Rock Art and Sibebe Rock

    For my birthday Katherine followed up on an interest of mine and we traveled to the NW part of the country to see the best display of bushmen (San) rock painting in The Kingdom. It was really remote, but fun to see. The best estimate is that it is 400 to 4,000 years old. My interest in this kind of art is that it is subject to fewer influences than what we've seen in more civilized cultures for the past few thousand years – the creator could know how and what he was supposed to paint only from what was on this rock wall from the last time these people came through. So maybe it gets closer to what people really want to portray.

    The figures at Nsangwini are unusual in seeming to show both San figures, shorter and apparently lighter, who lived only by forage, and the taller, darker (“black people” in the words of our guide) Bantu, herdsmen and farmers, who drove out the San and peopled southern Africa. There is a large and quite distinct elephant, some lions, and the only wildebeest shown in rock art south of the Zambezi River. The human figures all appear to be male, with classic “primitive looking” broad shoulders, long torso, narrow waist, and exaggerated thighs and calves. There is one scene of around 15 figures together, which our guide insisted was a war, but the figures were sufficiently smudgy that I could not identify weapons; it could have been a wedding, harvest celebration, or perhaps an assemblage of Peace Corps volunteers. If you knew what to look for you could see upright human figures a brochure describes as in a “trance dance.” Below them other figures have human bodies but preying mantis heads, and wings, and appear to be floating.

We stayed at a pleasant B&B in the small commercial town in that region that night and had easy travels getting home Sunday. A nice birthday.

The schools closed Thursday, April 17 for the 3 week Easter break (although no classes met all that final week, as far as we could tell.) We had met a high Swazi government official, a Minister of one of the largest government departments, at an NGO's event in our community in January where some of our high school students had presented a discussion of HIV. She had had good experiences with PCVs in her home community and reached out to us through the PC, and we ended up arranging to “house sit” her home over Easter weekend, although changes in her plans because of official functions meant that, instead of having the house to ourselves, she was there with her four charming children. Here is her house, with the black roof on the right, at the end of the road.

The area around the capital Mbabane is really hilly. Her house is still under construction; without a wall and an effective gate they feel quite vulnerable. A guard patrols the grounds all night, but that is true of most of the houses in this community, including the thoroughly walled one just uphill from her house. Notice the Remax sign?!

When we got there Friday afternoon we took a walk down the valley ½ mile with the cousin who is a domestic worker for the Minister. Beyond Sisanah and Katherine is a dam (siSwati for any body of water) which is sacred to one family in the kingdom. For some reason their ancestor, a “traditional healer” (medicine man) refused to treat the previous king, who sent troops to kill the healer; when they came upon him he was suddenly wrapped in a mist, and when the mist disappeared the healer had as well and this dam was there. No one likes to go near the dam. We didn't.

PIC 934

Saturday we took a khumbi to the trail-head for Sibebe Rock, 6 miles out of town. We hiked 3 ½ hours, 1,400' to the top of the world's largest granite dome, and the second largest rock in the world, smaller only than Australia's Uluru (fka Ayers) Rock. Despite yellow arrows painted along some parts of the trail (many of which were overgrown), we had serious route-finding issues, but saw some fine “high-veldt” (higher grassy terrain) birds that were new to us.

Sunday we went by the PC office to use the free and relatively high speed internet in the Volunteer Lounge.

The internet repeatedly crashed and we would lose what hadn't been sent or saved; communication in this country is really primitive. It took hours to do what we would have done in minutes at home.

We had our Easter dinner of PB and marmalade sandwiches and potato chips on the street in Manzini,

and then waited 1 ¼ hours, soaked in sweat, choking on diesel fumes, jostled by large people carrying equally large packages, for a packed bus to leave for our community; at least we had seats as we waited – people were jammed in the aisles standing butt to belly. Travel on holidays is a challenge.

Next week we go to St. Lucia and 2 game parks in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, south of Swaziland. We've rented a car, a driver will pick us up, drive us to the border, and we take the car from there. We can drive in SA, which will make us feel like grown-ups.  

Teaching: more ups and downs

    This week is the end of the 1^st term,, followed by the 3-week Easter break, and students and teachers alike are restive. We've completed our section on Sexual and Reproductive Health. Last week we did not want to start a new topic, so we prepared a lesson on self-esteem, which is viewed as important in young people making good decisions – the thought is that the kids generally know the important facts about HIV, STIs, pregnancy, but that behavior change at hormone-drenched peer-presssured critical junctures requires more than just factual knowledge. That seems right to us, but it's a big order.

    We start the week on Monday with a 50 minute class of the 6^th grade at the poorer primary school. Katherine pulled out of the room some students to talk to individually about their writing and other issues arising from their journals, while I read/told the rest a story about a boy who was feeling badly about himself and then found a way to feel better. This is a tough class of 50 or so students aged 9 to 21, jammed into a dark, fetid room of cinder-block walls (great for echos – terrible acoustics) , with the older ones in the back having very weak English. After I told the story, adding details to personalize it to their school, I put up some posters we'd made about self-respect and how you avoid feeling worthless and come to think of yourself as valuable.

    It went terribly. The boys in the back made comments that were probably mocking, because those near them looked at me and laughed. Small groups started talking, grabbing, fighting. The ones who wanted to participate could not hear my questions, nor the students' answers; I don't see how anyone one can ever hear a Swazi child respond to a question in a classroom; I'm told they are so quiet because they are afraid of being hit for the wrong answer. They can be heard from 300 meters away hollering “How WAH YOOO?” but can't be heard from 3 inches away in class. The attentive ones, mostly the bright-eyed little young ones from the refugee camp, with the 1,000 mega-watt smiles, could not hear what I was saying.

I lost control of the class, could do nothing, and gave up, took down our posters and left. It was a real low point. We were already feeling very homesick, and now defeat. How many more months of this?

The next day we had only 30 minutes for each class to teach the same lesson at the prosperous school. Because testing had been delayed from the previous week, when it had been scheduled, because the school copier was busted, our scheduled class times were taken with testing, but we pushed for some chance to get in front of the kids – no classes were being taught - and we ended up teaching through lunch (not my best time of day) and right up to the end of the school day. The students could not get enough of it. They had questions, comments, wanted to talk to us separately, could hardly let us go. Every teacher's dream.

    The next day, with a kind of dread, we approached the poorer school to take a run at the 5^th grade, but all was strangely silent – only the players on the boys' football and girls' net ball teams were there. We learned that the previous day the school had been notified they would play the first matches of the season, and only the players came to school. (Can you believe that? How hard would it be to set the athletic schedule back in, say, January? Or at least the previous week? No one seemed surprised. No one else.)

    I have to say, we felt relieved to skip that 5^th grade class on self-esteem. They'll have to get it somewhere else, I guess.

    So Katherine talked us into a ride over to the site of the competition, and we watched our girls netball team thrash another school from the neighborhood, 44 to 4

(Katherine is obscured by the goalpost; hard to frame a good picture with the glare, and bifocals.)

   Netball is a little like basketball, except the ball moves only by passing – once you catch the ball one foot must remain planted – and each player must remain in a zone. The girls love it.

    I also took pictures of the team and, when we passed through our commercial town over the weekend, got 3”x 5” prints for each of the 6 players, and handed them out yesterday; they jumped around, running excitedly in circles waving the prints, they were so pleased. It doesn't take much to bring some happiness with these kids.

    And our boys lost a heart-breaker in football. These sports are so important to many students that we suspect it is the reason some stay in school.

   Hanging with the students gave us a chance to interact informally with them individually and in small groups, missing from my droning on from the front of the class. And just showing up was appreciated – we've never seen any parents at any of these games.

    (Parents' interactions with students are really different here; we have 4 or 5 students whose parents teach at other schools where we work, but none of the parents ever bring up our teaching their children, and parents and children don't seem to talk about us. I don't want to seem egotistic, but we are pretty remarkable here; the only people from outside Africa in the community, the only whites, we've been talking obsessively in class about sex and peoples' private parts. You'd think it would come up with their parents. In a way I'm relieved – I'd been worried that comments such as that we have homosexual (the term used here) friends whom we really like, that we are not really very christian, and where they can get free condoms, might get home and get us in trouble; I can't tell what it would take to get noticed for classroom comments, but we don't seem there yet.)

Additional Journal entry: The Pink Pony

A journal entry from the wealthier school:

Once upon a time in the Bech farm lived a pony. Her name was Khaterine. Khaterine loved eating oats and fruits. She drank milk and water. One day when she was enjoying a burble bath, she saw a mirror in front of her. Then she said “I wish I was pink.”

Imidietly she changed into a pink pony. She was so amazed and happy at the same time. A few weeks after that she met a young male pony. His name was Mark. Mark was so handsome and mature. But, he was a vegetarian. He did not eat meat because when he ate meat, he would have bleasters.

One night, the two went on a date and it was so romantic. After a few minutes, Khaterine saw Mark get down on one knee, and he said, “Will you marry me?” and Khaterine said, “Yes, why not”?

This story is based on Mr. Mark and his wife, Ms. Khaterine.

Of course, it is clear that this child is keenly observant (“young,” “handsome”, “mature.”) but also possessed of a splendid imagination (“vegetarian”? “bleasters”? “Blech farm” - I have no idea. And, “Why not?” I mean, that's all?) OK, this is her story, I could write my own, if I thought I could do better.)

Vignettes

We had to go to the commercial town Friday to pin down arrangements for a vacation in South Africa (St. Lucia and some other nature preserves in South Africa, south of here) over the Easter break, and we arranged to meet the Sisi and Make from our training host family for lunch. Katherine wore pants, and as she left the High School after delivering our daily Word of the Day one of the teachers said she “Looked like a boy.” Her haircut is short. Our training host Sisi (literally “sister” but generally a young woman) had had her hair all freshly braided and she'd done the top just that morning in a kind of poof. She wore the bright green silky cocktail dress she'd worn to her sister's wedding in December. Our Make (“mom”; “k” is pronounced like a hard english “g” as in “got”, so close to “Maggie”) wore for the first time I think a dress and matching head wrap and blouse she'd sewn herself. They both looked great. Our relationship is very important to them, so much so that we wish we could do more to respond to them. Their community is not easy for us to get back to. Make is busy making the vestments for her Good Friday services; Good Friday seems to loom larger than Easter here.

When we sit at the kitchen table during daylight hours Katherine likes to watch the little lizards or salamanders or newts, or whatever they are, as they hide and try to catch flies. Katherine is always cheering for the reptiles, dark, unmarked (as far as I can see – never caught one) little fellows no longer than 3” long – and she's even been known to try to herd a fly towards a lizard waiting in the shadow of the window sash. Ever try to herd a fly? It's hard – you have to really hate flies. She does.

On a hot afternoon when the flies inside our hut get really annoying we keep track of kills. Once I had 7 straight – 7 swats with the fly-swatter, 7 little carcasses confirmed belly-up on the kitchen table. That was really unusual; we are typically lucky to bat 500; I think as the summer wanes the flies are getting smarter - natural selection?

As we hear from our friends that spring is coming, haltingly, to Denver, so too the seasons here are changing. Mornings are chill - maybe 55 degrees F, our outdoor shower at the end of the afternoon is . . . bracing. Fewer days are oppressively lot. Rains are less frequent, less violent, and simply less. We're trying to save the water from the roof we collect in barrels in the shower area for our showers, because it's so convenient there, so we use water from the tap for drinking and washing dishes. The roof water tastes better and has less silt in it than the water from the pump, which has traveled many miles through leaky pipes. We boil all of the water we drink, and then run it through a sanitizing filtration system.

 You will no doubt be a little relieved to learn that high schools are pretty much the same the world over. At least, over the two parts of the world with which this writer has any recent familiarity. And a good place to observe this is at a fall football game between nearby schools.

The morning of The Big Game the assistant principal makes a speech at assembly about school spirit and warning about fighting and throwing rocks. And drinking alcohol at the game; we were told by the teachers that problem really only arises from the school's alumni/alumnae. That kind of passing the blame occurs Stateside too, I think I recall.

During the morning of the game there seems to be less attention to studies than usual. At the game, the teenage girls cheer and dance. The boys pretend to ignore them. But I thought I noticed during the game that there was more hot-dogging by the players along the side-line in front of our school's stands - “no need to pass, I'll just dribble it through these three defenders.” And maybe more heroic injuries there, too. And yellow cards. It's as if the excited 17 year old girls created a separate penalty area on the field directly in front of the stands.

Those of us from Denver were pleased to hear the Swazi version of our Mile High Stadium's Rocky Mountain Thunder – drumming with around 160,000 feet on the metal deck of the stadium. Turns out that if you beat your fists or nearly anything else against the corrugated metal covering of the stadium, you get about the same deafening effect. That top row of the stadium here, in fact, had the same ambiance as the rowdies in the Denver South Stands. And the teachers trying to keep order had about the same effect as all those Denver police, who were not going to get punitive with loyal fans.

There were some differences:

• When the ball soared over the cinder-block walls at the end of the field into the acacia thicket, it came back more slowly. We are told the ½ life of an inflatable soccer ball here is measured in weeks.
• The singing here is much better than I remember at home. Of course, they practice the solo call and choral  repeat style every morning at assembly. I noticed no religious references in the tunes at the ball game. And I think the dance moves in the crowded stands here looked better than what I've seen on fall Friday afternoons in the States.
• The vuvuzelas they blow in your ear here have, blessedly, been so far left outside American stadiums as far as I know. How did we get so lucky? It's been several days since the game; the ringing in my ears seems to be diminishing. Say what? Are you speaking to me?
• I think our students applauded as Katherine and I entered the stands. Really? Now, it's been a while, but I don't recall applause when I was growing up for any elderly foreign teachers with odd accents and weird ideas, lecturing us obsessively about sex.
  So, yeah, pretty much the same. But there's some distinctive local flavor.
• Here they are directly after a score.

Our homestead has become quieter. The domestic worker who had pretty good English and so was our principal means of communicating with the family has abruptly quit, taking her 2-year-old. She felt she was over-worked and unappreciated. But the biggest change has been that a snake killed our rooster, which makes our nights much, much quieter. I've never been so grateful to a snake.

We usually do a wash each weekend. Here Katherine is at the cement tub among the banana trees at 7:30 Sunday morning.

Sunday we rode our bikes to the site where another volunteer lives and had lunch with her. Her school is a whole lot better funded than ours. The single volunteers find weekends long, lonely and boring unless they plan something, which they frequently do. Serving as a couple is a whole lot easier, for many reasons. Many.

Journal Entries

    Katherine wanted to get our primary school 5^th and 6^th graders to write, so she scavenged some of last year's unused test booklets from the wealthier primary school, distributed them, and has been asking the students to write about themselves, their families, what they like about school, the airport opening, a story, anything. This burdens us in several ways, because we end up carrying 90 or 120 journals 1 or 3 kilometers back from the schools (which is hard when we also need to stop by the local bar to buy another 2 liter bottle of the cheap raw red South African wine – can't risk an accident with the kids' journals, and they sell the red wine here chilled, so we mustn't let it sweat on the journals) and then reading, correcting, writing encouraging remarks, affixing appropriate stickers (e.g., Wow! Great Job! - thanks sister Martha!), and then carrying the journals back to school. But we've got to know some of the kids better through this process, and read some moving entries. For instance, the quiet, chubby little 11 year-old girl who told us she was raped by a 14 year-old when she was 3; it seems her family dealt with it as well as they could (her brothers beat up the 14 year-old), and hercurrent concern was that she thought her classmates knew and would mock her. We assured her they would not learn from us. Although sometimes, on some of the topics we teach, my eyes wander her direction.

    Here are some journal entries, selected only from ones we have home tonight from the poorer primary school's 6^th grade, where the tiny and eager 9 and 10 year olds, many from the nearby refugee camp, sit with the 19 year olds who have weak English, are thoroughly bored in their 3^rd or 5^th year in 5^th grade, and disrupt the class from the back corners of the room, barricaded behind piles of busted desks and chairs and rows of 4 little kids jammed into a desk built for 2.

    The spelling and punctuation here are as found in their journals. This is the poorer school, so they are much less fluent. Generally the penmanship is pretty good.

    [S is a tall, pretty 17 year old girl who is one of the few girls to display a little personality in the classroom. Yesterday she actually volunteered to be a co-captain of her 6^th grade section in our competition to give the right answers to questions we found in a Swazi Youth Council booklet covering the unit we've just finished on sexual and reproductive health – basically genital anatomy and what those parts do. (e.g., True or false: “If a girl or woman pees or jumps up and down immediately after sexual intercourse, she won't get pregnant.” Seems a lot of people here believe that; its the kind of line middle-aged sugar-daddies (typically HIV+, I'd guess) may use to get girls to have unprotected sex for maybe the cost of a school uniform – US $14 or so, I think.)]

    About my family My father's name is Enoc. My mother says my father was a good person and he loved my mother so much when my mother was pregnet to me. They were very happy. . . . He died on exident of a bus. [Vehicular accidents are a greater cause of death and injury than any other in Africa, including HIV or TB, according to a recent NYT headline we caught; simple, low-cost highway improvements would greatly diminish that.] When I was 8 months. I have been raised by my mother and I have a child now is 1 year old am so so proud about my little one.

    About my body. I love my body very much because my body important to me I think God forgivening me a beautiful baby. ["My body" was not an assigned topic, but we've been talking a lot about bodies, and body parts.  Wonder what they think of us, that we talk so much about sex?]

    [M is an 11 year old boy who describes himself as “bright in my comprexion.”]

   I like to see you in class teaching us about life skills and about HIV and AIDS. You as our helper you are responsible to us. You help us from the different questions about life skills and HIV and AIDS. I like you very much. Those who listen you in class when you are teaching get information from you. It is good what you do in class. I like your teaching very much and I thank for what you do in class.

   [MG is a girl, 13, who says she is “dark in compiation.”]

    My family. I stay with my grandmother, three aunts and two cousins. I have no parents, my parents died. My mom died in 2003 when I was two years. My dad died when I was ten years and I was doing grade 4 in 2011. I thought my life was over but life being nice to me. I was the only child to my mom and dad. My dad died because of tuberculosis.

* * *

    [Another entry, in response to a request to “Tell us a story.”] My family and I. I always remember my parents. When I remember them I cry because I'm not feel comfortable. Sometimes I do not sleep because I keep crying when I rember my mom and dad. It is so hard for me to live withought my parents, but my grandmother tell me that I am a strong young girl. I suport to learn so that when I grow up I work very nice. When my grandmother tells me that words or tells me storys I feel happy.

    [We don't know much about S M. We will try to follow up on the comment in the 2^nd paragraph. There are suggestions of possible abuse of the writer or perhaps an acquaintance in journal entries of several other students from other grades and the other primary school; we think sometimes school principals try to intervene to protect students. We fear a call to the police might lead to the child being left in a bad situation, now labeled a snitch and far worse off.]

    My Family. I stay with two sisters, two brothers. . . . We have no parant I feel bad about this I am not happy when I do not see my parant. I was so angry when my parant died and my sisters were very angry and my brothers were very angry about what happened to us.

    [Another entry, responding to “What do you like about school?”] I like at school I am serous about school . . . . I remember my parant my mother were take care of us. But know there is no life to us I do not know what can we do they beat me very hard and they call me bad names I am not happy even know I don't know what can I do. I like at school and like all subject they teach us in English.

    [We don't know much about H]

    What I like about School. My soul is so painful because the are some big boys in the back that spoil our live. They just think that we do not whant to learn like them.

If they can take them out of the class we can learn more from you and we can know everything that is you teach use we wish to be like you myself wish to be infront of some children teaching them something but the boy want to us to fail but we wont. God wil be with us at the end of the term we will pass [can't read]. God bless you thank you for what you teach us.

[E T is a tiny, extraordinarily intense 12 year old girl from the refugee camp with 4 or 5 white scars on her face. Her family is from Burundi. The refugee kids have typically only started to learn English 3 to 5 years ago, when their parents fled from their homes, but their English is often better than the Swazis who have studied it since preschool. Remember in the late 80s and early 90s when all the valedictorians at the service academies seemed to be named Nguyen, children of Vietnamese boat people, whose parents - doctors, teachers, nurses, government officials in their home country - worked in the U.S. at landscaping, restaurants, cleaning offices? Same with the 2^nd and 3^rd generation Cuban children in the 70s and 80s in south Florida? Many of the refugee children are like that – smart, driven, boldly facing an uncertain future (they are not eligible for college scholarships here, as far as we've been able to discover, and we have met none who have papers showing any citizenship status for any country, which would be necessary for some jobs and all travel; they say these are denied them by the Swazis to control them; the Camp Management says all they have to do is ask. ) – the hope of their families. Being a refugee is a powerful selection device for wits, perseverance, energy, and hope for the future despite dismaying currently available choices.]

    My life skill and the things that made me to love it. I love my life skill because it is very important to but, to my school mates they do'nt care about it. The most thing I like about my life skill is my teachers who are Nomphumelelo and Sipho [our Swazi names]. You are good teachers I love you. You are like my anything to me. My schoolmate disobey you and you teach well. I ask myself why they heat you?

* * *

In grade 6B the boys beat the younger one in class, eat, play, make noise, bring cell phones and play games, disobeying teachers, fighting and insulting you when you are through with your period . . . . [They did what?!]

    [Another issue with the journals is copying. Some journals have entries that are identical. Now, having sufficient interest for small groups to discuss and borrow ideas (maybe like a law school study group?) would generate energy and attention. But just copying a friend's work isn't helpful. Then, some of the work is clearly simply copied from another source; we showed a poem to one of the teachers who handed us a literature book in which we found the poem, but when I first read the poem in the classroom and was struck at the eloquence, unexpected from this offensive lineman-sized generally cooperative but quite tongue-tied 17 year old, I'd asked him several times if it was his work and several ways (trying to get past the language barrier), and he'd repeatedly assured me it was his. So we need to try to deal with that issue.

    Both our children ran into this issue of unattributed copying, both when teaching college level kids, from foreign countries. Maybe there are cultural norms. We are having trouble getting this issue across.

    H N is a girl who lives with her mother, sister, brother and grandmother. Her father is dead. The entries preceding this one were riddled with grammatical, spelling, and vocabulary errors. Katherine, who has a highly sensitized BS-detector, is sure this is copied. I guess I think so too, but even if it is, what does it say about her that this child chose to copy this! We will try to reach out to her next week when we are at this school; not sure what to say to her.]

    No future for me. Why are you doing this to me? Why are you spoiling my life? Why are you crushing me? Why do you pretend you love me you are destroying my chance of learning. You do not want me to enjoy my childhood. You do not want me to have bright future. All my dreams are shattered. You brought me to this world for this. You call me son or daughter for this. Why are so cruel? You had a wonderful childhood No-one hurt you in your youth But why me - Why

    Another concept we need to try to capture is that, in our class, mistakes are good! When an entry comes back covered with red corrections, that means they are stretching. But here, students are rebuked and sometimes beaten, for wrong answers. Which is why hands don't go up to respond to a question, and heads go down and voices become so quiet when we call on someone, and then get quieter and quieter as we come closer to try to hear them, with our failing hearing. They are getting better at bravely responding and speaking up in our classes, especially at the more prosperous school.

    This has been a really wordy blog posting. No worries – there will not be a test. And you won't be beaten. Not by us, anyway.