Some pictures to go with previous posts

New posts

I had lots of pictures to post, but for some reason I am unable to upload them, so unfortunately these posts are just me rambling on about everything.  I'll figure out the problem and post all the pictures next time, which should be in two weeks. 

About My Site

Now that I am at my permanent site, I can share some details.  I am in the village of Khuphuka, which is located in the Manzini region just south of the Mnjoli Dam, and I will be working at Khuphuka High School.  It’s in the mid/low veld, so it will be very hot, although there are hotter areas.  Khuphuka is close to Hlane Nature Preserve, which is the only one in the country that has lions, so that’s exciting.  Hlane also has leopard, cheetah, elephant, hippo, and much more.  I look forward to seeing more of the country, and have already enjoyed being able to settle into my permanent site a little more.  I’m in the process of having some furniture built by a local carpenter, a set of shelves and a cupboard for food/pots/dishes, and where I will do my cooking.  While I’ve settled in a bit, putting up maps, posters, flags, pictures, etc, I’m still living out of a suitcase, so it will be nice to get some shelves to put clothes on.  The last item will be to get a table, and then I’ll be all set.  That’s a little more expensive to have built, so I’ll probably get a smaller fold-up one in town. 

My hut is a rondavel right in the center of the homestead.  It’s a pretty lively place, with lots of people around.  My family is a babe and make (father and mother), with their nine children, including several adults who work elsewhere most of the time.  The youngest of their children is about 3, but then one of the older sisis (sisters) has a baby, and one of the older bhutis (brothers) has a wife and baby on the homestead as well.  There are a couple high school age kids too.  The parents do not speak much English, so I’ll have to work harder on my siSwati.  The younger generation speaks better English, but they all communicate in siSwati, of course.  One of the bhuti’s, who’s in From 2 (grade 9), has been helping me out a lot by showing me around and translating a little bit.  He’s my main point of contact for the family, as the rest of them are hesitant to speak English or just seem afraid of me.  It’ll take time to feel at home with them, but I’ve got two years and I’m sure it’ll happen.  I was surprised when I got to my site and there was electricity, as I was told I would have none.  That’s a bonus, although I didn’t mind living without it before.  I’d trade electricity for a decent bathroom/sink in a heartbeat.  I’m not sure I’ll ever really get used to living without running water.  On the homestead are dogs, cats, chickens, turkeys, guinea fowl (I think), goats and sheep.  The family also has a herd of cattle, but they have been grazing somewhere else since I’ve been here.  I think there’s a gecko in my hut as well, which is great since they eat up the bugs.

Mbabane/Swearing In

We would be spending three nights in Mbabane, to see the city, tour the Peace Corps office, and get officially sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers.  They put us up at a conference center that was very nice, and had great food.  When we arrived, we had to unload everything from the truck and get it organized.  We were being split up into transport groups of 3-6 people for heading to our sites, and so all of our stuff was put with our groups.  Then we had a short session with Nicole (APCD of administration), concerning logistics for the next few days, banking info, etc.  We got in lines to get our new ATM cards, receive our passports back with official work permits, get flash drives chock full of information, Peace Corps IDs, and other information.  After that we had a little bit of free time to figure out what we were missing from our piles, and just about everyone was missing something.  I was missing a few stove legs, although I ended up finding all of them before going to site.  A group of us walked into the town center to check it out, as we’d never been to downtown Mbabane.  It’s the capital city, and second largest city in the country.  I’ve heard several figures for each of the following, so these may be wildly inaccurate, but overall Swaziland is only about a million people, Mbabane is somewhere in the 60-70 thousand range, and Manzini, the largest city, is 80-90 thousand, for reference. 

Mbabane has a nice downtown area that is surrounded by mountains, with curving streets and a creek running through the center.  There are two malls right across the street from each other, one is large with a two-story indoor section, and a large outdoor section as well.  There are many stores with just about everything you could possibly want, including a little coffee shop/health food store, internet café, numerous clothing stores, and several restaurants.  The other mall is smaller, but it has a Pick ‘n Pay, the big, nice grocery store in Swaziland, as well as many smaller stores.  They are both right next to the bus rank, the heart of most Swazi towns, as this is where you catch a Koombi to your village or a bus to Johannesburg, for example.  There is also a nice market where some trainees bought traditional Swazi clothing to wear for swearing in.  The next day we got tours of the city and the PC office, led by someone from G8 (group 8, the volunteers who have been here a year).  We went to the office first, and it was pretty impressive, a large compound in a residential district.  It felt like being at an embassy.  We saw the old lounge, stocked with hundreds of books, movies, our mailboxes, and a couple computers, and got to see everyone’s offices/cubicles.  We visited the medical unit, and also were given tours of the new wing which is almost done, including a nice, big volunteer lounge that has two rooms, plus bathrooms with showers (a new addition).  It will be very nice once it’s completed.  Then it was back to the city center to meet up with the other groups for lunch.  My group went to a nice place along the creek, where I had a burger, fries and a cold beer, which was very nice.  Then we had the afternoon free to go through our stuff, shop, etc.  After dinner, a bunch of G8 took us out to one of the two bars in town they frequent.  This one, the Green Room, was laid back, with pool tables and plenty of room to hang out.  It was a fun evening. 

The next day was our Swearing In ceremony.  After breakfast, they started bussing people out to the Mountain Inn, a very nice hotel on one of the surrounding hills.  It had beautiful views, and there was a big tent set up for us right next to the pool.  Since this is the 50^th anniversary of the Peace Corps, there was extra money to be spent on the ceremony.  The Prime Minister and the American Ambassador were both there, so it was a pretty impressive event.  The next day there were pictures in the newspapers and we were on the evening news, although I don’t think any of us got to see it.  There were speeches, a presentation to the RPCVs (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, once you are sworn in as a volunteer, after you leave you will always be a RPCV) in the audience, and then we were officially sworn in by the ambassador.  Afterword was an amazing meal inside the Inn, with all the food you could want and lots of variety.  We were then bussed back to the conference center and had the rest of the day free.  That night everyone went out to Portugalia, the other bar in town, where PCVs go to dance.  It was another fun night, although I left fairly early.  The next morning we got up early to eat and then head off to our permanent sites.  It was another hectic time, getting each transport group’s pile onto the same truck, and then quickly departing.  There was little time for goodbyes.  It was odd, we’d all been spending so much time together over the last month of training, and now we were heading off to our various sites and would be lucky to see each other once a month.  Training was now over, and integration was about to begin.  We had a session titled Preparing for the Stillness to get us ready for the isolation we were about to experience.

Month Two, the End of Training

The last month of training was a bit hectic.  After a week off from language because of the field trip, it quickly became crunch time to learn enough SiSwati to pass the LPI (Language Proficiency Interview).  We are expected to reach Intermediate Mid, but Intermediate Low is considered passing, meaning only that we are not required to retake the LPI at IST (In-Service Training, which occurs in November).  During the last month we also found out about our permanent sites.  We were all supposed to visit the sites for OJT (On-the-Job-Training), which was coordinated with a counterpart workshop.  The counterpart for those of us in education is more of a supervisor, as it was typically the head teacher/principal who came to the workshop.  The workshop and OJT were pushed back a week because of a possible teacher’s strike.  The strike was then pushed back, and while the counterpart workshop went ahead, OJT was cancelled because the strike ended up taking place right when we were supposed to be visiting.  They tend to be overly cautious about our movements when there are possible disturbances in the country, which is just fine with me.  It would have been nice to see the sites so that we could do a little bit of planning, but being a PCV is all about being flexible, as we’ve all learned again and again. 

The last week of training, we had our second round-robin testing day.  Round-robin is a day where we have numerous tests and meetings, with the CD (Country Director), APCD (Associate Peace Corps Director, there are 3 APCD, one for the health project, the education project, and for administration), medical officer, safety and security, cross-culture, etc.  We had previously done mock LPIs, to gauge our level of language learning halfway through training, and I had received Novice High, one step below Intermediate Low.  This time I got Intermediate Low, so I passed, although I would have liked to do better.  The highest score was Intermediate High, which several people received.  We also met with the security officer from the U.S. embassy during that week.  The last day on our homestead, we packed up and then all went to the college for a host family appreciation celebration.  There were speeches by the CD, a host family member, one of our teachers, the college president (where we were training), and two of the trainees.  The teachers and the trainees also prepared some sort of entertainment, they sang a song and we danced to a couple songs, one popular in America and one popular in Swaziland.  Then we all had lunch, and the families were given a couple bags of groceries to take home as a thank you.  We went back with the families to wait for the arrival of the trucks that would pick up our stuff, although the truck was already waiting for me when I got back.  So I quickly threw everything on and said my goodbyes to the family.  I gave them a couple drawings of Michigan my dad did before I left, a deck of cards, and a small photo album of pictures I had taken of the family, and a couple they had taken with me.

We spent the last night at the college so that we could leave early in the morning to get to Mbabane.  It was a crazy evening, as all of our stuff was arriving on the small trucks from our three villages and being transferred to one large truck.  In that mess were tables, chairs and beds that went back to the PC, bags that we would need that night and in Mbabane, and then all the stuff to go to our permanent sites.  The arrival of the trucks was quite spread out, so the early stuff had been taken inside before the big truck arrived, and then had to be brought back out.  As it was getting dark, it started to rain a little bit, and there were even snowflakes.  Some of the trucks arrived after dark, and it was a nightmare for people to figure out which bags went where, with some people digging around on the big truck for bags they needed that night.  The truck finally got filled, covered and locked up for the night, and then we could have dinner.  That evening, we had a medical wrap-up session, which was a jeopardy style quiz game on such fun topics as Diarrhea, HIV, STIs (Sexually-Transmitted Infections), and first aid.  It was a raucous game with lots of yelling, but my team came out on top so we got to be first in line for ice cream sundaes.  Then we went back to our rooms and enjoyed being all together in the same place once again.