Making Mud Pies/Walls

February 25th, 2010
Making Mud Pies/Walls
I don’t believe I have written before about my work with the community support group. I have become a member of a HIV +/- support group started by World Vision. Using my American perceptions, I pictured the support group to be a great psychosocially healthy experience where individuals sat in a circle and shared their experiences, challenges, knowledge, and resources (and if your mind also went to the musical RENT – singing about it :-P). My group has a different definition of support: financial. I have been told by other volunteers that this is a common focus of almost all such groups. People don’t wish to join a group that won’t provide them with some type of food or income generation. Not to fear though, I am also told that once the business aspects of the group are solidified, people have been more receptive to psychosocial discussions and education led by the volunteer! So, short of getting them singing, I hope in time I can assist the group in more than physical labor. Although, this is what I was doing when creating the story worthy moment (and pictures) I want to share in this entry. :-)
Every Saturday morning a group of about 6-12 women and 1 man (1 of only 2 males in the group) gather to continue to construct the chicken coop that the group has decided will be its income generation project. Previous Saturdays I have joined the women on their 20min track out to the woods to hack down some small trees as poles. I have to admit I was not naturally talented at this task, especially when they insisted I close my eyes because the sap is thought to cause blindness. Carrying the trees/poles on my head or shoulders was also a bit tricky to master, but after finding the balancing point it is not too difficult. A moment I wish I had had a camera for, though, was when I produced my membership contribution to the project: a live chicken. My Make (also a member) and I walked to the meeting together that day. I had on a baby blue baseball cap, salmon colored long sleeve sun shirt, and brown capris with a lihiya (long colorful fabric) wrapped around my taboo pants. I was a funny site to begin with. Now add to this comic picture a black live chicken under one arm and a 2 meter stick in the other! :-) We were quite the pair walking down the dirt road that day.
Somehow I have digressed from the story at hand! My most recent visit to the project, 2/13/10, started as they usually do… me completely clueless of what is happening and how I can possibly help. Behind the stick structure with a tin roof that has been constructed from our previous trips to the woods, a few women start digging up the earth and putting soil into a wheelbarrow. I think, “I can do that!” and grab myself a tool. This, as does everything else that involves me working, shocks all of the Swazis I in my presence. Many say, “Uyakwati!” which means “You know how!” Anyway, after a quite the pile of soil as been moved from its home behind the coop to the front, a bucket of water is poured on it and a few women take their shoes off and start mixing it with their feet!! Heck yeah! I was all about the mud stomping! My shoes quickly came off and I dug my toes into the gushy, mucky, probably bug infested natural goo. Laughter immediately ensued from the women and myself! A scene from “A Walk in the Clouds” came to mind and “Crush the grapes! Crush the grapes! Crush the grapes!” musically repeated itself over and over again. :-P
The mud that we were so gracefully creating (sarcasm alert – I almost slipped multiple times!), was slapped up against the stick walls as a plaster. I now know how to make the stick and mud structures that a large percentage of my community lives in. It was an interesting experience, and luckily I had my camera on me for it! Hopefully the project will be completed in a month… maybe two… and then I will try to get everyone to set a bit of time aside at the monthly meetings to discuss health related topics of their choosing. Right now I am enjoying the physical activity, the bonding opportunities with my neighbors, and an experience that allows me to finally put my childhood mud pie making skills to good use!

Groundhog's Day!

So, you know I wouldn't be me if I didn't celebrate Groundhog's Day no matter where I was in the world. This Swaziland adventure is no exception! I was able to have a friend over, make tacos (big accomplishment in Swaziland), and talk to some amazing friends and family from the States! To start what I know will become yearly festivities amongst my volunteer friends I wrote an article for our post's monthly journal called the "SoJo". With my Mother's help on historical research, and a few international telephone interviews with Phil, I wrote the following. Enjoy and again, a VERY HAPPY GROUNDHOGS DAY from Swaziland!


SoJo's Official Weather Report
My morning ritual of sweeping the hut, a “refreshing” bucket bath, followed by breakfast has many times been accompanied by 93.9FM English Channel out of Mbabane. I was first introduced to this station by a community member who informed me that just after 6am and then again at 7am I could be informed about the day’s weather. This discovery made me very excited because, until then, my sisi was the closest I had to a weather girl, and her “glance to the sky” predictions were not always the most accurate. After only a few days of listening to the radio, though, I began to distrust the validity of the forecast. When there was a “very good chance of showers in the afternoon”, my 3pm sky would be cloudless. Their high temperature readings for Big Bend would be estimated at around 30-32 degrees Celsius, when my little thermometer was getting a reading of 40.6 degrees Celsius in the morning shade. My favorite was when they talked about cool and rainy conditions throughout the course of the day and then as an afterthought tagged on the line “…for the Western part of the country”. I guess I shouldn’t complain about the English channel forgetting to report about the weather at my site. For the past few months the lowveld has experienced HOT and DRY conditions pretty much day in and day out, but I believe there has to be a more reliable weather source out there…

Oh boy there is! In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania there is the world’s smallest and furriest weather forecaster known to all as Phil. I have been informed by highly reputable and reliable sources (my Mother & friends) that on February 2nd, 2010, Groundhog’s Day, he made the prognostication that the northern hemisphere will experience six more weeks of winter. I have taken his amazing wisdom and scientific expertise and translated it to our very own Swaziland. Thus, due to him seeing his shadow and relaying this to the Inner Council on Gobbler’s Knob in “Groundhogese”, we will have six more weeks of summer. Lowveld will continue to be hot and dry, Highveld will continue to be rainy, and Midveld will continue to be juuuuuust right. The Groundhog decrees, thus it shall be.

For the skeptics and/or genus discriminating few who believe that the Groundhog should not be allowed in the field of weather prediction, I would like to inform you that Phil has had a 100% accuracy rate since his first public prediction in 1887! In the 1700s his unique skill was recognized in his American ancestors by the German settlers who believed, as many Europeans did, that the immerging of hibernating animals was an omen that spring was soon to arrive. In that time and for centuries before, February 2nd was not dedicated to the amazingness of the groundhog, but was instead celebrated as Candlemas Day. On this religious holiday the custom was for clergy to bless candles and distribute them amongst the people. Being the halfway mark between winter and spring, the weather on that day was also observed and a prediction was made. According to an old Scotch couplet, “If Candlemas Day is bright and clear, There’ll be two winters in the year”, and an old English song states, “If Candlemas be fair and bright, Winter has another flight. If Candlemas brings clouds and rain, Winter will not come again”.

In summary, if the weather is cloudy on this auspicious day, Phil will know that spring is around the corner and stay awake. If the weather is sunny, as it was this year, Phil will see his shadow and decide to hit the snooze button for another 6 week nap to avoid the wintery weather that will surely come. You really can’t get a more experienced, knowledgeable weather forecaster than Phil. If you still don’t believe me, listen to 93.9FM at 6am or 7am and your faith in the groundhog will grow as you realize the humans have no clue.

Their “American Swazi”

About two weeks ago I got the hair portion of a complete Swazi makeover. I decided it would be fun to have some friends in the community braid extensions into my hair. They informed me that I should buy 3 packets of the “gold” color and that it would only take 2 hours, at the most. They worked from 3pm and were not finished until around 8:30pm! My head was extremely sore that night, but by the next day my scalp had resigned to the fact that it was now constantly under pressure and became blissfully numb. The style they said I was getting is called, “Fish Tails”. I will let my pictures tell the rest of the story.





Getting started. Ouch ouch ouch!

Throughout the process, which was taking place behind my friend's house, many people came to join the Zodwa Hair Braiding Party! As you can see the synthetic hair on my lap looked VERY different before it was put into my hair, which made me a bit nervous about the outcome. I was fully prepared to look ridiculous! Ha!
My friend Khuli (on left) set up my "appointment" with Swazi (on right), and was trying to explain that I would be able to style my extensions many different ways. Later on she ended up helping braid my hair because it was taking so long!
Finished! This is one of the styles. I actually think it looks kind of cool! Awesome. :-P
This is how I wear it most often. Many people ask if it is hotter now with all of that extra weight. Truly, it is actually a bit cooler when I have it up like this. It has pulled all of the hair away from my scalp (and some OUT of my scalp :-/).

My friends now tell me that I have become their “American Swazi”. I am told the braids can last up to 2 months in Swazi hair, but I will probably need to take it out sooner. :-P

Boys Will Be Boys, Girls Will Be Girls, Zodwa Will Be Both!

Monday, February 8th 2010
6:44 pm

A week or two ago I accompanied Make to assist in the building of the new secondary school about an hour walk from my homestead. She informed me that we were putting up the roof portion of the structure. I was clad in my “working skirt” ready to jump into some good physical labor. When we arrived on the scene there was one man pecking at the work of a cross beam with about four teenage boys watching him. The construction site consisted of a little 3x3m tin storage room, a JoJo tank (large water storage unit with a tap), and a the shell of a 3 room cement block building with some wood crossbeams in place.
When I asked how I could help, a small bucket of dishes were produced from the storage room and I was told I could wash them. Hmmmm… not quite what I was thinking, but if it helps, why not? A bit later my Make and a few other women who showed up left to buy some more maize meal for a lunch I was just realizing was going to be made at the site. I sat and talked while I waited for what I thought was going to be the start of the construction. Except for the one man, that’s what everyone else was doing… waiting.
About an hour later things really got hoppin’… sort of. A goat was produced and every man and boy was busy butchering it, even the one man who was somewhat working earlier. I was in charge of cutting vegetables for the soup/sauce that would be put over the liphalishi (cooked maize meal in the consistency of really thick, dry mashed potatoes). When the men were finished with the goat it was brought back to the three legged pots placed over the fires and they started back on the building at just about the same pace. I was then told I was to boil the meat (pretty much the only way meat is prepared here). At this point it finally hit me. I was not there to help build but to cook!! They couldn’t grasp that I was definitely more skilled and experienced with construction than with cooking, and any mention of me helping the men brought laughter to all. All but me… I wanted to see some progress made on that building, which was not really happening!
Once the food was finished, around 1pm, it was also declared the end of the work day! I helped dish up the food onto plates while the men went into a meeting about the finishing of the school. A Make handed me two plates to take into the room for the men. I would be lying if this didn’t irk me a little… ok, it irked me a lot! I was not allowed to help the men build (many of whom didn’t really do anything) and then I had to serve them with a culturally appropriate, respectful, slight bow!
This situation is a great example of how difficult it is to balance the need and want of a volunteer to be culturally integrated into their community, while at the same time really wanting to show cultural diversity and equality amongst the genders. In hindsight, I may have handled things a bit differently, but I don’t really know how. Without understanding a lot of what is being discussed in siSwati, I have usually followed the lead of others during community events like this. This day it so happened to be my Make. All other things aside, it was a really great time for me to bond with my host Mother over boiled meat and intestines. :-P If that building is left up to those men, though, it won’t be done for years!
Another, semi-related event occurred the last time I biked to Brandon and Laura’s to join them for a World Vision meeting. When I greeted a boy who was walking on the street he responded with “Yebo, Bhuti”. “Yebo” means “yes” and is the proper response, but “bhuti” means “brother” and should have been “sisi” or “sister”!! The song from West Side Story immediately jumped into my head, “I feel pretty, oh so pretty. I feel pretty, and witty, and gay”! Of course I was a sweaty mess, with shorts, shades, and helmet on, but a boy, geeze!! :-P I then got to thinking about how many girls I have seen riding bikes in my community… zero. The few times I see bikes in my community they are being ridden by men our older boys. When I asked my sisi if girls are allowed to ride bikes, she said that they know how they just don’t do it. Again, Zodwa is breaking the common gender roles!
Now that I am pretty firmly accepted into the community, I may even start wearing pants ever so often! Gasp! Actually, as far as traditional gender attire goes, my community is a bit more modern then other rural areas I have heard of. Maybe 5-10% of younger women wear pants on occasion. So, it’s not a completely unacceptable practice. When it gets cooler, then maybe my couple pairs of neglected pants will be pulled out from storage (under my bed) and make a fashion statement in the community. :-)

Franklin Planner vs. Africa!

Thursday, January 14, 2010
7:06pm
Had a fun day today hitting the road on my bicycle (why does Queen always jump into my head when I write that :-P). I had a meeting scheduled with the main World Vision office in Matsenjeni today. Actually, this was the rescheduled meeting, since they cancelled last week when we were originally going to meet. I decided to travel the approximately 17 km by taking my awesome red and white bicycle. For those who know my biking history, I miss 5speed. :( My Swazi bike is quite cantankerous. I think it should change gears… it does not and loudly protests when I try. This made the rolling hills that make up the terrain of this lovely area a bit more difficult and strenuous. The tires also decided they have the right to refuse to be completely full at any one time. Humph!
I got about five minutes from Brandon and Laura’s hut (they were also attending this meeting) and was informed via text that the office cancelled yet again! So, I had a nice visit with my friends, turned my bike around, and ventured back home… in the mid-day sun. That was quite a toasty ride. No worries, I had loads of sunscreen and water on board. :)
The planning, organizing, scheduling parts of my personality are going frickin’ nuts in Africa! Lately, my Franklin Planner has laughed at me as I write plans that will NEVER actually fall out the way they are originally intended. Time is a highly flexible, sometimes non-existent, social structure here. If a meeting is called at 10am, it is usually completely acceptable to show up sometime within the hour between 10 and 11am. I am taking deep breaths, always bringing reading material to meetings, and laughing at what I know consider being a “productive day”.
Anyway, have a meeting with MSF (Doctors Without Borders) tomorrow in Nhlangano to discuss community survey tools, and to hopefully improve the ones currently being used. After that I am heading into Mbabane to help with Baylor’s Teen Club. This is a teenage support group in which all of our campers were chosen from. They meet once a month, and I was asked to come up and help out with it. :) I am amazed by the power of play! Back to site on Sunday… but then again, since these are the plans, they are probably the LAST things that could possibly happen! Africa is anything but boring! :)

Proof that I'm in Africa! ANIMALS!

Mommy! Can I keep it! Please oh please oh PLEASE! :-)

During our drive through Hluhluwe Game Park many friends came out to say "hi". :-)

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.

This was our much enjoyed Christmas morning. Secret Santa gifts on the floor, pjs on, watching mushy feel good movies, food cooking in other room... perfect!

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!