Week Uno.

Hello, Hello!

Well I have officially been at my site for one week! (1 down of 104, but again, who’s counting?) The day they dropped us off last week was definitely that stereotypical vision you have when you think of the Peace Corps. They load all your stuff in a truck, drive you to the middle of nowhere Africa, unload it all and say, “Well, good luck!” and drive away. It was hard, and I think if my Make hadn’t been there and the kids weren’t constantly running in and out of the hut, I might have broken down. But there was water that needed to be fetched from the pump, my stove needed to be set up, etc so I kept busy and made it through.
Last Friday I went into town and bought my first bed. Who knew the first one I would buy would be in Africa?? For those concerned, no I did not sleep on the floor that first night, my family provided me a mattress, but I quickly went and bought one for myself. Actually, seven of us went to town and bought beds from an Indahli Store. Yes, we bought seven beds at once, so we made sure we got a discount. : ) Thanks, Jessica! The next day I went back and bought some baskets, a broom and some ski rope and made a little hanging basket contraption and a makeshift closet with the broom handle. So now most of my clothes and all of my food is off the floor, which has helped the ant problem, but not entirely solved it as I found out this morning…
But things are chugging along here. We are now in what they call the “Integration” period. We can’t start any projects, they haven’t even taught us how to apply for any grants yet so there wouldn’t be any money for the projects anyway, and we can’t really go anywhere. Thank goodness we do accumulate vacation days (already have one day in the bank from August!), but we can’t use them until after Inservice Training (IST) around Thanksgiving. And we only get to spend one night a month away from our site; as opposed to the two nights a week we get after Integration. So any traveling to the cities we do, we have to make sure we can get back before dark, not an easy feat. Which is why I stayed here last Tuesday when a bunch of people met up in Manzini. My transportation situation here is a bit frustrating but I think I am starting to figure it out. The problem with it is that it SEEMS like it should be easy and kumbis should come frequently, but they don’t and when they do, they’re full. Granted, I was trying to get to town at the end of the month and that is when everyone gets paid so everyone and their cousin was trying to get to town to get to the bank and the store. But I have a trip to Mbabane planned for next week (pending certain protests) so hopefully things will go more smoothly because it will be the 9th or 10th and not the 28th or 29th.
So during this time of Integration we are, well, integrating. We have a bunch of community assessment surveys to do and they encourage us to do daily activity schedules, seasonal calendars, focus groups and interviews. Basically these first three months are assessing what the community has and needs. Then we have to write up a report, not unlike a research paper for school, detailing our findings. I hope to meet up with my counterpart early next week so we can get the ball rolling on these assessments, also so I can have something to do. My counterpart has been at workshops for the past few weeks so I have been kind of moseying around the community on my own. On my way back from town late last week I met a guy from an NGO that was doing work at my clinic. Turns out they were doing free male circumcisions at my clinic for two weeks, and I was so excited, I invited myself to stop by on Tuesday (as Monday was a holiday-oh I’ll get to that in a second). I was really happy that this was happening not just in my community, but all over Swaziland. The NGO was targeting school aged boys during this two week campaign, as schools are closed for three weeks now. A recent study has shown that the foreskin has been shown to actually attract the HIV virus so obviously this is a very exciting prevention method. And the fact that they had already surpassed their goal of circumcising 5,000 boys and still had a week to go was great news. So anyway on Tuesday I went down to the clinic and accidentally walked into the operating room, where they quickly sucked me in and soon I was wearing scrubs and getting nurses anything they needed. (No snipping, I didn’t get anywhere near any medical equipment, no worries Eileen – incase you’re reading this…) But it was really fun and I was happy to have something to do! Plus they were so happy to have me, they asked me to come back the rest of the week, and as my counterpart was not around, I was practically begging for something to do, so I happily accepted. The doctor performing the surgeries (in Swaziland you have to be a surgeon to perform circumcisions) is actually from Salt Lake City, so we were both excited to hear another American accent, and I was able to serve as a Swazi English to American English translator, as the two are actually very different. And I am very excited to go back again tomorrow!
Back to the holiday that was on Monday. Monday was the Umhlanga ceremony, or the Reed Dance. If you haven’t heard of it or seen pictures of it, Google it, it is beautiful. Basically the king calls all the girls, virgins actually, in Swaziland to Lobamba on a certain day and the girls come by the truckloads a few days before. They then walk for a day or two to collect reeds (huge reeds) for the king’s fences, and then walk back. Yes, walk. Then, on the day of Umhlanga, they dance for him, about 70,000 girls dance together for the king. I went on Sunday with my family for the dress rehearsal, because Monday was a holiday and transportation was going to be even more of an issue. It was so great even that day and I’ve heard it’s even better on the actual day of Umhlanga. I am excited to go back next year.
Well I think that’s about it for now, I am exhausted from 2 ½ hours of hand washing my clothes this morning in the African sun. It’s definitely naptime! : ) Hope everyone is doing well at home and ready to go back to school! It is definitely weird not getting ready to go to school for the first time since I was like 4. I hope everyone is enjoying the Fair too and is eating lots and lots of Sweet Martha’s cookies for me, it may be a while till I get them so eat ‘em up! Miss you all and love you!

Love, Megan