An orphanage and Sheba's Breasts

     The 2^nd term of school is winding down and we do not have much access to the students, with classes ending for exams, then a week when the students come to school, but no classes are held while the teachers mark the exams, and the final week when nothing much happens. So we occupy ourselves.

Friday we went to a new part of the country for us, Shiselweni, in the southeast, to visit a volunteer we like a lot. She lives at a beautiful farm where an orphanage for about 50 children was established maybe 10 years ago. She works very hard, but loves the kids, and they love her. It was nice to see a new part of the country, although traveling everywhere by public transport is exhausting, and going new places can be a challenge.       Here is the entrance to her orphanage.

Her hut

And the shop from which she sells necklaces and bracelets fabricated from wound paper by local women as an “income generating activity,” something we all seek to develop; the man is looking at samples for his shop. 

I'd loved to have photographed her with the children, but that is forbidden. It can be very lonely for these young people, and I think it was nice for her to have a visit. She calls us Papa Bear and Mama.

We stayed Friday night in the Ezulweni Valley, the most beautiful part of Swaziland, surrounded by rocky hills, where many of the wealthiest people in the country live. Saturday morning we hiked up a rocky ridge to 2 knobs evocatively named Sheba's Breasts. The trail was the nicest I've encountered in this country, starting through thick forests of beautiful old fig trees, then to open slopes with a final steep scramble.

The late winter flowering trees are coming into bloom

     We were tired and glad to get back to site Saturday afternoon. Near our site we heard some children singing at a nearby homestead. They were rehearsing a song to perform in church the next day: “Raise your hands to the Lord,” or something like that.

As we left the woman directing them said she did not have money to transport them to where they should perform. We said we were sorry.

     For the next 2 weeks we will try to get to the students when we can, reading stories or just visiting with them, going over the writing we try to have them do in “journals.” Katherine has pulled 2 boxes of books from the High School that are too young for the students there, from the Books for Africa grant the High School received in May. We are working with the Primary School principal to open a “box library” for the poorer primary school, where books are unavailable and craved by some.

     In 2 weeks we hope to go with the wealthier school's 5^th and 6^th grades to Durban, SA for 4 days on a bus trip. The trip is still uncertain, because they are still waiting to see if enough parents can pay the required US $260 for each student to go. We hope the trip goes; we really like many of these kids, and we've never been to Durban. Seeing it through their eyes would be fun. Two of the younger teachers are going.

     Then at the end of August we go off for 2 weeks seeing Victoria Falls, camping 3 nights in Chobe Park in Botswana, and then 2 nights at a remote camp in the Okavanga Delta. Then back to Swaziland for the start of the 3^rd term. Towards the end of September Denver friends from South Africa visit and we go with them to one of the nicest game reserves in the country, one that is hard to reach by public transport.

     I rode my bike Sunday afternoon, for exercise. I heard one of a group of girls, all dressed up coming from church, call my name, so I stopped as I usually try to do when someone calls me by name, and walked a ways with them. She is in 10^th grade at the High School. We talked about her up-coming exams. We passed a dressy middle-aged woman, who asked them questions in siSwati that I could not follow, prompting laughter. I asked what she had said. My student said she had asked which of them was my favorite. I said meaning girl-friend and she said yes. I hollered back at the woman, in my best siSwati, that I was a teacher, the girl was my student. But you know, the existence of that relationship does not dispel suspicion. Damn.

A knife attack at the dance competition

     Our school made the national finals in some of the dance categories. The finals were held in the nation's main commercial football stadium in Manzini, the commercial center. We hadn't been to the stadium, wanted to support the kids, and had no classes scheduled, so we went on the bus with them.

     Before leaving school the dancers fixed sandwiches for a late morning snack. Katherine is in the school kitchen with the lead dancer.

The heavy mid-day Swazi meal of rice, beans and roast chicken was brought to the stadium from the school later in the day, arriving around 3, so the sandwiches were to tide them over till then.

      The events our school performed in were the African Dance, which is not the traditional dance and is not the least bit African – performed to Western-style pop other PCVs dismissed as “from the 90s” (but they knew each tune – I didn't recognize a single one of them, which says more about how I spent the 90s than about the popularity of the music);

“drummies” - drum majorettes;

and “show prop” where they do “western-style” dance holding some kind of prop in their hands, again to Western recorded music. Some school teams had hula hoops, pompoms, ours had balloons. Unfortunately, several of our girls' balloons burst, causing lost points enough to eliminate us. Here they are getting ready to perform.

That's Manzini on the hill in the background.

     Our teams were done by noon, but Katherine and I lingered, to support the teams. We could have walked into town, done some productive shopping, and taken a commercial bus 45 minutes  back to our crossroads. As the winter afternoon waned it grew windy and colder; many of the kids were only wearing shirts, others had school uniform sweaters, hardly any had jackets. Katherine loaned her scarf and a blanket we'd brought to sit on to one of the boys we like a lot.

     Awards were announced starting around 4. Our school did not win any. Our kids were disappointed but not surprised, and glad to go home, but our bus had not arrived in the stadium parking lot. As we waited a half dozen young men, some visibly drunk, started pulling one of our girls away with them. The girl was smiling and laughing, and the other girls were cheering on all of them, in great good humor. We were told one of the men was saying the girl was his girlfriend, and they did seem to know each other. Fun or not, I hated the behavior.

     Dark fell, the parking lot emptied, the “super moon” rose - the full moon closest to the solstice I think that is, which is closest to the sun, I think, so it appears largest. (One of our Volunteer group sent around a message saying its called the “perigee moon.” Using an outdoor latrine, and ours is 60 yards away, gives you the opportunity to focus on to such events.) The bus was said to be coming in from the other side of the country, 60 miles away. It was cold.

     We heard the girls shriek and saw one of our favorite boys, the one to whom Katherine had loaned the scarf and blanket, lying on the pavement, nearly motionless, holding his shoulder. I thought I saw a pool of blood spreading from his back. Our boys grabbed the drummies' batons and groups of boys started running around the parking lot, clashing, chasing, fleeing, shouting. Our boys caught a boy who wasn't from our school. They brought him to where we were gathered and we could see him lying on the ground where they put him; I could not tell what they had done to him, or how they were holding him there. There were two “real” teachers, around 50 students, and us. It was confusing and frightening.

     Our injured friend was loaded into the back of a pickup and driven away. The police arrived, maybe 45 minutes after being called; I don't sense that the police in this country view protection of the citizens as their main purpose.

     The bus arrived, we got on and it left, but not by the direct route back to our town. In a few minutes the bus pulled over to the side of the road and out of the dark the injured student got on holding his shoulder, with the teacher in charge and the 2 friends who had gone with him in the truck. We were very glad to see him upright. We got back Katherine's scarf. When we got home and carefully inspected it for blood, we found 2 small puncture wounds in it.

     We pieced the story together from some girls, and from visiting our friend the next day at the High School,where he is a boarder. After the confrontation with the “girlfriend” some boys had been demanding of a small boy that the little one give them his money. Our friend intervened, the robbers surrounded him and one stabbed him from behind. Katherine's scarf absorbed some of the blow and probably kept the knife from penetrating as much as it might have otherwise.

     Saturday afternoon when we visited our friend, the day after the incident, he had still not told his family.

Swaziland is in the top 10 nations in the world in per capita murders. But I am reluctant to draw invidious comparisons from this one incident. We remember fights after games in the high schools we attended and our children attended. Younger kids are prey at some US schools, although I don't recall encountering knifings from behind. A police presence would have helped; there has been some pushing and shoving and visible drunkenness after each of the high school competitions we've attended. But the police here are busy elsewhere. The attacker was, however, arrested and our friend will go to the police station to “open a case.” We generally feel quite safe here, especially in our own community, where everyone knows us – we do kind of stand out.

Inverting the calendar: Christmas in June and July 4 in winter

     The group of volunteers who came a year before us is now starting to leave, so our group threw a party for them at our favorite backpackers hostel. It seems to be a tradition to have a Christmas theme for this, I think because its hard to get really Christmassy in the December heat, so why not right at the winter solstice? Here are 4 of our group at our celebration.

I've become very fond of some from this group whom I've gotten to know. Peace Corps attracts some able and interesting people.  The one on the left, one of my favorites, was born in Sudan but moved shortly to Kenya for the first 8 years of her life; she is a devout Muslim, and we are observing Ramadan together, but I'm doing mine in reverse, only fasting from around 9 at night till 6 a.m.;Eid sounds more my style, anyway.  The one on the right is from Ethiopia, but grew up in Maine and is a devout Roman Catholic.

Our High School has been preparing for weeks for a traditional dance competition at a beautiful stadium 30 miles from here. (Its a “company town,” built and dominated by the sugar plantations surrounding it. There is a country club where we sometimes go for pizza or, in the heat, a swim and, mostly, for free but very slow WiFi.)  We went with the High School to the competition. There is one main event for the men

The women have a traditional dance competition.

In addition, the women compete in a drum majorette exercise (Another school's team is in the background of the picture above) and also in hip-hop dance moves and something with balloons, all very western-inspired I think.

One of our favorite volunteers was there with a dance team from her Primary School for the Deaf.

When she is with them, she is totally on, navigating between them and the hearing world, and helping them learn to deal for themselves.  She is an astonishing person.

     Katherine helped serve the lunch they brought in enormous kettles from the school.

Awards were announced

And the winners went crazy.  These are our drum majorettes, in their hiphop dance costumes, where they did very well.

Our traditional dancers did not qualify to move on to the finals near the capital city, but our drum majorettes will go. It may seem sour, but I would prefer to see scarce resources at our school devoted to activities with more academic content. Particularly, for girls, less jiggle. But it was great fun being with our friends.

     We're teaching about the immune system now in the primary schools, to create the foundation for what HIV does to it. Katherine cut out little symbols of CD4 and B cells (we call them “Captain” and “soldier”). This is the 5^th grade at the poorer school. Thee tall boy towards the left, aged 16, is a real trouble-maker, but we pulled him on-board, some, by getting him involved with the enactment of the immune system process. The others are 14.

That didn't work with another 19-year-old 5^th grade troublemaker, whom I tried to get involved and ended up having  to throw out of class. We're still working on classroom management.

We have no condom classes at the High School now for a week, so I washed the models and set them in our dish-drying rack.

The female parts on one have separated, right up by the cervix; don't you hate it when that happens? I've put duct tape around the vagina, which works pretty well but the vagina slides off the labia, so I'm going to apply some Super Glue to keep those parts together. Ah, friends, don't try this at home. Our 2 female parts models are now piled on the table right as you come in our door, so I'll remember to get to them. Think any visitors will be surprised to be greeted by 2 pairs of gaping labia as they enter? We had trouble figuring out which way the cervix fitted on the vagina, to be sure we glued it right, but we found a way to determine that, too.

Peace Corps Volunteers assembled for a July 4 barbecue at the PC Country Director's House in the capital. The newly arrived group was there, and also the group before us, for one last get-together.  All but the 2nd from the right, Elizabeth Nguyen, are in the older group which is leaving.  Elizabeth is in our group and works at an orphanage, where they keep her very busy.

It was fun meeting the new group, feeling how much we'd grown in a year in our ability to navigate here. Some of the newbies were pretty stressed; so were we back then.  Sometimes we still are.

     We then went to our favorite backpackers hostel and said good-bye our way. Someone put on some early 90s boy bands and some of the gang got into it as the night progressed.

Katherine went to bed early!

Now we settle down to about 6 more weeks of school in this term, followed by some travel in August: a 5^th and 6^th grade class trip to Durban, SA with the wealthier primary school in mid-August, followed shortly by a 2 week trip to Victoria Falls, Chobe Game Park and the Okavanga Delta in Botswana at the end of August. This coming week we teach the transmission of HIV, which of course is pretty key to what we are dealing with, but has a lot of words and will be a real challenge at the poorer primary school, where the students' English is weak. We're trying to think of a way to make a game of it.