After three years in Swaziland, my contract with Peace Corps came to an end. Actually, it had come to an end a year before that, but being of a perverse nature, I had said to myself, “Sam, Are you ready to leave this life of luxury here in the Land of Milk and Ligusha? Do you really want to go back home where there is clean water from your tap, where body washing is done with hot clear water from a pipe that is above your head instead instead of standing in 3 inches of muddy water in a wash basin, and splashing it on yourself, and a place where you can actually completely rinse your hair after washing it? Do you really need such foofaraws as refrigeration, air conditioning, a washing machine instead of a muddy stream, and regular dental care? Aren’t you going to miss the ammoniated air from fresh bat poop in your house and classroom?”
And I sat there in the hot evening sun, on the little bench in front of my hot house, because outside was cooler than inside, and deliberated on it. Just then, my friend Rejoice, whose name truly described her, came over to sit on my bench with me. As always, she was smiling.

Rejoice: Maseko, I know it is coming to the time that you will be going back to America, and I want to tell you that it makes me sad.

Me: Yes Rejoice, I am a little sad too.I will certainly miss your smiling face.

Rejoice: Can’t you stay for another year? You are part of our community here, and we like having you.

In fact, I could maybe stay another year. Peace Corps offered, under certain conditions, an extension of my contract for 12 months. I fit the requirements. The Swazi government had yet to send a woodworking teacher from the Teachers College to replace me. My woodworking program was going full guns, and the headmaster thought me a master teacher, and would send in the request for me to stay. All I had to do was ask him to do so. My service as a teacher was needed. And I had been prolific in writing grants to fund a bunch of community service projects, what Peace Corps calls Secondary Projects, and they liked my involvement in my community. Thanks to the benevolence of Peace Corps Grants Program, and grants from the US Govt “Small Projects Assistance Program”, more kids in my community were able to go to preschool in the newly rebuilt preschools.This allowed women who were studying at our Adult Education Center, learning to be preschool teachers, to be placed in jobs. The mothers of my students had formed a sewing collective, and with the grant money that I was able to provide, had bought cloth and patterns, and a couple of foot treadle sewing machines, and had gotten the contract with my school to make the girls uniform jumpers. Then 6 months later, they asked me to fund 2 knitting machines, and on the  strength of that, had gotten the school contract for student uniform sweaters, and had run both contracts profitably, and their families were eating better. With grant money, I had bought the cement and sand and chicken wire necessary to build two ferrocement water storage tanks, and had organized people in two communities to come together and let me teach them how to build them. And since then, I had seen half a dozen water tanks springing up without me having to fund them. The broken windows on my school had all been reglazed. Except for the clerestory windows in my woodworking classroom, which provided ventilation to the room, and allowed egress for the largish bat colony in my rafters. For a small grant, I had bought a shovel, and hoe, and a wheelbarrow, and had taught the mothers who ran the community garden how to compost, and encouraged them to come and draw on the mountain of bat poop behind my classroom to make the compost pile nitrogen rich, and as a result, our community garden was prolific, and the vegetables they grew were big, and healthy, and delicious, and I bought them gladly. I had, through grant largesse, also funded Grandmother Nzalos community health center program, and it was making a difference in the lives of my neighbors. How could Peace Corps say no?

Me: Well, Rejoice, there might be a way that I can stay another year.

Rejoice: (Leaping to her feet, and clapping her hands together) Oh, Maseko! You must try!

And she leaned over and gave me a big hug. And the next weekend, I filed for an extension.Two weeks later I received permission, so I guessed that I was stuck here for another year. It flew by. I was involved in so many things, and the days literally went by so quickly, that before I knew it, it was coming up to time to go into the office and file my completion of service paperwork. There were no more extensions of my contract to be had. I told my two homestead mothers that in a month, I would be heading back to America. They were sad too. A week later, they came to me and told me that they were planning a Going Away Braai for me. A Braaii is the Afrikaans word for barbecue. It was customary for a family to throw a braai when their sons grew old enough to leave home. My mothers, who were in their early 30’s, and my father, Musa, who was 38, had always treated me like kind of a softheaded son, even though I was older than they were. And my 8 brothers and sisters on the homestead, had treated me like an older brother. I would be very sad to leave them. The next weekend, I headed into town, accompanied by my brother Sydney, who was 18. The mothers had pooled some of their money earned from selling Marula Wine, and given it to Sydney, with a grocery list.

Marula wine was made from the fruit of the Buganu tree. It was perfect for wine. All you had to do was shake the tree, so the fruit would drop, and gather it before the pigs and chickens could come and eat it, and mash it, and stuff the mashed fruit into a 60 liter jug, Then add some sugar, and water, and in about a week, you had fermented it into wine. Strain it through a cheesecloth, and you would have a milky colored beverage, that tasted like sweet tarts, and would get you drunk as a skunk. The homesteads lucky to have a buganu tree or two, would make it, and it was a cash crop for the families. Marula season lasts about a month. Before it started, the King would always give a speech on the radio, asking families to pen up their free ranging cattle for the month, because there were so many drunk drivers on the road, that cattle-cides were common. If you hit a cow, and lived, the police would have to be called, which might take hours, and then the cows owner identified, and the driver had to pay for the cow, and in total unfairness, the owner got to take his mangled cow home, where he would butcher it, and eat meat for a week, and sell some. On top of having already been paid for the cow. Every ride that I got during that month, on my trips into town where I didn’t want to wait for the bus, would have a driver in various states of inebriation. And the ever present 25 liter jug of Marula wine, in the middle of the front seat, with a tin cup tied to the handle. Everybody said that their Marula wine was the best, and I tried a number of them. They all tasted the same to me, but in the spirit of the season, it would be unseemly to refuse to try some. The only thing that I did not like about Marula wine, was the hangover if you got drunk. They were killer hangovers, with pounding headaches the next day. And you got the Hershey Squirts. I don’t like the feeling of being drunk anyway, and after the first hangover from marula, I kept my tasting of it to small sips. For my homestead, the Marula wine sales, to those who were not lucky enough to have a buganu tree on their homestead, were probably 30% of their annual income, and so the mothers were serious about it.

Sydney and I got to town, and cruised the Peace Corps office, and then went to the market. I had groceries to buy, so we split up. Later, when I found Sydney out in front of the market, he was surrounded by a mountain of stuff. Some bags of food, and a huge burlap sack of potatoes, and a large watermelon. My stuff filled my pack, but left my hands free, so I tied some of his bags to my pack, and hoisted the watermelon in my arms, and Sydney put the bag of potatoes on his shoulder, and we went to the bus rank, and caught the bus to Manzini We sat in the shade of Manzini bus rank, waiting for the bus out to my school, and beyond, to the path that led to my homestead. My pack weighed a ton. The watermelon was heavy. The bag of potatoes was so heavy that I had to help Sydney hoist it to his shoulder. The last bus to my school was due at 2:30. By 3:00 it had not come, and the word was that it had broken down and would not be coming. The bus to Nsoko was getting ready to leave, next to us, so we jumped on. Nsoko was about 15km from my school, and was the end of the line for it, so we would have to hitch the rest of the way. We piled our goods inside, and rode to Nsoko. We got there right about dark.

Sydney and I loaded up with our supplies, and started walking down the road towards home. It was hot, and the things were heavy, and Sydney was struggling with the bag of potatoes. We staggered down the road as it got darker. My clothes were wet with sweat. It was the time of the new moon, so it was pitch black. Soon we were barely able to see the dirt road we were walking on. Only one car passed us, and it did not stop to pick us up. About 10:00 I was feeling exhausted. We put the stuff down to take a rest. All of a sudden, out in the darkness about 200 yards ahead of us, I heard the sound of someone pulling a rope on a gasoline engine, and as the motor rumbled into life, light sprang out of a big white tent. It seemed like a beacon, so we hoisted our stuff, and staggered over to see what was going on. It was a tent revival, and the preacher was setting up chairs. People started arriving, on foot and by car, and soon the tent was pretty full. We parked our stuff outside, and went in and got a chair. Eventually the preacher started preaching. Born again Christianity was sweeping across southern Africa at that time, and this guy was an evangelist. He was an American man. As he went on, though I tried to get into the spirit of things, I just couldn’t find it in me. He sounded like a failed preacher from America, who came to Africa where people wouldn’t notice what a terrible preacher he was. He was awful. He didn’t even look like he believed what he was spouting. I almost felt like leaping to my feet, and shouting, “CHARLATAN!” It was the worst preaching I had ever heard. Any church in America would run him out of town on a rail. When his minions started passing the basket around for donations, about halfway through his diatribe, I had to get up and go outside, or make an ass of myself by confronting his fakey evangelism.

After a million years, the “service” (though it didn’t seem to be serving anyone but the preacher) was over. THANK GOD! So to speak.

I looked up at the sky just now, as I was writing this, as I always do when I want to speak to God. I always feel silly, because up there is outer space, and nowhere in the Bye-bell does it say anything about the Deity living in a vacuum. But if She is truly omnipotent, He will see me, whatever direction I am looking. 

Me: Dude. (me and God are on a first name basis after all these years. He calls me Sam)

God:

  Me: Oh, Dude, stop being so loquacious.

God: 

Me: Well, I was just checking in. Don’t be mad because in my story, I maligned a man who was, however ineptly, spreading the Good Word, sort of. But poorly

.God:

Me: Hey, while I gotcha on the line, I hope you are enjoying my stories about my journeys in Your wonderful creation. Good work, Dude. Catch ya on the flip side

.God:

He doesn’t talk much, but I don’t mind. She has bigger issues than me right now, and that’s ok. I wouldn’t want the job. I always try my best to be egalitarian, in my life, and in my writing, so I use He and She interchangeably. Sometimes I call God, Dudette.

So, as the “service” was over, people started driving away, (see how God works?) and Sydney and I caught a ride all the way to the path leading to home, only a 45 minute walk away. We staggered into the homestead about 2am, dead tired. The mothers woke up, and came out, chattering like they had not been sleeping, and relieved us of the booty, and I went directly to bed.

The day of the braai arrived, and I had invited teachers from my school, and other volunteers, though I knew I lived in the outback, and not many would probably make it. 4 volunteers arrived on the 11:00 bus, and I had sent my littlest brothers to the bus stop to greet them, and bring anybody who arrived, to the homestead.They were so excited to have such an important job.

A group of teachers from my school arrived on foot, and the party got going. We passed around my guitar, and laughed and carried on. I had some beer that had been kept in the water tank overnight, so it was lukecool-ish. About 4:00 there arose a ruckus, and my two mothers came around the side of one of the rondavels with a goat. One had the tail, and one had the horns, and the goat knew his end was nigh, and was digging in all 4 feet as hard as he could. And bleating to beat the band. The mothers dragged it over to me. It was a traditional thing to kill a goat for a going away braai. I didn’t imagine that it would have to be the goer who killed it, but that was honoring me, by the family, so I went into my house, and pulled my razor sharp (because I was a woodworking teacher and knew to keep tools sharp,) sheath knife from my pack, and sallied forth to do my duty. I lived on a farm in my youth, so I knew where meat comes from. I strode over to the goat, and straddled it, and took my knife, pulled it’s head up by the beard, and cut its throat. While my mothers took possession again of the goat, and of my knife, I glanced over at my guests. The teachers were smiling and looking hungry. It wasn’t their first rodeo either. The volunteers were stunned into shock. Gaping at me. Looking at their faces, you might have thought I had killed Nelson Mandela, or Condoleeza Rice. I grinned at them.

Me: Where do you think meat comes from?

One Volunteer: I’m vegetarian.

Me: Oh, good. That is healthy. I recommend that you eschew the goat.

We munched on goat (and not) and fried potatoes, and salad, and watermelon, yum yum, and drank beer, and swapped stories until the wee hours. The mothers found space for everybody and we went to bed, and woke up to another glorious morning in Swaziland, with roosters crowing, and chickens clucking, pigs grunting, cattle mooing, and goats bleating. I am gonna miss this place
Family Matters, no matter where you find them.   
Life is great when you let it be.