The Work Begins

I’ve officially been at my site for 2 weeks now, and the work is beginning. Over the next three months, Peace Corps has given us a list of things we need to do. This week I started on the homestead survey, which involves going door to door and asking a series of questions. The idea is that we’ll begin to understand the needs of our community, as well as being visible and forming relationships.

My community has 4 neighborhoods, and I started my survey with the one that is farthest from me. It has homesteads right up to the fence that separates Swaziland from Mozambique, and is a long walk from the last stop on the bus route. Of the 55 homes I have surveyed out there so far, not a single one has electricity or a water tap on the property. They all share 1 community tap. I found only 2 homesteads with cars, and only about half have a pit latrine. Less than half have a radio. Sadly, less than a quarter have a vegetable garden. This is the poorest neighborhood in the village. Of all of the people in all of the homesteads, I found only 5 that finished school and 2 that were employed. Almost every homestead had someone who asked me for money, a job, or unspecified help.

The hardest part for me was seeing the available resources that were not being used. World Vision has given almost every homestead a large Jojo tank for water, and almost all of them were lying on their sides unused. No one was harvesting rainwater, which would be a good thing to do if you have no access to a tap. Many homesteads talked about the scarcity of food, but do not have gardens or fields of any kind. The same goes for employment – I saw women making grass mats, and some people getting ready to plow, but they do not sell their products. It was baffling to me.

I also saw a few people who were very ill. One was an old gogo (grandmother) who had a severely injured ankle. You could see the bone where the skin was scraped off. She asked me if I was a doctor and pleaded for medicine. I could do nothing for her – I am not a doctor, and even though I have medicine, handing it out would set a precedent and expectations that I cannot maintain throughout my service. I had to just thank her for her time and walk away. That was brutal.

Most of the homesteads were mud huts with thatched roofs. This was all very shocking to me, as the neighborhood I live in does not look like this at all. Most of the huts in my area are concrete, everyone has a garden, the schools are in okay shape, and children are not exhibiting obvious signs of malnutrition. It’s clear where the previous volunteers have focused their work, and where they did not. I know that the neighborhood farthest from me needs help, and I hope to conduct gardening workshops out there.

The challenges of working out there are huge. Due to the lack of education, almost no one speaks English. Few can read and write. If I walk, it will take almost 2 hours each way to get out there. If I have to ride the bus out there every day, I will run through my money more quickly than I care to. The biggest challenge of all, however, is in the attitudes. In my neighborhood, the people are motivated. They remember the previous volunteers and are ready to work. In the far neighborhood, people would rather sit unemployed and wait for me to do something for them than take charge of their own lives. They want me to fund gardens, but they do not want to actually do the gardening themselves. They want me to give them money, build them houses, give them medicine, and change their lives, but they lack the desire to be active participants in the process. Getting this community up and moving is going to be a huge challenge, and I hope that it is a feasible one to overcome.

I’m sure there are challenges in the other neighborhoods as well, but I haven’t surveyed there yet. The work continues this week. I’ll keep you posted!