Mommy! Can I keep it! Please oh please oh PLEASE! :-)
During our drive through Hluhluwe Game Park many friends came out to say "hi". :-)
Monday, January 11, 2010
Happy Holidays!
Sunday 10th January 2010
3:16pm
Wow. Where to begin… as briefly mentioned in my last, short, post Camp was amazing. In the course of 2 weeks we gave over 70 kids the chance to be kids. As leaders we were up by about 5am and didn’t sleep til close to 11pm! I could have slept for ages, but alas, there were fun holiday activities to stay awake for. :)
On the 23rd I got to return to site for close to 18hours. In which time I unpacked, repacked, wrapped host family’s Christmas gifts, got a bit of sleep and then jumped back on a bus heading toward the first festive stop of vacation. I celebrated my Christmas Eve and Day with 9 wonderful volunteers in Nhlangano. We have a good relationship with a lady that works for another NGO, and she asked some volunteers to house-sit during the holidays. This meant we had a place to meet, relax, cook food, watch tv, and utilize running water!! Oh, the Christmas miracles!! I stayed in my pjs all Christmas day, we cooked an assortment of non-traditional but VERY American dishes, watched seasonal movies like The Holiday and Love Actually, opened Secret Santa presents, and received a plethora of calls from home throughout the day. And I believe it was a comparatively cool and pleasant day at around 80-85 degrees F in relation to the high 90s to 105 the previous days. :) “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas”… for maybe five minutes. Ha!
On Boxing day, 26th, we took off in public transportation across the Swaziland/South African border for the first time since our arrival. We (including the AWESOME group of Ali, Cameron, Brandon, Laura, Rachel, Tristan, and myself) rented two cars and were DRIVING toward the Indian Ocean! When I say “we” I mean the two people in our group that know how to drive a stick. Surprising tid bit: almost all vehicles in at least part of Africa are manuals. You can rent an automatic, but it costs a lot more. The freedom of having control of your transportation is … blissful. I think that first day we were giddy/ punch drunk with the excitement of cruising on our own schedule, with ROOM to move, and the prospect of zero buses/khumbis/delays/chickens/smelly and/or drunk people/etc in the transportation. Obviously we were an easy crowd to please.
Before reaching Mtubatuba, our town of residence for the first few nights, we drove through Hluhluwe Game Park. I got to see giraffes, water buffalo, zebras, rhinos, a small alligator, warthogs and many impala. It was a fun, couple hour, drive, and we left (found our way out of the maze that was the massive game park, aka. Jamangi :-P) with just enough time to find our way to the backpackers before it got dark. This happened to be Brandon’s birthday, so we went to one of the few restaurants in Mtubaba for a delicious Italian meal and then promptly crashed in our bunked, air conditioned haven.
Our main intention for staying in Mtubatuba (I really like the name) was its drivable proximity to St. Lucia. St. Lucia is a well known for being a beach front tourist trap… exactly what we wanted! The first day there we all sported our much missed bathing suites and proudly displayed our freakish “Peace Corps tans” (dark arms and feet, neon white everywhere else) on the St. Lucia beach. It was overcast, but that didn’t stop the UV rays from spotting us as easy targets! No worries, my SPF 70 was in tow and mine was not the highest SPF on the trip! How I missed the water! When first hitting the beach it reminded me a lot of Lake Michigan with slightly higher waves and different vegetation past the dunes. At one point Ali and I perused the beachfront and stumbled upon a sign to the effect of “Stay away from crocodiles and hippos”!! Then we saw in the middle of a river that meets the ocean a family of hippos poking their heads in and out of the water! (Thought of you, Shelby, but couldn’t get one in an envelope to the States, sorry :-P) The more I think about it, NOTHING like Lake Michigan. Ha ha.
A few meals in this leg of our trip were at restaurants, but most evenings we shopped for ingredients and cooked food at the hostel, which was also quite enjoyable. I was the resident popcorn maker on the trip, and my skills were utilized almost daily. :)
The following day I petted cheetahs!!! No joke! We drove north a bit to an African wild cat rehabilitation center. After a fascinating demonstration by a man we affectionately nicknamed “Krueger Joe”, who we at one point feared was about to be devoured by an angry male cheetah (literally not a part of the demonstration - I was praying for him), we paid a bit extra to love up two 6month old baby cheetahs. Definitely a highlight of the trip! They seemed particularly fond of suckling pointer fingers, so I can now state I have had my hand in a cheetah’s mouth! After a lunch of seafood pizza and sangria we decided to procure snorkel equipment for the following day, indulged in ice cream, and enjoyed an early evening back at the hostel.
The next morning came much too early. To safely snorkel at Cape Vidal, a beach/game park drive located just North of St. Lucia, you could only be in the water at low tides. During this particular part of the year, that meant two hours around 7am and 7pm. The park only allows 120 cars in at a time and we were told that to get in at this busy vacation season we would need to be at the park’s entrance at least 30min before it opened… 4:30am. It was well worth the groggy, caffeine necessary start. One of our group members lost his wedding ring while snorkeling in the Indian Ocean and miraculously an hour later another member found it! We saw many cool fishes, corals, and even massive ship wreck items all before 9am! By 10am we were driving through other parts of the game park, and by 11am we were enjoying a packed lunch at a picnic/braai area at a lookout point called Mission Rocks. Probably around 1am we were all passed out in the air conditioned room at the hostel completely spent from salt water, snorkel masks, rhino spotting, and a beer on the beach. :-) To not waste any opportunity to swim, we utilized the hostel’s pool and got ready for our next destination, Durban.
So what do 7 Americans do when they get into a big city for the first time in ½ a year? After getting lost (due to an awful lack of street signs) and finding our hostel we headed to a mall!! We eagerly consumed the most American style foods, burgers, beers, and malts and then bee lined it to the cinemas to purchase our movie tickets for the evening’s entertainment! FYI. There are NO movie theatres in the entire country of Swaziland, we were pretty psyched. After realizing just how out the popular media loop we were the girls insisted on seeing New Moon (nope, not ashamed to admit that) and the boys chose a movie none of us had ever heard of, Avitar. For the next while we wandered the Mecca of consumerism that so much reminded us of home, and lavished in the choices of products (mostly cheeses and home decor :-P) that we knew we couldn’t feasibly transport back to Swaziland. The movies, and massive amounts of popcorn were perfect in every way possible!
New Year’s Eve Day the girls spilt to tour the city of Durban while the guys chilled at the beach. We walked through markets, took the “People Mover” to Florida St. where we ran into some other Swazi PCVs, and I even saw a professional theatre! We tried to visit a museum and even thought about seeing a show, but sadly many things closed early for the holiday. No biggy, we ushered in the New Year (7hours before the New York ball dropped) at a restaurant called Tacozulu with champagne, music, friends, and James Bond decorations! It really was a blast. Then we went back to the hostel and I made popcorn! Welcome to 2010 in Africa!
We wanted to take full advantage of our final full day of vacation by hitting the beach. Unbeknownst to us, the New Years Day tradition in Durban is to go to the ocean, so it was rather crowded. Near a casino there was a more private beach, so we traveled there and enjoyed a few more hours at the soaking up the sun and waves. Most of us came out of the water with a few jelly-fish welts that stung pretty bad, but after spending ½ a year in a landlocked, drought tested country nothing was keeping us out of the water! A nice dinner and another movie (Sherlock Holmes) were enjoyed to cap off the first day of 2010.
As my Father later put it, we had to finish of our trip with “pizzazz”. I am not referring to the 8am McDonalds run that my friends insisted we do on our way out of town, but tragically, one of our cars got into a accident on the way back to Swaziland. I was in the front passenger seat of the car. Miraculously we all walked away from the accident without any major injuries. A couple, who we consider to be Angels, really helped us out and even took us to their house while we waited for Peace Corps vehicle to come pick us up. The next few days were spent in Mbabane at a backpackers making doubly for sure we were medically and emotionally alright. I assure everyone I am 100% okay, and would love to become a poster child for the public awareness campaign for wearing seatbelts!! That is how you end a vacation with a bang!!
Now I have been back to site for a few days. After being gone for so long and with other Americans, the first night was a bit of a shock. My already limited siSwati had escaped me and I truly felt the isolation of site for the first time. The following day, as I waited for transportation to a meeting that eventually was cancelled, everyone who passed asked when I had gotten back. The Babe (man) who was waiting with me at the siteshi (bus stop) told me that everyone missed me while I was gone because they “love” me. That made me feel wonderful, and I realized I had no reason to feel isolated. I had family and friends all over my community. I was truly “home” from a wonderful holiday vacation.
3:16pm
Wow. Where to begin… as briefly mentioned in my last, short, post Camp was amazing. In the course of 2 weeks we gave over 70 kids the chance to be kids. As leaders we were up by about 5am and didn’t sleep til close to 11pm! I could have slept for ages, but alas, there were fun holiday activities to stay awake for. :)
On the 23rd I got to return to site for close to 18hours. In which time I unpacked, repacked, wrapped host family’s Christmas gifts, got a bit of sleep and then jumped back on a bus heading toward the first festive stop of vacation. I celebrated my Christmas Eve and Day with 9 wonderful volunteers in Nhlangano. We have a good relationship with a lady that works for another NGO, and she asked some volunteers to house-sit during the holidays. This meant we had a place to meet, relax, cook food, watch tv, and utilize running water!! Oh, the Christmas miracles!! I stayed in my pjs all Christmas day, we cooked an assortment of non-traditional but VERY American dishes, watched seasonal movies like The Holiday and Love Actually, opened Secret Santa presents, and received a plethora of calls from home throughout the day. And I believe it was a comparatively cool and pleasant day at around 80-85 degrees F in relation to the high 90s to 105 the previous days. :) “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas”… for maybe five minutes. Ha!
On Boxing day, 26th, we took off in public transportation across the Swaziland/South African border for the first time since our arrival. We (including the AWESOME group of Ali, Cameron, Brandon, Laura, Rachel, Tristan, and myself) rented two cars and were DRIVING toward the Indian Ocean! When I say “we” I mean the two people in our group that know how to drive a stick. Surprising tid bit: almost all vehicles in at least part of Africa are manuals. You can rent an automatic, but it costs a lot more. The freedom of having control of your transportation is … blissful. I think that first day we were giddy/ punch drunk with the excitement of cruising on our own schedule, with ROOM to move, and the prospect of zero buses/khumbis/delays/chickens/smelly and/or drunk people/etc in the transportation. Obviously we were an easy crowd to please.
Before reaching Mtubatuba, our town of residence for the first few nights, we drove through Hluhluwe Game Park. I got to see giraffes, water buffalo, zebras, rhinos, a small alligator, warthogs and many impala. It was a fun, couple hour, drive, and we left (found our way out of the maze that was the massive game park, aka. Jamangi :-P) with just enough time to find our way to the backpackers before it got dark. This happened to be Brandon’s birthday, so we went to one of the few restaurants in Mtubaba for a delicious Italian meal and then promptly crashed in our bunked, air conditioned haven.
Our main intention for staying in Mtubatuba (I really like the name) was its drivable proximity to St. Lucia. St. Lucia is a well known for being a beach front tourist trap… exactly what we wanted! The first day there we all sported our much missed bathing suites and proudly displayed our freakish “Peace Corps tans” (dark arms and feet, neon white everywhere else) on the St. Lucia beach. It was overcast, but that didn’t stop the UV rays from spotting us as easy targets! No worries, my SPF 70 was in tow and mine was not the highest SPF on the trip! How I missed the water! When first hitting the beach it reminded me a lot of Lake Michigan with slightly higher waves and different vegetation past the dunes. At one point Ali and I perused the beachfront and stumbled upon a sign to the effect of “Stay away from crocodiles and hippos”!! Then we saw in the middle of a river that meets the ocean a family of hippos poking their heads in and out of the water! (Thought of you, Shelby, but couldn’t get one in an envelope to the States, sorry :-P) The more I think about it, NOTHING like Lake Michigan. Ha ha.
A few meals in this leg of our trip were at restaurants, but most evenings we shopped for ingredients and cooked food at the hostel, which was also quite enjoyable. I was the resident popcorn maker on the trip, and my skills were utilized almost daily. :)
The following day I petted cheetahs!!! No joke! We drove north a bit to an African wild cat rehabilitation center. After a fascinating demonstration by a man we affectionately nicknamed “Krueger Joe”, who we at one point feared was about to be devoured by an angry male cheetah (literally not a part of the demonstration - I was praying for him), we paid a bit extra to love up two 6month old baby cheetahs. Definitely a highlight of the trip! They seemed particularly fond of suckling pointer fingers, so I can now state I have had my hand in a cheetah’s mouth! After a lunch of seafood pizza and sangria we decided to procure snorkel equipment for the following day, indulged in ice cream, and enjoyed an early evening back at the hostel.
The next morning came much too early. To safely snorkel at Cape Vidal, a beach/game park drive located just North of St. Lucia, you could only be in the water at low tides. During this particular part of the year, that meant two hours around 7am and 7pm. The park only allows 120 cars in at a time and we were told that to get in at this busy vacation season we would need to be at the park’s entrance at least 30min before it opened… 4:30am. It was well worth the groggy, caffeine necessary start. One of our group members lost his wedding ring while snorkeling in the Indian Ocean and miraculously an hour later another member found it! We saw many cool fishes, corals, and even massive ship wreck items all before 9am! By 10am we were driving through other parts of the game park, and by 11am we were enjoying a packed lunch at a picnic/braai area at a lookout point called Mission Rocks. Probably around 1am we were all passed out in the air conditioned room at the hostel completely spent from salt water, snorkel masks, rhino spotting, and a beer on the beach. :-) To not waste any opportunity to swim, we utilized the hostel’s pool and got ready for our next destination, Durban.
So what do 7 Americans do when they get into a big city for the first time in ½ a year? After getting lost (due to an awful lack of street signs) and finding our hostel we headed to a mall!! We eagerly consumed the most American style foods, burgers, beers, and malts and then bee lined it to the cinemas to purchase our movie tickets for the evening’s entertainment! FYI. There are NO movie theatres in the entire country of Swaziland, we were pretty psyched. After realizing just how out the popular media loop we were the girls insisted on seeing New Moon (nope, not ashamed to admit that) and the boys chose a movie none of us had ever heard of, Avitar. For the next while we wandered the Mecca of consumerism that so much reminded us of home, and lavished in the choices of products (mostly cheeses and home decor :-P) that we knew we couldn’t feasibly transport back to Swaziland. The movies, and massive amounts of popcorn were perfect in every way possible!
New Year’s Eve Day the girls spilt to tour the city of Durban while the guys chilled at the beach. We walked through markets, took the “People Mover” to Florida St. where we ran into some other Swazi PCVs, and I even saw a professional theatre! We tried to visit a museum and even thought about seeing a show, but sadly many things closed early for the holiday. No biggy, we ushered in the New Year (7hours before the New York ball dropped) at a restaurant called Tacozulu with champagne, music, friends, and James Bond decorations! It really was a blast. Then we went back to the hostel and I made popcorn! Welcome to 2010 in Africa!
We wanted to take full advantage of our final full day of vacation by hitting the beach. Unbeknownst to us, the New Years Day tradition in Durban is to go to the ocean, so it was rather crowded. Near a casino there was a more private beach, so we traveled there and enjoyed a few more hours at the soaking up the sun and waves. Most of us came out of the water with a few jelly-fish welts that stung pretty bad, but after spending ½ a year in a landlocked, drought tested country nothing was keeping us out of the water! A nice dinner and another movie (Sherlock Holmes) were enjoyed to cap off the first day of 2010.
As my Father later put it, we had to finish of our trip with “pizzazz”. I am not referring to the 8am McDonalds run that my friends insisted we do on our way out of town, but tragically, one of our cars got into a accident on the way back to Swaziland. I was in the front passenger seat of the car. Miraculously we all walked away from the accident without any major injuries. A couple, who we consider to be Angels, really helped us out and even took us to their house while we waited for Peace Corps vehicle to come pick us up. The next few days were spent in Mbabane at a backpackers making doubly for sure we were medically and emotionally alright. I assure everyone I am 100% okay, and would love to become a poster child for the public awareness campaign for wearing seatbelts!! That is how you end a vacation with a bang!!
Now I have been back to site for a few days. After being gone for so long and with other Americans, the first night was a bit of a shock. My already limited siSwati had escaped me and I truly felt the isolation of site for the first time. The following day, as I waited for transportation to a meeting that eventually was cancelled, everyone who passed asked when I had gotten back. The Babe (man) who was waiting with me at the siteshi (bus stop) told me that everyone missed me while I was gone because they “love” me. That made me feel wonderful, and I realized I had no reason to feel isolated. I had family and friends all over my community. I was truly “home” from a wonderful holiday vacation.
The lovely girls having a cocktail before we enjoy New Moon like 13 year olds. Yay Durban!
Rachel and me waiting to see the Wild Cat demonstrations. :-)
My Babe is home for an extended holiday away from work in Jo'Burg. I caught him loving-up Thobile's baby boy. Adorable!!
The family was happy to have me home. We were sitting on the back steps of the house discussing our holidays!Friday, December 18, 2009
Fallen Off Face of Earth!
Hey Everyone! I am in the PCV office right now and quickly wanting to shout out to let you all know I am alive and well! The past few weeks I have been helping out with a Orphan and Vulnerable Children's Camp. It has been amazing! The kids are so SOOOOOO happy and it fills me with joy. I have almost lost my voice from screaming, cheering, and singing. I sound like I have smoked 2 packs a day for 40 years :) The second camp ends next Tuesday and I will certainly want to sleep for a few days straight.
Site is still amazing, but I have sadly been away from it for a while. After camp I am heading on a much needed mini-low budget- vacation to South Africa. Myself and other volunteers are meeting in Swaziland for X-mas and then going to Cozy Bay and then Durban for New Years!!! Yay!
Happy Holidays Everyone!! I probably won't get to a computer again until 2010 so know that I am safe, happy, and missing the snow.... NOT! :) Huge hugs friends!
Site is still amazing, but I have sadly been away from it for a while. After camp I am heading on a much needed mini-low budget- vacation to South Africa. Myself and other volunteers are meeting in Swaziland for X-mas and then going to Cozy Bay and then Durban for New Years!!! Yay!
Happy Holidays Everyone!! I probably won't get to a computer again until 2010 so know that I am safe, happy, and missing the snow.... NOT! :) Huge hugs friends!
Monday, November 9, 2009
Never Too Old to Finger Paint :-P
Saturday 7 November 2009
5:55pm
So, obviously the last blog did not get posted as expected. When I went to the internet café it was closed, even though the sign they should be otherwise. I haven’t been in town since. I had a blast painting the map at the orphanage, though! The kids were adorable and I even impressed myself with my ability to draw the general shapes of countries on a wall. Granted, Justine and I may have solved some border disputes or, more likely, created many new ones, but it looks pretty darn accurate. :)
That Sunday I was planning on getting back to my community via the 1:30pm bus, “Zinyane”. But, as I am constantly learning, no day in Africa will turn out exactly as planned in the morning. This day’s schedule was changed by the internet café being closed and the bus not showing up. Yup, there I was with my bags and groceries, ready to get home, and the bus never came! Also, within ten minutes the sky went from sunny to a downpour. Luckily, I was still with Justine, and we were already under the protection of the bus rank when the rains started. The sky cleared up just as we were making contingency plans. Now usually I would have just taken a khumbi to the next small town, Hluti (where my PO box is), and gotten on another khumbi that would drop me about 3k away from my house. Being a Sunday, already 2pm, and having a large load of recently purchased goods, I was never going to be able to make it home before dark. Walking in the dark is just NOT HAPPENING!! Instead, I went home with Justine, which proved to be the best decision all weekend.
We barely made it to her homestead when the sky opened up and produced the biggest storm either of us has ever experienced! Sitting on her bed we watched as rain came through under her door and the wind blew her roof (corrugated iron) up and down at least 5-6inches! With the rain beating on the tin roof and the thunder booming every 10-20seconds, we had to yell at each other to be heard. I would guess this lasted about 20-30minutes. After it calmed down we discussed how surreal that was. It felt like we were one of those “scary” rides at Disney where everything shakes, there are loud noises, and water keeps misting. Then we walked outside to see the damage. Her family’s thatched kitchen roof had completely collapsed, some of the corn was flattened, and the “main” houses tin roof had been pulled up along one side. We later found multiple power lines down and some power line poles snapped in half, along with massive trees uprooted! These were tornado-like winds and I was sitting in a hut during it! I called my family as soon as the cell phone network was back up, and they were fine. My homestead had gotten the rain but not the high winds. Phew.
After surviving the storm, what did we do? We made POPCORN and ate all of the cold food I had bought in town but would not survive without the electricity dependant refrigeration. Mmmm. :) All in all it was an enjoyable evening… after God’s heart-pounding Disney ride.
The following day, while waiting for the 1:30pm bus that I had wanted to take the previous day, I helped Justine paint the bus waiting “room” (a cement bench with roof) across from the school she teaches at. It states, “Abstinence is 100% effective against pregnancy, HIV, and STIs. SEX CAN WAIT”. The education system only officially supports teaching abstinence, which in some communities is hard for volunteers to break through. While painting, we talked about making this a much larger mass media project. There are two of these waiting rooms every kilometer or so on this main road between Lavumisa (South-Eastern corner of the country) and Nhlangano (South-Western corner). Any slogans, stats, drawings, education visuals health related (HIV/AIDS, TB, hygiene, etc) could be seen by TONS of people each day! Needless to say, we are getting a bit excited about making this happen. We will be turning to our communities for ideas and artistic talent. No doubt we would love any ideas you have too! My “coloring inside the lines” skill won’t quite be enough. :-P Thanks to a bus not coming, I may have my first PC project!
Another picture of Bondiswa! Although in pink, he is an adorable baby boy.
This is Gabi, my language tutor, running partner, neighbor, and my friend. She is sitting in my hut after a language lesson; we must have been looking at my computer.
Here is the map of the world in a close to final stage of the process. We still needed put a couple more coats of paint on the lighter colors, outline them in black marker, and label them. I certainly learned some geography during this project! Now hopefully the kids will too!
This is the bus waiting "room" that Justine and I painted. Now finished, it looks shnazzy... and educational!
5:55pm
So, obviously the last blog did not get posted as expected. When I went to the internet café it was closed, even though the sign they should be otherwise. I haven’t been in town since. I had a blast painting the map at the orphanage, though! The kids were adorable and I even impressed myself with my ability to draw the general shapes of countries on a wall. Granted, Justine and I may have solved some border disputes or, more likely, created many new ones, but it looks pretty darn accurate. :)
That Sunday I was planning on getting back to my community via the 1:30pm bus, “Zinyane”. But, as I am constantly learning, no day in Africa will turn out exactly as planned in the morning. This day’s schedule was changed by the internet café being closed and the bus not showing up. Yup, there I was with my bags and groceries, ready to get home, and the bus never came! Also, within ten minutes the sky went from sunny to a downpour. Luckily, I was still with Justine, and we were already under the protection of the bus rank when the rains started. The sky cleared up just as we were making contingency plans. Now usually I would have just taken a khumbi to the next small town, Hluti (where my PO box is), and gotten on another khumbi that would drop me about 3k away from my house. Being a Sunday, already 2pm, and having a large load of recently purchased goods, I was never going to be able to make it home before dark. Walking in the dark is just NOT HAPPENING!! Instead, I went home with Justine, which proved to be the best decision all weekend.
We barely made it to her homestead when the sky opened up and produced the biggest storm either of us has ever experienced! Sitting on her bed we watched as rain came through under her door and the wind blew her roof (corrugated iron) up and down at least 5-6inches! With the rain beating on the tin roof and the thunder booming every 10-20seconds, we had to yell at each other to be heard. I would guess this lasted about 20-30minutes. After it calmed down we discussed how surreal that was. It felt like we were one of those “scary” rides at Disney where everything shakes, there are loud noises, and water keeps misting. Then we walked outside to see the damage. Her family’s thatched kitchen roof had completely collapsed, some of the corn was flattened, and the “main” houses tin roof had been pulled up along one side. We later found multiple power lines down and some power line poles snapped in half, along with massive trees uprooted! These were tornado-like winds and I was sitting in a hut during it! I called my family as soon as the cell phone network was back up, and they were fine. My homestead had gotten the rain but not the high winds. Phew.
After surviving the storm, what did we do? We made POPCORN and ate all of the cold food I had bought in town but would not survive without the electricity dependant refrigeration. Mmmm. :) All in all it was an enjoyable evening… after God’s heart-pounding Disney ride.
The following day, while waiting for the 1:30pm bus that I had wanted to take the previous day, I helped Justine paint the bus waiting “room” (a cement bench with roof) across from the school she teaches at. It states, “Abstinence is 100% effective against pregnancy, HIV, and STIs. SEX CAN WAIT”. The education system only officially supports teaching abstinence, which in some communities is hard for volunteers to break through. While painting, we talked about making this a much larger mass media project. There are two of these waiting rooms every kilometer or so on this main road between Lavumisa (South-Eastern corner of the country) and Nhlangano (South-Western corner). Any slogans, stats, drawings, education visuals health related (HIV/AIDS, TB, hygiene, etc) could be seen by TONS of people each day! Needless to say, we are getting a bit excited about making this happen. We will be turning to our communities for ideas and artistic talent. No doubt we would love any ideas you have too! My “coloring inside the lines” skill won’t quite be enough. :-P Thanks to a bus not coming, I may have my first PC project!
Another picture of Bondiswa! Although in pink, he is an adorable baby boy.
This is Gabi, my language tutor, running partner, neighbor, and my friend. She is sitting in my hut after a language lesson; we must have been looking at my computer.
Here is the map of the world in a close to final stage of the process. We still needed put a couple more coats of paint on the lighter colors, outline them in black marker, and label them. I certainly learned some geography during this project! Now hopefully the kids will too!This is the bus waiting "room" that Justine and I painted. Now finished, it looks shnazzy... and educational!Busy Little Beaver
Friday 23 October 2009
11:33am
Hey Everyone! It has been CRAZY busy for me here the past couple of weeks. As Nov. 17th (date of In-Service Training and the end of our integration period) gets closer and closer, I am finding more and more meetings to attend, informants to interview, and homesteads to visit. In Nov. I am suppose to have all of this information compiled in a Community Assessment Report, which will be turned into PC and given to all of the NGOs and community leaders participating in the development of my area. It feels like I am doing a college research paper, except it does not have to be in APA/MLA format! :)
Sadly, I will have to make this entry short. I decided to finally go into town only about a ½ hour ago. Another volunteer has asked me to go into Nhlangano and help paint a world map on an orphanage. Yes, I did forewarn her that I lack any skill necessary to produce visual art of any kind, but she said that I would be fine coloring inside the lines. :) This gives me a nice chance to have a weekend away from site, bond with another volunteer, and play with kids and paint! Yay!
Some fun news on the hut-front, my sisi had her baby! Bondiswa is an adorable, healthy, little baby boy. My sisi left on Sunday morning via public transportation, had the child at 6:30pm, and by 3pm Monday she was getting off the public bus at our home, baby in tow. Also, other than hospital staff, she was alone during the delivery and hospital stay! According to her, it is actually against hospital policy to have family with you during delivery! She kept Make informed by calling the cell phone, and we had a fun time bonding trying to discuss Thobile and her baby without anyone on the homestead who could speak English. My siSwati is coming along, but not that well. :)
Well I have to go catch a 1pm bus to catch a khumbi to catch another khumbi to this orphanage…pheew… so I better wrap this up for now. Wish me luck with the painting! Hugs!
This is my new nephew, Bondiswa, only a couple days after he was born and my sisi, Thobile. He is so stinkin' cute!!!
I am sporting my new woven grass hat that I bought at the boMake market in my community. This is my armor against the crazy strong sun here. This is the inside of my hut... I should have picked-up before taking the picture. :-P
View of the back of the main house and the beautiful bush that is in our "back yard". Beware though, that bush has HUGE thorns! The open door is to Makes room and the blue door on the left goes into the kitchen.
Here is the front view of the homestead from the gate. My house is on the right, then the main house, then the girls house (behind the tree).
Hut sweet home! I am standing on the porch of the main house, which has two doors. One goes into a living room area, and the other goes into the boys' room.
11:33am
Hey Everyone! It has been CRAZY busy for me here the past couple of weeks. As Nov. 17th (date of In-Service Training and the end of our integration period) gets closer and closer, I am finding more and more meetings to attend, informants to interview, and homesteads to visit. In Nov. I am suppose to have all of this information compiled in a Community Assessment Report, which will be turned into PC and given to all of the NGOs and community leaders participating in the development of my area. It feels like I am doing a college research paper, except it does not have to be in APA/MLA format! :)
Sadly, I will have to make this entry short. I decided to finally go into town only about a ½ hour ago. Another volunteer has asked me to go into Nhlangano and help paint a world map on an orphanage. Yes, I did forewarn her that I lack any skill necessary to produce visual art of any kind, but she said that I would be fine coloring inside the lines. :) This gives me a nice chance to have a weekend away from site, bond with another volunteer, and play with kids and paint! Yay!
Some fun news on the hut-front, my sisi had her baby! Bondiswa is an adorable, healthy, little baby boy. My sisi left on Sunday morning via public transportation, had the child at 6:30pm, and by 3pm Monday she was getting off the public bus at our home, baby in tow. Also, other than hospital staff, she was alone during the delivery and hospital stay! According to her, it is actually against hospital policy to have family with you during delivery! She kept Make informed by calling the cell phone, and we had a fun time bonding trying to discuss Thobile and her baby without anyone on the homestead who could speak English. My siSwati is coming along, but not that well. :)
Well I have to go catch a 1pm bus to catch a khumbi to catch another khumbi to this orphanage…pheew… so I better wrap this up for now. Wish me luck with the painting! Hugs!
This is my new nephew, Bondiswa, only a couple days after he was born and my sisi, Thobile. He is so stinkin' cute!!!
I am sporting my new woven grass hat that I bought at the boMake market in my community. This is my armor against the crazy strong sun here. This is the inside of my hut... I should have picked-up before taking the picture. :-P 
View of the back of the main house and the beautiful bush that is in our "back yard". Beware though, that bush has HUGE thorns! The open door is to Makes room and the blue door on the left goes into the kitchen.
Here is the front view of the homestead from the gate. My house is on the right, then the main house, then the girls house (behind the tree).
Hut sweet home! I am standing on the porch of the main house, which has two doors. One goes into a living room area, and the other goes into the boys' room.Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Pictures & Mail Call!
I have been getting a few questions about the types of wild life that I have encountered. Monkeys are by far the most interesting. All of the big animals are protected in the National Gamer Reserves, which I certainly hope to visit after integration (off of hut arrest :P). Scary note: I killed a baby scorpion in my room a few days ago. Yikes. 'Tis the season. :-/ 
Here is a better picture of the traditional attire I wore at my swear-in ceremony at the end of August. Both the bottom and top pieces of fabric are tied on. Happily, we had no wardrobe malfunctions that day.
This is my first Swazi home in Embasheni and the cuties that were always around. My hut now is round with thatched roofing, but I have yet to take a good picture, sorry. I'll get on that soon. 
A fun self-timed photo (thanks to training by Kevan :-P) of some crazy PCVs during training. Surprisingly, the couch did not break.
The bugs are HUGE!!! All insects seems to be at least 2-3 times larger than they should be, but I haven't found one that was too big to kill with a shoe. Once that day arrives... I'm leaving!! Haha.So I have yet again changed my mailing address. No worries if you have recently sent something to Matata, because I will still get it. Hluti is just a bit closer and easier to get to. Here it is:
Darryn Crocker, PCV
US Peace Corps
PO Box 158
Hluti, S409
Swaziland
AFRICA
Wrestling (WWE style) with Christianity
Sunday 4 October 2009
6:22pm
As I write this blog post, I can hear my family cheering and laughing in the house. They are watching the second most popular sport in Swaziland (just shy of soccer): American “if these moves were real we would be dead 50 times a night” Wrestling (WWE). In training, we were warned never to question the validity of this “sport” because we would instantly be ostracized and maybe even exiled from our communities! Well, now yours truly has to integrate into a culture that LOVES wrestling. By the end of my 2 years I will not only know how to fight HIV/AIDS in a developing county, I will also be able to name all the men, wearing less fabric than my bikini over their gloss spritzed muscles, who can “pile drive” and “nut crush” and “clothes line” and … whatever. Yay for me. ** I apologize to any readers who enjoy WWE and are annoyed or upset at my sarcasm … sort of.** :-)
COMPLETELY different topic, but somehow able to be worked into the title, is Christianity. I have been having difficulty wrapping my head around the religiosity of my community and the majority of Swaziland. Please, in no way do I want to sound or be deemed judgmental. I just want to share this struggle. Approaching the topics of religion and politics can be considered taboo in America, depending on your company. In Swaziland, approaching the topic of politics can and will land you in jail if it against the King, but religion is as much a “small talk” topic as the weather is. For example, while walking with my sisi a few men, purely in greeting, asked if we were “saved”. Just shy of 100% of Swazis are Christian. Almost everyone’s (including the youth) favorite music is gospel. Although the community I was raised in had little diversity when it came to religion, and was mostly Christian, this is a somewhat shocking experience. The best way I can explain it is to say that I always feel like it is “over the top”. Personally, it is so present in everything that it seems like an energizing, fun routine or social expectation.
Being Christian myself, I thought this would be a wonderful entry point for me to bring up and justify safe practices regarding HIV/AIDs! Surprisingly and very frustratingly, this is not always the case. Having multiple sex partners, both in and out of marriage, is a contributing factor to the spread of HIV. Definitely not Christian!! But I have heard people who attempt to justify promiscuous actions based on their “Swazi culture” (traditionally polygamous), even though promiscuity does not follow Christianity OR a true polygamy. Pre-marital sex is anti-Christian, yet to get a woman pregnant out of wed-lock is more common than not. It is like a step in the courting process, sort of equivalent to an engagement ring. It lays claim for a possible future “union”. Homosexuality is against the law and punishable under that law, but faithlessness/adultery is a non-spoken social norm. Being inundated with gospel music, 3-5 hour church services, and salvation bus conversations could energize and boost my faith, but instead it leaves me struggling to sort out the oxymoron of “cultural Christianity”.
On a lighter note: I would like to close this entry with a verbal Polaroid. The other day there was a moment that I soooo wished was captured on film, but alas, no camera in sight. Thus, with my limited writing skills, I will attempt to paint you the picture. One of my two older female siblings has a 6 year old girl and a 7mon old baby boy. Both are a handful and constant attention seekers, so I, being a dutiful Aunt (“Make Lomcane” in siSwati = Small Mother) help feed their fire. On this occasion I volunteered to carry and walk the baby. I did it Swazi style – on my back and tied on with a blanket. :-) After we collected my laundry off the line and attempted to help my Make shuck the dried corn (making me feel rather domestic), the dog jumped up on my leg and I petted him behind the ears. SNAPSHOT!! There is my perfect family portrait, or for some reason that is what crossed my mind at the time. Yes, it has occurred to me that this shot has some flaws. It is minus 1 husband, has a child quite obviously stolen, and my bhuti would cry if I tried to claim his dog, but come on - work with me here. :-) It seems to me like a borrowed and pieced together picture of a possible future self. Yikes! Haha.
Well, thanks for reading my rants and tangents. Sorry to those who can’t follow my random train of thought, and even greater apology to those who can! :-P Free virtual hugs for all!
6:22pm
As I write this blog post, I can hear my family cheering and laughing in the house. They are watching the second most popular sport in Swaziland (just shy of soccer): American “if these moves were real we would be dead 50 times a night” Wrestling (WWE). In training, we were warned never to question the validity of this “sport” because we would instantly be ostracized and maybe even exiled from our communities! Well, now yours truly has to integrate into a culture that LOVES wrestling. By the end of my 2 years I will not only know how to fight HIV/AIDS in a developing county, I will also be able to name all the men, wearing less fabric than my bikini over their gloss spritzed muscles, who can “pile drive” and “nut crush” and “clothes line” and … whatever. Yay for me. ** I apologize to any readers who enjoy WWE and are annoyed or upset at my sarcasm … sort of.** :-)
COMPLETELY different topic, but somehow able to be worked into the title, is Christianity. I have been having difficulty wrapping my head around the religiosity of my community and the majority of Swaziland. Please, in no way do I want to sound or be deemed judgmental. I just want to share this struggle. Approaching the topics of religion and politics can be considered taboo in America, depending on your company. In Swaziland, approaching the topic of politics can and will land you in jail if it against the King, but religion is as much a “small talk” topic as the weather is. For example, while walking with my sisi a few men, purely in greeting, asked if we were “saved”. Just shy of 100% of Swazis are Christian. Almost everyone’s (including the youth) favorite music is gospel. Although the community I was raised in had little diversity when it came to religion, and was mostly Christian, this is a somewhat shocking experience. The best way I can explain it is to say that I always feel like it is “over the top”. Personally, it is so present in everything that it seems like an energizing, fun routine or social expectation.
Being Christian myself, I thought this would be a wonderful entry point for me to bring up and justify safe practices regarding HIV/AIDs! Surprisingly and very frustratingly, this is not always the case. Having multiple sex partners, both in and out of marriage, is a contributing factor to the spread of HIV. Definitely not Christian!! But I have heard people who attempt to justify promiscuous actions based on their “Swazi culture” (traditionally polygamous), even though promiscuity does not follow Christianity OR a true polygamy. Pre-marital sex is anti-Christian, yet to get a woman pregnant out of wed-lock is more common than not. It is like a step in the courting process, sort of equivalent to an engagement ring. It lays claim for a possible future “union”. Homosexuality is against the law and punishable under that law, but faithlessness/adultery is a non-spoken social norm. Being inundated with gospel music, 3-5 hour church services, and salvation bus conversations could energize and boost my faith, but instead it leaves me struggling to sort out the oxymoron of “cultural Christianity”.
On a lighter note: I would like to close this entry with a verbal Polaroid. The other day there was a moment that I soooo wished was captured on film, but alas, no camera in sight. Thus, with my limited writing skills, I will attempt to paint you the picture. One of my two older female siblings has a 6 year old girl and a 7mon old baby boy. Both are a handful and constant attention seekers, so I, being a dutiful Aunt (“Make Lomcane” in siSwati = Small Mother) help feed their fire. On this occasion I volunteered to carry and walk the baby. I did it Swazi style – on my back and tied on with a blanket. :-) After we collected my laundry off the line and attempted to help my Make shuck the dried corn (making me feel rather domestic), the dog jumped up on my leg and I petted him behind the ears. SNAPSHOT!! There is my perfect family portrait, or for some reason that is what crossed my mind at the time. Yes, it has occurred to me that this shot has some flaws. It is minus 1 husband, has a child quite obviously stolen, and my bhuti would cry if I tried to claim his dog, but come on - work with me here. :-) It seems to me like a borrowed and pieced together picture of a possible future self. Yikes! Haha.
Well, thanks for reading my rants and tangents. Sorry to those who can’t follow my random train of thought, and even greater apology to those who can! :-P Free virtual hugs for all!
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