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.