... Is shared.

"Happiness is not so much in having as sharing. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." - Norman Macewan

Our guest blogger is Sean’s Mom, Chris, who came for a visit along with Evan, Sean’s twin brother:

 We visited one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the World … we spotted 4 of Africa’s Big 5 game animals … we climbed to the peak of a mountain which legends tell is the site of King Solomon’s Mines … we accumulated 4 passport pages full of stamps … but BY FAR the best and most fulfilling part of our trip to Africa was finding Sean and Grace there. As you know, our precious son and daughter-in-law/twin brother and sister-in-law are PCVs serving in the tiny Kingdom of Swaziland since June 2015. 

Sean and Grace have been wonderful communicators since they left the USA. They have blogged “This Life of Ours …”, written notes, emails and texts, passed along photos and newsletters, and managed regular phone calls from halfway across the world despite lousy internet and major time differences. For 3 weeks they invited us into their lives in their newest home and shared everything – families, language, food and water, culture, work, play, church – they even shared their pee bucket! We witnessed them working hard and loving well and as a result, we gained perspective and new context for all their communications. The day-to-day happenings of their “Swazi-life” mean so much more now and we feel honored to have had the experience. We are so very grateful!

Our sweet “children” introduced us to family. Sean and Grace’s tiny hut is actually quite spacious and they have made it home with her creative colorful touch and his skillful ingenuity. They divide chores and responsibilities and respect each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Job well done “Team Collins”! The Shabangu and Dlamini families are every bit as special as Sean and Grace have said. Make Shabangu has a huge heart (and huge pigs) and she is most definitely worthy of being our children’s Mom while they are so far away! I get the distinct feeling of “entertaining angels unaware” in her presence. Babe Dlamini is an affable family patriarch and proud nkhosi (of the king) countryman – he taught me so much about his heritage in such a short time. They are all wonderful people who we will never forget.

Our gracious hosts included us in worship. Again I am astounded at how big our God is and am thankful for the community of believers sharing truth and love in the tiny block church at the end of a dirt path in KaLanga.  Here, praise music echoes joy. Pastor Saul preaches and prays (entirely in English) passionately about living “all in” Christ. The words of the old hymn come to mind: “Blessed be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love; the fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above”.

                With pending projects and deadlines, these two diligent volunteers incorporated us in their work. I could go on and on about Peace Corps projects – it is mind-boggling how much has already been accomplished. Sipho and Siphiwe have learned the language and immersed themselves into the culture of their community. The results are that they are known and respected, developing long-lasting relationships, and being accepted into everyday work and activities. To their credit there are also 24 homesteads with new permagardens, each with a grey-water filter for sustainability; a refurbished library at St. Paul’s Primary School with an active Library Club and well over a thousand new age-appropriate books due to arrive next month; on-going HIV/AIDS education with weekly pickup basketball games thrown in; a productive chicken co-op; teddy bears for children to cuddle during clinic visits; and 1 of 25 playgrounds coming to fruition in the very near future. Sean and Grace work hard and efficiently. Their passion for the Swazi people and their PC projects is positively remarkable! It is truly inspiring to have shared this glimpse of their “jobs” and yes, most definitely, I am a very proud Momma.  Evan (aka Speed Tech PC) was able to install Windows 10 as well as provide much needed support to the high school computer lab. During a visit to the SOS Health Clinic I met 2 amazing nurses and a pregnant Mom (my first maternal exam since nursing school 30+ years ago). Eish! Hopefully attempts at encouraging our professional counterparts in Swaziland were successful because they too were inspiring to watch at work.

We also played together … a lot! We talked tirelessly and laughed and cried as we discovered history, enjoyed nature, and tasted unknown meats together. We were drenched by the powerful mist on both the Zimbabwe and Zambia sides of Victoria Falls. We hiked tough trails to Sheba’s Breasts and Nyonyane Mountain and blazed our own path between rock cairns of Mahamba Gorge. Swaziland’s dramatic landscape is beautiful and saturated with color despite the terrible drought and we were privileged to get our feet very dirty. With Evan as our expert driver (he quickly mastered driving on the left, maneuvering around cows, pedestrians, speed bumps, khumbis, and buses), Sean as our uncanny navigator (that map in his head is extensive), and a whole host of knowledgeable safari guides, we visited the country’s 3 Big Game Parks – Hlane, Mkhaya, and Mlilwane. Evan and I had a wonderful 3-day camp out in Kruger National Park, SA as well. We got up close and personal with amazing wildlife – rhino, giraffe, zebra, elephant, lion, hyena, waterbuck, wildebeest, water buffalo, crocodile, nyala, birds, warthog, hippo, impala and a variety of antelope. We learned to watch wildlife comfort zones and identify the impala’s noisy mating call.  Our friendly competition of naming new baby rhinos and giraffes was entertaining. We admired a myriad of authentic craftsmen and artists at work as well as their lovely wares. We sang and we danced and the Collins brothers kicked Swazi-style (or attempted to I should say). We were awestruck by radiant rainbows and picturesque sunsets. We packed a lot of playing in to our time together and I think we all have plenty of memorable storytelling material to share for many a campfire to come.

I get great satisfaction from carefully planning and researching our travel destinations, but this time Sean and Grace did most of the prep work and I hoped and prayed for a time of encouragement and refreshment for them with Evan and me there. I think my hope came true … and we were refreshed too! As a traveler I have learned to be flexible and expect change. Sean is 30 pounds lighter, Grace glows with a new tan … I knew to expect that. I expected changes more than “skin deep” too but you never really know what you’re gonna’ get. American writer Henry Miller said, “One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of seeing things.” At the risk of sounding sappy I’ll end with this: SiSwati names have meanings – Sipho and Siphiwe mean “gift” and “gifted”; Evan was given his siSwati name Sibusiso which means “blessing” by a sweet Hlane hostess. After some careful thought from a Make working in Mkhaya, I was given a siSwati name too – “You must be more than just ‘Make’”, she proclaimed, “Yebo! I name you Sibusiwe, meaning ‘You are blessed/We are blessed’ to have you visit Swaziland.” Perfect! Our visit and all that was shared along the way was truly extraordinary. Yebo! … We are blessed!

 

...is pending.

If "plan A" fails, remember you have 25 letters left. - Henry Guest

Pending…pending…pending. This post has been pending for some time now. Much of our life here with Peace Corps Swaziland is in a pending state. Currently, with two grants in the works for our library and chicken cooperative projects, our pending lifestyle has finally consumed us. It's not such a bad thing really, I mean our patience with all things is growing exponentially, as more and more things hit the pending stage, but there is a small drawback. Eventually, all of the pending is actually happening, and it's usually actually happening when we would be fine for it to remain pending a few days. Let me try to explain using last week as an example.

On Monday of last week Grace and I both received notice that our grants were approved by the small grants committee of PC Swaziland and PC Washington. Each volunteer may have one active grant at a time so Grace’s is a grant for the KaLanga Women’s Chicken Farming Cooperative, and mine is for library renovations at St. Paul’s Primary School, but I must add that Grace wrote both grants. She has grant writing and monitoring and evaluation gift, and I have a facilitating trainings gift, we’re a good team if I may say so. Anyways, both grants approved and immediately moved into the pending category of our lives. It takes up to two weeks for the money to actually get to my account for my grant, and it takes up to two weeks for Grace’s grant to get posted on the PC’s fundraising website. (Hence why Grace uses the term grant reluctantly, she prefers “monitored fundraising”) So, it's Monday and we already have two pending projects. We need to paint the library whilst the primary school is on break, but with the grant pending, painting is pending. We need to deliver 100 poultry transport crates to the Co-op before the chickens reach full maturity in the next 2-3 weeks but with the grant pending, delivery is pending. We also have a very successful permagardening project still underway. We officially finished all of the training sites last week and now, pending completion of each caregivers own permagarden, delivery of seeds, seedlings, and buckets is pending. As you can see, much of our life is pending.

 What happens when pending moves to actually happening is a source of much stress and excitement in our lives. As many of you know, we were set to meet my mom and brother for a vacation to Victoria Falls,in the midst of all the pendingness (Yes I made up that word). We will be in and out of the country and our community intermittently over the next three weeks, but with the expectation that pending will move to actually happening in that same time frame, it's been exciting and stressing to build-in pending work days to our vacation. On Thursday of last week, we were incredibly happy we did build-in some pending workdays as we bought seedlings and buckets for 3 gardens to plant over the weekend. After planting those three we had already made a plan to plant 5 more when we return to Swaziland next week. Pending to actually happening. We have time allotted to paint our library on two weekends depending on when our grant money moves from pending to actually happening. We have several times identified where we’ll be passing through Manzini and able to place our order and  setup delivery for poultry crates depending on when pending moves to actually happening. 

This blog post has now been pending for 4 days as we’ve explored Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe and Zambia, but it's time for it to actually happen I think. We’re headed back to Swaziland eagerly anticipating the sudden rush of things actually happening.

This life of ours… has some visitors.

“I like our God” – Make Shabangu

There is a restaurant somewhere between Mbabane and Matsapha, and not too far off of the main road called MR3, named Mugg and Bean. Experts estimate that if a person were to make their way to that particular Mugg and Bean, which happens to be the only one in Swaziland, they would have about a seventy-five percent chance of running into a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). PCVs come for the coffee and the food and the WiFi. And just maybe, they also come because seventy-five percent is a pretty good chance. Printed on the paper coasters at Mugg and Bean, there is a saying. The saying goes: “You can do anything, but not everything”. CeeGee and I had the honor, privilege, and blessing of visiting Grace and Sean over the past couple of weeks. In a word, the visit was extraordinary. It’s still sinking in. But I suspect that it is the sort of visit that will change us. It will make us better. It can’t help but do so, because we witnessed two people who truly lived the wisdom of that Mugg and Bean saying. What follows will be sort of a chronology of events. It won’t be everything for sure. My memory is not that good. But hopefully it will be enough to provide a sense of the visit CeeGee and I had and the life that Grace and Sean lead. By the way, my name is Jeff McCord(Grace’s Dad), and I will be your guest blogger for this edition of This Life of Ours… 

“Turn right and stay left…” that was the mantra after we picked up the Corolla Quest at the car rental place in Mbabane. I had never driven on the left side of the road in a foreign country, but PCVs are not permitted to drive in-country, so I was the choice. Sean rode shot-gun, which was on the left side of the vehicle, because he has the uncanny ability to find his way around. It’s truly remarkable. And I needed all the help I could get. Before we got started, I told Sean that I also needed him not to be nice. He needed to speak up in a non-polite way should I drift to the right or approach a cow too fast on the left. He just needed to conquer his innate goodness. Grace emphasized the point, and CeeGee moved to the seat directly behind me so that she couldn’t see what was happening. So, with Sean re-programmed to be mean and CeeGee intentionally in the dark, we headed off both on and in a Quest. 

We had arrived a few days before, braved the hike and the heights of Table Mountain, ran a half-marathon in Cape Town,ate a lot of good food, and spent time with two other PCVs by the names of Shar and Hannah. They are Grace’s and Sean’s good friends and some of the highest quality people you’d ever hope to know. By the way, it’s easy to pick out the PCVs after a road race. They are the ones who don’t waste their food. There is no careless toss of a half-eaten apple into the trash can or just a few sips from a soft drink. Everything is accounted for and everything is used, or it’s kept for the later. They possess an awareness that is unusual. It probably has something to do with gratefulness. Later, we made the border crossing from South Africa into Swaziland after a long shuttle drive from Johannesburg, which brings us back to the Quest.

Our first stop was the Shabangus, which is the family that Grace and Sean lived with during their training period. Babe Shabangu (the homestead’s patriarch) passed away near the end of that period. So, we didn’t get to know him, but his presence was there. We visited for a long while with conversation coming and going like the wind. Just being together spoke more than any tongue or turn of phrase ever could. Presence is a universal language, immune from the nuance of culture or custom. The Shabangu family was recently asked to host another PCV this year, but they didn’t understand the question. How could they host another PCV when their children were still in the country? Maybe after Grace and Sean went back to America, but for now their children needed to feel welcome to return home any time. The Shabangus have that kind of homestead, and Swaziland is that kind of country. Grace and Sean are also those kinds of people. When we stood up to leave, CeeGee kissed and hugged Make Shabangu with a loving fierceness - a combination that few people besides my wife are capable of. Then she did it again, and once again. No words were spoken. No words were needed. All of us knew it was a raw and heartfelt thank you for being her daughter’s mother, while she was so far away.

We hiked up another very tall mountain. This one is called Sheba’s Breast. Sheba has a very big breast (just saying). I sort of blame Grace for all the hiking. If she wasn’t so interested in being good to her mother, I’m pretty sure we would have stayed a lot more stationary. But I suppose that’s just her nature. On the way up the mountain, a Swazi lady was coming down. The lady had a few stray sticks and leaves in her hair. It’s a tough hike. Grace greeted her and without really thinking about it picked the debris from her new friend’s scalp. Down the lady went and up we went, never exchanging names only kindness. Over the next few days, we took the Quest on a couple self-directed game drives where we saw Zebras, Warthogs, Crocodiles, a very large lizard looking thing, Elephants, Hippos, all manner of deer-like gazelle looking animals, and Rhinos. We took the Quest where the Quest had no business going. But the Quest went anyway. And when we came across a very large mama Rhino with her very small baby Rhino, the Quest backed away slowly and took us to safety. I don’t know if the Corolla Quest is sold in the States. But I highly recommend going in on one.

We hiked another very tall mountain. This one is called Execution Rock, because they used to throw criminals off of it as a form of capital punishment. By the time we got to the top, I thought about committing a crime so I that I could just take the quick way down. When the Swazi’s are incredulous about something they say, “How?” With eyes wide open and a bemused look on their faces, they ask this most basic question. I like that. I like that a lot. I think I’ll start saying it. And as I looked out from Execution Rock and back toward CeeGee, Grace, and Sean, I asked it to myself. “How?” Heights and I are not friends, but the views from Table Mountain, Sheba’s Breast, and Execution Rock were breathtaking. I am glad for the climbs and most especially for the company. Whether you are going to this side or that side, there is something about going together that is just better than going alone. How indeed. After we got off of Execution Rock, it was time to head to the homestead. 

Grace and Sean have Swazi names. They are Siphiwe and Sipho. They mean “gifted” and “gift”, respectively. They live as members of the family on the Dlamini homestead. They have sisters and a brother, and a mother and a father, who worry for them, laugh with them, and ask after them. It’s a family. They live in a small home with no running water. They divide chores, cook great dinners, conserve water, make epic journeys via public transportation, and worship in a church just a little way down a dirt road. They serve their community through projects like permagardening training, a primary school library restoration, and the development of a women’s chicken co-op to bring much needed economic development to this poor dry region. Their life is hard and beautiful. And they don’t seem to have even the smallest inclination just how amazing they are. We stayed at their home for three days or so. We watched them work, saw them serve, and broke bread with their Swazi family. It’s not fair to ask words to describe the days we spent with them. Words just don’t stretch that far. So, it’s best just to say that it was a blessing – a true blessing.

In the market places or on walks down dirt roads, Grace or Sean would greet people in SiSwati. And CeeGee and I could watch the surprise on the faces of those people. It seemed they couldn’t believe that Westerners would take the time to learn their language. It changed the entire energy of each and every interaction. It was a show or respect, an expression of love. It communicated something very deep, and it was visible to the eye of even the casual observer. I’m left wishing that I could learn some sort of language that would communicate that same respect and that same love for Grace and Sean. But I have only the language I know. So hopefully, it is enough to say that where there is great love there is great sacrifice. And on the Dlamini homestead, the house of Siphiwe and Sipho radiates great love. It’s not the box of chocolate, shiny red card sort of love. It’s more the dusty, I haven’t taken an actual shower in two weeks, hardworking, sort of love. It’s real love, the kind in the Bible that comes before God and your neighbor.

Sean and I returned the Quest to the rental car agency. We sort of stood back and crossed our fingers while the large man in the short tie inspected the vehicle. He said we were good to go, so we went quickly. Our transportation to the airport came. And we all said our goodbyes. I don’t want to write much about that. It was hard. It’s still hard. But only until we begin making plans to return. On the plane on the way home, I watched a documentary about the Pope. It was in Italian, or it could have been Spanish. But at the end, there were quotations that scrolled across the screen in English. One of those quotations was from St. Francis of Assisi. It read, “Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” If St. Francis were ever to show up at the Mugg and Bean, somewhere between Mbabane and Matsapha, not too far off of the main road called MR3, and happened to run into Grace and Sean, I have no doubt that he would tell the rest of the world, “See, I told you so.”

...is busy, busy, busy!

“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” ~William James

It's been a busy few weeks for us in Swaziland! That's an exciting thing because it means projects are up and running and we’re fulfilling our responsibilities as Peace Corps Volunteers! Currently we have three projects that are ongoing: permagardening, library development, and chicken farming support.

The permagardening project we have going is a training in small, backyard permagardens for caregivers at SOS, the same organization we worked with for SKILLZ Basketball. We are providing permagarden training in three communities (KaLanga, Matsetsa, and Mangoleni) with the help of SOS’s Family Development Program Coordinators. Right now we have about 40 caregivers participating in training in the three communities, the oldest of which is 80 years old. Not bad considering the amount of work involved in developing a permagarden, but as we tell the caregivers, it's only a few weeks of hard work for the next ten years. The training is setup as a six week program, and we meet with each of the communities once a week so that the caregivers have the rest of that week to follow along at their own homestead. We have a good laugh each week as the predominately female caregivers come and tell us that their husband has finished with previous weeks instructions just as they said.

Our library project revolves around the Books for Africa grant which we received (big thanks to all who supported that initiative!). Our primary school will be receiving around 1000 books sometime around the end of May, so in the meantime, Grace had the brilliant idea of setting up a library club to help us paint/redecorate the space as well as organize all the new books once they arrive. Last week, we had about 25 kids Grade 1-7 on hand to help us clear out irrelevant textbooks on Tennessee and North Carolina history and write down why they liked books or reading. The results were fantastic! We not only cleared a lot of shelf space for more relevant and fun reads, but the kids had a great time expressing themselves and their love for reading and books.

Finally, we had a meeting this past Friday with the KaLanga branch of the Aludle Lubombo Mulit-Purpose Co-Operative Society, which is a very fancy way of saying a collective of women chicken farmers in our community. These women have joined up with a regional co-op to support and grow their own chicken farming business. They have identified a viable market, and developed a sound business plan for providing their buyer with the number of chickens the buyer wants. We are supporting them by helping them fit together the last piece of the puzzle which is to buy and distribute poultry crates amongst the co-op members, so that they can all transport their stock to a central location for the buyer and sell their entire stock for cash on the spot. Grace has her eyes on a couple of grants to help the co-op members which brings me to my next point.

The Peace Corps grant process is not really a grant process according to Grace, I wouldn’t know because I've never applied for a real grant before…however, Peace Corps grant process is really just a lot of paperwork to set up an account to fundraiser for yourself. That being said, we are pursuing a couple of different Peace Corps “grants”, but we will also be sending out some emails pertaining to certain projects where we could use some support. If you are interested in supporting some of our projects here in Swaziland, please email Grace at grace4collins@gmail.com and we’ll be sure to keep you posted!

Siyabonga kakhulu!