No, really, I am. Tomorrow night (Thursday) my flight leaves Joburg. Swazi Airlink is being liquidated, so the only other carrier between Manzini and Johannesburg, South African Airways, is swamped with passengers. So this leaves me with just one little detail to take care of: exactly how I'm going to get from Manzini to Joburg, a four-hour road trip. I'm still working on that one. Worst case scenario: I have to take a kombi and risk being late for my flight, and have to figure out how to get from the bus rank to the airport in Joburg. We'll see.
You might be in shock right now. I know I am. "How did it get this bad?" you ask. I'm asking myself the same thing at this very moment. The only thing I know is that this has been building for a very, very long time. I haven't written about everything on my blog, but suffice it to say that this has been the hardest year of my life and then some. I kept thinking that I could tough it out, which I've also been thinking for a very long time.
Then, yesterday morning during my run, which is when many of my epiphanies come, I had a thought. I asked myself, "Why are you fighting so hard? What are you fighting for?" Because that's what it has become: a struggle. Being here everyday has become an agonizing trial, a test, every second and minute are difficult and must be struggled through. And in this awful fight, it's me against the world.
And I'm losing. I think I've known this for awhile, but yesterday was when I was finally able to admit it to myself. After I asked myself what I'm actually fighting for, I realized that my remaining in Swaziland for a long time now has been about not being a quitter. Not giving up. Finishing what you started. Keeping up appearances. Trying to pretend like everything is okay. And it's been that way for so long that I can't really remember if it was ever about anything else.
I've never felt like I belonged here. Never felt like I had a purpose here. I never really knew what I was doing here, until it turned into just trying to make it until July when this would all be over and I could go home. And recently it just got to the point where I realized that it wasn't fair to other people if I remained here. Instead of simply putting on a pleasant face when interacting with people, like I've been doing for a long time, I started to not be able to muster up any enthusiasm or a smile, even a fake one. I'd been pretending for too long and I was sick of it.
So I've been ignoring people on the street, giving curt, barely polite, greetings, or not at all, and being really distant with my host family. And I realized that it's not acceptable for me to treat people like that. It's not who I am, it's not what they deserve, it's no way to treat a fellow human being. There is something very, very wrong.
So it was only by realizing my problems interacting with others that I was able to finally admit to myself that I'm not okay. I really am my own worst enemy. I knew that things were not right, but I also knew that I'm a strong person who can make it through a lot. So I just kept ignoring problems, and pushing and pushing myself through one day, and then the next. And the next, and the next and the next... I even knew that I was close to the edge, but I didn't know how close. Until now, when I'm leaving tomorrow morning and my chest constricts and there's a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as I think about how to make it until then.
So I'm ashamed. Ashamed that I'm running off and not saying a proper goodbye to all the people who have been so kind to me. I feel like a failure. I've failed to hold up my part of the contract that I entered into for this year. I feel mean, because I know how many people I'm hurting by just leaving all of a sudden. I feel weak, because I couldn't make it.
Telling my host family that I'm leaving took every bit of that tiny little scrap of courage that I could muster up. Worst is that I can't even really explain clearly why on earth I decided to do such a crazy thing as get on a plane tomorrow and leave them. After all, it's taken how many paragraphs here, and you're probably still wondering what's going on. And your mother tongue is English. When I told my three-year-old sister that I was going to "eMelika" she asked if I would be coming back tomorrow. My response was to burst into tears.
Frankly and honestly, I'm a mess. And I partially blame myself for letting the situation get so completely out of control that this evacuation is necessary. A lot of it, obviously, is due to circumstances and others' actions which are outside my control. But I'm not even going to go there.
Finally, I apologize to you. I'm sorry for disappointing you. I'm sorry for shattering whatever illusions you may have held about me. I'm sorry for not being honest with you throughout.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry...
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
The Marvelous Properties of Freshly-Baked Bread
It’s funny where the little moments of redemption come in. Last night on my way home I was on a mission. Zinhle had called earlier in the afternoon as I was leaving work and asked me to pick up three loaves of bread at Shoprite. When I stepped inside the store, the checkout lines were much shorter and quieter than usual, and I was relieved that this Shoprite excursion wouldn’t involve the endless waiting and congestion and noise and jostling and harassment from random males standing in the queue behind me that I had come to expect of my typical Shoprite experience. But I was wrong.
There was an actual mob by the deli counter, stretching back into an endless queue as far as the refrigerated dairy products corner in the back. With a sinking feeling in my stomach I identified the empty bags being waved about as bread bags as people shoved and shouted. I decided that there was nothing for it but to dive in, because hey, my family needed that bread as much as anybody else waiting here. What would my siblings eat with their tea in the morning if I didn’t return with the bread?
So I took a deep breath and burrowed into the mass of warm bodies, heading for the empty rack where I saw the bags. I was going against the current and several times had tried to squeeze under someone’s elbow only to find someone else popping out from that exact spot, their fragrant, warm prizes tucked under their arms. I was finally able to snatch up three bags, and found myself in the line. As I had a moment to observe the system within the madness, I noticed that a man wearing thick gloves was ferrying the loaves from where two other employees were popping them out of the hot pans, straight from the oven, into the waiting hands of the consumers. I also observed that these things were going to be hot, so I grabbed a basket sitting on the floor. Immediately the woman behind me put up a fuss, and from the repeated use of the word “Wami!” (Mine!) and her grabbing at the basket, it didn’t take long to see that this basket had a prior claim on it. So I let it go, since by now I was at the front of the queue and the bread man was coming at me with three fat loaves. He was reluctant to give me all three, because other people were anxiously waiting for them, and as I scurried off with my piping hot load I could hear the man behind me complaining.
As soon as I emerged from the mob, I threw the loaves into an abandoned basket because they had already blistered my palms a bright, shiny pink. I squatted on the floor, bagging my bread as people pushed past above me. As I stood in line to pay, the delicious aroma of freshly baked bread kept wafting up to my nose, and once I was installed in the backseat of the kombi it only got more intense. I kept shifting the hot bread on my knees as we jounced up the hills, trying to keep my legs from getting burned, my head from hitting the ceiling, my shoulder from banging against the window on one side, and my elbow from jabbing into Nomphumelelo’s side, my neighbor who happened to be a bit too close for comfort on this particular ride. I failed on all accounts, and when I emerged from the kombi it was with blistered spots on my knees and a sore head.
When I stepped into the kitchen at home I immediately (and rudely, without even a greeting) launched into an account of my fight for the bread, regaling Gogo and my sisters with my valiant efforts, the scalding temperature of the bread, and the woman with her shopping basket. They all thought it was hilarious and laughed delightedly at my stream of English jumbled with Siswati. Gogo was chuckling about the “wami” lady long afterwards.
And this small saga changed the course of my day. Before it had been just a slow day at the office, but after the adrenaline rush that fighting for my bread gave me, I was energized. I joked and chatted with my siblings, cuddled with my little sister Tema and helped Make weave grass rope. I swallowed the bitter inkaka greens for supper and gratefully mixed in the scrambled egg my sister had added to my plate, knowing that I didn’t really care for the inkaka. I sang along wholeheartedly with the children’s choruses during prayer time, and when we prayed I found a whole litany of things to be thankful for that day – I had finished typing the marriage enrichment manual at work, my hair-braiding appointment for Saturday was set up, the History of South Africa book I was reading was compelling and inspiring, and Nomcebo had brought in umbila and sinkhwa sembila (corn on the cob and sweet cornbread) to the office as a treat. So as I counted my blessings I marveled at how my day had been transformed by as simple a thing as stopping to buy bread on the way home. And then it came to me in a flash why the incident had been so meaningful.
For a few minutes at Shoprite, I felt like I belonged. Like I was a part of things. Like I was just a person like anyone else here. No one treated me differently because I was a white foreigner. No men harassed me or yelled lewd comments at me. No one made excuses for me or tried to help me or spoke English just for me. No one asked me for money or tried to suck up to me. People pushed me. They shoved me. They stole back baskets from me and didn’t want to give me the bread I needed. But I was thrilled. Because for a few moments I forgot my skin color. I forgot my nationality. I forgot my deficiency in the language that everyone else speaks fluently. I felt like I was just another tired, hungry person eager to catch the kombi home, but willing to fight for food for my family first. I felt a certain bond with these people, even as I fought them for my place in line. I felt like we understood each other, and after all, what is more basic than competition for food? I felt like I belonged here, in this struggle. It felt right.
There was an actual mob by the deli counter, stretching back into an endless queue as far as the refrigerated dairy products corner in the back. With a sinking feeling in my stomach I identified the empty bags being waved about as bread bags as people shoved and shouted. I decided that there was nothing for it but to dive in, because hey, my family needed that bread as much as anybody else waiting here. What would my siblings eat with their tea in the morning if I didn’t return with the bread?
So I took a deep breath and burrowed into the mass of warm bodies, heading for the empty rack where I saw the bags. I was going against the current and several times had tried to squeeze under someone’s elbow only to find someone else popping out from that exact spot, their fragrant, warm prizes tucked under their arms. I was finally able to snatch up three bags, and found myself in the line. As I had a moment to observe the system within the madness, I noticed that a man wearing thick gloves was ferrying the loaves from where two other employees were popping them out of the hot pans, straight from the oven, into the waiting hands of the consumers. I also observed that these things were going to be hot, so I grabbed a basket sitting on the floor. Immediately the woman behind me put up a fuss, and from the repeated use of the word “Wami!” (Mine!) and her grabbing at the basket, it didn’t take long to see that this basket had a prior claim on it. So I let it go, since by now I was at the front of the queue and the bread man was coming at me with three fat loaves. He was reluctant to give me all three, because other people were anxiously waiting for them, and as I scurried off with my piping hot load I could hear the man behind me complaining.
As soon as I emerged from the mob, I threw the loaves into an abandoned basket because they had already blistered my palms a bright, shiny pink. I squatted on the floor, bagging my bread as people pushed past above me. As I stood in line to pay, the delicious aroma of freshly baked bread kept wafting up to my nose, and once I was installed in the backseat of the kombi it only got more intense. I kept shifting the hot bread on my knees as we jounced up the hills, trying to keep my legs from getting burned, my head from hitting the ceiling, my shoulder from banging against the window on one side, and my elbow from jabbing into Nomphumelelo’s side, my neighbor who happened to be a bit too close for comfort on this particular ride. I failed on all accounts, and when I emerged from the kombi it was with blistered spots on my knees and a sore head.
When I stepped into the kitchen at home I immediately (and rudely, without even a greeting) launched into an account of my fight for the bread, regaling Gogo and my sisters with my valiant efforts, the scalding temperature of the bread, and the woman with her shopping basket. They all thought it was hilarious and laughed delightedly at my stream of English jumbled with Siswati. Gogo was chuckling about the “wami” lady long afterwards.
And this small saga changed the course of my day. Before it had been just a slow day at the office, but after the adrenaline rush that fighting for my bread gave me, I was energized. I joked and chatted with my siblings, cuddled with my little sister Tema and helped Make weave grass rope. I swallowed the bitter inkaka greens for supper and gratefully mixed in the scrambled egg my sister had added to my plate, knowing that I didn’t really care for the inkaka. I sang along wholeheartedly with the children’s choruses during prayer time, and when we prayed I found a whole litany of things to be thankful for that day – I had finished typing the marriage enrichment manual at work, my hair-braiding appointment for Saturday was set up, the History of South Africa book I was reading was compelling and inspiring, and Nomcebo had brought in umbila and sinkhwa sembila (corn on the cob and sweet cornbread) to the office as a treat. So as I counted my blessings I marveled at how my day had been transformed by as simple a thing as stopping to buy bread on the way home. And then it came to me in a flash why the incident had been so meaningful.
For a few minutes at Shoprite, I felt like I belonged. Like I was a part of things. Like I was just a person like anyone else here. No one treated me differently because I was a white foreigner. No men harassed me or yelled lewd comments at me. No one made excuses for me or tried to help me or spoke English just for me. No one asked me for money or tried to suck up to me. People pushed me. They shoved me. They stole back baskets from me and didn’t want to give me the bread I needed. But I was thrilled. Because for a few moments I forgot my skin color. I forgot my nationality. I forgot my deficiency in the language that everyone else speaks fluently. I felt like I was just another tired, hungry person eager to catch the kombi home, but willing to fight for food for my family first. I felt a certain bond with these people, even as I fought them for my place in line. I felt like we understood each other, and after all, what is more basic than competition for food? I felt like I belonged here, in this struggle. It felt right.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
The Terror Squad
Lord of Sound. Destination. Seduction. Teddybear. Pavarotti. Ice Baby. Terror Squad. Redemption. Lion's Power. Shakira. Cool Squad. Shark. Who's Your Daddy? Scandal. Twisted. Alaska. First Choice. Da Base Line. Honey Luv. Juicy Fruit.
So, what do these words have in common? This may seem like one of those awful SAT questions, where you can stare at a group of words for hours and not find the common thread. I'm sure you're as puzzled as I remember being when faced with some of those impossible vocab questions. But when I hear this litany of names, I am flooded with emotion. Exhilaration, fear, and apprehension mix with my amusement at the English phrases, so strangely put together and seemingly out of place. These names are my companions, a part of my daily life, essential, and yet they never fail to strike terror in my heart. They are the names of kombis, those incredible custom-built machines that form the backbone of the Swazi public transportation system.
A section of the busrank, relatively quiet at 8 am. Notice Teddy Bear featured in the foreground.
However, these essential, much-needed players in Swazi daily life are also, for me, the terror squad. When I am out on my morning run at 5:30 am, I enjoy breathing in the fresh, still-cool morning air and watching the lights of the valley wink off as the great red sun crests the eastern hill and vaults up into the sky, already blazing. The peace is shattered the moment I hear an ominous rumbling coming down the dirt road. The moment the van comes into view, I swerve to the side of the road and immediately lower my head and hold my breath in preparation for the huge cloud of dust that will linger long after the vehicle has blown past. Numerous times, while lost in thought or concentrating on my running, or simply not quite awake yet, I have been surprised by a kombi, and more times than I can count, I have had to literally leap into the weeds at the side of the road to save my life.
The irony of the situation comes when, an hour or so later, I reappear on the road, scrubbed and breakfasted, ready to travel into Manzini to work. Then, one of these holy terrors will pull up in a cloud of dust, the bus conductor grinning as he slides open the door for me, and the driver cheerfully greeting me. And I can’t help but look at them and think, “Do you not remember that earlier this morning you practically ran me down?! And now you’re grinning at me and asking how I am?! I’m just glad I’m still alive!” But it’s not like they have it in for me personally, since pedestrian rights are virtually non-existent here.
So I accept the terror squad for what they are, a fact of life here. Let me introduce you to the ones on my route, which runs Manzini-St. Michaels-Moyeni. There are two superstars, Cheese Boy and Peace Train. By superstars, I mean that they have built up quite a reputation for themselves, and everyone knows them by name. Cheese Boy is notorious because of its driver’s behaviour. Everybody knows that he was in jail for murder and that now he’s out on bail. His style of driving certainly reinforces his image. Cheese Boy never moves an inch for me when I’m running along, and I’ve had to pause in the weeds to recover my breath more than once after a close encounter with Cheese Boy. I’m scared to ride in it ever since I witnessed the driver jump out and leave the full kombi running to go beat up another driver who wouldn’t move his vehicle aside quickly enough.
In contrast, Peace Train is my favorite kombi. It’s painted a deep greenish-turquoise color and the windows are decorated with decals spelling out its name amidst little red hearts. The driver is always sharply attired in a long-sleeved, collared shirt, and the bus conductor has some of the most beautiful, big brown eyes I’ve ever seen. Everything seems better when I’m riding Peace Train.
Other characters on the route include Ingcamu, whose driver always wears a hat that makes him look like he’s on a safari, and who always greets me by name. Then there’s Centipede, with a big golden picture of its namesake on the door, and Liyandiza Lituba, “the Flying Dove.” Joy and White Heart are less frequent carriers on the route, and their staff aren’t nearly as flamboyant. Then there are the new boys in town, the twin Besuthus. They’re brand new and look exactly the same, so it took me a few days to figure out that there were two of them. They are definitely the pleasantest to ride in: they still have all the shock absorbers so the bumps are less jarring, they haven’t yet installed extra speakers along the ceiling so the music isn’t blaring an inch from your ear, the seats are all well-fastened down and free of poking springs, the windows don’t rattle in their tracks and the door opens and closes securely and quietly. Of course, they still tend to overcrowd, so that a van meant to seat 15 can frequently squeeze in 20.
That is, if there are no police checkpoints. The police like to surprise kombis by controlling traffic at a certain robot (stoplight). They will demand papers, which drivers dig from underneath sun visors and below seats. More importantly, if they see that the kombi is loaded beyond official capacity, the extra people have to get out. Understandably, this causes a conflict, since everyone has already paid their fares by this point and it’s still a good 10-15 minute walk into town. But you all simply sit there, and the policeman waits until someone finally caves in and gives up their place.
Paying bus fare is another adventure. Collecting money is one of the principal activities of the bus conductor, who also opens and closes the door and announces the stops. When he decides it’s time to pay, he will get out his change bag and hold his hand out to the passengers closest to him, which is a signal to everyone else to start digging around for the E 2.50 fare (roughly 35 cents). I frequently end up in the crowded back seat, because I can squeeze into smaller places than most African mamas and because I am frequently disgusted with those who will loiter around the kombi in the bus rank, delaying everyone as they wait for someone else to crawl to the back.
Paying from the back seat is interesting, because the money needs to be passed up through the rows to the conductor, who always sits nearest the door. So frequently the back-seat passengers consolidate their fares, making change amongst themselves, to minimize the times that money has to be passed back and forth. It’s amazing to me how quickly and efficiently the BC collects fares and makes change, remembering who has paid for whom and the amount of change each passenger is waiting for. On a few occasions, the BC has “forgotten” my change. Usually I just say politely, “Bhuti, ngicela ishintje yami.” (Brother, can I please have my change?) Once though, I had to follow a BC through the bus rank to the Spaza phone before I was finally able to claim my money.
Another complication resulting from a back-seat position is that often the BC can’t hear you requesting your station amidst the rattling of loose kombi parts and the blaring of terrible American hiphop, South African house music, or perhaps even a Zionist chant turned up full blast. So when we pass the Emseni Supermarket (which doesn’t really deserve the name, since it stocks about 20 different items which are spread out to take up shelf space) I wait for a slight lull in the rattling or a pause in the music and use the opportune moment to yell out “STASH ESHAWENI” at the top of my lungs. This is the stop about a 5 minute walk from my homestead. It’s called Eshaweni because there’s a concrete building housing showers at the crossroads, which was once used by local residents but has now ceased to function, with no hope of being repaired. So we all continue to enjoy our bucket baths – at least I do! But sometimes even the bellowing-at-the-top-of-my-lungs fails and then I resort to the “telephone” system, tapping the guy in front of me and asking him to pass the message up. Also, since the BCs all know me by now (after all, how many white girls ride on their route?) sometimes they just announce the stop before I ask. But I always ask, just in case. After all, they nearly kill me every morning, can I really count on them to let me off at the right stop?
Despite all this, the kombi system works surprisingly well, most of the time. I’ve always gotten to where I was going, although the amount of time it takes to get there is never guaranteed. Once my kombi broke down trying to scale a steep hill, and we rolled backward down it. Then we just had to sit by the edge of the road for 30 minutes until the next one came along. The kombis run roughly from 5:30 am to 7 pm (dawn until dusk), on no particular schedule, leaving the bus rank when full and collecting as many passengers as possible on the way back to town.
I have frequently observed “kombi wars” for passengers, where two kombis traveling the same route in the same direction will play a kind of relay game. While one is stopped to pick up passengers, the other one will pass it, but then that one will stop a bit further down, and the original frontrunner will regain the lead. Once, riding in a kombi behind the infamous Cheese Boy, we were coming down a narrow mountain road when Cheese Boy stopped suddenly in the middle of the road for no reason at all. It was too narrow to pass, and he sat there stubbornly for 10 minutes, ignoring the hooting (as they call it here) and yelling, until a line of vehicles had formed behind us. Suddenly, he started up again and tore off down the road. The only reason I can see is that he was doing it from sheer spite.
The “kombi wars” extend to the bus rank, where each bus conductor roams about his parked kombi, yelling out the destination to passersby. They often reach out to try to get me into their kombi, and I dodge, thinking “Yes, maybe if you shout at me a little louder, I will change my mind and go to Siphofaneni with you instead of going home to Esiyeni.” If there are two kombis boarding for my route at the same time, the competition is fierce as each BC yells at me to choose his kombi.
At other times, the kombis have way more passengers than there are spaces, and all vehicles are operating at full capacity and breakneck speeds. The major rush hour is in late afternoon when schools get out, and streams of uniformed school-children flood the bus rank. At this time, you can stand in line for 45 minutes waiting your turn to board. Curiously, there are always two lines for the Moyeni route, and it’s always a gamble as to which one will be the shortest wait, because the arriving kombis seem to pick one to load at arbitrarily.
However, there are some unspoken rules governing the madness. I’ve noticed that the kombis park in a certain order in the bus rank, and they’re supposed to fill up and leave in this order, to give every driver an equal chance. Also, if you’re in a kombi still collecting passengers in the morning, headed out toward Moyeni, and you meet one on the road going into town with empty seats, they will stop and allow you to switch kombis so you can get to town faster.
These falling apart, over-crowded, hilariously-christened vehicles, staffed by interesting characters and driven at alarming speeds but with tremendous skill, are an integral part of my life in Swaziland. Kombi rides never fail to provide an adventure, whether I’m ready for one or not. They are also a place for meeting friends and neighbors, attempting conversation in Siswati and, of course, the experiences always generate a wealth of good stories.
So, what do these words have in common? This may seem like one of those awful SAT questions, where you can stare at a group of words for hours and not find the common thread. I'm sure you're as puzzled as I remember being when faced with some of those impossible vocab questions. But when I hear this litany of names, I am flooded with emotion. Exhilaration, fear, and apprehension mix with my amusement at the English phrases, so strangely put together and seemingly out of place. These names are my companions, a part of my daily life, essential, and yet they never fail to strike terror in my heart. They are the names of kombis, those incredible custom-built machines that form the backbone of the Swazi public transportation system.
A section of the busrank, relatively quiet at 8 am. Notice Teddy Bear featured in the foreground.
However, these essential, much-needed players in Swazi daily life are also, for me, the terror squad. When I am out on my morning run at 5:30 am, I enjoy breathing in the fresh, still-cool morning air and watching the lights of the valley wink off as the great red sun crests the eastern hill and vaults up into the sky, already blazing. The peace is shattered the moment I hear an ominous rumbling coming down the dirt road. The moment the van comes into view, I swerve to the side of the road and immediately lower my head and hold my breath in preparation for the huge cloud of dust that will linger long after the vehicle has blown past. Numerous times, while lost in thought or concentrating on my running, or simply not quite awake yet, I have been surprised by a kombi, and more times than I can count, I have had to literally leap into the weeds at the side of the road to save my life.
The irony of the situation comes when, an hour or so later, I reappear on the road, scrubbed and breakfasted, ready to travel into Manzini to work. Then, one of these holy terrors will pull up in a cloud of dust, the bus conductor grinning as he slides open the door for me, and the driver cheerfully greeting me. And I can’t help but look at them and think, “Do you not remember that earlier this morning you practically ran me down?! And now you’re grinning at me and asking how I am?! I’m just glad I’m still alive!” But it’s not like they have it in for me personally, since pedestrian rights are virtually non-existent here.
So I accept the terror squad for what they are, a fact of life here. Let me introduce you to the ones on my route, which runs Manzini-St. Michaels-Moyeni. There are two superstars, Cheese Boy and Peace Train. By superstars, I mean that they have built up quite a reputation for themselves, and everyone knows them by name. Cheese Boy is notorious because of its driver’s behaviour. Everybody knows that he was in jail for murder and that now he’s out on bail. His style of driving certainly reinforces his image. Cheese Boy never moves an inch for me when I’m running along, and I’ve had to pause in the weeds to recover my breath more than once after a close encounter with Cheese Boy. I’m scared to ride in it ever since I witnessed the driver jump out and leave the full kombi running to go beat up another driver who wouldn’t move his vehicle aside quickly enough.
In contrast, Peace Train is my favorite kombi. It’s painted a deep greenish-turquoise color and the windows are decorated with decals spelling out its name amidst little red hearts. The driver is always sharply attired in a long-sleeved, collared shirt, and the bus conductor has some of the most beautiful, big brown eyes I’ve ever seen. Everything seems better when I’m riding Peace Train.
Other characters on the route include Ingcamu, whose driver always wears a hat that makes him look like he’s on a safari, and who always greets me by name. Then there’s Centipede, with a big golden picture of its namesake on the door, and Liyandiza Lituba, “the Flying Dove.” Joy and White Heart are less frequent carriers on the route, and their staff aren’t nearly as flamboyant. Then there are the new boys in town, the twin Besuthus. They’re brand new and look exactly the same, so it took me a few days to figure out that there were two of them. They are definitely the pleasantest to ride in: they still have all the shock absorbers so the bumps are less jarring, they haven’t yet installed extra speakers along the ceiling so the music isn’t blaring an inch from your ear, the seats are all well-fastened down and free of poking springs, the windows don’t rattle in their tracks and the door opens and closes securely and quietly. Of course, they still tend to overcrowd, so that a van meant to seat 15 can frequently squeeze in 20.
That is, if there are no police checkpoints. The police like to surprise kombis by controlling traffic at a certain robot (stoplight). They will demand papers, which drivers dig from underneath sun visors and below seats. More importantly, if they see that the kombi is loaded beyond official capacity, the extra people have to get out. Understandably, this causes a conflict, since everyone has already paid their fares by this point and it’s still a good 10-15 minute walk into town. But you all simply sit there, and the policeman waits until someone finally caves in and gives up their place.
Paying bus fare is another adventure. Collecting money is one of the principal activities of the bus conductor, who also opens and closes the door and announces the stops. When he decides it’s time to pay, he will get out his change bag and hold his hand out to the passengers closest to him, which is a signal to everyone else to start digging around for the E 2.50 fare (roughly 35 cents). I frequently end up in the crowded back seat, because I can squeeze into smaller places than most African mamas and because I am frequently disgusted with those who will loiter around the kombi in the bus rank, delaying everyone as they wait for someone else to crawl to the back.
Paying from the back seat is interesting, because the money needs to be passed up through the rows to the conductor, who always sits nearest the door. So frequently the back-seat passengers consolidate their fares, making change amongst themselves, to minimize the times that money has to be passed back and forth. It’s amazing to me how quickly and efficiently the BC collects fares and makes change, remembering who has paid for whom and the amount of change each passenger is waiting for. On a few occasions, the BC has “forgotten” my change. Usually I just say politely, “Bhuti, ngicela ishintje yami.” (Brother, can I please have my change?) Once though, I had to follow a BC through the bus rank to the Spaza phone before I was finally able to claim my money.
Another complication resulting from a back-seat position is that often the BC can’t hear you requesting your station amidst the rattling of loose kombi parts and the blaring of terrible American hiphop, South African house music, or perhaps even a Zionist chant turned up full blast. So when we pass the Emseni Supermarket (which doesn’t really deserve the name, since it stocks about 20 different items which are spread out to take up shelf space) I wait for a slight lull in the rattling or a pause in the music and use the opportune moment to yell out “STASH ESHAWENI” at the top of my lungs. This is the stop about a 5 minute walk from my homestead. It’s called Eshaweni because there’s a concrete building housing showers at the crossroads, which was once used by local residents but has now ceased to function, with no hope of being repaired. So we all continue to enjoy our bucket baths – at least I do! But sometimes even the bellowing-at-the-top-of-my-lungs fails and then I resort to the “telephone” system, tapping the guy in front of me and asking him to pass the message up. Also, since the BCs all know me by now (after all, how many white girls ride on their route?) sometimes they just announce the stop before I ask. But I always ask, just in case. After all, they nearly kill me every morning, can I really count on them to let me off at the right stop?
Despite all this, the kombi system works surprisingly well, most of the time. I’ve always gotten to where I was going, although the amount of time it takes to get there is never guaranteed. Once my kombi broke down trying to scale a steep hill, and we rolled backward down it. Then we just had to sit by the edge of the road for 30 minutes until the next one came along. The kombis run roughly from 5:30 am to 7 pm (dawn until dusk), on no particular schedule, leaving the bus rank when full and collecting as many passengers as possible on the way back to town.
I have frequently observed “kombi wars” for passengers, where two kombis traveling the same route in the same direction will play a kind of relay game. While one is stopped to pick up passengers, the other one will pass it, but then that one will stop a bit further down, and the original frontrunner will regain the lead. Once, riding in a kombi behind the infamous Cheese Boy, we were coming down a narrow mountain road when Cheese Boy stopped suddenly in the middle of the road for no reason at all. It was too narrow to pass, and he sat there stubbornly for 10 minutes, ignoring the hooting (as they call it here) and yelling, until a line of vehicles had formed behind us. Suddenly, he started up again and tore off down the road. The only reason I can see is that he was doing it from sheer spite.
The “kombi wars” extend to the bus rank, where each bus conductor roams about his parked kombi, yelling out the destination to passersby. They often reach out to try to get me into their kombi, and I dodge, thinking “Yes, maybe if you shout at me a little louder, I will change my mind and go to Siphofaneni with you instead of going home to Esiyeni.” If there are two kombis boarding for my route at the same time, the competition is fierce as each BC yells at me to choose his kombi.
At other times, the kombis have way more passengers than there are spaces, and all vehicles are operating at full capacity and breakneck speeds. The major rush hour is in late afternoon when schools get out, and streams of uniformed school-children flood the bus rank. At this time, you can stand in line for 45 minutes waiting your turn to board. Curiously, there are always two lines for the Moyeni route, and it’s always a gamble as to which one will be the shortest wait, because the arriving kombis seem to pick one to load at arbitrarily.
However, there are some unspoken rules governing the madness. I’ve noticed that the kombis park in a certain order in the bus rank, and they’re supposed to fill up and leave in this order, to give every driver an equal chance. Also, if you’re in a kombi still collecting passengers in the morning, headed out toward Moyeni, and you meet one on the road going into town with empty seats, they will stop and allow you to switch kombis so you can get to town faster.
These falling apart, over-crowded, hilariously-christened vehicles, staffed by interesting characters and driven at alarming speeds but with tremendous skill, are an integral part of my life in Swaziland. Kombi rides never fail to provide an adventure, whether I’m ready for one or not. They are also a place for meeting friends and neighbors, attempting conversation in Siswati and, of course, the experiences always generate a wealth of good stories.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Umhlaba Uyahlaba
Umhlaba Uyahlaba is a Swazi saying meaning literally “The earth is hard,” or “Life is hard.”
I was there when Sibusiso, a patient at Hope House, died this morning. I don’t know what shocked me more, his death, or others’ reactions, or my own.
I wasn’t even supposed to be there. Normally I go on Mondays, but because there was something I needed to do at FBS that Monday, I called and told Sister Elsa (the Catholic nun that coordinates Hope House) that I would be coming on Tuesday instead. Something makes me think that I was meant to be a witness to what happened.
Sibusiso lived in House G, with Bheki, the Zimbabwean volunteer nurse. Bheki came to Swaziland from his home country looking for a job. He came looking at Hope House, and there were no jobs, but now he volunteers to take care of patients who don’t have any family to stay with them. So at least he has a place to live. Anna, a staff nurse at Hope House, and I had been out in the garden planting the seeds from a pumpkin they had eaten yesterday. “Just scatter them anywhere,” she said, laughing at the protests of the garden boy tending his neat rows of maize, pumpkin and squash. On our way back from the garden, we stopped at House G to say hello. Bheki had just finished cooking emabele (sorghum porridge) and was trying to feed it to Sibusiso. Sibusiso ate a few spoonfuls, but then shook his head when Bheki tried to continue. Sibusiso looked sideways at me and gestured, making sounds that I knew were words inside his head, but they weren’t coming out right because he never completely closed his mouth when talking, so it just sounded like “Uhh…uhh…” Finally Bheki decoded the message and laughed. “He says he wants you to push him.” I looked at the frail old man leaning forward in the big leather armchair he was sitting in and smiled. “I’m not that strong,” I told him. Bheki went over and got the wheelchair and helped Sibusiso into it. Sibusiso looked like he didn’t know what to do with his feet, so I bent over and flipped the footrests down and lifted his big, yet surprisingly light feet to rest on them. While he was eating, I had noticed how skinny his arms were – I could see the exact outline of the bone in his forearm. His clothes hung on him like sacks on a stick. Later, I found out he only weighed 45 kg (99 lbs) – and he would be tall, I think, if I could have seen him standing upright.
Bheki wheeled him over to his bed, where Sibusiso collapsed, moaning and coughing. The cough sounded awful, like his lungs were full of junk just sitting in there. Anna was crushing some pills for him to mix with water so he could drink them. But when they tried to pour the liquid down, it just spilled right out of his mouth onto his pants. He groaned and lay back on the bed. Anna and Bheki looked at each other and decided they should take him to the Nazarene Hospital. They got busy making phone calls to a taxi driver and writing the referral letter to the hospital and collecting all his medication to bring in to show the doctor – and it was quite a lot, since he was taking the cocktail of ARVs (anti retrovirals) as well as the TB drugs.
The taxi driver arrived and sat at the kitchen table with me, as we watched Bheki try to change Sibusiso’s pants from where he had spilled on them earlier. But Sibusiso was being most uncooperative and finally the dirty pants remained on. Bheki lifted Sibusiso into the wheelchair and went to discuss something with the driver. As I watched, Sibusiso pitched forward from the wheelchair and threw himself back onto the bed. Bheki laughed at him, “He’s very clever, this one, he doesn’t want to go.” And I could understand why. Last time they were at this hospital, Bheki told me that they had waited for 12 hours, from noon until midnight.
But it was obvious Sibusiso had to go – when he was sat back upright, a line of drool escaped his lips and dribbled down onto his pants again. He seemed to have given up his feeble protests, and was quickly placed back into the wheelchair. I followed them out to the taxi, carrying the referral letter that had been forgotten on the table. Bheki parked the chair by the taxi’s open back door and went to get the drugs and other things and put them on the front seat. I stood there blinking in the bright sunshine, trying to figure out how we were going to lift him into the back seat.
Then Anna said quietly, “This one doesn’t need to go to the hospital anymore.” I was puzzled by her words, and as I stood behind Sibusiso’s chair, I noticed the strange angle of his head – it was tilted all the way back. Bheki came around and quickly wheeled the chair back up the walkway into the house, kicking off his sandals urgently when they got tangled in the wheels. I seemed to be rooted to the spot on the porch where I was standing. I watched them through the open window as they laid Sibusiso back on his bed. I didn’t quite understand what was happening, although in a way I think part of me knew the minute Anna had spoken. The rest of me caught up very quickly when the taxi driver, who was standing beside me, clarified matters: “This man has just passed away,” he said matter-of-factly.
I stood there numbly watching Anna and Bheki through the window as they moved in a flurry of activity that involved sheets and a pillow. The driver and I just stood in silence, watching. Then Bheki and Anna came out and started talking about whether or not the driver should get paid, and if so, how much. Bheki thought E20 (about $3) was enough. Anna looked at me and said, “Don’t you want to go for tea?” I turned my head with extreme effort and looked at her incredulously. I tried to think of how on earth I could respond to that question. After what seemed like a long time I said, “I’ve never seen anyone die before.” And I slid to the ground with my head on my knees and started to cry.
Once I started I couldn’t stop. I was vaguely aware of Anna leaving (to call the family, I found out later) and the two men concluded their haggling. “Ncesi,” (sorry) the driver told me, “Don’t cry.” And he handed me a tissue before he left. Bheki brought me a roll of toilet paper and said kindly, “Just cry. Just let it all out. I have to go, but I’ll be back soon.” I don’t know how long I stayed like that, but eventually I became aware of my surroundings again – the bright sunshine on the green grass, the birds chirping, the sound of wheelbarrows and workmen whistling. I felt like my world had just stopped, and I couldn’t understand how everything and everyone else was just continuing on with their business on a sunny Tuesday morning.
By the time Bheki came back, I had calmed down enough to talk. We sat in a pavilion as he kept repeating over and over, “I’m sorry you had to see that, I’m sorry you had to see that.” Finally I said, “Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault. I know it just happens, but it was my first time to see it so close, right there.” I stared out at the mountains and felt the wind drying the tears on my face. “Doesn’t it bother you?” I asked. “It does,” he said. “But you can’t think too much about it. It’s the kind of thing you can never get used to.” I asked if he knew it was going to happen. “No,” he said, “he actually seemed to be improving.” I was struck by the arbitrary nature of life and death. As I talked to Anna later, she said that Sibusiso was a fighter, and she always thought that he would be one of the ones to make it. But his CD4 count was extremely low, and he had just started taking ARVs a couple weeks ago. “Sometimes the body is so depressed that it doesn’t even know which sickness it has. Then, when you start taking the ARVs, it recognizes that it has TB and needs to fight it, and that’s what ends up killing you,” she said.
I sat out on the pavilion for a long time after Bheki left, watching the workmen move back and forth, and gazing at the green peaks above and beyond them. Finally, I went into the bathroom to wash my face. When I cam out, I found someone standing outside the office, and my response to his greeting struck me in a new way. “Ngiyaphila,” I said. I am living.
I felt very tired for the rest of the day. The sisters came in late, and apparently got the report that I was traumatized, because they kept wanting to know if I was OK. I felt very much like a child overreacting to something which adults have learned to take in stride. I felt like I was being unreasonable, judging by the way everyone else carried on without a glitch. Is it not reasonable to mourn the passing of a fellow human being? Isn’t it unreasonable that this is enough a part of daily life that people have learned to handle it so calmly?
Death is a part of life. I knew that with my head before that day- leaves die and grow back. Animals die, like the chickens we sometimes kill for supper or the three little puppies born at our homestead who didn’t make it. People die, and are mourned with night vigils and chanting Zulu songs and early morning burials. I knew all of this. I experienced it. But now I’ve seen just how easily you can pass from one to the other. There’s nothing momentous about it. The barrier, the one we think separates life and death so distinctly, that makes them such opposites, must not be as rigid as we think it is. One minute, Sibusiso is a stubborn old man demanding to be pushed around his room, and the next, there is a small lifeless sheet-covered form curled on the bed, and Sibusiso has moved on, to a place that the rest of us can’t know about right now.
That night, I ate emasi (sour milk) and porridge for supper with my family. After prayer, my sister was talking about all the accidents she had seen on the road. “Three of them, bad ones,” she said, making one of those “life is difficult” noises with her tongue. When I told her that one of the patients at Hope House had died that day, she said, “Oh, well it’s good he died before he got in the taxi.” I stared at her uncomprehendingly. She explained, “It costs a lot of money if you die in a car because then you have to pay to get the whole car cleaned.” While I digested this, my sisters resumed chatting about the surprising lack of kombis because of all the police checkpoints.
I don’t know why Sibusiso died. I don’t understand death, but you don’t have to understand something to realize that it’s a part of life. The sun rises every morning, whether or not you understand the way the earth orbits the sun and makes a complete rotation every 24 hours or so. The rain will fall (or not fall), whether or not you’ve learned about the water cycle and how climate change is affecting weather patterns. The maize plants grow tall from a tiny seed, whether or not you know about germination and photosynthesis and chlorophyll. And people die, but the rest of us go on living, for now.
And we don’t understand why it happens. And it doesn’t make sense. And we want to know why. Why did this have to happen? And we agonize and mourn and feel confused and lost and hopeless.
At least I do. But this is not the end of my questioning. There’s more: Why do my Swazi friends not react as I do to death? What has happened to them inside, that they are able to talk about the price of a taxi or feel hungry for tea the minute after someone has passed away? Why is death so much a part of their daily lives that they can just absorb it and move on? Or maybe they don’t absorb it, maybe it’s just pushed away into a corner. Like Bheki kept repeating to me over and over, “Don’t think about it too much.” Even then, in the midst of my grief, something in me rebelled against this. Even though it hurts, even though I don’t understand it, even though maybe I don’t want to think about it, I have to. To ignore it is to die a little inside. If you don’t process through the experiences and the feelings, that death still lingers with you, and the deaths will just keep building up, and you’ll carry that with you. And it will weigh you down, try as you might not to think about it.
Thankfully, I don’t know this from experience. I just feel that this is what must happen to you eventually. The gash in my heart from Sibusiso’s death has slowly started to scab over, in the week and a half that has passed. The lacerations from hearing about deaths and attending funerals of HBC patients keep my heart sore and tender. I can never forget about death here, where the death notices are there every day in the paper, right before the classifieds, and my coworkers scan them, hoping not to see someone they know. Every night at home after prayer, my family listens to the death notices on the radio. Yes, death is very much a part of life here. Swazis don’t pretend that it doesn’t exist, like many North Americans do. They can’t. With the highest HIV prevalence in the world, poverty, drought, hunger, malnutrition and poor health care, denying death is impossible. However, I don’t know how many people actually realize the extent to which death affects their daily lives. Or maybe they realize it full well, and that is why they refuse to think about it too much, because it’s the only way to go on living.
I was there when Sibusiso, a patient at Hope House, died this morning. I don’t know what shocked me more, his death, or others’ reactions, or my own.
I wasn’t even supposed to be there. Normally I go on Mondays, but because there was something I needed to do at FBS that Monday, I called and told Sister Elsa (the Catholic nun that coordinates Hope House) that I would be coming on Tuesday instead. Something makes me think that I was meant to be a witness to what happened.
Sibusiso lived in House G, with Bheki, the Zimbabwean volunteer nurse. Bheki came to Swaziland from his home country looking for a job. He came looking at Hope House, and there were no jobs, but now he volunteers to take care of patients who don’t have any family to stay with them. So at least he has a place to live. Anna, a staff nurse at Hope House, and I had been out in the garden planting the seeds from a pumpkin they had eaten yesterday. “Just scatter them anywhere,” she said, laughing at the protests of the garden boy tending his neat rows of maize, pumpkin and squash. On our way back from the garden, we stopped at House G to say hello. Bheki had just finished cooking emabele (sorghum porridge) and was trying to feed it to Sibusiso. Sibusiso ate a few spoonfuls, but then shook his head when Bheki tried to continue. Sibusiso looked sideways at me and gestured, making sounds that I knew were words inside his head, but they weren’t coming out right because he never completely closed his mouth when talking, so it just sounded like “Uhh…uhh…” Finally Bheki decoded the message and laughed. “He says he wants you to push him.” I looked at the frail old man leaning forward in the big leather armchair he was sitting in and smiled. “I’m not that strong,” I told him. Bheki went over and got the wheelchair and helped Sibusiso into it. Sibusiso looked like he didn’t know what to do with his feet, so I bent over and flipped the footrests down and lifted his big, yet surprisingly light feet to rest on them. While he was eating, I had noticed how skinny his arms were – I could see the exact outline of the bone in his forearm. His clothes hung on him like sacks on a stick. Later, I found out he only weighed 45 kg (99 lbs) – and he would be tall, I think, if I could have seen him standing upright.
Bheki wheeled him over to his bed, where Sibusiso collapsed, moaning and coughing. The cough sounded awful, like his lungs were full of junk just sitting in there. Anna was crushing some pills for him to mix with water so he could drink them. But when they tried to pour the liquid down, it just spilled right out of his mouth onto his pants. He groaned and lay back on the bed. Anna and Bheki looked at each other and decided they should take him to the Nazarene Hospital. They got busy making phone calls to a taxi driver and writing the referral letter to the hospital and collecting all his medication to bring in to show the doctor – and it was quite a lot, since he was taking the cocktail of ARVs (anti retrovirals) as well as the TB drugs.
The taxi driver arrived and sat at the kitchen table with me, as we watched Bheki try to change Sibusiso’s pants from where he had spilled on them earlier. But Sibusiso was being most uncooperative and finally the dirty pants remained on. Bheki lifted Sibusiso into the wheelchair and went to discuss something with the driver. As I watched, Sibusiso pitched forward from the wheelchair and threw himself back onto the bed. Bheki laughed at him, “He’s very clever, this one, he doesn’t want to go.” And I could understand why. Last time they were at this hospital, Bheki told me that they had waited for 12 hours, from noon until midnight.
But it was obvious Sibusiso had to go – when he was sat back upright, a line of drool escaped his lips and dribbled down onto his pants again. He seemed to have given up his feeble protests, and was quickly placed back into the wheelchair. I followed them out to the taxi, carrying the referral letter that had been forgotten on the table. Bheki parked the chair by the taxi’s open back door and went to get the drugs and other things and put them on the front seat. I stood there blinking in the bright sunshine, trying to figure out how we were going to lift him into the back seat.
Then Anna said quietly, “This one doesn’t need to go to the hospital anymore.” I was puzzled by her words, and as I stood behind Sibusiso’s chair, I noticed the strange angle of his head – it was tilted all the way back. Bheki came around and quickly wheeled the chair back up the walkway into the house, kicking off his sandals urgently when they got tangled in the wheels. I seemed to be rooted to the spot on the porch where I was standing. I watched them through the open window as they laid Sibusiso back on his bed. I didn’t quite understand what was happening, although in a way I think part of me knew the minute Anna had spoken. The rest of me caught up very quickly when the taxi driver, who was standing beside me, clarified matters: “This man has just passed away,” he said matter-of-factly.
I stood there numbly watching Anna and Bheki through the window as they moved in a flurry of activity that involved sheets and a pillow. The driver and I just stood in silence, watching. Then Bheki and Anna came out and started talking about whether or not the driver should get paid, and if so, how much. Bheki thought E20 (about $3) was enough. Anna looked at me and said, “Don’t you want to go for tea?” I turned my head with extreme effort and looked at her incredulously. I tried to think of how on earth I could respond to that question. After what seemed like a long time I said, “I’ve never seen anyone die before.” And I slid to the ground with my head on my knees and started to cry.
Once I started I couldn’t stop. I was vaguely aware of Anna leaving (to call the family, I found out later) and the two men concluded their haggling. “Ncesi,” (sorry) the driver told me, “Don’t cry.” And he handed me a tissue before he left. Bheki brought me a roll of toilet paper and said kindly, “Just cry. Just let it all out. I have to go, but I’ll be back soon.” I don’t know how long I stayed like that, but eventually I became aware of my surroundings again – the bright sunshine on the green grass, the birds chirping, the sound of wheelbarrows and workmen whistling. I felt like my world had just stopped, and I couldn’t understand how everything and everyone else was just continuing on with their business on a sunny Tuesday morning.
By the time Bheki came back, I had calmed down enough to talk. We sat in a pavilion as he kept repeating over and over, “I’m sorry you had to see that, I’m sorry you had to see that.” Finally I said, “Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault. I know it just happens, but it was my first time to see it so close, right there.” I stared out at the mountains and felt the wind drying the tears on my face. “Doesn’t it bother you?” I asked. “It does,” he said. “But you can’t think too much about it. It’s the kind of thing you can never get used to.” I asked if he knew it was going to happen. “No,” he said, “he actually seemed to be improving.” I was struck by the arbitrary nature of life and death. As I talked to Anna later, she said that Sibusiso was a fighter, and she always thought that he would be one of the ones to make it. But his CD4 count was extremely low, and he had just started taking ARVs a couple weeks ago. “Sometimes the body is so depressed that it doesn’t even know which sickness it has. Then, when you start taking the ARVs, it recognizes that it has TB and needs to fight it, and that’s what ends up killing you,” she said.
I sat out on the pavilion for a long time after Bheki left, watching the workmen move back and forth, and gazing at the green peaks above and beyond them. Finally, I went into the bathroom to wash my face. When I cam out, I found someone standing outside the office, and my response to his greeting struck me in a new way. “Ngiyaphila,” I said. I am living.
I felt very tired for the rest of the day. The sisters came in late, and apparently got the report that I was traumatized, because they kept wanting to know if I was OK. I felt very much like a child overreacting to something which adults have learned to take in stride. I felt like I was being unreasonable, judging by the way everyone else carried on without a glitch. Is it not reasonable to mourn the passing of a fellow human being? Isn’t it unreasonable that this is enough a part of daily life that people have learned to handle it so calmly?
Death is a part of life. I knew that with my head before that day- leaves die and grow back. Animals die, like the chickens we sometimes kill for supper or the three little puppies born at our homestead who didn’t make it. People die, and are mourned with night vigils and chanting Zulu songs and early morning burials. I knew all of this. I experienced it. But now I’ve seen just how easily you can pass from one to the other. There’s nothing momentous about it. The barrier, the one we think separates life and death so distinctly, that makes them such opposites, must not be as rigid as we think it is. One minute, Sibusiso is a stubborn old man demanding to be pushed around his room, and the next, there is a small lifeless sheet-covered form curled on the bed, and Sibusiso has moved on, to a place that the rest of us can’t know about right now.
That night, I ate emasi (sour milk) and porridge for supper with my family. After prayer, my sister was talking about all the accidents she had seen on the road. “Three of them, bad ones,” she said, making one of those “life is difficult” noises with her tongue. When I told her that one of the patients at Hope House had died that day, she said, “Oh, well it’s good he died before he got in the taxi.” I stared at her uncomprehendingly. She explained, “It costs a lot of money if you die in a car because then you have to pay to get the whole car cleaned.” While I digested this, my sisters resumed chatting about the surprising lack of kombis because of all the police checkpoints.
I don’t know why Sibusiso died. I don’t understand death, but you don’t have to understand something to realize that it’s a part of life. The sun rises every morning, whether or not you understand the way the earth orbits the sun and makes a complete rotation every 24 hours or so. The rain will fall (or not fall), whether or not you’ve learned about the water cycle and how climate change is affecting weather patterns. The maize plants grow tall from a tiny seed, whether or not you know about germination and photosynthesis and chlorophyll. And people die, but the rest of us go on living, for now.
And we don’t understand why it happens. And it doesn’t make sense. And we want to know why. Why did this have to happen? And we agonize and mourn and feel confused and lost and hopeless.
At least I do. But this is not the end of my questioning. There’s more: Why do my Swazi friends not react as I do to death? What has happened to them inside, that they are able to talk about the price of a taxi or feel hungry for tea the minute after someone has passed away? Why is death so much a part of their daily lives that they can just absorb it and move on? Or maybe they don’t absorb it, maybe it’s just pushed away into a corner. Like Bheki kept repeating to me over and over, “Don’t think about it too much.” Even then, in the midst of my grief, something in me rebelled against this. Even though it hurts, even though I don’t understand it, even though maybe I don’t want to think about it, I have to. To ignore it is to die a little inside. If you don’t process through the experiences and the feelings, that death still lingers with you, and the deaths will just keep building up, and you’ll carry that with you. And it will weigh you down, try as you might not to think about it.
Thankfully, I don’t know this from experience. I just feel that this is what must happen to you eventually. The gash in my heart from Sibusiso’s death has slowly started to scab over, in the week and a half that has passed. The lacerations from hearing about deaths and attending funerals of HBC patients keep my heart sore and tender. I can never forget about death here, where the death notices are there every day in the paper, right before the classifieds, and my coworkers scan them, hoping not to see someone they know. Every night at home after prayer, my family listens to the death notices on the radio. Yes, death is very much a part of life here. Swazis don’t pretend that it doesn’t exist, like many North Americans do. They can’t. With the highest HIV prevalence in the world, poverty, drought, hunger, malnutrition and poor health care, denying death is impossible. However, I don’t know how many people actually realize the extent to which death affects their daily lives. Or maybe they realize it full well, and that is why they refuse to think about it too much, because it’s the only way to go on living.
Holding onto Hope (written Sunday 10 Feb)
This morning the Faith Bible School Health Team presented at Hope House Assemblies in Motjane, a beautiful area near the South African border. The church is located on a hillside and the first thing you do upon arrival is catch your breath at the beautiful sunlit vista of green-lined fields and lush mountains and valleys that spreads out beneath you. This was my second trip to Hope House Assemblies, the first one being when I went to observe the activities of the NCP that operates out of the church building (see previous blog post). Not only do they provide meals and basic health care to the OVCs in the community, but the pastor and his wife have started an orphanage where they care for 18 children as well as their own. My first visit to Hope House Assemblies was an inspiration to me, and the second time even more so.
Children enjoying a warm meal at the Hope House Assemblies NCP during my first visit there.
When we arrived a little before 11, music was already blaring out of the large concrete church building. The time of praise and worship at the beginning of the service was just what I needed. The music was wonderful, and we sang some familiar English praise songs. The pastor and his wife are from Zambia, and as a result the entire service took place in both English and Siswati, which was very helpful. Faith Bible School was introduced and the team presented their abstinence drama, adjusted slightly to take advantage of the fact that Valentine’s Day is this week. This drama is one of the more popular ones and this time was no exception. The team had the whole congregation, but especially the youth, on the edge of their seats, and sometimes rolling off of them entirely in laughter.
The basic gist of the drama (as far as I can understand, since it’s always presented in Siswati) is this:
Two guys are discussing their plans for Valentine’s Day. Vusi is trying to get his girlfriend, Lindiwe, to spend the night with him at a fancy hotel, and he wants Lindiwe’s friend, Nomsa, to get together with his friend Sabelo. Vusi askes Lindiwe and she agrees, saying that she will send him a message telling him when to expect her.
Later on, Lindiwe is talking to Nomsa about the plan. Nomsa tries to convince Lindiwe to abstain and eventually she agrees. They write a letter to Vusi (the boyfriend) which begins, “Hi Vusi. Abstinence first, love affairs later.”
The boys enter, talking excitedly about their plans. Nomsa comes in, delivers the letter, and leaves. The boys are thrilled, and quickly snatch it up to read it. But their excitement disappears as they realize the choice that Lindiwe has made. They are upset and frustrated. Then one of their friends, Themba, enters. Themba has committed to abstinence, and tries to convince them that it’s the right thing to do. Eventually, they agree with him.
Lindiwe enters, afraid at the response she will get from her boyfriend. But Vusi hugs her and tells her that he agrees that abstinence is the right way. The team hums “Amazing Grace” while a team member gives a short speech directed at the youth of the church, encouraging them to abstain. Then the team exits singing a beautiful gospel song, “I was shaken by God Almighty…I am no longer the same…”
Team members performing the Faithfulness drama at a church in Matsapha last year.
Usually when FBS does a presentation, they are in charge of the whole service, and lead a time of singing, provide an MC, give the Word of God (or sermon), and present two dramas and have a discussion afterwards, encouraging the congregation to share what they’ve learned from the presentation. But Hope House Assemblies had already invited a guest speaker for the service, who turned out to be the chaplain for the Swazi National Police Service. The first thing he said when he came to the pulpit was how inspired he was by the drama and the team’s abstinence commitment. He shared that he and his wife had both abstained until marriage, and that as a result they can now trust each other to remain faithful. He even shared about his personal experience of going for an HIV test, and encouraging his wife to do the same. He didn’t share the results with us, (as he rightly said, “That’s none of your business!”) but even so, it was the first time that I’ve heard someone in a position of authority in the church talking so openly about HIV and AIDS and their personal experience with it. It was so encouraging to hear, and I think his sharing really strengthened the impact of the drama.
He went on to preach about a topic which fit quite nicely with our message as well. He spoke about holiness and his main Scripture was I Peter 1:15 – “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do.” He talked about people who lead double lives, who are one person in church on Sunday, but during the week at work or home they are somebody else entirely. He also talked about how holiness is what God desires of us, and that the beauty he wants to see in us is the “beauty of holiness.” He ended his message with a prayer and invited those who recognized that they weren’t living holy lives to come forward and recommit themselves to God.
I thought that his message was right on target. In Swaziland, there is a huge gap between public and private life, especially in the area of girlfriends/boyfriends/lovers. Here is an example related to me by none other than one of the FBS youth: He had been walking along the street in Manzini with a girl he was friends with from school. Down the street, he saw a female member of the health team, walking hand-in-hand with a boy. When she saw my friend, she left the guy she was walking with and bolted across the street, avoiding any eye contact. When the two team members saw each other at prayer meeting later that evening, things were awkward between them and neither one brought up their previous encounter. To really bring the point home, my friend who was telling me the story pointed to the pictures of the health team youth on the wall of the FBS office. “How many of them have told you about their girlfriends and boyfriends?” he asked me. I scanned the faces and replied, “None.” He smiled and asked me if I really thought that they were all single. “It’s just not something we talk about,” he said. “I don’t know why.”
This reluctance to talk openly about anything related to sex is a huge factor in the spread of HIV and AIDS in Swaziland. Most children don’t learn any facts about sex from their parents, so what they do know is gathered mostly from their (usually equally ignorant) friends. Is it then a surprise that part of the reason some youth, especially girls, start having sex so early (sometimes at 14 or 15 years) is that they were simply curious and wanted to know what it was like? (Of course, a large factor is economic dependence as well. It’s common for young girls to have “sugar daddies,” someone who they sleep with in exchange for clothes and a cell phone, or at a more desperate level, money for food.) One of the myths circulating about HIV and AIDS is that it’s something Americans made up because they didn’t want Africans to enjoy sex. Another one I’ve heard, even more disturbing, is that HIV was invented by the white people to kill off the blacks.
This lack of information and, in some cases, misinformation is combined with the traditional Swazi custom of polygamy. Although this practice is becoming less widespread, it is still fairly common in the more rural areas. I know that even some of the team members’ fathers had (or still have) multiple wives. So when, as a nation, you have this kind of cultural background, when combined with the secrecy around sex, the situation that results should perhaps not be surprising. It is quite normal for young women to be unmarried, with several children by different fathers, and still entertaining multiple boyfriends. Similarly, it is a matter of pride for men to see how many women they can sleep with.
When you bring in the matter of condoms, this becomes quite tricky. First of all, there are more myths and misconceptions floating around about these: “They spray the condoms with the virus and that’s how it spreads”, “If you use a condom, it means you don’t trust your partner”, and my personal favorite, which is spread widely among the youth – “How can you enjoy a sweet with the wrapper on?”
Trickiest of all is the matter of condoms in the context of the church. Traditionally, the stance the church takes is that the youth are abstaining, so they don’t need condoms. They seem to be, for the most part, quite oblivious to all the teenage pregnancies and kitchen-table abortions that are all too common. (Illegal abortion is another subject entirely, but a while back there was a gruesome story in the paper about a rural midwife who had been discovered to have dumped 80+ aborted fetuses in the pond behind her house.)
FBS does not promote condoms, toeing the line the church has laid down: Our youth are abstaining. They shouldn’t need condoms. Imagine what people would think if they found a condom in your pocket or purse! At our annual youth camp in December, two doctors from the Baylor Clinic in Mbabane came in to do a presentation on the basic facts about HIV and AIDS. Normally during the talk, they demonstrate how to use a condom properly, and then they distribute condoms at the end of the session. However, FBS asked them not to. The reasoning behind this was, and this is a direct quote as clearly as I can remember it, “What would happen if they went home and told their parents that they got condoms at the FBS camp?” Although it was a rhetorical question, I can answer it: It would look like we are encouraging them to have sex.
So the reality is that many youth are NOT abstaining and many marriage partners are NOT remaining faithful. But because of complicated intersections of ignorance and myths and stigma and the tremendous appeal of sticking to the status quo, it’s difficult to do anything about this. Fighting HIV and AIDS is all about “behaviour change,” which is a phrase those working in the field like to bat around a lot. Whether it’s a change from having unprotected sex to using a condom, or from five girlfriends to one, or from promiscuity to abstinence, or from being scared to find out your status to going for an HIV test, or simply from being ignorant to educating yourself, fighting the pandemic takes a decision. It takes change. And this is especially difficult in a context where people are content to do things as they’ve always been done and where unquestioning obedience to authority is the norm. Especially problematic is when there is a lack of strong, knowledgeable leaders of integrity to guide their people.
So, this complicated matter of “behaviour change” lies at the heart of the scourge of HIV and AIDS in Swaziland. It never fails to depress and frustrate me, because you can talk at people all you want, educate them and give them the tools they need to help themselves, but until they decide to make a change, nothing is going to happen. Sometimes this makes me want to scream and cry in frustration. Like the other day at Hope House (the rehab center where I’ve been volunteering, not the church, see previous blog post) when one of our patients had been sent to the hospital to collect the drugs to begin ARV treatment. He came back empty-handed, and the minder who had accompanied him explained that the doctor had been telling him what the drugs were and what they do in the body and when you need to take which ones, when the patient got up and walked out and flatly refused to accept the drugs. The nurse who told me this story just laughed in a hopeless way, as if saying, “What can you do?” But I wanted to scream. I wanted to run to the patient and shake him and yell, “Don’t you understand? Not taking those drugs is like lying on your deathbed and refusing someone standing in front of you offering you life on a golden platter!”
So that’s one side of this behaviour change. The other side is that all it takes to step toward life is to make that choice yourself. As the pastor said today in preparation for the altar call, “Making a decision is power.” So as I watched the 30+ young people up on the stage this morning, rededicating themselves in their efforts to live a holy life, I could only pray that they will gain the strength to follow through on their convictions.
Children enjoying a warm meal at the Hope House Assemblies NCP during my first visit there.
When we arrived a little before 11, music was already blaring out of the large concrete church building. The time of praise and worship at the beginning of the service was just what I needed. The music was wonderful, and we sang some familiar English praise songs. The pastor and his wife are from Zambia, and as a result the entire service took place in both English and Siswati, which was very helpful. Faith Bible School was introduced and the team presented their abstinence drama, adjusted slightly to take advantage of the fact that Valentine’s Day is this week. This drama is one of the more popular ones and this time was no exception. The team had the whole congregation, but especially the youth, on the edge of their seats, and sometimes rolling off of them entirely in laughter.
The basic gist of the drama (as far as I can understand, since it’s always presented in Siswati) is this:
Two guys are discussing their plans for Valentine’s Day. Vusi is trying to get his girlfriend, Lindiwe, to spend the night with him at a fancy hotel, and he wants Lindiwe’s friend, Nomsa, to get together with his friend Sabelo. Vusi askes Lindiwe and she agrees, saying that she will send him a message telling him when to expect her.
Later on, Lindiwe is talking to Nomsa about the plan. Nomsa tries to convince Lindiwe to abstain and eventually she agrees. They write a letter to Vusi (the boyfriend) which begins, “Hi Vusi. Abstinence first, love affairs later.”
The boys enter, talking excitedly about their plans. Nomsa comes in, delivers the letter, and leaves. The boys are thrilled, and quickly snatch it up to read it. But their excitement disappears as they realize the choice that Lindiwe has made. They are upset and frustrated. Then one of their friends, Themba, enters. Themba has committed to abstinence, and tries to convince them that it’s the right thing to do. Eventually, they agree with him.
Lindiwe enters, afraid at the response she will get from her boyfriend. But Vusi hugs her and tells her that he agrees that abstinence is the right way. The team hums “Amazing Grace” while a team member gives a short speech directed at the youth of the church, encouraging them to abstain. Then the team exits singing a beautiful gospel song, “I was shaken by God Almighty…I am no longer the same…”
Team members performing the Faithfulness drama at a church in Matsapha last year.
Usually when FBS does a presentation, they are in charge of the whole service, and lead a time of singing, provide an MC, give the Word of God (or sermon), and present two dramas and have a discussion afterwards, encouraging the congregation to share what they’ve learned from the presentation. But Hope House Assemblies had already invited a guest speaker for the service, who turned out to be the chaplain for the Swazi National Police Service. The first thing he said when he came to the pulpit was how inspired he was by the drama and the team’s abstinence commitment. He shared that he and his wife had both abstained until marriage, and that as a result they can now trust each other to remain faithful. He even shared about his personal experience of going for an HIV test, and encouraging his wife to do the same. He didn’t share the results with us, (as he rightly said, “That’s none of your business!”) but even so, it was the first time that I’ve heard someone in a position of authority in the church talking so openly about HIV and AIDS and their personal experience with it. It was so encouraging to hear, and I think his sharing really strengthened the impact of the drama.
He went on to preach about a topic which fit quite nicely with our message as well. He spoke about holiness and his main Scripture was I Peter 1:15 – “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do.” He talked about people who lead double lives, who are one person in church on Sunday, but during the week at work or home they are somebody else entirely. He also talked about how holiness is what God desires of us, and that the beauty he wants to see in us is the “beauty of holiness.” He ended his message with a prayer and invited those who recognized that they weren’t living holy lives to come forward and recommit themselves to God.
I thought that his message was right on target. In Swaziland, there is a huge gap between public and private life, especially in the area of girlfriends/boyfriends/lovers. Here is an example related to me by none other than one of the FBS youth: He had been walking along the street in Manzini with a girl he was friends with from school. Down the street, he saw a female member of the health team, walking hand-in-hand with a boy. When she saw my friend, she left the guy she was walking with and bolted across the street, avoiding any eye contact. When the two team members saw each other at prayer meeting later that evening, things were awkward between them and neither one brought up their previous encounter. To really bring the point home, my friend who was telling me the story pointed to the pictures of the health team youth on the wall of the FBS office. “How many of them have told you about their girlfriends and boyfriends?” he asked me. I scanned the faces and replied, “None.” He smiled and asked me if I really thought that they were all single. “It’s just not something we talk about,” he said. “I don’t know why.”
This reluctance to talk openly about anything related to sex is a huge factor in the spread of HIV and AIDS in Swaziland. Most children don’t learn any facts about sex from their parents, so what they do know is gathered mostly from their (usually equally ignorant) friends. Is it then a surprise that part of the reason some youth, especially girls, start having sex so early (sometimes at 14 or 15 years) is that they were simply curious and wanted to know what it was like? (Of course, a large factor is economic dependence as well. It’s common for young girls to have “sugar daddies,” someone who they sleep with in exchange for clothes and a cell phone, or at a more desperate level, money for food.) One of the myths circulating about HIV and AIDS is that it’s something Americans made up because they didn’t want Africans to enjoy sex. Another one I’ve heard, even more disturbing, is that HIV was invented by the white people to kill off the blacks.
This lack of information and, in some cases, misinformation is combined with the traditional Swazi custom of polygamy. Although this practice is becoming less widespread, it is still fairly common in the more rural areas. I know that even some of the team members’ fathers had (or still have) multiple wives. So when, as a nation, you have this kind of cultural background, when combined with the secrecy around sex, the situation that results should perhaps not be surprising. It is quite normal for young women to be unmarried, with several children by different fathers, and still entertaining multiple boyfriends. Similarly, it is a matter of pride for men to see how many women they can sleep with.
When you bring in the matter of condoms, this becomes quite tricky. First of all, there are more myths and misconceptions floating around about these: “They spray the condoms with the virus and that’s how it spreads”, “If you use a condom, it means you don’t trust your partner”, and my personal favorite, which is spread widely among the youth – “How can you enjoy a sweet with the wrapper on?”
Trickiest of all is the matter of condoms in the context of the church. Traditionally, the stance the church takes is that the youth are abstaining, so they don’t need condoms. They seem to be, for the most part, quite oblivious to all the teenage pregnancies and kitchen-table abortions that are all too common. (Illegal abortion is another subject entirely, but a while back there was a gruesome story in the paper about a rural midwife who had been discovered to have dumped 80+ aborted fetuses in the pond behind her house.)
FBS does not promote condoms, toeing the line the church has laid down: Our youth are abstaining. They shouldn’t need condoms. Imagine what people would think if they found a condom in your pocket or purse! At our annual youth camp in December, two doctors from the Baylor Clinic in Mbabane came in to do a presentation on the basic facts about HIV and AIDS. Normally during the talk, they demonstrate how to use a condom properly, and then they distribute condoms at the end of the session. However, FBS asked them not to. The reasoning behind this was, and this is a direct quote as clearly as I can remember it, “What would happen if they went home and told their parents that they got condoms at the FBS camp?” Although it was a rhetorical question, I can answer it: It would look like we are encouraging them to have sex.
So the reality is that many youth are NOT abstaining and many marriage partners are NOT remaining faithful. But because of complicated intersections of ignorance and myths and stigma and the tremendous appeal of sticking to the status quo, it’s difficult to do anything about this. Fighting HIV and AIDS is all about “behaviour change,” which is a phrase those working in the field like to bat around a lot. Whether it’s a change from having unprotected sex to using a condom, or from five girlfriends to one, or from promiscuity to abstinence, or from being scared to find out your status to going for an HIV test, or simply from being ignorant to educating yourself, fighting the pandemic takes a decision. It takes change. And this is especially difficult in a context where people are content to do things as they’ve always been done and where unquestioning obedience to authority is the norm. Especially problematic is when there is a lack of strong, knowledgeable leaders of integrity to guide their people.
So, this complicated matter of “behaviour change” lies at the heart of the scourge of HIV and AIDS in Swaziland. It never fails to depress and frustrate me, because you can talk at people all you want, educate them and give them the tools they need to help themselves, but until they decide to make a change, nothing is going to happen. Sometimes this makes me want to scream and cry in frustration. Like the other day at Hope House (the rehab center where I’ve been volunteering, not the church, see previous blog post) when one of our patients had been sent to the hospital to collect the drugs to begin ARV treatment. He came back empty-handed, and the minder who had accompanied him explained that the doctor had been telling him what the drugs were and what they do in the body and when you need to take which ones, when the patient got up and walked out and flatly refused to accept the drugs. The nurse who told me this story just laughed in a hopeless way, as if saying, “What can you do?” But I wanted to scream. I wanted to run to the patient and shake him and yell, “Don’t you understand? Not taking those drugs is like lying on your deathbed and refusing someone standing in front of you offering you life on a golden platter!”
So that’s one side of this behaviour change. The other side is that all it takes to step toward life is to make that choice yourself. As the pastor said today in preparation for the altar call, “Making a decision is power.” So as I watched the 30+ young people up on the stage this morning, rededicating themselves in their efforts to live a holy life, I could only pray that they will gain the strength to follow through on their convictions.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Bye-Bye Mangoza
My beautiful host siblings, Njabuliso and Notsopi, next to some beautiful peach mangoes in the yard of our homestead.
Saturday morning after tea, my sister decided that she wanted to say bye-bye to the mangoza. So one of the children was ordered out with a basin to glean the last fruits from the trees, now almost completely devoid of their former glory. When Wandile returned with the bowl full of mishapen, half-rotten and spotty mangoes, I wondered what kind of farewell this would be. I almost felt like one of those people who don't want to see a dear friend in a casket, because they'd rather remember them as they were in their best moments of life. Did I really want my last taste of this magnificent fruit to be these inferior specimens? I had almost decided to stick with all my magical mango memories (especially since I was already full from cups of heavily-sugared rooibos tea and slices of thick brown bread spread generously with peanut butter). But then the sweet scent and the sight of the golden mango flesh that my sister was already enjoying across the room pushed me to rise and rummage in the basin for some firm fish mangoes.
The first rule of navigating the Swazi mango season (roughly beginning of December - beginning of February, with its glorious peak in January) is to know your types. I'll order them according to my personal preference:
1. Paraffin These medium-sized mangoes fit well into your hand, because of their size and shape - rounded at the base with a little nub at the other end. They have thick green skin, which doesn't change colour until it's pretty mushy, so the only way to tell if it's ripe is to give it a little squeeze before you pluck it from the tree. They get really overly-sweet when too ripe, and I prefer them a little on the green side. I've eaten some so green that the flesh was a pale, pastel yellow and it had the crunchy texture of an apple. That was only on days when I was really, really desperate for my mango fix. A paraffin mango when at the pinnacle of its perfection has a rich, smooth, firm texture. The flesh is a bright, golden yellow. The taste is sweet, but paraffin mangoes have another level of flavour: a unique tang, a little tartness, that makes them my favourite.
2. Peach Peach mangoes are usually about half the size of paraffin mangoes, about the size of a tennis ball, but oddly and asymmetrically-shaped. When ripe they will blush an adorable shade of deep pink, which makes me think of them as shy little girls embarrased about their strange shapes. They have a lovely smooth texture, like the paraffin mango, but the taste differentiates them. Think of crossing a peach with a mango and you've pretty much got it: a sweet, smooth, rich flavour that trickles easily down your tongue and makes these little fruits addictive.
3. Red Giants I don't know what the real name for these monsters is, but the one I made up suits them perfectly. I've been told that they're another species of paraffin but I have trouble believing this. They're enormous - I bet they can easily weigh a pound. They don't grow in this region, so I've only had a few, purchased at the market or received as gifts from those dwelling in the lowveld. In the market they cost E 5 or 6, which is the price of a large bag of carrots or tomatoes, or three heads of lettuce! I had one really delicious one that reminded me of the kind of mangoes we used to get in Benin. But most of the ones I've had weren't that great, slightly green with a diluted taste, as if they only had enough flavour for a normal-sized mango, but then they just kept growing.
4. Fish I had to laugh when I first heard someone talking about fish mangoes - but that's because I hadn't seen one yet. A few days later, I spied a tree and instantly knew wha tthe fruit was, because the name describes them so perfectly. They're probably about 4-6 inches long, and a green colour that shades to deep red in patches when ripe. But their curvy, S-shape does make them look rather like small green fishies hanging upside down from the branches. There's nothing special about the taste however, they're just sweet and will do if there's no other mango available.
5. Mango These mangoes apparantly don't even get a special name, being at the bottom of the hierarchy. They're the smallest kind, even smaller than peach mangoes, and they're a crazy mix of green, yellow, and red, with black spots where they've started to rot. The principle reason why they have such a low ranking is their strings! Their texture is made up of lots and lots of little fibres, which get stuck in every crevice of your teeth and sometimes make their way down your throat, making you cough and gag. As far as I'm concerned, the only reason to eat them at all is because they seem to have the longest growing season: they were the first to appear in December and now they're pretty much all that's still left, along with the odd fish mango.
So, now that you're somewhat familiar with the world of mangoes, we can move on to acquiring them from the tree. I shocked my family at home by scaling a tree once, desperate for peach mangoes. "Uyati gibela!" ("You know how to climb trees!) shrieked my siblings in astonishment. I take it that this isn't something adults normally do here. And indeed, at home the task of mango collection falls to my two little brothers, the tingobiyane(monkeys) of the family. It really is amazing the high branches they can scurry along, finding the prizes and dropping them into our waiting hands as me and my sisters make a game out of who can catch the most. At the office, we have two magnificent paraffin trees, huge and very fertile. They must have each produced hundreds of mangoes. I'm the only one at work who will actually climb the trees (the others prefer to whack down the fruit with a long section of pipe laying around the yard). I spent many happy moments on mango quests, often taking time just to sit in the branches and lose myself in daydreams of becoming a monkey and spending the rest of my life in this enormous tree, eating mangoes all day. Some days this seemed like a very attractive option! But I always came down sooner or later, despite my coworkers' fears of me falling and breaking my neck.
And now the best part - we have the mangoes and now we can eat them! Just two basic rules:
1. Wash the mango first. Some people just eat them like an apple, biting into it skin and all. I tried this, and the skin can make a nice crunchy addition to the smoothness of the flesh. But mostly people choose to use a knife and slice away the skin, then cut the flesh off the pit in sections, and then finally sucking on the pit to get every last scrap of mango off. I'm famous at home for "washing" my mango pits because I suck them so clean!
2. You can't eat just one mango. I've never had less than two in one sitting, unless it's after a full supper. But usually, if you're just eating them as a snack on their own, you have at least three or four. Sometimes there will be mango-eating marathons, when a group of people just whiles away the afternoon with talk and a large bucket of mangoes. I know for a fact by counting the pits that a sister of mine (who shall remain nameless) once had 10 peach mangoes in one sitting! My personal record for one sitting is seven. And then I felt sick. But I didn't overeat mangoes as often as you might guess. Once, early on in my time here, I was ill for two days with bad diarhea from eating too much of an overripe papaya. Since then, I can't even look at a popo without feeling stomach cramps coming on. And my love for the mango runs too deep to allow myself to have a similar experience with my favourite fruit. So mostly I managed to restrain myself to five or six throughout the course of a day.
And now, this source of daily joy in my life has faded away, gone for another year. I already know how depressed I will be next year at this time, in the deepest dark of the Canadian winter, dreaming for a little taste of sweet golden sunshine on my tongue... My host family has already pointed out to me that I won't be here next year for the mango season. (They've seen how devoted I am to my fruit. Yes, I said MY fruit - Mango Mimi, that's my name. Before mangoes arrived, when I was drooling with anticipation, my sister Zinhle warned me that "in the middle of mango season when we're harvesting buckets of them, there will come a time when you say 'I don't want mangoes! I've had enough!'" And I replied 'Ngeke!' ('Never!') with great feeling, and I've kept my word - I never turned down a mango.) So when I whined "Ngitokhala!" ("I'm going to cry!") at the prospect of no more mangoes, they were quick to console me with the promise of what is yet to come: I'm already seeing the small green likotapeni (avocadoes) on the trees, and yesterday I knawed through my first green guava.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
work
a number of people have emailed me, curious for more details about my work. so i thought i'd give a little update about the highlights since FBS reopened after the holidays.
the 18th of every month is the day when our caregivers come into the office. every other month there is a meeting where they discuss issues that arise and share how their work is going. january wasn't a month for a meeting, so the gathering consisted of them turning in their forms, which keep track of the patients they visited and the supplies they distributed. they also collect an E 100 (about $15) voucher for shoprite, a grocery store. this is their thank-you for the work that they do. and they collect fresh supplies from our storeroom.
on a side note: most of our home-based care supplies come from the mcc aids care kits, which are unpacked and the individual items are given out on an as-needed basis. it was fun to see christmas pictures of my brother femi showing off a bottle of gold bond body powder that he'd gotten in his stocking as part of my family's efforts to make up an AIDS care kit, and then distribute an identical bottle to a caregiver the very next day. thank you to everyone who is participating in making the care kits - they are really useful and the recipients are always grateful to receive even a little token of care.
since i've arrived in swaziland, i've attended numerous workshops and trainings and witnessed our peer educators attending even more. many NGOs and church groups here use workshops as a way to disseminate information and skills, especially to youth who are no longer in school but unemployed. FBS is a channel to connect some of the youth we work with to trainings which are interesting and useful to them. recently, we've launched a TOT (training of trainers) program. five of our peer educators have spent the past months being trained in drama, life skills, sunday school teaching, livelihood skills (crafts) and HIV and AIDS awareness.
my own host sister, zinhle, has been learning how to weave with grass from a place called gone rural, which sells handicrafts made by local women. she is quite good at it and on a typical afternoon you can find much of our household involved in the process. make is braiding the loose grass into rope, i or one of the children is using scissors to trim the rope smooth, zinhle is sewing the rope into a table mat or coaster or whatever she is making that day, and my other sister nonhlanhla is trimming the finished product or perhaps ironing it flat. it's a good source of income for her, and now she is beginning to share her skills with others.
so recently this groups of TOTs has been visiting the 10 zionist churches that FBS partners with. the trainers give short presentations on their topic and then the youth in the church decide which skills they would like to be trained in. we're trying to set up a training schedule so that the trainers can begin spreading what they've learned to our constituency. i got to visit maranatha church in zion a couple weeks ago, and it was exciting to hear the trainers speaking about what they've been learning, and also to see the youth in the church respond as to what topics they would like to learn about. it was also fun when i stood up to introduce the program and explain what we would be presenting to them, when i first introduced myself and explained what i was doing at FBS in siswati. the youth just stared back at me with blank looks on their faces, and so i was afraid my siswati was so convoluted that they weren't understanding a thing. but afterwards i asked one of our trainers if i had been coherent, and he assured me that i was and said that the blank looks were due to the shock everyone felt when i began speaking in siswati.
i've also recently begun volunteering once a week at hope house, which is a half-way home for terminally ill patients. 99% of them are HIV+, and hope house provides a place for them to stay after they're discharged from the hospital but before returning to their home area. the initial admission period is a month, although this can be extended on a case-by-case basis. this provides a time for them to get rested up and strong. the two nurses at hope house are there around the clock to monitor the patients and teach them how to take their medications. many patients are also started on ARVs during this time, and the cocktail of pills and the strict schedule that must be followed takes a lot of getting used to. many patients do not understand ARVs and what they do and how to take them, so an important role for the nurses is to counsel the patients, educate them about ARVs, and monitor them to make sure the drugs are being taken correctly.
hope house has 11 units occupied at the moment. the houses are really wonderful, comfortable with beds for the patient and a family member or friend to act as a "minder" - to cook and clean and take care of them and keep them company. they also have a small kitchenette area, a table and chairs, couches, and an indoor bathroom (what luxury!) hope house is run by two indian nuns, and then there is the housekeeper, make thandi, and the two nurses, bridget and cynthia. i've only been there twice so far, but i think it will be a good opportunity for building relationships and finding out more about the medical care and treatment side of HIV and AIDS. so far i've learned how to take blood pressure (the old-school way, with a stethescope and contraption with rising and falling mercury to indicate the levels), dispensed pills, helped with odd jobs like moving furniture. mostly i just follow the nurses around, and we spend a great deal of time just hanging out with the patients and their visitors. they're always so happy to have visitors, especially the ones who are too weak to leave their beds, and there are a few who don't have minders with them and must spend their lonely days by themselves in their houses. it doesn't matter if you talk in english or siswati, if you make sense or not, if you look at a magazine together or comment on the music video on tv, even if you talk or not. they're just happy you're there.
the 18th of every month is the day when our caregivers come into the office. every other month there is a meeting where they discuss issues that arise and share how their work is going. january wasn't a month for a meeting, so the gathering consisted of them turning in their forms, which keep track of the patients they visited and the supplies they distributed. they also collect an E 100 (about $15) voucher for shoprite, a grocery store. this is their thank-you for the work that they do. and they collect fresh supplies from our storeroom.
on a side note: most of our home-based care supplies come from the mcc aids care kits, which are unpacked and the individual items are given out on an as-needed basis. it was fun to see christmas pictures of my brother femi showing off a bottle of gold bond body powder that he'd gotten in his stocking as part of my family's efforts to make up an AIDS care kit, and then distribute an identical bottle to a caregiver the very next day. thank you to everyone who is participating in making the care kits - they are really useful and the recipients are always grateful to receive even a little token of care.
since i've arrived in swaziland, i've attended numerous workshops and trainings and witnessed our peer educators attending even more. many NGOs and church groups here use workshops as a way to disseminate information and skills, especially to youth who are no longer in school but unemployed. FBS is a channel to connect some of the youth we work with to trainings which are interesting and useful to them. recently, we've launched a TOT (training of trainers) program. five of our peer educators have spent the past months being trained in drama, life skills, sunday school teaching, livelihood skills (crafts) and HIV and AIDS awareness.
my own host sister, zinhle, has been learning how to weave with grass from a place called gone rural, which sells handicrafts made by local women. she is quite good at it and on a typical afternoon you can find much of our household involved in the process. make is braiding the loose grass into rope, i or one of the children is using scissors to trim the rope smooth, zinhle is sewing the rope into a table mat or coaster or whatever she is making that day, and my other sister nonhlanhla is trimming the finished product or perhaps ironing it flat. it's a good source of income for her, and now she is beginning to share her skills with others.
so recently this groups of TOTs has been visiting the 10 zionist churches that FBS partners with. the trainers give short presentations on their topic and then the youth in the church decide which skills they would like to be trained in. we're trying to set up a training schedule so that the trainers can begin spreading what they've learned to our constituency. i got to visit maranatha church in zion a couple weeks ago, and it was exciting to hear the trainers speaking about what they've been learning, and also to see the youth in the church respond as to what topics they would like to learn about. it was also fun when i stood up to introduce the program and explain what we would be presenting to them, when i first introduced myself and explained what i was doing at FBS in siswati. the youth just stared back at me with blank looks on their faces, and so i was afraid my siswati was so convoluted that they weren't understanding a thing. but afterwards i asked one of our trainers if i had been coherent, and he assured me that i was and said that the blank looks were due to the shock everyone felt when i began speaking in siswati.
i've also recently begun volunteering once a week at hope house, which is a half-way home for terminally ill patients. 99% of them are HIV+, and hope house provides a place for them to stay after they're discharged from the hospital but before returning to their home area. the initial admission period is a month, although this can be extended on a case-by-case basis. this provides a time for them to get rested up and strong. the two nurses at hope house are there around the clock to monitor the patients and teach them how to take their medications. many patients are also started on ARVs during this time, and the cocktail of pills and the strict schedule that must be followed takes a lot of getting used to. many patients do not understand ARVs and what they do and how to take them, so an important role for the nurses is to counsel the patients, educate them about ARVs, and monitor them to make sure the drugs are being taken correctly.
hope house has 11 units occupied at the moment. the houses are really wonderful, comfortable with beds for the patient and a family member or friend to act as a "minder" - to cook and clean and take care of them and keep them company. they also have a small kitchenette area, a table and chairs, couches, and an indoor bathroom (what luxury!) hope house is run by two indian nuns, and then there is the housekeeper, make thandi, and the two nurses, bridget and cynthia. i've only been there twice so far, but i think it will be a good opportunity for building relationships and finding out more about the medical care and treatment side of HIV and AIDS. so far i've learned how to take blood pressure (the old-school way, with a stethescope and contraption with rising and falling mercury to indicate the levels), dispensed pills, helped with odd jobs like moving furniture. mostly i just follow the nurses around, and we spend a great deal of time just hanging out with the patients and their visitors. they're always so happy to have visitors, especially the ones who are too weak to leave their beds, and there are a few who don't have minders with them and must spend their lonely days by themselves in their houses. it doesn't matter if you talk in english or siswati, if you make sense or not, if you look at a magazine together or comment on the music video on tv, even if you talk or not. they're just happy you're there.
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