And Here.. We.. Go!

Well it’s been a busy few weeks in rural Swaziland. Tomorrow starts the project I have been working on since January! I can’t believe that it’s already time for it to happen. Monday through Wednesday, our RHMs who are the community health volunteers (like informal nurses) are having their trainings on HIV/AIDS one day, TB the next, then basic care and hygiene, family planning and circumcision the next day. Then next weeks starts our three weeks of community training sessions that the RHMs will teach. The past few weeks, the RHMs have been conducting surveys of the community to see what their knowledge of these topics was before the training, then we’ll do it again in September and hopefully there will be an increase in knowledge of these topics.
This past weekend was extremely busy preparing for the next few weeks of trainings. On Thursday, my counterpart and I had a marathon afternoon in town buying and printing and photocopying everything we need for the next four weeks. From 400 notebooks and pens to two thousand rand of food, we bought it all. It was crazy. On Friday afternoon we went on a chicken scouting adventure (Ali, you might want to skip this part). We picked out five chickens for the RHM training lunches and told the Make we would come back tomorrow to buy them before a few of the RHMs came to kill and clean them the next afternoon. As we were leaving, my counterpart said there was a good chance she would have to go into town tomorrow and could I handle the buying and carrying and oversee the killing and cleaning tomorrow by myself? Um, excuse me? I hesitantly agreed, because there was really no other option, and prayed she wouldn’t have to go. That whole night I kept thinking that if it were at all possible, I would call my mom and she would come down to pick me up and we’d go and buy some already killed and cut pieces of chicken from the store, and then go get a Caribou of course. But I guess there’s a time in everyone’s life where they realize they can’t just call their mom to fix the things they don’t want to do, and boy did I learn that one the hard way. Fortunately, my counterpart did not have to go to town the next day. Unfortunately, she called me at 8:30am to tell me this, as well as ask if I could buy the chickens and bring them to our kaGogo Center (across the community) by 10? Um, excuse me? Again? I mean at least I don’t have to worry about killing them, but I still couldn’t buy them from a lady whose language I don’t speak, and certainly can’t carry five chickens. So I grabbed two of my sisis and we ventured off to buy the chickens. It was awful. I’m not sure exactly how many of you have ever carried a chicken before, (Ali, you REALLY won’t want to read this), but you grab its wings and hold them behind its back together in one of your hands. So my sisis grabbed one chicken in each hand and I grabbed one, thinking, “Okay, I can do this.” Well, a few minutes down the road, I look down and see that my chicken is clearly suffocating. I don’t think they’re supposed to be carried like that for long distances. And we weren’t anywhere near where we were dropping them off. So I ask my sisis for help, who reply with “Oh yes, he’s dying.” And then a “Hey you! Why are you dying on Sethabile?” and knock another chicken against him to wake him up. Well of course its one of those things you cant stop watching and I tried to help him but there really wasn’t anything I could do. I kept shifting him from one hand to another, wondering why MINE had to die and not anyone else’s, and he’s not getting any better. And at this point I REALLY just wanted to hand him off to someone (mom?) who would fix it and so I wouldn’t have to deal with it, but my sisis were already holding two chickens. I HAD to carry this guy the rest of the way. I’ll save you the more gruesome details of his wing breaking and blood all over my hands, but lets just say I practically ran the rest of the way and dropped him as quickly as possible. He lived, just barely, until obviously he was killed. After we finally got there, I met up with my counterpart, said thank you to my sisis and headed off to the community garden for some vegetables. After a pit stop at a homestead to play with a baby and some incwancwa for breakfast (you know you’ve been here too long when you actually kind of like the sour, fermented, maize porridge breakfast), we then picked bunches of green peppers, dug out a ton of carrots and beet root, and chopped some cabbage, and hauled our hundred rand of groceries back across the fields, to our dying chickens. I was dreading this part of the day for a while and almost got sucked in to the killing when the bomake didn’t show up at first. But they came eventually, and they killed, cleaned and cut the chickens, and I bought them all fat cakes and sat around the corner. Then I grabbed my bags of cleaned chickens to throw in my family’s fridge and left as quickly as the five heavy chickens would let me.
Needless to say, I did nothing today, resting from my horrifying day yesterday, and gearing up for three weeks of trainings! Here’s hoping it all goes well! And on that note, its bedtime because tomorrow is an early day – just wanted to give you all a quick update on life. Hope you all have a great Memorial Day and eat lots of hamburgers and potato salad!

Love you all and miss you tons,

Megan