A Quick Rundown on My First Month

I’ve been in Africa for a while now, and I apologize that it’s taken me this long to post.  The two major reasons are that I’m in training 6 days a week, and the only free time we generally have is on the weekends when most internet cafes close down.  I also don’t have electricity, so it’s tough to type up posts at home and just download them in town.  But now that I’m getting into the hang of things, I’m making a point of getting some posts up. 

I spent a couple nights in Philadelphia at staging, where I met the other 38 volunteers in Group 9.  The Peace Corps started in Swaziland in 1969, but the program was ended because the country was doing so well.  The HIV/AIDS crisis that hit Swaziland has brought us back in 2003, and the first 8 groups were all health volunteers.  Group 9 is the first group to be divided between health and education.  Anyway, Philly was fun; I really enjoyed meeting all the people I will be spending the next two years with.  After a full day of training, including a yellow fever vaccination, we boarded a bus at 3am, heading for JFK airport.  We arrived about 6 hours early, and had to sit around on the floor waiting for the South African desk to open.  The flight was 15 hours, straight from NY to Johannesburg, arriving about 8 the next morning.  There we met some PC staff and a couple current volunteers, exchanged a little money, and got on a bus for Swaziland.  After a couple stops for food, the border, etc., we arrived at Ngwane Teachers College, where we would be staying for the next week or so.  It’s winter here, and Nhlangano is one of the coldest areas of the country, so there have been a number of cold nights, down into the 30s, although most days get warm, into the 60s. 

After about a week at the college, we all moved into homesteads to live with a Swazi family.  The group is split between 3 villages, two for health, and all education volunteers are living in Makhonza, a large, spread out village.  We are in training every weekday, and half of Saturday, with an average of 4 days at the college and 3 in the village.  We have trainings on language, culture, medical issues, safety and security, and then technical training on either health or education.  For the first two weeks with the family, I ate meals with them, getting to know them, eating Swazi food, and working on my language.  After that, we were given two burner gas stoves, and now we cook for ourselves. 

The next few weeks we will have more training, heavier on technical training and less on culture.  The plan is for us to meet our supervisors and get to visit our sites as well, but that could change.  On August 6, we leave our current sites, and after one night back at Ngwane, we will head to Mbabane for a few days, for our official swearing in ceremony.  From Mbabane we head directly to our various sites.