I’m A Volunteer, Get Me Out Of Here!

The working week this week was pretty standard; nothing spectacular happened so I won’t rattle on about it. The most important part of this week was the WEEKEND!

This weekend we had planned to go and stay at soup kitchen with Aunty Vinah and the orphans; we figured that we’d head up on the Friday, stay the Friday and Saturday night and then leave on Sunday after Swazi church. What we weren’t expecting is that Aunty Vinah invited almost the entire soup kitchen crowd to come and stay over too! We were only expecting it to be the kids that lived with her, but it actually turned into a mass soup kitchen sleepover. 

We’d been selling bags of crisps to the girls in hostel for a while, so we took the profit we had made and bought some crisps, sweets and nice drinks for the children to have over the weekend. We also took loads of spaghetti that hostel didn’t use and fed the kids with it for dinner and lunch!
The Friday night we took a walk with the children and visited 3 of their homesteads; at the first homestead we met one of the girls Grandmothers (Gogo), she has to be the most inspiring woman I have ever met. After 10 minutes talking to her all I wanted to do was cry. 

We arrived at the homestead and I went over to her and greeted her in SiSwati, assuming that it would be more polite and she might not speak English. Then Aunty Vinah walks over and shouts “No no SiSwati! Good English this one!”, and then the Gogo started laughing and began speaking to us in perfect English. It turns out that she was an English teacher and then ran a preschool for the local children out of her homestead, now she says she’s too old to teach and there needs to be someone else to carry on a preschool in Mpolongeni. She told us how she and everyone else in the community are very grateful to us because we feed the children well and they’ve started getting bigger, she told us how the children love coming along to soup kitchen on Tuesday’s and Friday’s and it really helps them all as they sometimes can’t afford to feed all the children who stay with them. Three of the girls from soup kitchen lived with this Gogo, but only one of them was related to her – she’d taken the other ones in off her own back. She doesn’t work and she keeps a few chickens, that’s all. 

She’s an amazing woman and I felt so lucky to have met her; but what it made me realise is that there are probably lots of women out there in every community exactly like her... old, not working  but trying their best to support those around them.
The people out here might have very little money and material belongings but they have characters and values that far exceed those we have in the Western world – there’s a lot we can learn from people exactly like this Gogo about selflessness, caring, gratefulness and loving those around you. In the poorest corners of the world you will find the greatest people.

Walking to the homesteads.

In the evening we all assembled in Aunty Vinah’s living room to watch a movie, not everyone could fit inside so the curtains were pulled back and benches set up outside the window so that people could sit outside at watch through the glass! Before this day if you had asked me the name of the worst film I had ever seen I wouldn’t be able to give you an answer, but if you asked me now I wouldn’t hesitate in saying ‘Kung Pow – Fists of Fury’.  It was a badly dubbed Asian karate film, the main character had a cartoon face that lived on the end of his tongue, the main female character’s voice was dubbed by a man squealing very high pitched, there was a field with a karate cow living in it and a really awkward scene where the main male character defeated the cow by frantically milking its udders until it was left shrivelled up and lying deflated in the field. I know what you’re thinking... now you have to see it for yourself.

Ashley and I then camped down on the floor of the building that the orphans sleep in with the orphans and the rest of soup kitchen. It was like when you have sleepovers with your friends when you’re younger, everyone is too excited and they keep talking until the early hours of the morning! We had a good night’s sleep and the only bad thing about it was that I woke up with some sort of cockroach/beetle thing crawling on my leg, and then I found one on my arm too. But I can get over that! 

Sunset at Aunty Vinah's place.

Sleeping room!

Saturday we got up at 6:45am to help give the kids breakfast; we then ‘bathed’ in Aunty Vinah’s bathroom (that doesn’t work), so we had a large tub each filled with water to squat and scrub in. Then we went to the soup kitchen field/maize field/cow pasture and played some soccer with the kids, I hung out with Tanele and was just enjoying hear her chatter away to me in SiSwati – I also learned that she calls me by the term umlungu (white person) and not Kate, but it’s cute!

Tanele <3

We then went with three of the boys to buy four chickens to cook for everyone to eat, this is our second chicken catching, carrying and killing experience and I’m getting pretty used to tucking squirming poultry under my armpit.

We then set up Ashley’s portable DVD player with Madagascar 2 Escape to Africa (culture appropriate!) and created a mini cinema to keep everyone entertained while we helped with the vegetables and the cooking.  Most Swazi’s have a tin hut for their kitchen and cook in large cauldrons over fires, therefore the room you cook in is enclosed, boiling hot and filled with smoke – it’s like that horrible minute a campfire turns on you and blows smoke into your eyes, but the whole room is like this... You can barely see or breathe and have to walk outside every 30 seconds because your eyes are streaming and itchy.

Cinema!

Preparing the chickens.

The rest of the day was a blur of eating, sitting and talking, playing with the kids and more eating... I don’t know what it is but they all had 5 HUGE meals, all 34 of them! I don’t think that happens normally, but we were buying so we were quite happy to do it. At least they ate really well for one day. 

Playing

Ashley and I also furthered our experimentation of eating bits of chickens; this time we pulled an I’m A Celebrity stunt and ate an eyeball each! It was squishy, rubbery and hard in the middle – I chewed once, gagged and swallowed it whole, couldn’t deal with anymore chewing! I couldn’t even tell you what it tasted like; it was just the horrible texture that has fixed itself in my mind. It seemed to not faze Ashley though; she just chewed away like it was a lovely piece of peri-peri chicken breast... I have to say, I’ve come a long way since arriving in Africa, when I left England I would only eat chicken breast, sausages, burgers, mince etc and wouldn’t touch meat with bones in. WHAT HAVE I BECOME?!

Gag reflex.

On the evening we open up a packet of marshmallows and show the children how to put them on sticks and roast them on the fire, at first they were really confused at why they would want to ‘burn’ their marshmallow, but we showed them how to do it, and once they tasted it they realised why it’s better to put them in the fire! They then started running around with the melted marshmallows on sticks shouting “ice-cream ice-cream!” because the runny marshmallow looked like melted ice-cream... apparently.

The next morning I got up at 6am to help Aunty Vinah make fat cakes in the kitchen; fat cakes are like doughnut balls and everyone in Swaziland sells them. Aunty Vinah makes them every day to sell at her ‘market’ along with small bags of crisps, ice blocks and small bags of fruit and vegetables. You make balls with the mixture and drop them into hot oil, Aunty Vinah wouldn’t let me turn them over at first because she said “If you burn your feet your parents will kill me! Going around with a bandage on your foot, no your parents will beat me!”, so when she went out of the kitchen I kept my feet a safe distance away from the hot oil, turned the fat cakes and received a round of applause from Aunty Vinah when she returned “aaah clever girl clever girl! You are Swazi now.” She’s too funny.

'Market'

For breakfast Ashley and I were treated to the delicacy of the chickens insides and bread; so I tucked into a chicken intestine sandwich and washed it down with A LOT of tea. The novelty wears off after a while; all I wanted was something normal. :(
After breakfast we brought out some paper and pens and did some drawing with them all, we asked them to draw what they had enjoyed the most about the weekend – most of the pictures were of food, a football and the DVD player, but at least we know they really enjoyed themselves!

Aunty Vinah and her husband Simelane do church in the room the children sleep in on a Sunday, Ashley and I joined in and we had a really lovely hour and a half of singing, listening to Mr Simelane talk and listening to all the children say thank you to us for coming and spending time with them. It’s definitely been one of the best weekends since being in Swaziland, and the whole time we had church I just felt like crying, the kids and Aunty Vinah were so grateful for us coming to stay with them, and we’d had a brilliant time spending more time getting to know them. The 2 hours of soup kitchen never really give us time to bond properly with the kids because it’s just a wild mess of bodies trying to get to their food.

We were very sad to leave soup kitchen on Sunday and go back to hostel, so I don’t know what it’s going to be like when we leave for good in August! I’ll be a wreck. Aunty Vinah was also sad to see us leave, she really loved having us over and kept saying the whole weekend “you are the only white people to come here”, I think she’d happily have us live there forever. 

I feel that these children are like my brothers and sisters, through everything that life has thrown at them they manage to be lovely lovely kids, and it was an honour to have them accept us into their little soup kitchen family and have us stay with them. 

For my whole life I will never forget this weekend.

Kate xx

Trigger Happy

Okay, so this week on Monday we were at Moriah Centre and they received a massive delivery of free (going out of date) food, drinks and other items from Matata Spar (Spar is exactly the same here as it is in England, so no confusion there). This rather pee’d Ashley and I off because we’ve been asking for donations for soup kitchen and Injabulo from them for ages, and they give us nothing! Then when they do decide to donate, they donate to the one preschool that has loads of sponsorship already... priorities?

Back at hostel they’re having a small redevelopment, they’re spending some of the budget and building a second kitchen and doing some maintenance. This also included throwing out all the old shelves, sofas, pillows, mattresses and anything else that didn’t have a use anymore. With soup kitchen in mind we threw ourselves into the crazy frenzy of workers all scrabbling for mattresses and managed to bag ourselves one mattress and seven pillows to give to the orphans who sleep on the floor at Aunty Vinah’s place.

This weekend was Easter weekend; basically everyone in Swaziland is Christian and Easter is the most important holiday in the Christian calendar... therefore once the schools had broken up on Thursday afternoon, hoards and hoards of people were out and about lugging massive bags with them and getting piled into huge lorries to be taken to church for a 3 day celebration of Jesus Christ. The whole of Swaziland must have been in those lorries, I swear it. Never have I seen so many people all rushing to get to the same place at the same time! Then again, I haven’t been on the London Underground at rush hour – but I’ll bet you that the Swazi bus stations on Easter weekend come pretty close!
At Injabulo on Thursday we only had 24 children in total! This was strange because it wasn’t raining or overcast, and usually the reason for kids not coming to school is that it’s raining or it looks like it is going to rain. Turns out that the primary school down the road broke up for Easter on Wednesday, so the parents assumed we had closed too. No. We’d planned a whole Easter day! Bought and boiled 80 eggs for an Easter egg hunt, dragged felt tips with us to colour in the eggs and printed off and cut out 80 rabbit masks and rabbit ears... and basically no one turned up. It was strange having such a small amount of kids and 4 teachers; it was like we were at Moriah Centre! Small classes, manageable activities and everyone had a chair and a table.

Luckily the leftover 56 boiled eggs didn’t go to waste; we had finally collected up all the tins of food that we had asked the Sisekelo students to donate for soup kitchen and Mrs Dlamini the Head of Catering at hostel had donated us 10kg of rice to cook. Therefore we actually cooked REAL food for soup kitchen for once; rice with a sauce made from gravy, baked beans and pilchards (it sounds dubious I know, but they loved it) grated boiled egg, bread and a jam sandwich for pudding! It was so lovely to see the kids properly enjoying their food, and not just eating it because they have to if they want to eat that night.

Someone enjoyed themselves!

Round of applause ;)

Easter weekend Ashley and I escaped from Big Bend and headed off to Shewula Mountain Camp; we set off by public kombi to Siteki, swapped kombi to Simunye and then fought our way onto a kombi destined for Shewula at the Simunye bus station. There must have been about 25-30 people with large bags trying to fight their way onto this tiny rickety kombi; the doors opened and people were pushing, shoving and throwing their belongings into the kombi, they were standing on old ladies and children in their efforts to grab I seat, even babies were going flying, I’m sure of it. Somehow we managed to find a seat and both squished into it with our bags, sleeping bags, pillows and tent (how we fit I do not know) and we started the slow and bumpy one hour journey to the rural community of Shewula. The kombi broke down twice on the way, and I honestly thought we were going to be left stranded in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully the kombi driver tweaked the engine a few times, and miraculously this beat up old piece of junk restarted.
Unfortunately for Ashley and I we were misinformed on where we should get off the kombi by the driver and we ended up at the 5km sign post for the Shewula Mountain Camp in the midday heat. Brilliant. So we began our long and unsure trek along the rural dirt road asking everyone we passed if they knew where the Mountain Camp was... “oohhh I know it”, “how far is it?” “it’s faaaar faaaaar that way, go over the hill, faaar.” So we walked and we walked, we walked for an hour uphill and finally we saw another Shewula Mountain Camp sign telling us that we were 2km away. I don’t trust road signs in Swaziland, the distance on them is more like the distance to the next sign rather than the distance from your destination!

We eventually arrive at the Mountain Camp and we’re the only people staying there that night; we pitch up the tent and the views are beautiful. We can see into three different valleys, and on a clear day you can see right over to Maputo in Mozambique.

 The Camp is a really lovely place and the best thing about it is that it’s a community project; all the money that is gained from the Camp goes towards running the camp (obviously) and any profit from that is used in the community. The camp has been established since 1999 and in the last 14 years they have provided three schools in the community with full kitchens, and other smaller projects such as building a small house for an old Gogo (Grandmother) with no home.
We go with one of the guys who works at the camp for a guided walking tour, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before but we do learn some new facts. He walks us through long grass, fields and through barbed wire fences; I don’t think we used a proper path at all! We saw where the community get their water, saw the forest in which they only bury the late Chiefs and we picked and ate fresh guava. I also learned that when you go into someone’s homestead as a mark of respect you remove your hat (or anything from your head), unless you are a married Swazi woman who wear scarves around their hair to show that they are married. Another fact I didn’t know is that when a homestead has made Swazi Beer they prop up a long stick with a white flag/plastic bag on the end to indicate to the community that they are selling Swazi Beer, alternatively if they are selling meat they raise a red flag/bag. So from the side of the hill you can look out across the homesteads and see who is selling beer and meat!

Shewula Homesteads

As there’s no electricity at the Mountain Camp we didn’t have much to do once night fell, so we played cards in the kitchen where there was one electric bulb and then went to sleep in the tent hoping that we didn’t die due to the tent being half collapsed and the zip being broken on the door so we couldn’t actually close it. I was terrified we’d get a snake in the tent, but we were still alive in the morning so everything was fine.

Eating dinner and watching the sun go down.....

At 6:30am we got up and packed the tent; we then walked 2km back to the road and waited to catch a bus back to Simunye. Thank god it was a BUS this time, because that battered old kombi would’ve definitely died!

We manage to get on our way back to Big Bend fairly quickly and uneventfully and then head to the sugar cane fields for some Easter clay pigeon shooting! 

Watching the men do the rounds of the shooting at the stations made me quite nervous, the shotgun was pretty big and the recoil on the shoulder looked pretty tough! We were allowed a go at the end and it was awesome! Neither Ashley or I hit anything but it was just a buzz to actually shoot a real gun, the recoil wasn’t half as bad as it looked and the shoulder bruise that it left just makes you feel like a badass.
We also did target practice on some drinks cans (again not really hitting anything apart from the wooden stand) with a revolver, a pistol and a glock. The handguns were much easier to use than the shotgun, and the target wasn’t moving so you could focus better. I have to say that going from never shooting a real gun to learning how to load, shoot and unload four types in one day – it’s pretty interesting.

Happy Easter Everyone!

Love Kate xx