Africa Dispatch: February 2011

ABNER DLAMINI
You may remember this name; he is our homestead "father", the man in whose homestead Rudy spent 10 days during his Peace Corps training in the early 1990s. He suffered a stroke in 2008 in which his right side was almost completely paralyzed. During therapy last year, he fell (the cause is not clear) and is now confined to a bed and wheelchair. I did not know if he would be alive when we came back. I visited the homestead last week and found he is alive, and though his state is worse, he seems stable. His right foot is quite swollen, as is his right leg near the hip. I will try to get over there every week to 10 days just to say hello.

HAPPY GAMA
Happy was a student when I taught at Nsukumbili in the 90s. She is now running a preschool, and her daughter Phayo comes over to play frequently. Ruth got a phone call from her Wednesday or Thursday saying she was vomiting and could not keep anything down. Ruth went to the school and found KC Dlamini, one the last teachers at Nsukumbili from the time I was here the first time, and learned that he was going to Mbabane on the road that passes Happy's homestead (it's about a mile from the school). He agreed to pick her up and take her the hospital. Ruth hopped in the car with KC and helped Happy from her house (she was walking using a broom for a crutch) into the car. Ruth then walked back to the school. KC told me that Happy's sister met her in town and got her into the hospital.

The next day, Happy called Ruth to report that she was back home. They had given her an IV at the hospital, and the rehydration (and rest, I suspect) fixed her up. If you pray, please pray for Happy. She has 4 children and 12 other family members (as well as her preschool students) relying on her. She needs to keep going, to keep her children on a good track.

TRAFFIC JAM
I've returned to my exercise regime, which includes a bicycle ride 3 mornings a week. One of those mornings this week I found myself navigating through a herd of cattle returning from the "cattle dip". No, that's neither a condiment you use with chips or a new dance mooooooooove, but a tick-control method. Weekly the cows are led to and jump into a tank with an anti-tick chemical in it. On those mornings, the road is pretty full of cows going to or coming from the dip tank. On this particular morning the herd was pretty large and the road narrow, steep and downhill. It was a bit unnerving trying to make sure I neither hit a cow, got rammed by a nervous or annoyed cow, dumped my bike in a roadside rut or slid on the steep, pebbly road. At the same time, though, I thought: man, how many people get to have a workout like THIS before work in the morning? I'm a very lucky man.

RAGE IN THE CAGE
You 40-somethings may remember this J. Geils Band song; you folks with grown children may remember the dynamic I'm going to describe. The older 3 girls get to bed between 7 and 8PM. If we manage to get Jabulile also ready for bed while getting the older 3 girls' teeth brushed, pajamas on, and final trip to the potty complete, we can lay "Jabu" down just a little after them, and Ruth and I enjoy an hour or so together while all the girls sleep. If we don't get Jabu's slightly different bedtime regime completed parallel to the other's, however, she passes from sleepy tired to berserk tired. If we put her in the crib after having missed the window of opportunity, she will stand up and hold the edge of the crib and scream, cry, and rock the top rail of the crib like Shaq O'Neal hanging on the rim after a monster slam dunk. We must remove her from the crib and entertain her (or let her crawl around on the floor herself) until she calms down enough to nurse off to sleep. This can be another hour or two. I suspect this is one of those dynamics which might be frustrating at the time, but which will prove a source of laughs and happy memories long after the kids have moved away.

3 HOURS, 17 MINUTES
That's how long Cub and I walked from the Pine Valley road to the school on Saturday, 5 February. We had just spent a wonderful day running errands, including a trip to Manzini for confession with Father Mikel Garmendia, a great priest from Spain. We returned to Mbabane and found the line for the kombi heading to Nsukumbili the longest I've ever seen it. I've developed a severe allergy to standing in blazing sun on hot pavement waiting for a kombi whose arrival time is entirely uncertain. Apparently there are only 2 regular kombis working our route right now; usually there are 4. The protocol now is that the bus marshal (guys in charge of the general flow of activity in the bus rank) will conscript some other kombi over to our route when the line of folks going to Nsukumbili is sufficiently long. Echos of Frankfurt: "Hey Cub, I have an idea; how about instead of us standing in that huge line waiting for a kombi, we take another kombi to Mbuluzi and hike home?" Cub was immediately receptive. We bought two 2-liter bottles of soda, a bottle of sunscreen (Cub already had a mild sunburn; I didn't want to make it worse) and off we went! A kombi to Mbuluzi High School (which sits at the end of the paved road) appeared just minutes after we bought our sodas, and it left 5 minutes after we boarded. We paid our fare and disembarked. "Okay, Cub, the next thing is getting to the trailhead. Let's hope we get a lift quickly. In the meantime, let's walk". Down the road we went. Not 50 yards later, a pickup truck picked us up and deposited us just 100 yards from the trailhead. So far, very good!

I told Cub that I would carry her in some parts, since the bag wasn't very heavy. In the back of my mind I figured Cub would start to get pretty tired by the end, and I would have some serious carrying on my shoulders. I polished off the first 2 liters figuring it would be better to have that sugar and water in my system before I really needed it.

As things turned out, I only carried Cub one time, on one of the uphills. She had not asked me to do it; I just figured we needed to move a little faster. She uttered not a peep of complaint during the whole walk, keeping up a brisk pace throughout. Most of the time we spoke of her plans to buy a bicycle and a pet bird. The girls have enough money for the bike; the bird, I told her, may require working and saving some more money. The weather was great, the terrain stunning (as always), and the company terrific.

LET THE BOVINE LEAD THE WAY!
About 5:30PM, we encountered our only difficult patch on the hike. We have to cross the Mbuluzi River one time near the end of the walk. There used to be a footbridge over the river, but it washed out a couple years ago and has not been replaced. Without that bridge, one must walk 45 more minutes to a second footbridge directly below the school. The sun was falling behind the mountains, and I did not want to negotiate that last 45 minutes in the dark. We started searching the shore for a good crossing point.

Thing is, this has been a season of robust rains; the river is full, and running pretty fast. I could not tell by looking how deep it was, and its speed intimidated me. I knew one place where I had crossed it with a former student one time; we got to that point and the water wasn't moving very fast; but how deep was it? No way to tell-until two cows, a mom and her baby, came along. "Quick, Cub, over here; let's see if the cows cross." Sure enough they did, with no trouble. The water only came up to the hips of the mom, and a little above that on the baby. I thought "Shoot, I can do that; but the water is going to reach my waist. Hmmmmm......I really don't want to walk the long way. This is passable, but rolling my pantlegs up won't be enough." What to do? "Wait", I thought, "we just passed a herdboy wearing only a pair of underwear." The wheels were turning. Only one homestead was in view, and that was the homestead of a man on the school board. My next step under similar conditions would get me fired in the United States, but here, quite the opposite. If someone reported to Mr. Gama (the school board member) that they had seen me without my pants wading across the river with my backpack and my daughter, he would probably say "Oh, yeah, Poglitsh; he's okay. He probably just needs to get home." Off came the shoes, the socks, and the jeans; into the top of the pack they went. I went across and back without any load the first time, just to make sure I could do it. It was safe, so I came back and got Cub. After depositing her safely, I ferried the pack over. I got dressed again and off we went. We got home just as ful darkness fell. I think we made a good choice; I really didn't want to navigate that last leg in the dark. Ruth and the others had dinner on the table. I sat down in my wet, slightly abrasive underwear and enjoyed the macaroni and cheese. WHAT A GOOD SATURDAY.

INVESTMENT PLAN
During our time in the States, I had good conversations with folks wiser than me about our family's future. It came to light that should we stay another 10 years (when Grace turns 18 and heads off to college), I will be starting some sort of work in my mid-50s. Though I'm pulling down a 6-figure salary here in Swaziland (a rockin' E100,000 a year; about $14,000), I'm not plowing many of those Emalangeni into a retirement fund in the US. We have some ideas about what I would do for work when we get back; we checked those ideas with those who understand such things, and they say our plan is workable. Still, it will be an adjustment to start a new line of work 10 years from "normal" retirement age. To stay ahead of the financial 8-ball, my retirement age may not be normal.

So from a financial investment point of view, Swaziland is not the 401k pot of gold. From the fathering point of view, however, I could not make a better investment. I spent 13 hours with Cubby yesterday, from 6:15AM (when I woke her up) until something past 7 when we walked in the door. We talked a lot. Most Saturdays I take one of the 3 older kids on similar trips, and enjoy similar amounts of "quantity time" with them. I have seen Ruth educate my children, and I know how they are progressing academically (we homeschool; I'm going to do some more with them starting this month). Hours of carrying them on my shoulders has built a bridge of trust which has given one child in particular the confidence to share a personal problem, and which has formed fond memories with all of them. Just today (Sunday, 6 Feb.) we did our standard walk to church. More time with the family, more trust between the members of our family. That trust will, I understand, prove invaluable as adolescence begins. I have enjoyed the opportunity to convince my children, through extended (and largely outdoor) activity together, that I love them, and that I have their best interests in mind. I am no saint, and I would not like to see their list of "dad moments" when I was unreasonable, unkind, and in all other ways a completely insensitive bozo. Still, they clamber onto my front and back when it's time for them to go to bed, and they want to continue a conversation after they're in bed and I want to hang out with Ruth. I may have to "pay" for this time later in terms of more time working before retirement in the States, and I may have to push myself harder than younger colleagues because my body won't be as eager to go as theirs are; but I will know that I was given, and by the grace of God capitalized on, the opportunity to invest not only in my future, but in the future of 4 young women. Charles Schwab, eat your heart out.

MAGIC GUCCIS
Part 1
I caught a snippet of a rap song in the mid-80s wherein the rapper blathered about "putting bubbles in the tub so I could have a bubble bath" and, after his scrub-a-dub-dub time, donning his "Gucci underwear". That phrase "Gucci underwear" has stuck with me ever since. The mind works in mysterious ways: memories of learning to ride a bike, hitting a home run (or striking out) in the big game, where and how you proposed to your future wife, and a line about high-price Italian undergarments. In our house, we frequently refer to underwear as "Guccis". Ruth and I have laughed about hypothetical conversations our daughters will have with college roommates:

"Whoa, I HAVE to do laundry. I'm down to 1 pair of guccis."
"You wear GUCCIS?"
"Well, yeah; I grew up in Africa, but I DO wear guccis. Don't you?"
"Hmmm...Ntombikayise (or however you pronounce your crazy name), do you know what guccis are?"
"Uh, yes; don't insult my intelligence. Guccis are underwear."
"Ntombi, no offense-but your intelligence is lacking in this department. Gucci is an expensive line of Italian clothing. Where did you get the idea 'guccis' were underwear?"
"My dad."
"The same guy who parked you in an absolute monarchy the size of New Jersey for 13 years and called a 3 hour walk (including the fording of a river stripped to his 'guccis' carrying a grocery-laden backpack that doubled as a baby carrier) a good Saturday."
"Yeah."
"Figures. Go do laundry."

Part 2
"Muti" (or its Zulu variant, "muthi") basically means "black magic". Many (but not all) Swazis attribute everything from car accidents to bad weather to new work opportunities to unexpected deaths to budding romances to missed goals at soccer games (and many other things!) to muti. Muti can be invoked usually by concocting, under the direction of a witch doctor ("sangoma") some bizarre blend of (fill in the blank): eyelashes boiled in brake line fluid, drinking some cocktail which might have oozed out of a Superfund cleanup site in the 1980s, killing a white chicken and tossing the bones in one direction and the feathers in another, etc. One student told me last week "Poglitsh, I'm going to bewitch you/kill you tonight! I'm going to cook up some muti and bewitch you!" "Okay", I replied, "While you're brewing up who knows what and whoopin' and hollerin' at your homestead all night, I'll be happily dreaming. See 'ya Monday".

CONCLUSION
Imagine, then, my Herculean effort to contain side-splitting laughter when I saw the attached headline on a magazine at Shoprite: "Muthi in My Gucci: Why Modern Women Speed Dial Sangomas". "Magic underwear" indeed. I wish I had opened the magazine and read what it is modern women seek when they speed dial a witchdoctor (probably on their cellphone, in heavy traffic, on their way to the big business meeting or a date, causing a driving hazard which results in an accident...ah, you see!!!! It's true-they were bewitched! Someone used muti!).

FRIENDS IN HAITI
Below you'll find a recent e-mail from our friends Jean-Jean and Kristie Mompremier. We love hearing what they are doing in Haiti; it is always an encouragement to us. If you would like, sign up to receive their interesting emails and consider supporting them.

We hope you are well.
Rudy, for the gang

Great News--with pictures this time

...

From:	Jean Mompremier ... View Contact
To:	Undisclosed-Recipient@yahoo.com

***I'm resending this because so many people were unable to see the pictures. Thank you for your input!!

Hello everyone. Rejoice with us!

"Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God,” John 1:12

When we started the Sunday afternoon service called ‘Come as You Are,’ we had invited all the voodoo priests in our area to come. We wanted to provide a safe, informal time for people to listen to the Bible and hear about Christianity. It was our intention, not to force or to shame people into hearing the gospel, but rather to provide a choice. So many people that practice vodou continue in this religion due to not feeling that they have another option. They stay caught in a cycle that was started by their grandparents.

Andre Chansma (not Andre Charles who we have reported about in previous newsletters) was the vodou priest who said, “We, as vodou priests, cannot do anything to true Christians; they are protected. Satan only has power over pretend Christians.” Later he had also told JeanJean, “Jesus is not for me; I don’t need Him.” We had taken teams of American and Haitian Christians to pray with him, but while he was interested, he never wanted to make a commitment.

Yesterday, Andre sent someone to ask us to come to his house. He has had medical problems for awhile and he had been in a car accident while we were in the US. We went to the house and found a different man. He was ready to accept Jesus as His own Savior. He was broken up because of the horrid sins in his past as a witchdoctor. He listed many to us and, yes, they were terrible. But, we know that God takes all of our sins and can make us pure again. Today, after our prayer and fasting service, 20 people went to Andre’s house to celebrate this man’s re-birth. He got up from his bed for the first time in weeks and walked into the public road. He insisted on burning his fetishes and vodou paraphernalia in front of everyone. He even asked JeanJean to have it announced on the radio that Andre is no longer for hire as a witchdoctor; he is a Christian. It is joy to say that he is our brother in the Lord. To those of you who prayed for Andre; your prayers have been answered!

It has been an exciting 3 weeks since we have returned to Haiti. A dream of ours and the community of Caiman has been realized. We have started holding services on Sunday morning at 7 AM. God has impressed on us the need to reach more people in our community and in the surrounding mountain areas that have no church. We have had 2 services already. There are so many people that go to this service that had always stayed at home before. And we are glad that we don’t have to compete with the rain and other Sunday afternoon activities.

Also, we have begun work on a church plant in an area about a 2 hour’s walk from our place. Dieugrand, another former witchdoctor, has been attending our service in the worship center for almost 2 years. He had walked 2 hours each Sunday afternoon and Wednesday morning so that he could worship with us. He had a large following while he was a vodou priest. Since his conversion, he has had the chance to be a witness to many of these people. JeanJean and Dabou went last Tuesday to explore the possibility of starting a church in their area. Ninety-three people came out for the 6AM service. Please pray for this exciting project. More for Christ!!

God bless,

The Mompremiers