One day during training at the Peace Corps training camp, about 7 weeks done of the 10 week training, I reached maximum absorption status. There was so much to learn and know. The language, SiSwati, was so pointlessly complicated. It wasn’t made at all like English, my mother tongue, or Spanish, German, or French, of which I knew a smattering. There were these noun concord groups thingamabobs that you had to memorize because they had no logic at all. Groups of nouns, which would tell you how to conjugate the rest of the words in the sentence. And they weren’t even the same thing, like all green things, or all nouns that had to do with people, or all animals, and frankly, it was like learning a nonsense language. Just to make it more difficult, it had 3 different clicky sounds, for the letters C, Q, and X. So if the word had one of those letters in it, you had to do the click for it. Up until 1963, when the British removed their protectorate status from Swaziland and they became independent, SiSwati had not been a written language, so Sir Somebody-or-other decided to make it one. Hence, the noun concord classes. Who knows what was in his mind? He was British.
There were classes in geography of the country, government in a Kingdom, natural resources and how they contributed to the economy, history of the Swazis, Peace Corps policies, teaching practice, and it was a slogfest every day.
I just couldn’t take any more in. My brain was full. So I went commando, and sneaked out the front gate after lunch. I had spent some evenings with the Buffalo Soldiers doing security at the camp, sitting by their fire at the front gate, practising my marginal SiSwati, and they all knew me, so the front gate guard smiled when I made the shhh sign, and opened the gate to let me pass.
I had seen a little river on the other side of the road, and I set off to explore it, and let my brain relax. It was nice. As I wended my way downriver, there were fields with cows, and trees unlike American trees, and flowers that seemed exotic. I saw Weaver Finches flying upside down building their mud and stick nest. It smelled good, and the river tinkled merrily by my side.
After a while, I started hearing someone shouting. I had no idea what was being shouted, but as I kept walking closer, and it got easier to hear, it seemed to be greatly passionate. I came around the corner, and there was a man, squatting on his haunches by a large boulder, shouting at the top of his lungs at the stone. I stopped immediately, and stood watching him. He didn’t seem angry, his posture was relaxed. He was just shouting. on and on. I didn’t recognize any words, not even one. After about 10 minutes, I walked closer, and said “Father, are you ok?” No response or dimunition of his tirade. So, I turned around and walked back to the training camp.
The next morning, in SiSwati class, taught by a local young woman, I stayed after class, and asked her about the shouting man. She became very embarrassed, and kind of fluffed me off, claiming to know nothing about it. But there was something, I could see it in her eyes.
I finished training, and swore in to the Peace Corps. I joked with the training director beforehand. “So, is swearing in where I have to stand up and say, ‘Let me in to the goshdang Peace Corps for cryin out loud, already!’”? He did not find me amusing. The U.S. Ambassador was right next to us.
About six months into my tenure as a teacher, I took a long weekend, and went to visit a fellow PCV at her school. I had a fun weekend, and sunday morning at 5:30, I caught the bus to Siteki in front of her school. There were only two other passengers, since it was near the start of the run to Siteki, so, I was able to get the jump seat right in front by the door, where there were bars in front of me from which I could hang my pack, and it was a one people seat, with a small space on the aisle next to me. People got on as we slowly cruised onward. At one stop, I heard shouting, and the last person who got on was a young man, shouting into his cupped hand. No one was paying him any attention, and as he got on, the conductor who was giving each person a ticket, let the young man pass without one. He turned, and squatted down in the space beside my seat, and shouted into his hand loudly all the way to Siteki, about 20 minutes, and got off walking across the bus rank, still shouting, still nobody giving him more than a casual glance. My right ear was ringing from his 20 minute symphony.
Things that you don’t expect can happen to you, when you are an adventurer like I am, and you just have to take them in stride. The young mans shouting was the same as the man by the boulder. Hmmm.
So, a month or so later, I was in my classroom, writing something woodworky on the chalkboard for the edification of my somnolent students, and all of a sudden, I heard this deep voice shouting behind me. My hair stood on end, and I spun from the board, chalk in hand, ready to write on whoever it was, and from the back of the room, Sifiso, had gotten up from his workbench, and was walking toward me, shouting in this deep voice.
Sifiso was a special student. He had been born with birth defects, and had one withered arm, and a twisted leg, but he was mentally at his grade level, and seemed like he really liked woodworking. I had encouraged his benchmates to help him, as his bad arm was useless for holding anything, and I was proud of them for having been of good heart to help Sifiso hold things, and saw things.
As he limped toward me, shouting in the deep voice (his normal voice was a high pitched tremelo), I looked around at the other students. They were paying him no mind whatsoever, and were studiously copying the writing on the chalkboard into their notebooks. He limped directly toward me, and as he got close enough, it startled me, and I tensed to react, if he were to run into me or something. Then he did an abrupt right face, and limped out the door and into the bush, still shouting. My heart was beating fast. It had startled me. I went back to my chalkboard, and class went on. At the end of class, I asked Nkhosinathi, my most loquacious student, to stay behind.
Me: Nkhosinathi, what was that with Sifiso?
Nkhosinathi: What do you mean, sir?
Me: That shouting. Why was Sifiso shouting, and why did he walk out of class?
Nkhosinathi: Oh, well, sir, his angel was on him.
Me: His angel was on him. What does that mean?
Nkhosinathi: Um, sir, it means that the ancestors are wanting Sifiso to serve their purposes, and he is not obeying them. They were speaking through him. They want him to go to Sangoma school, and become a Sangoma. (a witch doctor) But he is not convinced.
Me: Well, what will happen if he continues to disobey them?
Nkhosinathi: It means that they will continue to speak through him, until he does what they are asking.
Me: Ok, thanks Nkosinathi.
And he left class. So that was why the shouters shouted. It was not really shouting, a thing abhorred in public, but was the ancestors speaking through them. Their angels were on them. Um… ok, cool. Glad the Ancestors are not speaking through me.
Empathy Matters 
Sifiso