Reid and Brooke's Answers to JISD 6th Graders Questions

I hope that this answers most of your questions well enough, but if there are more, keep them coming. Some of them are hard to explain, but we hope to send a disc in the mail with pictures to accompany them, but we have not taken them yet and it will be at least two weeks in the mail, so I didn’t want to keep you waiting.

1. How do you say “I love you?”

I love/like you—Ngiyakutsandza. The only unusual sound in this word is the ng, which is the same as singing in English, but used at the beginning of the word instead. Altogether- ngee-yah-koot-SAHND-zah

2. How do you cook your food?

To cook food, we use a gas stove the Peace Corps issued us. Our host family uses a combination of gas stove and firewood, depending on what they are cooking. If it is beans or something that takes a while to cook, they use firewood they collect from the forest. If it is something that doesn’t take as long, they use the stove. They also have a wood burning stove, where you load firewood in and it heats up the stove, which is made of iron. The rest of the community uses mainly firewood. They have iron cauldrons they cook over the fire with. Some have electric stoves, but the electricity is shoddy, so no one relies solely on it even if they can afford it.

3. Do people wear shoes?

Most young kids do not wear shoes, what with their feet growing all the time. Kids will wear shoes to school because it is part of the uniform. Almost all the older people wear shoes, but not always.

4. If you don’t have electricity, how do you charge you laptop and cell phone?

Our homestead has a solar panel that we can charge our cell phones on at times (when there is enough sun, that is). We can also charge our phones and computer at the local stores that the power lines reach for a small fee.

5. Are there vehicles in your village?

People do drive cars around the community. There are not very many and most of them are not personally-owned such as delivery trucks, government vehicles and aid organizations (like the World Food Programme, UNICEF, World Vision, COSPE from Italy, the European Union, and so on). When traveling long distances, which from one end of our community to the other is a pretty long distance, we use a transportation service called a khumbi, which cost 4 Emalangeni (about 50 cents) per person around the community, and more as you go farther. We can take them to just about any part of the country (because we’re not allowed to drive) but it can get expensive and they do not keep regular schedules- they just leave when they are full.

6. We saw where South Africa was in a high risk area for Malaria. Is this true?

Malaria is a problem in some parts of South Africa and Mozambique and in many countries north of us nearer the equator. All Swaziland volunteers are on anti-malarials as a precaution, but only four (including us) out of 64 are located in an area of the country where there is a moderate threat level. We try to avoid it by wearing insect repellant and sleeping with a mosquito net over our bed. In the end, some of us will probably have malaria. The pills we are on only cover the symptoms but it will take another series of pills to rid the parasites from our blood and livers. 

7. What about AIDS there?

Swaziland has the highest percentage of HIV+ citizens of any country, about 26% of the total population and about 42% of expecting mothers. The US is standing at about 0.6% HIV+ for the total population. I’ve included a list of several of the social aspects that contribute to these numbers. (When reading this, try to reserve judgment and realize that there are certain things about American culture that make us less susceptible to HIV/AIDS but equally susceptible to a different virus that we are lucky enough not to have been confronted with yet.)
- Lack of education about the virus;
- Having several concurrent sexual partners, as opposed to serial monogamy in the US with more total sexual partners over a lifetime on average but without the overlap
- Circumcision has been shown to decrease rate of transmission and is uncommon in Swaziland
- Unemployment drives men to out-of-town or out-of-country jobs and fidelity is generally not expected of the man or the mistresses (hence concurrent partners)
- Condom use is unpopular especially among men and will pressure a woman to have unprotected (skin-to-skin) intercourse or remove a condom during
- Women do not have equal status as men and can be seen as insubordinate if a wife were to suggest that they wear a condom, if she suggests that they get tested or if she goes to be tested without consulting her husband first
- Combination of concurrence with the fact that this is a polygamous society so if one man gets infected he could bring the virus home to more than one woman
- Vaginal intercourse is the primary sexual activity and is preferred and expected by the men with manual and oral being virtually unpracticed
- STI/STD’s go untreated here at a higher rate than in developed countries
- This is what would be termed a collectivist society with men living in homes spreading out from their parents’ homes which comprise a homestead- this leads to a decreased sense of privacy and cultivates a hesitancy to seek treatment especially for sexually acquired infections
- Privacy is also an issue because Swaziland is small, interconnected and mostly rural (imagine Dallas versus Joaquin)
- General suspicion among much of Africa that the virus is being spread intentionally, that it was made as a weapon in a lab, that America has the cure but is unwilling to share it and all this combined with a propensity to turn to traditional medicine as opposed to trusting the pills that are being developed and distributed by the World Health Organization.

8. What do they use for clothing? Is it homemade or animal fur?

Some traditional dress does incorporate fur but is mainly worn for ceremonies and/or special occasions. Think of it as a tuxedo or a wedding dress- we wear them, but we don’t just wear them everywhere. Otherwise, dress feels mostly normal (by our standards) but more stressed differences between genders- men usually wear pants, not jeans, and a buttoned and/or collared shirt and women of all ages are expected to wear skirts or dresses (the older, the longer) and married women will often cover their hair. It is generally expected that one wear nice clothes (not jeans and a T-shirt) when visiting others as a sign of respect to that person being visited. There are people who make dresses and other articles of clothing. Our sisi (see-see) at our training site who we stayed with for the first two months was a dress maker and Brooke had a dress made by her. There is a stark difference between the amount, quality and price of bulk fabric here versus the States that makes this kind of business far more practical whereas in the States it is in most cases more cost effective to by ready-made clothing.

9. Is Africa a highly dangerous place in which to live?

We feel very safe where we live, as we are in a very rural community, and crime is more common in the cities and heard of in the news paper (like anywhere else) but we have not seen it so far. We were told by people in Texas before we came to Africa that we were going to have to start dodging bullets as we got off the plane (which we didn’t) and since we’ve been here we’ve been told that people won’t mess with us because they know that all white people carry guns. Personally, we can only speak for Swaziland, but it seems that violence really increases with the instability of the government and many of the African governments have been going through a lot of restructuring in the past fifty years, like Swaziland which only got it’s independence in 1968.

10. Are there tribes in your village and what are their names?

Swazis traditionally declare themselves as one tribe. South Africa does have different tribes (such as Xhosa, Zulu, etc; see Wikipedia, sorry) and Swazis could be considered one tribe among them but with actual, recognized political borders to define them. Last names are of much importance, but not to the extent of being a different tribe.

11. How do you say ‘critter’?

Not sure about ‘critter’ exactly, but ‘animal’ in siSwati is silwane (seel-WAHN-ay).

12. What do people do if they need glasses?

There are at least three clinics in Swaziland that issue prescription glasses and they are centrally located. Also, I don’t think that myopia (near-sightedness) is as prevalent here but I don’t have any numbers to support that- we’ve just seen Swazis demonstrate telescopic vision on some occasions.

13. Is there an army?

There is a standing army with camps located all throughout the country especially near national borders where they try to suppress illegal immigration, international cattle rustling and things like that- hopefully that’s all we will see them have to do. There is a camp with three soldiers stationed about a half mile from where we stay.

14. Have you seen the king?

We have had no personal sightings of King Mswati III. He was actually in the US a couple of weeks ago, so you all had a better chance of seeing him than we did.

15. Is there a doctor in the village?

There are several nurses here but there is not a doctor’s office in the community. There may be scheduled days when doctors come to see about certain conditions, otherwise you have to go to them for serious illnesses and the hospital is about 50 km away (~ 30 miles).

16. Do people have weapons for hunting and for protection?

People do have weapons, such as a knob-stick (basically a cane with a knobbish handle for bashing things) used mostly for prodding cattle and killing snakes, and knives which are more of a tool than a weapon. Guns are very controlled and not really used for hunting. There is only one day out of the year when the king announces a day of hunting but this has not happened since we’ve been here. Guns rest primarily in the hands of the cops and soldiers and outside of that are gang related (so I hear).

17. What are five popular foods the kids eat?

Five popular foods here are lipholishi (lee-POH-lee-shee), a moistened mixture of white, ground corn; ingcwancwa (there are clicks in it, so it’s hard to explain) also known as sour porridge which is like watery, fermented cream of wheat; emabhontjisi (ay-mah-bone-CHEE-see) which just means ‘beans’ and is made by mixing sugar beans with milk, oil, onions and/or salt and cooked to the consistency of Tex-Mex refried beans but without the lard; meat either grilled on an open flame or boiled in the animal’s own fat (whole boiled chicken is amazing); emahewu (ay-mah-HAY-oo) or sour milk which is chunky like cottage cheese or cornbread crumbled in milk, generally strange (to us) and comes in many flavors. Kids here especially like candy (called ‘emaswiti’) and Nic-Naks, South Africa’s version of Cheetos.

18. Do they have toys?

Kids make toys with whatever they find. Making cars is the most common. Simple designs are an old plastic bottle with four caps pinned or wired into the sides with a stick extending three feet from the front seat. Complex designs can have a complete frame made from bent wire, bottle caps for wheels, a cargo bed, and a stick coming out with a driver’s wheel attached that connects to a rubber band suspension system that actually steers the vehicle. There is also the classic bicycle tire rim being pushed along with a rod (the older generations at home can help explain that one). In Swaziland (like the rest of the world minus most of America where people are into baseball and futból americano) soccer is king and the kids will make their own balls by wrapping plastic shopping bags up inside each other until they have one that is regulation size that won’t go flat.

19. Tell us about the toilets.

There are no flush toilets where we are though they are common in most towns. In rural areas people have either a pit latrine which is a structure built over a large hole with scraps of old newspaper and/or trash for toilet paper. Also people just use the bush. Public urination is standard and very convenient. Adjustment to this has really not been at all bad and these conditions themselves are not bad in practice and really there’s just no other way. Health motivators in the area have made great strides in stressing hygiene and coming up with innovative ways to ward off diseases that could ensue, like dumping ashes into pit latrines to kill fly larvae and constructing small wash stations outside of the latrines to make hand washing more convenient.

20. Are there stores like convenience stores or a mall?

In our community there are several small stores that sell staple items, a few have cold drinks (where they have sodas in glass bottles that you have to drink on site and leave the bottle behind- very cheap, too), and one even has a pay phone. There are stores that resemble the convenient stores we are used to but the nearest gas station is about 20 km away and in that town there are several stores, even a supermarket almost as big as Brookshire Brothers with just about anything you could possibly need. There are modern-style malls at least in the two largest cities but if there are more, I haven’t been to them.

21. You know the movie “The Air Up There”? Is that true from what you’ve seen?

I remember only a little bit of “The Air up There,” so I can’t say much about it other than I have only seen one abandoned, unused, de-netted basketball goal here- it just isn’t that popular. They could talk all day about Cristiano Ronaldo (do you know who I’m talking about?) and not even realize they’re wearing an old pair of Jordans.

22. The ants you saw that live under the ground when you sweep your yard…is that the velvet ants like we have here?

There are several different kinds of ants here, some very small, and others like Brooke mentioned in the blog that chomp so loud they sound like rain falling when you go out at night. I have not been attacked yet so I can’t comment on how similar they are to our fire ants but Brooke has and she says it’s not as bad. There are also supposed to be the large ants (more like termites) that build the tall, dome-shaped mounds that I’ve seen in a book, but not in real life.

23. How do the people make money?

People make money here by selling produce, providing transport of people and materials, making ‘handicrafts,’ running small stores, teaching (which usually places a person away from their home town- teachers here are normally not locals), one man fixes shoes, one rebuilds and sells tractors and his wife operates the hardware store and has a salon in the back; some are in health care with private organizations or with the government clinics, and the government also hires police offices, military personnel, and other random government work. A lot of men will also seek employment in South Africa in the mines and sometimes for white-collar work that is non-existent or unattainable for most people in Swaziland. The unemployment rate is about 70%, so most people actually do not work and most of the jobs to be had are in the bigger cities- there is a population distribution here similar to Joaquin with most of the 18-40 year old population migrating to urban areas but without the school to provide a life-line for employment.

24. What is an average day like for a kid?

Average day for a kid in our community seems to be getting up around five in the morning (this really isn’t so bad when you don’t have electricity to distract, and the sun naturally wakes you up at this time), washing up a bit, cooking a little breakfast, helping/doing any and all chores, including fetching water which may be (and usually is) more than a mile away using 10-gallon jugs carried in wheelbarrows, gathering firewood, and much more. Not all children go to school either because they have too much to do at home, they’ve failed or they cannot afford it (which is usually the case). Kids also do a large portion of the laundry and cleaning. Boys will take the cattle (cows, sheep, goats, and donkeys) out to graze in the morning, to the dip tanks on scheduled days and into the kraals at night. Girls do most of the domestic-type work, clean dishes, serve dinner and tea and so on.

25. Do they have pets?

The majority of Swazis don’t keep pets, in fact we are laughed at a little for being partial to them. Dogs are kept for security but are not treated in any way like a pet, not coddled and not allowed in doors. We still like to pet them, though, even if they do look at us weird. Cats are kept for pest and snake control. Chickens are kept for sale or eating. Our babe (BAH-bay- father on our homestead) is an unusual Swazi in that he keeps about nine gerbils, two fish in an old tractor tire filled with water and a rabbit (which might not count since he’s mentioned that we will eventually eat it, but that was like two months ago). Also, we have seen two parakeets in a cage. Haven’t witnessed anything else.

26. How will they celebrate Christmas?

We haven’t been here for a Christmas yet, but we’ve been told that it is celebrated with A LOT of food. Food, food, food and visiting. They will slaughter an animal (cow, goat, pig, sheep or chicken- whatever they’ve got), cook rice, clean the yard, see the neighbors and start dishing out food for each other around mid-day and eat until they can’t eat any more. Gift-giving is not traditional although some have tried to introduce it, but (luckily) it doesn’t look like it’s going to catch. I think that Americans might put a little more emphasis on food and less on gifts if it wasn’t for Thanksgiving being so close.

27. Is there a Wal-Mart in Africa?

I have not seen a Wal-Mart since we left the States. We landed in Johannesburg and drove about four hours to get here and we have still not seen one. I can’t say we miss it, everything you need can be found easily once you know where to look and things are so cheap here compared to the US that it would probably be hard for Wal-Mart to compete.

28. How do the people keep safe from wild animals?

We are safe from wild animals because, really, most dangerous wild animals have been poached to the point of ‘regional extinction.’ They are actually hard to find even in the game reserves. But a few weeks ago, six lions and two elephants were said to have escaped from a South African game reserve and have not been apprehended to my knowledge. There were some helicopters flying low over our community looking for them, so our luck could run out soon.

29. Could we possibly have pen pals with your friends and how?

I think I could try to arrange for pen pals. The only thing could be that much of the youth can speak English (and siSwati) fluently but writing English can be very hard. So, as long as people take into account that English is their second language and be patient with that, it should be doable.

30. Do people really go around naked like on National Geographic?

People don’t walk around naked as a rule. Babies usually run around naked until they are about two years old or so. Some of the country’s national ceremonies will feature the girls topless and practically naked. This particular ceremony, the Reed Dance, is held every year at some time in mid-August and all virgin Swazi girls are invited to march together to the capital and participate. Nudity in this case is not considered erotic, but to symbolize that they, as virgins, are pure their nakedness is nothing to be ashamed of. There is a similar ceremony held for the boys, but it is a little harder for me to explain (and I don’t completely understand it yet). A traditional wedding ceremony also features the bride naked outside of the homestead the night before the wedding (see reasoning above) where she is accompanied by other women as she leans on a spear and cries to show her sadness in leaving her family and going to live with the family of her husband.

31. What do girls do for feminine products?

Many of the larger stores in town sell feminine products. Pads seem to be preferred. Women like to wear nail polish which can be found for cheap and hair products and accessories are popular but other cosmetics are not as common.

32. What about churches and religion? Do they believe in God?

Almost all Swazis would claim Christian. There is some variation in the way certain ‘denominations’ have incorporated their traditional beliefs such as the communication with ancestors which cause some to accuse others of ‘not really being Christians.’ Also, there is no real separation of church and state and the schools (which operate more as private schools anyway) include religious studies and often only covers Christianity but some are beginning to educate about Judaism and Islam.

33. If it’s 9 am here what time is it there?

To figure out the time here, you add seven hours to whatever time it is in Joaquin. So, when school starts at eight o’clock, it is already three in the afternoon where we are at. And, since you are currently in Central Daylight Savings Time, when you ‘fall back’ and go to Central Standard Time, we will be eight hours apart because Swaziland does not do DST. In technical terms, you are GMT+6 and we are GMT-2.

34. Are there flowers there?

There are flowers here. As I type this I am eating some locally harvested honey actually. Flowers are on the trees more so than the ground. It is too dry and hot here for flowers to be a groundcover like they are in Texas, but they have a lot of fruiting trees at least which look good, are useful for making honey and in the end make fruit here in abundance that you have to pay a lot more for in the States because of shipping like avocadoes, bananas and mangos.

35. Does it ever snow? You said it is winter…is it very cold?

There is no snow in Swaziland. It only sometimes reaches freezing at night in the winter in the more mountainous parts of the country, but it is really more like our late fall in Texas. It is now spring and already very hot. Another way to mark the seasons is the wet in the summer and the dry season in the winter. In the winter it can go months without rain which dries up the ground, drops the water table, the rivers and streams dry up and this makes drinking water hard to come by.

36. Do lions ever attack?

Sorry, no lions? None except the ones I mentioned in #28.

37. What’s the average life span?

The life expectancy in Swaziland is the lowest in the world at around 32 years, down from about 60 years in 1990. This is due to the disastrously high rate of HIV infection. This has given rise to high numbers of orphans and has destroyed the family structure that Swazis depended on in every aspect. ‘Life expectancy’ is not just a scientific term, people here, kids here, literally don’t expect to live past 40 and they do expect to eventually get HIV. This is one of the main things we hope to help with while we are here if we can.

38. Do kids go to school and for how long?

Most of the kids here start school, but not many finish (see #24). The government of Swaziland intends to initiate free education for Grades 1 & 2 starting next year. The school year begins in January and has breaks beginning in mid-April, mid-August and mid-December each lasting approximately three weeks. They start school at six years old in Grade 1, but if one of the reasons listed in #24 prevails the child may start late or not at all. The schools are divided into primary (Grades 1-7) and secondary (Forms 1-5). Students who make it to Grade 7 must take a national exam to be admitted to Form 1, and because of testing fees and increased price of secondary school, many do not go to school for more than seven years. People will sometimes not continue their secondary education immediately and it is not uncommon to see 23-year-olds in high school. I hope this makes kids in American schools feel at least a passing twinge of gratitude.

39. Have you seen any cobras?

I have not seen a cobra yet, but I’ll tell you as soon as I do- I want to more than anything. Some of the volunteers in our group have and some of the kids at one of the schools saw one there. Others have also seen black mambas and we have found dead puff adders on the road in our community. One volunteer a few years ago was attacked by a spitting cobra while going to the pit latrine- three spits to the face and the last one nailed him in the eyes. The puff adder is the one you really have to watch out for though because it is one of the most aggressive and it is also slow-moving so it can’t get out of your way fast enough to avoid you. It gives a couple of warning puffs (supposedly to ready its fangs which lay back in its mouth) and then strikes one your leg and then hangs on so that sometimes people have to sever the body to kill the snake before removing it. The dose it delivers is lethal and if left untreated will lead to death within 48 hours. This snake accounts for more than 90% of serious snake bites in Swaziland. The mamba is more deadly, but not nearly aggressive and quicker to get out of a threatening situation.

40. What are the houses made of?

Houses are traditionally made with tall grass cut and woven around and onto branches. More commonly you will see cinderblock houses with cement plastering on the outside, some made of large flat stones held by mortar, and many are made of sticks and mud (usually a bachelor’s hut). Roofing is either thatch (grass very skillfully arranged and bound to make a roof) or corrugated iron (tin) which is ideal for collecting rain water; also you may come across some tiled roofs, but only in wealthier families.

41. How do you write the alphabet there?

Their alphabet is the same as ours with only a few exceptions in pronunciation. ‘Th’ is not like ours, but sounds like the t in ‘tug.’ ‘Ph’ doesn’t make an f sound, but is just a harder p like the first p in ‘pop.’ The c’s are the most different- it is a click made from pulling your tongue from the roof of your mouth like ‘tut-tut-tut’ sound you might make when calling a cat. You would just have to hear it.

42. Do they really still do the African dances?

They do have their own traditional style of dance which they learn at home and at school and perform these at ceremonies (like the ones mentioned earlier) and a lot of times they will just come up to us and do it for fun, but they love it the most when you try to imitate them. They also like trying to dance like Michael Jackson and do a pretty good job at it.

43. What is each of yours most valuable possessions?

Our most valued possessions would probably be our solar headlamps. We wear them every night after the sun goes down and we charge them every day. Also I brought a pair of desert combat boots which are amazing and perfect for the terrain. Our water filtering system is something I can’t forget. Not having grown up on their water, we would probably have gotten sick more often without the filter that the Peace Corps provided us.

44. Is there anything that Swazis need?

It is easy to spot the tangible things that we think that Swazis could benefit from, but mostly what they lack is the ability to get by on their own. This country was rocked pretty hard by an epidemic that crept up on them and now has them scrambling to get themselves back in order. There is a generation growing up in fear of a virus that has wiped out much of the generation above them. They are growing up faster than they should have to and take on responsibilities that they have not had role models for. It’s a hard thing but they are taking it on and they have already made the first steps toward rebuilding. Succeeding in this requires that they be properly educated. Without this education they stand a higher risk for teenage pregnancy, drug use, HIV infection or simply being taken advantage of either personally or financially (because when you call for help, the unscrupulous also hear and come running). This is something that the government knows it has to address and in currently trying to remedy, but change on such a large scale will not be an overnight achievement.

So, in trying to help, I would suggest looking for ways to contribute to education. I know that the people that I’m writing this to (as well as others who happen to be reading) are creative people and that it’s entirely possible that you might think of some small things to contribute that others might not have thought of yet. One thing that a few volunteers are working on (that we hope to join help with) is a massive book drive to help spur a few school libraries in country that are trying to start up. As the government’s agenda progresses, needs will change, but this seems like it would be a big help, especially while things are in transition.

To the students and teachers: it is a very kind gesture to the kids here that others are noticing and taking an interest in them because they only ever see the America that’s on TV and the radio, not one that talks back or takes notice of them. I know that they would love to see the projects that you’ve done so please, take pictures, write letters, send paintings if you like. Some of them are in hard situations, but just to see that people want to learn about them and get to know them helps so much.

Sala kahle, Stay well,
Sabelo na Bongiwe Shongwe Reid & Brooke Golden
*these names are not translations, but were given to us by our host family

IST

Well, ii seemed like it would be a long wait until IST (in service training), our last training session before we really start working in our community. But now it is here, and time has gone by so fast. We finished our report (on time!) and now we are in meetings all day every day for the next few days. It is really good to see everyone again, and also to learn more about our jobs and stuff.

Reid has signed up for World Wise Schools, an exchange program that is Peace Corps based where we write to a class of school kids in America about our service. He is signed up with a teacher/good friend from his hometown, Joaquin, and they are doing some really neat projects in their school to help the children learn more about Africa. One thing they did was collect all the questions the children had and send them to us so we could answer them. The questions we received were great, and many of the same questions I had myself before coming to Swaziland, so I though it would be good to put them on the blog so everyone could learn.

Other than IST, there isn’t much new news. I got everyone’s letters when we came to IST (they were waiting in our mailbox) and thank you SO much to everyone for the letters! It is so nice to hear what is going on with you all.

One of the most interesting sessions we have had during IST was about women’s rights in Swaziland. A presenter from the organization WLSA (Women and Law in South Africa) came and explained what type of discrimination and legal issues women in Swaziland are facing right now, and it really showed a picture of how Swaziland is changing and developing. For instance, if a woman marries a man through traditional marriage and the man dies, there are many customary practices that must be followed that can severely impact the woman, such as there is a law saying she cannot plough her fields for two seasons after his death because she is in mourning. Now, in the past, this would have been a way for the woman to be able to rest and not be forced to just carry on with life as though nothing had happened, because in the traditional homestead, all the children and grandchildren would be around the house of the widow, so they would be able to help with the planting. Now, though, most men must go away to work, and many of the relatives of the age to help with the plowing statistically are dying of HIV, so if a widow is not able to plow her fields, she and her grandchildren could starve.

There is also a law that if a woman is married traditionally, then the man has complete control of the finances and assets, so if the woman wants to take out a loan, even if she is approved and everything, she cannot take it out without the husband’s signature. This is an issue that was recently brought up in the Swaziland newspaper, because several banks (including the bank the Peace Corps uses) still go by this policy, and they really have to until the law is amended.

It was a very fascinating session, and it really made me appreciate how the Swazi people are working so diligently to help their country grow in a peaceful manner.