Swaziland was easily the hardest month of my race this far. I was on a new, all girls team for the first time on the race, and although I love each and every one of my teammates, our living situation was less than ideal, and ministry was just tough for me to get in to. We lived just outside of Manzini, one of the biggest cities in Swaziland, and used the local for of transportation, called Kumbis to get to and from ministry every day. Our new team, Mezcla 1212 was formed because it was manistry month for VSquad. This just means that all of the men on our squad lived and worked together this month, and because there were only two teams with men on them anyway, all of the women from the two teams simply merged into one for the month. We also were living and working with another all girls team during our time in Swazi, and because of this, had 16 women living in one house together with bucket showers, one sink, a little gas stove and two porter potties. It was an interesting month for everyone to say the least.
Because there were so many of us, we were split up into three ministry groups. Some of our group worked with the AIM base there doing things like office work and sponsorship things, some of our group worked with Swazi men in their agriculture program, helping to start gardens in communities around Manzini, and the rest of us worked in local care points, similar to preschools, 5 days a week.
I chose to work at a care point, and was placed in a classroom with 23 adorable (or so I thought!) 4 year olds. My teammate, Helene, was in the room next to me with the 5 year olds. When I stared ministry, I had high expectations for the month. Anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely adore kids and love being around them, teaching them, and pouring into their lives. Pouring into these children while also trying to keep myself away from my breaking point proved to be the most difficult task that I encountered this month. I had big plans for these kids. I had things that I wanted to teach them, milestones that I wanted them meet, and things about life that I wanted them to learn. The teacher in me came out, and I immediately began writing lesson plans, coming up with craft ideas, and making work sheets.
I quickly learned that this month with the little ones was not going to be as easy as I had first assumed. Language barriers, cultural differences, and over all life knowledge became enormous stumbling blocks for me in every sense of the word.
I would like to blame my dislike for this month on the environment, on the living situation, and on the ministry, but I can’t. Although those three things had a huge impact for my distaste for the month, I know that my attitude towards each one of those factors was a reason why Swaziland was so hard for me. The teacher that I was to be working along side of, regularly left me in the classroom by myself, making my job something more like crowd control than teaching. My love for children quickly turned into frustration with almost each and every one of these little ones, and ministry, instead of being fun and rewarding, became something I dreaded.
Living in a tiny house with 15 other women, (as fun as that may sound) became a source of stress and frustration as well. On top of adjusting to a new team with NINE girls (all of which slept in the same little room), we also had another whole other team living in the other bedroom. In South Africa, God spoke to me about his plan for the rest of my life, and not having the personal space to process the things that I had been given drove me crazy. Sleeping squished in between two other girls drove me crazy. Having 16 people eating out of the same little pantry drove me crazy, and I let it. I didn’t fight fit, I just let myself be miserable.
After two horrendous weeks of trying to get these 4 year olds to retain anything that I was saying, and my team noticing that I was obviously with everything that month, one of my team mates pulled the ‘choose joy’ line on me. This line has become an essential part of many of our lives on the race. Choosing joy in situations where joy seems so far away, and you’re just completely done with ministry, community, and everything else difficult about the World Race is one of the hardest things to do. But I’ve learned that choosing to buy into joy, as much as it sucks sometimes, is all we can do to not only save ourselves from going insane during this crazy journey.
Swaziland was freaking hard. I couldn’t communicate with my kids, my teacher left me alone so she could do her laundry, there were never any muffins left for me to eat at breakfast and the only alone time I got on a regular basis was when I braved the out houses. But out of this I learned more than a few things. I learned that love is better than frustration, even when they don’t understand a thing you’re saying. I learned to accept the fact that people’s home lives are extremely different from mine, and even though my teacher leaving frustrated me to no end, She was a single mother raising two kids and a grand child and still deserved love and respect from me. I learned that it’s okay to miss breakfast sometimes, or to eat the gross banana flavored yogurt that no one wanted if it meant that I got to see my teammate excited over that chocolate chip muffin that I thought I needed. And I learned that being forced to constantly be next to someone forced us into having the hard conversations, the best conversations, and ultimately allowed our team and each of us as individuals to grow in ways we never imagined. Hard is hard, but hard is good. Hard is worth it.
