My "bobhuti" (brothers) and I making baskets

Fellow trainees and i hiking

In The Bucket

Hello again!

So, I had a horrible low point the other night I thought I probably ought to share... actually I probably oughtn’t share this, but it happened, and I feel the need to share it in order to truly illustrate the struggles I am facing here:

I went to the city for groceries and made a big American dinner for my family the other night. Garlic mashed potatoes, peas and carrots, baked beans, blah blah blah. Then I did some homework for training while watching Swazi country music videos with my family and the evening started getting away from me. By the time I washed all of the dinner dishes in a bucket on the floor it was well after 11pm and I had yet to “bathe” in a different small bucket. Now, mind you, I had never been up this late before in Swaziland. I was tired and not in the best mind. I didn’t want to wait for water to boil, so I decided to wash in cold water (not a big deal, I do this all the time because I don’t like to waste gas since I have no idea how I will get my gas canister to Matsapa and home again when I run out). This is when it happened. I stood in the middle of my room, soap crackling in my ears, shivering (it is winter here and, while it by no means compares to Iowa, it still gets rather cold under a tin roof), staring at the puddle of soapy water in bottom of the bucket. I had washed from the neck up, and it was nearing midnight. Do I really need to wash my armpits tonight? I thought. I sniffed one armpit. Then the other. Then the first again. I have never skipped a bath since I’ve been here. And I really haven’t gotten hot or done anything to make me smelly today. I sniffed again. “I am not going to put cold water all over the core of my body right now,” I mouthed to the cockroach skittering undisturbed across my floor to hide under my slipper. A minute passed and I was still sniffing my pits. “Oh my gosh.” I said out loud. “I am actually doing this. I am actually standing naked and half soaped in the middle of my room, sniffing my armpits.” I poured my dirty suds into my “to-dump” water bucket and crawled into bed. Hygienic low. I would like to hope this will not be a regular occurrence for me, but I am afraid that with how much work it will be just for me to retrieve water at my permanent site, it will be even easier to justify not washing my armpits... Huh... I just  made that whole story global knowledge.

Anyway, that’s the day to day here. Sat on a log today and washed my underpants beneath an avocado tree. Rainy season is late. Should be starting soon. Oh, also, about Swazi country music videos, I doubt they’d be on youtube, but on the off chance, you should probably look up “Ngiyabonga, music video” or some variation. It was the best one. It’s like a real American country music video. If it’s on there, you won’t miss it.

Thanks for reading up on me!! Salakahle (stay well)!!

My New Site!!

Hello again! I am excited as all get out at how awesome my permanent site is going to be! I did not have completely accurate information in my last report to you. I do not have a water tap in the yard. I do have to hike to a stream for water (eew. schisto). But it is not far. It is less than half a mile - probably not even a 3rd of a mile, so it is not bad. And Peace Corps is going to give me a couple 100 gallon drums to fill with water (I think I’ll set them up as rain buckets so they can fill up on their own in the rainy season) so I won’t have to worry about running out of water come dry season. But the rest of what I had heard was true. My house is HUGE (well... by Swazi standards. It is about 1.5 times the size of my bedroom growing up - for those of you who have been there). I have already drawn out 100 sets of plans for how it will be laid out. I have plans to make a big food/book shelf, benches to put along the wall for seating around my table, the table, and about 100 other things to make my hut a home.

The Methodist primary school where I will be working is really neat too. I am the third volunteer to be stationed in my village so everyone has an idea of my role in the school and community. They seem very open to any ideas I might have, and some of the teachers are really jazzed. I had some excellent conversations with a lot of the teachers and am pumped to work with them. I was surprised that we already covered the taboo topics around which Peace Corps suggests we tread lightly (corporal punishment and male dominance) and ended quite amicably with our differences in opinions, leaving, I believe, a good window to further discussion on the topics. AND (as I was hoping I would get to work on) they are really wanting to build a library. They have a bunch of books in the staff office, but no where for the kids to really access them. Also there is about a half an acre of land that used to be a garden but is no longer used, so I am thinking maybe start a gardening club for the kids and then they will have food they can bring home or eat at school and they will get a chance to try their gardening skills on different vegetables. They do have an agriculture class for the 6th and 7th grades where they grow a small plot of onions and cabbage (?) (I can’t remember what was in them exactly what was in them) which is fantastic, but hopefully we could grow enough food to feed the kids at school a variety of produce. Right now UNICEF provides the school with food to feed their ~150 kids one meal a day (which for many is the only meal they get) but it is only corn meal and beans every day. Some varieties of veggies would do wonders for these kids I think. I also really want to teach a life skills class for maybe the upper grades (5-7). But who knows. I am so full of ideas, but I still have three weeks before I move there, and then three months after that before I can start any projects. So right now it is just me being excited over potential.