Valedictory: by the numbers

                We are approaching the end of our service, leaving in just 30 days. This and the next 2 posts are intended as a wrap-up.

                 First, thanks to the Home Team.

                 The support of friends and family back home has sustained our spirits, added taste to our dinners, our mid-day cold drink and our morning coffee, and provided us with essentials unavailable here. (Scott, we used up both solar showers!  Thank God for duct tape and bike tube patches.)  I hope we have sufficiently thanked, and we will again upon our return thank, those who have sent and brought us "Care Packages."    Our "Home Team" of Cathy Darnell handling business affairs, Barry Patton managing our house, my sister Martha attending to what needed attention, our children helping with finance, investments (with sage advice from Steve Marsters), signing up for Medicare (unbelievably difficult from here) and issues as they arose,  our neighbors and friends seeing what needs to be done - you've all made this adventure possible and allowed us to focus on southern Africa, knowing you had things well in hand.

                 Visits from my sister, the Franklins, Yus and Hollises, made us feel connected, and kept us going.   Donations from many of you for Books for Africa supported a project that has demonstrable impact on a critical skill - and, Oh! - those smiles from children as they hold and start reading a book!!! They will wrestle each other to get to a book, and will surrender it with extreme reluctance at the end of a class, even books that are about a world they could not know.  And your donations reminded us of our friends on the other side of the world and your generosity and support.

ESSENTIAL NUMBERS

      The PC belabors us regularly with the necessity of compiling detailed reports, such as listing the exact number of boys aged 14 to 22 whom we have benefitted by improving their employability or their use of condoms (yup!  How exactly are we supposed to know?) and the like.  We comply, carefully saving our backup data.   I think the intent is to justify the expenditures to keep us here.  (It costs $155 per day to keep a PCV in the field, but only about half that is spent in-country;  the rest must be spent in DC, or . . . God only knows.)

      So as we approach the end of our service, I thought I'd try to quantify our efforts here.  The categories are not in any particular order, except the first, which is of course of foremost importance.

Number of birds identified: 252 and counting  (So glad we got over that 250 hurdle.)

OUR LIFE:

Number of times we ate beans and rice for dinner: around 400

Estimate of the number of 5 liter boxes of cheap South African dry red wine we carried (usually on our bikes) from the bar at the crossroads 1 1/4 mile away and consumed at our homestead: 40

Number of times we walked the dusty 1 1/4 miles into or back from the crossroads with the main paved road, which passes for a town here:  100

                Number of times we got a ride (usually in the back of a pickup) for part of that journey:  30

Percentage of times, as we walk back from the store, someone has come to us rubbing his stomach and said "I'm hungry":   30%

                If we are visibly carrying a plastic grocery sack:  60%

Number of times a Swazi male, seeing Mark riding his bike, has said "Please may I borrow me your bike":    Every one of them, I'm pretty sure.  Every time they see me.  My bike is of more interest to a Swazi man than sex (and there's plentiful evidence that's a major preoccupation.)

Number of other white people living in our county: 0     

Number of times I used fairly expensive internet data to check the stock market in:

                2013: at least once a week

                2014:   several times a month

                2015:   checked it twice

Number of times we'd get a pretty good Voice of America or BBC signal and, just as it was saying "And now for international news . . . " a far stronger signal covering 1/3rd of our band would come on with a "praise service" or scripture reading, in siSwati:  most of the time, I think.

OUR WORK:

Number of careers launched, at least where we see fairly good likelihood of achieving exit velocity:  1 (our African son John, with the United World Colleges full scholarship to UWC’s new Frieburg, Germany campus)

Number of students provided the opportunity to practice putting a condom on anatomically-correct quite explicit plastic models of male and female genitalia: around 600

      estimate of the students who actually put condoms on the models in our practice sessions: around 300 (Some would not do it, some refraining certainly for religious reasons, but others  perhaps because of embarrassment?  I'm just not sure.)

Number of separate primary school classes we taught:  around 300

Number of primary school students we taught in formal classes each week when we had a full week of school:  around 240 students a week

Number of separate, informal tutoring sessions we pulled together to address particular needs of refugee students or the Swazi students facing national tests (Grade 7s; Forms 3 and 5 in the High School):  around 180

Number of times we have appeared at the High School 7:30 morning assembly to present a "Word of the Day" to try to improve their vocabulary, and maybe a comment on news of interest:  around 200

Number of students who merrily greet us on their way to school - nearly every one of them.  Enthusiastically.  Usually waving with their whole arm.

Number of times we have shown up at a school to find its schedule changed and our class canceled:  35[i]

Number of times a school administrator advised us in advance of a schedule change.  Or of any other change of any kind, affecting our work.   0  (But once a fellow teacher SMSd us.)

Number of mandatory forms, surveys, and questionnaires demanded by PC:  at least 120.

                Number of mandatory PC  forms,  surveys, and questionnaires for which there is the slightest evidence that it was even opened or looked at:  maybe 10.  But all demands come with short turnaround.  (The younger volunteers caught on first: just fill something in and send it back.  Spend no time on it.  It doesn't matter to them; why should it to us?)

                Number of mandatory forms, surveys, and questionnaires  in response to which PC ever taken even the smallest action: 0.  Nada.  None.  Not a single one.  In 2 years!  

SILLY QUESTIONS WE ASK EACH OTHER, TO WHICH THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS THE SAME

Is it time yet for a cup of wine?

Want some chips?

Are you hungry?

How long have you been awake?

Your tummy OK?

Think we can get another meal out of these beans, if I add more veggies and cook a lot of rice?

How does pasta sound tonight?

VALEDICTORY

      The PC has had around 250,000 volunteers serve, and has a feel for the fairly predictable rhythms of the typical service.  Curiously, they have found, and we too have heard from Returned PCVs, that the toughest period of PC service is typically after it ends, moving on to the next step.  Many of these PCVs have many obstacles and complications to face:  looking for jobs; starting graduate school; ill parents or issues with siblings for which they will have to take responsibility upon their return.  Some have found love here, either becoming engaged to someone[ii], or becoming like a parent to a particular child.[iii]  

        We don't have those issues, and we have much joy awaiting us.  But we still feel a little like Rip van Winkle stumbling back into Sleepy Hollow.  He too probably had to get a new phone plan; new car; download and figure out apps he'd never heard of when he started his nap that have now become essential to civilized life; endure undecipherable references in magazines (the ones we read here are 2 to 8 months old), mass media, and from friends, to events back in 2014 he'd never heard of; sign up for Medicare (they don't take email, only fax, and they think "Why don't you just come in to the office?" is an adequate response); renew prescriptions; tackle deferred maintenance on his house and yard; adjust to living in a 4G environment when catching some 2G here is considered a Big Deal.  For how long was Rip napping?

PASSING THE TORCH

                The 4th of July celebration at the Country Director's House is the only time when 3 volunteer groups get together in this country.  The new group has just arrived a week earlier and are brought in a bus, still jet-lagged, exhausted, with a deer-in-the-headlights look of "What have I got myself into?"  The oldest group is already starting to exit, and the middle group is stepping into the daddy shoes. 

                This 4th we met a similarly mature couple with much experience in health and education and great attitudes, who said they felt they knew us because they had been following this blog!  It felt as if I'd put a message in a bottle and thrown it into the ocean, and the bottle had then washed back up over here with an unexpected reply; except that Google's search algorithms are probably more precise than ocean tides.  We love the idea of "passing the torch" and reading Laurie and Dave's blog, when they shake off the PC shackles of 9 weeks of training and get some internet access.        

                Here's a recent picture from the "poorer" primary school, taken by some Americans from Virginia who are opening a facility beside that school, for abandoned infants.  We are really going to miss some of these kids.  I'm grieving a little already.  The girl facing us on my left is a refugee from Burundi, one of our special friends.

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[i]   The Ministry of Education advises schools in the afternoon that they will play in an athletic competition the next day, which invariably means no classes are held, when 11 boys in a school of 450 play football.  The government of this country actively discourages advance planning and education.

[ii]   Visa issues are complicated, and then employability is daunting.

[iii]    But adoption is wholly prohibited, even for a double orphan (so plentiful here) with no one to care for him, so she plans to come back to visit in a year.