Let me take a moment to check my attitude at the door…

A phrase I haven't uttered since PST, although I felt it's resurrection necessary given my moodiness these past few weeks.

With less than two weeks left in the term I am trying to keep life in perspective.  For starters, it’s rather confusing to acknowledge that it is nearly December. What with the fact that it has been in the 90s, and “sweating profusely” has become my normal state of being. I am simultaneously welcoming the break with open arms and honestly terrified of it.

And like most things here, time easily molded into delicate folds of origami waiting to be tucked somewhere as a token representing a particular period of my life.  It is now officially the start of break. I spent the last two weeks trying to pull the school calendar together and solidify as much as I could in preparation for the coming year.  While seven weeks feels like eons of time, I know that before I know it will be January, and I’ll either be accustomed to the still silence of an empty campus, or will be anxious for it to be brought back to life with the sounds of laughter and school bells. 

November was very good to me. It showed that friendships had deepen, my language had developed and solidified the sense that I am in the right place.  Although I was extremely anxious about it, I was able to launch my student council, which I am also extremely excited about.  It took over a month for me to put the right signs together to communicate it’s purpose and persuade the students I had rendered as leaders to want to be on board. While I do not currently have a counterpart at the school (another teacher per say) one of my best friends here, Sokuhle who teaches sign in Manzini, and is a real role model to the students, has been able to come here and help me explain it to the students and communicate it’s significance. For the time being I have six students who I am going to begin providing leadership training to.  This includes how to run meetings, setting an agenda, writing minutes, and public speaking. However, part of the responsibilities we’ve discussed include how they are going to be role models to the younger students. The concept of “setting an example” is not the same as the one I grew up with, and so I’ve had to think carefully about how the group should transform, be legitimized and what role exactly the students should play. Thankfully, they are super excited and really liked the idea of building skills. I was worried at first as Sokuhle and I listed the responsibilities and expectations that they would back out. However, I am truly lucky to have Sokuhle, as he was very encouraging of the students and articulated that we were there to support them. I am intrigued to see where things go in the next year. For the time being I bought them all little notebooks to write their ideas in, so I have a glimmer of hope that they’ll think of something over the break. 

In the past few weeks I feel like I finally stopped feeling like a Mlungu (foreigner).  This is also evident in the realization that I am beginning to forget that I stick out like a sore thumb, and am the cause of many double takes.  This is mainly due to the fact that I feel like part of a team here at the school, and have been slowly chipping away at multiple language barriers.  It’s an incredible thing when you realize that people have chosen to trust you, and that the respect you’ve worked hard to exhibit is being reciprocated.  I was honestly a mess back in July when I first moved in with my host family and stuttered along through the syllables of siSwati.  If you could have told me that I was going to be as happy as I am now, PST would have probably (… maybe) been a lot less miserable, and full of anxiety. The fact is, I feel so fortunate to have made the friends I have, and that I was able to feel comfortable enough here to let my guard down enough to learn to laugh again, rather than feeling constantly on edge. We all joked that it was the mefloquin (malaria prophylaxis) that was making us paranoid… but I think it was just my brain rapidly trying to process everything that was around me.

For Thanksgiving we were all invited to the Country Director’s house for delicious kudla. It was really nice to have the opportunity to hang out with my fellow PCVs and some of my favorite food. I was a little bummed at first, because that meant pulling me out of school during the last two days of the term, and year. I knew that when I’d return the following day, most, if not all, of the students would have been collected by their parents or bogogo.  It reminded me of the end of the first summer when I bawled like a baby after my campers were picked up… these silly kids always weasel their way into my heart.  It was a pleasant surprise to see that a few were still here when I got back. I had arranged a skype date with my family (the first one in 5 months!) and I had just logged on, when they came out of the dinning hall, and the older girls filed into the teachers lounge… I don’t know how they find me sometimes. It was pleasantly fun. They hung out during the skype date and got to “meet” my family, and I interpreted as much as I could. It made me incredibly happy to see these two worlds kind of collide for a little while. They even gave them sign names, which was neat. I think in some ways that described my experience here far better than me just rattling off what I’ve been doing. 

This next week I’ll be back at IDM (where I spent my first two months here), attending a training in which we are allowed to bring a counterpart with, and talk about program design. 

We interrupt this programme for a breaking news update: The storms here are incredible, and I am thankful that they tend to occur in the evenings, when I am safely indoors tucked beneath my snuggie. You know it’s intense when the wind makes it through your closed windows. Usually I get tired of the lights flickering and end up chillin’ by candlelight. Also, I discovered that with enough force the rain also makes it's way through the door... so I had a lovely pool forming in my hut... oops.

Anywho. 

Other than that, I don’t really have much else to share… save for some gems I’ve been gathering for a few topic-focused posts.  But that’s for another day.

Insert Creative Title Here

I’ve now been in Swaziland for over four months and it feels like home. I am in love with my site. The students are incredible, and the teachers continue to be supportive and a good source of laughter.  I feel as though I am really part of this community, and that has really helped in my settling in. Although I’ve only been living at my new home for two months, it feels like I’ve been here much, much longer (but not too much long).

One of my favorite things about my site situation is that I live in an apartment next to pretty much all of the bothishela that live at my school. This means that in the early evenings, or after dinner I can spend time chatting with their families, gathered around the TV watching Generations (anxiously awaiting the terribly intriguing plot twists…), and sharing the occasional meal.  I have made it a tradition that once a week I cook for my counterpart Sanelisiwe and her family. It has been a really nice exchange, and makes me feel like part of a family, and Sanelisiwe enjoys learning new recipes and sharing food, so it generally works out. Most importantly I feel like a real person again, in other words, I feel like myself again.  Zinhle and I used to joke during PST that we weren’t real people, because we felt that we couldn’t act the way we would naturally, as we were trying to adjust to a different culture with different social expectations, while the same time feeling constantly like we were on stage wondering whether the audience was going to laugh with us or start throwing rotten vegetables. Thus, I spent much of PST honestly anxious, and uncertain. However, now that I feel more comfortable here, and understand when a joke is being made, and when I need to quickly exit stage left… I can laugh with the audience instead of feeling laughed at. It’s honestly quite wonderful.

So where am I going with this…?

Sanelisiwe has a daughter who is five years old, and at the age of being super curious and wanting to participate in everything.  She was sitting on a bucket in the kitchen and I decided it would be a great idea to take a piece of my hair, and drape it across my face above my lip, and below my nose, making a silly mustache. This sent her into a fit of giggles. Sanelisiwe then turned around (although she was in the middle of cutting some chicken), and burst out laughing. This has become a defacto move if ever I feel I’ve walked my way into an awkward moment or if things start getting too serious.  Sanelisiwe has also been extremely wonderful in making sure I’m doing okay, inviting me along when she goes into town (hey, she even stopped the car long enough for me to snag some pictures of a few giraffes), and not letting me miss out on the incredible VoetKoeks at Shopprite. That’s a quality friend right there.

The other teachers have also been extremely welcoming, and what is neat is that the Head Teacher suggested that I do little workshops with them in the mornings before class, focusing on topics such as mental health and wellbeing. This has been a neat project to work on, and a great way to become part of the team. We just completed In-Service Training (which was a crazy two week reunion…) and upon my return to campus several teachers came up to me and told me they had been bored in the mornings because I wasn’t there to teach them. The Head Teacher told me yesterday that she is going to change the schedule a little bit, and have classes start later in the day so I have more time in the mornings for my workshops. I am very excited because my latest topic is Goal Setting and Planning.  I think as many of you know, I enjoy a little structure in my life… and the school has been without a school calendar, thus, things sort of just happen, or they sort of don’t.  In thinking about the projects I wanted to start, but being unable to follow this schedule intuitively, (as I feel the teachers here have a sixth sense of knowing when things will happen…) I offered to help make a calendar. I am SO excited. Seriously. I had the teachers generate a list of ideas of things they want to do next year… clubs they want to start, programs they want to develop, and fun activities even for the teachers themselves. They came up with an incredible list. I then asked them to write their name next to the activity they’d be interested in working on, and was pleasantly surprised that EVERY teacher signed up to lead an activity, and some even signed up for multiple activities. I had been really stressed that I was going to be the only one starting projects, and that I wouldn’t have any support, so anything I did would just fizzle out upon my departure. Now I feel like even if some of the things still don’t actually happen, the teachers are learning the skills to program activities in the future.  I’m having them write up little plans for these activities so that we can give each other feedback on how they can best be carried out.  Some teachers even came up to me and said they were excited for 2014. This with the break in two weeks is really encouraging. 

So where might you also find me?

Begrudgingly (although, admittedly, I am enjoying it now…) I was placed in charge of the library operations at the beginning of this term.  It’s been a love/hate relationship for sure, but I’m now at the point where I know enough sign to communicate “library clean please now close” quite effectively. Other students also tend to follow my lead and help me tidy up, and ask each other to wrap-up and go. The other day, however, had me questioning what on earth I had gotten myself into.  It was the third or fourth day of rainy, cold weather, and it just so happened to be pay-day. This means that the teachers were excused from class so they could go to the bank. However, what I didn’t factor in, was that all of those kids, that would normally be in class, would be free, and want to remain in doors because it was unnecessarily cold outside. Therefore, my 11 person library class quickly expanded to 20, then 40, and before I knew it I had over seventy students crammed into the library, which is half of the entire school. Me and 70 students. For all you camp counselors out there, that’s a pretty terrible ratio.  I kind of forget where I was going with this, but I think for as much as my blood pressure went up during the two hours I spent in overseeing that many children as the library was pretty much bursting at the seams, it made me realize that for starters, I really can never guess what I’ve gotten myself into here, and secondly, that despite that horrible ratio, I must be doing something right, because the library closed in a relatively orderly fashion, and I’m glad that, despite my better judgment, I agreed to work in the library this term. It has served as a means through which I have really gotten to know the students, and figure out what role I want to have within the school. I think many of them have incredible leadership potential, and if I didn’t spend 15 or so hours a week hanging out with them in the library, I might not have been able to see that, or know how to communicate with them as well. I also made two checkerboards out of cardboard, and that has been a big hit.

This past week (as noted above) we were brought back together at our original training site to have “In-service Training”, it was much more difficult than I thought to tear me from site, and as I walked through the school gate I had to hold back tears, because I realized how much I was going to miss everything about the school for the next two weeks. While I do think it has been a nice break, and great to catch up and learn more skills, I am looking forward to being back in my house, sharing laughs over tea and chasing the pre-schoolers around pretending I’m a lion.  I think this means I’m integrated.

School holidays begin in December, and although I’ll miss the students, I am looking forward to having time to work on some of the projects I have started to develop, and practice my SiSwati. There are a few vendors in town that I am looking forward to hanging out with. I got super excited because I saw a “South Africa” version of “Monopoly” in Shopprite at a reasonable price and bought it immediately. I then proceeded to march proudly through town clutching the game like it was a long-lost teddy bear. As I strolled through the Bomake market my pal Mavis saw me and exclaimed, “Bongiwe! Can I play that game with you?” after which she promptly stated “I will beat you”, and I remarked “Challenge accepted”.  It’ll be fun to spend a couple days playing monopoly in the market (although I am sure my game will become a little rough around the edges), and hey, I’d say that’s a lesson in financial literacy.  This moment, along with many others that I now cherish, are why I am enjoying this experience so much. This is truly the most incredibly opportunity I have ever had.

I am also excited because I am now a Co-Director for the GLOW Camp that occurs annually in the April/May school break. GLOW stands for “Girls Leading our World”, and the camp counselor in me is pumped beyond belief. It is also exciting because Zinhle is the main director, and I like the other volunteer who is the other co-director. It’s going to be a really fun and enriching experience. 

Well, I think that’s a reasonable summary of October for now… every once and a while I pause and am awed that I am where I am, doing what I’m doing, things no longer seem so foreign, and I can easily see how far I’ve come since the end of June, which is a pretty neat feeling.

Until next time,

Salani Kahle. 

A sign that I'm aging...

I just posted the same post... again... and have no idea how to delete it... oooops.