COS Conference

    The Peace Corps get each group of volunteers together for some training and R&R a month before the first ones start to leave (called Close of Service "COS" in PC-speak).  We met for 3 days and stayed 3 nights at a really nice lodge 40 km from here, with hot showers, a fine restaurant, hot showers, great views, and hot showers.  It was really good to be with our group one last time before we start to disburse.  I'm very fond and admiring of nearly all of them.  This was a nice way to wind up.  As one could anticipate, the PC drags all kinds of forms and procedures into the COS process, and part of our assembly was to talk through that; they just can't help themselves.  They also help the volunteers with the transition process, which has frequently proved to be as difficult and stressful as any of the transitions during PC service.  Many of our group will enter graduate schools in public health, public policy or foreign affairs.  Others  will need to get jobs right away, and are daunted by that prospect.  The Country Director asked Katherine and me to assist him in a presentation on resumes, networking, and interviews, which we think went well and was useful.  In the evenings some brought draft resumes to us to review.

      The first morning some of us who used to exercise regularly together during our trainings in the first year got together for one last morning Insanity.

    Some of what we did was a little high school cheesy, but I loved it, and was deeply moved.  We were offered the chance to write notes to each other.  Many we received are deeply touching:  "role models,"  "supportive," " steadying," "caring."   Many referred to "mom" and "dad," and to especially vivid times we've shared over the two years.    Some comments I did not understand:  my "goofy jokes" -  what?   But all are very moving.   Brief encounters and comments over these two years have often been strongly felt.

    Here is a group picture we took.

      Now on to Bushfire, a 3-day music festival in a beautiful part of this country, where we'll see again many of our buddies, plus many from the group that came last year, now replacing us as the veterans, and also PCVs from all over southern Africa, plus lots of NGO types who drive up in their big SUVs.  Then back to "real life" for  9 weeks of teaching, tutoring, trying to move some special friends to a new stage of their lives, and closing up our life here.   But after COS conference it feels very different; we've moved on now to the leaving stage.

Scoooorrre!!!

         We are sometimes treated on our homestead to radio broadcasts of soccer matches, which are largely unintelligible to us regardless of the language spoken by the narrator.  I can however tell immediately when there is a goal scored, by the long-drawn-out shriek: "SCOOOORRRRE"    That is pretty much the soundtrack for the following.

       Regular readers of this blog may remember the Democratic Republic of Congo refugee John who was selected Head Boy in his 2nd year at our local high school, and whom some of you have assisted with ideas, research and study materials.  We met him at the nearby Refugee Camp in our first weeks at our site, and our efforts to help him with applications for further study and life experience were mentioned in our January 20, 2014, and January 5, 2015 blog posts.  This year we have paid 2 semesters of tuition for his A Levels (needed for college admission, 2 years after high school) at one of the best government schools in the country, in the capital, Mbabane.  He had some health problems,  now fortunately resolved (these kids have never had real preventative health care beyond the most rudimentary level - wash your hands and brush your teeth).  We were concerned how he would do at a decent school, where all students had desks, teachers showed up for class and started teaching at the beginning of the class period and expected homework to be completed and subjects to be mastered, and where the students had come from high schools with similar standards.

         He was #1 after the first month at this new school, and then again at the end of the 1st term.  (They announce and post that information here - every class position is public!)

      He had applied to Waterford, the excellent and extremely expensive private school in the capital, part of the United World Colleges, with which we were previously unfamiliar.  He's now been admitted to UWC Robert Bosch  campus in, Germany, on a full scholarship!  We like their web site at http://www.uwcrobertboschcollege.de/en/, and we are enormously excited for him.  

             We also helped him with his application to African Leadership Academy, a  7-year old private 2 year A level program in Johannesburg.    www.africanleadershipacademy.org   He was selected as one of the 400 finalists and traveled by khumbi to Jozie for their finalist weekend in January, and he recently learned  he has also been admitted there!  Either one of these admissions would complete all of the dreams of any student we know here.  John was the only admission to ALA from Swaziland.

           John has selected UWC Robert Bosch, a 2 year International Baccalaureate program in Frieburg, in the southwestern corner of Germany, that started up just a year ago.  We think having the European influence will open new vistas for John, the UWC "brand" and other indicia (the headmaster starting it up was head at Waterford here in Swaziland for 11 years) lead us to believe it will be very good, and we understand all graduates are awarded full scholarships to the US colleges or universities to which they are admitted!

            Those in the development business think a lot about "sustainability," and the Peace Corps emphasizes it to us continually, but as I see the sites and projects from the efforts of departed volunteers, and also projects we've worked on earlier in our stay, I think of a rock thrown into a pool, creating waves that quickly subside, leaving the pool placid, as it was before.  Maybe some of these students will have, for a while, a different view of themselves, their possibilities, and what they need to do to move forward, but most of our formal projects will be like that rock making a splash in the pool, which shortly settles down.

               But John is one "project" that is "sustainable."  He is launched!  He would have broken out somehow, I think.   He's really smart, and diligent, poised and mature, generous and a leader, and an extraordinary networker.  But we helped with some technology (scanning his school reports at HQ so he could attach them to his applications - nearly impossible from here), reviewing, targeting and helping focus his applications, and  some timely fee and transportation payments.   And it is a great joy now to consider the world he has ahead of him.

              Here's a picture of John with the PC volleyball team that competed against the Embassy in March.  He was really good and they put him in the center.

        We've been in the urban commercial area of this country most of the past week, unloading and then distributing the boxes of books sent by Books For Africa.  This is one of the most enjoyable things we do.  I enjoy the time with the volunteers, who are clever, resilient, hardworking, helpful (Mark: "How can I make my iPhone stop doing this?") and just a lot of  fun.  And the school staff picking up  the books are so proud and hopeful and delighted and grateful - it is heart-warming.  There were sometimes cheers, song,s even delighted dancing!

          Here the volunteers are in the empty warehouse starting to unload the truck, and the '14-'15 and '15-'16 BFA leadership group, in front of one school's stack of boxes.

The black girl to the middle of the back row was born in Somalia, grew up to age 8 in Kenya and then  most of her family moved to Washington State; she's one of my favorites of my new "daughters."  The Swazis have a lot of trouble with our lack of devotional zeal; their first question to us, after our names (big laugh when we give our Swazi names: Sipho and Nomphulmelelo) is usually "Are you Christian?".  Sagal is Muslim.  Her host family here "protects" her by quickly interjecting, when that question is asked, "She believes in God."  I haven't noticed Sagal in need anyone's protection.

          We have a little bit of a division of labor here from the "comparative advantage" arising from our different skill sets.  Katherine does a little more of the cooking than I do, and I deal more with the water supply and with snakes and spiders.  Last night as she was preparing for bed she was surprised by a small snake crossing her path by our front door; that one got away from The Mighty Hunter, but not the spider nearly the size of her hand just beside the seat in the latrine this morning.  I had previously let this spider live (or his relatives - could there be many more that size?), because I think they feeds on flies and mosquitoes, but my careful calculus of the relative distress from his life or death was the end of him.