A beautiful get-away weekend

     The temperatures in the "low-veldt" (lower, flat areas) have been regularly in the mid to high 90s  with no shade on our homestead, except, sadly, over by the latrine, where the flies will drive you mad.  To get away we booked Friday and Saturday nights at an "eco-lodge" in the mountains (highest is around 5,000 feet) in the northwest part of Swaziland.  We stayed in a safari tent,

with a fine hot water shower and adjacent toilet, large cotton towels and cotton sheets, and a good restaurant.

    The place is by a river with fine falls

and tall beautiful trees.     There is supposed to be good birding, but the heavy foliage at the end of summer made spotting a challenge.  We saw two new birds and some fine old friends, but did not see the crimson-tummied green-backed Narina Trogon, for which the place is noted.

      The total cost was about 1 1/2 times a Peace Corps volunteer's $220 (US) monthly stipend for basic necessities, but well worth it for us. (At the end of the 3rd week of each month there are increasingly desperate inquiries on the volunteer WhatsApp string asking if someone has checked an ATM and whether we've been paid, and much jubilation when the happy news spreads; there is said to be a "money dance" thought by some to hasten the electronic funds transfer - could these kids have over-imbibed local culture?  They pay $12 (US) a night for a dorm room in a backpacker's hostel.  Having a little reserve of plastic to fall back on for this kind of get-away or in case of emergency makes living here a little easier; these young volunteers are sometimes in very close circumstances.)

     Getting back to our site was a challenge.  We got a ride 2 1/2 miles up the steep little-traveled dirt road  to the main road with a young French couple who had stayed at the lodge for whom I had translated a little in a French, English and siSwati polyglot, then we were passed by a dozen or more cars and trucks - that never happens!  Few here can usually drive by the elderly white couple with backpacks hitch-hiking by the side of the road; sometimes I think they stop just because they are curious.  And it was starting to drizzle!  Finally a police pickup stopped for us; I have ridden in the back of a lot of pickups in this country, but this was a first.

Those benches are padded - nice!   A few more khumbi rides and some shopping in the main town and we were back to our homestead by mid-afternoon.

    We knew Monday would be a particularly heavy teaching day: two 1-hour classes for the 5th and 6th grade sections at one school on hand washing, which we had taught to 4 other primary school sections last week and 7 sections a year ago, so we know that pretty well.  Then a 50-minute class with 50 high school juniors in English language, and another 50 minutes with a special group of high school students from the refugee camp for supplementary help in English.  We have no background in teaching English-as-a-Foreign-Language, but we got some manuals and I think we're catching on.  Then Tuesday we start the primary school students on puberty, as an introduction to the reproductive system and then HIV, our core topic, towards the end of the first term.

    So our conversation over the weekend was dominated by TEFL  (e.g.,do we go next to pronouns or conjugating verbs?), and how we would present stages of puberty in mixed English and some siSwati - part of our goal is to try to get the kids used to using the names for things, because that helps in negotiating condom use.

       In covering puberty I plan to say in each of our classes that, in a class of 60, there are probably 2 to 5 students who are gay, and that I have many gay friends in the US whom I like a lot, who live happy, productive lives, with strong lasting relationships.  But, I will say, in Africa people who are gay need to look very carefully for support, and they need to be careful of the hostility they will find in a rural community such as this.  I was less clear last year on the acceptability of homosexuality.  The community knows us now, and if they don't like what I say . . . too bad.  The two classes I taught this morning were horrified by what I said; all the more reason to say it.