Well, I reckon I need to be giving you more of the nitty gritty than just the big stories. So, let’s come back to the constant health roller-coaster I ride. I have been in generally good health since my stint in the hospital back in August save for a few bugs here and there. But lately I have been getting a debilitatingly stiff neck and back pains that give me the most dizzying and painful stress headaches. I am, however, completely spoiled and take full advantage of Peace Corps medical care, so I have been going to physio-therapy for the past week, and am feeling much better. These things never happen alone though. Along with pain, I have contracted one of the 100 ailments constantly making its way around the orphanage. At this time I only have four large welts, but I do not know if they or more are coming or going. My shin is the worst with three of these welts. I have seen the doctor and no one seems too concerned, so I am on antibiotics and am monitoring my puss filled welts diligently. They change dramatically in shape, size, and color quite regularly, so I am assuming that means they are healing. Or growing immensely worse. I actually might have five contusions, but the one on my thigh is more of a wide rash-like thing and it itches, so I think that must be something completely different all together.
More daily life:
The orphanage is run by a South African woman missionary, Charmain, and her daughter, Chanel. On Friday, both of them had to make trips to South Africa, leaving my roommate, Rachel and I to run the place. Things in South Africa didn’t run as smoothly as hoped, and the boarder gate closed before anyone could make it back to Swaziland. So I stayed the night on Friday in the family home to take care of the kids who live there (one adopted girl 9, the grand-daughter of Charmain 3, and two orphans who live there 6 and 10).
Actually, why don’t I rewind. I will walk you through my Friday to give you a better taste of what life can look like for me... however, do not be fooled, I have yet to see one day resemble another.
So, Friday I woke around 5:30, my average time with the sun now lighting the sky somewhere early in the 4:00 hour. I heated water in the kettle on the stove to have a bath in my little dog-bowl-sized bucket (yes, I live in a place with plumbing and electricity these days, but in the summer, both amenities work only about half the time). I made myself a strong coffee (I found a stove-top espresso maker in the “free box” in the Peace Corps office, and if you fill it all the way with water, it percolates the perfect cup of deep black coffee!), ate a bowl of muesli, and was ready at 6:30 to hitch a ride down the mountain with Charmain and Chanel. From the bottom of the mountain I procured myself a spot on the side of the tar road to wait for a ride. It was cold and drizzly, so I walked to the little local “restaurant” (not quite the size of my modest bedroom, and that includes the entire kitchen, display case, cash register counter, and seating) and was quite pleased to find an egg sandwich wrapped in plastic. I bought it for my lunch and went back across the road where I waited less than 20 minutes for a khubi to come by and pick me up. I popped in my ear buds and pulled out my cell phone and played a few games of solitaire while I rode up and down the mountains, stopping only briefly to honk at cows in the road or pick up more riders. I lost track of where I was (so engrossed as I was in my electronic card game) that I nearly missed my stop. “Stesh” I whispered to the driver (for “stesh” is only ever whispered, never shouted). The riders of the khumbi rolled their eyes as I fumbled to find my coin purse and pay the ten emalangeni it cost to get from Mnyokane to Piggs Peak. Usually I have the cash ready to just hand over as I jump out, but that pesky game got the best of me. So I began my nice, cool walk up the hill to the private elementary school where I teach swimming etc. I arrived well before the office was open, so sat happily outside listening to Eric Clapton and B.B. King as I dominated yet another game of solitaire.
Friday was “Innovation Day” at the school, so I was quite excited that I had been asked to come help the kids with their projects. However, when the head teacher arrived, I found that two of the preschool teachers were absent, so I was the substitute. Luckily, I have been in the preschool once a week since September, so I knew the kids and the basic routine, but there were no lesson plans or instructions or schedule or anything, and I was flying completely solo. But I think it was a good day over all. I came up with a lot of activities - playing songs on the tambourine, teaching the importance of exercise with an improvised “Super Hero Work Out”, practicing drawing the letter Q, learning what a “design” is and coloring designs, dancing, counting, alphabet quizzing, etc. The kids were better behaved than I have ever seen, and I think they really did have a fun day. So, after school ended (preschool ends a couple hours before the rest of the school) I went back to the primary school and checked out the kids’ projects. It was pretty fun. A girl had me smell the perfume she made with different leaves and flowers (not bad!), some boys were bashing rusty paint cans flat to make their robot, one boy made an electromagnet out of a nail and copper wire and, “oh yeah, Mrs Fuare, do you have a battery? I need a battery to make it work.” Fun day.
Then, at around 2:00 I took off for home. I walked back down the hill and decided rather than walking the 30 minutes to the bus rank, I would just walk in the direction of home and find a ride along the way. You see, I am completely sick of bus ranks, and I think I will do my best to avoid them as much as possible for the next handful of months. They just get me in such a mood (a pissed off mood, let’s be honest - “Hey! Umlungu! Hey! -whistle- UMLUNGU!” “Hey baby, I love you! Baby. BABY! Hey!” and on and on and on until you just can’t take it) that it is taking me longer and longer to shake out of it, and I’d just as soon avoid the place. So I walked for a while trying to flag passing khumbis as I went (which of course were all full because they were just from the buss rank). But it wasn’t long before someone pulled over (I didn’t flag a ride or anything, just lucky! ... and white). A nice fella headed to Mbabane made the detour all the way over Maguga Dam to drop me at the foot of my mountain. Very kind. I stopped at the “Grocery and Investments” store (actually a nice place for here. It has a pool table, a soda cooler, and four shelves on the wall behind the counter where you can buy things like a loaf of bread, soya mince, soap, matches, tinned pilchards, or even a small bottle of cooking oil) for a banana and I grabbed a cold mystery soda (which was- surprise- gross). I waited at the bottom of the mountain for about half-an-hour chatting with my “waiting-at-the-bottom-of-the-mountain-hoping-to-catch-a-lift” friend who lives around there and has been coming down to chat when he sees me. Nice kid. Then when Happy, the woman who stays in the boys’s dorm here, came along, we decided we’d have better luck just hiking. Thank God for Happy! She showed be a beautiful shortcut that literally made the hike about 1/3 the distance (going between mountain tops instead of around them on the road), so we hiked together an hour or so before we made it back home. I was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to take a shower and crawl in bed, but it was only 4:00 and we still had no running water. So, I went and checked on the kids in the house (at this point I knew I would be staying there instead of at my house) and made my rounds putting out small fires between kids, helping with this and that, covering all the booboos from the day with Band-aids, etc. I went with the kids to chapel for a bit as a group had come up from Manzini for the weekend to put on some programs for the kids, and then went back to Charmain’s house. We watched a movie, I taught them a cool stomp dance, and we read some fun bedtime stories. The evening was interrupted only for a while when I found out that one of our kids had taken off during the evening. The man who had driven the people from Manzini told one of the boys he wanted to go to a shop. There is a little shop maybe 15-20 minutes’ walk down the road, but the kids are not even allowed to walk in the direction of it when we all go for walks as there is a lot of drinking and drug activity over there, and it is just not worth the risk with a bunch of orphans. So, the boy told the man he was not allowed to go, but when the man told him he had to, the boy went without another word to the man or anyone at the orphanage. I just about lost it. I was screaming and yelling and hopping about! No child is ever allowed alone with an adult. No child is ever allowed to leave the premises unless in an orphanage vehicle, or with two or more orphanage staff in a group of five or more children. And this boy left at sunset, with someone he had never seen, to a place he knows he is not allowed. I am usually a pretty level-headed person, but this is just not a safe place for kids. Period. When most children in this country have been sexually abused, when child-trafficking is on the rise, in a place where children’s bodies are cut up and sold as muti, I do not take things lightly. I was nearly in tears as I told this boy he better be thanking God he was sleeping in his bed that night - taking off with a complete stranger, who knew his intentions?! And of course I went and found this man who had driven the team from Manzini. Thankfully I had Rachel to whom I could yell about the whole thing and collect myself before I went and lit into that guy. But we got is sorted and he stayed in his bedroom until the team left the next afternoon. Just as I told him to do.
So, yeah, I went back to the house, played with the kids, read some bed-time stories, and crashed hard from midnight all the way until 5:15 when David came and woke me up to make him some ProNutro for breakfast.
Wow. That was a long one. But hopefully you got a little bit of a picture of my day to day. Perhaps I’ll give you another one sometime. There are no two the same, but they are always just as eventful!
