[The title has no relevance other than it being a nod to the Seattle Seahawk’s Marshawn Lynch]
I have so much to update you on!
My last blog left off before Christmas. I chose to spend the
day in my community and celebrate with my host family. Christmas day was the
first unbearably hot day I’ve experienced here…it was rough. We sat in the
shade and ate a lot of good food, all the men drank all day, and in the
afternoon we all piled in the back of the truck to go to a nearby town and
socialize. There were hundreds of people roaming around, drinking dancing and
enjoying themselves. It was almost too hot to sleep that night. I had to
surround myself with cold water bottles in bed. It was definitely difficult to
be away from home for the first time, and I missed all of the American
Christmas tradition so much, but I’m really glad I got to experience what the
holiday is to Swazis!
Christmas dinner, eaten on a grass matt in the shade…with
our hands, of course! And some box wine.
Just a few days later, I went to town to meet up with 14
other volunteers and head off to Tofo, Mozambique for New Years! My phone was
unfortunately stolen from my bag while I was still in Swaziland, so until a
couple of weeks ago my communications have been limited. Because of this, I
also didn’t have a camera for Tofo. I’d been planning on just using my phone.
Luckily everyone else took lots of great photos!
We left Swaziland at midnight, and arrived in Tofo around
10am. It rained the first day, but we got settled into our bungalows at the
hostel (built in traditional Mozambique style, out of palm fronds) and had a
low-key night, since we had a snorkeling appointment the next morning. Unfortunately,
when we showed up at the snorkel place they said the conditions weren’t very
good, and that we couldn’t go out. The only open spot remaining was for 7am the
following day. We decided to take it, knowing full well it would be a rough
morning after a night of partying. That
day was spent swimming in the warm Indian Ocean, tanning on the beach, and
enjoying some of the most amazing seafood I’ve ever had. Calamari, seafood
pasta, prawns, crab, it was all incredible. We met Peace Corps volunteers from
Mozambique and Botswana who were staying in Tofo for the week as well. Very
cool to find fellow Americans on this side of the world! We partied and danced
the night away. Our hostel had a live DJ and party every night that week, so
there was always something to do until about 4am.
Then, bright an early at 7am, we all (miraculously) reported
to Tofo Scuba for our snorkeling trip. After a brief introduction and finding
all the right gear, we headed to the water to help push the boat in. The next
two hours were chaotic to say the least. Apparently the best way to get the
boat out over the breaking waves is to go insanely fast and catch air. Several
of the girls were squealing and screaming, thinking we were going to be dumped
into the middle of the ocean. It was one of the most terrifying and awesome
experiences of my life. We had a guide on our boat whose job it was to search
for whale sharks, which are super rare but are commonly found off the shore of
southern Mozambique. When he spotted one, he would yell “Go!” and we all just
flipped off the boat into the water and looked for it. We saw two! We also saw
a pod of dolphins. All of that was great and fun, but the dark side of the trip
was the sea sickness. Seven of the 13 of us that went snorkeling ended up
puking into the ocean. There were two guys from Amsterdam on the boat with us
who were having a great time making fun of all of the Americans hanging
themselves over the edge of the boat, myself included. It was hilarious and
awful. It was quite the experience. We were incredibly happy to get back to
shore and recover!
We had no idea what we were in for yet…
Whale Shark sighting!
The famous Long Island Ice Teas at Dino’s
Part of the party crew!
I visited the craft market and hung out in the shade for the
rest of the day. That night, after dinner, we headed to a tiny (100 sq feet)
beach bar that the owner had invited us to earlier, called Rasta’s. We were
introduced to Tipo Tinto rum, which is just magical. Again, we dance the night
away and greeted the New Year’s Eve sunrise on the beach. The New Year’s party
at our hostel was a lot of fun, A bunch of people came out to dance in the sand
and count down to 2015. The next day was our last full day in Tofo, so we went
for another dip in the ocean, roamed the streets and the craft market again,
ate really good food, and visited Rasta’s one last time. I truly had the time
of my life on this trip, and am strongly considering going back next year. It
was such a paradise! I could not have wished for a better way to ring in 2015,
my full year of Peace Corps service!
Hike up the sand dunes
Back to Dino’s for more Long Islands!
New Year’s Eve
Until next time, Tofo!
After a week of recovering at home, it was time for another
GLOW training! All of the Swazi counterparts who will be counselors at April’s
GLOW Camp attended a week-long training, partially run by the senior counselors
I mentioned in my last post, in order to prepare them for camp. It was a long
week of 13 hour days, but I couldn’t be more excited about GLOW Camp this year!
And about getting to be even more involved in the process for next year. I’m
only able to report on this because GLOW was fully funded! I know that several
people who read my blog donated to GLOW and I want to thank you SO much! They
doubled the budget this year in order to put on two camps, so the younger and
older girls can be exposed to content that is more age-appropriate. Getting the
funds was a struggle, and the way Peace Corps grants work, it was an
all-or-nothing money situation, so for a while it was looking like there may be
no camp this year, which would have been devastating. We are all so thankful
that our friends and family in the US were able to make it happen, and I’ll
continue to keep you updated as we get closer to camp in April!
School has been out since December 5th, and only
just started back up on January 28th, so I’ve had a lot of down time
recently. I’ve been lucky enough to make some friends who live in Mbabane and
have the sports packages on cable, so I’m proud to report that I got to watch
the last two Seahawk playoff games live! I had to set an alarm to get up at
3:30am for the first game, and I watched both in living rooms by myself while
everyone else slept. I was obsessively texting people at home, and trying not
to wake anyone up by making too much noise and as I screamed and cried and rode
the insane emotional roller coaster that was the NFC Championship game. I
couldn’t be more proud and excited that we’re going to our second Super Bowl in
a row! One of the backpackers in Swaziland is throwing a Super Bowl party for
volunteers (which will probably have passed by the time I get this posted). I’m
bringing my full size 12th Man flag and all my other Seahawks gear
to the party. They’ll be well represented over here as we spend the day in the
pool, the evening braai-ing, and tune in to the game at 1:30am. Go Hawks!
The school term just began this week, and things are off to
the slow start I expected. I’m really excited to report that over the break I
found out my school will be receiving 1,000 books to upgrade our library from
Books for Africa. My counterpart and I applied a few months ago. This will be
my main project for this term. Currently the library at my high school is used
as a staff room, so we need to relocate teachers and clean out the space, write
a grant to get some tables and chairs, and prepare the space for the books to
arrive in April or May! I’ll spend several months helping guide the process for
inventorying and organizing the books, developing library policies and
procedures, and working with the teachers to come up with ways to encourage
students to use the new resources available to them. I’ll also be working with
my school’s health club and the Junior Achievement club, which is a group that
teaches business and entrepreneurial skills.
It’s been more than seven months now since I left home for
Peace Corps Swaziland, and I feel like only recently am I able to say that I’m
not entirely overwhelmed and terrified by the length of the commitment I made
to be here. Two years is a really long time, but I’m already over a quarter
finished and the time has flown by. I’ve missed out on things at home and there
are more to come, I’m sure (not being in Seattle for the Super Bowl is
absolutely breaking my heart. No one understands except for a couple fellow
volunteers who are also 12s). But every day I wake up to the sound of roosters
crowing and the kids sweeping the yard with brooms made from twigs. I watch the
lizards on my wall climb back into the thatch of my roof. I make Starbucks
coffee that my amazing family and friends have been supplying me with, or a
smoothie out of whatever fruit I can scavenge from the yard. I get to go to a
school in a rural village in southern Africa and work with the teachers to try
and improve the education these students are receiving. I come home and play
with the newly-turned-1-year-old baby on my homestead, and watch as he had
moved from learning to crawl, to stand, to walk, and now he’s starting to
almost run. I am served a variety of interesting foods, such as goat meat and
cow liver, which I muster up the courage to try and usually like. I have a
house and family and life in Swaziland. It’s pretty damn cool.
“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and
repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life”
–The Great Gatsby
No comments:
Post a Comment