I am sitting
on an elaborate bean bag setup in the living room of Team Go There’s very own
house in Swaziland! I can hear Katherine cackling in one of the back bedrooms
and Ruth laughing “oh Kathers…”. Kristen & Juddson are having quiet time
and Raimie is sitting at the kitchen table reading. The sun is out and shining
over the varying blues of the mountain range we see from our front porch. A
soft breeze blows through the open windows, the stillness being broken only by
the kitchen sink. It drips out a slow rhythm as chirping birds and some sort of
hooting animals outside add a melody. So far, Africa is not what I expected.
As we got
off the plane in Johannesburg yesterday, incredibly cheerful airport workers
insisted we use carts instead of carrying our heavy bags. As around 25 of us
sit outside the parking garage waiting for our ride, we attract some attention
as usual but surprisingly, no one is that startled to see a group of white
people. A local missionary stops and chats for a bit, an airport worker dances
by to Noe’s djembe beat and bystanders cheer as the guys to push-ups. Our van
arrives and a few of us girls get buried under packs in the back. I stare at
the disappearing view of Johannesburg through the back van window. After
arriving at our hostel for the night, we walk to the nearby mall in search of a
full meal. After 2 days of airport & airplane food, my stomach needs a
break. Ruth, Kristen and I sit down at a delicious burger joint and my Hawaiian
burger, fry sauce and our waiter’s friendly smile wipe away all travel day
stresses.
We pile into
2 vans at 5am the next day to head to Swaziland. At this point I’m averaging 4
hours of sleep a night for the past 3 or 4 days. I nap off and on as BMW’s,
huts and the incredible African landscape passes by my window. We cross the
border around noon (probably the least ghetto border crossing we’ve had so far)
and one chip sandwich and lollipop later (about 1.5 hrs.), we are at our home
for the month in Swaziland! The rest of the squad disappears in different vans
over the next couple hours and we sit down with our fabulous contacts to have a
cultural briefing. After that, Raimie and I head into town with Allison &
Amy (said contacts) to buy groceries for the week. We buy groceries at an
actual grocery store and get a tour of the town while we’re at it. After
getting back, we develop an interesting system of cooking with the water boiler
when we can’t figure out the stovetop. We move the table to the front porch and
have family time over a delicious meal of veggies, pasta and rosemary potatoes.
We head to bed soon after for a much needed 12 hours of sleep. J
So now that
you’ve caught up on the last few days, here’s what’s in store for us the rest
of this month. We are working directly with AIM at their base here in Manzini
and it sounds like we’ll be doing all sorts of things. AIM’s primary focus is
caring for the thousands of orphans created by the AIDS epidemic so a lot of
our work will be at the care points. Care points are where kids can come during
the day for teaching and at least 2 meals. They are cared for by Gogo’s
(grandmothers) and AIM workers. (It’s a similar set-up to the Amri Tola
Compassion school in India.) AIDS has always seemed like such a vague, far away
thing to me and it’s crazy to see the effects up close. The population is declining
and they aren’t exaggerating when they say Swaziland will cease to exist in 40
years. 15 year olds today have a 5 percent chance of making it to 30, Saturday
is burial day. The male driven society and the sexual spirit that perpetuates
the epidemic is rampant in this country. Hardly any girl will make it to
adulthood without abuse and hardly any of them will ever talk about it. No one
even wants to know they have AIDS because they will be shunned or abused for
it. My heart’s going to be broken this month. Please pray for them. And for us.
Our view of Manzini
