The Last Week of Hut Life!

In true procrastinator fashion, I waited the last week at my site to type up one of my final blog posts. I have seven days until Peace Corps picks me up from my community, ten days until I leave for Johannesburg, and a day shy of three weeks until I land in Boston. The last week of May was filled with lectures about how to get a job, what your Peace Corps experience has meant to you, and a good ol’ SiSwati test thrown in there just to make us sweat. We do all this wrap up at a four day conference called our Close of Service conference. It was useful in some ways and not so much in other ways. It was the last time we all came together as a group before people started leaving the country and it was good to hang out with some folks I hadn’t seen in a while. We were at Magadzavane north of Siteki near the border to Mozambique. It’s a nature reserve so we got to do game drives but it’s been so dry there wasn’t much around or much to see. On Thursday, I hustled home and repacked just in time to leave on Friday morning for Bushfire. I wrote about Bushfire last year but here’s a refresher. It’s a big international music festival with lots of delicious food and beautiful crafts to buy. The music last year was okay but this year was excellent. I think the music acts were much better. Bushfire also gave me a chance to see some of my friends from South Africa who I will see on my way home. I also got to meet new people which are always great since Peace Corps creates sort of a small, drama-filled bubble. After the craziness of the final week of May, everything sort of dropped off and moved much slower. I didn’t do much for my birthday this year. I went to Mbabane and had dinner with my friend Jess. It was far less interesting than my trip to Cape Town last year but it was a great way to celebrate regardless. Throughout June, I held a few meeting about the positive discipline workshop that my schools participated in during May. This was a way of evaluating the project so Peace Corps can justify spending money on the grant. The next big event was 4th of July. This is an exciting celebration because it’s the first time the current volunteers get to meet the new trainees. Of course, this is overwhelming for everyone especially since we have over 100 volunteers between the new and old folks. There is also always a lot of excellent food! It was great talking to some of the new volunteers because it helps you realize how far you’ve come. One girl asked: when does it all start to feel normal? I told her it all felt normal when I moved to my site and started making my hut my home. Now I’m tearing apart and emptying out that home! There’s a volunteer from Vermont in the new group so three out of the four groups from G10-G13 has had one! Go VT! July has been the longest and fastest month. My family finally got running water! The pipes that were laid in front of our homestead in December were connected! This makes a huge difference for my last three weeks, but it’s more important for my family’s entire life. That sound dramatic I know, but my family spends hours fetching water and going to the dam to wash laundry each week. Those hours have been cut out and they’ve started a garden that actually has a fighting chance. There have been moments in last month where I felt “hey I really made a difference here” and other moments where I feel “I did nothing and I’m just a passing through this village.” I went to my far school yesterday. It was the last day I was going to have a chance to visit and I had heard that not all the teachers were going to the celebration on Friday at my closer school. I showed up hoping to see the secretary, Busi, who I had grown close to. It turns out she had moved jobs and never called me. Its times like that where I feel like I haven’t really made an impact on people, but I also understand that she hadn’t been paid in three months because our school continually had money issues. I still plan to give her a call but it’s not the same as saying goodbye in person. I didn’t join Peace Corps to save the world or with the impression that I would change a whole community. In fact, in many ways my community doesn’t need changing. There are things in Swaziland that need to change, but it is almost impossible for volunteers to affect that change on the community level. Instead, I remember all my dad’s crazy little stories of international exchange students on our farm in Vermont when he was a kid. I can only imagine the crazy crap they saw from my dad’s stories. But he still keeps in contact with at least two of these people and, through that, he has a better understanding of two more corners of the world. That was my goal when I joined Peace Corps and it’s two of the three goals Peace Corps is based on. I wanted to touch a few people’s lives and make meaningful connections. The people of Kashoba have certainly changed me more than I have changed them. My career goals have always been international relations of some sort. Seeing the crushing poverty as well as the untapped potential has given me more direction. So I’m moving forward to work in international development with the hopes that I can work on projects that lift people out of poverty even in rural or remote communities. So that’s a little glimpse to how I’m feeling in these last weeks in Swaziland and southern Africa on the whole. I can’t wait to get home to the U.S. and I will be sad to leave my home in Swaziland. Watch out America! I’ll see you in two weeks and six days! Books: The Economist (working my way through the Jan and Feb issues) Show: Supernatural (Season 7)

A Long Overdue Update!

Wow it has been way too long since I’ve written a blog post. It’s been a mix of slow, slow weeks sitting in my hut and busy, hectic weeks. In addition, I’ve been able to make some decisions about my future after Peace Corps which are exciting! January and February were a bit slow as schools started a week later than they were planned to. Of course there was little explanation for this, but the King’s fields still needed to be sown following the male version of the reed dance (umhlanga) which is called incwala. While schools in Swaziland waited in suspense as did I. As many readers know, I submitted application to seven graduate schools. I was accepted to six but received funding from few despite the Paul Coverdell program through Peace Corps. My goal is to work in the realm of international development through small business and family financial planning projects. It’s hard to say what sort of job this will yield because everything from the UN to small NGOs are working on development projects that could relate. After a lot thought and some number crunching, I’m happy to say I’ll be working towards a Master of Arts in sustainable international development at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management. And in further good news I’ve already secured an apartment in Waltham! I can only imagine the day I return to the world of indoor plumbing and washing machines! Although I look forward to my July 30th close of service date, I feel sort of bad I’m so ready to leave a place that has absorbed me as one of their own. These past two weeks I have seen two big projects come together that help me realize how meaningful my experiences have been. The first project is Books for Africa. Thank you so much to all the friends and family who donated to this project! Unfortunately, I don’t have many pictures at the moment to post since I was helping direct the unloading and distribution of our 560 boxes of books! Now 28 schools in Swaziland will hopefully spread the joy of reading to all of their students. The second project was a positive discipline and classroom management workshop for my two primary schools. Here in Swaziland there is a Belgian woman who has worked in Africa for many years (nine of which have been in Swaziland). She is a consultant with amazing ideas on how to integrate a culture of positive discipline into schools. This is important because many schools, including my own, still rely on corporal punishment which is damaging for a long list of reasons. Instead of telling people to give up their ways completely, this woman shows teachers new ways of trying positive discipline. It was a stressful week planning all the food and workshop details, but Wednesday came and went without too much trouble. I as the uptight American caused a lot more stress for myself than necessary :) In other fun news I survived my fifth snake encounter in Swaziland! This time it was a puff adder. Lucky me they’re real lazy. Tuesday morning I was stressing a little about the food shopping I’d have to do in Siteki for my workshop the following day. I distractedly walk into my pit latrine. I did a quick once over as I’ve learned to do since my encounters with large spiders and a scorpion in there. As I turn and close the door behind me, I see something in the corner. At first it looked like maybe a sweater or something balled up but the realization slowly took over that this was in fact a very fat snake. Obviously I ran out of there which probably been hilarious had anyone been watching. I was looking for my host mother and she came walking down the driveway. Apparently the boys had found it the night before but make (mom) told them not to kill it in the dark. I told them next time they can wake me up at any hour to give me fair warning. The boys figured it would go away during the night and I suppose that was a fair assumption but still. As I left for Siteki, a neighbor came and killed the snake as me, my make (host mom), and his wife looked on with rocks ready just in case. It was quite the adventure! Pictures coming soon to a facebook profile near you! The two projects above were my last large efforts. My far school now has library books that need to be organized and my closer school still needs to learn how to incorporate theirs into the curriculum better, but these are all small feats compared to the rest. I’m looking forward to our Peace Corps close of service conference next week because it is the beginning of the end. As volunteers, we reflect back on what we’ve done and how to use that in our future endeavors. We also get tested in SiSwati…I can’t say I look forward to that! As of today, I only have 69 days left in my service and I hope to make them all count. When I think of all the things I can’t wait for back home (running water, a washing machine, etc.) I can’t help but be reminded that my host family and all the people I work with don’t get that option. It motivates me to work a little harder each week even though I’m on my way out. Lastly, I want to post a small shout out to my dad who turns 51 tomorrow! Happy Birthday! Book: No books lately, catching up on The Economist (December 2014 issues!) Show: Mad Men (Season 5)

Vacations and the New Year

January 15, 2015

It’s been over two months since my last blog post about what’s going on in Swaziland. December and January are not only the hottest months in Swaziland but also the most boring. The country shuts down for the holidays and on top of Christmas, Boxing day, and New Year’s Day there is also Incwala which is similar to what the reed dance is for the women. But here’s the highlights of what’s been going on for me:

Books for Africa:

I want to send a big thank you to everyone who supported our Books for Swaziland/Books for Africa project. We raised just over $7600 in less than a month! I’m very excited to get the project moving so we can receive our books hopefully by late April. Thank you thank you thank you to all of you that donated or spread the word.

Christmas:

Christmas isn’t a huge holiday for Swazis and I was away last year. This year I left on Christmas but I made sure to give each of the kids something small on Christmas eve. They were very excited. I spent Christmas at a hostel/backpackers where the owners know us and take care of us PCVs. They had food, music, and punch to make for a nice holiday party.

Vacation:

Obviously the most exciting part of the last two month is the two weeks I spent on vacation! I went to St. Lucia, Durban, and Drakensberg which are all in South Africa.

St. Lucia is a small little one-street town that sits along a huge estuary. I only stayed two nights so I didn’t get to explore it fully. I did get to see some hippos up close and personal. The first night I was pretty tired from travel so I ate, watched TV, and went to bed early. The second night I was joined by a group of PCVs from Swaziland and we had a nice lunch out and grilled cheese dinner in while we debated outfits for New Year’s Eve.

Durban was next. I stayed there the longest. The first night I got there I stayed at a different backpackers than the PCVs from Swaziland since it was full. Happy Hippo in Durban is really nice it’s just not the best location. It’s next to Ushaka Marine World which is pretty cool and it’s near the beach, but other than that there wasn’t much around. The next three nights I stayed at Tekweni’s near Florida Rd. Both Tekweni’s and Florida Rd. have a reputation of being the party place. Florida Rd. has more food options than Swaziland as a country. There was even a restaurant that served good Mexican food…still not real salsa though. I went to the beach, Victoria Street market, the botanical gardens, and a really amazing resort with an infinity pool and amazing views.

Drakensberg was the last stop on the trip and my favorite for sheer beauty alone. It’s no secret that I miss home a lot. The mountains in Drakensberg are very different than the ones in Vermont but it still felt like a small piece of home. We did a four night three day inclusive package. We went up the Sani pass to see Lesotho and get a view from the top. The highest pub in South Africa was a neat little place with money and signatures all over the walls. The next day was a hike to see the bushman paintings on the rock faces…a somewhat grueling hike I might add. We went over a partially broken bridge, up the mountain, and back down what was basically a very steep goat path. It ended at a beautiful waterfall but we did get a little rushed by a group of Germans who were trying to leave for Lesotho which was a bummer. I got the first real sunburn I’ve ever gotten here which was a bummer but hey the views were worth it.

The final day resulted in a very long and somewhat concerning car ride that took 10 hours from Drakensberg back to Swaziland. Low and behold we chose a janky little border post that actually checks for Ebola. And by checks I mean they take your temperature so let’s face it that could me anything from a mild cold to the flu to Ebola. Not a very sophisticated system. My favorite part of the drive was when my friend’s boyfriend who was visiting from the State said: they don’t even have a real gate; the guy just pushes it up to let cars through. Even better is we drove right around that gate after we got our passports stamped. Despite the drive, it all ended on a high note with dinner and drinks at Malandela’s with a bunch of friends.

I know I’m missing a lot of parts of the story like the gay bar I went to for New Year’s Eve and the crazy little children that drank my friends tea at Happy Hippo without invitation, but it would take a small novella to tell all those stories so I’ll just save those happy tidbits for when I come home.

What 2015 holds for my future:

I’ve talked to some friends and family, but I want everyone who is curious to know: I will be home by August 8^th of this year. One of my best friends from high school will be getting married in Maine and I fully intend to be there. So come April and May Peace Corps works with volunteers to choose a Close of Service (COS) date. I’ve also been accepted to Tufts University to their Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy program which was my top choice. I’m still waiting to hear from the other six schools I applied to so hopefully by April I’ll be able to tell everyone my decision. So weddings and grad school here I come! I’ll be sad to leave my home of two years here in Swaziland, but I also can’t wait to be back state-side!

Book: The White Man’s Burden by William Easterly

Show: Weeds (Season 4)

Books for Swaziland needs your help!

Hey everyone!

As many of you know already from e-mails and Facebook, it’s the time of year that Books for Swaziland is fundraising to bring 30 new libraries to Swaziland. Last year, I was starting a library with one of my primary schools. Now we have a beautiful library that will be used by over 350 students and 15 teachers at my school. I am very passionate about this project so I joined the Books for Africa planning team which writes the grant we are fundraising for.

I wrote this last year and I think it is a powerful image:
Imagine for a moment that someone came in and removed all the books from your house. How would you help kids learn to read? If you thought about writing, imagine that paper is so expensive you couldn’t use it. Newspapers? Imagine all the newspapers are written in English, a language you understand, but you have to pass all your school tests, exams, etc. in a foreign language. You go to school where textbooks are written in foreign language and your tests are also expected to be written in that foreign language. Those textbooks are the only books you or your child has access to.

It may seem extreme for those of us who had books all our life, but it’s a very real reality here in Swaziland. 

So here’s what I’m asking:

Books for Swaziland (a partnership between Peace Corps and an organization called Books for Africa) is a nation-wide project that will bring enough books to start 30 new school and community libraries all across Swaziland. The books will be free, high-quality books from United States donors, and each organization receiving the books will be responsible to raise 1,500 rand (about $150 USD – a big amount for our schools!) to help ship the books, in addition to providing a library room, shelves, labeling supplies, and a designated librarian.

Through these 30 new libraries, Books for Swaziland will reach approximately 60,000 students in the next ten years. This is nearly 6% of the total country population! Books for Swaziland will train a librarian for each school, approve a library program plan, and deliver over 1,000 quality children’s, young adult, and information books to participating organization. The result of this project will be an increase in literacy and English proficiency among students, as well as increased chances for students to obtain university admission or gainful employment. One library at a time, Books for Swaziland hopes to bring students out of poverty for a brighter, HIV-free future.

Each school/community is making a huge commitment by providing part of the shipping costs, a furnished room, and a staff member to serve as librarian. However, the Peace Corps volunteers in Swaziland still need to raise $7616 (the rest to be covered by Peace Corps) to cover half of the cost of shipping the books to Swaziland. That’s where you come in – can you help raise money to support education in Swaziland?

I am asking family members and friends to commit to donating monetarily to this project (if you’d like to send books, I can give you the shipping address for the organization in America). If you feel strongly about helping improve the quality of education and opportunity for Swaziland students, or if you just love me and want to help me out, here are a few ideas for making donating fun and easy:

-Just go online and donate. Easy-peasy. Click here to find out about donating.

-Ask a class at school or church to fundraise. ‘Loose Change for Literacy’ is a great theme and you can compete between classrooms or between guys and girls. The winners get bragging rights, and if you are feeling generous, a party.

-Make donating to this project your end-of-year, tax deductable donation.

-Host a small event with friends and ask everyone to chip in. Maybe you bake homemade lasagna or make dozens of pancakes and charge $15 a plate, or maybe you throw a Vegas-themed party where all winnings go to libraries.

-Simply spread the word where you work, where you worship, or anywhere else you have an audience.

As always, thank you for your encouragement and support of our work in Swaziland.  Thank you for helping make that happen!

The Beginning of the End

November 9, 2014

It has been a little over a month since my parents came to visit and I really thought that time would slow to a crawl. Instead it seems like time is slipping away. I have nine months left in Swaziland. For those of you who are looking for an exact date, I can’t give one but one of my best friends is getting married in Maine on August 8th and you can bet I’ll be home for that. Nine months feels like so much time but it really isn’t any time at all.

Reusable Sanitary Pads

Some may remember I wrote about this reusable sanitary project in some previous posts. I had great success with the adult women in my community. Most of them told others about this new type of pad and even taught another person how to make them. Fortunately and unfortunately, I only used about half of my grant money for the four workshops so I had to find a way to spend the rest. I thought teaching about these cloth pads at my primary schools would be the perfect addition to the project. So I taught over 200 grade six and grade seven students how to sew these pads. I even taught the boys. It was mildly infuriating to hear some of the boys say we were making them dumber by teaching them how to sew a product for women, but for the most part the boys didn’t mind. I haven’t done any follow up to see if the girls use the pads so I can’t speak to its successfulness. News about that will be coming soon. Either way it is my most successful project and it feels great to be finished with it.

Library Project

My first library project is taking far longer than it should. We are so close to opening it is disappointing I can’t get any help. I had high hopes because when I was on vacation with my parents in September the teachers made a huge push and got almost all the books registered and stamped. They began labeling the books with stickers but got confused. But that was the last help I’ve gotten beside one hour two weeks ago.

I really wanted this project to be finished so the grade seven students could at least see the library up and running before they move on to high school next year. It doesn’t look like that will happen. It’s pretty disappointing because it should have been finished two weeks ago. We are at the point where students can help us. The grade sevens left at 10:30am one morning after exams. With six or seven of those students, we could have finished in three or four days. Despite many disappointments about the delayed openings, I’m very happy to report that an additional grant from Peace Corps got us 12 beautiful shelving units. There is potential for this to be an excellent library. Once it’s open we will get a real sense of how well it’ll be utilized.

And it’ll open just in time for me to start library number two with my far school…

Being a Resource

I felt really great a couple weeks ago when one of my teachers asked me to help her with an assignment. She was asked to get people’s views on how allowing abortion has affected the youth in South Africa. I couldn’t offer any insight into South Africa’s situation but I offered some insights about abortion in the United States. It’s a sensitive subject so I had to tread carefully, but I’m really touched my teacher thought of me. It’s one of those important times where I get to share something about culture in the United States and I learn about cultural reactions to sensitive topics here in Swaziland.

A Wedding

I got a chance to attend a traditional Swazi wedding last weekend and it was an interesting ceremony. The wedding took place at the umphakatsi (chief’s homestead) because it was one of his sons getting married. Weddings here are a whole weekend event. Friday night, my bhuti (brother) stayed up with the family until the bridal party arrived at midnight. He didn’t get to bed until about 5am Saturday morning. Once the bridal party is welcomed Friday night, they rest and then Saturday is day of dancing! I went to the umphakatsi around 1pm with my sisi (sister) and two bhutis. My make (mother) was already there because she helped cook and prepare all morning. Around 2:30pm the women in the bridal party began dancing. Eventually the women from the groom’s family began dancing. The dances have meanings and I understood some of them. One of the most interesting was towards the end when the women from the bride’s family did a dance that was a way of saying goodbye to the bride as they give her to the groom’s family. It’s hard to explain here but I have many photos and videos. I guess that’s also how I became the unofficial photographer! I took photos for people and they asked me to print them in Manzini to sell. I ended up heading home around 6pm since the dancing was done and the amount of drunk men were becoming increasingly obnoxious.

Sunday was sort of a bust unfortunately. My host siblings and I walked over at 10am. Again my make was already there helping cook and prepare. The kids and I found a place to sit and play Uno (Thanks for the cards Dad and Vikki!). There was a small group of young guys who started hovering and asking questions. They wouldn’t leave me alone. Luckily my 10 year old sisi is so much smarter than I give her credit for. Make asked her to get something from the house so she had me walk back with her. We returned to the umphakatsi and found a new place to hang out for a little while but the ceremony was starting so luckily we didn’t have to wait long.

This ceremony is the bride’s family presenting blankets and grass mats to the groom’s family. It’s a long process and it was hot. My make brought an umbrella to block the sun. As I was holding it to protect her and the baby from the sun, one of the guys from before pushed his way in to hold the umbrella and tried to use that as an excuse to stand literally up against my body. Gross. So I moved away. My sisi (again so much smarter than I gave her credit for) told him she wanted the umbrella. He wasn’t going to give it to her so I told him it’s her umbrella so give it to her. Then they proceeded to sit behind me and take pictures of me with their cell phones as if I were a zoo specimen. I didn’t really pay attention but my sisi again told them to stop pictures. They said they would beat her (I should clarify they say that a lot here usually it’s just a joke). I’m so glad I didn’t hear that because joking or not I would have lost my patience entirely. Regardless, I watched the second part of the ceremony where they make up the new bed for the married couple and they lay in it (yes it’s as awkward as it sounds). Then I left. I’m disappointed that a group of 19 and 20 something guys ruined this cultural event for me, but I love my sisi for defending my honor so fiercely all day.

Graduate School

I’ve successfully completed three graduate school applications for programs in International Development. I’ve applied to Tufts University, George Washington University, and Johns Hopkins SAIS program. I have four more schools to apply to. By December I will have word from Tufts and Johns Hopkins. I’m excited and anxious to hear back from schools so I can begin planning my return to the states. Keep an eye out for updates.

Book: Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Show: Gilmore Girls (Season 7)

Another Big Vacation and a New Term

I should be sad that my parents just left last week after two amazing week of vacation, but I’m also very happy to be back in my own bed and to my old routines (except for the hand-sized spider I found inside the pit latrine door this morning of course). On Sept. 2nd, I headed to Pretoria, South Africa to meet up with my parents when they arrived on the morning of Sept 4th. The day I had in between was spent exploring some of Johannesburg which is somewhat off limits to volunteers. We can visit but we have to sign a waiver…I feel like that alone tells you it’s not the safest of cities. That being said, I thought it was pretty cool. Me and two of my fellow volunteers did a hop-on-hop-off tour and saw the tallest building in Africa as well as the apartheid museum.

I guess I should take a step back and explain that the week before I left for Pretoria I was out of my site as well. The last Tuesday in August I helped with a presentation to the new group of volunteers and then stayed in town for their swearing in ceremony on Thursday. We went out that night to celebrate with them and I only had one night at my homestead before I was off to town again. For those of you counting, that’s three weeks away from home save for the one night. It’s by far the longest stretch I’ve had away from my hut.

Vacation officially began September 4th when my parents landed in the morning. They were tired but who can blame them. That 15 hour plane ride is the worst! So we went to a hotel in Pretoria and while they napped some I caught up on my reading. The next day we were off to Kruger Park for three nights. We had to drive 7 hours and we were almost too late to make it in! Apparently the park gates and the camp site gates both close at 6pm. We got to the outside gates at 5:40pm and made a mad dash to the camp gates. Not solid advertising on Kruger’s part. But we made it. Letaba camp was really amazing because we got a view right out over the river. On our second night there we got to watch the elephants by moonlight! We did a lot of self drives and on our third night we did a night drive from Mopani park. We didn’t see too much that night but we got to see a leopard and I hear that’s pretty rare so I was thrilled! We still never saw any lions but we heard some. I’m convinced we passed them but I was holding one of the big headlights and as many of you know I don’t have the best vision in the world.

Kruger was full of cool animals but Big Bend is apparently home to the loudest little frogs you’ve ever heard/seen! We stayed in Big Bend so my parents could visit the schools where I work, the community I live in, and do dinner with my host family. It’s not a long drive but with the pot holes it’s a stressful drive. Either way, the place in BB had a pool with a serious frog problem. I’ve never heard frogs so loud in my life. Lord knows I don’t have enough water at my homestead to have a frog problem. Dinner with my host family stressed me out a little bit. I’m not sure my Dad and Vikki knew that but it did. I felt like I was the wobbly bridge between the two worlds and that seemed stressful. I shouldn’t have stressed at all because my host family speaks English very well and everything went great. My host family is still asking how my parents trip was and saying how wonderful dinner was with them.

Finally, after three nights in Big Bend, we moved on to stay at Sundowners in Ezulwini. Backpackers are an entirely new concept to my parents but for about $100 USD they got to stay four nights and see another common hangout for me as a volunteer. A bigger bonus still is that they got to meet some of my friends here in Swaziland. The coolest part our Swaziland leg of the trip was definitely zip-lining in Malolotja. Every volunteer I’ve talked to said they were very impressed my parents were up for that ( It’s a little scary to start but once you get about half way through the course you can enjoy the views and look around. It’s build into a canyon between two mountains so instead of tree to tree it’s more like rock to rock. We also went to the cultural village, the Ngwenya glass factory, and lots of the shops and restaurants around the valley.

Finally, on Monday the 15th, my parents headed back to Pretoria for some down time before the big flight back. I asked them to drop me off at the Peace Corps office and my dad took some photos of me heading in. Of course, the guard watched my dad take all three photos and waited for me to walk in before he informed me he had to talk to my father. I have many strong words to say about the lack of competence of certain people in that situation, but best to leave that unsaid. Like the saying goes: if you have nothing nice to say its best not to say it at all. Moral of the story: don’t take pictures of U.S. government buildings in other countries…Either way it was tearful goodbye. I’m not sure my parents could see it because I was raging about the picture incident but once they left and I got inside the office it took a little while to get myself together.

It seems surreal that they were even here now that I’m back in my hut living the day-to-day in rural Swaziland. July and August were some of the longest months in my service. There was nothing bad about them, but as I crossed the days off on my calendar they seemed like the never ending months. September was the tipping point. I got to share all the hard work I’ve been doing with two of the most important people rooting for me back at home. I know there are many more people at home who are rooting for me too! I realize now that I have 11 months until I leave next August and a long list of things I want to accomplish. I may spend 4 out of seven days of the week sitting in my hut, but those three days out of the week at my schools and planning projects mean a lot. You may ask: well Sammy if you sit around 4 days out of the week clearly you could be spending your time better? I say to that, we work on Swazi time. Nothing in Swaziland is ever rushed unless you’re fighting for a seat on the kombi/bus. (And grad school applications take more time than you might imagine!)

Well you’ve made it to the end! I shortened the story considerably so hopefully you at least got the highlights. Until next time….

Book: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Show: The West Wing (Season 2)

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

May Madness

I woke up today thrilled that I could sleep in and wouldn’t have to socialize with anyone. Instead I’ve become increasingly grumpy and annoyed by a lot of little things. It may not be the best mood to write a blog in, but I’m hoping by writing out what I’ve done lately I’ll feel a little happier and more excited about the projects that are going well.

April came and went. The only notable thing I did was visit Vusumnotfo, the place where I was for Christmas, to help a school in Piggs Peak with a computer science curriculum. Kathy, the woman who runs Vusumnotfo, started a school to send her daughter to. Now her daughter is going to college in the fall, but the school is still running strong. It has a Raspberry Pi computer lab. Originally, she wanted someone to help teach but since I live way too far away I agreed to help develop a day by day lesson plan that any teacher or volunteer could step into.

Besides the visit up north, it was a pretty boring month because school let out on the 17th just in time for a huge string of holidays. The week of Easter Sunday/Monday my host father didn’t go to work and I assume the majority of Swaziland didn’t. That Friday was flag day…apparently that’s a holiday worthy of time off. It worked in my favor because I got to spend a decent amount of time studying for the GRE (the exam you need to apply to grad schools). It’s been far too long since I’ve had to figure out the area of a circle or calculate ratios.

May has been the complete opposite of April. Of the last three weeks, I’ve spent about half of that in town doing work for Books for Africa and attending mid-service training. The Books for Africa program ships one shipping container from the U.S. to Durban, South Africa. Our BFA team expected the books to come in the last two weeks of April. We has no word as of May 1st about the shipping container. I was happily celebrating Cinco de Mayo (a Monday) with a group of volunteers in my area when we got the call that the books were in Swaziland. The tricky part about BFA is that the shipping container needs to be unloaded and books need to be distributed to schools within a three day period so we avoid late fees for returning the container and paying for extra days at the warehouse. So me and my friend Maggie, who was also helping with BFA, rushed to town Tuesday morning with only a change of clothes and the few other things we brought for our one night Cinco de Mayo celebration. It was less than ideal. Even worse, we are on our way to the warehouse when our lead BFA person calls and says we can’t unload the books because the container hasn’t been unloaded off the train. So swazi … It turned out for the better  because I got to buy my Bushfire Festival tickets (keep reading to find out more about that) and we got to go eat lunch/hang out in town. Wednesday and Thursday went pretty smoothly. We unpacked the container on Wednesday and organized the warehouse with piles of boxes by school/volunteer. Thursday all the schools picked up their books and, since my school was one of the last pick-ups, I got a free ride home! A slightly awkward one because it was the teacher who I had a slight texting problem with last year, the driver, and me squeezed in the middle, but a free ride is a free ride. Beats some of the bus rides I’ve suffered.

I arrived home bruised but happy around 6pm Thursday night. I was exhausted but I only got one day (Friday) to do my laundry and pack up for town again. Mid-service training isn’t mandatory but I signed up for two out of the three training Peace Corps offered. I didn’t have to be in town until Sunday, but I had a lot of things to get done on the internet so I went to town bright and early Saturday morning. Saturday night I had the great fortune of meeting two volunteers (although not with PC) from Pretoria in South Africa. It was nice to meet some people outside of Peace Corps and it turns out their coming back to Swaziland next weekend for the Bushfire Festival (keep reading!). Sunday through Saturday was training at the site where we spent so much time during July and August. Monday – Wednesday I had a teacher from each of my schools to learn about Grassroot Soccer. It’s a really cool program out of Cape Town that teaches about HIV using games and physical activity. Then Thursday – Friday, I had two teachers from my nearest school come to a training about positive discipline. It was a really interesting workshop. The idea of beating children in school makes many volunteers uncomfortable, but it’s what Swazis grew up with so it’s the only system they really know that “works.” The discussions about how we can change or the challenges we face in changing it were really enlightening. Finally, after breakfast on Saturday, I spent a little time in Manzini and then headed home. It felt great to be back in my own bed after two weeks of craziness!

This past week seemed just as busy as the first two, but this time I got to be in my own hut each night. Monday I went to the school to find out that the head teacher wants a library workshop on Wednesday. That stressed me out a lot. Tuesday I went to help another volunteer install programs on the computers at her school, then I got a package and some groceries in Siteki. Thanks for the care package Mom!! That afternoon, me and my counterpart were scrambling to get our schedule and topics together. Luckily, and this is the only time I’ll refer to this as lucky, World Vision had a training on Wednesday too! Imagine that, another meeting rescheduled due to World Vision. Instead, my counterpart and I used some time on Wednesday to plan our accession register for the library books! It’s a big first step towards opening!

Another exciting thing happened this week: I got my first grant proposal approved! Peace Corps, being run by the U.S. government, makes nothing easy when it comes to money for projects. It’s a somewhat cumbersome excel sheet set up. Even for only $150 USD, the smallest grant, we still have to describe every little step and detail of the project. What is this project you ask? I’m doing three small sewing circles to teach women how to make reusable/cloth sanitary pads. This is a really exciting project because it doesn’t take a lot of money and I think it has a chance of being sustainable in my community. I turned the paperwork in Friday (yesterday) when I had to go to town AGAIN for training. This training was to teach PCVs and their counterparts at the schools how to screen children for vision problems. Unfortunately, PCVs were mislead to believe that children would have access to free pairs of glasses, but that is absolutely not the case. At least with screening, children can be referred to government hospitals and have a chance at getting the help they need. And if not glasses, teachers can help students by moving them to the front of the class or in other ways.

Yesterday was my dad’s 50th birthday! I was sad I couldn’t be there to celebrate the big milestone with him but I know he understands. If it weren’t for his encouragement and support, I wouldn’t be in Swaziland at all. Instead of being sad, I look forward to him and my stepmom visiting in September!

Also, he now has a swazi birthday buddy because my host mom had a new baby boy last night! I know this is surprising to everyone stateside, but you know how if you ask a woman in the states if she’s pregnant and she’s actually not? I guess that’s just one of those cultural things. My make didn’t tell me she was pregnant and I didn’t ask because I thought she was just gaining weight. It was very clear when I came back from training that it was baby weight but before that it wasn’t so clear.

Things to watch out for in my next blog:

--Bushfire festival: this is a music festival held each year in Swaziland. It’s pretty popular from what I understand, so next weekend I’ll be sleeping in a freezing cold tent when I’m not rocking out to some cool music or shopping for souvenirs/crafts.

--TWO WEEKS TO CAPE TOWN! As you may be able to tell from the all-caps, I cannot wait to get out of Swaziland for a while. Cape Town sounds so amazing and I can actually go out after dark! There will be mountain climbing, wine drinking, island visiting, and lots more.

I suppose this helped me feel a little better about my day. My homestead is out of water in the jojo tank and I’m drinking, bathing, and washing my clothes using the filthy rain water I caught in these big 100L barrels. I pay each month to pay over a quarter of the cost so that’s why it bums me out. Many volunteers carry water from far distances, but it’s a matter of money management and feeling taken advantage of even though I know that's not my family's intent. Fingers crossed we get our jojo tank filled soon! In the meantime, I have lots of great things to look forward to. Keep reading to find out about Bushfire and Cape Town!

Book: The Invisible Man

Show: House of Cards, Season 2

While I was away ... Term One Came and Went

It seems like as soon as I made a New Years’ resolution to update my blog more fate told me I had to give up my computer for a month. The first week of February, as I finished watching Star Wars IV, I noticed my laptop cord wasn’t actually charging anymore. So I scoured all of Mbabane (the capital) in search of an adapter or a universal adapter set I could use. Lucky me, my netbook has an incredibly small charging pin and the charger runs on a higher voltage than the typical laptop charger. Thus began a month without a computer and I can honestly say it wasn’t as bad as I imagined.

The months of February and March have been “busy” in a way. I’ve settled into a solid routine and I’ve met more and more people to work with. Here’s a glimpse into my average week for Term 1 of school here in Swaziland (which closes April 17th).

Monday – I work with the preschool nearest to my homestead. I don’t actually do much to change their routine but I try and bring one new song or game to teach them each week. There are only seven students so I like that I can learn all their names and that each student gets the attention s/he needs. However, if it rains the preschool tends not to meet. The mud gets pretty intense along the roads.

Tuesdays – This is Health Club day for the primary school closest to my homestead. This is a group of students from grades 1-7 who come and participate in activities relating to their health. Before I came, I think this largely meant learning about oral hygiene, washing your school uniforms, early pregnancy, and alcohol abuse. These are all important topics but I’m trying to introduce the cause of most teenage issues: peer pressure and self-esteem. Slowly but surely, we are including different lessons that show students how to respond to those problems.

Wednesdays – This is Health Club day for a new school I’ve discovered. In early February, I was introduced to a primary school and a preschool that are about 5km from my homestead. When I first started going there I walked both ways, but now that I have the transport schedule down I’m less inclined to walk 10km for obvious reasons. This school was a little late in starting up their health club and is significantly less organized about it. This makes it difficult for me to plan and it has caused some serious frustration, but the teachers are all young and very nice so it’ll get better over time.

Thursdays – This is a day that I generally keep open for meetings although that doesn’t always work out. There is an HIV support group I’ve been trying to meet with but they meet on Tuesdays when I have health club.
Fridays – These past two months it feels like I’ve been in Mbabane nearly every weekend. On one hand, this is fantastic because I get showers and all the pizza and ice cream a girl could ask for but, on the other hand,  I also spend all my living allowance on food and lodging. Now Fridays have become my GRE study days. Yikes….

In other news:

I’ve planned a trip to Cape Town, South Africa for June during the week of my birthday. I’m so excited for the trip despite the fact that I take the GRE the day before my birthday. Mozambique was a good vacation, but Cape Town is a whole new type of vacation. There are tons of museums, beaches, markets, sports games, botanical gardens, and hikes up table mountain.

I’m working with a young man in my area to put together a business planning workshop. When I came to Swaziland, I expected people to ask me for money and food. I still face that question, but even more difficult is when people ask “What can you help me with?” That is hard to answer because Swazi people do have good ideas and some are willing to work hard to start a business or seek out education to reach their goals. I joined Peace Corps because they don’t just hand money out and leave, so I’m hoping over time I can work with all the people that have asked for help starting their chicken farming business or their car wash by doing this workshop.

Libraries galore! Another project most of you are aware of (and some of you helped fund) is the library projects at both my primary schools. Unfortunately, I didn’t apply for Books for Africa with the primary school furthest from my homestead because I didn’t know they existed. The good news is they have already started a building a library building. They’re about halfway finished. Which is interesting because they have no books and no sources for books. Meanwhile, my closest school will be receiving ~1000 books in the first week of May and still has no proper shelving for the project. It isn’t that the headteacher doesn’t care about the library. In fact, the four teachers on my library planning team and the headteacher are all very serious about making this library functional. They want to do a full day of training with all the teachers and come up with a solid system for using the books effectively.

Something I didn’t know in January when I wrote to update you all is how long it would take for schools to simply get paid. Free education is a new concept here in Swaziland. Over the past decade they have been cutting school fees for grades 1 through 6. This year grade six became free, last year it was up to grade five. So instead of families paying fees on day one, the school has to wait for a check from the government. This has taken until the final week of March for my schools. That’s a whole term in which teachers’ contracts weren’t finalized so they couldn’t teach, the school couldn’t afford their electricity, and feeding programs were cut so the poorest of students came to school without breakfast and didn’t get the one meal that got them through their school day. That being said, the government somehow finagled a way to provide new desks for our school. How does this related to the library you ask? Well the old desks will now become our new, temporary shelving. This is all the headteacher’s idea and I think she does really well working with what she has. Am I mildly disappointed we don’t have a more permanent structure? Of course, but at least the books won’t sit in a box until the end of time.

There’s a lot of people I’ve met and meetings I’ve held and frustrations I’ve faced that I didn’t write about here because y’all don’t want to read a novel every time you visit my blog, but hopefully you enjoy a little glimpse into what I’ve been doing for the past two months when my blog went silent.

Books: A gazillion books….because I had no computer to watch tv on for a month.
Currently it is: The Shackled Continent: Africa’s Past, Present and Future by Robert Guest (I highly recommend this book for anyone who considers Africa a lost cause)

Show: Homeland Season 2, Suits Season 3 (finally!)

Sweaty Seasons Greeting from Swaziland!

It’s a new year but it certainly didn’t feel like the holiday season for me without snow! Granted I don’t miss digging my car out of the snow. You’ve probably been wondering what the heck happened to my blog. I’ve been slacking. There are a few noteworthy things that have happened in December and January.

First, I had a training the first week of December and this time I got to bring a community member (a counterpart as Peace Corps calls them). I brought my Rural Health Motivator (RHM) because I’m hoping to work with her a lot in the community. We have some ideas to start an HIV support group and I want to work with Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs). We were in Matsapha for three days learning about the steps we should take to ensure our projects are successful. It was long and stressful for both of us but I’m really happy we got to do it. Unfortunately, my RHM had to leave a little early on the third day because her son was in the hospital! He’s fine now but still it worried me. I’m glad she was able to leave early and take care of him. Also fun fact: her son and I have the same birthday (June 11th)!

Second, I thought I’d have a hard time being away from home for Christmas for the first time in my entire life. It was hard to be away from family, but I had a great Christmas here in Swaziland. There is an organization called Vusumnotfo run by a former Peace Corps Volunteer. She served here and stayed her whole life. Now she and her daughter live in Ngonini. She runs this organization which does preschool teacher trainings and some permagardening work. About 20 PCVs and some other friends from the area got together and ate two AMAZING, DELICIOUS turkeys. There were tons of side dishes from all of us who attended. Tons of mashed potatoes which are my favorite! We also got to watch movies on the projector. All in all it was a great way to spend Christmas and I got to see the northern region of Swaziland which is beautiful. On Christmas day my dad called and I got to talk to my grandma, my brother, and my aunt. I hadn’t heard their voices in forever! As much as I wish I could be home with family for Christmas, I still had a great Christmas in Swaziland.

Third, New Years Eve in Swaziland is a real party at House on Fire. If you google House on Fire, you’ll see they are a music venue of sorts. They threw a big NYE party. I spent two nights in town at Sundowners and went to that. A group of volunteers went to Tofo, Mozambique but the prices were about double the normal prices to stay in Mozambique during NYE so I didn’t go. Also I finally got packages from home! Two from my mom and one from a friend! Getting my mom’s packages home from the office proved to be a bit challenging but I made it. Unfortunately, I did get stranded at the Siteki bus rank on the 2nd but it meant I got to spend the night at another PCV’s house in Siteki. She has a shower and a flushing toilet so I wasn’t too sad about getting stranded.

Last but not least, last week I went to Mozambique! I spend five days in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. The first night we had a group of 12 since 6 of the volunteers were going to Tofo in the morning. We went to a restaurant on the beach called Centaurio (spelling?). I found that I really like 2M which is a beer made in Mozambique. Of course…it’s not sold in Swaziland. Then the following day we went across the bay to Catembe and walked down the beach. We found a little place for lunch. The beach was really dirty so we planned on going to Inhaca island for our beach day. More on that later. Then we found this amazing mall! Everything a girl could want and all the food I could hope for. Whodathunk it was built by a drug lord wanted by the United States!?! Filipe is a friend of a friend from Wells College and he told us that fun tidbit. He also took us out that night to Mira Mar another restaurant on the beach in a different area of the city. It was great food but the bill turned into a bit of hell. Math is hard…esp with 8 people eating. Regardless we got it figured out and some of our group wanted to go out dancing. This also turned into a bit of  a mess. We had to go in two groups because of the whole one car deal. We tried to go to a place but it cost too much to get in and apparently flip flops aren’t club wear in Maputo (as if it matters what shoes we wear). So we called it a night and went back to Fatimas. Ohhh yes I meant to mention where we stayed.

Fatimas is a hostel (called backpackers here) with a nice open kitchen and bar area. The rooms were nice enough with lockable cabinets for our stuff and bug nets. Granted the bug nets weren’t the best. Our roommates were also a strange mix….to say in the least. The first night there was an old guy who said if were weren’t all married we were in trouble (joking but still…ew). Then there was an ACTUALLY freaky guy who said he couldn’t sleep in the room the first night because he wouldn’t be able to control himself. Wtf does that mean….we will never know and I don’t want to. Luckily he left after night #1. The old guy…well he continued to scar us. One afternoon after returning from walking around the city, my friend Liz and I walked into the room to find him laying on his bed naked. We didn’t see everything but there was little left to the imagination. Nasty.

Some other landmarks we visited were an old Fort, the Saturday craft market (I got some earrings and a bag), the train station, and the Central Market. On our last day we were supposed to go to Inhaca island which is known for beautiful beaches and great swimming. Now I’m not a big fan of sand but I do love swimming. Of course we woke up Sunday to rain and thunder. I didn’t want to get stranded on an island. I don’t need my own rendition of castaway please and thanks. So we read there is a hotel on Catembe (the beach we went to day one) where we could swim because the beach was clean-ish. In my grumpy, lazy mood I didn’t bring my bathing suit because I didn’t think the rain would clear up. Of course, the rain did clear up and it got hot! We went over to Catembe Gallery Hotel to find a beautiful restaurant set out on a dock with a beautiful view of the water. Then four of our group swam and laid out. Liz and I went back to the city forgetting on Sunday everything is shut down. So we tried to go back to central market only to find it locked. Another little gem we found was a man bucket bathing naked….so bizarre. I understand it’s hot but really guys? You can wear shorts and be clothed. Us gals have to be wearing a shirt and a skirt down to our knees. The least you could do is cover your junk.

The trip to Mozambique had been a bit of a struggle because we waited three hours for the khombi to fill up and had a bit of a dispute about paying extra so they’d bring us to Fatimas when we arrived. On our way back we thought we would try the other border crossing and the transportation that had to offer. All around the Lomahasha border crossing was a much better plan. It cost me a lot less and I got home around 1pm after a little grocery shopping in Siteki.

It was a great vacation but I’m happy to be home. Now I have a week before school starts! I’m excited to get started on projects that actually relate to my service. I enjoyed sleeping in late and just traveling in December and January but I have so many ideas I can’t wait to start on. Also, thank you to all my friends and family who donated to Books for Africa/Swaziland! We reached our fundraising goal in just six weeks and my school’s application for a library was accepted! I’m so excited to start getting the library put together. Thanks to everyone at home for their support!

TV Series: Breaking Bad (Season 5)
Book: Gang Leader for a Day, Freakonomics

PSA! PC Swaziland is asking for your help!

Hey everyone!

This is a special blog post for a project I’m very excited about! As you may remember from some of my earlier blog posts I’m trying to start a library at the primary school where I’ll be working on several projects.

Imagine for a moment that someone came in and removed all the books from your house. How would you help kids learn to read? If you thought about writing, imagine that paper is so expensive you couldn’t use it. Newspapers? Imagine all the newspapers are written in English, a language you understand, but you have to pass all your school tests, exams, etc. in a foreign language. You go to school where textbooks are written in foreign language and your tests are also expected to be written in that foreign language. Those textbooks are the only books you or your child has access to.

It may seem extreme for those of us who had books all our life. I remember my first gift to my niece was a Charlie Brown Christmas book with buttons that played songs. She loved that it played music, but it was constantly forgotten about as she worked through an endless pile of books with fun pictures and sounds.  The students at my primary school don’t have any library. The only books these students have access to are the textbooks that come from the school and without any reading preparation these books are too difficult to read for many students.

So here’s what I’m asking:

I believe development should come from the community level which is why I joined Peace Corps. I will rarely ask for money from my friends, family, and communities at home because community projects should come from community means and resources. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to understand your means and resources without education. Education simply can’t continue if students cannot read.

Books for Swaziland (a partnership between Peace Corps and an organization called Books for Africa) is a nation-wide project that will bring enough books to start 30 new school and community libraries all across Swaziland. The books will be free, high-quality books from United States donors, and each organization receiving the books will be responsible to raise 1,500 rand (about $150 USD – a big amount for our schools!) to help ship the books, in addition to providing a library room, shelves, labeling supplies, and a designated librarian.

Through these 30 new libraries, Books for Swaziland will reach approximately 60,000 students in the next ten years. This is nearly 6% of the total country population! Books for Swaziland will train a librarian for each school, approve a library program plan, and deliver over 1,000 quality children’s, young adult, and information books to participating organization. The result of this project will be an increase in literacy and English proficiency among students, as well as increased chances for students to obtain university admission or gainful employment. One library at a time, Books for Swaziland hopes to bring students out of poverty for a brighter, HIV-free future.

Each school/community must provide part of the shipping costs, a furnished room, and a staff member to serve as librarian. It is a hefty commitment on their end! However, the Peace Corps volunteers in Swaziland still need to raise $7232 (the rest to be covered by Peace Corps) to cover half of the cost of shipping the books to Swaziland. That’s where you come in – can you help raise money to support education in Swaziland?

I am asking family members and friends to commit to donating monetarily to this project (if you’d like to send books, I can give you the shipping address for the organization in America). If you feel strongly about helping improve the quality of education and opportunity for Swaziland students, or if you just love me and want to help me out, here are a few ideas for making donating fun and easy:

-Just go online and donate. Easy-peasy. Click here to find out about donating.

-Ask a class at school or church to fundraise. ‘Loose Change for Literacy’ is a great theme and you can compete between classrooms or between guys and girls. The winners get bragging rights, and if you are feeling generous, a party.

-Make donating to this project your end-of-year, tax deductable donation.

-Host a small event with friends and ask everyone to chip in. Maybe you bake homemade lasagna or make dozens of pancakes and charge $15 a plate, or maybe you throw a Vegas-themed party where all winnings go to libraries.

-Simply spread the word where you work, where you worship, or anywhere else you have an audience.

As always, thank you for your encouragement and support of my work in Swaziland.  Thank you for helping make that happen!

Lessons Learned and What Integration Really Means

I’ve been spending a while considering what to include in my next blog post. I could be telling you how my school is doing exams so I have been watching an excessive amount of shows/movies. I could also tell you about the two weeks of training I completed in Matsapha. Instead, I’d like to share some lessons I’ve learned during this indispensable “integration” period. As you read before, this is the first three months at our permanent site when volunteers are supposed to become a functioning member of their Swazi community.

When turning down a marriage proposal from the drunk man on the khombi hanging in your face, it’s best to do so with a smile and a simple no. Insults and anger rarely ever make the situation go away. So when life give you lemons….hopefully the drunk guy doesn’t make lemonade on your shoes.

Two weeks of training may feel long to a volunteer, but Swazis will assume you went all the way back to the United States…And continue to ask you why you were away for so long AND why you’re back. Those two thoughts don’t seem to fit together…Are you happy to see me or not?

Never convert the price to American dollars in your head. It’ll make you crazy…because it hurts to say 15E is too much when really it’s only $1.50 in USD.

Set your pride aside and just use a pee bucket at night. It’s just not worth a roach, rat, or snake crawling on/biting you.

Peanut butter sandwiches with bananas or apple are a perfectly acceptable dinner.

Don’t try and analyze how or why you have diarrhea (aka a poop parade). There are just too many possibilities.

Peace Corps before technology must have been …rough. I commend and applaud those who made it through without computers, kindles, cell phones, electricity in general.

Your feet will never be clean. You’ll step out of your bucket bath all proud of how clean they are. You’ll take a few steps and wonder “HOOWWW??!”

Screens on the windows are amazing but prepare to find spiders and other lovely surprises living between the screen and the glass. Approach with caution when opening your windows.

If you say you don’t want to do your insanity workout or hip hop abs because it creates more laundry, I suggest trying it pants-less. Don’t worry about chaffing, chances are you were sweating enough to prevent that problem before you even started the video.

Swazis have no idea if your hair is clean or disgusting. That’s no excuse for dreads, but it is a nice advantage if you feel lazy.

You’ll never be on time and transport will never go as you planned. There’s always a surprise in there somewhere. Hopefully it’s not pink eye from the number of butts rubbed in your face…now that aisle seat doesn’t seem as awesome huh?

Projects always seem like a good idea when you’re doing the work…Patience and learning how to convince the other party they want to help are two important PCV tools.

If you love dogs, people will think you’re hilarious and that you’re weird when you give them attention.

It’ll never rain when you expect/want it to.

Don’t compare your living conditions to other volunteers. For the three people who have flushing toilets and a nicer pad than you, there are plenty who don’t have electricity, reliable transport, etc. Consider those people before you bitch and whine.

If you want an honest, straightforward answer in Swaziland, ask a child. They’re rarely worried about offending you and they don’t know yet to feed you the answer they think you want.

Applying logic during moments of frustration may cause an aneurysm. Best to just go with the flow.

Well those are Sammy’s Integration Lessons. I’m sure there are many more... but these are the essentials. Enjoy!

TV Series: The Wire
Book: Game of Thrones (finished), The Shining

Many homesteads, a library, and a meeting

Hey I remembered to update my blog! In an effort to make these posts shorter, I’m going to try and update this more often.

The past week hasn’t been overly eventful. I think the reason Peace Corps Volunteers have to have patience is because of integration. I have no idea how volunteers did it before laptops and kindles. I would have been bored to tears by this point without them. You may wonder why the government pays for us to be here then right?

My two biggest goals at this point in my work is to get my Site Assessment Report (see my previous post) completed and an attempt to start a library by applying to Books for Africa. I went to 27 homesteads on Monday (the 7th). It was certainly a tiring day! Mondays seem to be my day to do my homestead visits with one of our Rural Health Motivators. So far I’ve visited 60 homesteads. I’m beginning to find familiar faces around town but names are difficult. Many people have the same surname so I could guess one of the common surnames (there are about five very common ones for my town) and probably get it right but I don’t want to know them just by guessing.

The library project is sadly being started from scratch. I say sadly because it means these kids have no access to books to improve their English reading and comprehension. It’s also sad because it’s going to take a serious amount of work to get a functioning library up and running. At this point we have a small, narrow room that will barely even fit the shelves. I know the school really wants this library so hopefully it’ll all work out. The next step is shelving, a budget, and the Books for Africa application.

I don’t go to the primary school every day. Tuesdays are health club days and Wednesdays I try to get a meeting about the library. This week I’ll be doing an HIV knowledge and attitudes survey with grades 5-7 to try and understand what information, myths, etc. the students already know. There haven’t been any formal discussions with the school yet but it seems as though they want to work me into the timetable (class schedule) to teach life skills. There are a few different manuals Peace Corps provided but it basically means HIV information, communication skills, relationship skills, self-esteem building, etc.

This past week I went to Simunye Country Club to celebrate the October birthdays among G11. It was a nice relaxing day but the internet didn’t work. This was sad for two reasons. I couldn’t skype with my stepsister and my niece. I also found out that PC didn’t make the automated payments they’re supposed to make from my readjustment allowance. It’s an added stress I didn’t really need. I feel broke in two countries! Yay!

If you were wondering about financial matters, I get a monthly allowance and I got a moving in allowance. I’m not actually broke, but there are still a lot of little frivolous things I buy to make my hut feel more like home or food I buy for comfort when I really don’t need it. Hopefully next month I can start saving some for a potential trip to Mozambique for the holidays. There’s a big group of volunteers who are hoping to take our first vacation over the Christmas/New Year holiday time. The US dollar and even the Swazi currency gets me pretty far there from what I understand. 

Today I went to a meeting at the umphakatsi (chief’s home). The inner council has chosen a new interim chief of sorts. The brother of the chief that passed away was chosen to take his place but by custom it’s supposed to be one of the chief’s children that follows in his footsteps. I thought perhaps the children weren’t old enough. Turns out the children are old enough but it would be improper to make them one of chief while the chief’s wives still “wear the black” (grieve). It was a short meeting but thank goodness it was today and not yesterday. I can’t figure out the weather in this country. It went from over 100 degrees yesterday to the 60s today. Obviously being from New England, I prefer the colder weather but dang it’s weird how fast it changes. Also…still no rain. I hear it should have rained a lot more by now. Hopefully we will get some soon.

I know I’ve seen other PCV blogs that list what the volunteer is reading or watching. So I thought I’d let you know what I’ve been doing in my spare time.

TV Series: Game of Thrones (Season 3)
Book: Game of Thrones (Book 1) and Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

A Month to Make a Home - Settling In

Yikes I’m a terrible blogger! To be fair, I have equally terrible internet access. On August 29th, I was officially sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV)! I made it through the nine weeks of training. In the meantime, lots of interesting stuff has happened which I’ve of course neglected to fill you in on. The first week I was supposed to be at my site I actually spent 10 days at site with my friend and fellow PCV, Janae. Unfortunately, my host uncle died so my family had A LOT of people here for the funeral. They asked me to stay elsewhere so they could house people in my hut. It was a good week because all that stuff they tell us about being lonely at site wasn’t so lonely when you have a friend, but it was disappointing I couldn’t unpack and get settled.
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So on September 9th, I moved to my home for two years! It’s a one room hut with a thatched roof and two windows. I do have electricity but for a few weeks all I had was a lightbulb, no outlets, so I charged my electronics in the main house. I gave you the run down on my family in my last blog. This time I’ll try to give you an idea of my town, which for safety reasons I won’t type outright. It’s a town of about 400 homesteads, we have two small stores, and two umphakatsi houses. Technically most places only have one umphakatsi but ours had a lot of wives. I live about a 20 minute walk from the main tarred road and the school is along the way so I’m close to everything that I need.
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In the five weeks since swearing in I haven’t done a lot in the way of projects. In case I forgot to explain earlier, I have three months of what PC calls “integration.” In these three months I have a set of tasks I should complete so I can do a Site Assessment Report. This report will help me shape projects and goals to fit what my community/school wants and needs. One of these projects is homestead visits where I visit each homestead. I’ve been asking some simple questions like if they have a garden, electricity, how many children, do they go to school, etc. It’s a good way to go around and get to know people. Most people I’ve visited have been receptive but some are a little suspicious and don’t really like me asking questions. I don’t blame them and hopefully over time they’ll talk to me on other occasions so they can know me better. I don’t do the visits alone. I have a really great Rural Health Motivator (RHM) who walks around with me. Bless her soul for putting up with walking around in this heat.
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The first week and a half or so I focused on getting comfortable. I bought a bed and a fridge (which couldn’t be plugged in for a while but it’s easiest to pay transport once). Then I painted my room blue and green in true Evenline fashion (Wells College…google it). I now have some tables and my mosquito net is hung so it’s really coming together to feel like a home. I’ve been trying to post photos but it’s expensive to do on my phone.
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My pit latrine has showed me the wonders my grandfather loved so much as an entomologist. We had some BIIIGGG nasty bugs in there. I spent half an hour one day walking around the toilet seat spraying Doom (bug killer). I’m sure my family thought I had lost my mind. Not entirely certain they’re wrong but who knows. We also had eight lovely pups when I arrived. Two have been sold since then but good news we are keeping two of the male puppies!! Oh I can’t wait to train them. Unfortunately that means squishing the bot fly larvae from under their skin (don’t google that one…it might make you toss your lunch). They have tons of fleas but such is the dog life around here. We have goats around all the time but they aren’t ours. They even tried to drink my laundry water while I still had clothes in the bucket. Lesson learned: do laundry indoors and guard it with your life.
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One friend from home asked me if everything tasted different here so I wanted to give a little explanation of food. Since I can’t default to my nachos or quesadillas for dinner without tortillas and salsa, I often resort to rice and beans or fried egg sandwiches. Pasta is easy to do here so that’s a huge plus. In Senegal the pasta was outrageously expensive. I also eat a lot of peanut butter and apples. The cereal options are quite limited which is so sad because otherwise I would eat that all the time. I found chicken franks that are almost like hot dogs but not quite the same. In summary, everything tastes a little different but most of it still tastes pretty darn good. And on days when I miss Cheetos, Nik Naks are SPOT ON. That’s one thing Swaziland learned to replicate exactly.
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Last weekend I went to Mbabane, the capital, and ran a 5k race. Why you ask? Because it was a good way to go see friends and do something that makes me healthier. I’m not a runner and no I don’t enjoy it but it felt good to finish. I also learned my lesson about traveling at month’s end. Just don’t. It’s awful. Payday means people have money to travel and buy stuff. There’s a saying here that tomorrow doesn’t exist, aka take advantage of everything today. Unfortunately, I’ve embraced this habit when noshing on nik naks and coke but it’s awful when traveling.
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This past week was a little tough. I’ve been a bit restless and I miss home. The two combined makes me generally grumpy. I’ll bounce back but don’t think I’ve forgotten about you back in the States. There are times when I remember certain memories or listen to a song I sang in my car to work every day before I left. It makes me miss it all, but on the other hand I’m starting a project to get a library at my school and I’ve been organizing activities for my school’s health club meetings. Slowly but surely may days seem to get a little busier and I meet new people. Another girl left at the end of September and I have to say I was a little jealous she gets to eat salsa and honey bunches of oats at home. On tough days all I have to do is play with our six puppies and it puts me in a much better place. Ahh the love of a dog! Unconditional whether I can speak Siswati or teach a class effectively!
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Hope everyone is doing well at home (except for the whole Syria shindig and US govt shutdown that’s pending)! See Swaziland does have some advantages! If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment or whatsapp me. I’m sure I missed some stuff about my first month at site.

On The Job! And other stories from training

August 25, 2013

I’m now heading into week nine of nine for training. It’s crazy that eight weeks have come and gone. The past three weeks were big weeks for us PCTs. We have been assigned our permanent sites, got to do On the  Job Training (OJT), and had our final “tests” in SiSwati/Medical/Etc. OJT was from Tuesday, August 6th to Friday, August 9th. We started the adventure by meeting our Site Support Agent (SSA) which for the Youth Development Trainees meant a head teacher or someone in the school administration. I got paired with a primary school. I was hoping to have the option to work at a high school but it looks like the high school my students go to is a WAYS away and there may already be a volunteer working there. Regardless, I’m excited to finish training and get to my community.

Here’s the skinny on where I’ll be living for two years:

I’m living on a small homestead with a Babe, Make, two boys and two girls. My 13 year old host brother, Nduduzo, will prove to be very helpful because his English is excellent. The two girls, Sinetisiwe and Bayabongwa, are 9 and 6 respectively. They were very shy and refused to talk to me so that was a little sad but I think over time they will warm up to me. Then Siniketo is the three year old. Remember how I was told there was only one child on my homestead? That’s because the other three were usually at school I think when PC visited.

There is a primary school and preschool just a ten minute walk away (maybe 15 if you drag your feet some). The preschool is run by World Vision, an international NGO, and they have also provided a lot of things to the primary school. Apparently, World Vision gave the primary school a bunch of volleyball nets and balls….so I guess I’ll be learning to play that soon? There are 15 teachers for approximately 370 students. That is about a 1 to 25 ratio so it’s not great but not bad either. Some of the projects that were mentioned during my stay were: a library, a garden, and flushing toilets (a promise I doubt World Vision will come through on). The first three months of training are supposed to be for assessment only, but I really want to work on getting a library as soon as I can. There is a program called Books for Africa that has a deadline in December for applications to receive library books. We are allowed to be working on that. The biggest challenge for my school seems to be space. We have enough buildings for the classes, but the admin building is very small and I don’t see any unused rooms that could work as a library. Again, World Vision has been promising to build some buildings so fingers crossed that they come through on some of that. Also another potential, and I say potential in slim chances terms, is a project with the Raspberry Pi computers. One volunteer in Swaziland has already initiated a project to bring these to his school. This is the  website if you’re curious about the project: http://igg.me/at/SwaziPi

During my stay I also met some key people in the local leadership. I met the Indvuna and the Bucopho. The Indvuna is the right hand man to the chief (umphakatsi) and the Bucopho is the “brains” (that’s what bucopho means in SiSwati) who helps with community projects. Sadly, our Umphakatsi was killed in a car accident last month. He left behind three wives and lots of children. I live very close to the Umphakatsi which is also an advantage because that’s where they do community meetings. I asked when they would pick a new umphakatsi but some other volunteers said their community’s umphakatsi died over 20 years ago so I doubt there will be a new one during my time. I did get to meet the wives and some of the aunts who are all related to my host family somehow. I think my host father’s father is a son of the chief’s son. Yea…you try and figure that one out. It hurts my brain sometimes when they explain family relations. Another important person I met was Make Nobella. She is one of fifteen Rural Health Motivators (RHMs) in our community. These motivators are commissioned by the King to help with health issues in rural areas where the population may not have access to a clinic. Make Nobela also explained that many of the RHMs in my community help care for families living with HIV. We walked ALLLLLL around the town (which has 400ish homesteads). I meet a lot of homesteads, saw the water dam, several boreholes (water pumps), and our Neighborhood Care Point (NCP) where the government pays to have food and care for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs). Are you sick of the acronyms yet? Welcome to our world as trainees :)

Then on Thursday, every volunteer got to visit a PCV from group 10 who have been here a year. The volunteer I stayed with lives in Simunye which is a very nice town funded by the Sugar Corporation. Luckily, knock on wood, transportation has been more successful for me in Swaziland than it EVER was in Senegal. Also less holes in the floorboards. It took me about an hour walking from home, waiting for a khombi, and driving to Siteki (my shopping town). Then another 30 minutes to Simunye. I even met Kelsey (a fellow trainee) on the khombi. Small world in this tiny country ( The bus rank is outside this lovely shopping plaza and next to the LOVELY OASIS of the Simunye Country Club. Just imagine a nice resort. They have a big pool, a kiddie pool, a playground, tennis courts, basketball courts, free wifi, fantastic pizza, and everything else a girl could want. This is where I’ll go when I just can’t take the heat any longer. If I haven’t mentioned this yet, PC thought it’d be hilarious to place the gal from New England in the hottest part of Swaziland. I’ll probably melt into a pool of molten human like Alex Mack. Anywho, Taylor (the G10 volunteer) showed us around the plaza and had us drop our stuff off at her apartment. She doesn’t have a host family because she’s in a bigger town. We then got to see the high school where she does most of her work. It’s a pretty nice school compared to what I’ve seen but someone once said don’t compare in Peace Corps. It’s a bad mindset to start with and to carry. The haves and have nots so to speak.

Then we went to the country club and had dinner. Their pizza is ….whew it’s priceless. I love cheese and pizza and cheese. YUMMMM! We also got to meet Taylor’s host mom (even though she doesn’t live with the family it’s still nice to have an ally in the community). Interestingly enough, her husband works for the water company that supplies water to Lubombo region (where I’m living). She was able to help me with some information about the water situation at my home.

On the way home, of course I got harassed by a drunk man on the bus. We were on the bus at 8am by the way. We were heading from Simunye to Manzini and this guy sat near me. I figured if I just ignored him nothing would happen. That’s just not the way the world works for me. He tried to talk to me. I told him I’m married and I don’t like him. I got pretty mad but tried to keep my cool. Then he stood up and tried to lean over my seat. I was ready to kick him in the balls but luckily my friend Hyomi stood up and started yelling at him. The bus conductor was quick to help us. The guy sat back down and just stared at me the rest of the way. Yippee! We got to Manzini safely and got to do a little shopping FINALLY.

The following week didn’t really have anything notable so I’ll just move on to this past week (August 18 – August 24th). This past week was by far the most stressful since I’ve been in country. It all started on Monday. I was having a bad day because I had a nasty cough and I just really missed home. My homestead didn’t have water for like three days so when I got home I realized I was all out of water. My Gogo explained how she had to go somewhere to get the water and did a lot of work for it. I respect that entirely. I only took half a bucket figuring I wouldn’t need much. I did however have laundry that had been soaking for a day and a half at this point so it needed to get rinsed. As I’m hanging out my laundry, it seems Gogo and the other woman on my homestead are laughing at me because that’s what I decided to “waste” my water on. It wasn’t like they were trying to be mean. They thought I couldn’t understand SiSwati but I understood enough. It was just a little cultural misunderstanding but at the end of a bad day it felt like crap to be laughed at. Then came our final testing day. Remember that list of tests from week five? Well we repeat all of those during week eight to make sure we know what we need to know. So I went into Thursday feeling really good about my SiSwati test. I had been interviewed by two teachers the day before and understood everything even if I couldn’t make up a good response. Bam! Thursday morning my SiSwati test was first and I totally bombed it. Now, I don’t like to blame the tester…that just seems like a cop out, but really she was awful and I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. I would ask her to repeat something and she’d repeat it three different ways and confuse me. Then she would give an example and it usually ended up being the answer I would have given. On top of the already stressful week and missing home, this just pushed me over the edge. It was a bad day needless to say and it only seemed to get worse.

The following day was host family appreciation day and I had offered to put together a slideshow of photos for the group. I didn’t have any photos with my family because I’m just not the best picture taker. I never think to whip out my camera. So I felt pressure to get a photo with them and get this presentation together when all I wanted to do was sleep and cry because my day hadn’t gone well. Luckily I pulled it all together and made it through the day Friday with a little help from a package from my mom (REESES CUPS!!!). I’m back on track and we move back to our training center tomorrow. Yay for showers and food made for me!! It was a long week, but I’m sad to leave my host family because I’ve become so comfortable with them. It’s hard to balance the excitement of getting to my permanent site with the sadness of leaving my new “comfort zone” so to speak. I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot of things in there but that’s what I get for blogging once a month…oops! Until next time!