A Celebration on the Homestead

     There are 3 elderly people on the homestead, in addition to ourselves: a Grandmother (“Gogo,” aged 82), who is actually the widow of our Babe's deceased brother; the father (“Babe”) on our homestead, a vigorous 72-year-old; and his wife, the Make (“mother” 63). Both Gogo and Make have diabetes and limited eyesight, and walk with difficulty. In January and February Make had become very frail and was taken for numerous visits to doctors, clinics and hospitals. And perhaps to a traditional healer, or 2, as well. At one point in early February, when she could not longer walk or even leave her bed, church friends of theirs arrived around 8 PM one Saturday night and prayed, preached and sang through much of the night. In later February her health turned around, and a “party” was set for last Saturday, August 16 to celebrate and give thanks. We were just back from our Durban school trip.

     Even before we left for Durban changes started to occur on the homestead: a tool shed was enclosed in cinder-block and turned into 2 rooms, another small house that had sat open since before we arrived was enclosed.

     When we arrived back from our 4-day trip to Durban on Thursday night there were many more people on the homestead, and much work more work had been done. All the buildings on the homestead, including our own little 2-room hut, had been repainted. Maybe an additional 10 people slept at the homestead Thursday night, and by Friday night another 30 had probably arrived; I have no idea where they all stayed.

Thursday afternoon a cow was slaughtered and taken to the butcher, but the head was preserved, and Friday afternoon the head was slowly cooked over a fire in an enclosure built specially for the occasion. Only the men entered the enclosure, and only the men cooked the head.

That is our Babe, seated on the right. Only the men eat the head – that's where the brains are.

     We offered to help, and pitched in several times on Friday, but there were many hands, nearly all more skilled than ours. So we rode off to the Public Library 2 miles away where there is internet to get back into communication with our world, do some shopping, and re-supply some free condom distribution points, notably the local bar. When we returned at 5 a rented tent about 20 yards by 15 yards had been erected. We visited with the many new arrivals, many of whom we had first met when we went to a family wedding of Gogo's daughter in Barberton SA way back in September, 2013, right after we first arrived at our “permanent” site.

We had settled in our hut for a dinner of some fried hot dogs and baked potatoes when our Babe knocked at the door with some choice pieces, especially for Mark, it seemed. I tried. I ate several pieces. I ate tree snails in Ecuador and I always sample the home-brew when offered; I thought, “I can do this.”

But there was just too much, even with copious libations of cheap kind-of-raw SA dry red wine. And it was brought over with such care, and there was so little privacy (the hordes of kids follow you to the latrine), so there were lots of reasons not to waste it. I took it outside, got one of the kids whom I knew was bi-lingual to explain to Babe how grateful we were, and returned maybe ½ of it to him. Damn little kid only said something like: “He doesn't like it much.” Babe chuckled – he does that a lot in our encounters - then gave it to the throng of kids, and it was gone in a flash. I had thought it was brains – kind of tasted the way they should, you know? But when I asked, the child gestured to his tummy. Hmmmm.  Perhaps those among our readers with a background in surgery can help with a proper identification.

     One animated little girl, maybe age 9, seized my wrist enthusiastically and dragged me around back of our hut where we have a (mostly) enclosed shower area and stepped inside saying “I can see you” showing how she could peer around the curtains partially covering the window of our hut opening into our outside shower.

     Around 9PM singing, then preaching, then simultaneous “testimony” or preaching, or spoken praise, started in the tent outside our hut. That lasted less than an hour, and then the children and many of the adults went to sleep, although I heard talking in the cook-sheds after 1. Saturday morning people started stirring around 4, and by 6 the homestead was in full swing with party preparations. The men spent the whole morning braiing (grilling) beef parts, some men never coming into the tent. The women prepared the rice, potato salad, beets and, most of all the lipalishi (like grits – a big staple here) and frying chicken.

The service was due to start at 9, and was mostly under way by around 11. Hymns, Old Testament readings, sermons, and speeches by Babe and family friends. Swazis speak without notes, but with pace and, when they want it, humor and wit, I think, judging by the reaction. (I understand little, at best.) This is our Babe, again, in the center in the dark suit, with Make next to him, and surrounded by his friends from the county government; he's related to the Chief (chief executive of the county, appointed by the King, but then hereditary, it seems) and fairly influential.

Effusive praise and thanks were given to God; if there was any mention of medical professionals or of a government health care system, I missed it. By around 2 the praise wound down and people lined up for the “refreshments.”

The crowd continued to grow, reaching around 250 when the meal was served.

     Friends lingered after eating. People we knew from the High School were there. The crowd quickly thinned but many stayed as dark fell.

     We leave at the end of this week for our 2 week trip to Victoria Falls and then Botswana. We'll take a khumbi on Friday to JoBurg (when we flew back to the US in January for the services for Katherine's Dad we took a private van, which is twice as expensive and wastes a lot of time because it only goes twice a day), fly to Vic where we'll celebrate our 40^th wedding anniversary (how did that happen? Better as time goes by.) then 3 nights of camping in Chobe Park across the Zambezi River in Botswana I'm told critters routinely wander through the campsites, especially at night, which would, as a pink sheets prospectus would say, bespeak caution. Then a private chartered plane into a remote camp in the Okavanga Delta for 2 nights, ending with 3 nights in Maun, on the edge of the Okavanga Delta, at a backpackers many PCVs have enjoyed, described as “the bar at the end of the world.” Then back to start the 3^rd school term.

School trip to Durban

     Earlier this week we went in 2 vans with 29 nine to 13 year olds and 5 real teachers to Durban. The good parts of the trip were quite good; the less good parts were more amusing than annoying.

Good parts

Durban is a big modern city with lots to see. 3^rd biggest city in South Africa, it is Africa's busiest port, and noted for its diversity, with many people from all over Asia living there. We stayed near its really nice beachfront: clean, user-friendly, great beach, nice waves.

     The first night Katherine and I wanted to get away, so we walked up the beach to a seafood place and took some prawns upstairs to a bar with a view of the Indian Ocean;  we watched the orange Super Moon come from behind the clouds, shortly casting a trail of rippling silver on the waves.

     Each night we went out to eat on our own, partly to get away, also to sample the different foods. One Indian specialty - “bunny chow” - was so spicy we could hardly finish it.

      We visited the Shark Board's education center and saw a shark dissected.

The Shark Board is a local government agency initiated in the early 1950s to deter shark attacks on swimmers, which is harmful to tourism. Their research and deployment of shark nets and baited hooks have resulted in there being no fatal shark attacks in this area for 50 years.

     Then we went to a place displaying birds and doing a bird demonstration. We got to see up close many of the birds we've seen in Swaziland, Kruger, and St. Lucia, and also many birds from around the world. Here is one of our favorite kids with a lorikeet (we think – spelling approximate.) from South America. 

We got back in time to go up the beach to play in the waves. The children are not very good swimmers and the only teacher willing to supervise them could not swim, and did not feel safe with them beyond knee deep.

I went out a little deeper.

     The 3^rd day we did a harbor tour and then a visit to a Sea World kind of place and got back in time for a swim in the hotel pool. Again, the teacher who always ended up dealing with the students, with whom I shared a bed, did not want them out of the shallower end. One little boy told me he wanted me to teach him to swim.

The water was not heated, it's the end of the winter, and both of us were really cold. We tried.

     The hotel we stayed in was quite nice. There was one other male teacher, so he and I shared a double bed in the room with the 2 van drivers, who were in the other double bed. The teacher I was with was an early riser, so each morning he and I would go for a walk on the beach, catching the moon going down and the dawn over the water. People he described as the Jerichos had a service at the waters edge each morning before dawn.  When we got back he and the 2 van drivers would carefully iron the clothes they would wear that day – even when it was at least the 2^nd day on a T shirt. I didn't iron. Swazis are very careful about the way they look, in the sense of having new- and clean-looking clothes that are “smart,” to use their word. We've seen women walk out of thatched huts made of cinder-blocks wearing satin cocktail dresses and high heels.

Not so good parts

     The teachers running this gave the most consistent display I've seen yet of the Swazi disinclination to think about something other than what they are doing right now. And they didn't communicate, with each other, nor with us. And they make no effort to tell the students what was going to happen next. They spent hours each day trying to find where we were supposed to go, waiting to do something that could have been started hours earlier, finding their way to where they needed to go and wandering around lost. They were peremptory and rude to us when we tried to figure out what was going to happen next so we could prepare a little. At one point they drove off and left me, when I'd stepped into an adjacent store to buy some airtime for the SIM card I was using to try to get communications in South Africa on my Swazi phone.  Almost all their conversation was in siSwati, even when we were sitting with them in the room; we've been working on vocabulary and grammar, but when they are speaking quickly to each other, with slang and abbreviations, we have little chance of understanding much.

     We spent a lot of time driving in these vans. Gospel music at full blast can give you the headache from Hell.

    Each day they bought packaged meals from KFC for lunch for all of us; KFC is more frequent here, and in China too, as I recall, than Starbucks in the US (actually, there are no Starbucks here, that I've seen.). I've decided the American distribution of KFCs in “developing” nations around the world is the nutritional equivalent of Lord Geoffrey Amherst selling small-pox infected blankets to the Native Americans. At one point the kids were given money their parents had sent with them, I believe in various amounts, to shop. Here they are at a really fancy SA shopping mall (3rd biggest in all of Africa, we were told, and I can believe it - probably 1/2 again the size of Cherry Creek Mall - it even had a Cinnabon store!) at which we repeatedly stopped. They purchased no fruit, only sugar, salt, and highly processed carbs.

And we had taught these kids 3 weeks of nutrition! This shows that effecting behavior is much harder than just imparting knowledge, which is indeed a cautionary note on our HIV avoidance task. But, you know, we ate the KFC too; in each case, nearly finishing it.

     At the Sea World-type exhibit (Shaka Marine) the MC was killing some time asking for a show of hands of those who would participate in a dance contest, and then had those who raised their hands dance in place. The audience, full of kids, joined enthusiastically, including many tourist kids and the 50 or so school children, most clearly of Indian descent, directly in front of us. But hardly any of our kids would even raise their hands, none enthusiastically, and none would get up to dance. Katherine and I kept coming back to the word “repressed” to describe their behavior. And these are the most responsive, outgoing students we have, by far. Partly they may have been intimidated by the surroundings, and maybe a little weary - no one told them when they had to turn off the TV and the lights, so they didn't.

A Visitor and A Celebration

     As part of the training process the PC has trainees visit their “permanent” site (as distinct from the training site where they live close to the training facility for the first 7 weeks in country) and then stay overnight with another PCV. We were hosts for a 55-year old woman from Massachusetts whose descent from Seneca (Northeastern woodlands Native American) ancestry was very important to her. She is resilient, self-reliant, and cheerful, qualities that will serve her well.

     We picked her up in Manzini, the main commercial town and had lunch; this is a tiny country and the main commercial town only has maybe 4 restaurants where you'd want to eat, so we quickly met up with other PCVs of our group and the new group, which was a lot of fun.

     She went with us back to our site with us and slept on the floor – not very hospitable, but it's all we had to offer – and the next morning she briefly introduced herself to our high school assembly.

She has a shock of white amidst otherwise black hair. It was a very interesting exchange with her. She had done cultural research on the Rosebud/Pine Ridge Reservations in South Dakota and repeatedly exclaimed upon meeting Swazis that she felt she was among “my people.” Both good points (friendliness) and not so good (dropping trash whenever convenient) seemed familiar to her. The PC opens us to new experiences.

     The “poorer” primary school has completed construction of 3 new badly-needed classrooms and threw a “party” to celebrate and thank the parents who worked on the project and the branch of the government that paid 75% of the cost. Parents were assessed the equivalent of US$5 for the party – an enormous sum for these families – which was reduced to US$3, but those who did not pay were allowed to come anyway.

The night before they slaughtered a cow under a tree near the school.

That is the chairman of the School Committee, whom we like a lot, wearing orange pants; he farms an adjacent homestead.   As Chairman he helped with mixing concrete and laying cinder block in the classroom construction, and here he helped with the butchering; I am always amazed at the versatility of these rural Swazis - their many skills.

     The proceedings started slowly, and we were pulled away with the “invited guests” to one of the new classrooms where we were fed choice parts – the liver was delicious, but whatever I took next I was unable to chew, despite diligent efforts, and I slipped it to the ground when I stepped outside.    We got back to the party just in time to catch the girls from the Refugee Camp doing a dance more typical of Central Africa – flowing and gentle, not as athletic and abrupt as the Swazi dances.

PIC 1584

The young boys did the traditional Swazi high-kicking dance.

People would come up and drop money to show appreciation. That is the Member of Parliament for the region and the Regional Education Administrator making their contribution. Katherine got big applause when she dropped some coins in the can. People turned repeatedly to me, but I explained Phumi had all my money, provoking much amusement.  

     The girls performed too. This picture is from the rehearsal that we attended 2 days before.

When the girls dance there are many demonstrative donations, especially but by no means exclusively from the men in the audience, who also take many pictures with their cell phones.
     Between the student performances were many long speeches by the MP, the REA, several Pastors, etc. It was necessary to eliminate several of the scheduled student performances because the show was going too long. Afterward the “invited guests” - local government VIPs, teachers, and Katherine and I, were ushered to a classroom where we were served beef stew, rice, beets, and salad. Out the window Katherine spotted a little boy from one of our classes who had memorized a poem about education, but we had not heard him give it. Katherine saw he was in tears. We went out and had him recite it for us several times; he felt better.

That is his can of soda in his pocket; I think he was saving it for later.

     The VIPs were quickly on their way – it was 4 PM, the party had started at 10, sort of. The School Committee Chair told us there was a crisis: it seemed as if nearly everyone in the community, whether connected to the school or not, had shown up, and were now expecting to be fed, and there was not enough food. He and the Principal took the extraordinary step of holding the adults back and feeding the students first; for many of the students this is their one meal of the day and a principal reason for coming to school. As we left the parents and other adults were being fed what was left. Swazis show great respect for older people and adults are always fed before children. I'll be interested to hear if there were any complaints.  The Principal and School Committee Chair are, in their quiet way, quite remarkable men.

More PCV Visits

     One of the pleasures of Peace Corps service has been becoming friends with some extraordinary American young people. Nearly all of them are less than half my age and younger than both our children. In some ways it recapitulates one of the great pleasures of our life, only this time with a couple dozen daughters. One can never have too many, I'm sure you'll agree.

     We get to know each other very well. We talk about  grim-looking bug bites; fevers; boys or the dearth thereo; snakes; bloody poop; scary men at the bus rank. I don't have solutions for most of these, but I think it helps to vent.  With one young volunteer towards whom I've felt a little protective we discussed reasons she may have stopped having her period – I think I held up my end of the discussion with some helpful views, and I was pleased when she WhatsApped me a few days later when it kicked in. It's family.

     So with classes canceled for exams last week and this we visited nearby PCVs. Two are at nearby schools for the deaf. Here is one outside her place at a high school, to which we rode our bikes.

The main road is narrow, busy with heavy trucks and fast drivers, and badly broken up in places, so we get to her school and back on dirt roads through the forest,

and explore single track winding paths that appear, at least when we turn off onto them initially, to be heading generally where we need to go.

PIC 1549

Fortunately Katherine has an excellent sense of direction.

      Another volunteer is at a primary school for the deaf, where she is frequently visited by another volunteer who lives on a remote, rural and very basic homestead about 20 kilometers away – which can take 2 to 6 hours. These young women can be very lonely and, with the way men here feel free to treat women, they are frequently harassed and sometimes genuinely frightened.  

The one in the middle, who lives at the School for the Deaf, has electricity, hot and cold running water, and a shower! She gets a lot of PCV visitors. Her housing is the near 1/2 of the pictured building.

     She loves these kids and they love her. Seeing her with these kids is one of the things we like best in this country.

(One step I've learned to make ourselves especially welcome with other PCVs who might not ordinarily seek to spend a lot of time with people older than their parents is to bring all our external hard drives loaded with everything brought from home or downloaded from other PCVs. The telling comment is “Nice-to-see-you-did-you-bring-your-hard-drive?” These young women spend a lot of nights alone in their tiny huts listening to the wind whistle in the dark and the mice in the roof thatch; Game of Thrones or the like becomes very important.)

     Both these PCVs at schools for the deaf have learned spoken siSwati and then Swazi sign, which is not the same as US sign, which one of them knew already. These women are really smart.

     The one at the primary school, whom we like a whole lot, has written a manual teaching the Swazi alphabet and numbers and basic words and phrases in Swazi sign, illustrated with pictures of the staff signing each letter, number, word or phrase. I took a copy home on my flash drive and I've been proofing it for her, prompting a memory of proofing grade school and then high school papers, some college, and just a very few graduate school papers for our children. This Swazi Sign Manual, with plenty of pictures, conversations and commas,  is an easier read than some other papers I've proofed.