WE'LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS!
Thanks to the hard work and generosity of Rudy's dad and gifts from several of you, we have plane tickets from South Africa to the USA for Christmas! School closes December 10th, but Ruth, Jabulile, and Grace (Ruth's technical assistant on baby care) will head out about a week before that so Ruth can attend the ECHO agricultural conference. Rudy, Cub, and Kit will follow right after we chase the students out the gate. We have no concrete plans yet; we know we want to get in touch with family and friends, and rest some.

GIRL'S CLUB
I don't know if we've told you about this yet; apologies if this is a repeat. On Friday afternoons at 3PM (as I write, in fact) Ruth convenes "Girl's Club". Whichever girls around Cubby's age and up are around the school at this time and day are invited. Ruth reads a story (and Nonduduzo, Yenzie's cousin, usually translates into SiSwati), they play a game, and then there is a fun/educational activity (baking, arts and crafts, acting out the story, whatever Ruth can think up or find in a children's activity book). Today they will make a pinata. Some mothers of the children used to come along too, but for some reason they stopped. Ruth was discouraged by that, but I told her I'm sure this is something very special to the girls and that she should continue. She has, and I am confident Girl's Club is making memories in the lives of these young ladies. In the long run, it might turn out to be our most successful "development project", as the girls get to have fun and gain some confidence (acting, thinking up and constructing art, and the like).

GOGO KHANYILE
This is the matriarch at the outstation church. You may remember that in April we said that her son, Waley Dlamini, a young man at our church, died. Thursday night we learned that Gogo Khanyile lost another child, a daughter. She was due to have some sort of get-together on the 14th, but she went into the hospital sick on Wednesday and died on Thursday night. If you pray, please pray for Gogo and other relatives. And if you don't pray, give it a shot. You might be suprised at what happens.

SELF-INFLICTED WOUND
Sometimes, the longer you are close to an issue, the more complicated it becomes to you. Other times, proximity and long exposure to something makes things appear simpler. The latter has been the case with my thinking about HIV/AIDS. Over 90% of HIV infections come through heterosexual sex in Southern Africa. And as people are having sex with more than one person over the course of a few months, no wonder the virus spreads so fast. So even though these early deaths are a horrific tragedy, it's been slowly and painfully dawning on me that they were almost entirely avoidable. Very few people are in the dark in Swaziland about how HIV spreads. I showed a 6-part video series by Bruce Wilkinson (dubbed in SiSwati) a few years ago about AIDS to my seniors. After we finished the series I asked one of them what they thought of it; he said it was good, but that everyone already knew that stuff. I was shocked. I asked him, "So why don't they change?" He replied "Because they don't care". Another student entered the room just at that moment and I said "Sipho, Nhlanhla here just told me everyone knows all the information about AIDS, but they don't change because they don't care if they live or die. Is that so?" Without a moment's hesitation he said "Oh yeah". AIDS is not like the Haitian earthquake of 2010 or the Tsunami of 2004, where people had no warning and almost no time to react. The AIDS death toll is largely a self-inflicted wound.

Now of course the complication comes with the survivors, especially children; and some girls/women have sex to put food on the table or to support siblings. But the root of the problem could be completely removed if men and women would wait for sex until they are married, and had sex only with their spouse after marriage. The two dynamics of this situation-the volume of death and disruption it brings, and the ease with which 90%+ of new infections could be stopped-produce moments of considerable frustration and sadness in me.

It also makes me think that people need more than another technical fix (like condoms, or virucidal creams, or circumcision) to stem the tide: they need to see that life has meaning, and they need something to live for beyond the present moment. Christianity has been in Swaziland at least a century, and it is publically expressed. One can find preaching and teaching on the radio, at the fruit and vegetable market, at tent revivals, and in handbills passed out by folks around town. Thing is, a lot of sexual shenanigans still take place. I wonder if it is a matter of the gospel needing to take root as ethical behavior. This isn't a fully-formed thought, but I wonder if the "next wave of evangelization" needs to be one of realizing the significance of human life as valued by God; this would, I suspect, help people towards or reinforce them in wholesome, life-affirming habits and push out a lot of unwholesome, destructive ones.

BRIGHT SPOTS
A couple months ago we were at a prayer meeting with some friends. In such meetings, when I "center down" (as the Quakers, I think, say), sometimes deeper issues come up. In this meeting a veritable slide show of faces of young people who died too young (mostly of AIDS) passed before my mind's eye. After the tears, however, the face of one young person also came to mind; she had made it through form 5 a virgin and seemed to be continuing on the right track.

Later we sent her a text message to check up on her, but didn't get a response. Then last Saturday, while walking around town, I met her and another former student who also was an upright young person. They were in town for a meeting called by the youth council of a local church, but were in a quandry because the meeting had been cancelled and no one had informed these two young women in time. Still, I'm happy to report they are both still doing well. One is living and working in town, and the other one is still in Dlangeni. What a relief and encouragement these two bright spots are in a time of far too much death.

MID-YEAR SUMMARY
At the beggining of this year, I had a quiet, inexplicable optimism that this would be a better year than 2009. So far, 2010 has (happily) met that optimism. School, except for the occasional hiccup and the Form 3 students, has been pretty good. It is becoming clear that the students' English skills are in many cases atrocious, and in order for them to learn the material I need to slow down my presentation (which I've done pretty much every year) and make reading comprehension a bigger part of my teaching. I'm doing that now, bit by bit.

It was nice to be in a support, and not directing, role with soccer this year. I suspect that in general, I am better helping someone else get things done than I am being the leader.

The birth of Anastasia Jabulile Poglitsh was a great treat; the delivery went well, mom and baby are well, and the other 3 girls really love her. I was reflecting recently that I am a rich man, by virtue of my awesome wife and children. Sometimes I think of Ruth as my crown, and our daughters as precious diamonds in that crown. I would not trade my marriage or kids for "stuff" or "success".

Our situation here is really good for us a family. I sometimes dread what we will do when Grace turns 18 (just a decade away!) and we have to move. Maybe we won't move; maybe we'll send her to the University of Cape Town, or something. Actually, for her to pass her citizenship onto her future children (if she decides to marry), she will have to spend some time in the USA. So this mostly-idyllic situation will change at some point, but for now it's a great nursery for our marriage and young children.

I do find one of the toughest things about being here is social isolation. Make no mistake, there are 6 of us in the house and I teach at a school, so I have lots of social contact. Also, my friendships with my colleagues are deepening, and I am enjoying friendship with Godfrey Mubiru and Lawrence Rugumambaju. But there are still times when I really want to speak with another American for a while, where all the linguistic and cultural settings are the same and I can "unload" things that might be bugging me. Living out here (which is where we want to live) keeps us out of the flow of life of our American friends in town, but we do plan to spend some time with some friends in the coming month. And as I said, my Swazi and Ugandan friends are a lot of fun, and sometimes our discussions go pretty deep. So the situation is manageable and slowly improving.

We are very glad that we have a good headmaster and deputy; they have kept the stability of the school, while adding some standardization which, though it still produces occasional grumbles (from me included), has enhanced the academic standard of the school. We were very concerned about this transition when it came in 2007 (headmaster) and 2008 (deputy), but we are very happy with how it has turned out.

Our homestead family has changed quite a bit since we got here in 2003. Make Malinga, Marcos' and Rudy's homestead mother, has died, as have 3 other people I can think of. Older children have moved away, and so a lot fewer people stay at the homestead. It feels (and is) largely empty. Abner Dlamini's 2008 stroke has impacted him (obviously) and the productivity of the homestead; he loved to work. His younger wife works hard too, but running a whole homestead is a LOT of work. I should get over there more often.

Back to the kids for a moment. We read and enjoy First Things magazine. The June/July 2010 issue carried an article called "The Weight of Smut" by Mary Eberstadt. It considered the consequences of pornography. If you are concerned about this issue, you should be. Pornography pulls in more money than the NBA, NFL, and Major League Baseball combined. And as Eberstadt's article outlines, it has disastrous effects on men, their families, and society. I include here part of an e-mail I sent to my dad recently.

"I just finished the article on pornography in the above mentioned First Things-makes me get defensive about my girls. That evil will be part of the environment they will have to live in. Probably it already is, as you can get the internet on a cell phone and I suspect high school boys are viewing that stuff today. They then look at my girls through those warped lenses. I do pullups and pushups and sit ups now; I intend to make my ugly, old, physical presence unavoidable when I come between young boys and my beautiful daughters."

We hope you are well.

Sincerely,
Rudy for the gang