November 12, 2011
Hello again! It's a pleasure to share our experiences once more. Writing these newsletters has been one of theunexpected pleasures of living in Swaziland.
MZWANDILE
Financial Management
You may remember the name Mzwandile Nkambule. When we arrived in 2003, Ruth wisely decided to ask theprevious headmaster, M.K. Dlamini, for the names of genuinely needy widows in the community. He identifieda widow living close to the school, who had two grandsons staying with her. One of those grandsons wasMzwandile. Mzwandile finished school in 2009 and after an extended stint with a vegetable retailer, enteredpolice college. We attended his pass out just a few weeks ago and told you about it in this newsletter. Mzwandile visited one evening recently and shared with Rudy some financial concerns. #1 issue: Three men (calling themselves prophets) whom his mom had become acquainted with were directing him how to disburse
his church tithe. First, Mzwandile explained, they told him he needed to give it to a certain church. Later they said he needed to give it to a particular pastor. Finally, they said he needed to give it to them. Chickzo (Mzwandile's nickname) explained that he had lent these guys 200 Emalangeni to buy a refrigerator and they had not returned the loan. Chickzo was confused as to what to do. I was not. "Mzwandile, let me pass you a bit of advice my dad passed to me: If it doesn't smell good, it isn't going to taste good. This situation doesn't smell good." I told him he didn't need to give these guys his tithe, and that he should do what he had planned to do-give it to a local church he has had contact with in the past. Money issue #1 settled.
Money issue #2: "Mr. Poglitsh, since I passed out of police college I have received phone calls from people I have not heard from in many years, so much in fact that I am considering getting a different phone number." Ah yes, Chickzo has hit the salary jackpot and all those folks are showing great interest in him. I explained that he now has a well-paying, steady government job and it is no surprise that others would like a piece of his newfound pie. I told him to come by some evening for dinner and a 1 or 2-hour financial seminar. Ruth is very wise with money, and we could help him get some sound financial principles and practices in hand. We hope to
see him sometime, not only about money but also about a...
New Arrival
A week or so after this discussion, a young lady with a baby on her back came to the house before school. She had been sent by Benele, Mzwandile's brother, to take some of their chicken from our freezer (they don't have electricity at their house, so we're glad to share freezer space). We asked if she is visiting the homestead; she said yes. She explained that she is also a recent Nsukumbili school finisher, and that the baby on her back is Mzwandile's. Ah. How old is the child? 9 months. Well, you both look very healthy. Here's the chicken, and have a nice day.
Get the phone and text a message to Chickzo-"Mzwandile, we just met a young lady with a baby on her back, and she says the baby is yours. Is there something you would like to tell us?" We haven't heard from him yet. Maybe he did change his cell phone number. Recently Mzwandile said we are like family to him. It's a bit of a shock, as "family", to not know that your "son" is not only seeing someone but is now a father. Perhaps we should have placed more emphasis on the
word "like" than on the word "family". We related this story to the Mubirus, our good friends from church. They said that in African culture often times such things are not mentioned. We told the Mubirus about our text message and the continuing non-response; they said perhaps Mzwandile was offended. The third Peace Corps objective comes to mind: share your culture
with host nationals. If Chickzo is offended, so am I. To not be let in on this development is a disappointment.
GOOD NEIGHBORS
With four daughters 9 and under, sometimes we lose track of a kid. Jabu is particularly adept at slipping off the radar screen. Just about dusk one recent evening, Ruth said "Rudy, where's Jabu?" I said I thought she was in bed-she wasn't. The hunt was on. We checked around the house, we started over towards the school, we started to worry...and then we found her at Sinathemba's house (Sinathemba is Stan Mamba's daughter). That is now the first place we look when we can't find her. It's sure a nice situation when your 18 month old can wander out of
the house and be found in good hands.
WHISKERS/WWF
Ruth and I have discussed getting a cat if the Ministry of Education gives me a contract. I've started the paper chase to get next year's contract, but 2 weeks ago I walked into the house and found the girls cooing over a black and white kitten. We had leaked word of our interest in a cat, and Happy Gama (a former student from the 1990s who now runs a day care and teaches our girls SiSwati) caught wind of it. She has cats at her homestead and brought one with her that day. "Whiskers" is a great cat, and is especially good with Jabu. We have frequently found Jabulile suspending the cat by her tail or a paw, and the cat has not screetched, scratched,
bitten, or anything. Sometimes Jabu holds the cat to her chest with two arms, then lifts her over her head and holds her against the back of her neck. I'm just waiting for her to slip and fall, and with the cat in one of these compromised positions, it's gonna look like a World Wrestling Federation piledriver. We frequently hear the older girls shrieking "JABU!!"; they run over and rescue poor Whiskers. Still, the cat hasn't run away, and still likes us to play with her.
LITSEMBA ALIBULALI-"Hope does not kill"
Last Friday I put Jabu on my back and went for an afternoon bicycle constitutional. While approaching Mdlunkhulu Primary School we rode up behind a 60-something year old man walking with a boy probably 5 or 6 years old. The man wore traditional Swazi clothes, and the boy was carrying a plastic grocery bag suspended by a knobkerrie (traditional Swazi walking/fighting stick). At one point the grandfather reached over and put his hand on the head of the boy. With fathers largely absent in family life, it was exhilarating to see (what appeared
to be) trans-generational male mentoring. I wish I had had a camera on me, but the image is etched in my mind. Perhaps there's still hope for strong Swazi families.
INSECT WEBINARS
Attached are two short videos discussing tinhlwa (flying ants) and sihlongololo (millipede-kinda things). Let Yenzie and the girls introduce you to two of the most familiar species of Swazi insects. Sorry the tinhlwa video is dark; I shot it with our Mavica at night, and it doesn't do too well in low-light conditions.
WETLANDS WRECKLAMATION
Sunday 6 November was my 44th birthday. What better way to celebrate it than with a walk to church, getting to sit with my wife during the service, getting a lift home with the Mubirus, then draining an unattended irrigation tank in the school garden to stem the mosquito explosion! Yep, Cub and I somehow wandered into the garden and decided to see which tanks might be harboring nascent bloodsuckers. We found two. We dumped cooking oil into one of them. We went to the second one and found it had two or three times the mosquito population that the first tank did. We also found a hole near the bottom of this second tank. We ran back to the houses and found a green garden hose which fit right into the hole and into the water. I got on the other end (slightly downhill from the tank) and GENTLY AND CARFULLY sucked on the hose. Without getting any of whatever muck was in that tank into my mouth, the water level began to fall. We got a goodly amount of water out without any more effort, but by the time the hose started sucking mud in its initial location and the siphon was broken, too much
water remained for my comfort. We used sticks and our hands to move the muck around so that the water pooled into one location. We moved the hose into that location, and I once again took up my position at the other end of the hose. I tried to be even more careful this time when starting the siphon, because the hose had had gross water running through it. I had to suck harder, though, because there was less water and it was thicker with mud.
I wasn't careful enough.
I got a quarter-mouthful of grit and who-knows-what behind my teeth. I spit like crazy, went to the water faucet with "clean" (right from the mountain) water in it and rinsed my mouth, and continued to spit. After Cub and I were satisfied the tank was as empty as we could get it, we went home and I rinsed for 1 minute with antiseptic mouthwash, then brushed my teeth thoroughly. I'm showing no ill-effects yet, but I'm not sure the mental scarring will ever go away. It's not that bad, really, but it sure is nasty to think about what chemical and biological crud I had in my mouth for a moment. It was worth it, though; the tank we poured oil into shows no
sign of living mosquitoes at any stage of development, and the tank we siphoned has only dirt in the bottom.
Success.
POPULATION ISSUES
Recently the United Nations Fund for Population Activity (UNFPA) marked the advent of 7 billion inhabitants on planet earth. The UNFPA country director published a piece in the Times of Swaziland, and I wrote one back. I don't know if mine got published, but both are included here. Have a nice day, Rudy for the gang.
Population and Contraception
On Tuesday 19 October Dr. Hassan Mohtashami of UNFPA wrote in the Times "it is critical that Swaziland [strengthen] its family planning interventions. It is more critical against the backdrop of the HIV pandemic which has doubled this country's mortality rates.""Family planning" always means smaller families and fewer people. How then is family planning the appropriate response to doubled mortality rates? In November of last year, the Times printed a story reporting on the most recent (2007) census. The census indeed found that Swaziland's death rate had doubled since the 1997 headcount. In addition, the census discovered that fertility had fallen over the previous decade-meaning fewer babies were being born. The census also found that infant mortality rate climbed from 78 deaths per 1000 live births in 1997 to 107 deaths per live births in 2007. The report concluded: "If this trend is allowed to continue,
the population of Swaziland will soon be declining at an alarming rate". It does not seem that overpopulation is a live concern for Swaziland at this time.
Near the end of his piece Dr. Mohtashami says: "This requires extensive community mobilisation, political support, increased funding for family planning programmes, a massive expansion of services and increased availability and accessibility to the various contraceptive methods." Those calls for "increased funding" and "massive expansion" make me wonder-who will pay for all that? We daily read about the local and global financial crises. The Swazi government is not awash in cash; neither are most nations around the world. My
home country, the United States, is itself about 14 trillion dollars ($14,000,000,000,000) in debt. I cannot imagine the citizens of any nation, with their own country struggling under massive debt loads, getting excited about their government giving lots of money to increase contraception and family planning in distant lands.
Dr. Mohtashami concludes: "We should try to ensure family planning is still a national priority in most developing countries." I wonder if he wishes developing countries like Swaziland to walk the path more developed countries have. A little background information will help us understand population dynamics. In order for a country to maintain its population, each woman must bear, on average, 2.1 children. If this number (called the fertility rate) gets larger, the population will grow; if it falls, the population will shrink. No European nation today reaches the 2.1 figure. These nations are depopulating themselves because they are not having children. As the number of pensioners rises as compared to the number of young and working people, taxes on
those young people grow. As these working moms and dads feel the pinch of increased taxes, they tend to have fewer children because they have less money (due to higher taxes) to support children. The trend reinforces itself (fewer children, more old people, higher taxes, fewer children, etc.), and the populations of nations plummet. Recently Walter Rademacher of the German Federal Statistics Office said "The fall in the population can no longer be stopped".
Is a smaller population a good thing? Is population a brake on prosperity? One might think the answer is "yes" to both these questions. After all, a libodlo (cooking pot) contains only so much liphalishi (corn mush). Surely if there are more people around the pot, each person will get less and ultimately, if there are too many people, some will go hungry.
In 1996, Professor Julian Simon wrote an article entitled "More People, Greater Wealth, More Resources, Healthier Environment". In it he concluded "Population growth does not lower the standard of living-all the evidence agrees. And the evidence supports the view that population growth raises it in the long run. Incidentally, it was those statistical studies that converted me in about 1968 from working in favor of population control to the point of view that I hold today. I certainly did not come to my current view for any political or religious or ideological reason."
Dr. Mohtashami explains that the Cairo conference in 1994 "replaced the dominant demographic-economic rationale for family planning programmes with a broader agenda of women's empowerment and sexual and reproductive health and rights". A few observations about the 1994 Cairo conference are in order. George Wiegel relates that "On September 5 [at the conference], Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistanunmistakably a woman, unmistakably Harvard-educated, and unmistakably a major political figure-took to the
rostrum during the opening statements to defend the 'sanctity of life' and to condemn the Cairo draft document for trying to impose 'adultery, sex education...and abortion on all countries.'" It didn't sound to Prime Minister Bhutto like Cairo had "women's empowerment" in mind. Dr. Janet Smith explains that the Cairo conference sought to make aid to developing countries dependent on those countries installing population control programs. In an address delivered during but not at the conference, Dr. Smith said: "The women delegates to the UN are
outraged by this. They find it insulting and demeaning; like their being treated like breed cows. What they want is better pre-natal care. What they want is better medical care, more access to education and food for their children that's not tied to contraceptive programs." Again, the representatives of the would-be recipients were not convinced Cairo cared much for their empowerment. Thanks to widespread concern from various NGOs, some of the most demeaning and anti-life language (including "pregnancy termination"-that is, abortion-as part
of "reproductive health care") never made it into the final Cairo documents.
So what about women's health and contraception? Is contraception the way to healthier women and moms? Research shows that in Africa, condoms are rarely used in long-term relationships, as couples believe they signify distrust of the partner. The next obvious alternative is the female oral contraceptive pill. By taking a tablet a day, a woman can render herself almost entirely infertile indefinitely. Alarmingly, hormonal contraceptives (like the pill) also render the women who take them much more susceptible to HIV. A report in the journal AIDS in 2009 found that “the risk of becoming eligible for ART [antiretroviral drugs] was almost 70% higher in women taking the pills and more than 50% higher in women using DMPA [Depo-Provera] than in women using IUDS [the loop].” A 1999 study found a “significant association between oral contraceptive use and HIV-1 seroprevalence or seroincidence … increased as study quality increased.” In fact, “Of the best studies, 6 of 8 detected an increased risk of HIV infection associated with OC [oral contraceptive] use.” Over 50 studies have found a connection between oral contraceptives (the pill) and greater risk of HIV infection. Concerning "the loop"-it is outlawed in the United States because it was found harmful to women. Why then are they still legal in less-developed nations? If they're too dangerous for American women, how can they be safe for African women?
On the 21st of October the Times reported that the message for the "World at Seven Billion National Campaign" is "ensuring that every child is wanted and every childbirth is safe and leads to smaller and stronger families." We all agree that stronger families is a great thing. I'm not sure how "every childbirth" will lead to "smaller" families-the birth of a child generally increases the number of family members-but we can also agree that making every childbirth safe is an excellent thing too. Moreover, every child is already wanted-maybe not by the mother and/or father, but by other loving husbands and wives who cannot have their own or simply want to love and nurture some more children. What remians , then, of the connection between contraceptive use, family planning, and maternal health? Dr. Robert Walley, Executive Director of MaterCare International, offered these comments at the 2007 "Women Deliver" conference in London: “By definition, a maternal mortality involves a pregnant woman, not a pregnancy that has been avoided or aborted. We have known for many years how to help prevent a woman’s death by emergency obstetrics and skilled birth attendants. It is a shame that these leaders [of the conference] want to divert attention from the real needs of women -- giving her the best of obstetrical care based on life, hope, and the dignity of motherhood.”
