...concentrates on the joy.

We have to choose joy and keep choosing it. –Henri JM Nouwen

I sometimes forget to find joy in my everyday. I must honestly admit that I do not do a very good job seeking it, I sometimes selfishly feel like it should just appear. It's easy for me to get caught up in the hum drum of my life- the dirty clothes, the excessive carrying of bags and backpacks, the hot sun, the long walks, showerless days, laundry, nighttime bugs, or public transport. See? Where is the joy in that? 

In the month of May we have planted 21 gardens out of 29 finished gardens. When we began our garden projects in March I told Sean I would be ecstatic about 5, thinking I was "pushing it". Additionally, we have been told repeatedly that the gardens are doing wonderfully and July can't come fast enough for them to show them off once again to us.

The library project at the primary school is underway, with a fresh coat of paint and 3 murals almost completed. We have library club on Wednesday afternoons. Students run to library club now. Last Wednesday 53 children spent the afternoon painting their designs on the tables. No paint was spilled on uniforms. This week students will be building library benches. Next week 1,000+ age appropriate books will arrive. 

Tuesday morning we visited the Neighborhood Care Point in Mapatsenvuku to give out handmade teddy bears from the Mother Bears Project to 25+ children under the age of 5. Yvonne, the teacher, has finally been able to break ground on a building after 4 years of working and waiting for a sponsor. 

Tuesday afternoon, after a long delayed grant process, 20 hardworking, intelligent women received 100 crates and 35 bags of feed to grow their chicken co-operative business. Early in the week they were granted rights to land in order to establish a permanent place to farm. A process that usually takes years and usually much longer for women.

Our sisi was accepted into a university. It rained 2 days last week. Babe learned how to write a business plan and design a cash flow. We added two new recipes to our rotation of dinners. 

I can't speak much to the bugs, public transport or laundry but there is so much joy to be found in my dirty clothes because they are covered in dirt and paint. Backpacks full of bears are worth the long walks for such sweet smiles. They say your hair is healthier if you don't wash it everyday and the hot sun is becoming less invasive as it becomes winter. I find joy in these moments, these places, these people, this life. It isn't hard to find it, I just need to remember to choose it. 

I hope the pictures below bring you joy today and you find joy even in the hum drum days this week. 

... 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.”