Big Vacations and Bunches of Projects

Whew I have a lot to update here in my blog. It’s been a busy two months since my last post!

First, I’ll start with the events and vacations:

-Bushfire Festival – In the last days of May, Swaziland held the Bushfire Festival which is a big three day music festival. The music was a big mix of traditional music from different African countries to local hip hop artists. There was even a group from the U.S. that preformed. The non-musical highlight for me was all the food vendors! They had tacos, sandwiches, pizza. It was all very tempting and I definitely went over my budget for the event mainly because I bought food. There were a lot of Peace Corps volunteers from countries around Swaziland including PC South Africa, Lesotho, Mozambique. It was interesting to hear about their PC experiences. Sunday of course came too quickly and I packed up my tent and headed home.

-Cape Town – I know I went to Mozambique in January but that didn’t feel like a very big vacation since it’s so close to Swaziland. Cape Town, on the other hand, was amazing. My friend Josh and I flew into Cape Town on Friday and headed out the following Friday. Saturday we went to Robben Island. It was a great, well-organized tour. Then we went out drinking that night which was a lot of fun because we could actually go to different bars and walk home, unlike Swaziland. We planned our trip out pretty meticulously but weather screwed up our Table Mountain plans on Sunday so instead we just slept off our hangovers, ate pizza, and went to the aquarium. Tuesday was test day. I took the GRE and I didn’t do as well as I had hoped but I’m glad it’s over. My birthday, the day after the GRE, we went on a day long tour of the peninsula below the city. It was beautiful. We got to see penguins at Boulder Beach, bike through Cape of Good Hope park, go to the most southwestern point of the African continent. It was a great way to spend my birthday. Thursday we finally got to Table Mountain nice and early so we could also visit Stellenbosch to visit Warwick winery. It was a bit of a whirlwind week and we got to visit a lot of other things like the District 6 museum, Green Market Sq., and walked a lot! Cape Town is an awesome city and it was nice to feel a little more at home seeing as it feels a lot more like a western city than an African one.

-Christmas in June – Christmas in June was the week after we got back from Cape Town. I felt kind of bad leaving my community again so soon, but it’s an important Peace Corps “holiday.” Each year it is an unofficial tradition that the junior group organizes a party at the backpackers in town as a sort of going away party for the senior group. We had superlatives and a big family style meal. Group 10 started leaving in June/July to head back to the States so for some folks this is the last time we get to see them in Swaziland. It was a bit of an overwhelming task to organize. I helped with people cooking food and it was a hectic mess, but people were fed and people got drunk. It was a fun night.

-Fourth of July – Fourth of July is my absolute favorite holiday when I’m at home. I love walking around Hinesburg watching the parade with my family, hanging out and eating with my friends, and watching the fireworks. I’m pretty disappointed I haven’t been able to celebrate at home since 2010, but our Country Director tries to make up for the fact that we can’t be home. He throws a party at his house in Mbabane with a big BBQ. It was also our first chance to meet the new group of volunteers that arrived this year. There is a new group that arrived on June 27th and there are 40 new faces to learn. I think it was overwhelming for PCVs to learn the new folks names and faces just as much as it was overwhelming for them to try and learn our names and faces.

Second, I’ll tell you what’s been happening in my community:

-Culture Day - This is an event held in Simunye each year where schools perform traditional dancing for boys and for the girls as wells as some other types of performances at the high school level that seems a lot like a mix of marching band without the instruments and cheerleading. The girls from our school didn’t do so well unfortunately, but the boys got fourth place so they qualified to go to finals at an even bigger event in Ezulwini. I didn’t go to finals because I was working with my other school, but I heard the boys did a great job. Culture day was overwhelming because there were about 1,000 people or more by my estimates at the small stadium. I got to see three other volunteers and see their schools perform. The event was a big deal and my school didn’t go last year so I’m glad I got to see it at least once. Even if it meant riding home on the loudest bus ride I’ve ever endured with a bunch of screaming children.

-Vision Testing – In the end of May, the Ministry of Health did a training and handed out kits to PCVs and their schools to test students’ eye sight. Unfortunately, Peace Corps agreed to partner with them on this project because they promised free glasses and increased access to eye care. It turns out we can test our students and write a referral card for their parents to go to the hospital, but they still have to pay for transport, a small entrance fee to the hospital, and eventually they have to pay for the glasses too. Despite that bad news, I’ve been doing vision screening with my second school. I’m hoping we can have a meeting with the parents that need to bring their children in for glasses and find a way they can come up with some financial support. This testing is not easy though. The kids wiggle, the teachers rush, and kids have short attention spans. I’m hoping I can write an instruction list so that teams of teachers can lead this testing once I leave, but it doesn’t look so promising. No matter what, this year I will try to test all the students at both of my schools so the students know whether they need to be sitting towards the front of the class or make other arrangements to do well in class. 

-Library work – My main school applied and received books from Books for Africa in May. They held a workshop and everyone seemed really excited to start working on the library. Unfortunately, I think they’ve lost steam. I offered to register the majority of the books because I know we don’t have the extra staff and our staff don’t have the extra time to register such a large batch of books. That being said, all the books need the school stamp and now I’m starting to put stickers on the spine that indicate which section the books can go in. I’ve only gotten one teachers’ help with that and I’ve become a bit frustrated. I’m hoping in the next few weeks I can re-energize the staff by giving them specific ways to help me out.

-Reusable, Cloth Sanitary Pads – As you may have read in my blog in May, I finally completed my first grant! The money for the grant came in while I was in Cape Town so my project got a late start. Not to worry because I have some great women helping me on this project. Throughout July, I held four (I only planned three but we had extra materials) workshops in four different areas of my community. The local Rural Health Motivators (RHMs) lead the groups after I taught them so for most of these sessions I was just helping hand out supplies and clean up. It was a great feeling to see the women talking and laughing about their new “accessory.” We trained 59 women in all! I’m really excited about how the project progressed. I was disappointed I did have to miss the fourth training session, but my lead RHM was a huge help and took over the training for me. At the end of August, I want to follow up on my project by asking the 59 women if they shared their new skill with other women, if they actually used the pad they made, and other questions to understand the impact of the project. For all my other slow-moving and frustrating projects, this one makes up for all those frustrations.

Well that’s a lot to take in! It’s definitely the cliff notes version of my life in Swaziland. The last two weeks I’ve had a hard time keeping my spirits up because I miss home, but after a year away I expected that. I’ve been cheered up by care packages from my mom and by looking forward to a very exciting visit from my dad and my step-mom. They will be coming in September and I can’t wait!! The countdown to their visit is on my calendar and whenever I get a little down I just look at that.

Book: The Invisible Cure by Helen Epstein
Show: Grey’s Anatomy Season 4