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