I’m Staying

October 28^th made it 4 months that I have been in Swaziland. I've had two months with my training family in the rural areas and two months in my new community. I've tasted enough of Swaziland to decide that I like it and I want more. I've seen the good, and I've seen the bad—and what I thought was bad really weren't at all.
These past two months I've been trying to integrate myself into the community the best way I can. My favorite times have to be with my little girls and my son (Jelly Belly, Angle aka Dimples, Pretty Girl, and Solomon). Every day after school I have a team of kids at my door. They come in and play from about 4-6 PM; we color and make crafts, they dance, I dance, then they laugh. I attempt to do my laundry, than they take over and finish it. Yesterday while washing my clothes, one of my kids said the nicest thing…. "Asanda, you know nothing!" I couldn't help but agree. It amazes me how smart these kids are. They definitely are in survival mode and I would want them on my side if I was ever stranded alone in a foreign place. Oh wait—I already am!

Another one of my highlights of the day is when some of my high schoolers come over. Some work on my garden, other come and teach me new card games, another comes and actually has some tutoring done. I love her enthusiasm to know English and her desire to get better. Even with all her homework she has from the school, she still wants to come over and do extra work. I let her read this book called "The Heaven Shop". It's a book about a girl in Malawi whose parents both died from AIDS. We discuss the book, which then leads to other discussions about life in general. It's moments like these that I cherish. Sometimes at the school I walk around wondering if people even understand why I am here. I know in time that will change, but for the moment being I love the few small yet meaningful relationships that I've made. It makes this whole journey a lot less lonely. 

International Day of Girl Child

October 11, 2012 was the first time in history that the UN declared a day especially for the girl child, and as a PCV I was able to take part in celebrating it with millions of girls around the world. This was my first official project at my school that I have undertaken and was a bit flustered to say the least. Plans A and B weren't happening, so I resulted to doing Plane C which was an assembly with all the girls in my high school. There was no guest speaker or anything memorable, but I wanted to do something to commemorate the day even if it was just for a few minutes. At the sound of the ending bell, I called all the girls into the courtyard of the school. I read a few facts about why there was a need for such a holiday, and then I had one of the girls in Form 5 read the proclamation declaring the day.

Here are a few statistics given by the UN about girls around the world:

• ILLITERACY – By 2015, females will make up 64% of the world's (adult) population who cannot read.
  
• SCHOOL DROPOUT – Only 30% of girls in the world are enrolled in secondary school.
  
• FORCED MARRIAGE – One in seven girls in developing countries is married off before age 15.
  
• VIOLENCE – One in 5 high school girls has been physically or sexually abused by a dating partner. Worldwide children as young as age 11 are forced to work as prostitutes. Some estimates have as many as 1.2 million children being trafficked every year.
  
• BODY IMAGE – More than half (54%) of 3rd-5th grade girls worry about their appearance and 37% worry about their weight. More than half (57%) of music videos feature a female portrayed exclusively as a decorative, sexual object.
  

Girls in Swaziland

The girls in Swaziland are not exempt from the statistics above. There is a reason why we (PC) are here in Swaziland to help the youth. Aside from the work we do with HIV, gender equality and female empowerment are two of the major focuses here. Plenty of studies will tell you the percentage of girls who are pregnant, have HIV, or both. Statistics can point out how many girls drop out of school and how many girls are sexually abused. But the real assessment of help doesn't come from a list of statistics; it comes from trying to build relationships with these girls.

Last week, while trying to plan my event, was probably the hardest time yet. Then this week while I substituted for one of the teachers, I had even more challenges. The problems I faced weren't due to miscommunication with people, which is inevitable. The frustration I had, came from the confidence levels and attitudes of the girls. Never in my life had I seen so much resistance, self-doubt, and fear. I have to be very careful not to take their attitudes personally. Wanting to celebrate this day for the girls and not having them care at all about it, is enough to make me stressed. From the objectives I have in mind to accomplish here, as well as my daily interaction within the community, I finally have a real idea of what is ahead of me.

Sustainable development doesn't happen by people merely receiving handouts or by being told what to do. Sustainable development also doesn't come into fruition by someone else crossing the finish line. The only way to move this country forward, and other countries like it, is to begin breaking down the strong holds in these people's lives. A person has to realize they need help and want it, in order for it to happen. My hope and prayer is that during my stay here, I will be able to make a change in these girls behavior that have been replicated from generation after generation. I want these girls to know that for once, someone is on their side; that for once they realize that they need to be treated with respect while also treating others with the same proper respect. I want these girls to find their voice and realize that they aren't subject to men and that their future is what they make of it.

I've been fortunate to find some girls in Form 4 who really seem to get it. I want to build them up as leaders and role models in the school. Next year when I start the Girls Empowerment Club, I am hoping to find even more girls who want to come together and encourage each other.

Next up on the agenda… Peer Educator Day (Oct. 25) and World Aids Day (Dec 1). Let's hope my camera doesn't act up again so I can have some pictures for you all to see.

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.

PST

Fun Moments of PST

Where shall I even begin? Pre-service Training (PST) has been like summer camp and school in all actuality. The two months while in training I’ve only been thinking about getting to my permanent site, unpacking my suitcase for good, and starting my real job. But now looking back, PST has been pretty fun. There was that time I killed a chicken, the time I went to a cultural village and saw the dancing as well as monkeys! There was also that time when we went to Ngonini and learned how to garden, then about 20 of us had diarrhea for a week. Then there were only 10 of us that had it… and then we all bragged about how much weight we lost. No connection though… I don’t think! Lol Oh I guess this is a good time to mention my recent 3 day encounter with a fever of 101 while trying to study for my final exams. On a healthier note, there was the time when Swazi took on USA in a soccer match—naturally we won, just don’t ask about the rematch. There were also the other various soccer tournaments in the community that always had my attention for one reason or another.

I’ve actually had some pretty cool experiences that have been on my bucket list. Our training village in the Manzini region is surrounded by all these beautiful mountains. In our free time, which was few and far between, a lot of us volunteers went mountain hiking. I’m a sucker for a good view, and boy did I see some! I once hiked to the top of a waterfall and was able to see Mozambique and the Indian Ocean.  I say this a lot, but God is amazing. If I had to go home tomorrow, I would still be ok, because I have been able to see more and more of His beautiful creation. I serve a creative God. This is the #1 reason why I love to travel, because I feel like I get closer to God each time. As Christians there are many ways to feel close to God, praying, fellowship with other believers, reading the Bible, evangelizing, and being in nature. Doing the latter has really strengthened my relationship with God while I’ve been here.

Another thing that I’ve been able to try out in PST that will carry on over the two years is my interaction with food. I actually cook it now. Really I do! Now I didn’t say I cook well…. But I cook well enough to eat it which is a great leap for me! Every time I cook a meal that looks good, I take a picture of it as evidence for the day after. A few of the things I’ve made have been scrambled eggs and spinach with roasted potatoes, stir-fry several different ways, tuna salad, alfredo and marinara sauce from scratch for my spaghetti, and my own vegetable soup.  Once I get set up at my house I plan on cooking a lot more adventurous things.

The best part about PST though has got to be the friends I have made. Granted I’ll be with the volunteers the whole two years (God forbid anyone ET’s), but this is the one time where we’re all close together. Now we’ll have to take 3 hour bus rides to visit each other. Not only did I make friends with the other volunteers, but also my host family. I truly do love them to death and will miss them dearly. I’m kind of happy that I won’t have a host family at my new site, because I would hate to compare. I know that I will always be a Magongo.  

Acceptance 8.19.2012

PST is closing and we’re starting to say goodbyes to our families in the training villages. This past weekend we had our Host Family Celebration.  Typically volunteers do a skit, a song, dance, slide show, or whatever. I’ve been learning some Swazi dance moves since I’ve been here and I really wanted to come up with something to show the families. On Wednesday I choreographed a dance to a South African song, and taught the dance to about 12 volunteers. On Saturday we performed it at the event. Before I was a little apprehensive that the attendees may find this dance horrible, offensive, and everything else; to my delight they loved it! This definitely wasn’t a super serious dance or anything that I typically perform, but a dance is still a dance to me—it’s my passion. It meant everything to me that not only did the Swazis enjoy it, but that they personally came up to me afterwards giving their appreciation and “acceptance”! The performance was mid-way through the ceremony, so as I sat in the audience for the remainder, I was overwhelmed with joy. This may sound silly or over dramatic, but honestly at that moment, I really felt like I was a part of their culture… I was no longer a mere observer.

Deep down inside we all want to be accepted. If someone says they don’t care about what people think, well they’re lying. With acceptance comes the ability to make change.

Personally I don’t need anyone’s approval except God’s alone, and for the longest time I didn’t really pay any mind to man’s opinion. However, now that I am living in a different place and a completely new culture at that, I really want to be accepted by my new home—Swaziland. No one can or should generalize a culture; in fact that is one of the PC goals—show the host country that American’s are not what you see on the TV, but that we are all different and unique. And by me sharing with you what it is like here in Swaziland, I am helping complete the 3^rd goal of PC, which is to educate Americans about another part of the world. So with that said, I can’t say that all Swazis are ‘this or that’. What I can say is that people will be people no matter where you are.  One of the many things I’ve come to know is that if you are unhappy in your current location because of the people, you cannot pack up and move thinking that a new city [or country] will have better people. Where ever you are, all cultures aside, there will always be the good and the bad.

As I mentioned earlier I don’t need man’s approval; and the main reason is because if I tried to get everyone to like me, I would be miserable! The two years I spend here in Swaziland will be wasted all because I wanted people to like me, rather than spend that time doing my mission. Alongside the PC’s 3 goals, my personal goal is that the people here will see Christ in me.  So if people reading this blog know their Bible, then they’ll know that the Word says, “we will be persecuted because of Christ”. Not everyone loved Jesus while He was here [and He was perfect!] so how can I expect that everyone will love me?

My objective as well as PC’s is to let Swaziland know that I’m not just some other US volunteer from the multiple NGO’s here in country; but rather that I am really trying to understand their culture, their language, and their life, so I can better help them. I want to assimilate myself into this place. In fact, this week I finish PST, and start my 3 month integration process. If I want change, progress, and sustainable development to happen here, it has to come from their people, not from the Umlungo who only knows the western way of doing things. This is why I want them to see me as a Swazi, this is why I want their acceptance into this culture. After last Saturday, I really feel like I am getting there.