. From there, it was back on buses (2 nice ones in a row-- unheard of thus far in our journeys) to Mombasa and then west to Nairobi. Mombasa was interesting but mostly charmless (except its Old Town area), and Nairobi is, thankfully, not living up to its big bad reputation for crime (nickname: Nairobbery). Maybe things here have improved recently... we're having a good time and are enjoying the lack of attention we get as westerners wandering the streets. Crowds are friendly, mostly uninterested in us, and even helpful when we need assistance, but there are still plenty of touts trying to sell us safari packages. And we bought one.

So tomorrow we head out on a 3-day safari trip to the famous Maasai Mara National Park. It would be sort of a tourist crime not to visit this place while in Kenya, and we're good, law-abiding tourists. Once we return from the safari we'll spend one more day in Nairobi and then fly to Addis Ababa (Ethiopia). Apparently, the only way to obtain an Ethiopian tourist visa right now is through the airport. Overlanders are having lots of trouble getting them from the Embassy, and no luck at all getting them at the borders. no idea why. so we'll fly to avoid the hassle (and overland through Northern Kenya is said to be really tough-- glad to miss it).

Leaving Mombasa for Nairobi marked the end of our Swahili Coast travels. No more Bahr al-Zanj (that's what the ancient Arab traders called this section of the Indian Ocean). From now on we'll stick to the interior regions. And it's been an amazing portion of our trip, traveling through island chains and fishing villages, sailing on dhows, strolling along plenty of empty beaches and swimming in vivid blue waters... truly unforgettable. For us, the highlight of that section was traveling with our good friends, Jason and Erica. 4 is a good number in which to travel. Together we endured some pretty wild transport adventures and saw some unparalleled beauty-- land and people-- and we'll never forget it. Personal highlights include: Maputo, 1 (and only 1) decent surf session in Tofu, Ilha de Mozambique, playing music with new friends in Quilemane, sailing through the Quirimbas Archipelago and the mainland fishing village of Pangane, a long and wild day of crossing the Moz/Tanzanian border, street food in Dar es Salaam, and wandering through Zanzibar's surreal maze of alleys in Stone Town.

So on to the next section of this voyage home: Nairobi north to Cairo, spending most of our time in Northern Ethiopia. From Cairo we'll hang a right.

We'll be home soon, but not too soon.

We're In Dar Es Salaam

2010-09-05T04:49:00.000-07:00

After a great month in Mozambique, we've made it to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania's biggest city. Just offshore is the island of Zanzibar, and we'll be ferrying over there in a few days. We've been on public transport the whole time-- which has included boats, motorcycles, trucks, minibuses and big buses... it's been quite an adventure.

Mozambique was amazing. We spent most of our time along the coast, visiting fishing villages and cities on the mainland and venturing out to islands just offshore. I caught a few waves in Tofu, then we met up with our friends, Jason and Erika, in Vilankulos-- which is not really much of a town. But the Bazaruto Archipelago just offshore is beautiful, so we spent a day boating around. Then we all went north to the city of Biera, Quilemane, Pemba... and after Pemba we found ourselves in the far north of Moz-- a very remote place. The most impressive thing in the north was the Quirimbas Archipelago, a string of over 2 dozen white sand isles surrounded by azure waters and coral reefs. It took some effort to get ourselves out there, but once we did, it was paradise. We spent a few days on the main island of Ibo, and then another 3 days island-hopping on a dhow (traditional sailboat), snorkeling and camping on uninhabited islands.

Back on the mainland in Pangane (maybe the most beautiful setting for a fishing village I've ever seen), we hit the road once again, aiming for a remote coastal border crossing point into Tanzania. The roads from this point onward were... interesting. From endless washboard dirt roads to deep-sand ruts winding through forests, this section of the trip was pretty hard on our butts. We spent some quality time in the backs of pickups and got filthy. The border crossing was difficult. I dodged a bribe attempt on the Moz side and dealt with a difficult border post agent on the Tanz side (suddenly the $50 visas were $100... we ended up paying $30 for a transit visa, giving us 14 days to get out of Tanzania). All this was followed the next day by a long and bumpy bus ride into Dar. We'll be staying put for a few days before moving on, mainly just to catch our breath and nurse our wounds.

wish we could post some pics now, but maybe next time.

first stop: Maputo

2010-08-10T22:37:00.000-07:00

We kicked off our post-service travel in Mozambique, just across the border of Swaziland, in Maputo. Our gracious hosts were Kim and Peter, who both teach at the international school and live in a great downtown neighborhood. We found Maputo's grid layout easy to navigate and spent a couple of days walking around and finishing a few errands.

Maputo is a vibrant city. We noticed renovation projects and new construction sites every few blocks. The mix of architectural styles juxtaposed on Maputo's streets is an interesting window into Mozambique's history. Portugese tiled roofs and iron-fenced balconies, round corners and embellishments of art deco, the cement block buildings of the soviet era--all together on the same street. We had a good time admiring them all.

Maputo has a cafe and siesta culture. Nearly all businesses close from 12-2pm and some even until 3pm for siesta hours and many people take this time to sit at the sidewalk cafes and have a shot of expresso and watch the world go by.

Maputo also has a variety of markets, each with a maze of stalls and vendors selling fresh or frozen seafood, tropical fruits and vegetables, handicrafts, curios, and spices. I (Jamie girl) need to brush up my bargaining skills again. Current edibles in abundance right now include tomatoes, oranges, tangerines (naranjites), roasted corn cobs, and a rainbow of other fruits and veggies.

We've planned our stay (unintentionally) during a very pleasant weather period in Mozambique--dry, breezy, and mild, with the temperatures during the day hovering around 70-80 F. It feels so good to step outside and feel the warmth of the sun on our skin and a light wind on our faces. We woke up this morning to a cloudy sky, but it had burned off by 8am.

We plan to visit the promenade and the beach today before leaving Maputo tomorrow very early (4:30am) to head northward to Inhambane and Tofo, where Jamie boy hopes to do some surfing if the conditions allow it.

Mozambique's modern history is really interesting, especially from about 1962 onwards. The symbols on its flag say it all-- does any other national flag feature an AK-47? Maputo displays those turbulent chapters in its architecture and street names (many of them Communist icons like Mao, Lenin, Marx, etc). For further info on the main players of this country's independence from Portugal, Soviet/Marxist experiments (which proved thoroughly disastrous), and current one-party Democratic/free-market system, check out the following topics: Frelimo, Samora Machel, Renamo, and Joaquim Chissano for starters.

2-1/2 hours in 2-1/2 minutes

2010-07-28T03:15:00.000-07:00

Recently, many of you joined us in helping our local Christian church repair some severe storm damage their building incurred about 5 years ago. This was a completely unofficial effort on our part—not a Peace Corps thing, and last week we finished up our part of it. Those involved should have just received an email detailing what you helped do, but for everyone else I’ll summarize: (USD)$1255 was raised and, as a result, The church now has the building supplies needed to repair their roof (beams and corrugated sheets and screws and nails) and to rebuild the damaged sections of their concrete-brick walls. It’s not enough money to build a brand new church building, but it should be enough to make the existing one structurally sound.

Since we’re leaving next week, we won’t be around to see the final result of this effort. But with the materials now in-hand, their repair work can begin.

Anyway, I made a little video from some footage I took at one of the Sunday services (which are held in the damaged building, as you’ll see) so now you can all have a glimpse of this congregation in action.

Final Garden Project Update

2010-07-21T03:01:00.000-07:00

Well, our work on the community garden’s water system has finished, and I just turned in the final reports and paperwork to the Peace Corps office (it was a PC Partnership Project). So I thought I’d give you all a little summary report as well—after all, you helped fund it.

First of all, some numbers for you. I surveyed garden members recently, asking them about their homesteads, their garden usage and how this dry season compares to last year’s dry season—which was prior to our project. And as you’d expect, having a reliable source of water in the garden has changed things for the better. Nearly everyone I talked with reported having a better food harvest and planting more seedlings this dry season. And right now, about 80% of the garden’s land has been cleared and/or plowed, compared to about 35% utilization last year. Garden membership has already doubled (from 10 active homesteads to 20, and from about 25 active gardeners to over 50), and it continues to grow. What's most encouraging is, all this growth is happening during the dry season.

And here are some water system specs:

1 concrete streamside reservoir
730 meters of new 110mm underground piping (and about 1km of total underground piping)
1 big steel filter placed over the beginning of our pipeline
5 shut-off valves located at various spots along the pipeline
32 standpipes and self-locking garden spigot heads (20 of them brand new)
4 big concrete water tanks inside the garden
3 pipeline flush-out locations
1 new maintenance wing of the Garden Committee
1 new water system maintenance manual (in siSwati)
1 big bag of spare parts, tools and repair accessories for the Garden Committee

Now for some pictures of the new water system’s main components...

Here’s one of the standpipes and garden spigots. There are 32 of them in the garden (16 on 2 different pipe rows), and we replaced 20 of them.

Here’s the water reservoir. It’s where our pipeline begins.

Here’s the main flush-out pipe and valve. This streambed is the low-point of our pipeline, so it's the best place to drain (and clean out) the system.

Here’s one of the garden water tanks. We built 4 of these in selected spots in the garden. Together they hold about 3700 gallons of water in reserve, especially useful when the pipeline needs to be shut off for maintenance or repairs.

Here is one of two lower flush-out spots. We installed these removable caps onto the end of the 2 rows of piping in the garden. Now they can flush out any debris or build-up from the spigot lines, which should considerably extend the life of the system.

Here’s the cover of our garden water system maintenance manual. It’s a 20-page guide to the system components, routine maintenance schedules, and replacement parts. And it’s in siSwati, thanks to the translation assistance of a few local friends. I distributed it to all the Garden Committee members as well as their 4 maintenance assistants/experts.

Much of our recent work on this project has been aimed at enhancing the long-term sustainability of this water system. And in this case, sustainability really hinges upon maintenance: will the garden members continue to maintain their water system, will they make future repairs properly and protect its components from vandals and cows… all of this remains to be seen. We’ve equipped them with all the tools and skills we could think of for them to do these things, and now it’s time for us to let go and step away. After being an active part of that garden for almost 2 years now, letting go isn’t an easy thing to do.

But when you’re done, you’re done. And we’re satisfied with the fruits of this labor, satisfied that it provides a good opportunity for these local gardeners to bring more food into their kitchens and to earn some income selling their surplus crop (right now in the garden, the going rate for a head of cabbage is E5, or about 65 cents). So we thank all of you who contributed to this project. You really did help improve the daily lives of people in Zombodze, and we hope this little report makes that truth a bit more tangible to you.

Primary School Library Grand Opening

2010-07-16T06:46:00.000-07:00

The other week, Ngwane Central Primary School held a Grand Opening ceremony for its brand new (and first ever) library. In all, the project has been a great success, bridging old book donations with new ones from 3 different sources: Darien Book Aid, Books for Africa (which many of you personally donated through via the Peace Corps Partnership Program), and from the teachers and Penpal students in Cottonwood Arizona. In all, there are now over 2000 books on the shelves. A new Library Committee has been formed, a card catalogue has been created, books have been color-coded and organized by subjects and the lending can begin.

Thank you to all who contributed to this project. It's been a lot of fun for us, and really rewarding for everyone involved (hopefully you too).

Here's a very short video about the Grand Opening day...

And here are a few pics of the book check-in process, which we helped the kids do over a 2 or 3 week period.

This was early on, when the shelves were still mostly bare. In all, more than 30 kids helped us and a handful of teachers in the book check-in process. Many of them had never before known how to identify an author, publisher, or even title. So this was quite a crash-course for them.

Here's the book check-in assembly line. 5 stations, all in a long row... Henry Ford would be so proud.

We received enough dictionaries to keep one in every single classroom, plus have a few left in the library. this made the English teachers very, very happy.

We received lots of beginner/young kids' books as well as young-adult books. a good mix.

our Zombodze church needs help

2010-06-23T03:46:00.000-07:00

Over the past 20 months we've established a relationship with a small Christian church in our Swaziland chiefdom of Zombodze, and they have a pressing need that we thought perhaps some of you might want to consider as a charity/outreach opportunity. So if you and/or your church group are interested in helping to fund the construction of a new church building for this congregation, now is the time to contact us and donate.

This is an unofficial fundraising effort. No Peace Corps program affiliations, just us two trying to help our adopted church. Anyway, $5,600 (USD) is what's needed to make this happen-- $5,600 builds a church structure here!-- and we're inviting you to be part of it.

Here are the basics: some years back a storm severely damaged the church's one and only structure, collapsing half of their one-room concrete block building. There are about 60 church members, and they're quite poor-- can't raise enough money to fix the damage. They still meet there every Sunday, holding service under what remains of the roof, yet the building is just not safe. It suffered major structural damage (I inspected it), and all but the concrete slab needs to

be completely replaced.

So I had the pastor make a listing of the building materials needed to build a new structure (same size/dimensions as the existing one), and we've now received competitive price quotes from two local hardware stores for the purchase of that material.

The cost of materials comes to about US$4,300 at the current exchange rate, and the cost of labor is about US$1,300. So for about $5,600 USD we could build this congregation a brand new church building.

Here's how it'll work. No cash will be given directly to the church leaders; instead, we'll collect donations personally and then purchase the building materials ourselves (in conjunction with the pastor, of course) which will be delivered to the building site. Contact us for more info.

We're leaving Swaziland in August, so we need to set a tight fundraising timeline on this project: please contact us no later than July 15th. That's about 2 weeks away. Any donation amount is gratefully accepted-- and please consider asking your church group to participate.

Thanks! email us: cooktimothy@hotmail.com and we'll tell you how to donate.

What happens after Swaziland?

2010-05-11T02:41:00.001-07:00

We’re now in the final 12 weeks of our Peace Corps service here in Swaziland, so I think it’s high-time to brief everyone on the details surrounding our departure. If you don’t feel like reading the below stuff and just want it in a nutshell, here it is: Our Peace Corps service ends on August 7^th, after which we’ll be traveling for a while through Africa, India, and SE Asia before coming home.

First of all, our official “Close of Service” date is August 7^th. Some people in our group are leaving earlier while others are extending their service or are otherwise staying here in Swaziland for longer than that… but we’re outta here after the first week of August. This date is certain.

And we won’t exactly be coming straight back to the U.S. We’ll be taking a more… circuitous… route back home. Without getting into too much detail, we feel it’s important to give you all back home a sense of what we’re endeavoring to do. Maybe you have travel plans that intersect with ours— maybe you’ll even want to make some. Or maybe you’re just wondering when we’re planning to get home. Either way, I hope the following info helps. But since these plans will likely change a bit, we’re not yet ready to give an exact date of return to the US.

After leaving Swaziland we’ll go to Mozambique and travel northward through that country with our friends (also married PCVs serving here in Swaziland) up into Tanzania. Could take as long as 3 weeks in Moz.

Then we plan to go to Zanzibar, an island off the Tanzanian coast. Once back on the mainland we’ll travel northward through Tanzania and Kenya, and then we’ll pause in Ethiopia to spend some time that country. Maybe 2 or 3 weeks in Ethiopia. Then we’ll continue north through Sudan (or perhaps fly over it entirely) and spend a little time in Egypt. This might be sometime in late September.

From Egypt we plan to head east into Jordan (and perhaps even Israel), and fly from Amman (Jordan) to New Delhi, India. This might be in October. We’d like to spend a number of weeks in both the north and south of India. Then we’ll fly east from India to Thailand, which will be a launching point for travels in Southeast Asia—especially Cambodia and Thailand, but also hopefully Vietnam, Indonesia and/or Malaysia. This would all be around December.

Now, what we do after Southeast Asia has not yet been planned. We’d like to be back in the States for Christmas… but we’d also like find an opportunity to travel eastward across the Pacific. So we just don’t know yet. But as always, it’ll depend upon at least 4 powerful and interrelated forces of travel: money, opportunities for further travel, things pressing back home, and the potent force called “what we feel like doing.”

We’ve been given the very unique opportunity of being able to start a trip already halfway around the world, and we really want to make the most of it. So often in life, one either has plenty of time and no money, or plenty of money and no time. It makes big trips really hard to plan. But we have been given the rare gift of having, for a brief window in time, both time and money, and for those of us who love traveling that’s just not an opportunity to pass up. So while we dearly miss all our friends and family back in the States, we’re going to make a few stops before coming home. Hope you’ll understand.

We do not currently have a day or week in mind for an eventual homecoming, but as soon as we do we’ll let everyone know. Until then, let me share what we’re currently thinking. We’d love to be home for Christmas 2010. That said, we’re not prepared to set that as a “deadline” on our travels. At least, that’s our current mindset.

What we are fairly certain of is this: given our chosen path of travel, we plan on making our US landfall in Seattle. And after an initial round of long-awaited reunions in the NW, we’ll travel east to the Quad Cities for the same. From there, our next destination will depend on job/employment developments.

Of course, we’ll keep you posted as all these plans take further shape. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers and support during this rather unique transition. And if you have any travel plans coinciding with ours, or if you want to make some, please do get in touch with us! We’d love to meet up, and we’re flexible.

Animals!

2010-05-11T02:33:00.000-07:00

What I’ll most remember about April 2010 is all the wildlife we encountered. We visited South Africa’s Kruger National Park, and in 3 days saw more wild animals than all the rest of our time in Africa combined. We also paid a brief visit to Botswana’s Chobe National Park and spent time canoeing and camping in the Okavango Delta (also in Botswana), both areas teeming with animals. I’ve never been much of a wildlife tourist, but seeing so many unique wild animals in their natural environment has been pretty cool. So… what did we see? Here’s a run-down of the highlights.

Lions: various glimpses, from a male sitting in the grass at night in Kruger to an adolescent lounging on a dead tree in Chobe. I tend to mistake lions for rocks when looking for them in grassy fields, even with the help of binoculars. So the only lions I’ve seen had to be pointed out to me (repeatedly) by others. Who knows how many I’ve missed—certainly more than I’ve managed to see. Guess I wouldn’t survive for very long in the African wilds… and I’d be exhausted, running away from all those rocks.

Crocodile: our best sighting had to be Sunset Lake in Kruger—by far the most frightening lake I’ve ever laid eyes on. Ask Mandy or Alisha about it. They’ll back me up on this.

Hippopotamus: All over Kruger (including the scary lake noted above). But perhaps our most memorable encounter with these massive and temperamental beasts was in the Okavango Delta, where we bobbed in a Mokoro (traditional dugout canoe) and watched them go about their hippo-business from an unnervingly close distance. Their grunts and snorts are startling. And one night, while camping on one of the Delta’s islands, a troupe of them stomped right past our tent.

Elephants: too many to count. From close range encounters to distant sightings and road crossings, it’s always fun to watch them. My favorite sighting was probably in the Okavango Delta, where on the first day out we glided silently around a tall patch of grass to see what all the splashing was about: 2 adult elephants wading through the shallow waters, eating and drinking and enjoying themselves.

Wildebeest: they’re common in numbers, but not in appearances. Strange looking things—like a mash-up of buffalo and antelope and cow.

Giraffe: talk about strange looking… giraffes are really plentiful in Kruger, and we had plenty of up-close encounters with them. In fact, at one point, spotting a giraffe wasn’t even grounds for our stopping the car. The babies are especially cute—we always stopped for the babies.

Zebra: throngs of ‘em. They like to hang out with impala and giraffe and warthogs, and they’re quite social. And after careful inspection, I am confident in saying that they’re clearly white with black stripes, not black with white stripes.

Impala: the most plentiful of all animals listed here. Big packs of them. Best encounter with them was in Chobe, where two males were locked in a very long fight (a mating/dominance thing) while other males stood around and watched the action.

Rhinoceros: in Kruger we came upon three white rhino and watched from a distance of 10-20 meters as they munched on grass. Jeez they’re big. I wouldn’t have gotten out of our rental car for anything. It felt like Jurassic Park. Swaziland has lost its wild population of rhinos to poaching. In fact, in just 4 years (between 1988 and 1992) Swaziland lost 80% of its remaining rhinos to poachers. Anyway, if you’ve ever felt self-conscious about having beady little eyes and a disproportionately large nose, take heart and think of the poor rhino: they’ve got it much, much worse than you, proportionally speaking, and plus, they’ve got poachers to worry about. There’s no one hunting you for your big nose, is there? So cheer up.

Wild dogs: Perhaps my favorite wildlife encounter of all. Our first day in Kruger, at sunset, a big pack of them came trotting down the shoulder of the road we were on. They weren’t in a hurry, and neither were we. It was an exceedingly rare close-up look at this endangered animal. Then, the very next night along the same road, it happened again! Here they came, 20 strong, along the roadside. We could not believe our good fortune. Probably the same pack, out on their hunting rounds. They’re among the most skilled and efficient hunters in all of Africa, averaging one kill per day. They’re also among the rarest predators in Kruger (and apparently the whole continent). Anyway, they’re big dogs—not like a scrawny dingo or coyote—and their muzzles are thicker than a pit-bull’s… it was another “stay in the car” moment.

Kudu: of all the varieties of antelope in Southern Africa (and there are a lot), the kudu is my personal favorite. The males are enormous (think horse), their antlers are really long and spiraled, and they have great markings on their fur.

Warthogs: these ornery guys are everywhere. So common, in fact, I almost didn’t mention them here (sorry Mandy)… but I really like them. I like the way they trot around with their tail sprouted into the air and their monstrous head held high and proud. They’re face is exceedingly ugly, but what great posture. Once in Botswana we saw a family of them hanging out in the parking lot of the bus station. Commuters, I guess.

Water Buffalo: the males are big and scary. They always seemed to give me the evil eye-- and what have I ever done to them? They seem to relish standing in the middle of roadways, daring vehicles to get too close. Their strange, flat horns sit atop their heads like “little George Washington wigs,” as my wife puts it. Funny looking, and yet they don’t seem to have much of a sense of humor. They too offered a few “stay in the car” moments for me.

Hyena: just a peek at 3 of them, lying together on top of a big rock near the road just before sunset in Kruger. Great camouflage. Still, in the ancient blood-feud between lions and hyenas, I side with the lions. Sorry hyenas, but you just seem a bit too… villainous.

Baboons: absolute pests. The only reason I include them here is because in the Okavango Delta they’re actually living “wild” lives (as opposed to living off of human trash and roadkill), and once we even saw a baboon swimming from one little island to another. Swimming baboons? Crazy. Also, once in Chobe a one-armed baboon endeared himself to me. I was enjoying a cold beer on a shady patio and he came scampering down from the trees to ask for a sip. Poor little one-armed baboon, climbing around with all his two-armed peers, just trying to get by in this hard-luck world…

Vervet monkeys: also a bit too plentiful in human-rich areas, but not quite the pests that baboons are. They have a little black stripe across their forehead. Looks like a mono-brow. Hard not to smile when watching them.

Jackal: We only saw one, foraging along the edge of the Chobe River at sunrise while silhouetted storks kept their cautious eyes on him. Looks like a cross between a fox and a dog.

Birds: we’ve learned to identify lots of birds, either by sight or by song. Favorites include the fish eagle (which looks a lot like a bald eagle), the lilac-breasted roller (beautiful—and the national bird of Botswana, we’re told), the hornbill, different kinds of kingfishers and weavers, the corrie bustard (the funniest bird name), ostrich, honey-finder, the “go away” bird (cool Mohawk), various storks, jacana… that’s enough, I guess. In Botswana we hitched a ride with a couple from San Diego who had thus far identified 199 different bird species in their month of travel. Pretty impressive. They were anxious to get to 200 and debated whether or not to count a chicken that had crossed the road in front of us. They decided against counting it because, “it wasn’t in their book I concurred, and so, much to the chagrin of chickens everywhere, the San Diegans’ count remained at 199.

And of course there are all the lizards and snakes and frogs of all sizes, the crazy spiders and creepy-crawlies encountered in various campground showers, the bizarre assortment of flying insects (I especially liked all the colorful varieties of dragonfly in the Okavango) and the bats that feast on them (one whizzed so close to my head that I heard its wings whistle past my ear), the little biting ants and the beetles… my favorite of these is the dung beetle, which I finally saw up close in Botswana’s Tsodilo Hills (the Kalahari); such an industrious, mild-mannered little guy, not afraid to get his hands dirty.

Two big cats top our list of animals we’ve yet to see but really want to: leopard and cheetah. I don’t think we’ll go out of our way to see them, but with plenty of travel plans left on the African continent, I’m sure we’ll have opportunities.

Third big fun thing: Victoria Falls and Botswana

2010-05-11T02:25:00.000-07:00

Right after the COS conference (see "Seconf big fun thing") we set out for another few weeks of traveling. We hopped a plane from J-burg and landed in Livingstone, which is the Zambian side of Victoria Falls. April is when Vic Falls is flowing at its maximum capacity, and this year is an exceptionally “full” year. You’d think that’d be a good thing for sightseers like us, but in fact it’s actually too much water. The mist cloud rising up from the base of the falls is so enormous (over 1000 feet into the sky at times) that much of the falls is shrouded behind it. So most of the time we walked around in giant curtains of water, getting peeks of the actual falls here and there while the earth rumbled beneath our feet. Pretty exhilarating—certainly the largest, most imposing waterfall I’ll ever witness—but not much to take pictures of, and not that much to do in the way of activities. Rafting? Out of the question, as the river below was a raging torrent. Walking out on the rocks and islands above the falls? No way, as one slip would kill you.

So we cut our time in Vic Falls short by a day and went down to Botswana’s Chobe National Park, which is full of elephants and lions and pasty tourists packed into overpriced safari jeep tours. It was a beautiful place, but the freedom of movement within this park is very limited. If you don’t have your own reliable 4WD you need to sign up for a “game drive” or a “river cruise.” So we signed up and spent some time gawking at the wildlife and talking to other Westerners… and you know what? It was fun. I’m not too proud to admit it. Plus, it’s not everyday that you see warthogs roaming the grocery store parking lot or warthogs hanging around the town’s central bus station. And it’s not often that you watch the sunset from the banks of the fabled Chobe River.

Then it was on to some real adventure traveling. For the next week or so, our route took us through parts of Namibia and Botswana where there are no (or very few) public transportation options. So (and this is the adventure part) we did what the locals do: we hitch-hiked. It sounds crazy, but out there it’s quite common and safe and relatively easy to do, and it worked out well for us. We got lifts from long-haul truckers and locals and international tourists, from preachers and atheists and surly government officials… and every ride was its own little adventure. At one point we were in a tiny village looking for a ride to an exceedingly remote place in the northwest Kalahari called Tsodilo Hills, and we found a white South African ex-pat preacher cleaning out his church in preparation for a visiting group. So we spent a few hours helping him clean and in exchange he gassed up his land-cruiser and drove us out to the Hills—a drive that included 40km of really rough dirt road. All through the Kalahari and around the Okavango Delta area we rode on ferries, in backs of pickups, in cabs of semi trucks, and even in the leather seats of a fancy new Hummer.

But the highlight of Botswana was the Mokoro (canoe) trip we took in the Okavango Delta: 3 days and 2 nights of quiet gliding through some amazing stretches of flooded land in its northwest corner (around the village of Seronga). The Delta is an environmental treasure, and we’re thankful to have seen it.

After the Delta we made our way south and east across Botswana, stopping in the Kalahari town of Ghanzi (where I spent my birthday), and that’s where our hitching ceased: public transport was once again a viable option. The next few days were spent either waiting for kombis and busses or else riding inside them, traveling through the Botswana border town of Lobatse, then on to J-burg and then finally back to good ol’ Swaziland.

So, all 3 big fun things combined, that’s what we’ve been up to this past 5 weeks or so. In general, we found the people of Botswana to be exceedingly friendly and helpful and warm-hearted (much more so than some other Southern African areas). In fact, we found that we had to really adjust our “trust with caution and keep your guard up” attitude while in Botswana, because it just wasn’t appropriate there. No one hassled us (not even little kids asking for candy!), and no one was dishonest toward us. It was kind of amazing. We actually felt safer there than here in Swaziland. And though we spent very little time in Zambia (and only in the very touristy area of Livingstone/Vic Falls), we found the locals there to be kind and friendly and genuinely helpful. Not your typical jaded tourist town. I wish we had more time to travel all around Zambia. Like Botswana, it’s peaceful and stable and friendly, and yet its lush, river-rich landscape is very different from the semi-arid Kalahari terrain.

Anyone coming to Southern Africa that wants a unique and diverse travel experience would do well to look at routes through Zambia, Botswana and Namibia.

Anyway, it’s nice to be back in Zombodze, nice to be staying put for 12 straight weeks. Just enough time for us to finalize our ongoing projects and bid this latest home of ours a proper farewell. I’ll be posting pics, videos and accounts of these latest travels as soon as I can.

Second big fun thing: Peace Corps Group 6 COS Conference

2010-05-11T02:22:00.000-07:00

We attended a Peace Corps- Swaziland “Close of Service” (COS) Conference, which probably doesn’t sound like fun—but trust us, it was. Any time our group of PCVs gets together, fun abounds. All of us Group 6ers stayed 4 days/3 nights at a nice place in Swaziland’s Ezulwini Valley while the PC staff briefed us on all the things we’ll need to do when completing our service. And we held an impromptu talent show on the last night, which was pretty fun. I was sort of cajoled into being the show’s emcee, which meant that I got to help orchestrate things a bit. Among the show’s highlights was Jamie-girl getting her hair cut live onstage by 2 other PCVs (thus displaying their hair-cutting talent). She went from long hair to short hair over the course of the evening—and the end result looks great. Anyway the show was full of antics and hilarity… just the way we like it.

One of the PC staffers here has said that each group of PC volunteers coming into the country is different, and that our group is different “in a very pleasant way.” And I couldn’t agree more. From the very start, it seems like this group has been charmed. We’ve been blessed with an unusually warm and loving group dynamic—it’s uncanny, and for a group of 30 somewhat random strangers thrown together and sent to another country… it’s downright miraculous. So it’s not going to be easy to see us all go our separate ways, even in this hyper-connected age of Facebook and emails and skype, etc. We’re a pretty tight-knit group, having shared some amazing experiences over the past few years, and though many of us will keep in touch after Swaziland, it’s still kind of sad to be ending this chapter of our collective friendship. We’ve made some lifelong friends here, and that COS conference was our last “official” group get-together (yes, an unofficial one is planned for later this month). So it was fun just to all be together again and enjoy each other.

Also, the in-country PC staff has been so good to us—supportive and helpful way beyond the call of duty. We really appreciate everything they’ve done for us and we’re going to miss them too!

First big fun thing: Mandy and Alisha visited

2010-05-11T02:05:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since posting to this blog, I know. But we’ve been busy—with fun things, mostly. April was especially eventful, with no less than 3 big fun things filling our weeks.

First big fun thing: Mandy and Alisha visited. We were visited by two friends from the US, Mandy and Alisha, and we had a great time traveling with them through Mozambique, South Africa, and also here in Swaziland. Mandy has already posted a photo album featuring the Swaziland portion of that trip, and it contains lots of great photos of our host community and country at large—click here to view it. Mandy is a talented photographer and it’s been really rewarding for us to see our everyday surroundings through her lens. Thanks Mand!

Our time in Mozambique was especially nice. We stayed with Kim and Peter (Kim’s an ex-Peace Corps Vol and friends with Mandy and Jamie) and traveled with them north to a great little coastal lagoon for a night of camping. I’ll have to relate in another entry how I lost my favorite Cape Town shirt in the lagoon; by far, the best way I’ve ever lost my shirt. Anyway, the fresh fish was great, the cashew nuts were plentiful, the Maputo markets were brimming with interesting counters and characters, the local beers were pretty good, and Kim and Peter were really great and kind. I heart Moz. In fact, We’ll be returning there after our PC service with another PCV couple for some serious weeks of traveling: all the way up the length of the country and into Tanzania.

And then there was South Africa’s Kruger National Park. Wow. Wildlife galore. It was pretty incredible. I’m sure Mandy will soon post a photo album of our days there, and when she does I’ll provide a link to it. Until then, see the entry titled “Animals!” for a run-down of some of the wildlife we encountered while there. And if you ever happen to be in Southern Africa, for God sakes spend a few days in Kruger. You’ll not regret it. Don’t let all the touristy safari crap dissuade you, because you don’t have to do that stuff to explore the park on your own. It’s huge and accessible.

next was the second big fun thing...

Friends Visiting in April!

2010-03-15T01:33:00.000-07:00

In less than a month two good friends from the US are coming to Southern Africa, and we’re pretty excited about it. We’ll all head first to Mozambique (where we’ll visit another American friend living in Maputo), then we’ll spend some time here in Swaziland, and then we’ll spend some time in South Africa’s famous Kruger National Park—lions and giraffes and hippos and other awesome safari fare.

This is gonna be fun.

Their April visit kicks off an exciting month for us. We’ll be going to a weeklong “Close of Service” Conference with all our fellow Group 6 PCVs, and after that we’ll set off for another 12 days of regional traveling: Victoria Falls (Zambia side), then Botswana’s Okavango Delta and Kalahari Desert.

The Peace Corps may be tough, but it certainly comes with benefits.

Stepping Away

2010-03-15T01:31:00.000-07:00

The local high school faculty and student body are excited about having another College Fair, and this year it will be held during the school’s first term (instead of the final term). This year, however, planning it and hosting it is entirely up to the school itself; all we’ll do is help revise the invitation letters. It’s not that we’re lazy. It’s just that, if we were training wheels, it would be time to remove us.

At this stage of our service, it’s all about stepping away and letting our counterparts do these things without “outside” assistance. So the less we need to be involved, the more successful we’ll feel! We’re also “stepping away” from an upcoming Youth Day event that builds upon last year’s efforts to increase the capacity of a local youth organization. We’re involved, but again, the less we do this time around, the more successful we’ll feel. Our local counterparts have (hopefully) learned how to plan and organize these kinds of events, and now it’s time to apply their new skills.

I want to briefly talk about this notion of stepping away, because, with just about 5 months left in our service, we’re thinking a lot about what we’ll leave behind; what’s likely to prove sustainable and what isn’t.

After two years of living and working here, we can say with great conviction that the only worthwhile kind of development efforts are those which seek to curb the pattern of aid-dependence. And this applies even to events like the ones mentioned above. Our working model of sustainable development seeks to build a community that does not need to rely on outsiders like us to (in this example) host successful community events. No matter what the project, building self-reliance is the underlying goal.

The crippling impact of aid-dependence, we have found, extends to all areas of outside assistance. Any form of “no strings attached” handout, which does not require any accountability or effort or commensurate obligation on the part of the beneficiary, has the potential to worsen aid-dependence. For an interesting and controversial treatment of the topic, we recommend the recent book by Dambisa Moyo called DEAD AID (2009). Clearly, there are productive and nonproductive ways of offering assistance to underdeveloped countries… problem is, the nonproductive approaches are usually the easiest and quickest—and they yield great photo-ops, too.

BUT… there is a tendency for people to use this aid-dependence difficulty to absolve themselves of charitable obligation. The rationale goes, since these do-gooder organizations only end up making things worse, there’s no reason to donate or otherwise get involved with them. But that’s misguided, and here’s a couple reasons why.

First of all, not all do-gooder organizations are equal. A genuine concern about aid-dependence should not discourage a person’s natural and healthy charitable inclinations, but rather compel them to be more selective about which aid organizations they support. We like using the website Charity Navigator to research organizations both large and small. Personally, we tend to favor projects or causes that seek to develop local capacity (both individual and/or organizational capacity); that equip the local population to better address its own needs and wants. That could be skills training or strengthening infrastructure, increasing general knowledge about issues being faced, etc.

Second of all, there are, regrettably, plenty of circumstances in which direct handouts are entirely appropriate. We’ve seen plenty of them first-hand. An aging grandmother caring for 6 orphaned grandkids, for example, whose mud-hut is collapsing and whose meager pension hardly satisfies her own hunger much less her grandkids… it would be immoral to deny her a bag of rice based on some lofty principal of reducing aid-dependence. If she doesn’t get that rice from the Red Cross (for example), someone could literally die. She IS dependent on food aid, and thank God there’s an organization out there willing to support her. So frankly, I have no patience for the old “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” argument in these kinds of dire circumstances. There really IS a place for this kind of extreme intervention, and organizations providing it rely on donor (and governmental) support. But when this extreme intervention is applied across the board to ALL cases of need, whether extreme or moderate, that’s where the aid-dependence problems arise.

Anyway, as we begin our process of stepping away from our development and aid projects, we’ve learned a lot about the various levels of need and the various approaches employed to address them. We’ve been involved with projects we deem successful and ones we deem unsuccessful. We’ve seen the benefits and limitations of charity and of self-reliance, and we believe that any society, whether struggling or prospering, requires the strength of both forces to function.

In fact, we’ve learned that the most desirable kind of human charity is that which seeks self-reliance for others, while the best kind of self-reliance is that which seeks charity for others.

Local Homestead Census Project

2010-03-15T01:22:00.000-07:00

We’ve been helping our community tally and analyze the results of a big local census (which was shaped and organized thanks to Jamie’s efforts). Local rural health workers were recruited to visit homesteads in their “coverage areas” and conduct the census, and we have now received demographic information for 1,377 homesteads—that’s over 11,000 people—in all 4 surrounding Chiefdoms that comprise our Inkhundla.

Why do this? Well, the simple answer is this: without basic, up-to-date information about these homesteads, it’s nearly impossible for local leaders to assess the community’s primary needs and to secure proper resources from both government and charitable organizations. So this census not only provides that basic information, but it also familiarizes locals with the process of conducting a census—and the importance of doing them.

Many NGOs show up in our community with all manner of handouts, from food to tents to clothing, and they ask the Headmen to please point them in the direction of the “neediest” local homesteads. But that’s a terrible way of doing things. It reveals a deep misunderstanding of the local jealousies and favoritisms (read: corruption) plaguing Swazi society. And that “show up and ask” approach also assumes that the Headmen actually have that kind of demographic information at the ready. But they don’t. No one does. So this census will at least provide everyone with an objective look at the community’s homesteads and their relative levels of need—a snapshot that will be out of date rather quickly, but is at least a good beginning.

So anyway, here are a few of the more startling things our Census has revealed about this community:

· 49% are kids, under the age of 18, with the vast majority of them (39%) under the age of 14.

· Of all the kids, 35% are either single- or double-parent orphans. That’s 17% of the total population.

· Of the remaining 51% that are adults, just 14% are over the age of 45. (sidenote: the national average life expectancy is currently around 34).

· Just 8% of the surveyed adults report having income from formal employment. (informal employment is more common). That’s an unemployment rate of 92%… and we think the US is struggling with joblessness!

So the “average” local homestead houses about 8 people—4 adults and 4 kids—and if they’re very lucky, one of those adults is bringing in steady money for everyone else to live on. If the family has any wealth or assets, it’s most likely in the form of cattle and/or goats.

After compiling all this census data, we set about finding an objective way to “measure” the different levels of need and risk that a given homestead faces. The need for an objective risk assessment is due to all the favoritism and jealousy that often hinder well-meaning assistance efforts. As cold as it may sound, we needed to take all these personal situations and express them in numerical terms—that is, assign a “Risk Score.” So we worked on building a formula, variously weighted by the number of orphans and working adults and elderly adults, the ratio of kids to adults and other ratios… and then we applied it to all the homestead reports. And what we’ve come up with so far seems to do a pretty good job at identifying the most at-risk homesteads— and without any last names or locations; nothing subjective to corrupt things.

The situations on homesteads with the highest risk scores are pretty bleak. They have no adult at all, or else very few adults (unemployed, of course, and likely elderly) with lots of orphans to care for. Here’s what a 15.22 risk score looks like on paper: 1 adult who’s 60-74 years-old and earns no income; 9 kids (5 younger than 14), 7 of whom are orphans. Yikes!

So we’ve graphed all this information and are teaching our local counterparts in community leadership to read and access the data. And hopefully, when the next organization comes and asks for the “neediest” homesteads, they’ll at least have something to reference.

Skills Training for Rural Health Workers

2010-03-15T00:41:00.001-07:00

Jamie has been busy developing short lessons for our community’s Rural Health Motivators (RHMs) on a variety of health topics. She presents these lessons to the women during their monthly gathering at Umphakatsi (community grounds), when they come to collect their government pay of about US$40 (that’s a monthly salary). Her upcoming lesson is about nutrition and malnutrition: how to properly identify malnourished children, and how to improve the local diet without spending too much money. She’s made upper-arm measuring bands to check for malnourishment in 1-5 year olds, and this week she’ll distribute them and show the RHMs how to use them.

(poster shows a balanced diet)

Here I am using one the measuring bands on Jamie. If her arm belonged to a 1-5 year old girl, she’d be one healthy kid. No malnourishment detected. Good news!

Jamie has made a lot of health-information posters over the past year or so. They’re on display at the local Clinic, they’re used for these RHM lessons, and they’re displayed at various community spaces and events.

As you can see in these pics, much of the poster information is written in siSwati. This is not an easy thing to do. Jamie writes out what she wants to say in English first, then consults the siSwati dictionary, then consults with friends to get the translation correct. It takes a lot of time, but it’s worth the effort.

poster information: signs and measurements of malnutrition and better food choices with limited money

School Library Project

2010-03-15T00:18:00.000-07:00

Soon we’ll be busy at the local primary school, helping the newly formed Library Committee set up its first-ever library. The school’s principal worked to renovate an old building into a great library space, and we worked to build a stock of books for its shelves. And within a month from now, both of those efforts will yield big results.

As many of you know, this nationwide book donation project reached its fundraising goals (thanks donors!) and Books for Africa shipped out their container of about 30,000 books last month. They should arrive here around early April, at which time the sorting and distributing will begin. Our school lays claim to just over 1000 of them!

PCVs from 26 different rural communities throughout Swaziland, including us, joined together on this Peace Corps Partnership Project. We were able to raise US$10,300 to cover the costs of books and shipping/customs expenses— and we set a Peace Corps record: the most individual donors to a single PCPP fundraising effort in the history of that program. Wow! Thanks everyone who contributed.

All 26 schools also had to raise money to cover various in-country expenses.

We’re preparing for the book’s arrival. Last month we attended a workshop to learn how to set up a school library, and in a few weeks we’ll teach that workshop to our school’s new Library Committee—covering things like book organization systems, making subject catalogues and title catalogues, establishing a lending system… lots of details. We expect to be busy with the Library Committee throughout April and May.

soon these shelves will hold books!

It may seem strange that a Swazi school library be stocked with English-language books, so I’d better explain. English is the mandated language for all education here. In fact, it’s the co-official national language (along with siSwati), and it’s the official language for all “government business.” As children progress through the grades, they must pass certain subject exams, and the most important of these exams is the English competency exam. In fact, students who do not pass the grade-5 English exam do not qualify to advance to the High School level. Without a firm grasp of English, the rationale goes, they’ll be unable to understand the teacher’s lessons in the upper grades. So for better or worse, this English-language mandate means that attaining fluency in English is extremely important for all Swazi students. By having a good library of English-language books for both the students and English teachers to use, our primary school will be much better equipped to meet these mandated education requirements—and the kids will have a better chance of graduating.

That said, it is important that these libraries properly integrate these English-language mandates with the cultural heritage of Swaziland and other Southern African traditions. In that spirit, school faculty members and PCVs are making every effort, to bring important cultural documents and reference materials into these libraries. We are working to include titles by regional authors, culturally relevant visual aids, siSwati language periodicals and other reading materials, and any other things that will help to encourage a sense of respect and pride in the Swazi culture. Plus, we’re encouraging the Library Committee to consider using the library for various cultural events, such as hosting local guest speakers to discuss local history and tell stories.

We’ll keep you all informed as this exciting project develops! And we want to send a big thank you to our Arizona friends, the students and teachers in the Verde Valley for their generous contributions. They raised money and purchased 185 children’s books for this library—and as soon as they’re on the shelves we’ll send you pictures! You are a special group of kids and teachers, and we’re so thankful for your efforts.

Community Garden Project Update

2010-03-14T23:55:00.000-07:00

We’ve been continuing our work on renovating the community garden’s water system, which many of you helped fund (thank you!). And as the rainy season comes to an end and water once again becomes a scarce resource, we’re preparing to see a big surge of interest in the garden: the pipes are full of water. For the first time in many years, when June and July rolls around and Zombodze’s rolling hills are all brown and fallow, the big rectangular footprint of the community garden will still be green and verdant… and I cannot wait to see it.

Although most of the work has long been done to bring water back to the garden spigots, there has still been a lot to do. Last month we expanded the creekside reservoir and reinforced it with concrete. Just last week we installed the permanent filter at the intake pipe (built by the local welder). And just a few days ago we finally finished the fairly grueling process of replacing all the old, damaged standpipes and spigots in the garden with brand new ones—18 in all. I’ll replace a few more old components before we leave, but nothing critical. The last big labor component to do: build some ground-level concrete water tanks in the garden, to be used for water storage if/when the pipes and spigots need to be closed for maintenance or repairs. I’ll be hiring a few local laborers to do the work (while I hover over them impatiently).

Picture Caption: Here I am replacing an old standpipe and spigot assembly with new components. I've spent a good part of the last few months standing in muddy holes and sweating profusely.

I’ve also begun compiling a maintenance manual for the new system, which is intended to help the Garden Committee preserve the pipes and valves. It includes pictures of all the components and how they’re put together, where to find all the underground stuff, information about local parts suppliers, and a maintenance routine for regularly flushing out the system and exercising the valves. I love doing this kind of stuff. Seriously—I do.

Our most challenging work lately has been mobilizing the Garden Committee and holding garden meetings to improve overall organization… but we’ll keep at it and try various approaches. This is not a society that places any value on punctuality, so as a result, trying to organize and hold meetings here is often a frustrating exercise in futility: sometimes no one shows up, sometimes people trickle in… hours late. Drives me nuts. But we’ll persevere. I’m going to approach a Swazi organization and ask them to help with long-term organizational development of the garden, thinking they’ll be around after we’re gone to follow through.

So that’s the garden water project update. The water flows, the system is functioning well, and what work remains is aimed at improving its prospects for long-term maintenance and preservation. When the dry season is in full swing I’ll do some measurement/evaluation regarding increases in garden membership and crop production.

Picture Caption: Two of our most valuable volunteer workers, Mkhulu Nkambule (left) and Mkhulu Simelane. These guys are really, really strong. And friendly.

South African Coast Roadtrip

2009-12-05T01:00:00.000-08:00

Here's a video summary of our trip, which features monkeys, trains, hikes, beaches, waves, markets, and Twurly Cones.

Want to help launch 27 school libraries in Swaziland? me too. here’s how.

2009-12-01T00:38:00.000-08:00

We're back in Swaziland and will post vacation pics/vids soon, but first things first-- this is way more important...

The vast majority of schools in Swaziland do not have functioning libraries or access to large collections of books, and our community’s primary school is no different. But they’ve recently renovated an old building for use as a new library and now all that’s needed are books to fill the shelves (see the pics). We’ve been trying to help them do that, pursuing a few different options with the school’s principal (plus, our good friends in Cottonwood, Arizona are even working on something—Cottonwood rocks!). And now YOU can get in on all this literary do-gooder action.

Thanks to fellow PCV (and great friend of ours), Jason Kiener, there is currently a Peace Corps Partnership Project (PCPP) online fundraising effort underway to supply about 30,000 books to over 27 schools in Swaziland… our school being one of the chosen. Want to help? Got five minutes? Donating to this project is easy, just go to this Peace Corps website and follow the steps (on the right-hand side of the page).

We’re among a group of in-country PCVs partnering with Jason on this important nation-wide effort to increase the library/book capacity of rural Swazi schools. The U.S. partner is an organization called Books For Africa, and your donations will help fund the shipment of a giant shipping container full of books to Swaziland. A librarian-training course for participating schools will also be donor-funded. See the above-linked site for more project details.

We estimate that our school, Ngwane Central Primary School, will receive just over 1000 books through this project to help establish its first ever library. Pretty cool, huh? There’s actually shelving space in our school’s renovated building for about 3,000-4,000 books, so the other ongoing book donation efforts are still very much needed and greatly appreciated! Together, all these combined efforts will have a school library up and running in no time.

Jason is using the same program—the PCPP—we used for our community garden water project. 100% of your donation goes to directly to project costs and implementation. Plus, it’s fully tax-deductible.

So if you love books and libraries, and if you love the idea of helping school kids here in Swaziland gain access to books and libraries, then this is a great opportunity to help make that happen. The PCPP amount being raised is US$10,300. Donations of any size are gratefully accepted.

As always, thanks for your continued kindness, generosity and support you’ve all shown us during our time here.

South Africa Sojourn

2009-11-16T20:59:00.000-08:00

We're travelling along the South African coast right now, on a 15-day vacation from our site in Swaziland. We're surfing, hiking along beaches and through forests, exploring little towns and settlements... it's been great to be on the move. We've rented a car and can pretty much come and go as we please-- not relying on khumbis and busses feels like such a luxury-- and when we get to Cape Town we'll hop on a train bound for J-burg.

Right now I'm using the computer at a great backpacker's lodge located in the shady forests around Nature's Valley. Yesterday we hiked around Tsitsikamma National Park and it was brilliant. It's breakfast time and we have a fun day planned: Monkeyland in the morning and the beaches of Buffalo Bay in the afternoon. I've been excited about Monkeyland for months. It's a free-roaming primate sancuary in which you can just walk around the grounds with all varieties of monkeys. Guess I've gotta remember not to put bananas in my pockets today...

Anway, we've been driving from east to west along a coastal highway called the N2. We picked up our car in Piet Retief and went straight down to Durban, where I picked up a used surfboard other essentials. Then we went into a remote area called the Wild Coast, staying first in the Eden-like beach town ofPort St. Johns and then Coffee Bay. Coffee Bay was great-- stayed a few nights, surfed/boogie-boarded (she-J) in warm, shark-free waters and went on a little day adventure to Hole in the Wall. Then we headed on down to East London (where I picked up a cheap old wetsuit for the cold waters ahead), then the surf mecca of Jeffreys Bay for a few days. Next, we're off to Buffalo Bay for a couple of days/nights, then Mossell Bay, then we'll spend some time in the Cape Town area before boarding the train.

So that's the basic itinerary... we'll post pics and vids when we're back home in Swaziland.

two top 10's

2009-10-28T07:37:00.000-07:00

two top 10 lists for you...

Top 10 Reasons it feels like we’ve only been here a SHORT time:

10. I still really suck at speaking siSwati.
9. We’re not even close to filling up the pit latrine.
8. I still get lost in Mbabane and turned around in Manzini.
7. Haven’t yet seen any lions or giraffes.
6. Still wearing the same old patched up pair of pants I brought with me.
5. Haven’t yet read the entire PCV Handbook
4. Still have plenty of crossword puzzles to do.
3. Haven’t gone through all the bags of coffee from care packages (thank God)
2. Feels like just the other day we were back home, saying goodbye to friends and family
1. Plenty of locals still stare at me as though I’m an extra-terrestrial

Top 10 reasons it feels like we’ve been here a LONG time:

10. 9 new babies have been added to our friends/family back home (including the Burley twins)
9. I hardly notice the roosters anymore
8. I’ve become quite skilled at pretending to understand more siSwati than I actually do.
7. Eating with my left hand (which is taboo here) feels really strange… and I’m left-handed.
6. Seeing a plane and/or hanging a fresh strip of fly tape constitutes an exciting day
5. It’s nostalgic to see and feel U.S. money (we keep a wad of it tucked away).
4. Hard to recall the annoyances of living in the U.S. but easy to remember the conveniences.
3. I call my wife “Khetsiwe” (her Swazi name) way more than I call her Jamie
2. I’m okay with being crammed into an overcrowded van with engine trouble and faulty doors
1. When white foreigners passed through our community (it’s happened exactly once) I stared at them as though they were extra-terrestrials

My Entrepreneurship students won a trophy

2009-10-28T07:14:00.000-07:00

For the past academic year I have been facilitating a Junior Achievers (JA) business/entrepreneurship course at the high school, in which students founded a mini-company. They wrote a business plan, raised startup capital by selling shares and taking out a loan (from JA), then they developed a product and sold for a profit—all to learn about basic business operations and entrepreneurship. We sold scarves, ordered from a factory and designed to meet the school’s dress code requirements (kids get punished if they don’t adhere to it). They had the school motto, “Simply the Best,” embroidered on the scarf and sold it for a decent profit.

Anyway, at the end of the course, and after a Liquidation Report was turned in, the program judges selected the top 10 mini-companies in Swaziland to gather for an awards expo… and we were invited. The kids were pretty excited about the prospects of winning something. I, on the other hand, was more excited about a big, fancy lunch.

It happened last Saturday (Oct. 17th) in Manzini. At this expo, the General Managers of all 10 companies gave presentations about their company’s experience—startup, product, financials, social responsibility projects, income statement, etc—and the judges watched. Then these judges (businessmen and community leaders) combined the scores with previous scores to decide who got the awards. There were 1st, 2nd and 3rd place trophies, plus awards for CEO of the year, most innovative product, and best social responsibility project.

And you know what? Our little scarf company took home the grand prize: 1st place nationwide. Our CEO, a 17-year old boy named Makhosi, was interviewed for the local news. The school got a big, shiny trophy. The kids got prize money. I got that lunch. We were in the newspaper.

I know that winning isn’t everything, that the learning and practical experience gained by these students was its own reward… but I gotta tell you, winning feels good. And as the awards announcement approached that afternoon, I was just as nervous as my students. A little recognition is nice, you know? And for many of those kids, this was the most recognition they’d ever received. They danced on the bus all the way back home (see the video below).

It was a real challenge for me to be this program’s local facilitator. Cultural differences are really magnified in the classroom setting; they do school differently here, from corporal punishment to maddeningly “flexible” schedules… and frankly, I was never able to tell if anything I was teaching was actually sinking in. So it was nice that things ended happily. I guess sometimes you don’t know if a thing is worth doing until after you’re done doing it.

here's a short video for your viewing enjoyment...

top 10 highlights

2009-09-29T04:37:00.000-07:00

Top 10 highlights, in no particular order, of our last three weeks or so here in Zombodze (not including the College Fair-- see previous post for that)...

1. Today while doing the laundry, Jamie-girl estimated that we only have to hand-wash all our clothes about 40 more times. Her estimate is based upon doing it once per week… I suggested that if we only did it once every 2 weeks we’d get that number down to 20. Sensing my lazy ulterior motives, she shook her head disapprovingly. So 40 more times it is. Summers are much easier for clothes-washing: less overall bulk, and virtually no pants or socks. But still, 40 seems like a big number to me.

2. With today’s afternoon weather akin to standing in front of a hair dryer, our clothes dried really, really quickly hanging on the line. Maybe not a legitimate “highlight,” but exciting nonetheless.

3. Down in the community garden, water now regularly gushes from the spigots. Many men, women and children now use lengths of hose (connecting them to the spigots) to water their garden plots—compared to carrying the water one bucket at a time from a muddy seep 100 meters away. It’s a miraculous difference. I saw Grandfather Simelane using a sprinkler head the other day. There is still work to do on the renovation project (repairing a few leaks, installing valves, replacing old/broken parts, improving upper reservoir, building concrete retention tanks in the garden), but the transformation is already apparent. People are expanding their plots, new areas are being cleared, unwanted trees are being removed from within the fenceline… a new energy of optimism is palpable among the gardeners. I like being there.

4. Also in the garden, We planted a bunch of beans and in a few weeks we’ll plant more (staggered sowing will stretch out our harvest). We’ve also planted more beets, carrots, tomatoes, potatoes… and our cabbage, corn and squash are off to good starts.

5. Scooter, our favorite of the 5 homestead dogs, has injured his paw. One of the pads is flayed open like a prawn, as though he stepped on a big piece of glass or something, and I cannot imagine he’ll heal up very easily. But he’s always licking it and keeping it clean, and the wound actually seems to be improving. We’ve seen him heal from nasty flesh wounds before, so maybe he’ll be back to his old self soon enough. But these days he hobbles around on just three legs, which hinders his favorite pastime: harassing wayward cattle.

6. While hiking around on one of our favorite boulder-strewn mountaintops here in Zombodze, we had a little run-in with a snake. I was standing on top of a rock under which it was hanging out. It popped its head up and looked at me, and here’s the thing: it was the thin, hooded head of a cobra. In an instant I hopped away to a different rock, and we watched from a distance as it slithered through the grass and vanished behind some other boulders. Seeing a snake is not that rare, even big ones (this was well over 1 meter long and thick as my wrist), but this particular sighting merits special mention because, after consulting our trusty wildlife ID book, we’re about 80% sure it was a Mozambique spitting cobra, one of the so-called Big Seven (the 7 deadly snake species living in Swaziland). Isn’t that a great, ferocious name? It’s common and widespread here, though apparently less so in our specific climate region, and as its name promises, it has incredible ability to… I’ll quote from the book: “spit venom up to three meters at any threatening movement.” 3 meters, for the metrically challenged, is almost 10 feet-- and they aim for the eyes. Apparently I didn’t constitute enough of a threat to the snake, standing on a rock 1 or 2 feet away from its head with a walking stick in my hand… and though I’m thankful of that, I’m also personally offended. Not threatening enough?? I’ll have you know, I’m plenty threatening. Let it be known: the Mozambique spitting cobra is both dangerous AND insulting. Jamie-girl, having heard a “snake-like sound,” had avoided that rock altogether. Smart girl. Have I thanked you all for your thoughts and prayers lately? Thank you. Have I asked you to keep them up? Please do. I truly love having stories like this… but only because they end well.

7. As a result of the above experience, we had a rather careful and tense hike back down the boulders of what WAS our favorite local camping and hiking spot. Not sure we’ll be pitching the tent up there again… bummer.

8. H1N1, the swine flu, is making the rounds in Swaziland. At last count, 13 PCVs had it. They’re all gonna be fine, and we’re fine too, but the PC Office has placed overnight travel restrictions on us until things calm down. The attention garnered by the swine flu in Swaziland has been a source of much frustration for us PCVs: we often struggle to raise awareness about the far more lethal threat of HIV/AIDS, all while this flu strain gets front-page coverage.

9. The wives of all 4 married couples in our Group 6 recently got together and finalized the dates of our beach camping trip to Mozambique. It’s 3 weeks away. I’m counting the hours. I now daydream about the warm Indian Ocean waters.

10. Some friends of ours recently passed us a bunch of great African music, and we’re enjoying it. Artists from all over the continent—Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, all over West Africa… it’s great stuff. Ali Farka Toure, Baaba Maal, Dub Colossus, Ernest Ranglin, Habib Koite, Mandoza, Femi Kuti, Manu Dibango (African soul), and lots of stuff from West African jazz legend Fela Kuti.

High School College Fair

2009-09-29T04:33:00.000-07:00

Last week the local high school had its first ever College Fair, thanks to the efforts of Jamie-girl. She managed to get representatives from 7 tertiary institutions operating in Swaziland to come and speak with all the Form 4 and 5 students (equivalent to US grades 11 and 12). The school faculty was really pleased with the event and they now want to hold another one next academic year (hopefully the beginning of an annual thing). The students here face challenges in getting reliable, first-hand info about their post-high school academic options, so this College Fair was very well received by them. There were a few business/technical schools at the Fair that many students didn’t even know about—and since there’s only one university in Swaziland, those schools offer some important options.

After the event I got a note from a student that really made our day: “Sir I don’t know where to start when telling your wife how thankful I am about the eye-opener college fair. I’m now looking forward to my future…” So cool. It turns out that formal and informal guidance counseling in the high school has proven to be a really valuable aspect of our work here. Back in the US, teens and students can slip up a few times and still have some reasonable opportunities to get back on track, but here there’s just no room for error and those same little slip-ups can result in hopelessness about their future. This student’s note was encouraging to us.

The next Royal Residence

2009-09-22T05:12:00.000-07:00

Last week a local friend of ours was part of a Zombodze delegation that was summoned to meet with the King, His Majesty Mswati III, at his royal residence in nearby Embangweni. And he came back with interesting news for the chiefdom.

The king wants to build another royal residence here, on the grounds of Zombodze’s umphakatsi (the chief’s homestead and center of community life), and preparations will begin within the year. What that means is this: once the residence is built, one of the queens will live here. Not the Queen Mother, mind you, but one of the others.

The king currently has 10 royal residences (and 13 wives,) the nearest one being about 25km away at Embangweni… so why build another one here at Zombodze? Well, there happens to be a lot of historical significance to this particular location. Our friend explained that the Zombodze umphakatsi is the site of what’s called a “royal kraal,” a kraal being a place where cattle are kept (read: corral). And, according to our friend, this is actually where Swaziland’s first king lived, King Ngwane (which explains why Zombodze is more commonly known as Ngwane).

It goes back to ancient times, when the Swazi people parted ways with and warred against the Zulu and the Nkosi people. This Chiefdom was where King Ngwane and his Swazi warriors established their territorial boundary with the Zulu. In fact, the neighboring South African state, which we can see from our homestead, is called KwaZulu-Natal, “home of the Zulu.’ So the royal family from which King Mswati III descends has ancient ties to this specific location. The first king (Ngwane) is apparently buried on the other side of a nearby hill. And here in Southern Africa, ancestral connections are nothing less than spiritual connections.

Because of all this ancestral significance, the royal family often comes to Zombodze’s royal kraal to perform certain important rituals and ceremonies. If there’s an election, for example, or some auspicious occasion requiring a certain ancestral ceremony they’ll come at night, do their thing, and then be gone before sunrise. And I guess the King figures it would be much easier in all of this coming and going to have a royal residence here.

I’m sure we’ll be gone before the residence is completed. It will undoubtedly change things for this community. Having high fences and walls and armed guards at umphakatsi will be different, and having a Queen as a local resident will surely change public life here. Perhaps certain community-development projects will be fast-tracked, and perhaps the local economy will get a boost… I don’t know. But regardless, it’s exciting news for the Chiefdom and I think there’s a certain amount of community pride about the whole thing. Which is good; everyone deserves to feel proud about where they’re from.

By the way, if you happen to have a copy of Shaka Zulu, please send it our way. We’d like to watch it now, as much of it apparently takes place in these surroundings.

Kombi Logic

2009-09-22T05:10:00.000-07:00

Kombi (koom-bee): a privately owned and operated minivan taxi, specially modified and licensed for public transport, which adheres to specific routes (like a bus) and which is notorious for three common characteristics: blaring loud music, having mechanical problems of all possible varieties, and overloading passengers.

Over the past year we have grown accustomed to various routines and daily-life details we’d consider to be uncomfortable (or at least inconvenient) back home. We hardly notice or even miss having running water inside our home, for example. But relying upon kombis and busses for all our movement is still pretty annoying to me. We’re now mostly numb to the various physical discomforts-- being cram-packed in them, breathing exhaust fumes, enduring loud (and really bad) music, having anxiety about the driver’s recklessness and the vehicle’s road-worthiness… these are all things we’re quite used to. But what continues to frustrate us is how kombis and busses make otherwise easy errands difficult. They can completely thwart one’s attempts at keeping schedules and plans, patience and sanity. But sometimes they provide us with funny stories, and for that—and only that—I’m thankful to them.

Our kombi ride from Nhlangano back to Zombodze last week started out pretty typical: we went to the bus rank (a big parking lot for busses and kombis full of horns and hollering), got into the kombi marked ‘Zombodze,’ and proceeded to wait for it to fill up. Official capacity was 15 but they rarely leave without having at least 17 passengers (driver not included), plus everyone’s bags and groceries piled into it. And this time was no different in that regard. We set out for our 35-minute ride with 17 passengers, and it was pretty comfortable by kombi standards: the music wasn’t very loud and it may have been overloaded but not ridiculously so; not circus-clown overloaded.

But as we left the paved highway and started heading down the dirt road that leads to Zombodze, a police truck passed us, then came to a stop in front of us. And before our kombi could go around it, two policemen were motioning for us to pull over. The usual spot-inspection of the kombi ensued, and the police counted 2 passengers too many. So the driver got out and walked back to the police truck to do business while us passengers waited. These things take time. Everything takes time.

Eventually, the driver and his conductor (a guy who sits at the slider door and collects money) were given two choices: either they accept a ticket for E120 (or about US$15), representing E60 per violation, or… they pay the cops E30 in cash and go on their way. So okay-- a typical roadside bribery situation, nothing unusual about that.

The conductor and driver paid off the corrupt (and cheap) police and our kombi resumed its bumpy ride down the dirt road without having to unload any passengers. And within a few minutes, the kombi stopped to pick up another passenger. 18 people inside, which meant that every “row” was now truly packed, but nothing we couldn’t endure for the remaining 10km or so. But then the driver stopped to pick up another person, and then another one—making 20 passengers. And that, I can tell you, is an unusually tight fit. If you’re among 20 passengers packed into a standard-sized kombi and you didn’t previously know your benchseat-neighbor, you certainly know them now.

Jamie and I weren’t the only ones who couldn’t help but laugh at the sudden turn of events—from being pulled over for overcrowding to being legitimately overcrowded in a matter of minutes. What was the driver thinking? Well, here’s the thing. He’d never have loaded up 20 passengers had he NOT been pulled over and fined. But since he was now down E30, he had a strong incentive to pick up as many passengers as possible, which is exactly what he did. It’s kombi logic: he needed to earn back the money those police had taken.

I’m pretty sure the irony was utterly lost on our driver. By the time we reached Zombodze, I counted 21 passengers in the kombi—with the official capacity being 15 (driver not included). One was a kid, and he didn’t take up too much space… but still, I think it was the second most crowded kombi I’ve ever been in. All because we’d been pulled over for overcrowding.

Some people here like to throw around the acronym, TIA, which stands for ‘This Is Africa.’ I don’t like to use it, mostly because as a volunteer for a Federal agency there are already enough TLA’s (three-letter acronyms) in my life. But if I did like to say TIA, I guess that kombi escapade would have been an ideal occasion: corrupt enforcement of vehicle overcrowding leads to an immediate increase in… overcrowding.

Reed Dance: video clip

2009-09-22T04:56:00.000-07:00

Since our pics of the Umhlanga ceremony don't really do it justice, here's a short video clip to give you an idea of the event's movement and sound.

Umhlanga (Reed) Dance

2009-09-15T02:40:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we attended one of Swaziland’s two big, annual cultural events, the Umhlanga (Reed) Dance. The main ceremony is held in Lobamba at the King’s royal residence, the official location of all Swazi cultural ceremonies. But we just went to the regional one (which happens a few weeks later as the King travels to his other royal residencies throughout the kingdom replicating the ceremony). The Reed Dance ceremony is for the young, maiden (virgin) women of Swaziland. The traditions and symbolism behind it is fairly complex... from a spectator's point of view, it looks like a large parade or procession of girls and women in traditional wear dancing and singing for the king and his men.

Here are some pics, as it's hard to describe otherwise. there were between 10,000 and 16,000 participants at this regional ceremony (the national one had about 80,000). Red feathers worn in the hair indicates royalty-- in this case, the princesses.

The pics don't do this event justice-- the sounds and movement of it are amazing. We'll put together a short video to post for next time.

Garden Project Update

2009-09-08T05:52:00.000-07:00

We're staying in the capital city of Mbabane for the rest of the week for our mid-service medical and dental exams. This means we'll be spending a lot of time in the PC Office's Volunteer Lounge which has a couple of computers--a nice perk.

We wanted to provide everyone with an update regarding the community garden water project. Last week we finished digging the 730 meter trench and laid the pipe on thursday. We had a crew of 10-15 men, women, and children performing the work. The men joined the the pipe because that needed muscle and the women and children covered the pipe with dirt once it was in the ground. Now, the community garden spigots have water again! We call this "Phase I" of the project. When we return from our medical exams next week, we'll begin Phase II which involves installing flush valves and filters as well as fortifying some areas, namely at the headwaters of our source, for sustainability.

To be continued...

Down the Trenchline

2009-09-01T02:18:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone-

Work has begun on the community garden's new water system. It's an all-volunteer labor project, and the community turnout has been good. This week the water pipe trench will be finished, and on Thursday we'll be placing and covering the new pipe. Anyway, this video shows work on the rockiest (and therefore most difficult) section of trench.-- a good volunteer turnout that day.

Thank you

2009-08-25T04:49:00.000-07:00

Just a quick thank you to all of you who donated to the garden water project. The money was raised within one week-- cool. So the work has begun, and I'll be posting pics, vids and updates for you as things progress.

So far the volunteer workers have been doing great. In fact, the 730-meter long trench will be completed this week. We'll be placing piping in the ground next week. So thank you for helping to make this happen!

Are you ready?

2009-07-30T04:12:00.000-07:00

After much planning and waiting, our community garden water system project has been officially approved by the Peace Corps Partnership Project, and the fundraising can begin!

So here's how it works. It's easy. You go to a website, read the project description, enter the amount you'd like to donate to the project in the little box on the right-hand side of the page, and click "Donate." the PC website guides you through the remaining quick steps.

Here's the link: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=645-072

All donations are tax deductible and go directly to us for the materials costs of our project-- no overhead expenses at all. The project summary describes the work pretty well, so I won't elaborate further in this post... but if you want more info please let me know and I'll send it your way.

Thank you, dearest friends and family, for your interest and generosity.

Dropping Off The Cow

2009-07-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

Here's an article I wrote for the PC-Swaziland newsletter, which goes to all us in-country PCVs and PC staffers.

Dropping Off the Cow

For Senzo and Doctor, delivering the cow was serious family business. Jamie and I went along for the adventure of the walk: about 32 kilometers (20 miles or so) across the rolling Shiselweni countryside to a homestead near Hlatikulu, connecting footpaths with dirt roads through grasslands and gumtree forests for about 9 hours. With a cow. It was not until the end of our journey, when an insulted gogo refused to accept the cow as sufficient payment for Senzo’s “transgressions,” that I realized just how serious this business was.

The gogo had been clear upon our arrival. Senzo had been told to deliver five cows to her homestead. Two would probably have sufficed as a down-payment, as a gesture of good faith… but one cow? Not good enough. These were delicate matters. And Jamie and I sat alongside him on the grass mats, accomplices in his apparent insult, smiling and playing dumb. Had we really walked all day with a cow through 7 different Chiefdoms just to insult perfect strangers? Yep. And we now sat in their yard, tired and hungry and wondering how we’d ever get home before nightfall. I asked myself, what would Mfanafuti do in this situation? Clearly, vigilance was in order.

Senzo is our 26-year old bhuti [brother]. The transgression for which he was paying was in fact an unplanned pregnancy. He’d fathered a beautiful and healthy baby boy, born to his girlfriend four months earlier. So, for knocking up his girl he now owed her homestead five cows, but without proper employment he’d only managed to round up one. He had every intention of paying the full five cows, just over time—in one-cow installments. His girlfriend’s homestead, however, had clearly expected the two-cow installment plan (actually, it’s a bit more complex than that… I’ll explain it soon enough). Their refusal to accept the cow was, in part, a matter of family pride: Senzo had taken their only granddaughter’s virginity and in exchange he now dared to low-ball them on the penalty payment. Unacceptable. So what was to happen? Were we to walk the cow all the way back? Impossible: not enough daylight, and even if there was, the beast was exhausted. And so were we.

We’d picked up the cow 9 hours earlier, from a relative’s hilltop kraal in the pale pre-dawn light of 5am. She was a bit short for a cow but quite healthy, with a solid black coat and properly curved horns… nothing special but certainly nothing to refuse under normal circumstances. She even had a name: Mfazomnyama (Zulu, not siSwati), meaning “Black Wife.” And for the first 15 kilometers or so she was feisty at the end of her rope, wildly darting off-trail and refusing to cross rivers and generally disregarding the wishes of Doctor, our homestead’s teenage shepherd boy and occasional cattle driver. But eventually she wore down and resigned herself to the long walk.

One must have a proper permit to transport a cow in Swaziland. We got ours from the local government veterinarian back in Zombodze, waking him up at about 5:30am and asking him to inspect Black Wife. He obliged us, though begrudgingly, and signed the paperwork legitimizing our journey. And it’s a good thing we were legit: policemen and regular citizens alike stopped us all along the way, demanding to see the cow’s paperwork and asking questions-- where are you taking that cow? That’s too far to walk—why aren’t you taking proper transport? And (to Senzo) why have you taken these bamhlungu with you? Our answers were usually met with outbursts of laughter. Apparently, white people walking across the countryside is kind of funny to locals… add a cow to the mix and it’s downright hilarious.

Jamie and I helped walk the cow as best we could, wielding sticks and throwing the occasional dirt clod or whistling and hollering, but mostly we just trailed behind it, watching where we stepped and talking with Senzo. We discussed the various Chiefdoms through which we walked, about the homesteads we encountered and the rivers we crossed. And of course we talked about the transgression and its five-cow penalty.

Months before, when the pregnancy had been discovered, his girlfriend’s family had paid a visit to Senzo’s homestead to discuss the issue and to claim their right to a penalty payment. They’d placed in his sweaty palm five maize kernels, which told him exactly how many cows they’d be expecting. There was no negotiation or debate about it. This was compensation for having taken their granddaughter’s virginity. Three of the five penalty cows could be directly applied to Senzo’s eventual Lubola payment of 15 cows. Sort of like the kind of arrangement common at wine tastings, where the tasting fee is waived or discounted if you end up buying a whole bottle.
Actually, it’s a lot more complicated than that. There are long-established traditional protocols for the situation Senzo and his girlfriend were in. The first cow—the one we were delivering—is called the imvimba, a term specifically referring to a cow given in order to calm down a girl’s family when there’s an unplanned pregnancy. It is usually the only one that’s butchered and eaten right away. The second cow is called the inhlawulo, or penalty cow paid for an unplanned pregnancy. And the other three cows are considered a kind of installment on the future lubola payment. The girlfriend’s gogo had been led to believe that the imvimba and the inhlawulo would be delivered together: one to eat and one to keep.

Anyway, it became clear as we walked and talked that Senzo wanted to marry this woman. He wanted to pay the Lubola and be a proper husband and father… but how? If he couldn’t come up with even two cows for an initial payment where would he manage to get 15? So it seemed that a proper traditional Swazi marriage was still quite out of reach, regardless of his (belatedly) honorable intentions. In fact, Senzo explained that many Swazi guys in his economic situation wouldn’t likely deliver even a single cow nowadays—they’d just stay away from the mother and child. But Senzo was actually interested in being a father to his new son, and he reasoned that delivering this cow would at least earn him visitation rights. Insulting the (potential) future in-laws had not been part of his plan.

Still, Senzo probably deserved the tongue-lashing that gogo gave him that afternoon in the yard. It lasted about 30 minutes and was, considering the circumstances, fairly tame. And it was quickly followed by gracious Swazi hospitality: A big, hot meal. Despite her obvious disappointment, gogo invited us into the home for chicken, lipalishi and sweet potato. It seemed a strange turn of events. I’m quite familiar with the platitude about not biting the hand that feeds you, but is there an equally clear guideline about eating from the hand you’ve just insulted? None come to mind. It was an awkward situation, which may have been why no one from the homestead joined us visitors for the meal. We ate alone— Senzo, Doctor, Jamie and myself—like the hungry outcasts we were, grateful yet nervous.

Black Wife’s paperwork sat on the corner of the table as we ate, folded into fourths and wrinkled. Senzo explained the situation. If gogo came in and asked for that paperwork, then she was tacitly accepting ownership of the cow. If not, then her refusal was clear and final. But honestly, can you imagine a gogo turning away a free cow?

By the end of our meal gogo had joined us in the living room and, much to our relief, she asked for the cow’s paperwork. She inspected it and explained that the cow must be accompanied by a solemn promise from Senzo to deliver the others as soon as possible. Senzo gave his word. So it was, for the moment, settled. Black Wife would be taken to a nearby relative’s kraal for safekeeping and would soon be slaughtered. Us four visitors were finally free to leave.
But before we did, Senzo got what he’d come for: a little time with his new son, Senzelo. His girlfriend brought him out and propped the chubby little guy on one of daddy’s legs and sat down beside him on the couch. I saw smiles all around—not strained or awkward smiles, but genuine ones. Happy ones. There’s something about a healthy little baby, smiling and bouncing atop his father’s lap, that trains one’s attentions on the future, however uncertain. And though everyone in the room that afternoon probably had different thoughts and fears about what that future held in store, it’s notable that we all found at least one thing to smile about.

What made me smile (other than being really full and free to go) was seeing Senzo make an honorable effort at fatherhood. Sure, mistakes had been made and penalties exacted and family pride had been wounded and all manner of difficulties abounded… but you know, I find it hard not to admire an honest attempt at doing the right thing, however clumsy the attempt.

By the way, if you happen to know where to find four respectable cows at a deeply, deeply discounted rate, please let me know.

This is Senzo with his son, Senzelo.

The handwaashing song

2009-06-28T01:19:00.000-07:00

Hi all-

last week we did a short hand-washing lesson for the group of orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) at a nearby Neighborhood Care Point (NCP), which is where they gather to get a meal. the words to this song are about needing to take care of one's self. the buildings you see are a little sitolo (store) and the home of the sitolo owner. the actual NCP has no structure; it's just an outdoor firepit onsite where volunteer women cook the meal. the tables, chairs, and cooking equipment is locked in the sitolo at nights, so it works fine. This is one of the "functioning" NCPs, and we enjoy doing activities with them.

Our Community Garden Water Project

2009-05-27T01:53:00.000-07:00

We’ve formally begun the process of improving the water-delivery system for Zombodze’s community garden. This kind of project begins with a series of community meetings, and the first meeting has been held. We’re now exploring the various approaches with stakeholders (mostly mothers who are active in the garden) and gathering information about two potential water source (their cost-benefit, long-term sustainability, and broader community support for each).

We drafted a letter to express the consensus of those attending the first meeting, and to get a few key community leaders singed up to the cause. It provides a good overview of the project, so I’ve copied it here:

May 18, 2009

Subject: Zombodze Community Garden Water Delivery System Renovation

To whom it may concern:

We, the undersigned, would like to formally express our active support and involvement in renovating the water delivery system for Zombodze-Ngwane’s community garden. This community-initiated project is vital to the proper functioning of the garden, which has suffered from dwindling participation for years due to its unreliable water supply. We hereby recognize that an improved water delivery system is very much in need, and that there is sufficient community interest in rehabilitating the garden to warrant sponsorship of this project.

17 years ago, when the current water delivery system was installed, participation in the Zombodze community garden swelled. Its plots provided both food and income to over 50 local homesteads. Shop owners from all over the Nhlangano area came to our garden to purchase produce and local families had a variety of fresh vegetables in their kitchen, even during the dry season. But by the late 1990s a series of events, both natural and manmade, undermined the dam and the piping supplying the garden’s spigots with water. As the water dried up, so did participation, and so did the funding needed to maintain what was left of the weakened delivery system.

Today the majority of participants still maintaining year-round plots are widows and their children or grandchildren, together representing about 10 local homesteads. For the last decade these women and children have watered their crops by using open trenches to divert water into the garden spigots, and by carrying buckets of water from local streambeds. But this method has proven increasingly unreliable, burdensome, and unsustainable for supporting even this modest number of garden participants. A renovation is needed.

There are still components of the previous water delivery system that can be utilized, most notably the underground piping and spigots within the garden fences. Since these existing elements offer us a variety of cost-efficient approaches to securing reliable water for the garden, we support a renovation project that makes proper use of them.

We share three general goals for our community garden, all of which require an exclusive, reliable water delivery system. The first goal is to raise participation levels back up to 50 or more Zombodze homesteads. The second goal is to increase the numbers of local children and youth actively participating in the garden. The third goal is to see the establishment of a new Community Garden Committee, comprised of participating gardeners, whose charge it will be to oversee and maintain all the components of the renovated water delivery system. This committee will help ensure that the difficulties of the past are not repeated.

It is time once again to make our community garden an important resource for income and food in Zombodze, and we hereby endeavor to raise the support and funding necessary to make that happen. We ask you to join us in this important effort, and we thank you in advance for your support.

Respectfully,

Rachel Nsibandze, Chairperson Bheki Ngwenya, Indvuna Simanga Mdluli, Bucopho
Zombodze Community Garden Zombodze Inkhundla Zombodze Chiefdom

Johannes Ndlangamandla, MP Timothy Cook, Volunteer Jamie Cook, Volunteer
Zombodze Inkhundla US Peace Corps US Peace Corps

So that's the letter.

Some of you have already generously expressed an interest in partnering with us on this project, and we really appreciate it. We’ll need all the help we can get! This will likely be the most expensive single project we attempt while here, and though it doesn’t seem like much by US standards, it’s a lot by Swazi standards. We won’t have a useful cost estimate until a water source has been chosen, but it’s safe to say that the project will likely run between $2500 and $3500 US dollars.

As the community’s decision-making process moves forward, we’ll be applying for a Peace Corps Partnership Program (PCPP) posting, and that’s how you’ll be able to donate. Our project will eventually be posted on the PCPP website where anyone can contribute directly to its overall cost; once all the money is raised then PCPP will send us the full funds to begin the work.

In the meantime, if you have questions or just want to tell us you’re interested in being a part of this effort, then cool—it really helps our planning to know the level of support out there-- send me an email and I’ll happily reply: cooktimothy@hotmail.com.

the halfway mark

2009-05-27T01:48:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone-

June marks the one-year anniversary for us coming to Swaziland; the halfway point of our PC service. So all 30 of us remaining “group 6” PCVs will be congregating for a weeklong, mid-service conference to talk about… stuff… and to learn about… things. I don’t really know what we’ll be doing. Wait—I know a few things: the annual medical exams are on the agenda. Oh joy. If you’ve ever wished your life consisted of more shots and vaccinations, you should seriously consider PC Service. Also, Jamie and I will be doing a short workshop outlining to other PCVS that singing competition (what went into planning/executing it), so I’m sure other PCVs will be doing similar programming workshops.

I guess that’ll be interesting, but mostly I’m looking forward to two things: a week of meat for dinner, and a week spent hanging out with our fellow PCVs. We haven’t seen many of them for months and we really miss them. They’re a great group of people and having a week together is gonna be great. The exchange of ideas and news and approaches (and music and movies and books) makes the mid-service conference valuable, regardless of what’s formally planned.

Lastly, I (Tim) would like to request some books that I’ve been unable to find here. It’s a very strange listing coming from me, as you’ll see, not my usual line of interest. But they’re great examples of certain storytelling techniques and archetypes found in modern horror/fantasy and American Gothic novels… and I want schooling in that dept. This is actually a listing of genre-classics compiled by Stephen King in his excellent and detailed study of the form, Dance Macabre. Anyway, here’s the list—cheap old paperbacks are what I’m wanting, any condition, the lighter the better:

Ghost Story by Peter Straub (1970s)
The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons (1978)
Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1898)
Rosemary’s Baby and A Kiss Before Dying both by Ira Levins (1960s)
The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney (1955)
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury (1962)
The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson (1956)
The Doll Who Ate its Mother and Parasite both by Ramsay Cambell (1970s)
The Fog by James Herbert (1975)
Stange Wine (story collection) by Harlan Ellison (1978)
The Shining and Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

If forced to narrow this list, I guess I’d pick the books by Bradbury, Ellison, Jackson, James, and Finney… but any and/or all of these titles will be much appreciated!

me, you, and 13,000 close friends

2009-04-23T05:22:00.000-07:00

The highlight of our Cape Town trip was our participation in city’s Two Oceans Marathon. We ran the 1/2 marathon (21km or 13.1 miles). Over 13,000 people ran the 1/2, which meant that we ran in a huge crowd for the first 7km or so. When we reached the hilly portion of the course it was easier to maintain a regular pace, as the crowd thinned out a bit. This was Jamie-girl’s third 1/2 marathon (New Zealand and Tacoma were the others) and my first. Our friend and fellow Swaziland-PCV, Jason, joined us on the course, and we were met at the finish line by his wife (also a PCV), Erika. We all had a great time running together, despite having to get up at 3am on race day.

Turns out, I (Jamie-boy) didn’t have too much difficulty running the distance. I enjoyed myself—which I never imagined possible. In fact, us Jamies plan to enter another 1/2 marathon event before returning to the States, this one at Victoria Falls in 2010 (the course looks amazing).

Get this: the morning AFTER race day, Jamie-girl got up and… went for a brisk run. Needless to say, I stayed in bed.

race relations in South Africa

2009-04-23T05:19:00.000-07:00

One thing we did NOT particularly like about Cape Town was the still very pronounced impact of generations of institutional segregation and Apartheid. It is most prominently expressed in terms of economics: the only black families one finds in “fee areas” like Boulder Beach or Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens are those working there, cleaning the grounds; the only blacks one finds in downtown restaurants are the waiters. The socio-economic divide mirrors the racial divide with frightening precision; there is virtually no deviation between the two.

And the most common public interaction between whites and blacks is framed in inherently unequal economic relationships as well: boss interacts with employee, customer interacts with worker, passerby interacts with beggar. It’s hard to imagine growing up your whole life having only related to blacks in terms of unequal economic transactions: as employees, as workers/servers in stores and shops and even homes, or as pesky beggars on the street. Never as neighbor, never as fellow church members or teammates or co-worker… never as anything meriting equal deference. Quite a skewed reality. Yet it’s a common one for white South Africans. And that knife cuts both ways, as blacks grow up with an equally skewed reality (I’m called “boss” all the time by Swazis and black South Africans, simply because I’m white. Drives me nuts-- this casual bit of slang is no accident of language, it’s descendant of a warped racial reality). So it’s no wonder that most aspects of SA culture are still quite segregated, from swimming beaches to public transportation, regardless of government policy. The Southern US cities have nothing on the South African cities in this regard. And it’s going to take a long time—at least two generations of equal employment opportunity, I’d think—before Cape Town’s social and racial diversity becomes the valued asset it should rightly be.

I’m not an expert in race relations or the impact of institutionalized racism on social/cultural development, but it’s pretty easy to see the post-Apartheid struggles and how they’re reshaping both the big cities and small towns of South Africa. These struggles reveal a deeply wounded, culturally fractured country. We Americans tend to think of post-Apartheid SA as being “on the mend” or “over the hump,” but in my observation it is still very much threatened by them; by no means are the past and present inequities meaningfully reconciled. I saw this in Cape Town, in Durban and all the other areas of SA I’ve been. But I must say, Cape Town seemed to me the most progressive—certainly more than Durban—perhaps due to a higher raw number of service-sector economic opportunities there, and perhaps also due to the central role that Nelson Mandela has played in shaping that city’s recent identity (the prison that held him for 26 years sits just offshore on Robben Island, a tourist ferry ride from the Cape Town waterfront).

One last thought on this topic. As difficult as the US’s process of desegregation and racial reconciliation has been, I think South Africa’s society actually has it much, much harder. Too many reasons to get into here, but there are totally different dynamics going on, from language barriers to overlapping colonial footprints to oppressed majorities (not minorities)—so it’s not exactly comparable to the US’s struggles with race relations. They aren’t simply “40 years behind” in their Civil Rights struggle or something… theirs is a different kind of struggle.

7 reasons to love Cape Town

2009-04-23T05:15:00.000-07:00

Last week we returned from an 8-day trip: a few days in Durban and 6 days in Cape Town.
We’re both a bit enamored with Cape Town, so I’ll now risk sounding like an over-zealous Tourist Bureau pamphlet to tell you 7 of our favorite things about it…

1. The geographic setting is awesome. the urban center and downtown neighborhoods stretch between Table Mountain National Park and the Atlantic Ocean. Beautiful seaside suburbs reach all around the Cape (most of which is protected Park land) and feature white sand beaches, lots of great surf spots, hiking trails and small-town vibes. There are as many pine trees as there are palm trees, lush vineyards, crisp trade winds and pleasant seasons, and lots of picture-perfect views. I cannot think of another big city so close to National Park trailheads… San Francisco comes to mind, with its proximity to ocean and hills, But even that falls short, both in proximity and sheer natural beauty.

2. The surf. I know I already mentioned it, but this place has the best surf options of any city I’ve ever visited. Over 40 legitimate spots spread all over two different coastlines: one on the western (and cold) side of the Cape of Good Hope, and one on the eastern side of it (warmer, seasonally dominated by Indian Ocean currents). What this means is, when the winds or swell directions are wrong for some spots they’ll probably be ideal for other spots—they have bays and beaches pointing in every possible direction and angle. The 40 nearest spots are all within about 30-40 minutes’ drive from the town center, and (get this) you’re within an easy day’s drive to the world famous perfection of Jeffery’s Bay. Heading east along the coast from Cape Town offers great Indian Ocean surf and small, friendly crowds. Hands-down the best surf town I’ve ever been. Biggest drawback—and it’s a big one: a healthy population of great white sharks lives in these waters. Durban has shark nets protecting its local beaches but Cape Town does not.

3. The Wineries. We didn’t even make the hour-drive out to Cape Town’s most famous vineyards of Stellenbosch, and the wineries still made this list. We elected instead to visit the ones closer in, along the eastern slopes that border the National Park in the leafy, upscale suburb of Costantia. From nice waves to nice wines in like 15 minutes. Free tastings, reasonable prices, Eden-like settings (one estate was established in 1682), friendly vintners… loved it.

4. Penguins. Down the Cape Peninsula on the southern end of a little Bayside town called Simon’s Town is a protected, breeding colony of African penguins. These things are ridiculously cute, full of personality, guaranteed to make you smile and laugh. I say they’re protected, but maybe that’s not quite accurate: for a small entrance fee we entered Boulder Beach (another national park I think) and we were able to sit right next to them—even swim with them in a protected little cove if we dared get in the frigid water. One area was more restricted (the actual nesting area), but the access we humans are allowed to these penguins is pretty incredible—and would not likely be allowed in the U.S. Still, mixed feelings and all, it was so cool to hang out with penguins.

5. Table Mountain National Park. I’ve already mentioned it, but it deserves its own little bullet point. Again, lots of access trails, fantastic views and dramatic aesthetics, unique geology and plant life… the definitive feature of Cape Town.

6. The Victoria and Albert Waterfront. It’s part of downtown’s waterfront and it’s a really cool mix of industrial, residential, and retail. Most of it is new and spruced up (maybe for the upcoming World Cup) and there was a lot to see and do—malls, museums, galleries, markets, coffeeshops and restaurants, marinas, etc. We bought new jackets down there… maybe that’s why I recall it so fondly.

7. Kistenbosch National Botanical Gardens. Established in 1913, this huge plot of land (528 hectares) near the University of Cape Town is partly cultivated/landscaped and partly nature/wilderness preserve. Hiking trails connect its upper slopes to bordering Table Mountain National Park, and Olmstedian pathways meander through its lower slopes, where 9,000 of southern Africa’s 22,000 plant species are grown in carefully manicured terrain. The landscape is sublime. It’s part of a World Heritage Site. I’ve never seen a park or garden grounds to rival this one—I don’t know what I could possibly say that could do this place justice… maybe just look at some pictures online.

We also liked various markets in/around the downtown’s City Bowl, and Green Point, and the beach suburbs of Camps Bay and Hout Bay and Muizenburg and Kalk Bay… visiting the tip of the Cape of Good Hope was cool, as was Signal Hill… but 6 days in Cape Town wasn’t quite enough time. We didn’t, for example, visit the prison on Robben Island (where Mandela was held) or the Stellenbosch wine region, and we didn’t do any downtown museums or galleries or explore the coastlines to the north or east (called the Garden Route). Maybe next time. If any of you comes to the southern Africa region, first thing you should do is contact us; second thing you should do is invite us to join you in Cape Town. We’ll say yes.

some Cape Town pics

2009-04-17T07:44:00.001-07:00

penguins: Simon's Town

2009-04-17T07:34:00.000-07:00

This is a beach in Simon's Town, a southern suburb of Cape Town.

NCP Volunteer Training Day with Red Cross

2009-03-26T03:10:00.000-07:00

First Annual Youth Group Singing Competition

2009-03-26T03:09:00.000-07:00

We’ve been working with a local youth organization to host a teen group singing competition here in Zombodze, and the event is coming up in about a month. I know you didn’t ask, but I’m going to tell you about it anyway.

The participants will write/compose an original song on the theme, “healthy living, healthy lives,” and perform it in front of a panel of 4 judges—3 of whom are well-known Swazi musicians. The grand prize: an all-expense paid trip to a professional recording studio in the capital city where they’ll get to record a 5-track demo CD. The CD will be produced by a popular Swazi musician/producer, DD Cool. Plus, the group will get to perform their winning song onstage at this year’s Live Life Music Festival, which is held in a big park in the capital city (second-place group will also get to perform there). Other prizes include T-shirts, local restaurant and grocery store vouchers, and a DVD of the event performances.

There are a wide range of song topics that fit the theme, from drug-free living to faithfulness/abstinence/safe sex, to respecting others and being role models. We’re giving the groups a lot of leeway, but we’ll check ahead of time (via registration forms) to ensure that their songs fit with the general theme. Our goal is to encourage an open, public exchange of ideas and attitudes about these topics, letting the youth be the messengers. We also want to encourage the abundance of musical talent in Zombodze, providing a venue to showcase it as well as provide an opportunity for the winners to meet some Swazi bigshots and learn a bit about the business. It’ll be a daylong event with lots of health-related information tables and guest speakers, and a mobile HIV testing and counseling unit will be located onsite—something we’re pretty serious about these days.

The local youth organization we’re working with is called Zombodze Youth in Action (ZYA). We’ve lined up some great partners in order to make this event happen: Red Cross, Population Services International (PSI), Dance with EMAFU (a Swazi non-profit), Zombodze Central High School, Nhlangano AIDS Training and Information Counseling Center (NATICC—they’ll provide a mobile HIV testing/counseling unit at the event), and of course the US Peace Corps. Our own afterschool club, Leaders in Health, will also help out, as well as Zombodze’s MP and Indvuna (elected officials), and plenty of local churches. We think it would be great if this turns into an annual event for ZYA and the community.

There are still a few small but important things for which we’re seeking financing: money to buy blank DVDs and blank Cds, and about $150 to cover grand-prize related expenses. So if this event is something you want to contribute to, you can! $25-$50 USD really goes a long way here… if interested drop me an email and I’ll send you some specifics: cooktimothy@hotmail.com.
As a thank you, we’ll send you a DVD of the event and a copy of the winning group’s CD.

Lists and big cities

2009-03-17T01:32:00.000-07:00

Jamie-boy here. It’s a cloudy Sunday, March 15th, and we’ve sequestered ourselves inside our little home for the morning. We want to write some emails and get some paperwork ready for tomorrow, when I make a big trip north to the capital city. I’ll spend a few days there, having a few meetings and seeing an orthopedist about an achy leg (from all the jogging—it’s fine, just getting some advice on caring for it while training). And while I’m there I’ll be sending out emails and posting entries like this to the blog, checking various news websites to see what financial calamity has befallen America this week, indulging in big-city food like pizza slices and fried chicken.

This is a “big” trip not because the capital city is so far away; it’s actually only like 160km or so from us. But it takes a long time to get there—about 4 hours, using no less than 4 different public transport vehicles to get to PC headquarters in Mbabane. Compared to PCVs in other countries we have it easy here in the Swaziland, I know, but it’s still a real production to “head in,” especially because we want to get a lot done while there. As is usually the case when I go, Jamie-girl has prepared a list of all the tasks I want to accomplish and the items I need to get while there—PC office things and personal errands, internet tasks, special big-city grocery items, etc. I’ll actually be spending the night at a backpacker’s hostel in town just to have enough time to do everything and make the trip worthwhile.

She makes me the list because I’ve demonstrated a consistent pattern of forgetting to do things, neglecting to get things. I get to the city and maybe it’s all the traffic and people and seeing other PCVs in the office, but my mind goes blank. It’s all quite exciting, this going to town business, and apparently my memory is quite susceptible to excitement. So when I’m the one heading in, I adhere to Jamie-girl’s lists religiously, protecting them from harm or wandering eyes like a pirate guards a treasure map. Wandering eyes: I do not like people to know that I require a list from my wife to get by in the city, and I do not like people to know what items are on the list—it’s private and it’s our personal business and I’m not interested in discussing it with anyone. So I’m rather shy about pulling it out of my pocket to read and check, and I do so as inconspicuously as possible. Telling all of you about the list, in fact, is an oddly public confession. My name is Timothy Cook, and yes, I need a list from my wife when I go to town.

The state of the list will ultimately determine whether or not I had a successful trip into Mbabane. It will be pulled out when I get back home and reviewed; each item will be discussed—especially those items not crossed out. I would sooner lose my money than my list on these trips. I can always just go to an ATM in the big city and withdraw more money—bad, yes, but quite recoverable… but replacing the list would require a phonecall to Jamie-girl, an explanation (not likely to be very well crafted considering my state of panic), an attempt at recreating the list on-the-spot with frayed nerves and strained tones of voice… not to mention the troublesome thought that our private list is floating around somewhere, unguarded in the big city, free for anyone to find and read and perhaps pass around or send to one of those “Found” websites that post that kind of stuff.

This has never once happened to me, thank God. And if you’re reading this, it’s a good indication that I am still in possession of the list and successfully working my way through it: “post new entries to blog.” Check.

Katrina cleanup article

2009-03-17T01:09:00.000-07:00

Back in 2005 I spent 3 months in New Orleans working on initial-phase recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina. A while after returning I did some research on the city’s cleanup efforts and then wrote a paper about it. Eventually I submitted that paper to an academic journal and after various peer reviews it was accepted for publication, pending my replies to reviewer comments. So I’m happy to report that at long last my work on this project is done: the reviewing and revisions are complete and actual publication is at-hand.

My article is titled “Cleaning up New Orleans: the impact of a missing population on disaster debris removal” and it will appear in the upcoming March/April 2009 issue of Journal of Emergency Management (Vol. 7, No. 2).

I’d love to tell you where to get a copy, but I don’t really know. Where are academic journals sold? But if you’re interested, here’s the JEM homepage—a good place to start: http://www.pnpco.com/pn06001.html

Also, if you still want a copy of the May 2008 issue of Subtropics, the literary journal that published one of my nonfiction essays, here’s their website: http://www.english.ufl.edu/subtropics/

Babies back home

2009-03-17T01:07:00.000-07:00

Since we’ve been in Swaziland 4 new babies have joined our group of friends and family. First to arrive was a cute little boy named Gabriel, then came Etienne, a beautiful baby boy, then came Allegra, a beautiful baby girl… and just within the past few weeks my brother and his wife welcomed their adorable little daughter into the world—Mya Grace Cook. Congratulations, newest parents!! We cannot wait to meet her in person.

So on the scorecard, it’s a tie ballgame right now: 2 for the boys and 2 for the girls. There is in fact a tie-breaker baby on the way (Jon & Jess)… is it a boy or a girl??

Yesterday Jamie-girl pointed out that there are nearly as many pics of babies on our wall-o-pictures as adults, despite the fact that we know far more adults than babies. It’s true: the babies and toddlers are disproportionately represented on the wall, and I think it’s unfair. We’ve known them for far less time than most other friends/family, and yet they’re getting top billing on the wall. But you know, it’s an injustice we’re both quite willing to overlook due to one overriding reason: these kids are really, really photogenic. I mean, they’re just cute—Lilly, Brennan, Gabriel, Mya, Etienne, Allegra—and I guess cuteness wins out. If any of you adult friends/family were as downright adorable as these kids are, then you too would dominate our wall-o-pictures… but the little ones have us all beat in that department.

And then there were 29

2009-03-17T00:52:00.000-07:00

When our volunteer group arrived here in Swaziland there were 36 of us. Now, just over 8 months later, there are 29 of us left. So about 19% have gone back home for various reasons. I fully expect that percentage to increase over time. In fact, the group that arrived before us, now in their final months of service, have lost nearly half of their volunteers. I’d be surprised if our group loses that many, but volunteers going home early pretty common here in Swaziland… and us remaining PCVs hate to say goodbye. The news almost always comes as a bit of a shock, and in many cases it involves saying goodbye to someone we’ve grown to care about—someone we’re going to miss.

Fact is, this PCV thing can be quite hard. Our locations, work opportunities and personal issues vary greatly from person to person. And many leave due to situations back home—most of them entirely out of their direct control. We’re fortunate enough to have each other here in Swaziland, and to have great support and stability from friends and family back home. But some PCVs simply don’t, and it can make this kind of service abroad quite difficult.

So I’d like to say hi to any Group 6 Swaziland ex-PCVs who might be reading this blog from back home in the States: Beth, Drew, Jarrod, Amanda, Vanessa, Sara, and Tom—we miss you guys. Tom, thanks for bequeathing us your Chicago Tribune crossword book; you’re alright for a young whippersnapper. Kevin cries quietly into a lap-pillow during long meetings now that you’re not by his side and I think he needs a visit from Clowns Without Borders—maybe you can set something up. Beth, take a trip down to Ashland when you get the chance and send us a really cheesy postcard (and maybe some current real estate listings?). Drew, your departure marked a double tragedy for us remaining Group 6ers: our overall group height significantly decreased, and Jay lost his hair-twin. Miss you, man.

And Meredith from Group 5, if you’re out there—hi there! We didn’t get to say goodbye. Swaziland isn’t the same without Versailles… we got a big red towel from the massive give-away that your departure triggered. Hope all is well with you.

Anyway, there are still plenty of PCVs here in Swaziland, and there are about to be about 40 new ones, set to arrive in June. Just as it’s sad to see friends go, it’s exciting to see new ones come. This has been much more of a social experience than we ever imagined—and we’re site-rats compared to some PCVs.

Truthfully, the time is flying by for us, and we’re going to need every day we can get in Swaziland just to do the things we’ve already planned. So for the record: we’re here for the long-haul.

we went for a hike

2009-03-17T00:12:00.000-07:00

Two weekends ago we joined 5 other PCVs for a hiking/camping trip in Swaziland’s Malalotja Nature Reserve. Finally: a good reason to buy myself a big bush knife.

The trails in Malalotja are pretty well overgrown this time of year (grass up to 9 feet tall), and according to the main entrance registry we were the only people in the whole park. On the first day we walked along open, grassy ridges and hillsides and then descended deep into the rocky gorge of a swift-moving river, reaching our shady little riverside campsite at dusk. We spent the next day exploring the gorge and adjoining valley… just beautiful. At night I spent an inordinate amount of time sharpening my new knife, trying out various types of river stones to see which worked best.

About 1/2 km downriver from our campsite was a 35-foot waterfall, sheer and wide and thunderous in the narrow gorge, spilling into a large pool below. We scampered down the granite slopes to the pool’s edge and swam in and out of the current—not too cold, not too hot. On the opposite side of the waterfall was a bare granite cliff with a rounded, overhanging edge. I swam over to its base and dove beneath the surface to check the pool’s depth: didn’t find the bottom. Perfect—deep enough for some cliff-jumping. So I picked my way back up to the waterfall’s top, swam across a calm little section of river about 10 meters above the falls (by far the most nerve-racking part of this adventure) and made the first jump off the cliff with a couple of friends.

I’ve always been a sucker for jumping into water from cliffs and bridges, and this 35-foot cliff wasn’t high enough to warrant any dread—just big smiles. The real thrill for me was jumping alongside that roaring waterfall. One of the guys who jumped with me is an expert whitewater kayaker. He checked out the water flow in the pool (and in the crossing above the waterfall) and showed me where it was and was not safe to swim… given our remote location, I wouldn’t have done it without his trained eye helping out. Anyway, it was fun (and safe) enough that I did it twice more before leaving.

About 50 meters downriver from that pool was another waterfall, this one about twice as high. But there was no obvious route down to the pool below, so we just peered over the edge and enjoyed the view.

Malalotja is home to a lot of wildlife— plenty of rare African birds and about 63 species of mammals, including baboons, eland, wildebeest and hartebeest, oribi, aardwolf, and even a small herd of elephants (which came in from South Africa some years ago and have apparently bred successfully in one of the park’s larger, more remote valleys). We didn’t see any elephants or leopards, but loud baboon barks were common, echoing off the steep rock walls around our campsite. They sound like dogs, minus the howl. The most common animal we encountered were not welcome: ticks. With the grass so tall and thick it’s tick season here in Swaziland (a handful of PCVs have had to deal with tick-bite fever). So we’d stop pretty frequently to check for ticks and brush them off before they had a chance to bite.

The trails in Malalotja are currently so overgrown that it was a real chore just to stay on them. Bushwhacking was unavoidable. One morning, four of us set out to go see some huge waterfalls a few hours’ hike upriver from camp, but we couldn’t follow the trail. After an hour and a half of traveling we weren’t even 1/4 of the way there: we’d spent most of our time bushwhacking through a broad, bowl-shaped field of high grass and ferns after our trail had disappeared into a maze of elusive game trails. So we made our way to a clearing (where we actually found the trail again), ate apples and nursed our wounds, then turned back for camp—and the swimming hole.

Anyway, we hope to return and explore other parts of this beautiful park, especially in the winter when the trails are easier to follow.

We received great news last month.

2009-03-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

Doctors Without Borders (Medecines Sans Frontieres) will be coming to Zombodze’s health clinic. Not just once or twice, but every Wednesday for the foreseeable future. They’ll bring an RN and sometimes a doctor to treat patients and provide critical services our clinic can’t currently provide. The most significant of these services are TB testing and monitored TB treatment, HIV testing, counseling and treatment, and CD-4 counts.

We’re thrilled. Their decision to come to Zombodze had nothing to do with us, but we’ll make sure to support their efforts here, especially regarding referrals. We can now do targeted homestead visits, looking for people who need medical attention (esp. TB cases) and help them get to the clinic on Wednesdays. Before, all we could do was encourage them to go into Nhlangano’s health center—but many can’t afford the kumbi ride into town and back, and there’s something troubling about directing a TB-infected person to use crowded public transportation…which left us with no good options to help. Now we can refer them to the clinic on Wednesdays, then show up ourselves to see who does and does not come, then do follow-up visits to those who didn’t show.

In this manner, DWB’s presence in Zombodze will undoubtedly save lives. They are here to stop a TB epidemic. In and around Nhlangano (the nearest city, 19km away) they’ve identified something like 26 cases of MDR-TB (not XDR, thank God), which is a highly lethal form of TB that’s developed resistance to the typical drug treatment. So DWB has likely drawn a “catchment area” around Nhlangano and are now hurrying to get doctors into those communities to try and halt a nasty epidemic. Furthermore, cases of XDR-TB, the worst and most drug-resistant form of TB currently known, have been found in the South African state of KwaZulu-Natal—which directly borders our chiefdom. So when Zombodze’s high HIV infection rates are combined with this heightened regional TB risk, there’s no question as to why DWB is setting up shop. And we’re overjoyed that they’ve come. I cannot help but think that, had they been here back in November/December, Gogo (grandma) Nkambule might still be alive: she didn’t get tested/treated soon enough and TB quickly killed her, leaving about 5 young kids without a caretaker.

As I’ve noted before on this blog, Swaziland’s HIV-TB co-infection rate is (by far) the highest in the world, at 80%. HIV weakens the immune system, TB infects the vulnerable person and—unless they get rapid treatment—swiftly kills them. Thing is, TB is curable. But it requires the patient to adhere strictly to a drug-treatment regimen for the full duration (usually 6-9 months), which is difficult. When adherence breaks down, resistant forms of TB emerge. That’s where the highly lethal MDR and XDR strains came from: they’re essentially manmade super-bugs—and an HIV patient with a low CD4 count does not stand a chance against them. Anyone who’s read “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” or is otherwise familiar with Paul Farmer’s work, knows what’s up with this resistant-TB thing… it’s serious, it’s devastating, and it’s preventable.

So here’s the short of it: thanks to DWB, we’ve been given the opportunity to help stop an epidemic of MDR- and XDR-TB from sweeping through this community. Accordingly, this development shifts our project priorities a bit. Homestead visits, for example, now take on an entirely new level of importance. We’re in a great position to help—we know the area’s homesteads by now, we know enough siSwati to ask the right questions and check people out for symptoms and tell them when/where to go, and we’re healthy enough not to be vulnerable to sickness ourselves. We’ll help DWB train and support the local RHMs (Rural Health Motivators), we’ll finally be able to encourage people to get an HIV test right here in Zombodze, and we can help with adherence follow-up on those receiving TB treatment.

Our basic goal is to make sure that DWB staffers are busy every Wednesday they spend in Zombodze.

As we walked over to a meeting to meet with a DWB rep, we brainstormed a wish list of things we wanted them to do in Zombodze. Before we got there we went through a “magic wand” scenario: if we could have them do anything we wanted in our community, what would it be? We figured that this exercise would prepare us for the unlikely event that someone asked us what we wanted from DWB. And when we sat down in the meeting and the DWB rep explained what services they’d be providing, she basically described our whole “magic wand” scenario. Every single thing on our little DWB wish list was named and will be coming to Zombodze—even some things we hadn’t thought to wish for. Hearing of these plans was, for both of us, a stunning moment. Thank God for DWB.

We’re so very glad to be here.

some pics

2009-03-16T07:47:00.001-07:00

Jamie-boy gets to play on a roof.

Hiking in Malalotja Nature Preserve (Swaziland)

Hiking buddies and fellow PCVs

camp in Malalotja

More fun working on the roof

Jamie-girl at training event she organized

puppies. everyone likes puppies.

warthogs. not everyone likes warthogs.

Jamie-boy standing in his corn. If you build it...

Jamie-girl tending to the sweet potatoes.

Beans.

spider webs on a dewy morning... very Hallmark, I know.

at the fruit/veggie market

a rainbow in Zombodze.

care package bliss

2009-03-16T07:43:00.000-07:00

Hi all-

We’ve been spoiled by all the care packages you’ve sent us over the months, and we want to sincerely thank you for your kindness and generosity. We have good coffee and drink mixes, pain pills and daily vitamins galore, beef jerky and sausage and all kinds of tasty treats, great music and movies (getting movies/DVDs are cause for major celebration), yarn and crosswords, Splenda, magazines and newspapers, pictures, lots of seeds for the garden, socks and undies… it’s like year-round Christmas. And many packages have included things for people in our community too—which is really fun to give away. We once received a packet of Halloween stickers and the local kids loved them. We’re always excited to go to the post office… thanks to your thoughtfulness, we don’t feel particularly deprived of anything.

Well, maybe a few things.

After all these months, we still get quite excited about receiving any and all of the stuff on our long-standing care package wish list, but there are a couple of new items we’d like to add.

Duct Tape. Even here in Swaziland, not a week goes by that I don’t long for a roll of the greatest tape on earth.

Pens and pencils. For some reason, basic black-ink writing pens are kind of expensive and hard to find in Nhlangano-- and I’ve yet to find my pencil of choice, the Dixon Ticonderoga #2. go ahead and laugh if you want, but the DT2 is a beautifully crafted piece of hand-held goodness. Ever the cutting-edge futurist, Jamie-girl loves her mechanical pencils, but they don’t do it for me. One cannot chew on the mechanical variety-- I’m a Ticonderoga man.

Highlighters, and maybe a few Sharpies. We do a lot of flip-chart stuff for various events and displays. And we’d like to hand out highlighters to some of our students as prizes (instead of candy).

More pictures. I know pics are already on the list and we’ve been getting them, but we want more of YOU hanging from our walls. And we lost a bunch of ours (long story). So even CDs full of digital pics would be (and have been) great.

Rechargeable batteries—AA and AAA. Our headlamps and reading lamps take AAA and we don’t have rechargeables in that size.

Podcasts (on CD). We recently got a CD full of NPR/PRI podcasts, and it’s been great listening to them. Here are some podcasts we really like: This American Life, Radio Lab, KEXP Live Performances, surf video podcasts (like Fuel TV, DVS, Rip Curl or Shralp), Bill Moyers Journal, NOW, 60 minutes, Democracy Now… whatever you think we’d enjoy. We’re able to download some shorter podcasts when at the internet café, but the larger ones (esp. video) remain out of our reach.

Video of an NBA game: the Cavs’ first home-court loss to the Lakers last month. But I’m not picky—any good Cavs game will do… I just want to see LeBron James play. If you can figure out how to get it and put it on a DVD, I’ll be forever indebted.

Same goes for the Super Bowl. Heard all about it… love to actually see it.

GU or GOO… not sure how it’s spelled. It’s high-energy “food” sold in little squeezable packets that runners use during long runs and races. We want to have some for our upcoming 1/2 marathon in April.

Little things we can give to kids in our community—small toys or stickers or kid-size toothbrushes or small bars of soap or crayons or… whatever you might think of; we have fun giving and they have fun receiving.

As much as we love getting them, we’d like to offer you an alternative to sending care packages. Instead of spending all that money on postage, consider donating a similar amount to one of our projects-- or tell us what charitable idea you’d like your “care package” money to go toward. You wouldn’t believe how far $50 goes in Swaziland (as a reference, we’re currently living on a stipend of around $250 US dollars per month—which covers both of us). So for example, instead of sending us 2 care packages in 2009, just send us one—and donate the postage cost of the other one to a project we’re doing here in Zombodze. Or maybe make one of the packages a “charity pack” full of things we can provide to our community.

We still want to get your packages, believe me, but we don’t want their cost to cut into anyone’s charity budget.
Again, thanks everyone for your generosity, friendship and support!

we went to Durban

2009-02-13T04:43:00.000-08:00

We spent all of last week in Durban with a fellow-PCV couple. It was great. we found a good deal on a little "Kondo" (yes, with a K because it's not really a condo but a motel room with a kitchen) right on the beach and spent quality time in the ocean, staring at the ocean from the balcony, jogging alongside the ocean, sitting in the sand beside the ocean... you get the idea. My friend Jay and I got to surf every day, and Jamie-girl got to jog every morning along the promenade.

We ate seafood in restaurants. We went to a movie (Burn After Reading). we drove a car. it was all quite luxurious and reminiscent of times past. And it also allowed us to step back from our daily lives in rural Swaziland and appreciate its simple beauty.

Anyway we're back and we're busy, especially in the schools. More on that later.

Also, we just got an email from a Port Townsend woman who's working/living here in Swaziland-- how cool is that? She found us through this blog. I love it when that kind of thing happens.

wind blows our latrine down... again

2009-02-13T04:26:00.000-08:00

We had a big wind/rain storm a few weeks ago, and it tore the roof off our outhouse and damaged its walls. again. I took a little video of the aftermath, and thought this would be a good opportunity to try compressing the video file and uploading it to the blog... let's see if it works. our internet cafe's bandwidth in Nhlangano isn't exactly huge, but it might just be enough.

The whining noise you'll hear on the video is the dog (not me-- sorry to disappoint). I call him Killer, due to a disturbing incident with a neighboring homestead's kitten... but when the storms come he doesn't exactly live up to the vicious bravado his name implies. And I like him for that-- big scary dog, total wuss. Anyway, if this video thing works okay, we'll do more of them for the blog. And we'll even put ourselves in them from time to time.

hey-- i think it worked! let me know if you can view it on your side of the world.

Help Zombodze: Way #2

2009-02-13T04:24:00.000-08:00

This one is a water project aimed at renovating our community garden’s water-delivery system, which currently fails to provide year-round water. You can be part of this project primarily by helping to fund it: I’ll be posting the project on the Peace Corps’ online, public-funding vehicle called Peace Corps Partnerships (see below entry). You’ll be able to click on the project and donate directly to it—100% of the donation will go directly to the project, and all of the project funds will go through me personally (PC deposits the funds into my Swazi bank account). But before I post the project to the website, I need to get a feel for the level of interest (ie, how much funding can I reasonably expect to raise) and factor that into the project’s proposed scope.
This project will restore a reliable water source to the Zombodze Community Garden—called the bomake garden (pronounced bo-mah-gay, which is plural for mother). The garden is a big rectangular patch of fenced land that once contained many dozens of food-producing plots for our community’s homesteads… but when the water source failed. So did many of the plots. Here’s the abbreviated version…
The bomake garden is where we have our plots, along with about 20 other locals, mostly mothers, grandmothers and kids. During the rainy season—Nov-Apr—this number doubles. But during the dry season—May-Oct—only the strong and determined can manage to haul water up the hill in buckets to their plots, so the number shrinks. But if water was delivered to the garden’s pipes year-round, we project the number of active, food-producing plots would triple, providing food to perhaps 50 different homesteads. Our community census showed an average of 8 people living on Zombodze’s homesteads—4 adults and four children (2 of those kids being OVCs). So using the 50-homestead figure, improving the community garden’s food-producing capacity in this manner would provide a year-round source fresh veggies to around 400 people, 200 of whom would be kids—and about 100 of those kids being OVCs.
There once was a good water-delivery system for the garden, carrying water through underground pipes to the garden’s spigots from a small dam-created reservoir located along a year-round stream 1km away. But about ten years ago the concrete dam was vandalized and never properly repaired, eventually leading to a full breach of an adjoining earthen berm. So today the water-delivery system is far less reliable—and totally seasonal. Water now reaches the garden’s spigots via a 1km-long, open-cut trench, and only when the stream is full enough. The trench is susceptible to pigs and livestock and spongy soils, so it’s a very inefficient water-carrier. In fact, most of the water it carries never ends up on anyone’s garden plot.
Why use the community garden instead of simply having a “kitchen” garden on one’s own homestead? Well, here are the three main reasons. First is fencing: the community garden’s fence is intact and offers reliable protection from free-ranging cows, goats, pigs, chickens, etc. Most homesteads do not have such fencing—it must be taller then an average cow’s head and sturdy to be effective—and they don’t have the resources to install anything like that around their garden plots. So the homestead plots are usually pretty small, yielding much less veggies than a plot in the community garden could offer. Secondly, when one gardens among many others there is beneficial exchange of seed, fertilizers, knowledge, and ideas. The seed-swapping alone is invaluable, and the garden has a ready supply of sweet potato starts, spinach seeds, etc. Gardening alongside others makes for a healthier variety of veggies in one’s kitchen. The third reason would apply if the community garden had reliable water: most homesteads here (like 76% of them) don’t have easy access to water, especially during the dry season. If they had a place to grow food during the dry season, it would dramatically change their quality of life.
There are a few different ways of renovating the bomake garden’s water delivery system, and the community will ultimately decide which one to pursue. I’ll help. One way would be to drill a borehole onsite and either reconfigure the existing underground piping to connect to the new source. Another way would be to make some structural repairs the earthen berm and reservoir up on the stream and reconnect the existing piping to new feeder lines. Both have their benefits and complications, but the borehole option is significantly more complicated and community leaders seem to be leaning toward making repairs to the old reservoir. We shall see…
Anyway I’ll be happy to provide lots more information (and pics) if you’re really interested in getting involved on this project—send me an email: cooktimothy@hotmail.com.

Peace Corps Partnerships

2009-02-13T04:21:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone…

Before I post any more project ideas, I’d like to explain what the Peace Corps Partnership Program (PCPP) is—if you ever decide to help us fund something, you’ll probably do it through PCPP’s website. It’s tax-deductible that way.

The PCPP website is how people back home can donate money directly to a PCV’s projects. We post a specific project to the site, and then anyone can click on it and donate directly to it—100% of the donation goes to the selected project; no “admin” or “overhead” costs apply. And the funds we raise through PCPP are managed by us personally: once the funding target is reached the Peace Corps deposits the full amount into our Swazi bank account for immediate project implementation. We then write a bunch of reports and document the project costs and outcomes for the Peace Corps and all the partnering donors.

Projects posted to the PCPP website have to meet some basic requirements first. One of them states that the community benefiting from the project must provide at least 25% of the overall project expenses (which could include in-kind labor costs, materials, or money). So if we post a project to the PCPP website, it means we’ve received community buy-in and we’re ready to implement the project asap. If the project doesn’t raise the funding target within a specified timeframe then it’ll be pulled from the list—allowing room for others.

Anyone can donate to any project posted to the PCPP site (any PCV in the world can post projects), but by far the most common way they get funded is through the donations of people connected to the PCV administering the project. Friends and family! So before we post anything, we’ll put our project idea on this blog to gauge interest and potential funding partners. So as we post the different projects we’re working on, we’ll be sure to mention when it’s a potential PCPP-funded one—and if you see something that strikes your philanthropic fancy, just shoot me an email to begin the partnership.

YOU can help Zombodze: Way #1

2009-01-23T04:41:00.000-08:00

Many of you have asked about how to get involved in/contribute to any of the projects we’re doing here in Swaziland. Thanks for asking— we’ll be posting some info about our projects currently needing funding or materials. To start things off, below is a very small-scale project we’ll be doing in Zombodze; you can be directly involved by helping us gather supplies and sending them to us for use and distribution.

There’ll be plenty more opportunities for partnering with us in the coming months (including tax-deductible Peace Corps Partnership charity opportunities), so please don’t feel any pressure whatsoever about this particular one—it’s just what’s on our plate this week.

If you’re interested or have an idea to help us provide these supplies, or if you have ideas about other supplies, email me directly: cooktimothy@hotmail.com. We can make this happen—and we’ll even take some pics for you…

Neighborhood Care Points: Activities for Orphans and Vulnerable Children

Target population: Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs)
Activity Needs: 350-400 (or more!) of the following items: toothbrushes, toothpaste (small tubes), toothbrush covers, sample-sized bars of soap, small plastic baggies (for the soap).

This is a small-scale project aimed at providing OVCs (orphans and vulnerable children) aged 4-11 with some basic instruction regarding personal hygiene. The activities would be organized and presented by us at all the local Neighborhood Care Points (NCPs), which is where volunteer women cook meals each day for OVCs who aren’t getting enough food wherever they’re living.
Many of these kids are under 10 years old and do not yet know about the importance of hand-washing (they eat NCP meals with their fingers) or brushing their teeth. So our idea is simply to incorporate little informational activities into our regular visits to Zombodze’s NCPs—not every time, just every once in a while. We’re already working with these NCPs, so implementing this is simple.
In the tooth-brushing activity, OVCs (and volunteer mothers) would be taught how (and when) to brush their teeth, and would then receive a toothbrush and small tube of toothpaste of their own. Some toothbrush covers would be really nice to give them, but are not essential to the activity. In the hand-washing activity they’d learn to wash their hands—especially before eating with their fingers—and would then receive soap in little plastic storage bags to keep as their own. The NCPs would also be provided with soap and hand-washing basins, and the volunteers would be encouraged to make hand-washing a regular part of the OVC’s mealtime routine. These are not exciting handouts, I know, but believe me the kids would be thrilled—and more importantly, it would help to reduce the incredibly high rates of preventable sickness among these kids.
We’re working on the NCP’s food needs with WFP, and Unicef does education-based activities (vowels and number lessons)… but sanitation/hygiene informationals are nonexistent.
There are 7 NCPs in our chiefdom, each feeding an average of 50 kids per day… that means 350-400 kids.

Leave your catapults at home.

2009-01-07T03:50:00.000-08:00

Pics from our Kosi Bay Christmas trip

2008-12-30T23:36:00.001-08:00

Kosi Bay sojourners

2008-12-30T23:34:00.001-08:00

December 28, 2008:

Yesterday we returned from a 4-day camping trip to South Africa’s Kosi Bay National Park, a World Heritage Site located on the beaches just south of the Mozambique border. We went with 3 other PCV friends and had a really great time spending Christmas with them and the other locals we met there. Kosi Bay is a very remote spot, so we managed to avoid the big holiday crowds that flock to the beaches this time of year. We'll put the pics in the next entry (they're both being posted at the same time anyway).
Kosi Bay National Park protects a string of big lakes that empty into the ocean, and it features huge sandy beaches cradling warm Indian Ocean waters, all surrounded by a dense “sand forest” housing hundreds of bird species, antelope, and other wildlife. We stayed just above one of the lakes at a bush camp. Swimming in these lakes isn’t advisable: they’re home to hippos, crocodiles, and Zambezi sharks. But we did plenty of swimming in the ocean, playing in the waves and floating in little coves sheltered by outlying reefs and rocks. Jamie-girl was able to run 30 minutes down the beach in bare feet, dense vegetation on one side and dazzling blue water on the other side, without anyone in sight after the first 5 minutes. The emptiness and beauty of our surroundings were stunning.
Our Lonely Planet-Southern Africa guidebook calls this park “the jewel of the KwaZulu coast… some of the most beautiful (and quietest) beaches in South Africa.”
Our hosts, the owner of the camp and his friends, were great; sea fishermen with jaw-dropping shark stories, generous personalities, and a rugged old land-cruiser truck to haul us around on the tricky sand roads of the Park. This group of South Africans basically included us in their Christmas activities, taking us to the beaches, sharing their camp kitchen, campfire, huts, and beautiful screened-in camp dining room. We made some good friends and good connections to guides who know the KwaZulu area like their backyard, and we’re definitely returning for more. It took us 3-4 hours to get there, and our total cost for the entire 4 days—rental car, groceries, lodging, everything—came to about $100 (US) per person.
I didn’t do any surfing, partly because I had no board and the nearest surf shop was about 1-1/2 hours south of the Park, and partly because I had no idea what we were going to find out there. It’s quite remote, no surfers were in the water, and around sunset the tiger sharks come out to feed—3 to 5 meter-long beasts with a dangerously curious nature. But I did get my saltwater fix by playing in shore break until I felt truly broken, and by getting enough saltwater up my nose for my sinuses to feel normal again. Ocean water temp: mid-70s. perfection. The place was hard to leave.
One of the coolest features of this place, aside from the gorgeous empty beaches, was it’s so-called “sand forest.” Imagine miles and miles of big sand dunes, covered with a multi-layered canopy tree forest and beautiful grass meadows—all this plant life growing directly on sand dunes. You could dig down and all you found was more sand, no actual brown dirt. Apparently there’s enough consistent rain and drizzle to support the forest despite the water’s rapid drainage through the sandy ground. There are lots of mangrove, fig, raffia-palm, acacia, and other trees in this forest, and some kind of fern/palm species that takes four hundred years just to get as big as a bush. All the roads winding through it are deeply-rutted sand tracks.
After parking our rental car at our host’s home in the nearest town to the Park border, we rode in the back of his old truck for about an hour over these crazy roads just to get to his bush camp. And then it was another 30 minutes’ bumpy and beautiful drive from there out to the nearest beach. By the time we got to the sand we were so far off the proverbial map that it felt like we’d time traveled. The beach was a nesting area for loggerhead and leatherback turtles, and there was a little research station built into the hill out on the point; other than that, there wasn’t a structure in sight. The shallow water was topaz blue, the sand was the color of tanned skin and fit perfectly between my toes, and the breeze was fresh and light.
Amazingly, the heat wasn’t at all oppressive, thanks to a bit of cloud cover and rain that came and went during the first few days, blocking some of the intensity of the African sun’s direct rays. It’s truly amazing what the sun can do to a person down here, and we’re getting smarter: we escaped getting burned while on the beach. We’d expected extreme humidity and heat, but we managed to get some relatively mild conditions. Our host said we’d lucked out.

For New Year’s Eve we’ll be joining some other PCVs and close friends at a backpacker’s lodge in Swaziland’s Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary. It’s supposed to be a really nice and low-key lodge with a pool and private rooms (Heidi/Xtophe and Fed/Lekha: the description of this place reminds me of that great hostel in San Jose, Costa Rica). It’s not far from home-- we’ll just stay a few days there, but I’m looking forward to it.
Then, at the end of January or the beginning of February we’re planning to take one more little trip before summer goes away. We’ll take some days and go to Durban, which is also on the KwaZulu section of South Africa’s eastern coastline—just much further south than Kosi Bay. It’s known for great surf breaks and swimming beaches in the summer (that’s now), but it’s too crowded to properly enjoy during the holiday season. So we’re waiting until school starts up again and things calm down before going. While there, we’ll get some boards and catch some much-needed waves, stay in a room near the beach with indoor plumbing (the opulence!), jog along the beach promenade like in San Diego, explore the Indian spice markets Durban is known for, and maybe even go out to eat at a restaurant.
Anybody want to come along? I’ll make you a deal: you pay for your airfare, I’ll rent you a board AND buy you dinner. I’m serious—I’ll do that. Think about it… let me know.

Happy New Year everybody. We love you and miss you all, and we miss all the great traditions of gathering and celebrating with friends and family that make this time of year so special for us.
Thanks for your thoughts and prayers, your gifts and cards, your support and encouragement.

Q&A: an epidemic of confusing numbers

2008-12-30T23:28:00.000-08:00

There is a lot of confusion and conflicting information regarding the rates of HIV infection in Swaziland, so I’ll try to clarify some things and give you the most up-to-date numbers we have. We work closely with groups that gather the authoritative figures on this stuff, including NERCHA and the in-country Baylor Clinic doctors, so I’m pretty confident about the accuracy of this info. Actually, I’m far more confident than pretty… but that’s for me and my therapist to work out. On to the Q&A.

Question: What percentage of the population in Swaziland is infected with HIV?

You’d think this would be a pretty straight-forward question and answer, but there are actually a few different ways to measure the epidemic’s scope within a given population and that’s why you sometimes see conflicting numbers. Let me define a few terms first.
First of all, there is the rate of HIV “incidents,” which counts only the number of new HIV cases, and there’s the rate of “prevalence,” which counts all existing HIV cases. We use the prevalence numbers, as they give a more complete picture of the epidemic. So all the numbers I’ll be quoting will be prevalence rates.
There are really 3 main rates measuring HIV prevalence in Swaziland’s population: the overall rate, which includes babies and grandpas and everyone in between; the 15-49 rate, which is the age group most sexually active in a population—and includes the so-called “productive population” of income-earners and consumers; and then there’s the ANC rate, which stands for “antenatal care” and looks exclusively at the HIV rate among pregnant women using health clinics during their pregnancy.
The overall rate is usually the smallest number because it includes lots of people who aren’t even sexually active—like babies and elderly. The ANC rate is always the highest number because it’s measuring a group of women (who always have higher infection rates than men) who are obviously sexually-active AND have obviously had unprotected sex (thus the pregnancy). That’s why the 15-49 year-olds rate is popular among health educators and practitioners: it includes both men and women, pregnant or not, within the largest demographic segment of sexually-active adults. So you have 3 main HIV rates (there are plenty more, believe me, but these are the big 3), all slightly different and all frequently used without explanation. So without further ado, here are the statistics-- remember these correctly and you’ll be better informed than most health workers in Swaziland.

The overall rate of HIV prevalence: 19% (that’s the highest national overall rate in the world.)

The 15-49 rate of HIV prevalence: 26% (that’s the latest from Demographic Health Survey, from May 2008)

The ANC rate of HIV prevalence: 39% (that’s from the national sero-sentinel surveillance study—remember, just pregnant women in this number).

Question: can you please confuse me even more by throwing more numbers and categories at me?

Sure. Here you go… Swaziland’s ANC rate, at 39%, is actually down from it’s peak of 42.6% in 2004. So nearly half of all pregnant women here were HIV positive 4 years ago—and this recent decrease may well be more of a “leveling off” trend than an actual long-term decline. Currently the mother-to-child transmission rate is 14%, meaning that about 14% of babies born to HIV-positive moms are becoming infected. And that’s much too high—that rate should be below 5% with proper treatment and precautions.
Still reading, huh? Okay, here’s more. A closer look at that 15-49 rate shows that among 30-35 year-olds in Swaziland the HIV infection rate is currently a staggering 43%. This reveals an important feature of the HIV epidemic here: it’s killing off an entire generation. My generation, in fact. If I was a 33-year old Swazi man instead of a 33-year old American man, I could rightly assume that close to half of my peers—certainly half of my female friends-- were infected with HIV, and that many of them would not know their status, would not seek treatment and would die within a decade.
It’s also interesting to note that female infection rates are always higher than male ones. It’s basic anatomy: they’re just more susceptible to the HIV virus. In Swaziland’s 15-49 age group, the female HIV prevalence rate is currently 31%, whereas the male rate is 20%-- a very significant difference. Among Swaziland’s overall rate, 22% of the women and 15% of the men are HIV positive.

Question: I heard that tuberculosis (TB) is a bigger killer in Swaziland than HIV/AIDS… is that true?

It is true that TB kills more people than full-blown AIDS in Swaziland. But there is an important connection between HIV infection and TB infection: they often go hand-in-hand. So in many cases it’s hard to say that a person died from either one or the other. The sad thing is, TB is curable.
That brings us to the HIV-TB co-infection rate, of which Swaziland has the highest in the world: 81%. This rate tells us the number of TB patients who are infected with the HIV virus. In Swaziland most of the people infected with HIV do not actually die of AIDS; it takes a while to develop full-blown AIDS (the CD4 count needs to drop below a certain threshold before you even officially have AIDS), and other “secondary opportunistic” diseases often kill them first. Of all these secondary opportunistic diseases to which HIV-positive people are susceptible, TB is by far the biggest killer. TB is really, really common here. So for these reasons and more, the HIV-TB co-infection rate is important.
That 81% number is the prevalence of HIV infection among newly-diagnosed TB patients. What it means to us as PCVs is, when we come across someone with TB, we can be relatively sure that they’re HIV positive and therefore need treatment immediately, or else they’ll die quite rapidly-- their immune system doesn’t stand a chance against full-blown TB. But in rural areas, that’s much easier said than done. In fact, one need not be HIV-positive to die of TB here, just weak and isolated from proper treatment.
One recent case is that of Gogo (grandma) Nkambule. We first met her on a homestead visit back in the middle of November. She walked up to us, talked with us in English for a while about her situation (70 years old and trying to care for 5 or 6 little kids with no income after their father dropped them at her house 5 years’ prior). She was complaining of a nighttime cough and occasional pain in the side of her chest. We both immediately suspected TB, of course, but she said that it wasn’t TB, that she was negative for TB, and we simply had no means of getting her to a hospital. We did not know her HIV status, but at 70 and facing food scarcity problems she was clearly vulnerable to infectious diseases, with or without HIV.
Then after one month we visited her homestead again, delivering 15kg of rice from the Red Cross, and this time she was bed-ridden, blankets and a pillow on the dirt floor of her hut, with an older daughter tending to her. She’d severely deteriorated—ankles swollen, unable to walk, coughing persistently, barely able to talk with us. She’d been to a hospital and we looked at the medications they gave her, which revealed that she’d been diagnosed with TB (for some reason, she still did not think she had it). Jamie gave her some tips to reduce the swelling in her ankles and encouraged her to take the meds faithfully. We left after about 15 minutes. Today I learned that last night, 8 days after that visit, they buried her. She probably died a few days prior to that (so, around Christmas day)—just over a month after being able to walk and talk and care for her grandkids.
So death by TB can happen quickly for those already weakened, whether by age or malnourishment or HIV. And of course our fear is that the little kids she was caring for have contracted TB (patients with full-blown TB spread it to an average of 10-15 people). They’ll now be moved to another relative’s nearby homestead, where it’s possible that TB will continue its spread through that family. This is how a TB epidemic spreads so rapidly—and add to that the over-crowded public busses and khumbis, often the only means of getting to a hospital.

Question: I heard that the life expectancy in Swaziland is like 21 years old or something… is that true?

No, thankfully it’s not that bad. But Swaziland’s life expectancy rate is indeed among the lowest (if not THE lowest—I’m not sure) in the world. Again, you have some competing numbers to contend with, so I’ll tell you what I know.
Apparently there are 2 basic measurements of life expectancy used by the World Health Organization (WHO): the basic life expectancy rate and the healthy life expectancy rate. I suppose the latter rate is looking at how long the average person lives in relatively good health—so maybe terminally ill people are not factored into this number… I don’t know. Look it up and let me know—it’s a new term to me. Anyway, these numbers are estimating the average age that a person born this year can expect to reach. So here they are, as currently reported by WHO:

Average "healthy" life expectancy in Swaziland: 33 years old for men, 35 for women.
Average life expectancy (which must include the sick and dying, right?): 41 years for men, 43 for women.

Question: how can a baby born to an HIV-positive mother be HIV-negative?

In fact it’s quite common that HIV-positive women give birth to perfectly healthy HIV-negative babies. Most babies of these women are actually born HIV-negative. Apparently, that placenta really does an amazing job at isolating the baby and its fluids from things like infected blood. Don’t ask me how. Fetuses develop their own unique blood supply and it stays separate from mommy’s blood. But where viral transmission can—and does—occur is during the baby’s delivery and during the initial year of feeding.
Here’s the crazy thing: breast milk carries the HIV virus, but it can pass through a newborn’s digestive tract without ever infecting it—especially if mommy’s HIV is being properly managed—and will nourish the baby just as well as HIV-negative breast milk. Where mommy and baby run into trouble seems to be when mommy MIXES formula and HIV-positive breast milk. The way our Baylor Clinic pediatric doctor friends explain it, a newborn’s digestive system is still fragile and forming and can be “scraped” or injured very easily. Breast milk is perfectly designed to be processed by that fragile tract, but formula can actually create tiny little micro-tears and cuts as it passes through their gut—which normally would not bother anything; but when you add HIV-positive breast milk into that damaged little tract, the infection rate jumps up dramatically—the virus gets into the blood stream. So what doctors in the know are currently recommending for HIV-positive mothers (in addition to adhering to their treatment) is that they either breast feed exclusively OR use formula exclusively, but they should never combine the two (“mix feed”). But many Swazi women don’t know this—or do not understand it—and figure that formula feeding is best if they’re HIV-positive. But formula is expensive here, and soon the mom runs out of it and resorts to breast-feeding. That’s part of the reason Swaziland’s mother-to-child infection rate is 14% while it’s just 5% in Botswana, where they’ve managed to spread the good word about exclusivity in newborn feeding practices. Ideally, the HIV-positive mommy would breastfeed exclusively (no formula) for the first 6 months, then after that switch to formula and other baby food (no breast milk!), if possible.

Q&A: lack of ocean puts Swazi pirates at unfair disadvantage

2008-12-30T23:26:00.000-08:00

Q&A: lack of ocean puts Swazi pirates at unfair disadvantage

This time I’ll focus on regional instability and crises, and the impact (or lack thereof) they have on Swaziland and our life here thus far.

Question: Has the political, economic, and public health crises in Zimbabwe impacted life in Swaziland?

Nope. Zimbabwe dominates the news here, especially the BBC show “Focus on Africa,” but otherwise we’ve felt no effects of the ongoing multiple emergencies in that country.
While Swaziland does indeed share borders with South Africa and Mozambique—both bordering countries of Zimbabwe—it does not share any direct border with Zimbabwe. Those fleeing Zimbabwe for one reason or another are mainly flooding into South Africa, and really have no reason to come in large numbers to Swaziland: there are no jobs here. In fact, Swazis are flooding into South Africa, too, as are Mozabiquans and Botswanans and Namibians and Zambians… the basic rule for this southern-most African region is this: when crisis strikes, those affected flee to South Africa if they can. That’s why South Africa has such a serious illegal immigration problem—and xenophobia-fueled hatred and violence aimed at black foreigners in South Africa has been on the rise for some time. Luckily for Swazis, their native language, siSwati, is widely spoken in SA and it’s so similar to Zulu (spoken by many South Africans) that they’re rarely (if ever) singled out as targets of violence. Plenty of Swazis live and work legally in South Africa.
As for the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe, the fear is that it’ll spread down the rivers and into the other countries through which those rivers pass. But again Swaziland is not in danger, as Zimbabwe’s south-flowing rivers all pass into Mozambique and South Africa without connecting significantly to any Swazi watersheds.
In general, any unrest in the region is of course bad news for the countries in that region, so Swaziland isn’t totally isolated from the situation in Zimbabwe. There may be some national economic/trade impacts or tighter restrictions at Swazi borders for Zimbabwe citizens… but we as PCVs here in Swaziland haven’t noticed anything different at all, and I don’t really expect that we will. We didn’t plan on traveling to Zimbabwe, anyway, as it’s been a no-go zone for quite some time before we ever arrived in the region.

Question: Have you felt any impacts from the situation in the Congo and along the Congolese- Rwandan border?

Not at all. Those countries are a long way away from us or any countries surrounding us, and that’s primarily an ethnic/land scarcity crisis carried over from issues and causes surrounding the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s. Swaziland has no Hutus, no Tutsis, no Congolese rebel militias or any socio-cultural connections to the people of that war-torn region. Like anybody else, we just hear about it on the news.

Question: any Somali pirates threatening Swaziland?

I wish: it would mean we had a coastline. And plus, I’d probably be able to pick up some pretty authentic pirate costumes at the local second-hand stores. Sadly, there aren’t even any siSwati words for “Arrgh” or “ahoy” or “matey.”

Q&A: old, earnest prayers

2008-12-30T23:24:00.000-08:00

In this entry I’ll try to address some of the questions about our access to basic infrastructure—water, electricity, transportation, that sort of thing. It can be confusing because on the one hand you’ve read about the water shortages and difficulties here but on the other hand our garden seems to be doing okay and we’re not often thirsty… so what gives? I’ll try to explain this, among a few other apparent conundrums.

Question: If there’s such an awful water shortage in Swaziland, how are you growing carrots and tomatoes and cabbage and everything else?

I’ll start with the simple answer, then move on to the more in-depth ones. Basically, it comes down to our easy access to drinking water on the homestead—not “garden” water, but drinking water. This allows us to prioritize our water usage differently than those who must collect and haul ALL their water, whether for drinking or bathing or watering plants. So the water that we collect and haul (when there isn’t enough rain to do the watering for us) can be devoted exclusively to watering our veggies. But the water collected and hauled by homesteads without such an onsite water source must be used according to resource-scarcity prioritization: indoor water uses (drinking, bathing, washing dishes) always trump outdoor water uses (laundry, watering plants and animals). And here’s the thing… about 70-75% of the neighboring homesteads fall into this water-scarcity category of prioritizing. They’re hauling unclean water from surface sources (streams, seeps) hundreds of meters from their homes, and the difficulty of this daily task demands that they only use water for the most essential things. So our homestead’s borehole/water tap located on our homestead (about 10 meters from our home) frees us up to use our “collected” water exclusively for gardens. And we never use the borehole water on our plants (but we do use it for laundry). That’s the micro-view reason. Now I’ll pull the camera back a little and offer some broader views of the situation.
There are two main seasons here in Swaziland: a cool, dry one (winter) and a hot, wet one (summer). Winter months are generally from May-November (ish) and summer lasts from December-April. There is actually a fall and spring too, but they’re quite short and not nearly as distinct as the ones we get in, say, Ashland, OR or Silvis, IL. So most people just refer to the dry season and the wet season.
We’re currently in summer, the hot, wet season, so rains come more frequently than in winter months (along with plenty of thunder and lightning). But Swaziland is full of different climates, and while one place gets rain another place just around the corner gets none. Even within our own chiefdom, there is a “lowveld” region that’s lower in elevation, much hotter, and much much drier. There aren’t any community gardens over there because there isn’t enough accessible water to keep them up—and they get only a fraction of the summer rains that we get. They are only about 30 minutes’ drive down the dirt road from our garden.
Entire regions of Swaziland are facing prolonged, severe drought for the past 5-10 years or so. The Lubombo region is most widely effected by this ongoing drought. The soils have been devastated and their old water sources are depleted. It just stopped raining with any frequency (or volume) over there, and people are literally starving. Add to that rampant poverty and unemployment and the worst HIV/AIDS epidemic in the world, and Lubombo is truly suffering. That region is only about an hours’ bus ride away from us. That’s one of the problems with having no large-scale water-collection and delivery systems: while one neighbor might have access to drinking water, another one just over the hill can’t even grow beans.
We have PVC friends living in Lubombo communities right now, and I’m pretty sure they’re not growing large gardens. We are fortunate that Zombodze gets rain during the wet season—that used to be true for all of Swaziland, but now it’s very regional. In general, the highveld regions get plenty of rain, the midveld (where we live) gets enough in certain areas, while the lowveld gets little to none at all. So the lower the elevation in Swaziland, the greater the drought and human suffering.
That’s the bigger picture. Here’s the more localized, Zombodze picture. The trick with gardening around here is this: plant the seeds just before summer begins and struggle for a while to water the little guys. That way, when the summer rains finally come you’ll have seedlings and it’ll be a good time to transplant (if necessary) and get the plants to maturity by around Christmas time—which will allow you to have two full crop cycles before the dry months come again. We’re doing just that; for the first few months after planting we carried heavy buckets of water from a source up the hill to our plot in the community garden, just like everyone else. Once the rains came in late November to early December, we didn’t have to carry the water like that, but instead collected from little spigots inside the garden, which are connected to a stream-fed water trench on the hill above the garden (this little water-delivery system only works when it rains and needs a complete overhaul—one of the projects I hope to do while here). Or we collect the rainwater in a big bucket that we have and use that water on days when it doesn’t rain. In this manner, we’ve been able to grow our veggies, as have about 20 or so others in this garden. There’s a fence around it, so it’s protected from animals as well.
I would point out, however, that the only thing we’ve yet eaten from our own garden are a handful of baby carrots that we thinned last month to make room for other carrots to grow large. So we’re not exactly living off our plants yet—and we’re fortunate not to have to try.
But even in our community garden the water is very unreliable. In fact as I write this, we’re getting the first rain we’ve had in at least 10 days—and our plants have been suffering. The wet season/dry season pattern that everyone relies on to grow food has become so unreliable and unpredictable (especially regarding when the summer rains arrive and the duration between summer rain storms) that people commonly lose their seedlings and crops. It’s one thing to collect and haul water from a few hundred yards away when you’re only needing to water a dozen or so rows of seedlings; but when you have an entire plowed hillside of maize—or when you’ve already transplanted all those seedlings and now have hundreds of separate plants of each variety in many dozen different rows to water—it’s next to impossible to manually water it all. So when the summer rains don’t come, gardens and crops are lost—and most of these gardeners are not doing it for fun; they’re not hobbyists, they’re growing food to live on and to feed their kids (and in countless cases, their dead neighbor’s kids). So not getting rain during the rainy season is really disastrous. We’re not sure which of our plants are going to make it—if it hadn’t rained today we were going to begin trying to haul buckets of water up to the garden, but we wouldn’t have been able to properly soak the dry plants like they needed,
Luckily, maize is a great drought-resistant crop, and it also happens to be the Swazi’s staple food. So with or without today’s rain, the big maize fields probably would not be completely lost. But what suffers with less rain is the size and productivity of the maize crops. Less maize at the end of summer means no surplus to sell for income, and quite possibly food shortages for homesteads during the latter-half of the dry months. It’s important to consider that the two summer crop cycles are, for most homesteads, meant to provide their staple food source for the entire year. Two growing cycles doesn’t leave much room for error… or erratic weather patterns. And it’s also important to point out that where families are trying to live off maize alone, malnutrition is rampant. Veggie gardens provide crucial nutrients that everyone needs and deserves, and yet in times of water shortage (which is at least half the year in Zombodze and all year in worse-off areas) those are the most difficult gardens to grow. Trench gardening, which is a great water-minimal technique perfect for such situations, is being taught by organizations and PCVs in many communities here, and we certainly hope it helps the high malnutrition rates.
Homestead gardens, as opposed to the community garden we’re working in, are even more susceptible to water shortages. Very few homesteads here in Zombodze have a bore hole or underground water tap—in fact, we live on one of only two or three that we’ve seen—and so those families rely on hauling water (buckets, wheelbarrows) for both drinking water and gardening water. Since watering one’s children is far more important than watering one’s cabbage, such homesteads simply do not even try to keep even a modest veggie garden. They plant a crop of maize when the rains come (3 straight rainy days is the sign to plow) and are at the mercy of the weather. Over the past 5 years or so, the weather has shown precious little mercy.
But right now the maize fields have sprouted up all around us. The fields we walk through to go to the schools or the little stores or the community hall or the garden are all striped with green leaves, and along with everyone else here we pray for days exactly like today: rainy and wet. In fact, if you want to pray for Swaziland, pray for rain to fall on parched lands; it’s possibly among the oldest of all earnest prayers, and it’s still quite relevant here.

Question: do you have indoor plumbing or electricity in your home?

We don’t have indoor plumbing but we do have electricity. Two plugs, one in each room, and two lights, one in each room. We bought a small electric oven (larger than a toaster oven but not by much) with two burners atop it. We also have a two-burner propane stove and a tank of propane, supplied to us by the Peace Corps. If/when the power goes out (and it flickers a lot) we can always use the propane. We don’t have a refrigerator, but I keep a little milk container in the main house’s mini-fridge, and that’s been enough so far.
Many PCVs here in Swaziland do not have electricity. It just depends upon what’s available at the site you’ve been assigned to, and you really have no idea what you’ll have (or not have) until getting the assignment. All through training, no one knew anything about their permanent sites—not where it would be or what kind of house structure would be there. Ours turned out to have electricity and a bore hole/water tap on the homestead. We’re thankful for that, but also know that we’d have been fine without such conveniences (in fact we told the staff as much when they asked about what kinds of things we hoped for in a site).
We fetch our water from a spigot located about 10 yards behind our home. We use a couple of large water containers with handles, fill them up and store them under our countertop. Some of it goes in the water filter for drinking, some of it goes in the dishwashing bowls, some of it goes in the little hanging shower bag. There’s nothing particularly complicated or even uncomfortable about this setup anymore, we’re so used to it that I don’t even think about indoor plumbing (except when dreaming up ideas for building a summer rainwater-collection system that would deliver water through a pipe in the wall to our shower area… maybe next year).
And of course we don’t have an indoor toilet, we use the pit toilet latrine out on the edge of the homestead. We share it with the rest of the family.

Question: do you ever get to see any TV?

Our family has a TV in one of the main homes and watches it a lot—one Swazi channel and a handful of South African channels—and that’s the norm for Swazi homes with electricity. We rarely watch anything with them, but I’ll occasionally stop in when I hear a football match playing, or to try and catch a news broadcast. Back in our training village (eKhiza) I used to watch the nightly Swazi news with my homestead father every night, from 7-7:30pm. I wouldn’t understand a word they’d say.
Nowadays we try to get our news from shortwave radio broadcasts and internet sources when in town. I guess we could get a TV if we wanted, having electricity, but honestly, neither one of us misses TV in the least and we haven’t even considered the idea. We do like to get DVDs to watch on our computer, either via care packages (thanks!!) or from trading with other PCVs. There’s quite a movie and books trade going on amongst us PCVs.

Question: how do you get around? By car, by bus, by bicycle?

We either walk or take public transportation. We do not have bikes, though if we’d needed them Peace Corps would have provided money for them. We found that we just didn’t need them in our community because most places we’ll be working are so close to our homestead.
PCVs are not allowed to drive vehicles of any kind while serving in-country—not a car or truck or moped or motorcycle, nothing. Too many fatalities in the past. And Swaziland is not a safe place to drive, anyway. So we rely primarily upon minibus taxis called khumbis to get anywhere that’s too far to walk, like to Nhlangano for grocery shopping. These khumbis are packed with people—I mean, really packed. From Zombodze to Nhlangano it’s cheap, E8 one-way (about 80-90 cents US) and the khumbis run frequently. Most khumbis have a sticker inside that says their maximum capacity is 14 or 15, but they rarely run without 18 passengers. One Sunday our homestead brother’s soccer team hired a khumbi to take them all to a game in a neighboring sub-chiefdom, and we were invited to come along. I saw the same sticker inside—15 passengers maximum—but counted 26 people piled into this thing. Jamie-girl sat on my lap and I hung part of my body out the window. The funny thing is, after the game we ADDED one other guy who needed a ride back to Zombodze. So 26 very sweaty, happy (because we won) guys and exactly one woman (sitting on my lap) all piled into our slow-moving, music-blaring khumbi. There are mooments here when there’s absolutely no mistaking that we are in fact in Africa. That was certainly one of them—and the cool thing was, we also felt at ease and at home among these friends.

We’ve written a big report about the Zombodze community, documenting all sorts of issues from infrastructure to HIV/AIDS issues, and I’ll try and email it as a .pdf to those who are interested. Maybe I can somehow attach it to this blog for anyone to access… we’ll see.

That’s all for now.

Hambani kahle!

Q&A: no bear-hugs, please.

2008-12-30T23:22:00.000-08:00

Q&A: no bear-hugs, please.

In this second installment of answering some of the many questions we’ve received (and confusions we’ve encountered) about Swaziland and our experience here, I’ll focus on the government structure: Chiefs, the King, the parliament and other elected officials. It seems confusing because Swaziland has both an active King with semi-monarchical powers and elected representatives. But it’s relatively easy to describe and I’ll give it a try.

Question: Who is the King and what’s he like, and have you met him?

The King is His Majesty King Mswati III, son of the late King Sobhuza II (who was the world’s longest remaining monarch at the time of his death in 1982), and he is the last remaining monarch in all of Africa. Mswati III was selected from Sobhuza’s hundreds of sons (he had 120 official wives) to succeed his father at the young age of 16 years old. Today he is 40 and currently has 13 wives himself. He is greatly admired by a vast majority of Swazi people, though political opposition groups (which are banned here) have recently expressed their displeasure with his monarchic role in Swazi government.
No, we have not met him and will not likely ever meet him. It’s a small country, but not that small. And even if we did get an audience with him, we’d not be able to look directly at him, as a matter of cultural respect. This is not a “ceremonial” King like in England or elsewhere, this is a full-fledged real-real absolute monarch and there are a number of things one does and does not do in his presence. Remember when the Queen of England came to the US recently and was bear-hugged warmly by an American in the adoring crowd? I recall that she and her guards were so gracious and the whole incident was kind of endearingly humorous,,, a similar incident here in Swaziland would not involve such a happy ending.
The Swazi governmental system was initially formed when Swaziland gained independence from Britain in 1968, but the national constitution that formed it was mostly a British document and was dissolved in 1973 by King Sobhuza II. In 1977 a new constitution was written by the Swazi Parliament and it gave the King absolute power over all matters of State. He died in 1982 and Mswati III became King in 1986. As pressure grew within Swaziland to extend basic principles of democratic representation in its government, King Mswati III signed a new national constitution in 2003, which set up parliamentary elections and elections for regional leaders as well. The new constitution also solidified the traditional centers of power, maintaining the Chiefdom system and preserving the King’s powers to direct governance (for example, he appoints a large number of Senators as well as all Ministers of the various government departments, and he still has far-reaching veto power and budgetary control).

Question: who’s the head of your community—a Chief, a Headman, an MP, the King, or…?

Well, I guess the King is the true head of all Swazi communities, but he doesn’t do so in-person. Practically speaking, the community leadership is divided into two interactive parts: the older, traditional system of Chiefs and Headmen and the King, and the more modern, political government of representatives—mainly the Minister of Parliament (MP) and the Indvuna, both of whose work falls under the King’s control, too, but in a different way.
The King’s interests are represented primarily by the local Chief, who works with a group of community Headmen called the Inner-Council (each little area in the Chiefdom has its own Headman). This Council meets twice a week to settle local disputes and provide counsel to leaders of various projects. Anything we do in the community will first be approved by this Inner-Council, and they can help us with lots of different things. We have an advantage in this regard, because we are staying on a Nsibandze family homestead; the Chief is a Nsibandze.
The MP and Indvuna are elected officials, with national and local elections occurring every 5 years. 2008 was one of those years. Here in Zombodze we have both a brand new Minister of Parliament (MP) and a new Indvuna. The MP represents local interests in the National Parliament (in the Capital city of Mbabane), and the Indvuna serves here in Zombodze as a regional official who heads the “Indkhundla” (perhaps best described as a state, like Oregon; so the Indvuna might be like a Governor, but with much, much less power). The Indvuna works with the Chief and his inner-council of local Headmen to deal with regional programs and development issues—and this is where the new, political representative government meets the older, traditional style at the community level. We work very closely with both our MP and Indvuna, and seek approval, advice, and assistance from the Chief and his Headmen. Clear as mud? Ya, it’s a bit confusing, but then again, try to explain our US system sometime—most all government structures are complicated.
The only simplifying governmental feature here in Swaziland is this: the King has final say over anything he wants; it’s just that he chooses to delegate this “final say” power to lots of officials, some of them directly appointed by him and others directly elected by the people. But ultimately, all of them are subject to his (and his powerful council of advisors’) will.

Interesting sidenote: our Indvuna is the first disabled person in Swazi history to attain the office. He is a T-12 paraplegic, bound to a wheelchair after being injured 10 years ago in a serious South African mining accident that killed all but a few workers. There is no Swazi equivalent to the U.S.’s ADA, so basic accessibility issues can be quite challenging for him. He founded an advocacy group for people with disabilities in the Zombodze area and that’s where he got his start in leadership and community organizing. We are privileged to get to work with him on a wide variety of community projects—and hopefully one that involves modifying some of our community areas and buildings for wheelchair accessibility (mostly just sidewalks and ramps).

Question: Do you ever work with national officials or the US Embassy?

Our work projects will mainly focus on the Zombodze Chiefdom, so it’s the local officials that we’ll be working most closely with. But we are also well acquainted with Swaziland’s new Minister of Health and Social Welfare: he is the founder and president of a non-profit organization called NATICC, which is based close by (Nhlangano) and works on HIV/AIDS counseling and testing, and lots of prevention/education projects. He is the brand new MP for the Nhlangano district (called Shiselweni 2) and was subsequently appointed Minister of Health by King Mswati III—all VERY good news for our work and for HIV/AIDS efforts in Swaziland as a whole.
The US Embassy is run by the Department of State (headed by the Secretary of State), which is a completely different department as the US Peace Corps. So we don’t work with them, but of course they would support us in emergencies just as they would for any US citizen.
As PCVs, we are invited guests of King Mswati III and his government, and our only involvement in governmental activity, whether local or national, is strictly for the purposes of assisting Swazis with their struggle against HIV/AIDS and issues arising from the epidemic. We are not in any way politically active, nor do we take any public position on political matters. That role is for our US Ambassador and the US Embassy. We’ve met the US Ambassador, Maurice Parker, a handful of times now (a career diplomat, not a Presidential appointee, so he’s not going anywhere when the Obama Administration takes over), and we really like him and his wife. In fact, one of his kids did the Peace Corps years ago—so he’s an ex-PCP (Peace Corps Parent) and has a real heart for us. We ask him all kinds of things, from the mundane to the controversial, about our role as PCVs and our country’s role here in Swaziland. Be assured that the US’s position on matters of State and issues of democratic reform here in Swaziland are being properly (even forcefully) communicated by the Embassy Staff and Ambassador Parker—he has his job and we have ours.
There is a charitable “Ambassador’s Fund” that sponsors all kinds of development-related projects in Swaziland, and we may eventually work with one or more of them, but otherwise our roles as PCVs are very, very different from any State Department positions.

That’s all on the government stuff.

Hambani kahle, bamngani bami.

Q&A: Sounding Smart

2008-12-30T23:19:00.000-08:00

I want to use these next 4 or 5 blog entries to answer some common questions we’ve received and to clarify a few confusing details about where we are and what we’re doing. This first focuses on the Swazi language.

Question: Is it siSwati or Swahili you’re speaking in Swaziland, and what’s the language like?

We’re learning siSwati, not Swahili. Swahili is typically spoken in Kenya and many places north of us, but no Swazis speak (or would even understand) Swahili. siSwati is in the Bantu language group and is similar to Zulu and its regional variants, which is widely spoken in Southern Africa. They’re so similar in fact that learning one means you can pretty well understand both. Zulu has more types of clicks than siSwati, which primarily uses just a few (or at least variants of a few, depending on which letter follows the click). This fact makes it easy for us to distinguish spoken Zulu: it’s more click-heavy. Anyway, Swazis speak siSwati, not Swahili. That’s a lot of S’s to keep straight, I know, but doing so will provide you with two more S’s: sounding smart.

Question: can you guys make those click sounds yet? What other sounds are different or difficult?

Yes, we can in fact now properly pronounce the clicks in siSwati and don’t have too much trouble saying the words that include them. But it’s taken a great deal of practice and when reading or using an unfamiliar word it still sometimes trips us up. To try it, just place the middle of your tongue on the roof of your mouth (or place the front of your tongue directly behind your front teeth, depending upon usage), and create a kind of suction that, when you force your tongue down and away from your mouth’s roof, makes a click sound. To say “no” in siSwati, which is spelled cha the “ch” is a version of this click: you pronounce the hard C sound at the same time that you make the above-described click. Then you follow it with an a (pronounced “ah”). The hard part is making the click and the C-sound at the same time, but it is possible—the far back of the tongue makes the hard-C while the middle/front of the tongue makes the click.

There are also a lot of sounds that linguists call “lateral fricatives,” which sound a bit like soft, slurred Z’s, and resemble a buzzing hum in the mouth. HL and DL are the most common such sounds in siSwati, as in the town name Nhlangano or the word kudla (to eat) or kudlala (to play). The DL sound has more of the Z sound whereas HL is more breathy and S-like. Some non-siSwati speakers pronounce the HL just like the English “Shl,” which gets them in the same phonetic ballpark I suppose… but it still sounds pretty funny: “I’m going to Shlangano today after our meeting” is just enough off-kilter to be hilarious. Anyway, what’s fairly easy about siSwati for us English speakers is that it uses the same alphabetic letters, and most of those letters represent familiar sounds.

Question: are you fluent siSwati speakers yet?

As of the end of 2008 we are by no means fluent siSwati speakers. Not even close. English is commonly spoken here (in fact Swazi schools use English to teach all subjects and English is the official language of governmental business/operations) so we can usually get by just fine. But in the rural areas, community meetings, and on many individual homesteads, English is rarely used or understood—and that’s where our language training comes in. siSwati is a beautiful, sing-songy sounding language, and some of the grammar/conjugation rules actually enhance the alliteration and rhymes within phrases. We like it—but it’s still hard for us to speak or understand it. We are at the beginner-intermediate level, and we’ve hired a tutor to help our continued language learning; a local high school girl who comes over every week or so for one or two hours. She’s great—in fact her first name is Patience. I’m not speaking figuratively, and that’s not what her name translates into, that’s really her name: Patience. Having a tutor named Patience is like having a dentist named Gentle. It’s reassuring.

Question: can you teach me a few things to say in siSwati?

Here are a few siSwati phrases, sayings, and figures of speech for you to practice and impress (or utterly confuse) your friends. K’s sound like English G’s, C’s are clicks and HL’s /DL’s are fricatives, as described above.

Angisati siSwati – I do not know siSwati
Kulungile — it’s okay/alright
Ngiyabonga kakhulu – I thank you very much
Wemukelekile -- You are welcome
Ngicela emaswidi? – may I please have some candy?
Uyangiphatamisa – you are bothering me.
Ngipuma eMelika futsi kitsi kukaSeattle – I am from America and my family home is at Seattle.
We like to walk in/on the mountain– sitsandza kuhamba ensambeni
Umfati wami (or: Umkami) – my wife
Indvodzami – my husband
Uyasebenta kakhulu engadzeni namuhla, make! – you are working very hard in the garden today, mother!
Akamuhle lilanga liphuma – she is as beautiful as the sun.
Akamubi wehlula emanti – he/she is so ugly that even daily facial lotions can’t change him/her.
Angihambisani nalentfo – I am not of the same opinion.
Indendende – it’s a long lousy and boring speech.
Kuba munyu kwetibunu – to be tired of sitting on your butt for a long time in the same place Yincane nayitekwako – It’s a big long story that cannot be described.
Kandlula wafa -- there is no food to offer you; we have nothing.
Mehlo madzala – long time no see [“mehlo” is eyes].
Muhle sengatsi akayi ngaphandle – she’s so beautiful that you’d think she doesn’t use the toilet.
Kulola matinyo – to wait impatiently to eat promised meat.
Lizizi – describes a person who likes meat a lot
Okumhlophe! – all the best; best wishes!

And this last one you might already recognize from reading this blog:

Hambani kahle, bamngani bami -- goodbye/go well, my friends.

Hello pen pals at Oak Creek School!

2008-12-20T02:12:00.000-08:00

We have a bunch of new pen pals: students at Oak Creek School in Cornville, Arizona (which is close to Sedona and Cottonwood), and we just wanted to say: hello and Happy Holdays, Cornville! You all should be getting letters from us very soon. We've enjoyed reading all your letters-- full of great questions and very well written-- and we thank you for writing us.

To everyone else, our friendship with this class is via the Coverdell WorldWise School program, which is offered through the Peace Corps. It gives us a chance to share our expeiences with a classroom back in the US-- and we love it.

Never leave home without your loin cloth

2008-12-20T01:26:00.001-08:00

Sanibonani bonkhosi...

As Christmas approaches we're preparing to do something that we haven't done since arriving here: leave the country. We are joining some fellow PCVs and going to South Africa's Kosi Bay National Park, which is on the coast right below the SA/Mozambique border. The Indian Ocean will be warm, the weather will be sweltering, and we'll be going through the bug spray-- and we cannot wait.
I took the above pic while at the local Incwala ceremony, which is kind of hard to explain. It's basically the primary "male" ceremony of the Swazi culture. We went there with some guys from our homestead and community, thinking that we'd just be watching, but in true Swazi style they asked us to join in. There was a part for women as well as men so we both got in line and mimicked the motions of those beside us. It was great but somewhat embarrassing: We had no idea what was going on-- and of course that day was the one time I (Tim) left home without my loin cloth... it's not often that shorts and a T-shirt makes you feel over-dressed for the occasion. Still, it was pretty cool to be included, and next year we'll have some of the chants and "dance" steps down.

Over the past month or so, we've had some actual community development/support work to do. On Thanksgiving we helped out with a local event for pre-school aged kids, most of whom were orphans/vulnerable children from the chiefdom's NCPs. They had a drama competition around the theme of "challenges at home" or something (imagine: tiny kids acting out family dramas like poverty and abuse... it was heartbreaking and adorable). Hundreds showed up, probably because beef was on the lunch menu. More recently, we helped out with a Red Cross food-aid effort in our chiefdom. We helped put the "recipients" list together and then jamie-girl accompanied the MP and other local officials when the Red Cross distributed it. It was quite a scene, with more than 1000 men, women, and children lining up in the heat to receive bags of rice and cooking oil (donated by Taiwan/World Vision this time). It was one of those, "you know you're in Africa when..." moments. And that same day I (Tim) was back at our local umphakatsi (chief's homestead and community gathering center) for a much-anticipated groundbreaking: we're beginning construction on a small community soup kitchen for the NCP (neighborhood care point, which feeds OVCs). The Zombodze MP (Member of Parliament) has so far been great to work with, and he managed to secure some funding for the project. One of our goals for the next few years is to make sure that every NCP site in our chiefdom (there are about 8) has a structure to store and lock up their food and conduct little classes or educational sessions for the OVCs they feed every day. Currently they all have some kind of firepit, but only about half have an enclosed, lockable structure.

Jamie-girl has been working to implement a community calendar of events and has made great progress on that in the past few weeks, as well as an effort to get important health information on the bulletin board of our local Clinic. School will be back in session by the end of January and we'll both be active there, starting up student clubs that target career and life skills guidance counseling, as well as a small-business/Jr. Entrepeneurs project with a partnering NGO.

Training is over, folks-- let the work begin!

It's hot these days. Our garden is growing and expanding-- over 80 tomato plants alone!-- and we have spent some sweaty afternoons weeding the beds, planting corn, and clearing new beds for transplants. Thing is, there's almost always a breeze and it's downright pleasant in the shade. The evenings are beautiful. We do need more rain (haven't had any all week), but otherwise we're fine with Zombodze's summer weather... so far. They say January is blistering. But you know, ever since spending May in India (and a sampling of Phoenix in summertime), nothing has really felt unbearably hot. I think our internal thermometers were permanently altered.

We sure miss everyone this Christmas season and wish you all a very merry holiday season. We'll not likely get back online until after the new year, so everyone take care until then!

Pictures of Home

2008-11-29T05:25:00.000-08:00

I thought ya'll might be wondering what our place looks like. We live in a two-room hut. The front room is our library, living room, and kitchen. The back room has our computer desk, clothes closet, bed, and bathroom. It's a small space, but we've managed to make it feel homey and not too cluttered. Let your imaginations run wild if you want to continue to create your own idea of how we are living, but this is the reality for those of you who want a peace of mind!

Alive and Well

2008-11-22T02:33:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone! It's been a while, I know. We've been busy. Election nite was spent with fellow PCVs in the capital city, Mbabane, watching the returns come in on CNN (we rented out a hostel with sat. TV) and it was a pretty amazing experience. But since then we've been busy visiting homesteads in our community and collecting information for a big report/study we wrote on Zombodze. That's finished (for now), though the visits will continue-- just not at such a furious pace.

The final component of our PCV training was a week-long event in Manzini: 5 days of training on proposals and project funding options, NGO networking, and just sharing info/ideas with the rest of our PCV family. It was exhausting but oh so fun, as we all got to stay together in a dormitory (at a convent). But now we're headed back to site, and we're excited about the opportunities that this training session revealed.

The rains have arrived and our garden has really taken off. we transplanted beets, tomatoes, and cabbage a few weeks ago, and everything's growing like crazy. It's a lot of fun to be in the garden, and now that the big report is completed we'll be able to hang out there a bit more. the landscape has shed its drab dry-season colorings for beautiful green fields and gardens. And the afternoon thunderstorms make for great sunsets. Lots of new baby goats and cows on the homestead, and fruit trees are beginning to show their potential, especially the peaches and mangoes.

For Thanksgiving we'll be joining some close friends/fellow PCVs at their homestead up in the hills. Their homestead raises turkeys. We have much to be thankful for this year.

More later-- just wanted to let you all know that we're still healthy and happy.

Election season in Swaziland is over

2008-10-08T06:25:00.000-07:00

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.

things that creep and crawl

2008-10-08T06:17:00.000-07:00

Oct06- The other day we were moving brush and making some temporary repairs to a fence around one of the gardens, and Jamie-girl spotted a rain spider crawling along one of the gum tree branches. From leg-tip to leg-tip, this thing was around 8-10cm long, and the only spiders I’ve ever seen bigger were the tarantulas in Arizona. The good news is, it didn’t bite Jamie-girl. The somewhat bad news is, we’ll likely see these things quite often. Our little plant/animal guide to Swaziland says they’re common, widespread, and have “mild venom.” The word “mild” there is really overshadowed by that other word, you know? So I guess from now on we’ll exercise “mild caution” when handling brush.

Coincidentally, I had just been thumbing through the spider section of that book the night before seeing the rain spider (which is the only reason I could identify it), and its description caught my eye not because of the “mild venom” comment but because of two other words: “enter houses.” That’s the last thing I wanted to read; if something’s gonna be big and creepy and venomous, let it stay outdoors-- the last thing I want it to do is “enter houses.” And reading through the rest of the book’s section on local invertebrates further convinced me to step up my efforts (which had already begun) to seal up any little holes and cracks in the walls. We found some ants on the floor a few days back and that launched an effort to find and block their thoroughfares. While doing this I happened upon a modest-sized black spider in the corner behind our food shelving, and as it managed to elude the little wad of toilet paper which I so bravely wielded, it occurred to me (for the thousandth time now) that I’m in Africa—which meant that this was some kind of African spider I was pitting myself against, and perhaps I was outmatched.

It seems to me, if you want to make scarier an animal already kind of scary to begin with, add the locative description of “African” to its name. Example: bees can be kind of dangerous, I guess, but what about Africanized bees? Downright frightening. Or scorpions—they already carry a fair amount of dread with their name, but consider to us North Americans how much more dreadful an African scorpion sounds. Which would you rather face on a dark night with nothing but a flashlight and a flip-flop: a North American scorpion or an African scorpion? Before you answer (and saying “neither” doesn’t count), consider the following description of the (African) buthid scorpion, excerpted from my guidebook: “runs fast with tail straight out, stings readily.” And yes, they too are “widespread.” Or consider the very next entry on my book’s page, the (African) liochelid , a “medium-sized” scorpion whose length—this must be a typo, please let this be a typo—ranges from “9 to 10 cm”. That’s like 3-4 inches, my fellow (metrically-challenged) Americans, And yes, of course it’s widespread—they’re all widespread.

I won’t even get into details on the snake section of our book, other than to say that it lists no less than 19 snakes common to our specific region/climate (so-called “montane grasslands”), 5 of which have a red skull-and-crossbones symbol next to its picture.

So anyway, back in the kitchen… the sudden awareness that I was dealing with an African spider got me thinking that perhaps it could be a more formidable foe than the North American varieties (of which, to be sure, there are downright nasty ones—black widows, brown recluse, Charlotte…). So I did what any sensible young (African) warrior would do: I got myself a bigger wad of toilet paper. And after I killed it I cracked open our Swaziland plants/animals guidebook to see if it was pictured. It wasn’t. But that rain spider was, and so was the sun spider (“medium-sized hairy spider-like creature [huh?] with enormous jaws but lacking venom”}, the banded-legged golden orb spider (“widespread, large spider…mild venom”), the golden-brown baboon spider (“widespread, large robust hairy spider… venom not dangerous to man”) and a few other excellent eight-legged reasons to seal up those cracks and always carry the flashlight to the outhouse after dark.

If you’ve read this far, you probably need a palette-cleansing image to counteract all the unnerving, creepy, itch-inducing descriptions to which I just subjected you. So here’s one, sticking with the African-as-descriptor animal theme: the striking African monarch butterfly, of which our book describes as “widespread, large-winged and brightly colored… flies all year.” They look just like the monarchs back home, except bigger. Picturing it? Feel better now? But wait— here’s my favorite detail about those pretty butterflies: “distasteful to birds because of poisonous chemicals stored in its body.” How cool is that? So, note to self: enjoy looking at the African Monarchs, but try to resist the temptation to pop them in my mouth.

The spiders, on the other hand, are apparently quite edible, and taste like (what else?) chicken.

Past and Present in Zombodze

2008-10-08T06:12:00.000-07:00

We aren’t the first Peace Corps Volunteers to live here in Zombodze. The last one was here for about a year back in 2005(ish). But about 25 years ago a young PCV named Dan Webber was placed here, and his influence and projects remain an important part of this community—and an important part of our own PCV experience thus far. What follows is a pretty cool story, folks, and it continues to unfold.

The first time we visited Zombodze we walked into the carpentry workshop and met the carpenters, a young man and an older man. When the older man learned that we were PCVs, he pulled down a framed black-and-white photo from the wall above his workbench and handed it to me. I saw in the photo two men shaking hands in front of a van with the words “Sebenta PC Training” written on its side. One of the men was a Swazi, dressed in traditional Swazi clothes, and the other was a young westerner with a big beard and an even bigger smile. The carpenter told us that the picture was taken back around 1982, and that the westerner in it was Dan Webber, a Peace Corps Volunteer who’d lived and worked here in Zombodze—and whose projects included constructing the very building in which we stood. In fact, all the buildings in that complex of workshops and stores are the result of Dan’s outstanding partnership work with the community.

As I held that picture and listened to our friend translate the carpenter’s account of how much Dan did for him and the community, I felt myself apart of something larger, and I knew, standing there, that I was right where I wanted to be. And though I’d already been in training in Swaziland for a few months, I think that might have been the moment my personal Peace Corps experience began: The gray-bearded carpenter (Mkhulu Twala is his name) returned the picture to its place on his wall, told us he was happy we’d arrived, and invited us to come visit him any time. We have.

It gets better. I told this story to a fellow PCV a week or so later, and she told me that in fact Dan Weber was on Facebook and had contacted some Swaziland PCVs regarding his old community of Zombodze. Later she gave us his email (thanks, S.), and since then we’ve been in direct contact with Dan (I think he even reads this blog—hi Dan!). He’s passed us some photos and an account of his time here back in the day (1981-83), including pics of Mkhulu Twala and other people in the community that he’d befriended and worked with. His experience in Zombodze was incredible—Dan built his own home here and he could speak fluent siSwati upon leaving, and the results of his community development work endure.

So we’ve been able to share those photos Dan sent us with Twala the carpenter as well as others who knew Dan, and we gave them updates about him. And it’s been an amazing thing to share: they are overjoyed. In turn, we’ve been able to send Dan some current photos of his old friends and exchange community info with him… this intercontinental, inter-generational exchange continues to develop, and it’s quite a meaningful experience for us. His longtime friends here in Zombodze are now our newest friends, welcoming us to Zombodze with open arms.

So thank you, Dan—siyabonga kakhulu, umfanfigile!

There are currently about 50 PCVs placed in all 4 regions of Swaziland. If there are any other Swaziland RPCVs out there reading this who’d like to find out if a current PCV is living in your old community, leave us a message and we’ll be happy to check it for you.

Address Update

2008-09-20T05:46:00.000-07:00

We have a new mailbox closer to our site in Zombodze. You can send letters and packages to this address, but items sent to our old mailing address in Mbabane will still reach us. The old address is located at the Peace Corps HQ. The new address allows us to check our mail more frequently when we make trips into town.

PO Box 236
Nhlangano, S400
Swaziland - Africa

We are enjoying reading all the comments that you're leaving on the blog, even though we can't reply (SLOW connection speeds). Thanks everyone! We miss you! Keep in touch.

gardening begins

2008-09-07T02:10:00.000-07:00

Sept03- We have been given space in two community gardens near home and today will begin clearing the plots and turning over the soil in preparation for planting. We plan to plant carrots, lettuce, cabbage, potatoes, beets, maize, sugar peas, and onions. We’re a bit behind in planting, given our late arrival in Zombodze, but as long as we get seeds in the ground before the rains we’ll be fine. If all goes well, we’ll be eating our own veggies in December.

The reason we’re planting in 2 separate gardens is simple: we want a participatory presence in both places. One garden is run by an OVC group (Orphans and Vulnerable Children), and we hope to work with them on various projects. The other garden is the large "bomake," or mothers, garden—a community garden that our own make (pronounced mah-gay) belongs to, along with many others. At both gardens the main challenge is water. Both rely upon open trenches that carry water from a stream 1.5km away, and the trenches are full of sediment and their walls have eroded in a few critical areas (a few rainy season floods). So not much water reaches the garden reservoirs. The bomake garden actually has underground piping to deliver water to spigots in all parts of the garden… but the reservoir that feeds these pipes is all-but dry most of the time. This is an issue that we hope to work on during our time here, and being active members of these gardens marks the beginning of our involvement.
When those small reservoirs are dry, everyone must either haul water to their plots by hand or else coax a trickle down the trenches with a shovel or a hoe until enough water gathers in the pit to fill a bucket or two (this second option only applies to the OVC garden). These water difficulties have diminished overall participation in the gardens, thereby keeping affordable and healthy food from many kitchen tables in Zombodze.

As we have recently witnessed first-hand, there is nothing quite so desperate as a family lacking in food and water. Here, the two necessities seem to go hand-in-hand: without an adequate supply of water, how can one grow food? By comparison, washing clothes or dishes or even bathing in clean water seems a luxury: one bucket bath could water perhaps 5 rows of carrots. I’m thankful that our homestead has the means for its own water tap and well—we never go without water or its benefits. But I think that our work in the gardens will give us some real-life appreciation for what water scarcity means for small-scale food production.

As I write this, I keep thinking of the little misters in the produce sections of grocery stores back home. And I cannot help but consider the comparative extravagance of it: our grocery stores continuously water crops after they’re picked, usually with a little thunder-and-rain soundtrack. Why do they do this? Maybe it’s aesthetic-- moist produce does look tastier. Or maybe wet produce doesn’t spoil as quickly… I don’t know. If anyone knows, please tell me. But I was always convinced they did this little misting routine because wet produce weighs more (and therefore sells for more) than dry produce, and the trickery of it always bothered me a little. Now, thinking about it with the Zombodze gardens in mind, it bothers me for other reasons.