September 16, 2010
(Sorry this is only coming up now; I had some more Internet woes! Oh, and prepare yourselves for a long blog entry!)
Psychologists’ Meeting in Mbabane And Swaziland Burns!
This has been one of the craziest weeks so far in Africa! I’ve given an account of this past weekend and about all the new friends we met, but I forgot to tell you about the new medical student that arrived on Sunday night. His name is Stewart Jackson (lives in Redding, England, but goes to university in Edinburgh, Scotland) and the small amount of time we’ve spent with him has been enjoyable and an optimistic start to our relationship. He will be here for a full month so we look forward to getting to know him more.
On Monday the 13th of September I spent the majority of the day working on the garden (as is the norm). I filled the day with building a road and harnessing water from a mountain spring. The job consisted of funneling the spring water into a tube running under the road in order to eventually connect that water source, along with many other springs, together to create another source of water for the farm. As I have said in the past, I am trying to establish dual purposes for the garden. First, by using the natural topography of the land, we will establish a location where we will harness badly needed water and, second, we will create a place of beauty and serenity for guests of the farm.
While building a garden on the side of a vine-infested mountainside, one recognizes the copious amounts of debris that needs to be cut. Since there is no real option for taking the debris to another location, the only suitable solution is to make large piles of debris and burn it. My first team of Swazi men spent the majority of Monday doing just that: cutting out vines, trees, and weeds and setting them ablaze. Knowing that the bush veld (bushes on the side of the mountain) was very dry, I made sure to spend extra time dousing the fires to prevent flare-ups. We put the flames out and headed up to get ready for a birthday party being held for Will that evening. The party went very well and the food was delicious [my first time for having prawns (really big shrimp with gross looking heads)]. We got back a bit late, but made it to bed at a reasonable hour.
As I slept, Jono Pons came to my window and started knocking feverishly! We jumped up to see why we were being woken up at 11:30 at night. “Ben, your garden has caught ablaze,” Jono said, “and I fear that if we don’t go tend to it the whole mountain will catch fire!” I collected myself and looked out my window to view a cauldron of fire sitting at the valley’s end. Grace and I jumped out of bed and ran to Eric and Brad’s room to tell them to quickly equip themselves with flashlights, drinking water and gloves, as we needed to go to rescue the mountainside and the garden. We rushed down to the garden just in the nick of time to move a large collection of brush and logs that, if caught on fire, would have resulted in a fire too large to control.
We fought the fire as a whole unit until 12:30am when 2 more Swazi men came to give further assistance. At that point we decided the blaze was contained enough to leave the Swazis as sentries and we returned to bed. Brad and I, feeling the pangs of immense guilt and frustration, decided to stay while Grace, Eric, and Jono left to get some sleep, as the morning brought a big surgery day. “I nearly caught the whole mountainside on fire,” I reiterated to myself as I spoke to Brad and kept an eye on the fire. I couldn’t believe I had made such an error in judgment.
With morning coming soon and knowing that I needed to be up early, Brad and I decided to leave the hillside to the care of the other men and we headed back to bed at 2am. After a night of near sleeplessness, I boarded a van at 7:25am to travel to a governmental meeting regarding the treatment of psychological issues for the people of Swaziland. Government officials in charge of the country’s psychological care initiatives received word that a new person studying counseling psychology was now living in the country (there are VERY few psychologists in the country so the word passes quickly when there is a new face) and they contacted me to participate in the meeting. You may be thinking, “A government official sought out someone that has very little psychological training and asked them to come to a meeting of all the ranking psychologists and psychiatrists in the whole country?! That’s a bit hard to swallow!” Well, I assure you, I feel the same way! In the States, I am a counseling nobody, but ironically I have more psychological training and education than many of the persons providing psychological services throughout the country.
The meeting went great! Though I stayed mostly silent throughout the meeting, there were areas where I was able to provide a small amount of assistance. To make a long story short, they asked for my help in creating a protocol for stress management and also asked that I give a course on signs of depression and how to assist those who are struggling with its effects. Though I felt woefully inadequate to take on this task, I said that I would do what I could to help. After accepting their offer, I later found out that the work that I will be doing, along with data that has been collected over the last many months, will be used to create government protocol propositions that the King of Swaziland will review and, potentially, put into action. Though I am excited about this crazy opportunity, I feel very overwhelmed and have to come up with some way to keep my head clear. Rest assured, I will be reading and studying like mad to feel equipped to make this happen. I feel like I’m back in grad school again! To those of you back at school who are reading this, pray, meditate, give ohms or whatever you do on my behalf! Also, if there are any suggestions that you have, please, Please, PLEASE! give me your feedback! I’ll keep you abreast of all that transpires!
While at the meeting, I also met with a woman working with the ICAPS program through Columbia University (International Counsel on AIDS treatment and Preventative Services). She said she would love to have some help as well. I’ll be calling her later this week to set things up so I’ll let you know!
We drove back to Siteki after the meeting in the capital city, Mbabane, and arrived safely back at the farm. The sunset was casting a beautiful glow over the mountainside… oh, wait a minute… holy crap the whole mountainside was on fire (Not the garden side, but the other side of the farm)! Brad, Grace, and I rushed up to the Pons’ house to tell Jono. We knocked on the door, “Jono, have you seen the fire on the west side of the farm?” I asked as we ran out of the house to see the fire. “Get everyone together and be back up here in 15 minutes!” Jono said as he rushed back to the house. “We have a lot of cattle over there that we need to get to!” Thankfully Eric, Will, and Stewart were together and we all were able to get our dirty clothes on, get water, grab the chainsaw, and be back up to the house shortly thereafter. We all jumped in the Land Rover and careened down the road toward the blaze. We hurried past fire after fire, as our main purpose was the care of the cattle. We pulled up to the pen holding the beef cattle just in time as the fire quickly encircled the herd. I jumped out and started cutting down tree limbs to use as “fire swatters” and quickly went to protect the cattle.
The rest of the crew went down the fire line to create a perimeter while others started “back burns” to suffocate the large fires. We succeeded to some extent, but the devastation was too great to control for the most part. The tractor pulling the water tanker arrived about an hour later and I turned into “hose operator” for the next 2 hours. The enormous flames and suffocating smoke made the entire experience surreal as if we were all characters in a Lifetime made-for-tv film.
Our night ended not knowing just how big the fire was or how large it would become through the night. At any rate, we felt pretty good about our work saving the crops, cattle, hay, fences, and houses. The next morning, we went to see the reach of the fire and it was amazing just how little we did to curb that fire’s vigor! As we stood on the highest point overlooking the hillside, we saw a path of devastation stretching roughly 500 feet wide and over a mile long! More pictures of the fire will be up soon!
I’ve spent much of the week after these events not sleeping very deeply-constantly fearful of another flare-up. However, things have calmed down recently as we had our first mist of the season that helped the veld to be less dry. Strangely, fighting these fires has been kind of fun! The rush of excitement coupled with the satisfaction of keeping your home (or pseudo-home) safe feels so rewarding. I suspect this won’t be the last time we fight fires on the farm!
I apologize for its length, but for those who made it through this whole blog, I appreciate your willingness to stick with me as I detailed the week!
Ben
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