The Farmers Market

One of our favorite activities is going to the farmers market on Saturday morning. We head out around 8:00 and walk the mile to the market to hopefully get there before the crowds hit. If you are new to farmers market this is the best time to go. There are tons of produce, flowers, and gourds. Not only is all the food tasty, fresh, and local, but it is so colorful. Here are some pictures from our trip today. If you go to a farmers market let us know what you are buying and how you cook it so we can get some more ideas! Some times our eyes are bigger than your tummies and we don't always know what to do with all the stuff we bring home.

One of the many colorful stands of flowers

A view of some of the stands

It is still raspberry season but not for much longer!

Us at the market

The last of the summer squash... so sad it is over already.

Family Visit

Last weekend my parents came to visit us in Michigan. We celebrated Arthur's birthday, visited the farmers market, and went on a nature walk. The walk might have been the highlight. My dad gave us a lesson on how to identify trees and we collected many leaves to bring home to identify later. We also came across this crazy looking caterpillar. Unfortunately it doesn't turn into a beautiful butterfly but a dull looking moth. It is called Halysidota tessellaris -- Banded Tussock Moth caterpillar. If you want to check out some other really cool caterpillars found in Michigan check out this website.
http://www.pbase.com/crocodile/caterpillars2004&page=all
My mom stay until Tuesday to see me teach at Michigan State. She made it through all three hours of the class with out falling asleep! It was nice to have her there and show her what I do every day.

Lansing

I spend three days a week in Lansing. I stay out there because the commute is so far and I have to be there for up to 14 hours a day some days. Lansing is different than Ann Arbor. In Ann Arbor we live in town and can walk most places. But Lansing is in the middle of Farm country and I have yet to see the town.

In Lansing I am staying out in the country. The house is surrounded by corn fields and on my drive to work I pass many cows and horses. It is a long way from NYC! It is very relaxing living in farm county. The landscape is pretty and is a nice change from the box stores that I pass on my drive from Ann Arbor to Lansing. The nice part is it saves me a lot of driving time and means I can work from home on Thursday and Friday. The down side is that I essentially travel three days every week and miss Arthur.

My drive to Work

The view from my window

Living in Ann Arbor Michigan

We have been back from Africa for three months now. It has been wonderful to see family and friends and settle into the next stage of our lives. We are now living in Ann Arbor Michigan where we are both attending school. Arthur is getting a joint degree in business and environmental science at the University of Michigan. I am going to Michigan State for my PhD in Science Education. That means we will be living in Michigan for three years! It will be an adventure that we will keep you posted on. But for now we have set up our apartment and getting into the swing of things and waiting for all of you to come an visit. Check out pictures of our apartment at http://picasaweb.google.com/Courtneyschenk/OurNewApartment?pli=1#5242547220927909410

Come and visit!

Arthur's Update

I was sitting on a bus yesterday, going from Mozambique to Swaziland, when I realized that I had six different currencies in my bag, four of which I had used in the last week. I also realized that I smell horrible, but thankfully nobody on the bus cared, especially not the guy drinking beer next to me.

I’ve been on my own ever since Courtney left for NYC three weeks ago. I’ve been mostly in Swaziland, but have still been traveling around a good amount.

Traveling in Africa is different from sightseeing in Europe or Asia. It’s not looking at art or learning about old buildings, and definitely not about eating delicious food. Instead, it’s more about trying to understand how life works in a place where it is so different from what I’m used to.

It’s really easy to leave the tourism bubble – just walk down the streets or get on a bus – but it’s hard to understand the people and the culture. But I’ve been trying. For that reason, when Courtney left, I tried to find one place to live for a few weeks rather than simply traveling around from country to country. I decided to live in Swaziland with a guy named Myxo, a Swazi who runs overnight cultural tours to Swazi villages (eat Swazi food, live in Swazi huts, meet locals, etc, http://www.myxosswaziland.com/). Myxo hosts the Dartmouth African foreign study program for a week or so every year, and Courtney had enjoyed it so much back in 2003 that she recommended I try it. So Myxo and I agreed that I could live with him for 3 weeks in exchange for me writing up some promotional and fundraising materials for his tourism company and a preschool that he started. I split my time between the village, where I lived alone, and his backpacker’s hostel in the city of Manzini.

Here is a description of what I’ve been doing for the past 3 weeks. For those of you with short attention spans, scroll down for some snippets of stories and plenty of pictures, all in chronological order:

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Swaziland – It was a full day’s bus-ride from Johannesburg to Swaziland. I was dropped off, tired and sweaty, at a hotel where I immediately went to the bar to wait for Myxo. The bartender was talking to a local in SiSwati, a language that I had definitely never heard before. It had clicks in it and I couldn’t understand a word.

After my first beer, Myxo showed up in his old truck. We had never met, so I was wondering if the arrangement would actually work. Would I wish that I had gone somewhere else? Could I actually offer anything valuable to help the preschool? As soon as I saw his truck I knew things would be ok. His truck has a Vermont bumper sticker.

Myxo with his truck and Vermont bumper sticker, in front of hostel
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I stayed at Myxo’s place in Manzini for a couple of days, buying supplies and eating grapefruits off the tree in the back yard. Manzini, a large city by Swaziland standards, is mostly filled with discount clothing stores, and is the kind of place that makes you walk quickly to get your shopping done and then go home as soon as you’re finished. Nice market though.

So after a couple of days in Manzini, Myxo drove me out to kaPhunga village and dropped me off by myself, just me and a few books, two kilos of rice and beans, and a five liter box of wine. I was there for eight days.

A Traditional Swazi Beehive Hut

I spent my mornings in the Matjana Village Preschool (www.matjanapreschool.org-a.googlepages.com/home) with teachers Ncobile and Fortunate. The kids were cute of course, but also remarkably well behaved and impressive (they already speak a good amount of English). I’ll try to post some videos of them once I get back to the US. The preschool is in a mud hut and is a tight squeeze for the 22 kids and two teachers. Myxo is currently trying to raise money to build a new, bigger preschool, and to cover current costs. That’s what I’m helping him with. Inside the Hut

While in the village I lived in a traditional Swazi beehive hut, an impressively intricate structure made entirely from wood and grass. Most locals now make their houses from bricks and have sheet metal roofs. But every year the strong wind blows the metal roofs off those houses, while the beehive huts withstand the wind perfectly.

Me Cooking

All cooking in the village is done over an open fire. It takes hours to cook, and normally I would start a fire in the morning and only boil water for tea and oatmeal, then keep the fire going all day. After preschool I put on my pots of rice and beans, enough for both lunch and dinner. Afternoons were spent cooking and reading. Evenings, after dinner, I mostly sat around the fire with Sifiso, a young guy who looks after the place I was staying, and his grandfather, who had normally come from the bar and who loved to laugh. He said that he used to work in the mines in South Africa, and the idea that a white person would actually want to come live in his village was changing his impression of white people. The sun was down at 5, and I was in bed with my book at 6:30.

There was a full moon the first night

I was in the village for a week before I got pretty bored and lonely and decided that I wanted to start writing the fundraising materials for Myxo. So I returned to Manzini to do that.

I also just went to Mozambique for four days. I was in Maputo (the capital city) and Tofo, a touristy beach town.

So I’m in Manzini for another few days, and then back to Johannesburg for one day before I fly back to the US on June 8th.

Here are a few snippets of some poignant moments from the last few weeks:

The outhouse

Short Stories

Teaching
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.”

Sifiso and his Grandpa, changing cell phone ringtones by the fireside

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.”

Getting Back to Swaziland

Getting back to Swaziland
This story doesn’t have a point or a punch line, it was just a really long day of travel:

My destination in Mozambique was Tofo, a touristy but beautiful beach town. The seafood was delicious and I had a great time, even got to go swimming with humpback dolphins. But unfortunately, the town is 500 miles from Swaziland, and I had to switch buses in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. One 8 hour bus and another 4½ hour bus.

It was a 4AM bus, so I woke up at 3:40 and hurried over. But all the good seats were taken, so I was stuck with the wheel-well seat, which quickly made my legs fall asleep. Unfortunately my legs were all that could sleep. The upset seafood in my stomach kept me awake, telling me that I might have to open the window and let it out.

So instead of sleeping, I just watched Mozambique. It’s a beautiful country, and what it lacks in infrastructure it makes up for in bus-ride consumerism. Everywhere on buses in Africa, whenever there is a stop, people run up to the bus and sell any and everything through the windows. But I had never seen bottles of gin being sold at a bus stop before. Especially at 7 in the morning!

At a bus stop

Finally I asked a guy in front of me to switch seats, allowing me both more leg room and somebody to talk to: the only other white person on the bus. (Because Mozambique was a Portuguese colony, Mozambicans generally don’t speak English.) On a 10 hour bus ride I needed to talk to somebody. As it turned out she was American and we had a mutual friend from my high school. That was strange.

Side of the road in Mozambique

After arriving in Maputo, I wanted to see the city a bit but needed a meal. So I sat down at a table on the sidewalk and the waiter said his only two words of English: “chicken or beef.” I said chicken and waited for the food. 30 minutes later and getting agitated, I finally went to look for it inside the restaurant, and saw that it was a ready buffet. Oops.

My next stop was the bus to Swaziland, but I wanted to walk around and wasn’t really in a hurry. I had only gotten vague directions to the bus stand from the first bus driver, but after an hour, I started asking people to point me in the right direction. Unfortunately, they always pointed me in different directions. I’ve been told that it’s a cultural thing in that it’s considered impolite to not have an answer to a question, so it’s better just to make up an answer. Or it could have been a language barrier. I know in the US taxi drivers sometimes don’t speak English, but in Africa they generally do. Except in Maputo, apparently.

Limbless tree in Maputo. Not sure why it's limbless, but all the limbs on all the trees in the whole street had been cut off.

Finally a man came up to me and asked me if I was lost. He was dressed in a suit and tie and sporting a remarkably out-of-place British accent. But he knew where the bus was, and even walked me part of the way.

I caught the last bus to Swaziland and made it back to the hostel at 7:15PM, where I went straight to bed without dinner.