Sunday, November 4, 2012
Sitting Underneath the Peach Tree
Right now my light is flickering and it is very annoying. I am sitting in my bed, which is where I usually sit. I do have two chairs, but no real table. A lot of times I also sit on the floor.
I did make a table in the main room of my hut. It is a door with cinder blocks under it. When I get a little less cheap I do plan on buying legs and making a shelf underneath. I have made my cubbies, which I love. My family was shocked when they saw what I had made. In my bedroom I have a few more cinder blocks under planks for a nice little shelf thing. Its cute. My closet it two metals poles hanging from rope. It works pretty well. I have started decorating my house, it looks the way most of the places I have lived look, slowly getting clustered. I have hung up photos that people have sent me, they decorate random places on my walls and I love it. I have a really pretty painting of Africa hanging. I go to my neighbor's and it is so cute, so I have decided to start taking things serious and we are going to redecorate. I want to make things match a little and you know, make it cute and organized. Hard, and it will take a while, but it will get there.
On the work front, things are going well. I have a community assessment do near the end of November. I took a survey at my school which has been a complete hassle to compile, I am just at the beginning of it. The survey asked questions about home life, who lives with you, do you eat three meals a day, have you ever been abused, what do you hope to be when you grow up, what activities do you do, etc. This will give me at least a little basis as where to start. I hope to start teaching life skills classes next year and really want to start a girl's club. The club would be a place where girls could come and ask questions and have fun, and learn about growing up.
Every once in awhile I get hit with something that reminds me of how real things are. For example, two Swazi foods are imbhidvo and ligusha. Every time I heard imbhidvo I thought it was another name for spinach. Ligusha, I knew was just a slimey green thing that looked like mucus. Neither of which would be my cup of tea to eat. Anyway, I just thought these were veggies. Finally somebody made me realize, “No Jess, they eat them because they are weeds that grow everywhere and so are easy to get.” Oh, good to know.
Some things are ridiculous here a bit though. In one chiefdom, the chief banned cutting down firewood because his cows were being stolen. In another a chief banned women wearing pants. In both these places if a person was found doing them they would get charged a fine. Making women wear skirts is one thing, but not allowing your people to be able to cook is another.
I have started tutoring. It is a bit difficult, but will hopefully be rewarding. It is hard because one day I will have one student and the next, surprise, here are three of her sisters as well. And “no, we didn't bring our books.” I was very happy to hear that my student's mother was helping her correct her homework, but than even this was troubling when I saw a zero had been erased. When I asked why she had erased it (because it should have been there,) my student told me her mother had told her it was wrong. Bummer. In some cases it is also a bit scary because since things are done strictly in one way here, I get nervous when I say, “no you should put a comma in your number to separate the thousands and hundreds.” I can only hope the teachers do see that this is also correct.
This weekend was Halloween. The PCVs had a party. It was a lot of fun. It was great seeing how creative people were. My favorite costumes were a killer bumble bee and a unicorn. They looked great! My friend and I went as eighties dancers. It was a blast. As most people were going to sleep, six of us went to a bar. Wow! What an experience. The male to female ratio was intense. Let me put it this way, there were two other girls there and then the four of us girls. People were gropey and vultures. We stuck together with our two male friends. I was happy to know dance moves that easily moved people away or made them realize that if we were going to dance, they wouldn't touch me the wrong way. I am an assertive girl (so no worries mom, we were all safe). Also, the friend who brought us was a very large man.
It was neat though because I had a very interesting conversation with a Swazi male. We talked about how hard it is for Swazis, and the difficult infrastructure of the country. We spoke about how different life in the rural areas of Swaziland is compared to the cities. And truly, it is quite the difference, I will go into further detail in a later post.
Sometimes I think man, I miss America. I miss my friends. I miss my family. I miss running water. I miss Chinese food. And then, I sit under the peach tree with my three bo-sisi and bhuti, all of them amongst the branches, eating peaches, and think, “Ya, I can deal with this.”
