After months of waiting, guessing, and spending far too much time on the Peace Corps Wiki, I finally received my Peace Corps placement. 

I leave for the KINGDOM OF SWAZILAND on June 26th as a community health HIV/AIDS educator. 

....So what does this mean? 

The job description (as with most community development jobs) is pretty vague.  If you're curious about the work/lifestyles of volunteers in Swaziland, I strongly recommend googling "Peace Corps blogs Swaziland."  Past and current volunteers have executed some pretty interesting projects, and I'm excited to follow in their rather large footsteps.  (Did I mention that Netflix founder Reed Hastings and Hardball's Chris Matthews both served in Peace Corps Swaziland?)   

I will have 9 weeks of pre-service training with other volunteers in Swaziland before I move to my permanent residence for the next two years.  Pre-service training is supposedly a crash course in language, culture, job training, and health/safety training....I sincerely hope they teach us the best ways to kill black mambas without getting bit.  Gulp. 

While there are a thousand things I'm looking forward to about my new home, there are also some things I look towards with a certain level of trepidation.  Most of all, I will miss my wonderful family.  They have always patiently put up with my international travel/years abroad, but we all recognize that two years in a country as different as Swaziland will be hard on everyone. 

There are a few tragic facts of life in Swaziland that I will confront in my job on a daily basis, HIV/AIDS being the primary one.  Swaziland has the highest HIV/AIDS rate in the entire world.  Conservative estimates put it at roughly 25% of the population.  Others put the rate at closer to 40%.  For 20-30 year olds, the rate is 40-50%.  The life expectancy (32) is the lowest in the world.  These facts are staggering, and painful even to think about.  The future of the entire country rests on its ability to battle the disease, and I'm intensely curious to see the response on the ground.  There's only so much you can learn scouring NGO reports and public health journals.

I am keeping my expectations low in terms of the work I'll be doing and the impact I'll have.  Perhaps I'll only impact the lives of a few individuals, perhaps I won't produce any change other than a ripple, or perhaps I'll be just another well-meaning Westerner in a country with thousands of well-meaning strangers. 

In the mean time...

I will do my best to learn as much culture, language (siSwati), and technical skills as possible.  For anyone who wants to learn about the political situation and wealth inequality in Swaziland, I recommend the superb documentary (on Netflix!) "Without the King."  While it is a stark indictment, I would recommend reflecting on wealth inequality and political rhetoric here in America.  Perhaps the 99% movement's greatest success was its ability to bring the discussion of wealth inequality to the forefront of our nation's consciousness.  In this way, the film's subliminal message rings eerily true in our own drastically different political and cultural context.        

I am still very much in the learning-process about Swaziland, although I find myself rattling off more and more complex details each day.  Now, it's just another waiting game until departure....