Back in School

It’s been almost 7 years since I was in high school. I’d forgotten how silly kids could be, and how fast their minds and vocabulary grow.  Even though the roles are now reversed and I am no longer the student, I have to admit that I was a little nervous about being the new kid. Sure when the Head Teacher announced that I was from America, everyone went nuts. But what will happen once the glitz of it all fades away. Although I am working in the schools, I am not a formal teacher. I don’t want these kids to see me as someone who stands in front of the classroom and punishes them if they act up. I want these kids to see me as someone who they can come to and talk to—someone who they know will listen and accept them for who they are.

So far everyone has been great. The teachers are all very friendly and willing to help. We have a good number of teachers here who are in their 20’s, so I’ve made some friends who have helped me around the community and given me an alternative to staring at the walls in my house or watching Modern Family over and over. They even got me to play some soccer. Some of the guy teachers play on the field behind the primary school and invited me to come by. They say I did a great job….. but come on, have you ever seen me kick a ball?!

One of the great things I love about this place is the hospitality and everyone’s willingness to help me out. I have the maintenance guys coming over to put nails in walls and hang up curtains, the woodshop guys building me furniture and fixing my shoes, the agriculture people helping me attend to my garden, the ladies bringing me free produce, and everyone’s collective concern for my mosquito bites that have over taken my body.

A difference that I see here amongst the children is the size of them. There are grown men in Form 2 (Grade 9). Many factors determine why students are older than some yet in the same grade. I always find myself asking them how old they are. I think the oldest ones we have here are 22. Then there are the little ones. Some of the boys in Form 1 (8^th Grade) are so stinking cute! But I have to keep my eye out for these boys; they will try and charm the pants off of you. I was talking to one teacher when this little Form 1 walks by and gives me this sly wink. I laughed at the teacher, and he said I had to watch out for that one—“he’s naughty”. Lol

One of the things I enjoy is the morning assembly; before the bell rings the kids line up and begin a song of worship. Then they say the Lord’s Prayer. I like seeing them all together wearing their green and white. In Africa, the students wear uniforms to school. This is part of their school fees and is also one of the reasons they stop attending school; parents can’t always afford all the school fees for all of their children.

The primary kids are also something special—they make me feel like a rock star! As soon as I walk in the gate, a flood of children run towards me.  “ASANDA! ASANDA!” they yell. I haven’t done any work with these kids yet, but I do come to visit them and let them know I am around. You should see their sad faces when I tell them I am not their teacher. Nevertheless, during their break I play with them in the court yard. Heads up—never tell a group of 100 children to “run to the tree and back”—you may have casualties. My innocent game of Simon Says quickly turned into a scene from Hunger Games. 

In order to save my job, and maybe a kids life, I told them to teach me a game instead. I LOVE THEIR GAMES! Almost all of them involve dancing and shaking your booty. Yesterday was “Open Day” were the parents came in…. I know I had a few of the adults in seams when they saw me amongst the kids acting like their own children. Then they played a game where the boys ran across the field doing back flips! OMG THEY ARE SO GOOD! I was half afraid and half astonished by all the back tucks they were doing! It is a sight to be seen. One day I will get my video camera out so my viewers at home can watch.

I guess it is something unheard of when I tell them I don’t have children. When I am sitting in the classroom with all the little girls, they ask if I can be their new mom. I said yes, they are all my children! Then as they continued to braid and play with my hair, they fought over who would be child number 1,2,3,4……

A Day in the Community

Last week I went to my first community campaign for HIV/AIDS. Fortunately where I live, there are lots of these that go on. The campaign this month was geared towards behavior change. What that means is getting people to change the way the think and act in terms of their sexual decisions. Here in Swaziland, a lot of people use the excuse of culture to justify their promiscuity. Polygamy is still an active practice here, though it is decreasing in the younger generations; but MCP (multiple concurrent partnerships) is still very prevalent.  Back in the day, Swazi culture deemed it acceptable for a man to have multiple wives. The difference between then and now is that the man did not sleep with the woman until she was his wife. In theory, sexual active was bound to the man and his wives. However today this is not the case. 

[In case I haven’t mentioned this yet, Swaziland has the highest rate in the world for HIV. About 40% of people between the ages of 18-49 have HIV. Even more shocking, the community where I live, as well as the neighboring communities where I also work, have the highest rate in all the country, (one community has over 80% of people between the ages of 18-49 with HIV).  For security and sensitivity reasons, I don’t want to list any of these communities by name; just know that it is a major issue here and EVERYONE is affected by HIV in one way or another.  For many of you in the States, you will never know what it is like—even I am still trying to fully understand it.]

So now that I’ve mentioned a little bit about HIV statistics, I want to bring it back to the polygamy and MCP. “Culturally” a man is defined by how many wives he has, and or how many girlfriends he has. I don’t know where this got lost in translation, but if you ask any ‘old school’ Swazi, the men didn’t sleep with these girlfriends until they were married. Today the men think that before they marry the woman, they have to “test the goods”. This is why I put quotations around culturally, because “culturally” the men didn’t sleep with women that weren’t their wives, but the past couple generations think they have to. So now you have these men with 3-5 wives who sleep with girls before they marry them, then the men go back and sleep with their wives. If the man was just infected with HIV, he spread it to the whole network of people he was sleeping with. The same is true with men who have MCP, they sleep with multiple women in the same period of time. If the man has HIV, he has just spread it to that whole network of people he’s been in bed with. If you put two and two together, you can see how HIV has spread so widely here. 

This is why the campaign I just worked at focused on behavior change…. It was to encourage people to stay faithful to their partner. The slogan they used was “Tsembeka kulotansdzana naye uncobe i-HIV/AIDS”. It basically means, staying faithful to your partner will prevent HIV.  My mission here in Swaziland is Youth Development; at least that is what my title says. A lot of the work I do will deal with behavior change. In case you haven’t noticed, behavior change takes a lot of time; and more than likely, I won’t be around to see the long term impact I’ve made, since I’m only here for 2 years.  However at this HIV campaign I attended this past week, I was able to record a minor success—and it has nothing to do with HIV, but rather community. 

Let me tell you what happened. I was at the site watching a group of people try to set up a tent for the event. There were at least 13 of them gathered around holding poles, looking all types of confused. Rather than staying in the car waiting on my counterpart (who was also the only one I knew there), I decided to add a 14^th person to the madness and hold up a pole. Not speaking their language, I simply observed and tried to interject with hand motions if I thought it might help.  After being unintentionally pushed out of the circle, I saw the group of men claim defeat and put all the poles down and walk away. Not wanting to give up on this tent, I started looking closer at the poles and saw that they had labels on them, and that it was actually somewhat of a puzzle. While I have never EVER put a tent up before in my life, I knew I could do this. So I called a few of the men back over to help me; by the way, there were about 80 people crowded around watching me center stage as I tried to assemble this thing—no pressure. I pointed to the labels on the poles and showed them how to sort it out so they could see that there was a system to this. Eventually I had all 13 men back over here watching for me to give the next move. Within 10 minutes we had the tent up! Just a moment ago, they were ready to walk away and say forget it, but now I was applauding them as they had the tent assembled! 

This story is an example of how my work in Peace Corps will go—I observe, I help, and I try to show things in a different light. These guys who I helped, work in the sugar cane fields and are very good with their hands and manual labor; I on the other hand am not. But with my way of thinking, I look for an explanation and direction. I saw that the tent had all the materials it needed to be built, and we had the man power to put it up. They just needed someone to look at it from a different angle. My goal here is not to change the Swazi people to what I want or how I think it should go, but rather to show them other ways of doing things, so that it might make them a better person. And honestly, I am looking to learn a lot of new things from them too. 

Maybe after that day, one of those guys will look for directions before jumping into something and getting confused, maybe someone will learn to take leadership and others will listen, or maybe one of the females that was watching from the sidelines will see she is just as capable of “putting up a tent” as I was.  Or maybe all of them have forgotten about this event already. It really doesn’t matter; what matters was that in that moment, I was able to help a group of unfamiliar people come together and work to achieve a common goal. As minor as this was, that day, I helped someone see a challenge conquered.

I Swear to Protect and Defend…. Peacefully

Congratulations everybody! I have officially become a volunteer. This means I won’t have to cancel this blog, and you get two years of my tirades. Exciting, I know. So basically what just happened was that I went through a two year pre-interview, then I had a two month test crash of being a volunteer, and now as of Aug. 23, I can say I have a job! Finally finally FINALLY! The moment we all have been waiting for (I say ‘we’, because I know on the other side of the globe my mom already has her Peace Corps regalia as if she is a volunteer herself. Now that my brother Jordan is out of the Marines, I’m her new outlet. lol).

The swearing in ceremony was really cool. I’m glad Peace Corps makes a big deal about it, even though I’m only a volunteer. The Charge of Affairs for the US Embassy was there to swear us in. We took the same oath that the President, the military, and congress take… to protect and defend the constitution against all enemies (we just do it “peacefully”). The CoA forgot to have us raise our hand, so we’re still undecided if we’re actually official or not. The first prince of Swaziland, the acting Prime Minister, and the Minster of Health were there, so I think that’s enough verification to say we’re official. 

At the ceremony I choreographed another dance to perform. This time the four of us dancers wore traditional Swazi attire and did more cultural moves, including a high-kick. I don’t think Swazi’s love anything more than American’s dancing like them. I’m serious! The Prime Minister took out his own ipad and started recording the dance! We also were on the nightly news, and we made the front page of the national newspaper, and were featured in the newspapers for the next three days! 

Now I’m ready to go out on my own. I’ve passed all my tests, I can say my name in Siswati, and I can do a high-kick—Peace Corps and Swaziland have declared me ready. So what’s next? Well I move into my official community and set up shop for the next two years. Honestly, I don’t know what I’m going to do, but when I do figure it out, I’ll be sure to let you all know!

There is me front and center.