Poems

THE SNAKE KING OF THE NGWEMPISI RIVER

The Snake King lives on the steep hinterland

Under the boulders and over the sand

He coils himself around the red stones

Squeezing the marrow from inside their bones

Their marrow runs fast, seeking the sea

Thus makes a river, and thus makes a tree

The Snake King sleeps in his watery lair

Biding his time before rising for air

 And when he does cross to the other side

He searches for fear to counter his pride

So he takes on a form of mortal temptation

A charming young man to the lucky young maiden

Lest she see his true tongue, he whispers devotions

Until in a trance, her feet move in motions

To the river she follows and sinks down below

Stuck in his lair where no mortal may go

And if she escapes, as the kidnapped can do

He raises his tail and the thunder rolls through

He must be appeased, the villagers say

And pray to a god much newer than they

The Snake King just laughs at their innocent crime

As he slides back below, merely biding his time

_________________________________________

IN THE VILLAGE OF PAKA

In the village of Paka

Sits a most ancient tree

And beneath it are buried

The chiefs regally

But no children must play there

And no lovers embrace

And the tree must keep growing

Expanding its place

And if you dare enter

The leaves spread so wide

It will swallow you whole

And spit out your hide

_______________________________________

The Devouring

So if the perfume’s pungent

Then that is why I’m here

To smell your legs

And eat your eyes

And bring the crowd to tears

A doorway stands

Between us though

And sideways I shall crawl

To clutch your feet

Beneath the stones

Before I make you fall

And I’ll slide up your body

Til my eyes can eat yours

Then we’ll sit relaxing

Upon the sated floor

__________________________________________

THE BORDER

All of that fate cannot have meant nothing

Riding down the mountains and into the plains

Driving hours beneath the escarpment

The sugarcane nodding complacently

The sun unforgiving in its angry warmth

As it convalesces with the road

And turns dust into water

The road

The sun

The escarpment

The sugar

And just you driving by

With me at your side

We stop at the border to stretch our legs

It is night now and the gates are quiet

Just some soldiers with guns

And a few trucks passing

Even the filling station is dark

We peer past the barbed wire

But we don’t cross

Just stand there with our passports out

Before we turn around and drive back through the night

Leaving our sticky souls

Side by side at the border

__________________________________________

TIMELINE TWO

I had my ticket

And was ready to go

The next morning of

A thousand years ago

If you had kissed me then

Would the words

Between my lips

Be a bible full of stories

For believers

To find us in? 

__________________________________________

THE END OF AN ERA

You are an empire man

In the age of multiculturalism

Born to fight for king and country,

But neither of those exists anymore

The map is closed in, and you are always within it

Just less relevant and somehow less useful

You fumble and disregard definitions of modern manhood

Yours is a rugby field and a longing for the days

When being a man meant

Self-evident satisfaction

Joyriding through the bush

And sleeping with the coloured daughters of

the black women who raised you.

__________________________________________________

On Leaving A Life of Poverty

It is often said in RPCV circles that readjustment is the hardest part of service.  I've wanted to do an entry on readjustment for some time, so here are my reflections after 3 weeks away from Swaziland… 

The weeks leading up to my Close Of Service were very trying.  My health was failing despite constant testing and reassurances from the Medical Officer that everything would straighten out once I left the physical hardships of rural life.  I worried that my projects would fail, that my friends would forget me, or that I would be remembered for the wrong reasons. 

Most of all, I think I was afraid that I would too quickly retreat back to the so-called “first world” and abandon my Swazi friends in thought and abandon them in their need.  I still am afraid of this.

The hardest goodbye came when I left my two sweet host brothers- both orphans who I had fantasized about adopting throughout my service.  We all cried and I hugged them fiercely, whispering “Ngiyakutsandza- ngitawubuya,” in their ears as we parted.  I love you- I will return.  Please let me keep that promise.   

When I actually did leave, it wasn’t for America, but for Namibia.  For the first time in my life, I took a chance on love and moved to Namibia to be with my Namibian boyfriend, Owen.  In the past three weeks, I have been experiencing what everyone experiences when they move- newness, learning, and constant comparison with the last place you lived.  I don’t know if you’d call it “readjustment,” but some differences in my lifestyle then and now have really stuck out independent of host country culture.

At first, I just walked around Owen’s apartment stroking his appliances and wondering if it would be silly to photograph these luxuries.  I could suddenly buy and store meat and cheese and yogurt!  I could make large portions of food that we couldn’t finish and just refrigerate the leftovers to microwave the next day.  I could buy fresh milk and chocolate and enjoy them without having to share with 10 others as we cuddled up and watched movies in the evening on furniture much softer than an overturned bucket.  Groceries were only a quick taxi ride away, not a grueling 7 hour round-trip trek.  I ate three meals a day instead of two because I did not spend lunch with an empty stomach in solidarity with co-workers who can only afford to eat breakfast and dinner.    

I could brush my teeth without walking outside to spit, and I could rinse my toothbrush thoroughly in running water.  I learned to take pleasure in drinking water again that didn’t smell fetid even after boiling.  I didn’t have to ration my water intake on weekends.  I didn’t have to deny myself the pleasure of washing dishes with more than a cup’s worth of water, or showering in more than a tea kettle full.  I did 3 loads of laundry a week in the machine and I didn’t have to wear something multiple times to justify the soap, water, and labor it takes to clean clothes by hand.

My mental and physical health is rapidly improving.  I don’t have to carry heavy buckets or stoop over the soil, so my back feels better every day.  I don’t have a single person knocking on my door asking me for tutoring, my possessions, a job, or money.  I feel light about this.  When someone comes onto me inappropriately, I’ve gained back my fighting spirit to yell at them, not just yank my wrist away and brush it off as a cultural difference.  Owen observes that I am coughing less each morning.  The drug resistant ringworm on my legs is slowly healing.  I exercise almost daily because I have the energy and I feel healthy enough to do so.  I don’t have to eat dinner in solitude, but can cook a balanced meal for two and discuss my day with someone who cares about me beyond what I can do for him.  I am convinced that, had I lived in that extreme poverty for the rest of my life- my life would have been much, much shorter.        

To someone from America, I know that what I said above about life in rural Swaziland sounds difficult and sad.  To someone from a poor background in a developing country, I know that what I said above sounds whiny and privileged.  The past two years were difficult, yes.  But they were only two years.    

If I have learned anything from the past two years of intentional poverty, it is that poverty is the most evil structural violence in the world and that nothing short of a radical redistribution of wealth will uplift the bottom billion.  If I sound like a freshman in college just discovering a cause for the first time- please forgive me.

I believe that poverty (and I refer here to the absolute kind of poverty that I experienced in Swaziland- where those who lived on 2 US dollars a day were the LUCKY ones) is the most difficult experience a human being can experience.  Even open warfare is not experienced as a daily struggle for survival from birth until death in most cases.  Those who make it out of poverty are the rare exception along with those who survive it into old age.         

…I started this entry hoping to write about readjustment, but what a silly thing that is when I think about the lives of the friends I have left behind.  I will be fine.  So will they, because they are strong enough to work for their survival every day.  So I will now close with some quotes on poverty which struck a chord in me.  I hope they are also thought-provoking and meaningful to you…

    “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” 
― Hélder Câmara,

“If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.” 
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.” 
― Dwight D. Eisenhower

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” 
― Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Poverty is the worst form of violence.”

-Mahatma Ghandi

“Once poverty is gone, we'll need to build museums to display its horrors to future generations. They'll wonder why poverty continued so long in human society - how a few people could live in luxury while billions dwelt in misery, deprivation and despair.” 
― Muhammad Yunus

“If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.” 
― Charles Darwin

“When we want to help the poor, we usually offer them charity. Most often we use charity to avoid recognizing the problem and finding the solution for it. Charity becomes a way to shrug off our responsibility. But charity is no solution to poverty. Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor. Charity allows us to go ahead with our own lives without worrying about the lives of the poor. Charity appeases our consciences.” 
― Muhammad Yunus

“An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.” 
― Plutarch

“And that’s when things get messy. When people begin moving beyond charity and toward justice and solidarity with the poor and oppressed, as Jesus did, they get in trouble. Once we are actually friends with the folks in struggle, we start to ask why people are poor, which is never as popular as giving to charity.”

― Shane Claiborne

“The fact that the poor are alive is clear proof of their ability.” 
― Muhammad Yunus

 

Lobola

WARNING: Graphic animal slaughter footage below!  You’ve been warned…

I was the official wedding photographer at my friend’s lobola ceremony a few months ago, and it was SO FUN!  Normally I despise large, traditional activities for the negative attention they bring to me.  (Marry me, give me your dog, give me your clothes, etc….)  But at this wedding, I knew both the bride and grooms’ families, so there was no awkward conversation or marriage proposals.  Being the photographer was also nice, because the bride went around explaining to everyone that I was developing the photos for them, so that let me mix in and out of every age and gender cluster without offending. 

Marriages in Swaziland are a union of two clans, and so the families get to know each other at large, festive celebrations spread out over years.  The ceremonies surrounding them take so long that I have yet to see a single wedding from the bride-snatching “teka” ritual to the finish. 

The part of the ceremony I’ll describe below is the first day of the “lobola” (bride price) portion of the ceremony that I photographed.  This is the second major weekend of festivities following the bride-snatching teka ritual, but could happen years after the teka.  For instance, my friend who is getting married was teka-d by her husband when she was 18.  They have raised four children together, two of whom are already adults themselves.  His family has only just recently collected enough cows to pay lobola, so that in part explains the typical long delay between teka and lobola ceremonies.      

Anyways, the lobola is a two-day ceremony.  On Saturday, the two families reside, cook, and eat on two separate homesteads.  A goat is slaughtered at each and cooked for everyone. 

I stay on my friend’s homestead, and she makes a beautiful blushing bride. 

Everyone cooks, sleeps, and dances around.  The girls and men show off their traditional dancing.  Everyone sings and claps while one individual is given the floor to show off their moves.  Nothing is funnier to them than when I try the traditional high-kicks characteristic of Swazi dancing. 

I lay dozing on a grass mat when I overhear the old men talking about me and wondering if I would like to be teka-d.  One hypothesizes that I would be offended, while others refute this and say that I am a Swazi now.  I startle them by laughing and responding in SiSwati that I don’t want to have a Swazi traditional wedding, but that I can respect the custom. 

Around 2 in the afternoon, the groom’s family assembles and sits on one side of the rondhuvel.  The bride’s family elders also file in and sit facing the groom’s family.  It is an intimate space.  I sit with the female elders on the groom’s side.  The bride and groom also sit with their families.

The bride’s family begins by the elders introducing themselves individually.  The grooms family choruses a response to each greeting; “Sizesazi, sizesazi, sizesazi.”  I don’t understand as it is in Zulu and I’m a bit rusty on my translation.  Thankfully, one of the elders catches my confusion and gives her responses in Swati for my benefit.  “Sitesati, sitesati, sitesati.”  It means “We came, we didn’t know.”  (Later in the week, I ask Peace Corp’s language and culture trainer why they say this and why it’s in Zulu, and he doesn’t know why- just knows that this is the way things are done). 

Then the delicate negotiations begin!  It is a fantastic exercise in Swazi compromise and conflict resolution.  Voices are kept soft and low as elders take turns speaking, eye contact is avoided, and everyone sits still until unanimous agreement can be reached.  Mostly male elders speak, but females are also listened to if they voice an opinion.  If an offer is deemed not serious, the other family guffaws gently and acts mildly offended.  The groom’s family opens with the offer of 5 cows, but there is much to discuss.  About 40 minutes in, the bride’s family leaves to conference in private.   They return with a counter-offer, and the groom’s family agrees.     

The final offer is 7 cows plus 1,000 cash.  The groom’s family has only brought 800 with them, though, so Scruff-T is offered as collateral should they fail to pay the remaining 200.  She sits like a good girl between my legs during the entire lobola negotiations.  At several points she even snorts at the correct moments, which caused the families to chuckle warily at how perceptive she was.

Then the groom’s family veils the bride, who is crying.  They drape the female elders of the bride’s family with blankets and shawls.  They have accepted her into their family and the negotiations are complete. 

After that, everyone files outside and stands outside of the crawl.  Several young men go inside the crawl.  One has a spear and stalks the two cows that are to be slaughtered.  Perhaps sensing their impending doom, the normally docile cattle run back and forth skittishly as the young man walks behind them with his spear.

He strikes a large black cow just behind the front leg, striking the artery.  The cow is in a panic and somehow manages to jump the fence.  The crowd jeers and men quickly go restrain it with a rope.  It soon lays down and dies.

The second cow to be killed is brown.  He strikes this one more cleanly, and it stands patiently until it bleeds out.  The crowd erupts into cheers as it finally falls to its knees.

Quickly, knives and buckets are brought out and men and women expertly beginning skinning and butchering the cows.  

There’s a lot of laughter.  The cows will be eaten tomorrow.  For now, it’s just a party until the wee hours of the morning. 

  

Why You Should Hire A Returned Peace Corps Volunteer

Applying for jobs after the Peace Corps can be a daunting task.  After all, Peace Corps is advertised as “the toughest job you’ll ever love.”  What work experience could possibly live up to that?  And how on earth do you explain to potential employers what kind of expertise you will bring to the table?  Here’s my list of reasons why YOU should hire a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. 

1.        We are cross culture experts.

This claim is flung around quite loosely these days by every college senior who spent a semester downing cervezas in Barcelona or pints in Dublin.  But Peace Corps Volunteers have gone above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to working in cross-cultural environments.  We’ve woken up before sunrise to harvest maize by hand and worn long skirts and headscarves in 110 degree heat.  We’ve learned obscure languages and acquired the blessings of local chiefs.  We’ve tried the local delicacy and spent the following 24 hours running back and forth to the latrine.  We’ve done our jobs in countries where conceptions of work and time vary drastically from our own.  We’ve bitten our tongues when our looks are dissected by total strangers, we’ve waded through marriage proposals during business meetings, and we’ve sat for hours in the uncomfortable local sitting position.  And we’ve (hopefully) done it all without offending the locals.           

2.       We don’t sweat the small stuff.

The projector is broken and we have a presentation in 15 minutes?!  Peace Corps Volunteers don’t sweat it.  If we can’t fix it with some spare parts we find in the trash bins, we’ll wing the presentation with grace and style.  We have seen too many truly tragic and heartbreaking things to get lost in the minutia of everyday life.  We work hard but can recognize the difference between a minor episode and a major emergency.       

3.       We are generalists, not specialists.

Our wide range of skills can be deployed at any moment.  Just because our official Peace Corps job was “Community Health HIV/AIDS Educator” does not mean we just went around slapping condoms on bananas for two years.  We’ve written grants, negotiated contracts, organized professional workshops, and taught classes.  We’ve babysat, experimented with permaculture techniques, and provided career guidance.  We’ve gathered statistics and created organizational linkages.  And we did all of this in a foreign culture without easy access to internet or other resource materials.  Oh- and we also know the proper way to butcher a goat. 

4.       We are patient and tenacious.

How many times have we walked many miles to get to an important meeting?  And at those meetings, how many times did we wait four or more hours for it to start?  And how many times did we get turned away after waiting those four hours when the meeting was postponed?  It has happened more times than we care to count.  But we don’t give up.  We keep walking those miles; we keep calling the people we need to talk to.  We bring other work with us to do while we wait; we get our male colleagues to call on our behalf so that the contact will take us seriously.  We see delays and problems which try our patience as a way to work even harder.  Our tenacity will win out in the end. 

5.       We’re grateful for what we have.

A Peace Corps budget is hardly luxurious.  We’ve eaten around the moldy bits of bread and vegetables and washed our hair in a bucket with less frequency than anyone should disclose.  We’ve squatted for four hours on overcrowded public transport downwind of a poopy diaper and we’ve cried with joy when the rains finally came.  These may sound like hardships, but we know we have it better off than many people.  If you give us a job, we will always be grateful for that.  

6.       We believe in community service.

We care about our neighbors and do what we can to help them.  We can put our egos aside to work for the common good.  We feel good when we do well unto others.  If you hire us, chances are that we will be heavily involved in community service initiatives at work as well. 

7.       We follow the unofficial Peace Corps motto: “Make it work.”

We see solutions where others would throw up their hands and walk away from a problem.  We’ve crossed rivers lugging bags of cement and managed to keep the cement dry.  We’ve made model cars out of old wire and turned cardboard juice boxes into beautiful wallets.  We’ve had plans go horribly wrong, but adapted our approach to turn our failures into successes.  We’ve thought outside the box while still remaining within the appropriate cultural framework. 

So there it is, folks.  Seven big reasons why Returned Peace Corps Volunteers make great employees.  If you’d like to hire me, let me know! 

On What We Leave Behind

The less time I have here, the more I find myself wanting to leave a legacy behind.  Legacy is such a formal word, though.  It’s a word you hear at funerals and monument unveilings.  It is something permanent that shows that all your efforts were not in vain.  I don’t think it’s vanity to want to leave a legacy behind in Swaziland.  If I didn’t, would the blood, sweat, and tears I’ve spent in this country mean nothing? 

Whenever you get two or more volunteers sitting around together, we debate the potential futility of our efforts.  We struggle with different philosophies of development, and we secretly hold our own philosophy as superior to those of other volunteers.  We all find our philosophies superior to those of the big NGOs and missionaries.  By the time two years are up, we want to punch anyone who dares to utter the words “sustainable projects” in our presence without ever having done one on the ground. 

I’m not naïve about the outcome.  Twenty years from now, my village will probably still look the same.  The road leading to it will still be dirt, most parents will still struggle to feed their children and pay their school fees, and electricity and water will only be available to the lucky few.  I haven’t uplifted my entire community.  If someone ever claims to have done this, I would be very skeptical.  So what have I done?  What is my “legacy”? 

·         I will have built a library- the first one in the entire chiefdom. 

 

·         I taught about 20 adults and around 150 teenagers basic computer literacy.

·         I directed Peace Corps Swaziland’s female empowerment initiative and increased our camp size by 1/3.  Check out the video:

http://youtu.be/CLvGt7bOXdY

·         I started a community garden for orphans and vulnerable children.

·         I educated our soccer league (12 teams) on reproductive health. 

·         I kept a previous volunteer’s income generating project alive against all odds and acquired a grant for it.

·         I conducted a business management and fruit tree propagation training for the seedling nursery.

·         I planted two orange groves for two different communities. 

·         I helped many students pass English with nightly tutoring sessions.

·         I introduced worthy people to scholarship opportunities and competitions.

·         I helped with small tasks at the clinic.

·         I provided fun activities for Kindergartners on a daily basis.

·         I started a girls’ club in my community.

….But all of this will be forgotten soon, probably not long after I board the plane home.  So this is not a legacy, because a legacy is something lasting. 

What I admire about Peace Corps is that we live in the communities we work in.  When you mention Peace Corps to rich city-folk, though, they don’t understand how we are different from any of the hundreds of NGOs or (terrible) missionaries which roll into the village in their big white SUVs and roll out again before dark.  We stay.  We learn the language and understand the needs and power structures within our communities.  We strive to be a part of the community- to be (almost) Swazi.  City people cannot know the daily struggle for tiny increments of progress nor can they achieve the accomplishments listed above.  Perhaps they see me as merely a tourist in these peoples’ lives.

So what is my legacy, if only intangible? 

My legacy is simply that I was here.  How many times have I been approached by a man or woman, grinningly asking “Are you a volunteer?”

“Yes,” I would answer nervously, wary of a long conversation about sponsorship. 

“I knew a volunteer once,” that person would say.  “His name was Frank.  I miss him too much…”

Or they would say: “I once had a Peace Corps teacher.  Mr. Johnson cared about us a lot.  He thought I was brilliant at school and even wanted to pay my school fees.”

Or: “My friend Welile was my best friend.  My very best friend.”

Or: “We once had a volunteer stay with us.  Her name was Ashley.  Do you know her?”

Or: “I worked with Bob.  He did HIV testing with me at the clinic.  He really loved it here.”

See, Peace Corps Volunteers have been in the rural areas for generations now.  We’re not centered in the towns and we’re not flashy like MSF or ICAP, so no one has heard of us there.  But in the rural areas, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who at one point wasn’t taught by a Peace Corps Volunteer. 

I love those conversations, as they are the most positive affirmation one could ever get.  It is affirmation that years-decades even- after you leave, someone still thinks of you fondly.  That is what I hope my legacy is.  That one day, 20 years from now or so, my little host brother (by then a grown man of 27) will spot an American walking down by the soccer pitch.

“Hey you!” he’ll call out, running over to some nervous Peace Corps Volunteer with a backpack on. 

“Are you a volunteer? …I knew a volunteer once.  Her name was Zanele and she was my sister.”

 

 

On Poverty Porn

Had I seen the documentary “Born into Brothels” a few years ago, I probably would have liked it.  The chaotic scenes of Calcutta’s red light district, the snippets of Hindi I can halfway understand, and the starkly hopeless portrayal of the film’s childlike subjects make for a very compelling film. 

But these days…it looks like poverty porn.  I have no doubt that the filmmakers made the documentary with the best of intentions and that the white woman who helped the children had nothing but love and good intentions for the kids.  And while it’s necessary to be exposed to the harsh realities of life in other parts of the world, it’s so much easier to zoom in your Nokia lens on the eyes of a child whose skin color is different and who doesn’t live in your own backyard.

Let’s turn the camera around for a moment to really examine the crassness of such an action.  Let’s say a young African backpacker rode up into your town one day and started taking pictures and filming your children.  You know that when he goes home, he will speak of our quaintness, our backwards ways, and our strange jobs.  He will post pictures of our children online without our permission and he will take pictures of us doing our jobs to post on a cheeky Instagram entitled “These are real jobs in America.”  He will not learn our names, and he will promise to send us the pictures.  Maybe he will even promise to pay our children’s school fees.  But he won’t. 

I used to bring backpackers into my community.  I would get frustrated when, on my weekly night in town, they would sit around the bar of the hostel and talk about how developed and rich people are here.  (Swaziland, like many countries, hides its poverty well off the main tourist route).  So I would offer to show them “the real” Swaziland….Or at least the Swaziland that 70% of the people live in.  It is a Swaziland with dirty naked babies, strangely colorful religious rituals, and lots of opportunities for that perfect “African” Instagram photo to share with your friends back home. 

So I would take them to my community, and they would have a very moving experience as people welcomed them with open arms.  They would take lots of photos and promise to email them to me so that I could print them for my friends who had welcomed them so kindly.  And despite my follow-up requests…not a single backpacker has ever emailed me the photos. 

Like the film “Born into Brothels,” the experiences of backpackers are less about the people whose lives they are documenting and more about their experiences as amateur photographers on the road in wild and savage lands.  My least favorite had to have been the French-Canadian photographer who refused to cover up his tattoo when I asked him.  His goal was to go to every country in the world.  Swaziland was 140-something and he threw a tantrum when I told him he wouldn’t be able to exchange his money at the bank on a Sunday. 

I sometimes feel that I may be guilty of perpetuating the “poor African” stereotype, if only to a lesser extent.  But then I remind myself that I would never point a camera at my host brother and make a world-famous documentary about him.  Because the documentary wouldn’t really be about him, but what he represents as just another AIDS orphan in Africa.  Because that’s how it would come across.  A movie wouldn’t show how he does in school, his favorite movie, his favorite thing to draw, and that he loves to play ball.  A movie would only show him as that poor African child who has a white woman interested in saving him.  I shudder to think that any artist with a video camera come here and record the lives of the people I love as if they were noble savages or something.  But it happens every day.  And is this blog not also a kind of testament to “my adventures in Swaziland”? (Mission trips are the worst in terms of the noble savage imagery, but at least their hearts are less selfish than those of backpackers). 

So here’s my etiquette list for backpackers, artistic types, missionaries, and anyone else traveling to any neck of the woods anywhere, ever:

1.       Don’t talk about a country you’ve been in for two seconds (or less than 6 months) negatively.

2.       Let locals help, but don’t expect their kindness to be free.  Tip any man or woman who helps you a few bucks.  If they refuse, great.  If not, know that they probably needed it a lot more than you.

3.       10% gratuity is polite in restaurants in southern Africa.  Don’t take advantage.  Tips are usually shared collectively and supplement a meager income.

4.       Lifts are also not free unless they refuse your cash.

5.       Don’t complain about your hectic time trying to arrange local transport.  This is called daily life, and your privilege reeks when you do it.

6.       Don’t say “I’m glad I paid a bribe.  I just wanted to have the experience.”  (A backpacker actually said this to me recently).  Bribes are embarrassing for your hosts.

7.       Don’t over-barter unless you know you’re getting ripped off.  You clearly have enough money to travel abroad and are undervaluing craftsmen’s work when you force them to earn mere pennies off of a sale. 

8.       Do NOT take pictures without the permission of the subjects.  (This one annoys me SO MUCH!) Furthermore, tell them how you will use those photos. 

9.       Don’t make promises you can’t keep. “Yes, I will sponsor a child,” is easy in the heat of the moment and the warmth of their smiles.  It’s a lot harder to commit to on the other side.

10.   Learn the names of the maids at the hostels you stay at, not just the names of the white bartenders.

Sorry for the rant…I guess I’m just frustrated from my interactions with travelers who don’t really even care about this place other than to check off another country on their list before moving on to their next Instagram moment.

Any Given Saturday

“When I talk to people at home about the pandemic, I get the sense that they feel a dying African is somehow different from a dying Canadian, American or German- that Africans have lower expectations or place less value on their lives.  That to be an orphaned fifteen-year-old thrust into caring for four bewildered siblings, or a teacher thrown out of her house after she tells her husband she is infected- that somehow this would be less terrifying or strange for a person in Zambia or Mozambique than it would be for someone in the United States or Britain.”

---Stephanie Nolen, 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa

It’s been a long time since I went to a funeral. 

A neighbor and relative of my host family died of TB.  No one says AIDS.  He leaves behind many sweet children who are now double orphans.  Two of his daughters are my artists- they come almost every day after school to carefully color in the lines in my coloring books. 

I wake up on Saturday around 5:30.  I bucket bathe and make an omelet for breakfast.  My host mom knocks on my door around 7:30.  “Zanele, I am going to cut some maize, and then I am going.” 

“Ok, I’ll be ready in 5 minutes,” I tell her.  I have a 10kg bag of rice we’re taking to the family.  I bought it months ago and no one but a mouse has nibbled on it since then.  I want to help the family, who I know to be extremely poor.     

Women are already well into the throws of cooking when we arrive.  The men are throwing tarps over the houses to create a space for the night vigil.  A girl who lives on the homestead walks around with a face mask hanging around her neck.  I am worried that the homestead has more than one case of active TB.

I follow my host mom around like a puppy and my puppy follows me.  At one point, my host mom goes home with an old lady, so I follow.  She points out an herb that lowers blood pressure, so we help the old lady collect some.  Then we tear off the leaves to put in a pot to boil.   

We go back to the homestead of the funeral, which is only a 5 minute walk away.  One of my artists proudly shows me how she can draw perfectly symmetrical circles on the sand.  All of his kids look like they’re doing fine.  They are tired and kept busy, but they seem fine. 

Then my host mom takes me to a rondhovel that’s a bit separated from the homestead.  The smell of fermenting maize washes over me as I duck through the low doorway.  In a giant water barrel, the fermenting maize is making a bubbling and popping sound.  It is uncombodze, the traditional Swazi alcoholic beverage of choice.  It takes 3 days to ferment and a white Swazi once told me that sometimes an old battery is dropped into the mix to speed the process.  If a whole barrel seems like a lot for a funeral, keep in mind that the drink has a really low alcohol percentage- usually between 1 and 3%.  I’ve tried it before, and know that I’d need to drink at least a gallon before I would even start to taste the alcohol in it. 

We spend the next hour or so straining the solid bits of maize out of the brew by dumping it in buckets over mesh bags.  It smells pretty good and our hands and fronts become soaked and sticky with the chunky pieces of maize.  When we are finished, the brew begins frothing and overflowing out of the smaller water barrels we’d transferred it to.        

After that, the day is a blur of washing dishes and chopping liselwa- a Swazi indigenous squash that is rather tasteless.  I am offered food repeatedly, which I keep refusing as politely as possible even as I become hungrier and hungrier.  I know that I am snubbing their food, but I also know that I will be violently ill if I eat it, especially eating with my hands and with no clean water or soap to wash with.

The body arrives around 4.  There is some hushed panic on the homestead, as they don’t have the requisite number of pallbearers.  Any man standing around quickly runs to the coffin to help.  Only 5 adult men can be found, so one old woman is the 6^th pallbearer as they carry the blanket covered coffin from the truck to the tent.  The neighbor women follow the coffin singing a subdued hymn in low tones. 

Suddenly, the women who had been laughing and working alongside me all day break down.  Other women are quick to soothe them.  But the worst is the children.  The sweet, sweet girls who are my artists break into wails calling for their papa.  They are quickly taken inside and held by their female relatives, but their wailing continues over the hymns. 

I stand outside staring at my toes.  I try and concentrate on anything but the noise of their grief.  I am standing with the girls’ school friends.  They, too, are uncharacteristically quiet.  We are all staring at various spots on the ground, trying to build walls around our ears with our minds.

I leave then to feed Scruff-T and I don’t go back.  This is a small funeral.  There will be no distracting myself or distancing myself from the bereaved around me.  So I decide to get some sleep and wake up very early the next morning to go to the end of the funeral.    

I wake at 5 in the morning and throw a scarf over my hair.  I leave with a flashlight, but the sun is already rising by the time I get to the road.  As I get to the road, I see the funeral procession coming towards me, so I turn and begin walking with a friend of mine.

He asks about funeral customs in America and my relationship to the deceased.  He is heartily amused by my explanation of an Irish-American wake and also intrigued when I explain that funerals are attended by only those close to the deceased and bereaved.  As we walk, the number of mourners behind us swells to about 200.  All of the closest neighbors have come to the burial.  With over 200 mourners, it is the smallest Swazi funeral I’ve ever attended. 

We walk the kilometer or so to the unofficial graveyard of the community.  The only way you can tell it is a graveyard is the humps of earth and the occasional arrangement of stones over some of the humps.  An old man asks me for my dog in exchange for a cow.

“No, I will give you my dog for 20 cows.  You must pay lobola.”

All of the men around me crack up.  “Zanele- this is not a wife!” One laughs, pointing at Scruff-T. 

“Ahh, but she is my baby, so he must pay lobola.” 

By now we have arrived at the grave and we spend the next 20 minutes singing songs as the body is lowered into the ground.  I realize that everyone has divided at the gravesite by gender and that I am on the male side.  I slide discreetly towards the back of the crowd and join the women.  My host family grieves close to the grave with the family. 

I begin to slowly become distressed as I realize that I forgot to bring small coins for the collection.  Around this point in the funeral, a collection is taken up to help pay for funeral expenses.  As the only white person in attendance, I feel scrutinized and judged already.  Luckily, one of the women walking back summons me to go with her to help dish up the take-away containers.  The portion sizes are small, but there is somehow enough for everyone.  I quickly scarf down a meager portion of rice and gristle between washing dishes.  Later, a woman offers me a large plate piled high with side dishes, a sign of respect for my status and close familial relationship to the deceased.  I am touched, but tell her I have already eaten.    

When I get home after dishing and washing dishes, I get a whatsapp (like texting but cheaper) from one of our GLOW counselors informing me that one of our own GLOW counselors has also passed and was also buried last night.  She leaves behind a 4,6, and 8 year old.  As I sit on my phone sending out messages to the GLOW community informing them of her passing, my little bhuti comes in and wants to watch his favorite movie.  He rests his head in my lap as I nod off to sleep.  Funerals for me will forever be associated with the sensations of sleeplessness.