Teddy Bears and Baby Cobras

This has been a pretty busy month. School has restarted and we are starting to get to know some of the high school students through the weekly Health Club meetings. They seem to be a pretty nice bunch of kids (although some of them aren’t really “kids” persay at 20-23 years old). I think one of the first things we are going to work with them on is a world map. This is a project which is funded by “Friends of Swaziland” through Peace Corps. (http://www.friendsofswaziland.org/) We will use a grid and paints provided through their donations to paint a mural of the world map on one of the outside walls of the school building. This we hope will be doublely good as 1) a project to work together on to get to know each other and be productive and 2) to increase all those who happen to glance at it geographic perspective. The lack of knowledge in regards to geography is astounding. Even compared to mine which is rather atrocious in itself. Which I guess would lead us to 3) help my own geographical knowledge (this is Amy and not Joe as his geography is really rather good).

Anyways, we have been busy with that along with the planning of an event we held for the orphans and vulnerable children in our community. We were able to work with several donors including a wonderful woman from the U.S. Embassy who participates with the Mother Bear Project (http://www.motherbearproject.org/). All of the children received a teddy bear and some other small items and then we followed with a lesson for the children about general health and HIV/AIDS prevention.

Other than that we have been keeping up with the local HIV/AIDS support group which is a wonderful group of people in the community. They are trying to work on a couple of projects including a chicken project and a grinding mill. A grinding mill is important in Swaziland because the main staple food is ground maize boiled with water. They have an amazing amount of different ways to prepare such a simple dish. Anyways, so the grinding mill is very important and the closest one is about 6 km from our community. This doesn’t seem that far but when you don’t have your own vehicle and you have to lug heavy bags of maize wither on the bus (which costs extra $ in addition to the fee to grind the maize) or by foot, then it is a long way. So this would be good for the entire community.

The end of this month brought much to do as we were fortunate to receive a visit from the recently appointed Director of Peace Corps. Director Tschetter along with his wife and several other VIPs came to visit our homestead. It was great to meet everyone and we found out that Director Tschetter and his wife are both originally from South Dakota ! Crazy! In preparation for their visit the entire homestead was going crazy with cleaning, yard maintenance, ect. I now know the finer points of sweeping dirt and polishing cement. It truly does make them both look nicer!

While out in the front of our porch Joe noticed the chickens making a ruckus about something near the cement base of our house. Right in front of our bedroom windows was a baby Mozambican Spitting Cobra! It was only about 1.5 feet long but I was still a little freaked out. It continued to go along the base of the house towards the porch, periodically rising up and displaying its hood when Joe poked at it with a stick. Eventually it got to its intended destination, climbed up the brick wall of our porch and into a little nook in th decorative brick 4 feet off the ground. It looked like it knew the way so we assume it has been living there. One of our bobhuti (brothers) then killed it with a broom. Can’t say I was sad to see it go but Joe wanted to let him stay.

So, it has been a busy month and now we are looking forward to March. Supposedly winter is coming at the end of March…….we will see.