The Trip of a Lifetime: Part 3 – Gunn's Camp in the Okavanga Delta

     After 3 nights camping on the Chobe Riverfront we returned to the main city in the area, Kasane, and flew in a small plane (4 passengers) to Gunn's Camp, in the middle of the Okavanga Delta. Gunn's had 6 tented platforms and a reception/dining area, on a series of small islands in the marshes formed by the Okavanga River spreading out and evaporating, leaving practically no water to flow south into the Kalihari Desert.  For the 6 tent/cabins, so 12 "clients" there were 24 staff on site; it was delicious to be pampered – clean sheets on real beds, good meals served on china, spectacular dawns and sunsets over the marsh.

(Did you notice in that top picture, fine South African white wine with lunch! Ohhh, I could get used to this!) The wildlife wasn't nearly as abundant as at Chobe, but the guides were more sophisticated, and made it very interesting for us, and you know, 3 or 4 elephants can be as interesting as 100.

     For instance, who knew that the male impala servicing a breeding herd always poop in a pile in the same place, time after time, while females poop around anywhere. When a rival male comes and poops on the other male's pile, the 2 have to fight and often the male with the herd loses, having lost weight and strength attending to 2 or 3 dozen does. Don't you hate it when that happens? But our guides held out hope – often the defeated male, driven out and disconsolate, rests, eats and gains weight, and wins back his place with the herd. I'm eating all I can. Really.

Bird of the Day: Wattled Crane

     The Wattled Crane is a big bird (seeing a pattern here?): 4' high, with a gray back, white belly and neck, yellow bill with a red base, and long white wattles hanging from its chin! (Urine samples have been demanded from the design committee submitting this one; wattles? Red base to the bill? Really?!) Our Bird Book describes it as “vulnerable . . . uncommon and localized,” with only 8,000 globally, 2,000 in Africa!

     At Gunn's our guides could identify birds by their call, and could call them in, and tell the different kinds of nests. They also babied us, insisting on coming to our cabin/tents to get us for dinner, after dark. But seeing 18” elephant footprints in the sand outside our tent one morning did make us appreciate the attendants' attentions. On a walk our guide pointed out lion prints in the sand, going the opposite direction from ours. A few steps on he pointed out that the lion had then gone back the other direction, so the lion was now apparently ahead of us. I noticed after that the guests all walked close together.

     One of the pleasures of our trip was the people we'd spend a few intense days with and then move on. Here are clever handsome Belgian newly-weds who had been self-driving 3,000 miles, camping through Namibia and then Bots, having adventures nearly getting stuck fording rivers, and who now stayed 2 nights at Gunn's. The first night at Gunn's they chose to camp on a nearby island – with 4 attendants! Segolene had never camped before she'd met Benjamin 8 years ago. He'll start with Boston Consulting Group in Brussels when they return.

    Giorgio, a courtly and witty old-world widower, 81,who was from northern Italy and had an old-world grace, carried a well-thumbed copy of Birds of Southern Africa, stained and wrinkled in some places, many of the pages kind of curled. That told us all we needed to know about him. He reminded me a little of Katherine's Dad, but from Parma.  His wife, an avid birder, had died, and he was there with Eleanor, a new acquaintance only a little younger than he, who had no English, the lingua franca of southern Africa, nor, as far as I could tell, any interest in birds. . He was, of course, charmed with Katherine. 

      We carried everything we needed for 2 weeks in our backpacks, and had to pack with care. I'd pulled up weather forecasts for Vic and Bots before we left and noted a hot spell while we were in Chobe, followed by a cooler patch, but had not focused as much on the implications of a day/night temperature swing of around 48ºF. At the last minute Katherine chose to jettison an insulated jacket, and it became clear that presented a challenge. We borrowed a fleece jacket from our organizer before we left for the Chobe Waterfront, but at Gunn's she was really cold. She is very hardy. Not that she doesn't notice the cold (and other afflictions from living in southern Africa), but she doesn't let it get her down. Here she is one morning, on our porch at Gunn's, catching the dawn over the marsh

BotD: Meyers Parrot and Bennett's Woodpecker

     This has to be a tie between 2 fine “life birds” for us. Our plane out was a late one – 3 PM, so after lunch, with no activity planned (yes, it's a little like summer camp), we set chairs in the middle of our small island behind our cabin/tent and studied the jackelberry tree above us, which was full of life. Guides had pointed out both the Meyer's Parrott and Bennett's Woodpecker on our walks, but we've got our standards, and had seen neither with sufficient clarity to claim a sighting. But here we nailed 'em both. Meyer's Parrot with green belly, blue vent and yellow shoulders and an improbable yellow crown. Bennett's Woodpecker with a red crown and mustachial stripe, brown and white barred wings, and speckled belly. Ahhh.

No pix of either – these guys are tough to catch.

The Trip of a Lifetime: Part 2 – Chobe Waterfront

     After 2 lovely, memorable days at Vic, we took a taxi to the border crossing of the Zambezi River into Botswana, rode the ferry across, and waited for the guide I'd hired by email, the recommendation of the friend of a Botswana PC volunteer whom we knew from Denver, who had served in Botswana and been a great help to us in getting ready and in understanding the PC.

“This Is Africa” Moment: abandoned?

     I'd made all of the arrangements myself for our 2-week trip, using our limited internet and email, so there was no one local and knowledgeable to help us with the transitions, leaving me always wondering as each new stage approached whether it would work, or had I failed to notice something?

     No one sought us out at the ferry landing where we crossed the Zambezi into Botswana, so we walked up to the border gate, got stamped to enter Bots, but stayed there. Then each of us, one at a time, went back to the ferry. We are pretty recognizable – the only other white people all were in tours, arriving together, being met by those open-back safari vehicles with rows of benches, each vehicle with guides and a driver. No one responded to the name of the guide I'd hired, to whom I'd sent half our payment for 3 nights because, he'd insisted, he had to pay the fee for the campsites right away back in May. An hour passed, now an hour later than we'd said we'd meet. We had no phone service. We spoke to one of the safari guides, who called the number I had for our guide and he answered! He was down by the river, at a separate boat landing where the safaris bring their clients across in a motorboat, maybe 50 yards from the car/truck ferry landing, where we'd come over free with all the Africans.

OK, relax.

TIA Moment: buying food by memory

     Once we'd gone by an ATM to pay much of the other half of what we owed our guide we went to the grocery store where our cook bought all the 4 of us needed for our 3 nights of camping. I saw no list. All from memory. And, you know, if he forgot anything, I never noticed it; do you think sometimes some of the things that assist us, such as lists (and notes for speeches – Swazis never have notes when they speak, but don't seem to need them) cause memory and perhaps other skill,s to atrophy? Though I do wish Swazis made more use of calendars.

Bird of the Day: Saddle-billed Stork

     On our drive into Chobe National Park we saw a Saddle-billed Stork. An enormous bird, maybe 5' tall, with a white belly, black neck and head, and black and white wings. But then, in a touch Disney's animators would not have dared, the bill has broad red and black stripes and, can you believe it, a bright yellow saddle at the base of the bill. Wow! When you take your eyes off it, you can't believe it, and have to look again.

TIA Moment: our car as an elephant scratching tree

     As we drove to our camp we startled a medium-sized female elephant scratching herself against a tree 20 yards away. She appeared annoyed at the interruption and came up to the car and rubbed her ample butt against the right headlight, then her side against the driver's (and my) side of the car. Then she turned towards us and glared, flapping her ears and feeling the car with her truck. Having made her point, she moved on.

I have no pix once the female started scratching herself against the car; photographs seemed unimportant at the time. Here she is when we first encountered her, on the left, scratching her butt against the tree.

      That night we camped on the shores of the Chobe River. Our guide cautioned us that there were lions around, and that hippos, hyenas, or perhaps even leopards could come through the campsite, and all were “Potentially Dangerous Animals” (PDAs, in the guide lingo). Our guide said if we really needed to visit the ablutions during the night, which was a large cinder-block building 75 yards away, we were to call to him to wake him and he would drive us. Well that didn't work for me, but I could hear on and off through the night the distinctive grunting/bellowing/roaring lions make, so I did wait for a time when I had heard no roaring or footsteps for a little while, and I did not go far, nor did I linger, although the stars were magnificent.

TIA Moment: A Lion!

     The next morning, as I was explaining to Katherine that sounds travel further at night, the pitch of a lion's rumble carries particularly well, and the lions we heard were actually probably quite far off, we looked up and watched a large male lion walk by our camp, maybe 20 yards away, between our fire and the river. He's just disappeared off to the left of this picture, in which I had thought I was capturing the coming dawn.

We followed the lion (in the car), and shot lots of pix.

He joined another large male, 3 females and 3 cubs, and then disappeared into the bushes about 300 yards from our camp, following a herd of water buffalo.

TIA Moment: An Attack!

     When we got back to camp we found we'd been raided! No, not by man-eating predators, but by baboons, who had seized the bag containing all our bread – alas, no sandwhiches. Keeping food safe was a struggle.

     Each morning waking up on the Chobe Waterfront was like waking up in the Garden of Eden. “The world was all before them, where to take their rest . . . .” (Martha's Baccalaureate, with an assist from John Milton.) The number of animals and birds was simply astonishing. I tried to count the elephants; there were small families of 30; herds of 80; a herd of around 130. Sometimes 2 such herds would be in sight at the same time. I did not try to count the Cape Buffalo, and could not possibly count the zebra.

During the heat of the day the guides would snooze and I would sit in the shade with a 5-week-old Economist magazine and my siSwati vocabulary flash cards, but I rarely read or studied. Even at the quiet time of day, there was almost always something going on: an Open-billed Stork would catch and swallow a fish, Glossy Ibis and Pied Kingfishers dove for fish, White-breasted Cormorants opened their wings to catch the sun's warmth. When the fishermen from the Namibian side of the river (not a park, as it is in Botswana – Botswana has done a whole lot of things right) moved out of sight in their mokoro (a canoe hollowed from a log),

a Marabou Stork or African Fish Eagle (similar to but slightly bigger than a bald eagle, but with the bright white extending much further down the front) would settle in.

      On our afternoon game drive we found the lions about where we left them, and then followed the males as they walked by our camp as the first male had done that morning; our guide said the females always lead (!), so they must have gone through earlier, unnoticed by us.

      That night around the campfire we discussed with our guide and the cook the importance of tribal relations - whenever they encountered someone they would always mention to us what tribe their visitor was from.

That's our guide in the middle, the cook on the left. And that night and then throughout the rest of the trip we asked about relations between men and women – our guide was adamant that a man should have sex with as many women as possible, and having several wives is a mark of success. Botswana is a relatively prosperous nation with good health care and educational systems, and yet a very high HIV+ incidence, although not as high as Swaziland's, which is the highest in the world. If Bots can't solve that problem, with all it has achieved, the prospects for success in our efforts are not encouraging. Changing behavior is really hard. Especially behavior driven by hormones.

     As our cook was fixing dinner the lions did their parade past the camp; our guide built up the campfire and urged us all to gather closely around it. We complied.

     That night shortly after we'd gone to bed I heard a lot of thrashing around in the river by our campsite, and some trumpeting sounds I thought were elephants, but could have been . . . hippos? When it grew quiet I felt it was probably OK to get up; as I re-entered the tent Katherine awoke and said she wanted to step outside. As she proceeded I heard more thrashing and bellowing from the direction of the water, but Katherine was very cool, giving no indication she'd even noticed. She took longer than I wished, but I said nothing, and we quickly returned to the tent. Her hearing at certain pitches is even worse than mine, and the next morning, when our guide traced the footprints and elephant dung on the road by our camp, Katherine asked if I'd heard them.

That day we finally saw a leopard, only briefly.

Our guide had heard from another guide, one of his “home boys” (his word = same tribe), where a leopard had been seen, and our guide figured just where to park to watch him slowly stalk by, 15 yards away, following a herd of impala. Just magnificent!

Bird of the Day - a Hung Jury: Goliath Heron or Green Wood Hoopoe

      We'd seen the aptly-named Goliath Heron in February at Kruger, but this was such a close and long viewing of a splendid bird that he wins BotD honors.

         (This is Katherine.)  I  disagree with this designation. For me the BotD was the Green Wood Hoopoe, a big green/blue bird with bright red decurved bill and red feet and a high pitched cackling call. Though not a rare bird, this was one I had been hoping to see!

Another TIA Moment: Kidnappers!

     The guide and the cook had different pressure points concerning the dangers around us, although each wanted us in our tent, for different reasons, when they weren't around. I was up a little before dawn the day we were to leave and made my way quickly to the ablutions, for a lot of good reasons. The cook came in shortly after and was genuinely startled and upset to find me there. He had earlier told me that the guide, who had warned us about the lions, had only lead ½ day tours from the lodges, going back each night to the lodge, in contrast to the cook, who was used to living among lions in his 2 week trips; I'd been puzzled about the inconsistency of our jumping in the car to follow the lion, but leaving the cook to fix breakfast while the lions walked by camp; how did we know they weren't hungry? Anyway, the cook's concern was different; he said I was vulnerable to Namibian poachers who, seeing a target of opportunity, might seize a westerner for ransom. But later, when I mentioned that concern to our guide, he brushed it off, saying that hadn't happened for years. Its hard to assess the dangers. Especially in the dark, with lions roaring in the bushes.

      The guide and I had begun to get on each other's nerves. I couldn't consistently distinguish all the different birds we were seeing (K could), and was starting to hear a little too often “As I told you before . . . .” The relationship of a guide with his male client can be fraught: see Hemingway's splendid safari story The Short, Happy Life of Frances Macomber; fortunately, it didn't get that far with us. To my knowledge.

TIA Moment: Elephants on Parade!

Katherine had taken her chair to the shade of some acacia bushes, but came back to where I was sitting to tell me a big herd of elephants was approaching. As we sat under the bushes they passed by 15 yards away from us, some starting as they spotted us, facing us and waving their ears, stamping a little before they turned and moved on to the river. I stopped counting at 80.

Here are some other shots from Chobe. It was just unbelievably fabulous.

The Trip of a Lifetime: Part 1 – Victoria Falls

     Our 2 weeks visiting Victoria Falls and then Botswana was one of the great events of our lives: wonderful sights; fascinating people; some hardships we were able to handle; splendid birds and animals. The following description goes on a little long, I know; sorry, we saw and experienced a lot in 2 weeks. I broke this into 4 separate postings for the 4 stops of our trip. I think breaking it up makes it easier to deal with, but I don't really know – this is the only blog I've ever done. There will not be a quiz.

    We crashed our first night in Swaziland's commercial town, staying with a 3^rd year volunteer who had been working nights with commercial sex workers, going around with a driver and a nurse; he finished his service the next week. Buying pizza we joined a volunteer who is extending for a 3^rd year and her well-spoken low-key Swazi fiancé who is construction project manager for an NGO building a health clinic. Very interesting conversations.

     Staying in town enabled us to take the 1^st khumbi out of Manzini to JoBurg, which left at 7 a.m. It was fun to see dawn come to the city and the bus rank wake up, and to start our adventure. We got to JoBurg in time to take a bus tour of the downtown area, which is now probably the least important part of the city, but all we had time for – the action in Jozie seems to emanate from the townships and the wealthy surrounding suburbs, where businesses moved.

     Quick impression – JoBurg is a lot like Denver. A sprawling, high, dry city established about 35 years after Denver (Jozie – 1886) because of mineral discoveries, where treatment of the indigenous population was (and still is for JoBurg) an issue, and vast income disparities are manifest. JoBurg's downtown looks like Denver's in the late '80s after the oil crash, but without even the 16^th Street Mall. But JoBurg has a terrific fast, clean, safe, frequent comfortable train system. In the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, JoBurg is a “rainbow” city.

TIA (“This Is Africa”) Moment: WHO Yellow Fever proof

Checking in at the JoBurg airport to fly to Zambia the airline agent stared fixedly at my yellow World Health Organization card, shook her head and said she had to review it with her supervisor. She came back smiling – the all-important date of yellow fever vaccination was not included in the stamp she had been scrutinizing, but on the line of the card containing the stamp and also lots of additional (superfluous – but you never know who might want more) information.

OK, exhale.

     Upon arrival at our hotel in Zambia we walked 15 minutes to the Zambia side of Victoria Falls, the east side. Impressions:

• The paths were full of Africans, far outnumbering the whites, exactly the opposite of our experience in Swazi game parks.
• The Africans were generally dressy, as for a special outing. Many ladies from church groups were in their full church dress, identical for all from the same church, each uniform sparkling clean and ironed; many others were in Sunday best outfits. Only the white people wore what I would call “sensible shoes.”
• We were silent upon first viewing the falls. In discussions later we agree each of us was a little underwhelmed. More on this below.
• We walked down to the river below the falls, then back up. Many school groups. A boy passed me and urged on his girlfriend: “If this old man can do it . . . .” Missed what he said next. To whom could he have been referring? He had to say that in English?
• Up at the top of the east side of the falls again, we walked along the shore of the Zambezi in the golden fading life of dusk, seeing therRiver flow peacefully through the many islands, and then disappear over the lip like a giant's infinity pool, sending up the “smoke that thunders” that gives the falls their local name.

• People come to Vic Falls from all over the world. At the table beside us at dinner that night were some loud heavy-set men with younger hard-looking women all, ordering repeated refills of their wine glasses and other drinks; I'm convinced from the sound of their speech and appearance the men were Russian oligarchs.
• The next day we took a 15 minute helicopter ride, then walked across the bridge to Zimbabwe and walked the west side of the river, and from these two we came to appreciate the scope and magnificence of the falls. They are more than a mile wide, and about 110 yards high. But the falls were created, not by erosion, but by a rift in the earth opening from the shift of tectonic plates, and the area in front of the falls to the other side of the chasm, where we walked, is astonishingly small – sometimes I think about 125 yards away. This makes it easy to see the details, but you have to step back, and see each separate vista, to appreciate the scale. Or swing around in a helicopter, which we did. Also, the Zambia side, where we stayed and from which we first saw the falls, is slightly higher, and so in the drier season when we visited the flow is decidedly less than on the Zimbabwe side. My beloved art history professor referred to buildings and art works you can “see” in an instant (the Parthenon, Washington Monument; US Capital) and ones that you have to walk around, take some time and study a while to figure out (the Hamilton building at the Denver Art Museum; one's not better than the other - they are just different). Vic Falls is like that; it cannot be comprehended from any one view, even the helicopter.

• Each day we watched bungee-jumpers from the bridge. Both nights I woke up, shaking off what could have been a Meflaquin dream (and I haven't take that devil's brew for 8 months!), envisioning myself poised on the lip of the step in the middle of the bridge, then stepping out and down, down . . . , and of course waking up! We visited on the bridge with a pleasant Brit who was cheerfully watching his wife “take the plunge.” I thought of asking her as she strapped in if she knew whether he had bought a lot of insurance on her life recently, but refrained.
• This was our 40^th wedding anniversary. Many times we thought of those days 40 years ago, and of where we are now. Memories evoking “such sweet sadness.”

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.

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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.

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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.