How Lucky I Am...

Lately, I’ve been thinking often of a scared 22-year old girl. In an unprecedented moment of courage, that girl hugged her mother, father, and little brother goodbye in the lobby of the Indianapolis International Airport, knowing that it could well be the last hug she would give them for 27 months. She didn’t cry as she turned from them and walked to the security line in the darkest hour of the night before the sun rose. She didn’t cry as she waited in line, knowing they were already gone and wondering (and already knowing the answer) if they were as heartbroken and frightened and happy and scared as she was. She didn’t cry until a TSA agent conversationally asked her where she was going; that casual question turned the unique unreality granted by a sleepless night into sudden and crushing reality. She was going away on a one-way ticket and she wasn’t coming back for years.

Tears welled up in my eyes as I wrote that paragraph. Although I’ve grown from that girl as these three years have passed, I still feel a powerful empathy for her overwhelmed heart and a bit of admiration for the courage it took her (and, truly, it took all PCVs and their families) to say such an uncertain and frightening goodbye. In retrospect, I feel the courage of that moment more than I ever could have at the time, because now I know exactly what was going to happen next. Moving abroad can challenge your deeply held beliefs of right and wrong by painting them as cultural constructs; it can make you both more alive and create the feeling of your life being paused at the same time; it opens your heart to people you couldn’t have dreamed of in a culture you couldn’t have imagined, only to break your heart by leaving them to see the people you’ve spent years desperately missing. Living abroad is lonely and powerful and an incredible journey of discovery, and it can change the way you see and move through the world even upon returning home.

Truthfully, it’s been a time of tears, both sad and joyful, for me as of late. I can’t believe I’m writing this post – I can’t believe I’m leaving what is officially-on-paper my post, and officially-in-heart my home. For a final time, if you’ll humor me, I’d like to take you on a brief journey of the love I developed for Swaziland, for Swazis, and for myself.

My first few months in Swaziland were absolutely miserable. I remember lying in my freezing bed in the room of my training homestead, while the drops of condensation from my first (and very messy) hot steamy bucket bath dripped from the low tin roof onto my upturned face. The thought that kept flitting through my mind was, “This is my life now. This is what it’ll be like for 2 years. This is what I willingly and knowingly committed to.” I struggled to be healthy and struggled with culture shock. I struggled with not having a support system due to not having access to a phone to reach my family and friends back home. I drifted through the days of training in a lonely haze, alternately feeling sorry for myself and occasionally making a friend.

When I got to my permanent site after the conclusion of training, I was happy. I was lonely and overwhelmed again to be the only American in a village where I hadn’t yet built any relationships, but I had a wonderful friend named Nombuso and a host mother that I bonded with instantly. Over the months of integration and my first year of service, I lived. Nombuso became one of the best friends I’ve ever had, and together we were unstoppable (actually, she was unstoppable and let me come along for the ride). We established a library in a primary school with the help of initially-reluctant and ultimately-in-charge Patricia Nxumalo, ran a session on food preservation training with the rural health motivators in the village and a representative from the Ministry of Agriculture, started a small business by selling the products we made, taught financial literacy to children heading households, and had plans to start an economic savings group with the small business as more and more women got involved. Nombuso used her money from her business to attend and graduate from the University of Swaziland, and then went on to build herself, her husband, and her 5-year old son a brand new homestead. Seeing her success and coming to love her more every day was an experience unlike any other – to be both mentor and mentee in a friendship with a woman that fit me like a puzzle piece was so deeply fulfilling. I believe I can say with certainty that miles alone can’t end a friendship forged in love, and she’ll be a part of my life and heart forever.

By the end of that first year, however, my relationships with my host father and a man in the community were becoming worrisome. Individually, they both caused me problems that eventually made me fear for my well-being and possibly my life. I won’t delve into the details of this again – I covered the parts of it that I’m comfortable sharing in another blog post and I can’t see a reason to relive these instances of trauma, both explicitly stated and internally remembered.

When I was unceremoniously pulled from a village that had been my home and placed far from the host mother and best friend that I loved, the library that I was proud of and hoping to improve with Patricia, the projects planned and not done, and the men who had caused me sleepless nights and waking terror, I predictably experienced a range of emotions. All those relationships that I had worked so hard to build, reaching deep within myself past a frightened and shy introvert to find someone with an open heart waiting to emerge, were gone. They were hours and an expensive trip away. I couldn’t go back to the village for my own safety, but I could meet them in the nearby town if they had transport money and freedom of travel. I knew that for the first time in my service my physical being was safe – I truly felt that in my heart and it brought me stillness and peace. However, everything that I had built and would build “one day” had ceased to be when I realized that “one day” wouldn’t ever come for me. I started at my new village feeling jaded and hurt, but safe.

This transition was, without question, the hardest part of my Peace Corps service. I struggled to get out of bed and spent the vast majority of my time shut up in my hut with the door closed. I was terrified to throw my whole self out there again – after all, I was leaving in less than a year and I’d experience being ripped away all over again. I was reserved with my host family (who really is the most warm and accepting and patient group of people ever – I am proud to call myself a Mamba), hesitant to commit at the school, and didn’t take the initiative to sit at the shops to meet and talk with people, as I had done only a year previously. I lost a lot of time to this period, and that’s the only true regret of my service.

One day, I was walking down the main road from one of my earlier days working at the high school. I was talking to a friend in Peace Corps. I had leaned on my friends a lot for support, and I was starting to exhaust their supply of emotional availability as well as to make them deeply concerned for my health. One of them finally told me: “You’re so unhappy here. You either need to find a way to be happy or you need to go home now. You can’t exist like this forever.”

That was what I needed to hear. I was fortunate enough to have the mental health following this period of healing to pick myself up and throw myself into work. I had spent a lot of time doing very little, but I was still able to expand an existing library through facilitating a donation of 1000 books, coordinate a girls’ empowerment club (GLOW), help coach a debate team, and assist in the purchasing of food and cooking for a large girls’ empowerment camp. It wasn’t all that I could have achieved in ideal circumstances, but it was the best I could have done with what remaining time I had left myself. I still built strong relationships and I still had projects that I was proud of in the 7 months I had, and I am still proud of what my counterparts and I built together.

During that second year, I wrestled with the decision of whether I should stay a third year or go home as expected. I had applied to 6 graduate schools and been accepted to only 2, neither of which gave me enough scholarship money to make attendance possible. I didn’t have a job lined up, I had no plan, and I got rejected from many of my top schools. Staying seemed to make sense, but my heart wasn’t in it. Still, I met with representatives from the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation one sunny Wednesday in May. After my conversation with them about what they were looking for and what their Foundation was like, I was sold. I called my Country Director and accepted the job on the spot – I went from feeling a bit obligated to stay to feeling excited about my new job.

This past year at EGPAF has been wonderful. I got to work as an epidemiologist on various research studies, which we used to strengthen existing programs and design new ones as unaddressed needs arose. These health interventions happened both at the grassroots level and at the highest levels of the Ministry of Health. It’s an odd transition to be working with national committees on a country’s health policies one day and going to a rural clinic to make sure the patient registers are filled out completely the next, but it’s been the best possible experience. I have not in my service experienced the professional growth that I experienced in this last year, and it has changed my life. It has also impacted change at a level I couldn’t previously have imagined. My name and my work is part of some national health policies – I have concrete evidence of my impact on this health system, which is something very few people get to experience. Truly, I am so incredibly fortunate.

Most importantly, my year in the capital city working with EGPAF has been a year of relationships, love, and happiness. I can honestly say that leaving these people breaks my heart – I can’t imagine where I’d be without each and every one of the people I’m fortunate enough to work with. Between the quirky Strategic Information Unit; the compassionate Clinical Services Unit; the hardworking Pilots; and all the helpful (and endlessly patient) souls in Procurement, Finance, Capacity Building, Communications, and the other units, I’ve made true friends. These are people who have enriched my life simply by their presence, and I hope that I’ve meant to them what they’ve meant to me.

This work is my passion, and working in my field only made me more excited to get my MPH and continue this work in underserved and vulnerable populations in urban areas in the USA. My experiences here served me incredibly professionally – this year, I applied to 5 graduate schools and got accepted (with scholarships) to all 5. I’m attending my dream school to continue the work I started here, and I couldn’t be more excited. If I have served EPGAF even half as well as they have served me, I’ll count myself a good Volunteer!

Finding a quotation with the right level of beauty, poignancy, and profundity to both reflect on and summarize my service, Swaziland, and Peace Corps isn’t easy, but I believe I have found the right one. To conclude this blog post, I leave you all with the words of A. A. Milne:

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

Truly, truly lucky. Siyabonga, eSwatini. Ngiyakutsandza.

Complexity and Context

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve written. Before I jump in to today’s topic, I’ll throw in a quick personal update.

The people I came to Swaziland with more than two years ago are mostly gone. They’ve closed their service and moved on to the next steps of their lives. Five of us chose to stay for a third year, and I’ve started my third year work assignment now. Two months ago, I moved to Mbabane and started working with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF). I’m still a Peace Corps Volunteer, but third years frequently partner with NGOs or other development organizations to work on organizational capacity building in addition to the individual capacity building we’ve been doing for the first two years. I live in a nice little flat with running water, a hot shower, a microwave, an oven, and a great big closet. Life in the city is nice; I’m walking distance of a grocery store, a restaurant with sushi, and a decent mall.

So far, I’m still settling in to my job. I’ve edited a report for printing and distribution, and I’ve also done data analysis and report writing on another research study. I’ve also been working with a team to attend rural communities, where we have a day for HIV: testing, discussion groups, skits, songs, dances, and food. However, it was editing that first report that has allowed me to look back on my service with a new attitude.

The report was on a study we did with PSI exploring the reasons why so many women seroconvert (become HIV+) during pregnancy. We were exploring both sexual behaviors and healthcare access. We interviewed focus groups of men, women, and healthcare workers. Something one of the healthcare workers said really stuck out to me, and I’ve been mulling it over for some time.

 

"A long time ago there used to be community nurses. They would take a car and go to the communities [to provide HIV education] but those projects have since died... maybe it's because our numbers as health workers have gone down or the strategies for accessing communities are no longer functional. But sitting in the health facilities, we are not winning the battle, be it tuberculosis, be it HIV, we are not winning it."

Rural communities have clinics, several rural communities and clinics compose the catchment area for a public health unit (PHU) or bigger clinic in a particular area (called an inkhundla), and several tinkhundla PHUs report back to a clinic or hospital in an urban area. This health care worker worked at a health facility in an urban area and not in the rural communities. She was expressing her frustration at being unable to reach rural Swazis who have limited access to money, transport, time, and other resources that make clinic visits a possibility. At first, I felt a sense of sadness and defeat reading that quotation, but then I spent some more time thinking. Do you know who lives in the rural areas and has strategies, resources, and motivation for reaching these underserved populations?

That’s right – Peace Corps Volunteers.

When you live in a rural community, your community is your life. You live and work and learn there, and the people you serve are there. You know your clinic and your school and your inner council, but you wouldn’t necessarily work at a level beyond your community. You wouldn’t have access to those nurses who work at a bigger level of healthcare, and you wouldn’t hear the passion and longing they express to have the resources to change their country. You see your nurses, your clinic, your teachers, your school, and little else. That’s what makes Peace Corps special – this access to and focus on underserved rural communities instead of resource-rich urban areas.

It’s also what makes Peace Corps frustrating. As an American, you can’t gain an understanding of a foreign country’s entire complex healthcare system in just two or three years. As a PCV, you work hard to just understand the structures in your own rural community. When all you see is a clinic that ran out of ARVs or can’t keep funding food at support group meetings, you feel frustrated. Sometimes it feels like you’re the only one who cares or who is willing to work for change. When you have the rare opportunity to work in a city in an NGO at the highest levels of healthcare, you are able to look down the lines of the system and see something else.

People care. Your service matters. Swazis in the urban areas express a need for the roles that we fill to be filled. We’re part of a puzzle that fits together intricately, but seeing beyond your own piece is challenging.

I’m not saying that my faith in the system is absolute now, but what this quotation and the past two months have taught me is that the limited number of people we meet during service can’t represent the system as a whole, and it’s so much more complicated than we could have ever imagined. I’m able to see my work in the context of national development instead of local development, and it gives me renewed hope. Development is a challenging field because we’re bringing Western ideas of what it is to be developed and what needs to be done to get there into a society with its own cultures, traditions, and challenges. We’re frequently hitting walls and having our ideas dismissed until we learn how to work within the culture instead of trying to work against it.

The beauty of a two year assignment is the ability to gain an understanding of and an appreciation for a culture that isn’t Western and isn’t your own. You build relationships, gain and give trust, and become part of a family and community you couldn’t have imagined before coming here. The beauty of a third year is an added understanding of development as a system of structures and partners, with individuals being the key players but not the large-scale change agents. What PCVs do in the communities and what we do as part of NGOs are different roles that contribute in different ways to the larger picture of development and service. Her smile is a small part of the Mona Lisa, and the entire painting is what is considered the masterpiece; in the same way, the many PCVs and projects and NGOs and partners and Swazis make up this complex and beautiful painting that is Swaziland and development.

Defining the Peace Corps Experience

In my last post, I tried to list the biggest memories of my service. That was a challenging post to write, and I found that I was sifting through a lot of things in my head before I settled on those five. In the weeks since I last wrote, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what and how I want to remember my service, and how I want my communities and friends to remember me.

Peace Corps service means different things to different PCVs, and to me the greatest meaning is more in the small things than in the big. I will always remember making s’mores with my host family, taking walks with Nombuso, those few magical weeks when we had so many tiny little kittens, laughing long into the night with my PCV friends at Sundowners, and dancing with my GLOW club. My service isn’t defined by the big memories, but in the hundreds of small ones that I have made over the past 21 months.

My service has also been defined by relationships. I have had 4 successful and sustainable projects, but many more relationships that have impacted my life immeasurably. I’ll never forget talking with an uncle during Pre-Service Training about vegetables, and how he always thought only poor people who couldn’t afford meat ate them, and then we worked through understanding nutrition together. The next morning, I found an avocado shell outside his house and the core of an apple. Nombuso has helped me to see the person that I want to be through being both a friend to me and a role model. My host mothers (from each community) have shown me what real strength is, as well as unconditional love. These relationships matter to me now, and they will matter to me in 20 years when I’m telling my children about my service experiences.

In my first year here, I fell into a rut. It’s easy to become cold and unfeeling when you are constantly surrounded by insurmountable challenges and indescribable hardship, and that did happen to me. While you do have to learn that you cannot feed every orphan and save every child to protect your heart, you also have to learn what you are able to give and give freely: smiles, hugs, kind words, and maybe a sweet here and there. It’s easy to become angry and hard when 9/10 men you encounter shout at you and harass you, and maybe even grab your arm or touch you. It’s hard to remember that the 1/10 are the ones who matter, and are likely the ones who are actively giving of themselves and working hard to redefine respectful behavior. Being unkind to everyone means missing relationship building with the movers and shakers of Swaziland, and it took me a long time to learn how to live with this balance.

I don’t want to be remembered as being cold, unfeeling, angry, or hard. I want to be remembered as kind, hardworking, energetic, enthusiastic, approachable, loyal, and dedicated. In order to leave that legacy, I have had to work every day to understand the cultural norms, learn what appropriate responses to certain behaviors are, and never give up in the constant battle that is living in a fishbowl. If I want to be remembered as kind, then I need to respond to unwanted attention kindly but firmly. If I want to be remembered as approachable, then I cannot ignore every child who screams at the umlungu (white person) for money or sweets. If I want to be remembered as dedicated, then I need to ask questions and really listen to the answers. Relationship building is hard, and smiling every time I’m treated in a way I dislike is even harder, but the rewards in the end are worth every bit of that hard work.

The beauty and the curse of Peace Corps is that you only get out of your service what you are willing to put in, and the only one who can define that is you. Although we live in different cultures, Swazis are people just like us, and they can sense when you don’t want to be there and don’t want to work with them. If you treat them like they are lesser or different or a burden, then you cannot expect to be treated as a friend and welcomed as a member of a community.

Professor Dumbledore once challenged us to think carefully when given a choice between what is right and what is easy. It’s easy for me to write off my challenges as cultural differences and move on, but perhaps it’s right to address them head-on, unflinchingly, with all my energy and heart. The questions about what memories you want to make and what legacy you’d like to leave behind have always been abstract and distant to me, but with only 4 months remaining in my service, it’s time to really think and make the right choices.

I owe it to the girls in my GLOW group to be energetic at meetings and come with a well thought out plan. I owe it to the men in my community to start a conversation with kindness and not assume the worst. I owe it to my counterparts to trust them to know more than me and to be perfectly capable of working hard and working intelligently. I owe it to the women in my community to listen when they approach me and ask about income generating activities or savings groups or gardening. Perhaps most importantly, I owe it to myself and to my country to treat all people here with the same respect, benefit of the doubt, and kindness with which I’d treat any Westerner. Our behaviors and the way we express our wants and feelings vary based on the cultural norms with which we were raised, but things like hope, ambition, big dreams, happiness, love, friendship, and family transcend cultural barriers. To live in another country, to realize how little I truly know about the world, and to rethink the behaviors with which I am most comfortable has made me realize that I am truly participating in something that is unfathomably bigger than myself.

There is no greater gift that Swaziland has given me.

My Top 5 Peace Corps Memories

It was suggested to me that I do a reflective post on my service thus far. I don’t really spend enough time on this, and this post was a pleasure to write. Looking back to seek out and re-experience the best moments of my service was a wonderful exercise. So, without further ado, here are my top 5 memories of my Peace Corps service to date.

5. Cooking Dinner for Nombuso

Nombuso, my best friend, has had me over to her homestead countless times. She always serves me a “snack” (read: heaping plate of food that would feed 2 Americans for a large meal) of rice, beets, chicken stew, and cabbage. She is an excellent cook, and somehow I always manage to clear my plate. Proof positive that I’m integrating! One evening, I cooked for her.

I visited another PCV (Pam) for a World AIDS Day fair in Siteki, which was conveniently where all the fair volunteers (including Nombuso) were staying. Pam and I spent the evening preparing chicken breaded with French’s fried onions, Kraft macaroni and cheese, and steamed broccoli. For dessert, we made chocolate no bakes. I think she liked the American food itself, but she loved that we cooked for her. She might have reassured us that she liked it about 75 too many times to be entirely convincing, but she gamely ate every bite. Food is a gesture of love universally, and I think it is always well-received.

4. Watching G12 Swear In

When I, a member of the 11^th group of Volunteers to arrive in Swaziland (G11), took my oath, I felt like I was a part of something special. I had just come off of 9 weeks of intensive and challenging and busy training. I was used to seeing Americans every day, I was comfortable with siSwati, I felt like I had a good handle on my projects, and I was ready for the downtime that everyone promised would come during integration, the 3-month period of observation when we move to our permanent sites. I felt like I had seen and done and experienced so much, and now I was officially achieving a dream: being sworn in as a member of the United States Peace Corps.

What followed was, by far, the most challenging year of my life. I have never been so sick, bored, lonely, cold, hot, challenged, or incompetent. I was terrified and stressed. However, it was also one of the best years of my life. I made a Swazi best friend, I learned how resilient I can be, I did projects that were meaningful and fulfilling, I found my place in a wonderful new community and host family, and I learned how to be happy.

When I swore in, I thought I understood what that oath meant. After completing a year of service, listening to the same oath had a totally different meaning. The words were powerful, and knowing what the members of G12 were about to undergo made them feel even more so. Looking back and how far I had come and what I had learned with the members of my group made the oath very, very special.

The oath is as follows:

“I, AB, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

3. Peeling Beets

On World AIDS Day, Nombuso invited me to a fair that she had helped to plan in Siteki. That was all she told me, and that was all I knew.

Turns out, we were on cooking duty, which had to prepare meals for 3,000 people. We started working at maybe 3pm the night before and worked until midnight. We started to feel loopy and giggly as we worked and the night progressed. Our hands were stained bright red from peeling beets, which you do after they have been boiled. Some of them had been boiled minutes before, and we learned really quickly (and the hard way) not to touch those.

The men, as men are wont to do, were sitting and talking while we scrambled to get the work done. One young guy was urging us to work faster and flirting. We told him that if he wants to talk to us, then he too must peel beets, because this is the beet peeling table.

I have never seen a man grab a beet so fast. It was so funny. It ended up being a lot of fun and pleasant conversation. We started cooking at 4am the next morning, and all 4 of us still had red hands.

2. Seeing Photos of My Library

I wrote a post quite some time ago about how freaking hard starting a library is. When I was moved to a new community, I left my library in disarray. Only half the books were numbered and had labels on the spines and checkout cards glued in. they were still in boxes. I handed the printed register to the librarian and that was the last I heard of it.

This is my library the last time I saw it. When I get new photos from Nombuso, I'll post them.

Nombuso and I meet up frequently, and one day she showed me photos of the library she had taken on her phone. I almost cried.

They finished it. They unpacked those boxes, put a spine label on every book, glued a checkout card in every book, numbered every book, and entered it into the register by hand. They did it. The library is open, students are reading, and I have photographic evidence that I created a sustainable project.

There are many moments here where we each question whether we are making a difference, or if anything we do will live past our departure. I am lucky enough to know the answers to those questions before the end of my service, and I will forever admire the work of my old library team.

1. Nombuso’s Graduation and Big Announcement

Nombuso earned a certificate in psychosocial support through the University of Swaziland through distance learning, which is where you commute for the weekends for class. For 2 years, she went 3 hours each way to take her classes. I helped edit her papers, which were thoughtfully written and rewritten by hand, quite painstakingly. She took her learning and did trainings all over the community, unpaid, because she wanted to see the children properly cared for. Nombuso is amazing. She also has a 5 year old son and a husband who works out of the community, so he’s never able to be around.

She invited me to attend her graduation. I met her parents, her husband (who is absolutely hilarious and utterly smitten with her), and her wild little son (he’s 5). I watched her walk and greet the King. She was so proud, and her parents were so proud of her. Her husband asked me if I would give him a present. I asked him why I would do that. He said that he was the real winner here today, because he convinced the most beautiful and smart woman in Swaziland to marry him. He then kissed her on the cheek while she squirmed away and looked embarrassed. It was sweet and funny.

Nombuso and her husband

She then told me that she was enrolling in a program for a Bachelor’s degree in social work. She said that, through the sales of jam, honey, and atchar, which we learned to make in one of our projects, she has raised and saved enough money to cover the tuition. She held my hand, thanked me profusely, and hugged me. She told me that now, all her dreams are coming true.

Nombuso has been a defining character in my Peace Corps service, and a true friend. Most of my top memories include her, and I suspect will continue to include her for my final 6 months here. Whitney M. Young, Jr. once said, “The truth is that there is nothing noble in being superior to somebody else. The only real nobility is in being superior to your former self.” Nombuso, the Swazi people, and many Peace Corps experiences have given me every bit of my newfound nobility. 

Nombuso's parents, Nombuso, me, and her son, Snethemba