Ruth in her Sunday best
Kit and Whiskers
Jabu and Jabu. Jabu Poglitsh was much happier after a service-long sleep.
Hillbilly Princess
Cub and emafohlofohlo
Kit by her waterfall.
Hello again! Hope you are well.OVCs
This acronym stands for "orphans and vulnerable children". The government and the various school administrations have been at loggerheads over this issue: the government regularly tells the schools to admit all such students, and promises to pay the schools later. The government, like so many around the world today, is close to broke, and so (not surprisingly) the promised money is rarely forthcoming. Saturday's newspaper carried this story reporting that the principals will leave the whole OVC issue for government to sort out. It seems something like an autoimmune reaction when principals and the government argue-one would expect to find them on the same side of issues, but believe me, they are not on this one. About half our students fall into this OVC category. Next year could be interesting!
MORE SCHOOL STUFF
I'm writing on Tuesday morning the 29th; by the time you read this, schools will be closed. This has been the strangest school year in our 9 years here: an exhaustingly-long second term, a third term starting two weeks late, teacher strikes over issues increasingly distant from education (including pay for private security guards and the appointment of supreme court justices), tension between administration and teachers at Nsukumbili, and the constant uncertainty about the government's financial standing (though not a paycheck has been missed). It will be good to be away from this institution for 8 weeks.
RAINS
They have finally come! We went through much of September and October without rain; here in November, it is falling. The lack of quantity is made up for in the way it comes: all-day, steady volumes, not the late-afternoon thundershowers. This slow-and-steady variety is good because the water soaks into the soil and does not 1) just run into the river or 2) cause erosion. It's fun to wake up (before 5AM) to the sound of chickens and tractors. Food's a'comin'!
MABIZO
This is a SiSwati word for people who share the same first name. On Saturday night the 26th, Jabulile spent much of her sleepless night in bed with Ruth and I. This caused some consternation, as Sunday morning featured a Sunday School party at church. Ruth puts lots of effort into these parties, and she had hoped to focus all her energies on keeping the party rolling. The prospect of a sleep-deprived 1 1/2 year old needing constant attention was not a happy one.
Within minutes of the party starting, I passed our youngest daughter to Jabulile Kunene. Jabu stayed with mabizo wahke (her name-mate) happily through the party and the church service, falling asleep in Mrs. Kunene's arms as the liturgy proceeded. What a relief and a blessing! Thank you Make Kunene!
Jabulile and Jabulile before church (Jabu Poglitsh's unhappy countenance improved after a service-long sleep)
SUNDAY BEST
Here is a photo of Ruth taken on Sunday at church. Note the clothes melange: stylized traditional African dress, headscarf (appropriate for married women), and ECHO nail pouch (for Kleenex and her watch with a broken band). She is standing in front of the church door; this mud-and-rock building was completed in the 1960s and though it is showing some signs of age, 40+ years is pretty good for mud block. The car belongs to our friends the Mubirus.
DISCOTEQUE
With the advent of the rainy season, our power supply becomes less steady; we are at the very end of an old electrical line, so a storm in the Ezulwini valley (18 miles away) can knock out our power. One recent evening the lights were brightening and dimming, as through a child got hold of a dimmer switch; I anticipated a blackout, and was thinking what I would have to do to get the house reasonably lit. As if on cue, Grace told me that Stan Mamba was welding next door. His tool-box size welder draws so much current it affects the volume of electricity in our wires. In the States one occasionally goes next door to borrow a cup of sugar; here, neighbors borrow amperes of electricity.
THRILL ISSUES
A week ago I took our girls and Yenzie to the river to play. One of the neatest parts of the river is a large rock area with a "rapids" next to it. Kit got too close to the rapids and, stepping on a wet part of the rock (which is extremely slippery) fell in. This happened while I was looking another way; the shouts of the other girls alerted me and I ran after her. Kit went feet-first down the whitewater; when she stopped in a pool I grabber her under the armpit and pulled her out. I had no idea what to expect: gashes, broken bones, spluttering water out of her lungs all passed through my mind. She was absolutely unhurt. She didn't even cry, though she did lay on the rock like a wet dishrag and neither spoke nor played again that day. I am so grateful to God that she was unhurt. Here's a photo of her next to the rapids. She was, as you might guess, reluctant to get close to the water for this photo. I also attach a short video, wherein Kit describes her experience.
Kit and her whitewater
Kit is also learning how to ride a bicycle. Her favorite part is returning to the house after a session at the soccer field, where we go down a slight incline and back through the school gate. She likes me to hold her steady and let the bike build up speed. This gives her an increasingly-fast and bumpy ride. She laughs along the way. I hold the handlebars both to steer (she's not steady enough to do this downhill alone yet) and to apply the brakes; though she can steer pretty well on flat ground, her hands aren't big enough to keep her going in the right direction and grab the brake handles simultaneously. She's an adventurous spirit!
SPELLING BEE
More about Kit-part of Grace and Cub's homeschooling is (not surprisingly) spelling, and part of learning to spell is a spelling bee Ruth devised. One day this week Kit (one of whose nicknames is "Bee"; I think we picked it up from a friend who calls one of his kids this) wanted to join in. She spelled almost a dozen three-letter words correctly, like her big sisters! Between biking, whitewater rafting (without the raft) and spelling, we have a precocious (and unpretentious) 4 year old in our house!
KIT PART THREE
Here are two photos of her. I like the one on the left for the combination of the taffeta-like dress and the hiking boots; she's my hillbilly princess. The photo of Kit with our cat Whiskers is nice, too; I like how they both wear black and white.
KING SIZE JUNK FOOD
Here's Cub with the 2-kilogram bag of emafohlofohlo (the SiSwati word for "crunchy snacks"; the word is the Swazi interpretation of the sound they make as you chew them). These were enjoyed at the Sunday School party on the 27th. Cub is just under four feet tall. Everything about Africa is BIG.
SIGN OF THE TIME
Yesterday evening Ruth asked Grace what she and the other kids were playing. Grace explained they were playing "toyi-toyi", a term describing how protesters (civil servants, soccer fans, probably some folks at the upcoming climate conference in Durban) excitedly hop in place, sing, walk, etc. to show their displeasure and make their demands. Ruth asked them what they were toyi-toying about; Grace said they were saying "We want our money!" It is amazing how children mimic their elders.
WHISKERS 2: BOSOM BUDDIES
Just as Jabu wanders off occasionally and we have to search for her, so does Whiskers the cat occasionally vanish off the family radar screen and must be sought. One evening this week that happened. Cub returned from her bedroom with a sleepy cat in her arms, explaining that she found Whiskers sleeping on the chest of a sleeping Jabulile in the crib. Whiskers is a great cat.
CONVERSATIONS
We occasionally take some of our dinner to the night-watchman at the gate and share a little conversation. We figure that 12 hours in a little hut beside the school gate through the dead of night is pretty boring, and we can help with some food and kind words. One evening I approached the guard hut and found the door open but the lights off. Upon closer inspection I found Jabulani Gama sitting at the desk inside. I asked him in SiSwati, "Jabulani, why are you sitting in the dark?" He responded in SiSwati, "With the lights on the insects fly in." This is hardly riveting conversation, but the fact that he and I conducted it entirely in SiSwati-with me knowing what I was saying and what he was saying almost effortlessly-felt really good.
Last Saturday Cub and I went to Mbabane. On the kombi ride out of town, we passed a church enjoying some sort of celebration: everyone, young and old, was dressed nicely as they milled around outside the church. One of the church children looked at the kombi and said "Umlungu!" Umlungu means "white person". A former Nsukumbili student sat in front of Cub and I, and I said in SiSwati "Where is the umlungu?" The former student replied in SiSwati, "There is no umlungu here." The folks on the kombi laughed, and I got another warm fuzzy for language.
Sala kahle ("stay well"),
Rudy for the gang
