Book Project

I am currently working on a project to get library books for schools throughout Swaziland. You can check out the project at:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=645-077

Giving to a cause like this is a valuable contribution that can be made in honor of family for the holidays. Every donation (no matter how small) will help! You can also help by telling your friends and family about the project as well. Thanks so much!!

Gotta watch out for leopards, giant lizards, and even chickens!

September
These last few months have flown! In September I spent a lot of time in the capital for routine medical exams and a short episode of H1N1. Fortunately, Peace Corps required that I stay at a cute little guest house until I felt better (this took about six days). Although it was great to have home cooked meals, catch up on the news, and take showers it wasn’t long before it got really lonely at the guest house. Being there really made me miss my hut, the family I stay with, and all the options I have for things to do with my free time.

October
In October, I had the honor and privilege of representing Peace Corps at a standards setting workshop for the care of Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs) throughout Swaziland. The event was facilitated by UNICEF and attended by many “experts” in the field. I remember the days when I used to sit in lecture halls at the University of Washington wondering what it was really like to work with the U.N. Now I honestly have a good idea (UNICEF is a U.N. organization). It was not an easy workshop! We were working on creating a document that will serve as the standard for all OVC care. To make this enormous task easier, we broke into small groups to focus on specific topics. I went with the group that was focused on education. Because education plays such an incredible role in the lives of OVCs, it felt like every time our small group got up to present our ideas to the big group, we were bombarded with questions, comments, and ways to make our section stronger! In the end, however, we were all proud of the standards that we created over the course of three days. We will continue to meet and work on making these standards stronger as time goes on. After completing the standards setting workshop, I rushed back to my community to prepare for another workshop. This workshop was to train “peer educators” in health education, the employment process, and leadership. Another Peace Corps volunteer and I joined together to teach the workshop for fifteen people. We spoke about HIV/AIDS, STIs, gender roles, supporting people living with HIV/AIDS, dealing with abuse, writing resumes, conducting job interviews, professionalism, and how to be a leader amongst our peers. It went really well and the students demonstrated that they were willing and ready to go back to their communities and spread the information they gained. Then, the last weekend in October, I went with some friends on one crazy hike. We went to Malalotja Nature Reserve which is not too far from where I stay. We wanted to camp very far into the camp, so we all came with big backpacks holding tents, sleeping bags, food, and equipment. The Nature Reserve has baboons, zebras, warthogs, panthers, and springbok (to name a few animals). We were hoping to hike by moonlight to the highest peak. Unfortunately, heavy fog moved in and kept us from being able to reach our destination. Nevertheless, the trip was a blast! We had many great conversations and got to see and hear so many animals in their natural state. It was the longest and hardest hike I have ever attempted.

Crazy Animal Stories
Yesterday we found a giant lizard on the homestead. From the distance, it looked like a little crocodile. These animals live around rivers. They aren’t dangerous to humans, but a blow from their tail could severely hurt a dog or a bite from an angry would leave one with much disease. The lizard was stealing eggs from the chickens. I also have an interesting chicken story. A few months ago, I kept hearing what sounded like a chicken squawking inside the home of my family. The house was locked, so there was not much I could do about the situation. I just kept wondering if there was chicken inside the house. Later in the day the family came home to say that the same chicken was flying through their window everyday. It would land on their bed, lay an egg and then make a mess on their bed. After a few weeks of this happening, they decided that the only solution was to have that chicken for dinner! There is nothing quit like eating chicken with other chickens walking by your feet. Swazis love to serve meat at important functions, and so it has become a regular part of life to eat chicken around the other chickens. It has also become a regular part of my life to chase chickens out of my room. My room is next to a room storing chicken food, so when I open my door, the chickens come rushing in hoping I will feed them. The family also killed a spitting cobra on my homestead last month, but there is no need to go into any details about that! Anyway, I hope that you and your family are doing well! Take care.

Better Words then Mine

I often struggle to put my experiences here into words. The whole experience is constantly filled with ups and downs. While the difficult times are amongst the most trying I have ever known, the good times are some of the best in my life. I wash my laundry by hand as a fight off farm animals (usually chickens, goats or geese), I bath in a bucket, and use a pit latrine. I spend more time by myself then I ever have before, I have become a much better cook, and I have read books I always dreamt about. I laugh harder and more often here then I have since I was a child. For work, I spend most of my time way out of my comfort zone in situations that require endless amounts of patience. It’s tough to see the results of most of what I do. In other words, the whole experience makes me feel very alive and very human. And that my friends, is worth everything!

It is hard to believe I have been in Swaziland over a year. The winter season is drawing to a close as spring slowly takes over. Compared to last year, this winter felt pretty warm. Last year, I would go to bed with a hat, gloves, two blankets, a sweatshirt, and long johns and still wake up cold in the night. I think this year felt warmer because I am staying at a different place. During training we were all staying in the Southern part of the country. I am now up North where there are mountains, but my site is below them. However, if I want to experience winter (even now), I can go stay with my friend Victoria. Her site is nestled in the mountains. It takes me forty five minutes to get to her place, but the temperature difference is incredible!

When I first got here, I read a book called “The Village of Waiting” by George Packer. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo, Africa in the 1980’s. Even though the book was written many years back and in a different country, I can relate so much to what he has to say. Here is an exert from his book:

I would watch the farmers wondering back at night, drinking, singing in their pleasantly gravely voices, and wonder how many millions or billions of people were doing this same type of work all over the world, and had been doing it, in ways that couldn’t have been much different from this, throughout human history. It has been the lot of all but a tiny portion of humanity, and still is for the majority. Yet to that privileged minority, the work and the workers are invisible, don’t exist. I would never have given them a real second thought if I hadn’t been in their midst (page 164).

This is Africa

Unexpected Changes

I know that it’s been a long time since I wrote an entry. I needed to take a break for a while. This New Year has definitely brought its share of unexpected changes. Most of you have heard by now, but I had a difficult situation arise in my community in March. In the end, Peace Corps determined that I could no longer continue to work in the community I was originally placed in. This situation is not common. In fact, as I began to share my story with other volunteers, most of them said they weren’t sure they would have chosen to stick out the process. It wasn’t an easy transition, but with a few Peace Corps friends by my side (saying they would do anything to help me through), I decided to stick with my commitment. As you can imagine, moving to a new community is no easy under taking. It was incredibly hard to stay goodbye to my old host family. They did an amazing job making my stay enjoyable! I’ll miss the deep conversations we had most nights under the stars, the little two year old pounding on my door in the morning demanding that I come out and play, and the quietness that came in living so far off the beaten path.

Peace Corps then put me up in a hostel in Mbabane (the capital of Swaziland) while they got a new homestead and community ready to host me. Staying in the hostel was tons of fun. I made many new Swazi friends, ate lots of KFC and Chinese food, and was able to spend some quality time with Peace Corps friends as they passed through Mbabane to visit the Peace Corps office.

Although I miss my old community immensely, my new homestead definitely has its perks. Now I have electricity, running water just outside my door, and easy access to transportation into town. It has been interesting to see the differences between the two communities. In my old community, the chief was on a major national committee and did not stay in the community much. In my new community, the chief is very young and makes it a point to be involved with the daily functions.I have been working closely in my new community with the Gogo Center manager. As I mentioned in a previous entry, the Gogo Centers are managed by NERCHA and most communities in Swaziland have one. Gogo centers are meant to serve as community focus points for the fight against HIV/AIDS. Each Peace Corps volunteer was paired with a Gogo Center manager for work in the community. The Gogo Center manager in my new community is amazing. His enthusiasm for improving this community is enthralling. For instance, we just finished working together to host a soccer and netball tournament for primary school students in the area. With my counterpart’s enthusiasm, we were able to put this entire event together over the course of two weeks. We were hoping that by serving food, we could attract many community members into watching the games. We were then planning to provide education, dramas, personal stories, and testing to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Although the event did not go nearly as smoothly as we would have liked, it was a success. The games went well and we were able to provide food for the players and dramas with personal stories for those in attendance.

Although Swaziland has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS infection in the world (42.3%) and the testing is free, very few Swazis have actually tested. For example, in my old community I surveyed 150 homesteads (this accounted for about 1,500 people). Only 10% of those surveyed had ever tested. Students often ask me why Swaziland has the highest infection rate in the world. I then write that question on the chalkboard and ask them to brainstorm possible reasons. The students don’t like thinking about the reasons and often find it difficult to even think about. However, I think getting to students to have this specific discussion is among the most affective things I do here in Swaziland. We end up listing things like poverty, lack of education, lack of condoms, lack of knowledge about condoms, cultural traditions, stigma, denial, the place of women in society, societal acceptance for having multiple concurrent partners, taboos surrounding conversations about sex, etc.

I will try much harder to keep this thing updated, especially now that I have electricity!

Business Time

I find it incredibly difficult to write blog entries!!! I want to paint a realistic picture of life here, but at the same time that is impossible. Anyway, the truth is that I’m doing pretty well here. We just finished up three months of “integration.” During our time in integration, we were expected to focus on gaining as much information as possible about our communities. I conducted interviews with various leaders, administered HIV/AIDS knowledge assessments, attended various community meetings and events, got to know local NGOs, shadowed some teachers at the local high school, and conducted a census by visiting 150 homesteads in my community. I then presented my findings in a report that I submitted to Peace Corps and my community.

I have enjoyed the times when this work has required that I rub shoulders with organizations like the UN, World Food Program, Doctors Without Borders, and USAID. I spent so many years reading about them in college and its very interesting for me to see how they work in real life. Swaziland is saturated with NGOs from all over the world. In an effort to provide Peace Corps volunteers with a community connection, each volunteer was given a designated counterpart. The counterparts are all working with an organization called NERCHA, which stands for the National Emergency Response for Coordinating HIV/AIDS. NERCHA is a government organization dedicated to organizing the nations’ efforts to combat HIV/AIDS. Each counterpart is responsible for overseeing all activities which occur in a building called the Gogo Center. There are Gogo Centers in most communities in Swaziland. The centers are meant to be used for activities fighting HIV/AIDS at the community level. The counterparts play a huge role in helping new volunteers adjust to their new lives in Swaziland. They are meant to be a mentor, guide, and translator in our new communities. Unfortunately, the counterparts get paid very little for their work. This means that most of them have great difficulty balancing the needs of the job with their needs for income (this means that sometimes they literally do nothing). Many Peace Corps volunteers have had a very difficult time adjusting in their new community, because of such problems. Fortunately, my story is different. I was given a very reliable and fun counterpart who made my adjustment to the community an enjoyable experience.

It was incredible to watch the election here in Africa. People were talking about it weeks before it even began. On Election Day, I met up with the other volunteers in the capital city and we stayed up the whole night for the big event. Obama’s win was huge in Swaziland. In the Swazi newspaper I read, it was the cover story and then half of the paper was about how important the win was for democracy. The election also had a profound impact on me. Those of you who know me well know that my education made me a bit of skeptic about what the U.S. often represents, especially when it comes to foreign policy. However, my experiences in Swaziland combined with what happened on November 4th, 2008 have left me with an entirely new perspective. Obama now comes up very often in daily conversations and I can’t help but show my pride in telling my Swazi friends about what that election means for me and for the world. It is incredible.

Now that “integration” is over, I must return to my community and get down to business. I have already begun teaching at the health club, but there are so many things I hope to do over these next two years. The war on HIV/AIDS here in the nation with the highest rate of infection in the world must be fought on every level. I know that my time here is short and that the work needed is enormous. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read my blog. I would really love to hear from you!

The End of Training

So we just finished up our last week of training! Next week, we officially swear in as volunteers. We will have a special ceremony presented by the U.S. embassy that the Queen is expected to attend. We started the week off by going to visit the Swaziland National Museum and then a cultural village. At the end of this visit, we watched a traditional dance. I was sitting on the front row. The dancers pulled me up to dance in front of everyone not once, but twice!!! If only you could see!! Luckily, one of my fellow trainees did get it on video, so maybe I can post it some day…. We’ll see about that. And yeah, for those of you that have seen my moves in Seattle, they are even better in Swaziland!! Yeah, yeah.

Yesterday, we had our language tests! We each had a personal interview with someone who could ask questions in Siswati about everything we have learned so far. It was difficult, yet exciting at the same time. It was exciting to sit and have a conversation and realize that I have learned a lot these last few months. I’m not sure about the results yet, but it feels so good to have that behind. Today our families threw us a surprise party. It was so sweet! They gave each of us traditional Swazi attire and cooked a feast. These are our final days in our current villages. After our ceremony next week, we will be starting over new. I hope to hear from you soon!