While staying in the village, I wanted to charge my cell phone. My hut didn’t have electricity, so I went over to the primary school nearby. I met with the Headmistress, who agreed to charge my cell phone, but then decided to take me over to one of her classes. As soon as I walked in the door, the students stared and the teacher stopped talking, politely staring. He asked me to talk about America, what life is like there and how it is different from Swaziland.
Where to begin? Swaziland is so different that I couldn’t even think of good reference points to help me describe life to them. I had already been asked whether or not America has a king (Swaziland does, and he has 12 wives); how many cows my family has; whether I had paid a dowry for my wife; and whether, on a long airplane flight, the driver can just land and rest if he gets tired.
The KaPhunga Primary School
But there were things that they already knew about America. On the way over to the school, a young student had come up to me. His name was Lucky, and he wanted to be an actor in kung-fu movies and live in Hollywood. The students also knew that America gives their school food – the school’s cooking building was littered with USAID Maize bags.
A USAID food bag outside of the primary school kitchen
So my teaching stint lasted only 5 minutes, and I mostly just recited facts that I knew about America. But the main point I tried to get across was that, like Swaziland, America had once been a British colony.
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AIDS in Swaziland
Swaziland’s HIV infection rate is the highest in the world – 38% of adults. Knowing that, it’s hard not to walk around and wonder who has AIDS and who doesn’t. It’s sobering.
People here don’t seem to mind talking about it, but are apprehensive to get tested, and there’s also a lot of uncertainty and denial.
I talked to one woman in the village whose sister and sister’s husband had died of what was probably AIDS. (She said that they just “got sick.”) She said that she was afraid to get tested because if she tested positive she would have to spend lots of money on medicine and good food. So it was simpler for her just to not get tested. I didn’t press her on her logic, nor did I really encourage her to get tested. It wasn’t my place, but I also had thought of her as low risk because she was relatively young and she hadn’t really left the village. Then she started talking about her boyfriend, who is a trucker in South Africa.
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Another guy I talked to got really excited when he heard I was from Dartmouth. He wanted to show me a picture from when the group of Dartmouth students had visited in 2004 and played soccer with his team. (“The girls were really good!” he said.)
Of the 11 soccer players in the picture (the white guy is a Dartmouth professor), two have died of just “being sick”, and another is “very sick” right now.
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Fireside Laughs
During my week in the village, the highlight was evenings around the fire, hanging out with Sifiso and his grandpa. Normally the grandpa had come from the bar, and was on his way to the primary school, where he was the night security guard. He had two wives, one of whom lives just down the hill from where I was staying. Sifiso spoke a bit of English, but the grandpa didn’t speak a word of it.
Here are the highlights of nights in front of the fire with Sifiso and his Grandpa:
1. I was sitting around the fire with Sifiso when the grandpa showed up and started going on and on in a depressing way, really trying to get sympathy from his grandson. I had no idea what he was saying, but he sounded really depressed, but in an angry way. I had met his brother earlier, and he was recovering from TB, so I assumed that something serious was wrong in the family. Was the harvest bad? Is he really sick? What happened?
But then Sifiso started laughing and making fun of him. The grandpa kept complaining, but Sifiso just kept laughing. Desperate to understand what was going on, I finally asked Sifiso to translate.
“It’s his cellphone” Sifiso said. “He took it to the school to charge the battery and some kids changed his ringtone. He can’t figure out how to change it back.”
2. The first night, the grandpa came to the fire and sat down and after a while I realized that he didn’t have a sock on his right foot. I asked Sifiso to ask him why he only had one sock on. The grandpa proceeded to take off his shoe and go on and on complaining about his foot, making sure to show a blister on his little toe and pointing out how his shoe rubs there unless he wears a sock.
-“Ok, I get that, but why only one sock?”
-“Oh, well because when he was putting them on this morning he could only fine one.”
3. One night the grandpa didn’t come by. I just sat by the fire by myself and went to bed early, but while reading in bed I heard my cooking pots banging around in the kitchen hut. I figured it was the grandpa’s dog, Toby (no joke, the dog’s name is Toby), who usually came around looking for scraps after I had eaten. But then when I woke up the next morning, I saw that someone had gone through my food in the night and eaten some of my biscuits. I had a pretty good idea who. So when I asked the grandpa that night if he had eaten some of my biscuits he just started laughing. I didn’t have the heart to yell at him.
And then the next morning two more of my biscuits were gone.
4. Again Sifiso and I were just sitting by the fire when the grandpa showed up. I was warming up my rice and beans, and the grandpa started pointing at my food and talking about how hungry he was. When I told him that I wouldn’t give him any (it was my food, and he had been bumming food off me ever since I got there), he turned to Sifiso and asked him to tell his family to bring some food for him. Sifiso and the grandpa lived in the same compound just down the hill (well, he split his time between there and the compound of his other wife). So Sifiso yelled down the hill to bring up some food for the grandpa, and five minutes later a group of kids walks up the hill with a bowl full of food for him. Apparently that is how things work in Swaziland.
What a Deal!
While I was in Tofo, Mozambique, I went to a small crafts market. I hadn’t taken much money, and soon was totally out. But guys kept coming up to me, trying to sell me batiks and trinkets. Telling them I didn’t have money worked at sending them away, except for one guy who offered to barter with me. First it was two batiks for my sandals, then three, then four. Finally he offered me every batik he had – all 30 of them - for my sandals. What a deal! (But I didn’t take it.)
Fun Times on the Mozi / Swazi Border
Crossing from Mozambique into Swaziland, I was reading by the bathroom at the immigration building, killing time while customs officers were inspecting the bags of used clothes strapped to our minivan. Crossing borders in Africa has been remarkably easy, but there’s always a worry in the back of my mind that I could get hassled, particularly coming from Mozambique, the only country with modern weaponry on its flag (an AK-47).
So when an immigration officer came over and pointed at me and said “what is that?” I got a bit nervous. But he was pointing at a bracelet that Courtney had given me. I told him that it was a bracelet that my wife had gotten in Kenya and given to me as a present. -“Oh” he replied, then raised his eyebrows and asked, “Well, can I have it?”
-“Umm, no. Sorry. I don’t think she’d be happy if I gave it away.”
-“Oh, ok, well do you need to use the bathroom? It costs 50 cents.”
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