WALTERS IN SWAZILAND!!

Holy cow! I have gone WAY too long between postings! I am sorry about that. As you might imagine based on that fact, things have been rather busy down here in the Kingdom. Things at the orphanage are going great. I love my new placement. The people with whom I work are absolutely wonderful people, and the kids... oh my gosh. I am madly in love with 60 some-odd kids (well... in all honesty, probably 50 some-odd; there are a few with whom I am maybe only “in like”). So far I am teaching life-skills to grades 4-7 at the primary school up here. I am really working on goals and understanding how choices can lead us either closer to or farther from our goals (thank you David Edlestein for all of the books for inspiration on that). I am also working on setting up a library like I was in my last site. Thanks to St Andrew’s in Beverdale (shout out!), I have heaps of books to add to the ones the school had (and of course the books from Dave - that was a double shout-out. Feel special). The school’s books were all published in the 70’s and covered in bat guano and mountains of dead bugs and mystery substances, so the new additions were MUCH needed. I am also working on trying to get the kids to memorize their multiplication tables. As I am sure I have told you, education here leaves quite a bit to be desired... so I quizzed all of the kids grade one to high school (unnecessary side note: the high school students live at the bottom of my mountain in a branch of the orphanage, not where I live) and found that only a couple of the older kids knew anything. So I have recorded songs, made up games, and bought a guitar to have the kids sing their tables and they are doing fantastically! I have been tracking their progress on a bull’s-eye sort of graph, and their improvement is amazing! Really cool to see such big results.

Now, more importantly, my last three weeks.

Sam's Mom Presenting a Rug

My mom, dad, and grandmother came down to visit me for 2 1/2 weeks in June!!! It was so absolutely wonderfully incredible!!! I am going to overuse the heck out of exclamation  points in this paragraph because being with my family was just THAT amazing!!! They came on June 12, and we spent our first couple of nights at Malendella’s, a nice B&B in Malkerns with some great craft shops, a restaurant, a bar, and a fantastic view! We spent our first few days visiting the family with whom I lived when I first arrived in Swaziland, touring museums, a cultural village, and craft markets. Then we changed bases and stayed at Riley’s Rock for a couple nights- a nice cottage-style resort located inside of Mlilwane,

Visiting Sam's Family

Swaziland’s first Big Game Park. We saw lots of zebra, warthogs, hartabeast, hippo, alligators, etc. My grandma, Emmy, spent her 90th birthday there. We spent the day visiting the family I had to leave in April. The gang got to meet Sam Vilakati (whom St Andrew’s is sponsoring to attend school at one of the country’s best schools... which is only one of four in the entire country from which one can attend university after graduation - please refer back to the previous note about the quality of education here) and his family as well as my family - Gogo, Hlangiwe, Nandipha, Nobuhle, and one of my best friends, SK were all there. Then we took Gogo and Nandipha up to Mlilwane to a restaurant for lunch - they LOVED it!!! Gogo hasn’t left Sibovu in over ten years, so I think it was really special for her. And everyone really. We brought presents and food to both families, and they gave gifts to Mom, Dad, and Em. Sam called me yesterday to tell me that his mother cannot stop talking about how that was the best day of her life and telling everyone she knows how God has chosen her and blessed her. 

My Two "Gogo"s!!

Anywho, after that we had a birthday party for Emmy at Riley’s Rock. Some Peace Corps buddies came up to help us celebrate. The next day we had breakfast with Ted (Ted Riley - you may remember him from posts last fall/winter... your fall/winter, my spring/summer) and drove up north to the Hhohho region where I am residing now. We had a lovely time staying a few nights at the orphanage. Unfortunately we didn’t get to teach any classes (poor Mom; I was really looking forward to her having that opportunity, and I know she was too) because the school was having a sports tournament at the end of the week, so they were not holding classes the days before. But the kids were all at school, so at least they got to see where I teach and watch the kids singing in morning assembly and the kids running around.

We spent our last couple days in Swaziland at the Hlane game park (known for its high lion concentration). It was pretty sweet. We went on a game drive and got WAY too close to a pack of lions. We were LITERALLY 1-2 meters away from a sleeping male... well he WAS sleeping until I noticed him. We were all looking at 3 females at a safer distance when I turned around to see a male RIGHT behind us and yelled something similar to, “Holy Smokes!” and woke him. He was cool for a bit. (At this point I am standing in the safari vehicle from the adrenaline pulling me to my feet.) I was staring him in the big yellow eyes, taking pictures when he got annoyed. He growled and lurched at me, snapping his jaw. At this point I screamed, fell into my seat, and peed a little bit. I spent the next five minutes leaning hard toward the lap of the safari guide. We also saw lots of elephant, rhino, hippo, impala, a giraffe, some COOL birds, and heaps more! We spent our last night at a my favorite backpackers’ lodge and met LOTS of Peace Corps Volunteers. Then, in the morning, we shipped out to spend a week in...

CAPE TOWN! After being treated like Gods at the Johannesburg airport (Emmy got a wheel chair to help her get to our connecting flight in time, and the people were amazing! We didn’t wait in a single line, got our luggage before anyone else, got to sit in a plush lounge, and were escorted in a private vehicle across the airfield that elevated us right up to the door of the plane!), Mom booked us an INCREDIBLE flat in Camps Bay where we were RIGHT on the ocean front, third-story flat with a private pool and a balcony with the most incredible view. We spent the first day settling in and walking about the town. The next day we took a cable car up to the top of Table Mountain, one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the world. Dad faced his fear of heights to give Mom and I the most magnificent view ever! The next day, the three of us took a full-day wine tour. We met some really cool people and enjoyed drinking some very very nice wines. I mean, wow wines. Emmy stayed home for a couple days to relax after the heavy tole Swaziland takes on people... and to watch Wimbledon (which, for the first time in her life, she didn’t have to wake up at 4am to watch - time zones). The next day we went to the District 6 Museum (If you don’t know much about District 6: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_Six ) and checking out the Waterfront area (please note that 3 jaw-dropping, mouthwatering meals were consumed each and every day at various locations and sushi was eaten for more than one of those and sometimes as snacks). The next day we took a double-decker bus tour where we hopped off at craft and food markets... and a great sushi joint. The next day we took a tour down to the Cape Peninsula. What a full day that was! We took a boat to an “island” completely covered in seals, fed ostriches at an ostrich farm, visited a penguin colony, took pictures at the Cape of Good Hope, the most southwestern tip of Africa, ate a tasty lunch at Cape Point where we saw a pack... school? clan? of whales, and finished the day with a walk through some gorgeous botanical gardens. Our last day we spent strolling along the beach and... eating sushi (I just want to say thank you again to Mom and Dad for being so kind as to suffer through countless meals of sushi and never complaining or requesting any other cuisine). 

I will stop writing now. Sorry this was so long. If you actually read all the way to the end of this, leave a comment with your name on it, and I will buy you a beer when I get home... or a sushi lunch.

Also, sorry to skimp on the pictures. WAY more to come next time, but right now I am limited to 30Mb of data on the internet, and the cafe is going to kick me out soon for going through 3 of the free internet vouchers trying to share these pictures!