The Busy Season

Sanibonani!

I’m posting this blog from the Peace Corps offices in Mbabane, in between running around like a crazy person doing last minute tasks for a training we are hosting this weekend. The other co-directors of the Girls Leading Our World program and I have organized a special training for our Swazi counterparts/camp counsellors focusing on psychosocial support and dealing with abuse. This was actually a topic requested by the Swazi women who run the GLOW clubs in their communities, so we’re really excited to have been able to put this weekend’s events together. Several guest speakers from different organizations around Swaziland will be coming to offer their advice, support, and knowledge surrounding abuse and what these women can do to help the girls in their clubs when these issues arise in the lives of the girls they work with.

So that’s what I’m up to for the next few days. But to cover what’s been going on lately, September was The Month of the Library Project! Everything finally fell together with the school’s schedule and mine, and one we started working, things actually went a lot faster than I expected. Furniture was delivered, and once we had the tables and chairs in the library we were able to start unpacking and sorting through the Books For Africa donations. Students came in every day to help me with sorting, labeling, and cataloging the books, or just to check out what was going on. Several were asking if they could borrow books before the cataloging was finished! I was so happy to see them actually excited about reading. Over the next several weeks I was at the library almost every day, all day, cataloging the 2,359 books that now make up the Mayiwane High School Library! There are still a few final things that need to be purchased before I can close out the grant, but I am proud to say the library is now open and fully functional, with a ton of credit being given to the students who sat with me for hours putting color-coded stickers and numbers on each book and organizing them on the shelves. We have a lot of great titles (Nancy Drew, Harry Potter, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Babysitters Club, Goosebumps, and several classics) that I hope the students will enjoy, and I think they are appropriate to the English reading levels of most kids at the school.

I plan to start a reading club of some sort at the beginning of the next school year, in January. It would be difficult to start now because the students are already in the middle of taking their final exams, and then school is out for the holidays after the first week of December. I’ll be sure to keep you posted on how that goes!

On the first Friday of October, the high school had its annual Speech and Prize Day. I remember blogging about it last year, but I had forgotten to bring my camera! This day is sort of like a graduation ceremony for the Form 5 students. Who began their final exams the following Monday and are done with school the first week of November. Students from every grade who have excelled in every subject are also recognized and given prizes. It’s the absolute sweetest thing to hear a students’ name called, and see then shyly approach the podium to collect their prize, while in the meantime their proud mother is pushing through the crowd of parents and dancing through the stage area up to their child to greet and congratulate them. The traditional cultural dance teams perform at the event, along with choirs and other talented students, and several influential community members and honored guests attend. The head teacher and the head boy of the school both thanked me in their speeches for my work on the library, and the head teacher was very pleased to show off the renovations to the VIP guests. Speech Day is a really fun event for the community, and everyone (we’re talking 3000+ people) gets fed afterwards by the brave souls who have been working in the kitchen for 12 hours prior to lunch time!

Sidenote: While all of this had been happening, it has been SOFREAKINGHOT here in Swaziland. Overnight, winter simply decided her time was over, and handed things over to summer without much of a transition at all. We’re talking 110 degrees with no shade, air conditioning, and until two weeks ago, not even a fan. This summer has already been much hotter and more miserable than last, when the temperatures didn’t get this high until Christmas day.

In the coming weeks, I’m looking forward to the Peace Corps Halloween Party, our Senior Counsellor Training in preparations for GLOW Camp, and formally finishing up the library project. I’ll be posting the link to donate to our amazing wonderful, extremely valuable, super inspiring, way too fun GLOW Camp fund very soon! We have put a lot of effort into budgeting and rearranging our funding sources so that we only need to raise about half as much money as last year, and still plan on making camp bigger and better, so please consider contributing if you’re able to!

Sanalni kahle bamgani bami!

xoxo

Better late than never?

Okay, so I wrote this blog about a month ago and never had internet access to post it! So here you go. A very, very up-to-date one is coming as well! Sorry its been so long!

Wow! I’m the worst blogger ever. The past few months have been a combination of times when I have had zero access to internet and very little to report home, and others when I’ve been too busy bussing, training, flying, and visiting my favorite place in the whole world to blog!

Now that I’m back in the kingdom and things have settled down, I can share a bit of an update. At the end of May I attended Bushfire Festival here in Swaziland and had the time of my life. Nearly all the PCVs from this country, along with hundreds from South Africa. Mozambique, and Lesotho claimed a big area of the campground and partied together all weekend. Bushfire is an annual music and arts festival hosted at House on fire, and it has been rated one of the top 7 in Africa. My friends and I spent the weekend dancing, shopping, eating, chilling in the sun, and having a great time. A highlight for me was finally getting to see Cassper Nyovest. He’s the most popular hip hop artist in South Africa right now, and his music is inescapable here. I’ve learned to love it, and it was great to experience it live!

 

 

Bushfire was also a bit of a going away party for the group of volunteers that arrived in Swaziland in 2013. They began leaving the week after and have slowly been trickling out of the country ever since. In about a week, my group (G12) will truly be the veterans of Peace Corps Swaziland!

My library has books! They are in boxes, waiting to be inventoried and shelved, but they’re here! And that’s so exciting. The library set-up process has been moving slowly, as many things do in Swaziland. We were able to get the building painted on the inside and outside, and completely cleaned out. It’s looking great, and I can’t wait to get books on the shelves. The next step is for me to purchase the tables and chairs with the grant money, so we have a place to work while sorting the books. Unfortunately, August 7^th was the last day of the school term, so that process won’t start until early September.

In other work-related news, the GLOW grant is thisclose to being finished! Our original naïve wish that we would not have to fundraise this year is not going to come true, but we were able to significantly reduce the amount of money we need to raise by splitting the cost up among two different types of grants. We are now beginning to talk to speakers, vendors, and venues about putting on our two camps in April. More info to come on GLOW soon, as we will definitely need your support!

The month of June brought me two special gifts: baby hippos and food poisoning. A couple of volunteer friends and I went with our Swazi friends on a little self-guided tour of Hlane Royal National Park. For about $4 you are allowed to drive yourself through the parts of the park that do not have lions. We got to see hippos, rhinos, giraffes, and lots of impala and warthogs! It was a fun way to spend the afternoon.

 

 

 

 

The following weekend, I had the worse sickness I’ve ever experienced in my life. I will spare you all the details, but just imagine severe food poisoning hitting you in the middle of the night in a situation where you have no sink, toilet, or running water of any kind. I will probably never be the same!

At the end on June a new group of almost 50 volunteers arrived to begin their service. Their arrival marked me being here for an entire year. In some ways it feels like so much has happened that I have to have been here longer than that, but in others it is surreal to think this experience is half over. It seems like I’m just getting started with my work…which I am. And that life is just beginning to feel normal. I am extremely grateful that Peace Corps uses a two-year model for service, because it really does take the greater part of the first year to learn enough about local language, culture, and practical skills to even make you qualified to begin working with people for positive change. And then, once you feel comfortable in the context you’re working in, you still have to form the relationships that will lead you to identifying the needs of your community, and the people who are motivated to work with you on projects that address those needs. I know my second year is going to disappear too quickly, especially with visits from friends and family and trips I am planning to take. I plan on enjoying it while it lasts!

I GOT TO VISIT HOME IN JULY AND IT WAS AWESOME. I had the best two weeks back in Washington, and it was really, really hard to say goodbye again. It was great to spend time with family and friends, drink Starbucks, and eat sushi. I got to attend a party celebrating one of my very best friend’s recent marriage, and surprise another bride at her wedding! Being reminded of all the comforts and conveniences of home (dishwasher!!!!) was nice, and it will definitely help get me through the second year, knowing what I have to come back to.

 

Now I’m back on my homestead and finally readjusted to the time difference. I brought back some tortillas from home, and it is avocado season here, so I’ve been enjoying eating tacos…probably too many. Since school is out until September, I’m just planning to spend time helping my family with their produce from the garden, playing with the adorable babies on the homestead, visiting my bhuti’s wife at her salon in town, and roaming around Swaziland visiting other volunteers. My friend Sydney and her boyfriend, Shahar are going to be visiting at the end of the month for about 10 days, and I’m really excited about that! I get to show them around Swaziland and they can experience hut life for a few days. Their trip is also timed perfectly, as they’ll get to experience Umhlanga, famously known as the Reed Dance.

I know I say this always, but I really will try to be better about posting! Things are picking up, and I should have more to write about in the coming months. Sala kahle!