Nsoko is the hottest, driest place I’ve ever been.
The South African border is seven kilometers to the east, on the ridge of mountains that encircles a wide, flat valley filled with sugarcane slowly dying of thirst. I actually haven’t seen the town itself, only the AIM care point where we are living. It consists of a team house where 22 of the 35 people on my squad have beds, an office building, a pre-school, a church, and a hut next to an umbrella tree where go-gos cook lunch for children five days a week.
The drought in southern Africa is killing cattle in Swaziland by the thousands. Predictions say only 10% of the crops planted this year will be harvested. Nsoko is one of the poorest areas in a country already devastated by the HIV/AIDS epidemic (according to the WHO, if infection continues at its current rate, Swaziland will cease to exist by 2050), and now that the drought is killing the livestock and sugarcane, Nsoko is only getting poorer.
This month, I am playing with children as go-gos (grandmothers) cook what might be the only meal they get that day. They don’t need me here. What the Swazis need is rain and jobs, not an American missionary staying for a month.
I was thinking about this as my team walked to our care point. The sun was just starting to poke out from behind the clouds that had gathered overnight. A skinny pig ran off the shaded porch as we approached. There were kids straggling in from all sides of the care point, a two-room concrete hut with a spigot 10 meters away. We had no instructions for the day, and none of the go-gos spoke English. So we did what we’ve learned to do best: improvise.
We sang camp songs under the umbrella tree, and chased toddlers around the dusty field. Claire hoisted a little girl in a pink dress up by her armpits and swung her in a circle until they were both dizzy. There were several different renditions of “Ring Around the Rosie.”
But finally, the kids and the missionaries were all very tired, and very hot.
We sat in a rainbow assortment of plastic chairs on the porch as kids poked at the backs of our knees and pulled at our necklaces. Then it happened: the moment I became a cliche missionary girl, and I can’t look back.
A little boy in a striped shirt squirmed into my lap. He couldn’t be older than five, and spoke no English, not even enough to tell me his name. He scooted across my lap until his back was pressed against my chest, and leaned his head into the hollow above my collarbone. He smelled like peanuts and scorched earth, his skin soft and dry against mine, his eyes so dark brown they looked black underneath his thick, drooping eyelashes.
I didn’t even know his name. But this little boy wanted nothing from me but a place to rest. So even though it was hot, and the most cliche missionary thing I’ve ever done, I let an African pre-schooler fall asleep in my lap under a shady porch on a hot afternoon.
The circumference of the world is relative, it turns out.
I’ve traveled so far, and learned so many things about how to change the world and how to never, ever do ministry, and all of my righteous indignation at being in a drought-stricken country, using up precious water with no return on that investment, goes out the window when a toddler does something adorable. Sometimes the world is large. But sometimes it is just big enough to hold a yellow plastic chair and two human beings who can’t speak to each other.
I don’t know if that makes the rest of this month worth it. I really don’t.
But I’m different because of living here, and even while I’m unsure of the lasting impact, I’m glad that I came. I’m glad I learned the circumference of the world.
