Not just another Pleasant Valley Sunday…

We tried another new church this weekend, Siteki Church of the Nazarene. It was different from our other Swazi church experiences; this was an event. As is the Swazi way, we were warmly greeted when we arrived. The service was already in full swing by 11:00 am (we didn’t know that is started earlier). We sat in the back together only to realize that the men and women were sitting separately…oops.

Unfortunately, the service was in Siswati, so we couldn’t quite follow it all. However, from the clip art of elderly people on the bulletin and the group of old people at the front I supposed it was “Honor Old People Day” while Brad supposed it was “Bring Your Old Person to Church Day.” Well, it was something like that.

The service proceeded in the manner of a variety show. An old lady sang “Where He Leads Me, I Will Follow,” a blind choir sang two songs to soundtracks (they all swayed to the rhythm while the main soloist danced and dramatically kicked up her legs drawing cheers and applause from the congregation), and some more people sang solos and duets. A group of four women, three older women with coordinated peach dress suits and fancy, white hats and then their token young soprano dressed in black, sang a quartet. They sang heartily (I think one or two of them may have legitimately been basses) in English, giving new meaning to “singing all the verses.” I think there were four false endings to the song that drew scattered applause before the women launched into each next verse. They finally ended and began flipping through their lyrics book. Brad whispered that this was intermission and verses 17-36 were coming up. Thankfully, they did not go on with verses 17-36, but they did sing another song with even more complicated harmonies that made us all uncomfortable in our seats.

What was interesting was that “anything went” in the service. People were walking in and out of the building, talking to each other, walking around and taking pictures. One person even came up and randomly took Brad’s and my picture while we were sitting in our seats. Most entertaining was seeing one of the pastors taking pictures on his cell phone of each act that performed. Since cell phones don’t typically have a zoom, he had to stand on stage close to the pulpit and hold out his phone in the performers’ faces for the best shot. We even had a lady come and ask us where we were from and whether we had something to “render” to the service. When you’re a visitor in Swaziland, you better have something prepared for church! Thankfully, our only recognition was the pastor referring to us in the sermon and saying that all races are united in Christ.

Following the musical selections they proceeded to have musical prizes. A bag was passed around the group of old people while the pianist played music, whomever held the bag when the music stopped chose a prize from the bag. Then some elderly people were selected to come out, dance, and strut their stuff on the stage. Brad coined this particular event Gogo Dance Off (Gogo means Grandma). Two women had canes swinging, another shook her hips, and one woman appeared to making gang symbols. This dancing caused riotous cheers, applause, shouts, and laughter. It was a regular catwalk! However, in the end one of the small old men won the most votes for his smooth strutting; he won R100 and some other people won cell phones.

You may be wondering if there was any sort of message during this church service variety show. Yes, there was a sermon that was emphatically delivered. Unfortunately, it, too, was in Siswati so we only caught a few words here and there. This proved to be the most unique church experience we have had so far. However, despite the eccentricities of the service, one thing was clear that the Swazi people have an energy and fervor for God, people, and music. It was refreshing to see the joy, love, and respect that the people showed for us and for each other.

Five years….has it been that long?

Ben and I celebrated our fifth year wedding anniversary on September 24^th of this year. To us, five years sounds like a long time, especially when many people our age are not even married. However, at the same time it seems like the time has flown and we are still newlyweds. Anyway… since we have had plans over the last two weekends, Ben and I were able to commemorate our anniversary this past Saturday.

We took the car and traveled to Manzini (the largest Swaziland city about 45 minutes to an hour from Siteki). There we enjoyed browsing and bartering at the Swazi hand craft market where colorful paintings and material adorned the walls, and carved animals, wooden bowls, beaded jewelry, and much more were laid out for view. Oranges, apples, bananas, tomatoes, greens, potatoes, onions, and all sorts of freshly harvested foods were on display. Even specialties such as tailoring, barbering, and freshly ground herbs were available. If you can picture a stereotypical African market, you are not too far from reality.

After that, we enjoyed visiting the Swaziland Candle and Craft Centre where intricate animals and unique colors and shapes were remarkably shaped into wax candles. While the market is much more stereotypically African, this center catered to the tour groups and was quite the tourist destination. Three or four busses full of travelers stopped while we were there. When everything became really busy we decided that we wanted to get out of there fast!

Ben and I then went to the Summerfield Botanical Gardens where we walked around and ate at a picturesque restaurant amidst the beautiful lush tropical greenery. We enjoyed an elegant meal (However, with the currency exchange my Duck Frittatela dish was only $7 and Ben’s Butterflied Chicken was $11.) and shared a dessert. It was a lovely opportunity for us to be together and reminisce about our past and share our dreams for the future. Overall, our weekend was a great mix of relaxation, romance, and fun!

-Grace

A week’s worth of excitement in Southern Africa

Since we last updated the blog our activities have run the gamut from mountain climbing to partying to watching elderly dance-offs, with a little bit of work thrown in here and there… For some reason, Swaziland never seems to be boring! Two weekends ago Eric, Ben, Grace, Will (a South African friend of ours that lives on the farm with us), Stewart (a med student in Scotland that was working at the hospital for a few weeks) and I went on a beautiful drive (that ended up being about 4 hours each way) to the Ngwempisi Gorge in southwest Swaziland. We packed 6 people in Will’s VW Golf (not advisable) for a 1.5-hour drive to the Malkerns valley where we met up with the Swaziland National Historical Society, a group led by old South African and British ex-pats, and about 20 other people representing 6 different nationalities and spanning ages 1 through 65. We drove about 30 minutes before we turned off the paved road onto a glorified dirt path (most of the roads in Swaziland are similar…) for 2 hours of 4X4ing (thankfully we were no longer 6-high in Will’s Golf at this point) to one of the most incredible places that we have yet encountered in Swaziland! (Considering the abnormally positive way we talk about our weekend trips you might think that we have become Swazi tourism ambassadors—unfortunately, it is an unpaid position…) It is so nice to go to so many beautiful locations that feel untouched by capitalism—most Swazis don’t even know that this place exists and you can tell by the condition of the roads! We spent 8 hours driving for about 2 hours of hiking and sightseeing but, nonetheless, it seemed to be well worth it.

We weren’t quite ready to head home at that point so we went to the Summerfield Gardens for some Cokes (the food was expensive so “dinner” turned in to “drinks” quite quickly) and wandered about the beautiful grounds for a while. This is yet another example of “whoa, I didn’t expect that”. It was so nice that Ben and Grace went back this past weekend.

This past week was Stewart’s last week in Siteki prior to heading to Cape Town for a month so we took the opportunity to have multiple parties to celebrate. We had an evening braai at the lily pond that involved copious amounts of food, as usual, a great sunset, and S’mores! It’s amazing how good S’mores taste when you’re not expecting that you can make them. We had to be creative with some of the ingredients but overall it was a great success.

With party #1 out of the way we were on to planning party #2—Grace started planning early on what kind of cake she would make, we got large quantities of beef, we found a new location for our party (we try out a new location almost every time we braai to keep things interesting) and we were set. Grace made yet another knockout cake, we gorged ourselves on beef, and we finished off the night with some very interesting, very strong orange liqueur.

The week at school was interesting, as usual. Very rarely are any classes on time or in the correct order, classes are cancelled on a whim, and teachers just don’t show up sometimes so you just learn to go with the flow. I’ve been trying to work on the concept of accountability when it comes to doing work and consequences for actions, but that is probably going to take more time to resolve than the two months we have left here… Anyway, things are going as well as possible, especially with the advanced students that I have been working with. They are moving pretty well through the new subject matter that we have been covering and it has been pretty satisfying to see the results. I’ll keep you posted on how the others fare…

This past weekend we sort of split ways—Ben and Grace had a day to themselves to celebrate their anniversary (two weeks after the fact) while Eric and I went hiking in Mlilwane Nature Reserve. I’ll let Ben and Grace tell you about their time but Eric and I had quite a time not only in the park but also just trying to get there to begin with. Ben and Grace took the car for their relaxed day together while Eric and I made our way to Mlilwane via bus, taxi, and leg-power. We road on the bus for the hour drive to Manzini, then hopped a taxi to the Malkerns valley, which dropped us off at the road to the park. We then walked 3.5 km to the park entrance and then another 7 or so km through the park to get to our destination: Executioner’s Rock. This mountain is an incredible sight—sheer rock faces going up to an impressive peak surrounded by huge pieces of granite, waterfalls and trees. We didn’t want to go to the welcome center where we would have gotten our park maps because it was another 3.5 km in the opposite direction so we trekked out with barely a clue, just trying to go in the overall correct direction. After a while of hiking we found a trail that looked promising (although we went the wrong direction on it for about 10 minutes before we realized that it wasn’t going to pan out) and we started heading up as fast as we could because we wanted to hike the mountain and still have time to make it back to Manzini to catch a bus back to Siteki. The trail looked very promising until we got to something that you don’t see every day: a toilet inset in a small crevice between two 10-ton boulders. That was the end of the trail. The end. The trail clearly said that it went to the summit so what were we to do? We jumped over the toilet between the 10-ton boulders and started making our own trail as directly up the mountain as we could. This highly fined activity (leaving the posted trails) involved jumping from boulder to boulder on the side of a decently steep mountain, trying to maintain forward momentum while avoiding the occasional hidden chasm. After a rather exciting deviation from the posted trail, we picked up another one that took us to the top of the mountain for incredible views of the surrounding area. You may wonder why it has the name “Executioner’s Rock”. If you see the photos (although they probably don’t do it justice) there is a sheer rock face that descends quite a long way to an unfortunate end at a rock pile—the mountain is aptly named due to its rather barbaric previous use. But, putting that mental picture aside, it is quite a sight to behold that begs to be experienced in more depth later on.

By the time we got to the top and had our fill we were quite a bit past our “turn-around” time, which meant that we had to figure out a faster way to get back to the bus stop. We quickly justified more illegal behavior that involved cutting cross-country far from any posted trails, through brush, across streams, and over “koppies” to a farm that looked like our ticket out. Unfortunately, we found a gatekeeper on our road to freedom that, after talking with his supervisors, said that he would be fired if he let us out that gate. That means that we had another 7-10 km walk across the park in store for us to get out the front gate.

We did not do that.

We then went around the corner out of eyeshot and hopped the fence, barbed wire and all, to achieve our long-sought egress.

Then we got caught.

The beauty of Swaziland is that no one really cares so we just said “sorry…too far…” as we kept walking. At that point, our highly motivated gatekeeper turned around, hung his head and walked back to his ill-attended post. We never saw him again. We eventually got past the kids (and adults) asking for sweets and money and made it back to the main road. Thankfully, luck-sack Eric was with me so we got a taxi within 30 seconds of getting to the road. We made up enough time with that fortunate turn of events that we had just enough time for Malandela’s (good, wholesome, fattening food) for dinner outside on a perfect evening prior to catching another taxi to Manzini in a downpour, and the last bus of the night to Siteki.

What a great weekend! We seem to have way more than our fair share of those. Grace will enlighten you about the rest of the fun we had this past weekend (involving “gogo” dancing grannies and never-ending quartets) so stay tuned!

Thanks for continuing to follow along with us as we live and learn in Africa.

-Brad

New Photos!

Check out our new photos! Click on the Slideshow on the left to go to larger photos. Just a few at this point, but there are more to come!

-Brad

The Big City!

We had the opportunity to spend this past weekend in the large cities of Pretoria and Johannesburg, South Africa. We stayed with Chantelle Vorster (our new South African friend-thanks, Elani, for hooking us up!) in her home in Pretoria. The time in the city was a much needed reprieve from the slow, rural pace of Swaziland.

We were so excited for our trip, and so thorough as we packed clothes, snacks, drinks, iPods, Rand (South African currency), cameras, and everything we thought we would need for a good journey. Ironically, as we entered Siteki (about 2 km from the farm), Ben questioned us, “Uhhh….do any of you have your passport?” All four of us were passportless. After a few slaps on the forehead and several exclamations, we were able to turn around and retrieve our passports quickly. We would have had a less than enjoyable 2 hour drive to the border post and 2 hour drive back without our passports! The rest of the drive was rather uneventful and despite crossing the border with our car for the first time and some confusion about two “Forest Drives” on either side of the highway, we made it safely to Pretoria.

When we reached the city we met several of Chantelle’s friends at a braai on Friday night. We had a great time sharing about each other’s culture and meeting new people. Since I love food, I will expound on several of the South African foods we eat regularly and some new ones we experienced this weekend. At the braai we had steak, boerwors (a less spicy sausage-like meat that is cooked on a braai [grill]), milk tart (a milk-based custard type dessert in a crust), and cook sisters (a fried, twisted donut-like pastry that is soaked in a sugary syrup). All were delicious…as if you could go wrong with grilled meat, custard, and fried dough!

We were able to experience Pretoria on Saturday. After awakening early, we visited the Boers Mark (Farmer’s Market). This large market was a collection of fresh produce, local cuisine, flowers, South African handcrafts, and much more. We thoroughly enjoyed the sights and smells of well-made wares and cooking food.

That day we also met new people including Landie Erasmus who made us a lovely welcome basket with all kinds of special South African foods. Some we had tried before and some were new. These included biltong (dried meat), droerwors (dried boerwors), Astros (bite-sized chocolate covered biscuits with a hard candy shell), Jelly Tots (fruit flavored gummies), Speckled eggs (soft jelly eggs in chocolate with a crisp candy shell), vanilla fudge, more cook sisters, mince fattis (which are just what they sound like—seasoned hamburger on fried dough), funky fruit sticks (dried fruit sticks rolled in sugar) and some other cookie-like things; I don’t even know what they were but they were good to dip in tea. Needless to say, we not were short for food this weekend! We also had tea with Elani Fourie’s (our South African friend who lives in Kentucky) witty grandmother who lives in Pretoria. We enjoyed meeting with her and hearing some of her fun stories.

Some of the South African governmental offices are located in Pretoria. We visited and basked in the ornate and beautifully designed, curved Union Buildings. We were able to see the high school where Chantelle and Elani attended as well as the University of Pretoria where Chantelle currently attends. We also saw a part of the city center called Church Square where several old, stately buildings and palm trees surround a square where Johannesburg was founded.

Our day was extremely enjoyable overall, but I especially enjoyed going to some malls in the afternoon. It just felt comfortable to be in civilization again. Even though we consider Mabuda Farm in Swaziland our “home,” I definitely needed some external stimulation. These South African malls were awesome and huge! One of the malls had a climbing wall, bumper boats, inflatable jumping rooms and a drive-in movie theater on the roof. As you can tell, by the evening we had had a packed day; therefore, we were all pleased to have dinner at home (Chantelle’s mother graciously made us a meal) and watch a DVD (P.S. I Love You for all you chick-flick lovers).

On Sunday, we went in to Johannesburg. We saw several places including Montecasino. It is an artsy area with a casino, two theaters, bird garden, fountains, many restaurants, and quaint shops. However what is unique is that it is constructed to look like old world Italy, and it does! Being there definitely hearkened back to our travels through Italy in 2007 and I was sorely tempted to sample some of the fine gelato offered in the piazza.

We also saw Sandton, which is very modern and urban up-and-coming area of Johannesburg. We saw Nelson Mandela Square where a larger than life statue of Nelson Mandela overlooks a square of hotels, restaurants, library, and theater. We had lunch at a great restaurant with delicious gourmet pizza. We had been craving pizza and it totally hit the spot! We had a welcome diversion at the Johannesburg Botanical Gardens Included in the day was seeing the Nelson Mandela bridge, Mary Fitzgerald Square, Melrose Arch (a new area of chic restaurants and shops).

Our afternoon adventure was a drive to Soweto. This is one of the slum areas of Johannesburg that was designated for black people during the apartheid regime. At that time they were divided up into zones (if you have seen the recent movie District 9, it is loosely based on this area). Both Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmund Tutu (both Nobel Laureates) grew up on the same street in Soweto. It is still an extremely run down and poverty-stricken area. Though we had some difficulty finding it at first because the main road was closed down and then we drove off the map, we were still able to see the pitiful squalor that people live in just outside of the main part of Johannesburg.

We left Monday morning after stocking up on some food items in South Africa that we cannot find in Swaziland. Despite some significant low-lying fog and some crazy Swazi drivers, we arrived safely home. The day had significantly cooled to approximately 55 degrees, which was a wonderful taste of the fall that we will miss in the states. All in all, our jaunt into civilization was stimulating, relaxing, and an ultimately a success.

-Grace

September 13, 2010

Having a Huge Braai, Hiking, Swimming in mountain waterfalls, and Frisbee… Could it get better?!

This past weekend Will’s (another doctor working with Dr. Pons) girlfriend and close friend came for a visit from Joburg, SA which was a ton of fun. Saturday night we got together with Jono and Helen, Will’s friends, and “The Four” for a huge barbeque (Braai in South Africa) and we pulled out all the stops! Three different kinds of meat, rice, salad, Potato salad, sweet potatoes, papaya, chakalaka and CAKE!

That next morning we went on a big hike in one of the game reserves on the western side of the country. Our hike led us from the top of the ridge down into a valley filled with lush landscapes, great rock formations, and beautiful waterfalls. As the Swazi summer is starting to ramp up now, some people in our group of 7 decided to take a little dip in the pools underneath the waterfalls; very cold, but quite refreshing with the sun beating down on us. The only casualty was Grace’s pride as she took an unfortunate spill into rushing water; thankfully no physical pain and a good laugh after she was dry!

After our hike, we met up with some people in Mbabane for a game of ultimate. Our group consisted of Swazis, Mozambiquans, Afrikaaners, South Africans, Canadians, Middle Easterners and Americans (quite a few other than just us). We had some great fun and were invited to play in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament being held Joburg in October.

All in all, this was a great past weekend. For those keeping up with our activities, the secret garden is going well (putting in a new road to get a tractor in… I’ve had enough of manual labor!), Brad and Grace are in the swing of the school season, Eric is having great success as both a surgeon and teacher for Will, I will be meeting with a psychologist on Monday to discuss working with the government on their counseling (private and group) protocols. This looks to be a big week!

Sorry all for this blog entry being late, Swaziland is in the middle of a very dry time of the year and many places are catching fire and burning the telephone polls which have left us again without internet.

-Ben

Psychologists’ Meeting in Mbabane And Swaziland Burns!

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 13^th 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

Back to School...

Another interesting turn of events occurred the day before school began on the 8^th. Brad and I were asked to teach at the Global Revival Mission School (primary school from Kdg. to 7^th grade). Brad would continue teaching Math and Science the 6^th and 7^th graders and I would teach English to some of the grades. Though quite exciting, this stirred a strong nervousness in me for many reasons. First of all, I am not trained as a teacher (I don’t think playing childhood “school” in my barn was quite enough), secondly, I don’t know how to teach English as a second language, thirdly, I don’t speak Siswati, and lastly, this is a big job!!! However, I went with it and Wednesday was our first day of school. After participating in a rousing assembly complete with group songs with hand motions, a sermon message, special choir numbers including “I Will Call Upon the Lord,” and a specific thank you to us for painting the desks, we began our first day of school. After speaking with the teachers, we determined what our schedule would be and Thursday we began working with the students.

The first class I taught was the first grade class and it was pretty much a disaster. The students could hardly understand me and they were a rowdy bunch. Their elderly teacher seemed very eager for me to teach for her and she left! I spent most of the class time trying to read the kids’ names on their workbooks and pass them out (too many letters and clicks!), trying to teach “in, beside, behind, under, and on,” and trying to play “Siphiwe Says” (Swazi version of Simon Says).

Today, it went a little better. I wasn’t supposed to teach today, I was just going to assist the teacher. However, when I arrived, the teacher was gone and the kids were chaotic! She had written some things on the board, so I just jumped in. We worked on action words, which was easy to convey and something I could act out. I was walking, winking, jumping, crying, sitting, holding, and eating all over the classroom! We had fun having the children come up in groups to act out the words as well. The difficulty came when we began the workbook page. As we were counting and identifying positions, I asked them to, “Write a 2 beside the two balls.” I received many blank stares and even the most accomplished English speaker in the class said he could not understand. I repeated myself several times, paused for many seconds, and wracked my brain. Finally I said, “Rrrrite a too by tha 2 boals.” “Oooohhhh,” they said and starting writing (this had a feeling quite similar to the story of We call her Leenda. J). Therefore, the rest of the hour consisted of Grace speaking in some sort of Swazi-British-American accent to communicate the instructions. Though, still not a wholly successful venture, hopefully, I can continue to assist the first grade teacher in English class.

I was supposed to teach my first lesson to the sixth graders today. I prepared diligently and was geared up to go; however, somehow, when it came time to teach, all the children were outside playing, eating, or getting ready to finish for the day. Since I have been genuinely confused by their class schedules already, I approached the teacher to figure out what was happening. He said that the day was over and they were skipping the last period. Apparently, on Fridays they start a ½ hour early to let out early. No one bothered to tell Brad or me until the day was finished. (That’s why I seemed to be late to every class today!) So, obviously, there is a lot I need to learn about Swazi schools, communication, and timing. What I can figure is that, 11:00 means 10:30 on Fridays, and 12:00 on special days or days with delays, and 11:30 or 11:35-ish on normal days. I will never understand. Anyway…after observing the teachers in the 5^th-7^th grades over the last two days, I am very excited about teaching those classes. They understand English much better and I feel like I have a grasp on the content. I’ll keep you updated on how my first lessons go next week and we’ll see what happens with the first graders!!

-Grace