Community Day

I don’t put many pictures in here, so I thought this month I’d add a few of a recent community event.  A friend took these photos, and I just love how everyone is having a great time in them.  I especially like that this entire event (although sponsored by American-financed organizations) was put on by Swazis.  As far as I know, I was the only non-Swazi to play any part in it.

The day before the event, an NGO truck rolled into the clinic and unloaded about 50 live chickens and enough food to feed the estimated 1,000 guests.  Community members began arriving and we proceeded to spend the entire afternoon butchering them.  Soooo gross.  I established myself as a cheese girl who didn’t know the proper way to gut a chicken.  (Cheese boys and girls are like city-slickers who faint at the trials of rural life).  By the end of the day, I was a pro at killing and cleaning chickens.  All parts of the chicken were used; intestines, feet, and heads included. 

On the day of the event, I went to the clinic at 6 and helped load the truck to take to the Umphakatsi.  This is the community meeting place located in each chiefdom and known in English as the “royal kraal”.  Usually only married women have to cover their heads at Umphakatsi, but the nurse told both my unmarried friend and I to go to her house to grab some scarves before we left.  I cooked, chopped and washed dishes all day while the NGOs gave community talks.  Different dances and skits revolving around HIV were performed.  The entire community was there, and 71 people got tested for HIV.  Of those, only 8 tested positive.  It is perhaps an encouraging sign that only 8 people tested positive, as it is well below the national average.  The lives of those people and the lives of their families will be forever changed, but that’s 8 more people who are also now empowered to protect their sexual partners.       

These aren’t the kind of photos you’d see on Save the Children infomercials; because they’re not the kind of photos that make you want to crack open your checkbook with guilt.  They don’t focus on the poverty of the subjects, but rather on their happiness and togetherness- two characteristics of Swazis I deeply admire.

A lot of times, Peace Corps volunteers in Swaziland feel frustrated that their work isn’t sustainable or isn’t helping anyone out in the long run.  We worry that we’ll come back to our communities in a decade and nothing will have changed.  We hold long, heated discussions about whether or not we’re perpetuating a cycle of dependency.  Sometimes we even wonder if anyone will miss us for any other reason than that we were mobile ATMs while we were here.

 But on that day, I had no doubts about the resilience and capabilities of my community.  No one called me Umlungu or asked me for money.  We just worked side by side to give our community an amazing day.  When the event ended late in the afternoon, the whole village seemed to be working at breaking down the tents and cleaning up.  They did this all while laughing and singing loudly.