A couple of weeks into Peace Corps training, I hitched into town from the training camp, to buy some food. The training camp dining room was not staffed on weekends, and we were left to hustle our own grub on saturday and sunday. On my way back to camp from the market, I was walking to a place that had room to stand and hitch, and I saw this blonde amazon of a woman walking briskly along on the other side of the road. She was stunning, with a glow of total health. I just stared at her openly, with curiosity, and she glanced at me and grinned.
Blonde Amazon: You are one of the new trainees. I can tell.
Me: You can tell? How?
She crossed the road to where I was, and turned and stuck her thumb out. A car was approaching.
Blonde Amazon: I saw you back at the market, and how you paid what the mother asked for those carrots. She was disappointed. You didn’t even try to bargain, but just paid the asking price. Bargaining is the fun part of standing all day in the hot marketplace. You didn’t ask her name, or try to have a conversation. You should change that. Then I watched you gaping at everything like you just came in off the farm. I could tell it was your first time at the market, and figured you were part of the new training group.
She laughed again and her eyes actually twinkled. She seemed to be the pinnacle of competency, at the peak of health, and a vision of loveliness. I was at a loss to say anything. I was in awe of her.
Blonde Amazon: My name is Jennifer (she prompted)
Me: Oh, um, Hi! I am Sam. Do you live here in town?
Jennifer: No, I teach math down in the south of the country, in a town named Hluthi. I am headed to the training camp to teach a session to you guys.
I dodged off the road as a small truck swerved over and skidded to a stop. She jumped in the back quickly, and stuck out her hand to pull me up and in. She told the driver where we were going, in what appeared to be perfect siSwati. We blabbed all the way to Sibebe, the camp. It turned out her great tan and fit body were from her passion for mountain biking. She biked everywhere out at her school.
-30-
Mike came by with his homestead father, Magagula, and invited me to accompany them on a walk across the veld, “to do some business at a man’s homestead over that side”. This seems to be a phrase that gets a lot of use here. Over that side can be from 10 feet, to a mile or two. Or in another country. I said, sure, let’s go.
We walked for a goodly time and came upon a homestead with a couple men sitting around talking, and passing around a black clay bowl and drinking from it. We joined them, and Mike’s father introduced us to the men, and they included us in the pass around of the bowl. The bowl contained the traditional home-made beer, called Tjwala. It was sour and bitter and lumpy, with a nasty white color, yet with the odor of unwashed feet. My first tiny sip was also my last sip ever for the rest of my life. I kept my face still, and managed to not wretch, but it was tough. I watched Mike, and when it came to his turn to drink, by the total lack of any expression on his face, I could see he did not like it any more than I had.
It is considered extremely rude in Swaziland, if not insulting, to turn down food or drink that someone offers you. For the rest of my turns at the pot, I just pretended to sip without opening my lips.
After a while, we took our leave and walked for an hour and a half across the bush, and eventually arrived at another homestead. Here Father Magagula had told us, he intended to make arrangements to borrow a big truck with which to deliver the dowry of 15 cattle, which his oldest son was paying as the dowry for his soon-to-be wife. After all that walking, the truck owner was not there. That didn’t seem to matter much to Magagula, and we rested a bit, and talked with the mans beautiful daughter who clearly had an eye for Mike. Then we took our leave and walked back eastward toward our homesteads. The sun was very hot.
We reached a small stream which we had to cross. Father Magagula told us to hustle when we crossed the stream because of crocodiles. I didn’t know if he was kidding or not, so I wasted no time in crossing. I didn’t see any crocodiles.
-30-
Today, about 10am, my little sister, TV, came to my hut and said imperiously, “Sipho, uyateza umtimba yakho, phuma, na hamba e Sifiso.” I had not the vaguest idea what that meant, except it had something to do with my new brother, Sifiso. I smiled and shrugged my shoulders. TV sighed and repeated it again slowly. Nope, no Idea. I shook my head. She sighed again, and rolled her 7 year old eyes, and said, “Sipho! You wash you Boedee.” It took me a second, but I realized that she thought I should wash my body.
One of the mothers had brought me a basin of warm water every morning, and I had already washed myself today. I didn’t think I stunk, and wondered why TV had come in to tell me that at 10 oclock in the morning. She went over to my backpack and took out my towel and my soap, and grabbed my hand and towed me out of the hut to a path where my brother Sifiso was waiting, with a towel over his shoulder. TV said, “Sipho, you go Sifiso.”
Sifiso set off down the path, and I followed. After 15 minutes, we came out on the bank of the Black Umbuluzi river, which I had known was nearby, but had never seen. The path ended at this big flat rock that stuck out in the river, where Sifiso made the motions of washing his body.
“Alright!’ I shouted, and shucked off my clothes, and took a running dive off the rock into the river. It was so cool and wet, and such a break from the oppressive heat, and I swam happily back and forth in the current. Sifiso had not expected that, and he stood there stunned. I glanced back at him, and he had run to the edge of the rock and was shouting and gesticulating energetically. “Sipho! Phuma, phuma, phuma! Tingwenya! Tingwenya!”
Hmmm, “Phuma” is what mother says when she chases the kids out of my house. It probably meant “get out.” I looked back at Sifiso and laughed. I motioned to him to come in, and shouted, “the water feels great Sifiso! Come on in!”
“Sipho! Phuma! Tingwenya! TING! WEN! YA!” and he pointed up river, where three crocodiles were sliding into the river on the other side. Oh, tingwenya are crocodiles. Before I knew it, I had levitated myself out of the river and back on the flat rock in an instant. Sifiso was throwing stones at the crocodiles, and they swam away.
The rest of our washing was much more sedate and we just squatted at the shore and washed by splashing river water up with our hands.
-30-
TV came for me about 11am the next day. I was informed that lunch would be served down by the main hut, and it would be good if I hustled my butt down there, because father was waiting for me. Father Maseko was the assistant indvuna of the area, and people came to him with disputes, or seeking his wise counsel in various matters. We ate some jelly bread and tea. Then two men and a woman came and sat at father’s feet.
The conversation seemed to have a lot to do with cows, and I soon realized that it was a dowry discussion, to arrive at how many cows the man needed to pay for his bride to be, to her father. The discussion went on for a while, very spiritedly, and eventually they arrived at 18 cows to be the price paid. Everybody smiled and shook hands, and the people went off ito the bush.
The day was filled with people coming to my father for things, and though I could not follow the siSwati very well, it was interesting watching the body language and level of excitement and nervousness of the people. As the sun got near the horizon, and the last of the people left, the mothers brought us supper.
It looked like they were experimenting with the box of unknown food that I had brought with me again. My plate had the usual ubiquitous blob of supper porridge. Next to it was a small pile of pickles, on top of which they had perched a half of a canned peach. Also a slice of white bread with a thick layer of peanut butter, and a thin slice of the spam that they had served me a couple days ago, smelling a little rank from its two days of unrefrigerated storage. To top it off were two cooked carrots with coconut flakes sprinkled over them. I guess I should have tried to explain the items in the box of food that Peace Corps had sent with me, but was unsure of how to do that with my minimal siSwati. But the dinner was delicious, even the semi rank spam, and father and I enjoyed it to the last crumb. Later the mothers brought us each a roasted sweet potatoe, fresh off the fire, and we sat there in companionable silence and enjoyed the warm gooeyness of them. Yum yum.
The next morning I was awakened at sunrise by a weeping woman. I went outside and saw two of my mothers walking around with a weeping young woman, the one whose dowry was paid the day before, who was saying goodbye to everything. The trees, my house, the cattle, everything. Then the women sat in the field and sang such sad songs and wept and carried on until the man, her new husband, came to carry her off into her new life.
-30-
I am sitting here in the hot sun at the Hlatikhulu bus rank. Hlathi is a tiny town, where I could catch the next bus out to Ntjanini, and the school where I was heading. I will be visiting some PCV’s (peace corps volunteers), for a sort of trial by fire, about 2/3 of the way through the 10 week training course. All of the trainees are similarly taking buses out to various schools to visit active volunteers, to get a taste of what life is like for a volunteer. We received what seemed to be only the barest minimum of directions, and wished good luck in getting to our destinations. I had caught the shuttle bus from Mbabane to Manzini, where the central bus hub was based. I was told to catch the blue and white Muhle Tours bus, take it to the second Hlatikhulu stop, and walk up the hill to Hlatikhulu proper, and catch the green and white Tokhozani Mabhele bus to Ntjanini. Easy peasy. Except for the complete lack of any kind of signage to know where you are.
I had gotten to Manzini 45 minutes early for the Muhle Tours bus, and found it, and it seemed full already. Nonetheless, I climbed the ladder on the back of the bus, and tied my thousand pound backpack onto the luggage platform on top, and climbed down and went inside and managed to find a seat about halfway back the bus.
As I sat there, more and more people kept jamming onboard. The conductor started packing the people standing, by having them face the windows and stand butt to butt in the aisle. A clearly printed sign above the front door said Maximum Capacity: 70 seated, 30 standing. 100 people. It looked like we were somewhat exceeding the capacity.
When we took off, the bus wallered like a beached whale as we headed out of town, listing back and forth across the lane of traffic. I couldn’t believe the suspension wasn’t breaking down. A while later, we were climbing a long steep hill at about half the pace that I could have walked up the hill backwards, and POW! a tire blew out. We wobbled over to the guardrail, partially off the road, with just walking space between the bus and guardrail. “Everybody off!” So we all got off the bus, which took about 15 minutes. I wondered what the Swazi customs were about getting my same seat back when we got back on. It was a huge group of people now standing along the side of the road by the bus. Huge.
The driver and the conductor jacked up the bus and pulled the wheel off, took the tire off the rim, patched it, and put it all together again and on the bus. That was about a half hour’s work, which I thought was amazing for a bus parked on a steep hill, and all the work done by hand. Faster than Discount Tire would have done it back in Austin. Then they motioned us to reboard.
I stood to one side of the door, and counted people as they got on. 165 passengers, a conductor and a driver. And me. Through judicious use of the clutch, the driver managed to get us moving again, but we stayed in first gear all the way to the top of the hill, about 15 minutes. The conductor was collecting the fares, and mine was about $2.50 US, which I thought was cheap for this level of intense entertainment.
When the bus pulled over at my stop for Hlatikhulu, I tried to make my way up front, but the aisle was crammed with people, so I hiked my skinny self up on the seatbacks, and frog jumped my way to the door, and climbed up and brought down my heavy pack from on top. I struck off up the hill to Hlatikhulu proper. It was sunny and about 98 degrees and I sweated a lot climbing the hill. It took about an hour. The town was so small that I could see the bus rank from a distance, and went there, and sat in the dirt and drank half my canteen of water. There was no shade that wasn’t already packed with people, so I just sat in the sun.
I noticed that I was the only lightly complected person in the bus rank, and I drew a lot of attention. Several people came over and asked me for money, for food, for a job, and finally a grandmother came over to squat by me just for conversation. She spoke great English, told me that she had been a teacher in her younger years, and when she asked who I was going to visit, she knew both Doug and Patrick. We had an animated conversation until the bus to Ntjanini came.
-30-
The next day, after participating in Doug’s woodworking classes with him, we went back to his house, where I took out the now thawed chicken I had bought in town, and fried it up, and made some coleslaw, and some instant potatoes. It took a while for the chicken to cook, but finally it was done, so I dished out plates of food, and we sat down to eat. The meal looked delicious.
I picked up my drumstick, and took a bite. Well, I tried to take a bite, but, in fact, my teeth bounced off the chicken. They would not penetrate. It was like biting a superball. Not wishing to make a scene because that would be unseemly, I quietly put my drumstick back down on my plate, while glancing surreptitiously at Doug and Patrick. They were having no better luck than I, with the chicken. They glanced at each other, and then at me.
Doug: The chicken seems a bit tough, Sam.
Patrick: Like rubber, I think.
Me: I think it is more like breaded diving wetsuit material.
Doug tried again, with force, his jaw muscles bulging, but unable to penetrate it.
Doug: Maybe Kevlar like bulletproof vests.
So, we all gave up and made a meal of slaw and potatoes. The other two decided that it must have been a homestead chicken that had to scrounge for anything to eat during its life. I saved the chicken, despite its imperviousness to our teeth, and the next day decided to make chicken salad after wrestling the meat into tiny pieces with my sharp pocketknife and pounding it with a hammer. I added onions and celery, and cut up an apple, and added that, and some raisins and mayo. The chicken flavor was minimal, and the salad had the consistency of creamy veggies and plastic pellets, but we ate it anyway, and enjoyed joking about it. I wondered if my digestive juices would affect it much.
-30-
I received my school placement today and found out where I would be teaching in a couple weeks when training was over. Elulakeni High School. With my Peace Corps application that I sent in months ago, I had included a letter talking about how I was there to be of service, and didn’t care how difficult the posting was, I was up for it. That letter had figured prominently in the discussions of where to send me. I asked the training director about my school, and he told me that he had not actually been there, but had made the decision after reading my enthusiastic letter and talking with the Director of Technical Subjects. He suggested that I speak with him, and ask him about my school.
I did that, and right away he started snowjobbing me. He used expressions like “due to your positive attitude and resourcefulness”, and “I like how committed you are to doing a good job, Sam.” Uh oh. Then he told me that Elulakeni is considered a hardship site, that there is no electricity or water anywhere near it. He showed me on a map where it was. It was way out in the middle of nowhere, in the light green section of the map, which the map key told me was “sea level elevation, and very arid”. He said I would have to be very conscious about keeping myself healthy, and get used to not seeing anybody from Peace Corps much. He was too jolly, and I felt like there was something that he was not telling me. He kept chuckling to himself, and referring obliquely to my letter, and how they really wanted someone who was a survivor, whatever that meant. Well, I had made my bed, so it was time to lie down in it. Next weekend was Easter weekend, and those of us who would like to go and visit our new school, were permitted to skip classes on friday, and go. I plan to.
I got on a bus in Manzini about 2pm on friday, after asking around for which one went to Elulakeni. It was crowded and I stood in the aisle holding onto the luggage shelf for 4 hours. The conductor had made his way back to where I stood in the back, and tapped my shoulder, and said, “Elulakeni, You get off now.” and pointed out the window. So I got off. It was nowhere at all. Not even a sign. The bus drove away, and I walked up the dirt track to the top of a hill, and there before me on the other side was the school. Actually “schools”. There was a primary school, and a small clutch of tiny houses that I found were teachers quarters housing, and way off in the distance was the high school, and the adult education center, and a preschool. It was completely deserted because it was Easter weekend, and the teachers had gone home to visit their families.
I wandered around for a while, and found the woodworking shop and Home Economics classroom in a clump of two buildings behind the rest of the school. I knew it was the woodworking classroom because of the sign on the door, but it was locked. I scouted around and found that I could climb on the roof over the sidewalks between the classrooms, and get access to my shop through a broken window. It was a decrepit place. Stains of bat pee, which smelled strongly of ammonia running down the cement block walls. Berms of bat guano around the perimeter of the floor. There were 10 workbenches in the room. That was all. No wood, no tools, no chairs, just workbenches. I dropped my backpack there and climbed out the window and down off the roof, and went exploring.
Most of the classroom windows were broken, and half of the doors were missing or hanging by one hinge. Not much TLC in evidence. I walked out to a dusty dirt patch that had soccer goals on each end. Across the countryside around me were thorn trees and dead grass clumps, and off in the distance, homestead groups of mud huts with grass roofs. There was not a speck of green in the landscape. Everything was a muted dusty tan color. I had heard that there had been drought for two years, and it looked like it. The sky was yellowish from the dust being picked up by the fitful wind. There were the skinniest cows I had ever seen, grazing in the schoolyard, eating dead grass clumps, and some were eating what looked to be exam papers. It was getting on to dusk, so I climbed back into my classroom, and sat on a workbench and ate a peanut butter samwich that I had brought, and drank half of the water in my canteen. I took out some paper and wrote a letter to my uncle as the light faded.
As I was bemoaning the lack of amenities of my school, I heard a swooshing sound, and I looked up and saw hundreds of bats swirling around, leaving their resting places to go out the broken window to find some bugs to eat. When the light was completely gone, I climbed out of the window again, and went and laid on my back in the middle of the soccer field, and looked at more stars than I have ever seen before in the night sky. No electricity, no light pollution. I could see the celestial arm crossing from horizon to horizon. The Southern Cross was clear and situated in the southern sky. I could hear cattle lowing, goats muttering, chickens clucking, and a muted drumming from off in the dark distance. Eventually I got up and climbed back into the woodshop, and pulled out my sleeping bag, unrolled it on top of a workbench and went to sleep.
I was up at dawn, and packed up and caught the bus back towards town at 7am. There was nobody around at the school, so no reason to stay there.
-30-
Here is a quiz for you. Answer all the questions, and don’t cheat!
1. Where is the remotest, most poverty stricken, unhealthiest place in the country of Swaziland?
2. What school has a history of volunteers refusing to teach there, and some quitting the job after being posted there?
3. In what area is it imperative that you take Two different malaria medications?
4. Where is the densest population of bats in the world?
5. What area do PCV’s swear that it is so awful and far away, that they wouldn’t go there even to visit their best friend?
6. Where was the latest large outbreak of cholera and amoebic dysentery due to the hideous condition of the water in the river?
7. At what school did the last volunteer to be assigned there quit her contract early and advise Peace Corps not to replace her because of hideous living conditions and corrupt administrative hierarchy?
If you answered “Sam’s New School” for all of them, you would be correct! When I ask other volunteers about it, they roll their eyes and say things like “You’re kidding? They sent somebody there again?” and “Oh, man, I pity you.”
-30-