And then there was one...

Despite the fact that I’d gone to bed around 6:30 on Saturday night (seriously), when the door-pounding started around 7:30 on Sunday morning, I ignored it for a full 5 minutes. But my brothers were persistent. They boys alternated actual, open-handed pounding with the Swazi knock, which involves a hand motion similar to knocking, but instead of making contact with the door they just say “knock,” pronouncing the “c” as a click. (It’s strange.) And then they said “Bokhi ufile,” which catapulted me out of bed immediately.

After the stillborn birth on Monday morning, she’d been kind of mopey. She’d been taking care of Puppy Face, but not really eating, and she wasn’t anywhere near as attentive to the puppy as she’d been to Eliza and Maggie. Then, when I came home on Wednesday, the puppy was gone. Then Thursday, Bokhi was gone. She’d disappeared before, but never for more than a day or two, so when she hadn’t returned by Saturday afternoon I’d accepted that she probably wasn’t coming back.

Until Sunday morning. When the boys woke up, Bokhi was lying outside my door in the pouring rain. Dead. (“Bokhi ufile” means “Bokhi has died.”) I’m not sure how she ended up there, but I think somebody brought her body home in the middle of the night for me to find, and they took her collar and her “My Name is Bokhi” tag as their reward. I didn’t mind, though, I was just glad to have her home.

The boys and I took turns digging a grave for her, which Mkhulu (Grandpa) thought was crazy. In Swaziland, babies under the age of 6 months aren’t even given a funeral, since they’re not seen as human until they go through a ceremony held at 6 months. If a human baby doesn’t even deserve a funeral, it’s just ridiculous to give a dog a burial ceremony. But she was MY dog…

After the boys had had enough of my silly American affection for canines, Eliza and I said our good-byes and laid over the grave a big, flat stone with “BOKHI” painted on it in thick black letters. It’s sad (and, yes, I did cry this time, which my host family thought was nuts), but I know she had a long life (she was older than my 9-year-old bhuti) and I gave her a full year of American-style love, pampering and leftovers. She was a fantastic dog, she gave me Eliza and she kept me company in my first few months here when the language barrier was too much for me and I was desperate for a non-judgmental friend.

So, since the last time I wrote a blog, my dog population has decreased from three to one. And that one, Eliza, is having a pretty good time being an only dog. She’s 7 months (and 3 days) old now and has grown into a great guard dog, a relatively well-behaved pet and a relentless wannabe friend of the cat, Patrick, despite the fact that Patrick only shows love with his claws.

In other news, the Hluti Central High School Junior Achievement Company (the business studies after school program I did from February to June) has made it in the top 10 of all schools in the country. That means that, despite the fact that we had our last meeting on June 11, we have been given the honor of remembering everything we did half a year ago and giving a lengthy presentation to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, USAID and other sponsors this coming Saturday. They want the club to put together a PowerPoint presentation for the sponsors, which is funny considering most of my class has absolutely no clue how to even turn on a computer. I tried to explain the concept of a PowerPoint to them, but explaining the concept of a projector is only slightly easier than explaining the Internet, which is impossible.

How do you define the Internet? It’s an imaginary place where people can communicate with each other, buy stuff, do research and a million other things, and you get to it through your computer. It exists, but you can’t see it. It costs, but you don’t actually GET anything. It’s like explaining love, which, incidentally, was the topic of my Life Skills classes last week. The class was “Love v. Lust: Recognizing Acts of Love” and basically it was a big group-work brainstorming session on how to show love. The whole purpose of the lesson is for students to list ways they show love to their parents, siblings, friends and boyfriends/girlfriends, and then to realize that there are a whole bunch of ways to show love OTHER THAN having sex with someone. (In every single class, the students listed “have sex” as a way to show love to a boyfriend or girlfriend.) We talked about lust and how it didn’t mean love, and how somebody who actually loves you will never ask you to do something you don’t want to do.

The lesson went really well in all my classes, but I was a bit horrified at some of the responses. In almost every class, the first answer I got to complete the sentence was “I know somebody loves me when…” was “…they give me sweets” or “…they give me money.” Under every category and in every class (4 classes total), students said that you can tell somebody loves you because they give you gifts. Hm.

Perhaps this explains why I’m constantly asked for gifts. Everybody is just testing me to see if I love them. Today, in a span of 4 hours, I was asked for the following things (I kept track):
A bag of chips
A loaf of bread
A bottle of Fanta orange
Sweets (candy)
My necklace
The dress I was wearing (when I leave)
Kombi fare (twice)
My phone number
Money to pay for a girl’s hospital bills
Transport to take said girl to the hospital
A dog
“Breast spray” to make a girl’s breasts look like those of a virgin
To purchase a life-size chicken made entirely of yarn
A donation of economics books to the high school
Money to rebuild a house that had caught fire
Money to pay for school fees (twice)
Money to pay for a student to re-take an exam he’d failed
An E1,500 cell phone (3 times the price of mine) and airtime

That’s all for now. I just finished a fantastic book (which I started before I even left for Swaziland) called “Nine Hills to Nambonkaha” by Sarah Erdman. She was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cote d’Ivoire from 1998-2000 (I think) and she writes about all of the amazing, frustrating, educational, life-changing experiences she has over those two years. It’s really well-written and an easy read (if sad at times) and a lot of the analysis she gives of barriers to development, the role of international aid, the mystery of traditional beliefs and the challenges of being an American in Africa apply 100% to my experience here in Swaziland, even though I’m 20 countries and a decade away from where she served. If you’re considering Peace Corps or you just want to know more about the experience, I definitely recommend the book. It’s, hands down, the best account of PCV experiences I’ve read (and, trust me, I’ve read a lot). Eliza really liked it, too. She thought the back cover was particularly tasty.


I've been teaching the boys on my homestead how to use a camera, which is nervewracking to say the least. I live in constant fear that they'll drop it, which sometimes they do, but I make them fasten the loop around their wrists for back-up. Swazis seem to be extra un-coordinated with expensive things like cell phones, cameras, radios, etc. Anyway, this is the first photo my bhuti Kwanele took, and I rather like it. Please note the mud everywhere. That's what Swaziland looks like during rainy season.


This is the homestead after 3 days of rain. My floor is brown. It's supposed to be light gray. It's disgusting. I've completely given up on trying to keep mud out of my house because, between the dog and the kids, it's impossible.


Kwanele playing dominoes. They can't get the word "dominoes" so they keep calling them "dice". We've been practicing math stuff with them (basic addition mostly) and then building towers and knocking them over. Good, clean fun. Well, it would be clean fun except that you get muddy from just being in my house.


A cow. Standing in a puddle. I take my camera along on all my long walks to the clinic and the school and it makes the walk seem more like an adventure. Most mornings, I see the family that lives nearest to this puddle drawing water from it. To drink. Despite the fact that cows stand (and do other things) in it. Gross. This is why people die of diarrhea in Africa.

Putting things in perspective

When Swazis want to say hello to someone but can’t afford to call them, they do this thing called “buzzing.” Since you don’t get charged for a call unless the other person picks up, they call, let it ring once, and hang up before anyone answers. Personally, I find it extremely annoying. Especially when it starts at 5:30 am (which it does pretty often) and doesn’t end unless I buzz back, which I am opposed to on principle. Swazis do it because they want to show the buzz-ee that they care, but all it shows me is that the world doesn’t want me to sleep past 6am. Ever.

(Swazis don’t sleep late, ever, either. There’s this commercial for the morning show on Swazi radio where the DJ says, “It’s 6:00am and if you’re still in bed, shame on you.” Really?)

Thus, at 5:30am on Sunday, as usual, I was struggling to sleep through the incessant buzzing from my host family. I assumed they were eager for me to get home (I was house- and dog-sitting for a woman in Nhlangano) so they could play with the toys in my house, or that they wanted me to pick up some groceries in town, neither of which seems particularly urgent before 6am on a Sunday. When I finally got up (at about 6:30—I slept late), I tried in vain to call them back, so I just gave up. Then, after a 45 minute kombi ride and a 15 minute walk, I was greeted by a flock of children running full-speed toward me. They were racing to be the first to tell me the good news…

Apparently, while the girls were busy making breakfast (at 5:30 on a Sunday), they noticed Bokhi acting strangely and, sure enough, they watched her deliver her third puppy of the year (Maggie and Eliza were born on March 10). She’s an adorable, whiney little black pup with a white patch on her chest, just like her mom. I took the obligatory photos and hung out in the chicken coop, where they’d set up camp, until I was confident that Eliza wasn’t going to eat, pounce on or otherwise break the baby, then left them alone for the afternoon.

Then, Monday morning when I went in to check on my three girls, I saw two little feet sticking out of Bokhi’s behind. Another puppy? 24 hours later? I postponed my plans to go to the school (like a responsible Swazi teacher) and hung out in the chicken coop with the dogs (very un-Swazi) to see what was going on.

I knew from the beginning that there was a problem. I sat quietly on a polished tree stump across the room, watching Bokhi pace back and forth in the room, trying to sit uncomfortably, trying to push the baby out. An hour passed. Then another, and Bokhi had made very little progress. Finally, after Bokhi laid down on the concrete floor with a look of defeat (yes, I was reading her body language), I reached down and touched the half-born puppy’s legs. They were cold.

Naturally, I called my mother in America, at 3:00am her time. On her advice, I helped Bokhi deliver the rest of the baby as my host Gogo (grandmother) watched in horror, yelling “Phindile, put on gloves!” (She thought I could get HIV from dog blood, which I corrected later.) It was a little boy, obviously dead for hours, probably since the previous day.

And I wasn’t ridiculously upset about it, as I would have been a year ago. I’ve come to realize that nature isn’t exactly kind, and after living in a country where animals exist to serve purposes (food, rat-catching, protection, etc.), I understand that there are bigger injustices in the world. I live in the country with the highest HIV prevalence in the world, where children are often malnourished or undernourished, where preventable and treatable diseases like TB and malaria cause countless deaths every year, and it seems a little silly to cry over a stillborn puppy.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve learned in Swaziland. Not to let the little things—things which, often, I can’t change—bother me. (Not that death is insignificant, but I’ll save my mourning for someone who deserves it. This is Bokhi’s death to mourn, and she seems a little depressed. I understand.)

In other news, I have somehow managed to make myself really busy. As usual, I’ve been teaching my HIV/AIDS and Life Skills classes at Florence Christian Academy and working at the clinic, but I’ve also secured permission (I think) to paint and possibly renovate the pre-school by my house, written up a “curriculum” for an exercise club, typed up all my lesson plans for my Life Skills classes, made promises of training the teachers at Hluti Central on how to use the Life Skills curriculum I’m providing, plowed and planted a huge garden (by hand from 4am-7am before it got too hot) and started an extremely expensive borehole project for my clinic, which I hope to have funded through an extremely lengthy Peace Corps Partnership Project proposal (which you can donate to!) that I have to complete before my visitors come in November. I’ll keep you posted on the progress of all of these ventures, as well as the workshop for police that I’m trying to plan and the million other things I’m trying to do before I leave in a rapidly-approaching year.

Still, I’m not anywhere as busy as I’d be if I was in the US. I still have time to read books (“Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin, about a man who does development work in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which I definitely recommend), listen to East Coast Radio (right now I’m loving “Sexy Chick” by David Guetta featuring Akon), watch movies (just finished “Meet Joe Black” for the first time) and make beads. Jenn, another Shiselweni volunteer, taught me how to make beads from strips of magazine papers, like Bead for Life, and I can’t stop. It’s a great use of time and magazines, and I’m excited to possibly use my new found skill as a product for the small business program I’ve promised to teach next year (the SAYE program I did this February-June). Patrick (the cat) loves it too, mostly because he likes chomping on the strips of paper as I twirl them around the toothpick, which I don’t really appreciate.

I think that’s all for now. Happy belated birthday to Ezra, whose birthday I missed not because I forgot his birthday but because I forgot what day it was. I didn’t realize it was October until Tuesday. The 6th. I don’t know how I’m ever going to function in America.

Love from the Swaz!


Patrick is a fantastic hunter, but he really likes to play with his food. That means that sometimes, in the middle of the night, I have to get up and beat his toy rat to death so he'll eat it and stop throwing it all around the house and playing fetch with it and things. And then I wake up and there's rat blood all over my floor. Can you imagine me putting up with this a year ago?


I spared you the earlier photos of Patrick eating his victims, but for some reason I keep taking photos of it. Doesn't he look vicious? And everyone doubted that such a cute, cuddly little kitten could be a mean killing machine.


Sisi and Hle with a gigantic flower they stole from somebody's garden. For some reason, they've both stopped going to pre-school and I can't figure out why. But it means that I have friends again.


My washing machine. To wash the big blankets Peace Corps gave me, I put them in a basin of soapy water and jump on them until I'm tired, then change the water and jump on them until they're rinsed. Usually it takes 2 or 3 rinse times. Sometimes, I wash the slab of cement where I do my laundry and just pile the wet blanket on the ground and jump on it to get the water out. Then I search for somewhere to hang it to dry, which is usually the roof of the chicken coop because it knocks the fences over. Whoever purchased these blankets for us (Peace Corps) had obviously never washed their laundry by hand.


A rather noble-looking tree near Jaclyn's community. It's right across from the bus station in Mbulugwane and serves as shade for fruit sellers, a meeting place for old men and a signpost for various misspelled signs advertising services offered in the community.


This is the question box I have in the main office at the high school. Kids put questions they're too embarrassed to ask in front of the class into the box and I answer them. Most of the questions are general health questions that high school students should know, including things about yeast infections (common here because of poor hygeine), STIs, misconceptions about preventing pregnancy and things like "can I get HIV from animal blood?" I also get questions like "can you buy me a cell phone for E2500" and "do you have a husband?" I don't answer those.


Puppy Face. I call Eliza "Stupid Face" a lot, so the kids have started calling Patrick "Kitty Face," so this is Puppy Face. Until I know she's going to live and I give her an actual name.


Eliza loves me, but she really hates when I make her sit still to take pictures. She was good through the first 14 or so, but on the 15th she retaliated.

Just Photos...

Sanibonani bekunene!

This past weekend, Jenn and I helped Jaci judge a "debate" (it was just speeches in support of a topic, nothing against) about HIV prevention in schools and I took some photos. I'll write more about the event later.


This is the everyday scene at Richfield's Butchery and Restaurant in Nhlangano. If you're lucky, they carry the big frozen pigs through the dining room while you're eating. If you come to visit me, we'll be eating lunch here one day. They have AMAZING friend chicken and spicy wings and some Indian food and lots of Swazi traditional food. It's BY FAR the best place to eat in Nhlangano (even better than KFC). Besides, you never see people sawing the heads off of frozen pigs at KFC.


Jenn, Jaci and I had spring rolls for dinner. We cooked up some carrots, onions and green peppers, then wrapped the veggies into spring rolls with cold ramen noodles, peanut sauce and diced apples and tomatoes. Delicious! If anyone is sending me a care package, you should toss in some spring roll wrappers (the ones you just dip in water, not the ones for fried spring rolls) because they are delicious. Like a diet vegetarian burrito...
This is the road and the mountain in Jaci's community. It's amazingly beautiful and so scenic that the mountain in the distance (the little triangular one) is on the 100 Emalangeni bill. There's some legend about the mountain, which is why you can't climb it. Something about important people being buried there or something.



Me, Jenn and Jaci on our long walk (in the rain) from the debate on Friday. It hasn't stopped raining this past week and I'm soooooooooooo tired of being soggy!

A Success Story...

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s not often that I see any sort of progress being made as a result of my being in Swaziland. My role as an HIV educator is part of a long-term plan (hopefully a solution) to the HIV epidemic in Swaziland, and my primary focus here is combating the spread of the virus, but that’s not the only reason I’m here. Peace Corps has three goals and 2 of them are about cultural exchange. Again, it’s difficult to measure cultural influence, but sometimes I’m pleasantly reminded that I’m an example to other people and that, sometimes, they actually listen to me when I talk.

This is a success story.

Early Tuesday morning I went through my usual routine: a rude awakening by Patrick the Cat at 6am, a bucket bath, last-minute revisions of my lesson plans and an 80-minute walk to the local clinic, to be followed by two classes at the high school. As I passed the bus shelter on the main road, about 20 minutes into my walk, I gained an admirer. He told me I was beautiful, asked me who I was, what I was doing, where I lived, if I was married, the usual. And when I told him I was in a hurry and started to walk off, he joined me.

As we walked the rest of the way to the clinic, he asked me what made me come to Swaziland if I wasn’t getting paid. People ask me this question all the time because, in Swaziland, nobody does anything for free. In fact, that was the first thing our programming director told us when we arrived: “Don’t expect a Swazi to do something for nothing.” My usual answer is that, because I was given so many opportunities in life, I feel like it’s my responsibility to use my skills and knowledge to help people who maybe weren’t given the same opportunities as me. I say that a good Christian does things to help out other people who are in need, that if everyone gave back a little more to their communities that we would all be better off. I mention that, even if you’re not getting paid, that it makes people respect you and gives you a feeling of accomplishment. And that everything I do can and should be done by Swazis, helping each other simply for the sake of doing good. He seemed to get it, so I changed the subject.

Remembering my primary purpose in Swaziland, I asked him if he’d ever been tested for HIV. Like most people I ask, the answer was “no.” He said was too afraid of the result, but he would test if he felt sick. (Not knowing doesn’t make you any less HIV-positive!) I explained to him that HIV was so common in Swaziland that being HIV-positive was just like having any other chronic illness, like diabetes, and that HIV is easily managed if diagnosed early, but if someone waits until he is sick to get tested it will probably be too late. Since he was walking with me to the clinic anyway, I invited him to come in for free testing by the visiting nurse from MSF. He shook his head and asked me a few basic questions about HIV until we reached the clinic, at which point he turned around to make the trip back to his bus shelter hangout.

An hour later, after counting out 2000 co-trimoxazole tablets into individual packets, I left the clinic en route to the high school. On my way, I passed my friend from the bus shelter working in the mission’s community garden. He put down his hoe and motioned me over to the fence, where he proudly told me that he had made an appointment for an HIV test in the afternoon. Until then, though, he was helping a bunch of bomake (older women) working in the community garden. He wasn’t getting paid; he had volunteered to do it just because he could. Because he didn’t have anything else to do. Because if everyone gave just a little more to their community, everyone would be better off. (Because he listened when I talked!)

What had started out as a bit of a nuisance (a man following me, as usual) turned into a great teaching opportunity, both about HIV and about cultural norms (ie, not doing anything unless you’re getting paid). No matter what he’ll know his status, and maybe he’ll go on to talk to other people about getting tested, or live to be an example of selfless giving back to the community.

It was a reminder, to me, that every moment in Swaziland is an opportunity for me to learn, to teach and to live by example. If I measure my success by personal exchanges rather than by the change in the HIV prevalence 20 years down the road, it’s easy to remember why I’m here.

In other news, there’s a bit of a public health emergency going on in Swaziland. Besides HIV, I mean. On Saturday, Jaclyn called me in a panic, asking for the phone number of the on-call doctor from the hospital (he’s a friend of mine) because her bhuti (host family brother) was seizing uncontrollably and having difficulty breathing. Then, Tuesday, the head teacher mentioned to me that 4 high school students had been taken to the hospital after seizing during class, and that many more had reported seizures and muscle spasms that impaired breathing while at home. Apparently it’s not just in Shiselweni region, either—the Mbabane newspaper apparently covered something over the weekend about medication-induced seizure fits affecting public school students throughout the country. Apparently, the Ministry of Health provided every public school in the country with de-worming medicine for the students this past week. The medicine is either in tablet form (for high schools) or is a sticky pink syrup, both of which are administered by teachers to the students at school to kill intestinal worms. It’s a worthy cause because intestinal worms can cause dangerous weight fluctuations and malnourishment, especially in a population that is largely malnourished and underweight, many with compromised immune systems. But, for the kids suffering from seizures, the de-worming medicine given to schools may be doing more harm than good, and nobody knows how long the affected kids will continue to have seizures.

They’re not really sure why this medicine, which has been used for years, is suddenly causing so many problems. It could have been a bad batch or medicine, or maybe the teachers didn’t pay enough attention to ensure that children were administered the proper amount according to their weight, or maybe this is just the first time it’s been widely reported. Regardless of why, it’s scary.

Finally, after mostly sitting around and watching DVDs for the last few months, I’ve decided I really want to get in better shape. As motivation, I’ve made arrangements with my high school to start teaching an after school exercise and health club every week. (I’m really hoping they are all in worse shape than me…I can GUARANTEE I’m more flexible and have better balance, so we’ll start with yoga.) On Wednesdays, school gets out in the late morning so that sports teams can practice. Unfortunately, because there are only 5 sports teams total (soccer, volleyball and netball for girls; soccer and volleyball for boys), that means that the great majority of the school either watches sports or goes to the bus shelter to hang out (hang out means “eat junk food, create mischief, avoid doing chores at home, get pregnant, etc.”). The school has given me a suitable space, so I’ll be teaching two classes a week—one for boys, one for girls—on exercise, nutrition and various health topics. I have DVDs for yoga, Tae-bo, cardio dance, aerobics, abs, legs, upper body exercises and proper stretching, but it I’m teaching a weekly class I want to be sure I have plenty of variety. Thus, if you have anything (DVDs, books, magazine clippings, good websites, etc.) on exercise physiology, basic nutrition or anything I could teach to my class (including other exercise routines, even if it’s just written descriptions), please send them my way (Justine.amos@gmail.com). I will be typing up some handouts for my classes on the different exercises so they can do them at home and hopefully teach other people the importance of exercise, so I don’t even need the DVDs, just an idea how to do the exercises. Ngiyabonga kakhulu! (Thank you very much!)

That’s all for now. No KFC today. That seems counterproductive if I’m trying to get in better shape.

Love from the Swaz!

It's a small world, after all

Last Friday, after spending the entire day killing time in Nhlangano (investigating vacation plans online) while waiting for my paycheck to be deposited into my account (it never happened, that’s why I’m back today), I boarded the last possible kombi back to my community around 4:45pm. Unfortunately—this is how public transportation works in Swaziland—it didn’t leave until the last passenger boarded at around 6:15. Now, it’s spring in Swaziland, which means it gets dark around 6pm, and I’m supposed to always be HOME before dark. And it wasn’t just dark, there was a fine, blowing mist, and it was so foggy that the driver (who I was seated next to) couldn’t see more than 2 feet in front of the kombi. Add to that the fact that the kombi had exactly 1 headlight (and a dim one at that), 0 defrosters and 0 seatbelts, and both window cranks were broken off so we couldn’t even open the windows. And the MTN cell phone network had been down for about 24 hours, which means that if we had an accident there was no way to contact anyone. As the passenger sitting closest to the driver, it was my job to periodically wipe the fog off the inside of the window with the driver’s hat, which made the situation only marginally better.

Naturally, because I kept reaching over him to wipe the windows, the driver and I got to talking. He introduced himself as Siyabonga (“Thank you God”) and asked me why I was in Swaziland, how I like it, if I’m married…all the usual questions. And then he asked me if I’d ever lived in Durban, which was a surprising deviation from the usual interrogation. I told him that yes, in 2007 I went to the University of KwaZulu-Natal for a term as part of a study abroad program, but that I hadn’t been back since. And then he asked me if I liked Amarula, which is a creamy, Bailey’s-type South African drink made from marula fruit. I guess I looked at him strangely, because he explained himself. Apparently, he used to work at The Cellar, a wine store where I used to buy wine frequently. On my last day in Durban, I went in and bought a bunch of little bottles of Amarula to give as gifts, and apparently he was working that day. And remembered me. And then ended up driving my kombi in rural Swaziland 2 years later. It’s a small world.

Anyway, the 45 minute drive to my bus stop took nearly twice that long. Usually, when I don’t get to my community until after dark, I just call one of the teachers at my school and they meet me at the bus stop and drive me home (it’s a 15-20 minute walk down a dirty/mud road), but the cell phone network was still down. And there was no way I was walking home that night. Plan B: I asked Siyabonga if he could possibly drive me home, which he agreed to do. After we dropped the rest of the passengers off in Hluti, we turned around and headed back in the direction of my bus stop…which we drove past twice (once in either direction) because the visibility was so bad.

Finally, 2 hours after nightfall, I made it home. And Siyabonga got stuck in the mud, which Eliza quickly splattered all over my dress. But at least I have a new (old?) friend in my community. And he has a car.

If you’ve been reading my blog regularly you know that this story is not that ridiculous in the scheme of public transportation horrors in Swaziland. Most kombis (public mini-buses) would be deemed un-roadworthy in the US for one or more reasons. First, they’re supposed to seat 14 people but kombi drivers usually put 18 passengers, a driver and a conductor and maybe some extra kids on them, which means that you’re one of 4 people sitting on a 3 person bench seat (this is why I try to sit in the front). They all have 3 doors—two up front and a sliding door on the side—but most doors only open from the insider OR the outside, not both. (Not like child locks, they’re just broken.) Often, sliding doors are tied on with rope and sometimes they fall off while driving or, more often, when you try to open them. Windows in the front are usually stuck open or closed because the window cranks are broken off and it takes someone with a pair of pliers to change the window’s position at all. If you’re lucky, one of the back windows is completely missing and has been covered with a plastic trash bag or packing tape, which means that it makes a terrible noise when we’re cruising down the highway. There are usually two big speakers (like from a home theater system) hung from the interior roof of the kombi, which serve only to blast gospel music and rip the back of your shirt as you try to get on or off. The maximum number of seatbelts I’ve ever seen in a kombi is 2—the driver and the passenger—but even those seatbelts didn’t have working seatbelt latch things, so when kombis go through police checkpoints the driver and passenger put the seatbelt across themselves like normal but just sit on the buckle because there’s nowhere to buckle it. If the police notice this, they make the driver give them a bribe—usually half of the trip’s total revenue. (This bribery system is also how these faulty vehicles get licensed in the first place…) Most of them have to be push-started at the beginning and a few times along the way when they stop to drop off passengers, and many break down without reason a time or two during the trip. Oh, and at the end of the month (pay time) most of the men, sometimes including the driver, are not only drunk, but drinking on the kombi. Kombis are also the scene of a lot of strange behavior, including incessant sexual harassment, drunken brawls, the beating of children, transportation of farm animals, etc. One volunteer told me about a kombi she was on where the driver stuffed a live cat into the glove box so he wouldn’t scratch the other passengers.

But, rest assured, it’s worse in Mozambique. (Erin, Jess and Brittney, I hope you’re reading this!)

Also I still don’t have Swine Flu, which is both good and amazing because everyone else (including people on my homestead) seems to be getting sick. I’ve set up a hand-washing station in my house and I’m avoiding sick little kids in general and snot in particular, which is really difficult because I think they’ve been in various stages of sick and snot-faced since I arrived. Oh Swaziland.

Anyway, that’s all. Hopefully I’ll get my camera, which I loaned to a fellow volunteer, back sometime soon so I can post some photos again. But now it’s Famous Bowl time.

Love from the Swaz!

Optimism, blood tests and rat skins.

This week and last I’ve been doing a sort of Jeopardy-style review game with my high school students to assess how well they’ve actually listened to my lessons this past year. And, unfortunately, even though we spent the last 8 months talking specifically about HIV, they still don’t understand BASIC things. For example, I asked them “Name the three ways a mother can pass the HIV virus to her baby” (something we covered in the Mother to Child Transmission lesson). They answered, “Being circumcised makes it harder to get HIV.” What? That doesn’t answer the question at all! And they didn’t know the answer to basic questions like “What does HIV stand for?” I would hope that, in a country where almost half the population is infected with HIV, they would know the most basic things about the virus. And, upon first impression, it SEEMS like they DO know the info. But they’re just repeating what all the HIV educators before me have said to them. Instead, of actually learning the material, they learn how to regurgitate things like “you must abstain from sex” and “always use a condom” and “all men should get circumcised.” But do they really know what that means or have any idea how to actually avoid HIV in their own lives? I don’t think so.

So how do you make the lessons translate into actual behavior change? How do you make memorized phrases like “always use a condom” actually influence a 15-year-old boy when he decides to have sex? Make him actually USE a condom? When it really comes down to it, the kids I’m teaching need to make the choice to change their own behavior, and nothing I can say—no matter how scary I make HIV seem—can change their minds or their behaviors.

It’s a challenge, that’s for sure, and because of that it’s sometimes difficult to see any sort of progress in this job. If the kids I’m teaching now actually listen, it means that in 30 years they will still be HIV-negative, or that the women will know how to protect their babies from getting HIV. How do I measure that? For now, it’s just a matter of having a small impact on at least one person. In training, they told us that a “teach one, reach one” attitude would keep us going…that if we have made a positive impact on at least one person that our time here isn’t wasted, that we’ve left the community better than when we came. So it’s all about reaching individuals, and hoping that those individuals go on to reach other individuals.

And I know I’ve reached individuals, particularly on my homestead. On Tuesday, my sisi (she insists on being called “Monica”) and I made the trip to Nhlangano to have baby Mpendulo tested for HIV at the clinic run by Baylor University. We arrived just before 9am, after an hour of trudging through the pouring rain, and obediently made our way through line after line at the Nhlangano Health Center. E7.50 later (that’s about $1), I found myself in a room full of babies waiting patiently for their HIV tests. Presumably because I was white and they didn’t want to keep me waiting, baby Mpendulo got to go first.

The test for babies is called a Dry Blood Spot, or DBS, and, unlike the rapid test for adults, actually checks for the presence of the HIV virus in the blood. (The adult rapid test looks only for the presence of HIV-related antibodies, which are always present in the blood of a baby born of an HIV-positive mother, at least for the first 18 months. For adults, the Western Blot test looks for the virus, but it’s super expensive.) For the DBS, the nurse draws blood from the baby’s big toe and, on a little paper card, fills 5 quarter-sized circles with the baby’s blood. Then they send it to Pretoria, South Africa, for testing because there isn’t a laboratory capable of running the test in Swaziland. And in 4-6 weeks, we’ll know.

The biggest confusion of the whole day, for me, was how the baby was registered. On his birth certificate, his name is Mpendulo Khumalo, but when Monica registered him, she wrote Mpendulo Mkhulisi. Which doesn’t make any sense, since his mother’s surname is Masuku, and Mkhulisi is Gogo’s (grandmother’s) last name. I’ve found that names here often don’t make sense. For example, my sisi Londiwe goes by Thobile at school, which isn’t even her middle name. So her school certificates will be issued in a name that is not legally hers, so if she goes to college or applies for a job that requires her high school diploma, they’ll be issued for a different name. Likewise, my bhuti Kwanele goes by Nkhosinathi, which also is not his name. I don’t understand why there’s all this unnecessary confusion. Every day in the newspaper, there are announcements of name changes that say things like “Phindile Simelane will now assume the name of Phindile Dlamini, the reason being that it is my natural surname.” For one, the grammar is incorrect, but mostly I don’t understand why mothers can’t just name their kids what they want to call them.

Speaking of other things I don’t understand, I’ve been watching “The Wire” (an HBO series that’s like a really long episode of Law & Order, but mostly about drugs), and on the WARNING screen at the beginning of the DVD it says that it is licensed for home use only. “The definition of home use excludes the use of this DVD at locations such as clubs, coaches, hospitals, hotels, oil rigs, prisons or schools.” Oil rigs? Do people commonly watch movies on oil rigs? So commonly that it needs to be stated in the warning? It also says that the soundtrack can’t be publicly broadcast in nursing homes or railway stations. Hm…

In other news, my new roommate Patrick is pretty much the most useful pet I’ve ever had. Wednesday night, after about an hour of hunting flies in the house, I got sick of kitty knocking over my stuff and coaxed him out the window to the great beyond. Not 10 minutes later, Patrick came waltzing back into the house with a mouth full of monster rat, still alive but scared out of its mind. He proceeded to play with his food for the next 20 minutes, leaving the rat playing dead in one corner of the room, then pouncing on the poor rodent every time he tried to make his escape. And nothing made me more proud then when Patrick finally made the kill, leaving a streak of rat blood across the middle of my floor. A year ago, this definitely would have bothered me. Instead, I video-taped him skinning and eating it. Swaziland has changed me.

The other highlight of my week is that KFC has FINALLY introduced the Famous Bowl in Swaziland. Since I arrived, the napkins have been advertising “The KFC Famous Bowl: The home-style meal you don’t have to go home for.” And, a year later, it has arrived. In case you don’t know, the Famous Bowl is mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, chicken strips and cheese mixed together in a bowl, served (in Swaziland at least) with a pink sparkly spoon. Judge me if you will, but, since my first Famous Bowl on Tuesday, I’d say I’ve spent about 15 minutes each day fantasizing about it. Nhlangano, my shopping town, just keeps getting better.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. I’m supposed to be in town this weekend for last Shiselweni Region Youth Support Group meeting of 2009, but because of the Swine Flu outbreak in southern Swaziland (13 volunteers, 3 staff members and our doctor are all sick), the meeting is cancelled. Instead I’ve come to town to eat another Famous Bowl, buy cat food and finalize vacation plans for November when Erin, Jess and Brittney come to visit. 44 days!!!!

Love from the Swaz!

(Oh, and I’m sparing you the disgusting photos of Patrick eating a rat only because I took them on my video camera and I haven’t figured out yet how to transfer still photos from my video camera to my computer. Unless the internet café knows how to do it, in which case I’ll post them later. I assure you it was glorious.)

Introducing my new roommate, Patrick.

We’ve all heard the saying “don’t let the cat out of the bag,” which is a useful bit of advice if you’re walking around with a canvas shopping bag full of un-sedated cat. But the advice I really needed on Saturday morning, when I was trying to stuff my new kitty into a box in anticipation of a 45 minute bus ride, was “don’t try to stuff a fully conscious cat into a box.” Particularly if you value NOT bleeding.

This whole adventure started Friday afternoon, after a particularly productive meeting with MSF (seriously, I’m not being sarcastic), when my fellow Shis girls and I made the trek out to Pasture Valley Children’s Home. (Actually, they made the trek on public transport and I hitched a ride with Peter, who was transporting 90 plastic chairs in a pick-up the size of a Ford Ranger, which was basically a miracle.) We spent the afternoon/evening gathering fresh vegetables from the farm and then making mass quantities of cole slaw, lettuce/tomato/carrot/green pepper salad, spicy boiled cabbage, spinach, cheesy broccoli and cauliflower bake, Swazi porridge, egg sandwiches, brisket stew and stir fry, all in anticipation of Saturday’s Open Day on the farm.

The Open Day was the official grand opening of the second children’s home at Michelle and Peter’s farm, Pasture Valley. All sorts of important people—Peter and Michelle’s family and friends, people from various NGOs, the nuns from Our Lady of Sorrows, members of the McCubbins’ congregation in South Africa, representatives of government, officers from SOS Children’s Village, etc.—came to celebrate 6 years of replacing bleak futures and neglect with safe homes and loving family. Something worth celebrating, no doubt. After a brief tea/homemade lemonade time, everyone shuffled into the “tunnel” (greenhouse) for the scheduled program. Each of the kids recited a bible verse from memory, then they sung songs in English and Siswati about Jesus, etc. Peter also told the story of how it all started 6 years ago, basically because they recognized a need for such a children’s home and the fact that they could, possibly, find the resources to make it work. And they have.

After a wonderful lunch and about 3 servings of Michelle’s incredible gooseberry custard, the three of us gathered our things and headed back to town to catch public transport home before dark. And thus began the great quest to transport the solution to my rat problem back to my house—a 45 minute drive and 20 minute walk with a fully-conscious and fully-clawed cat. Kirk, a volunteer from the US, was nice enough to drive the four of us (I’m counting Patrick the Cat) to Nhlangano in the Pasture Valley kombi, a 10 minute drive. By the time we got to town, I had a huge rip in my brand new dress, shredded skin on my fingers and a pretty steady stream of blood running from my knee to my ankle. And that was just the beginning.

We decided that, like Swazis do, I should find a box to transport my critter in, so we drove around Nhlangano searching for a Patrick-sized box. We settled on a Simba Chips (like Lays) box from the Caltex station, and borrowed a big roll of packing tape from the curious Indian shopkeeper. Then, for the next 10 minutes, me, Jenn and Kirk wrestled with Patrick to get him safely and securely into the box while all the passer-by stopped to watch the spectacle from outside the kombi. Suffice it to say that Patrick won. Then, I remembered that I had a reusable shopping bag in my backpack. And, magically, Patrick was fine with it. This must be why the saying is about cats in bags, not cats in boxes.

After returning a shredded box to the Caltex station and neglecting the entirety of the shopping list I’d brought to town (I wasn’t about to brave a grocery store with a bag full of scared cat), I boarded the kombi for the trip home. After the kombi door was closed, I let Patrick out of the bag to look around and, hopefully, calm down a bit. Which he did. Then, as we were pulling out of the bus rank, my lap started to get very, very warm. And wet. Excellent! But, the way I figured, it was so hot that day that, if I didn’t mention that he had peed on me, it would probably be dry before anybody else noticed, and you couldn’t smell it over the constant stench of diesel exhaust seeping up through holes in the floorboards. So I just ignored it for the 45 drive to my bus stop. And, sure enough, we didn’t leave behind a wet spot, nobody mentioned the incident, and I didn’t have to pay the driver extra for the mess. By the time we got off the kombi, Patrick was so resigned to his fate that he slept most of the 20 minute walk back to my house, even when Eliza (my dog) greeted us at the driveway by barking and jumping up on me.

Patrick and I spent the rest of the weekend hiding in my house, me reading “Water for Elephants” (an excellent book) and him prowling around and meowing at the various rat hangouts in my house. Finally on Monday morning, after winning a battle with Eliza, he began exploring the rest of the homestead—a veritable goldmine of tasty rodents. Everyone on the homestead (except Eliza) is excited to have him around, especially me. He’s super cuddly and I haven’t seen a rat since Thursday night!

I think that’s all I have time for now. I’m simultaneously writing this and trying to entertain a sick baby, which is pretty much impossible. I don’t know how people get anything done when they have babies. Maybe that’s why nothing ever gets done in Swaziland—everyone is too busy taking care of their flocks. But I’ll save my commentary on family planning and child care for another time.

Love from the Swaz!


The "braai" at the Pasture Valley Open Day. "Braai" is Swazi (Afrikaans?) for "cook-out," or any other variety of cooking meat with fire. Most braais, like this one, are made out of old oil drums and a section of heavy-duty metal fence, which serves as the grill. And then stuff is cooked over straight wood, no coals. Usually.


The Pasture Valley kids all dancing and singing about Jesus.


Patrick likes to crawl under my blankets on my bed, which means that every time I come into my house and throw my stuff on my bed he's in danger of being squished. I don't know why he does that.


Patrick the Rat-Killing Cat. He's more ferocious than he looks, I promise.


Lunch at the Open Day.


Jaclyn, Bonkhosi (a boy from the children's home) and Jenn enjoying lunch. Bonkhosi thought we were crazy because we basically followed him around all day and took pictures of him, but he's just so darned cute!


Image on the jumping castle. In Swaziland, you know it's a real party when there's a jumping castle.


Michelle's fantastic gooseberry custard. I don't know if gooseberries exist in the US, but if not I'm going to smuggle some seeds home and make them exist in the US.


Eliza being Eliza. That dog is crazy. But since Patrick is around she's been behaving more. I think she feels replaced.


Gogo Constance and Make Nellie (Gogo=grandmother, Make=mother), the house mothers at Pasture Valley Children's Home. They do SO MUCH to take care of those kids, and they love them just like they're their own kids.