This blog was written a few weeks ago. Only ten days left in the Swaz!
Sara walked outside with our garbage, intent on burning it, and was immediately surrounded by children who wanted to go through it. They were on their hands and knees, desperate for anything they could find; a rotten onion, scraps of bread, packets of ketchup – anything that might bring their family sustenance for another day.
Amidst a backdrop of beautiful mountains and rolling hills, the land around us is barren and impoverished. The children are starving, as food and water are scarce, and they’re dressed in clothing that we, in America, would consider to be rags. Most of them are orphans and raised by their grandparents, if they’re raised by anyone at all.
Their beautiful faces are hardened by the reality that is theirs – although, now, they are playing with the white girls and will receive a hot plate of rice, they will soon be back to scrounging for food. They are with us for only a few hours every day, a brief reprisal from their life of hardship. They come to play, to crawl on us, to hear us tell them that they’re beautiful and loved; they come to, if only for a moment, be children.
With the half-way point quickly approaching (…WHAT?!), my team and I find ourselves in the middle of Nsoko, a small village in the eastern-most part of Swaziland. We’re stationed for the month at an Adventures in Missions base, where we live in the middle of a feeding station. (Seriously. The kids are fed 20 yards from our front door. Which means they are always around. As I type this, there are five little children peering through the gate on our front door, zoo-watching style.)
We’ve been blessed with a giant room and an actual bed for each of us. (Although, I’m currently covered in bed-bug bites, so I suppose there was something good about sleeping on the floor last month.) We have running water and electricity, both of which go out intermittedly, and the closest… well, anything… is ten miles away (and by “anything”, I mean a small store to buy bread and rice). We cook for ourselves on the smallest budget we’ve had so far and live off of sandwiches and eggs. We can’t really afford bottled water, so we drink it from the tap – and besides a slightly brackish taste, it’s apparently quite safe. (Don’t worry, we’ll still take anti-parasite pills before we leave, just in case.) There are no trees under which we could find a slight relief, and, in order to respect the local customs, we wear skirts and cover our shoulders, even in the sweltering heat.
We’ve spent nine weeks on this continent, and now we’re down to our final three. Our braids are beginning to come out and we’re starting to discuss what summer clothing we’ll drop before our flight. In just a short while, we’ll be on a plane to spend three months in the cold of Eastern Europe.
But God’s given us this final month to allow us to truly see His heart. To allow us to spend time in His undeveloped creation, the heat and the dirt that makes up the bush of Swaziland. To allow us to fall in love with the dark faces of this country – the orphans walking around in ragged clothing without shoes, the widows struggling to survive, the grandmothers loving their community with everything that they have.
Three more weeks in the bush of Swaziland. I’ll let you know how it goes.
