Finally, after almost two years of being in Swaziland, the only volunteer that I had found who had a guitar, and was willing to sell it, came to the end of his term of service. He sent me a note and told me to meet him at the Peace Corps office and he would sell me the guitar. I had really missed my guitar, but had been afraid to bring it when I came over from the States, because I was really attached to it, and had heard and read stories about how often PCV’s had gotten robbed.. So, finally I would be able to play and sing again. Yippie! My new guitar had a nice case, and was black, and made me feel like Johnny Cash while noodling around on it.

I finished what I had to do in town, and went by the huge market, and filled my pack with veggies and fruits and rice, and even found some cashews, for my larder, and hopped on the bus back to school. The past couple weeks, the usual bus had been broken down, and the buses running the route were a mixed bag of old fill-in buses, some of which looked like they were left over from World War II. The one I was on today had somehow run over a boulder a couple days ago, and it had torn the gas tank out from underneath, so now they had a 60 liter jug of diesel fuel bungee corded to the cage around the driver, and had a piece of fish tank hose running out of the open spout of the jug, and down under the motor shroud, to supply the motor with fuel. It had splashed some diesel out onto the floor of the bus, and it reeked, even with the windows down. 

I had tossed the guitar on top of the bus with the big things people were transporting, and tied it off up there. We clanked and wobbled down the road, and the bus had broken down 3 times already along the way, and the conductor and driver had gotten underneath, and janked around under there, and then we had gone onward again. This time as we rolled to a stop, it seemed serious. They had been messing around underneath for about 45 minutes, and had pulled out the longest hydraulic line I had even seen, and it had a hole in it. We were stopped in the middle of nowhere. The conductor had walked off into the bush with the long line, to get it repaired somewhere. It was hot, and the passengers were restless. I was too. It was still at least 20 km to school, and if I didn’t have to, I preferred not to have to walk the rest of the way to school with my heavily laden pack and my new guitar.

It was boring sitting there, so I got out and climbed on top, and untied my guitar, and brought it down. I thought I would play and sing for a while, and take everybody’s attention off of the broken down bus. It has always made me nervous to play in front of people, even tho I had belonged to a band back in Austin, and each time I would be ready to sing in front of an audience, I was never sure that my voice would come out of my mouth on key. Once I got started, it was easier, but waiting to sing that first note was always nerve wracking. 

I stood near the smelly jug of diesel, and opened up with a song by John Prine, my guitar hero, and let it roll. The people were stunned. I think some of them were surprised that anyone would even think of singing on the bus. I sang and played for about an hour. Nobody had ever heard even one of the songs I knew, but they were a polite and appreciative audience. The conductor arrived back with the hydraulic line, and they fished it under the bus, and got to work connecting it back up. My fingers were sore from playing, so I put the guitar in its case, and put it back on top, and as I climbed down, the bus driver shouted to me to get in and crank up the engine. He knew that I could do that because I had done it several times on the old bus when he had had to fix a flat tire. So I climbed up in the drivers seat, turned on the key, waited for the plugs to heat, and stepped on the button on the floor to engage the starter. The motor fired up with a big cloud of black smoke.

As I climbed down from the driver’s cage, I noticed that the seat, which had a big hole worn in the middle of it, was stuffed with something that looked a lot like the zippered canvas mail bag for my school. We had had no mail at school for about a month, and now I knew why. It was, in fact, our mail bag. So as I climbed down, I took the bag out of the seat hole. Mail would build up at the post office in Manzini, and when there were 5 or 10 letters, they would give the mail bag to the bus driver, who would give it to whoever was getting off at the Elulakeni stop, and they would deliver it to the school. If nobody was getting off at the school, the driver would whistle really loud as he passed the stop, and fling the mailbag to the side of the road, and whoever noticed it, would pick it up and bring it to the headmaster.

Whatever the repair was, it was working, so we clanked and shuddered off towards the school. I looked in the bag, and there were 6 letters inside, 3 of which were for me. One, amazingly, had been addressed by my niece like this…

Unckel Sam

Peace Corp

Elulakeni

Mbabane, Swaziland

Africa

And it had actually made it to me. Is the universe amazing, or what? From that day forward for a while, I was famous for having played a guitar and sang for a bus full of people. People who greeted me were always asking when I was going to do that again. Sometimes you just need to step out of your comfort zone, if you are gonna be of service to others.

Giving matters