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).