Why Swaziland?

As many of you know, James (who is writing this…) has been teaching a class every other year that travels to Swaziland.  The focus of the class is HIV in Southern Africa, but mostly it is just a service course that takes students to do volunteer work.  For those of you who don’t know, Swaziland is a small African Kingdom bordered by South Africa and Mozambique.  It has a population of about one million (and falling).  In 2009 it was estimated that 168,600 Swazis were living with HIV.  That number has only increased.  Current estimates are that 40% of the population is infected.  That, of course, leads to many other problems. Among them is a dramatic, ongoing increase in numbers of orphans and child headed households.  A good deal of the work that the class has done aims at helping these children.

Part of the reason for including Swaziland in this trip was to provide some time to plan for the next class trip (in May of 2012).  We now have several projects we are exploring.  Without a doubt, the most ambitious works with McCorkindales orphanage outside the city of Mazini.  The orphanage sits on over a hundred acres of land just outside the city and currently cares for over 40 children.  The support for the day-to-day operations comes entirely through a group called Mazini Youth Care.  That group supports many programs for at risk youth around Manzini.  With so much land available, our hope is to be able to transform McCorkindales into a self-sustaining program.  We hope to do that through investing in the land to create a working farm.  If all our planning goes well, we hope to put in fencing, piping, and a test orchard of fruit trees as the first phase of the project.  We also hope to expand existing vegetable farming to provide more immediate assistance as the fruit trees mature.  If the trees prove successful, our hope would be to expand the orchard in future years.   Eventually, the plan is that the farm will support the education and welfare of the children, and their work on the farm will also provide them valuable job skills.

Of course, this is no easy project, and we are in the very early planning stages.  Not the least of the problems is the fact that neither one of us knows the first thing about farming!  We will need a lot of help to make this a reality, and there are a lot of logistical hurdles to work out with the organization running the orphanage, but we are very excited about the possibilities.

Immediately, however, there are needs at McCorkindales that we have tried to address.  Before we leave, we will be buying seedlings to make a small start on expanding their vegetable garden.  After planting Saturday morning, we will provide a small hot dog lunch for all the kids to celebrate (and say goodbye).  Today, we delivered new school uniforms for 19 of the kids.  Many of them were wearing uniforms that were many years old and literally falling apart.  Much of the money for this came from Change Lives, a foundation started by one of the first students who traveled to Swaziland with me.

If you are ever interested in helping out Swaziland, here are a couple suggestions.  Best of all, however, would be to come down and get your hands dirty!

Project Africa Global: A group out of Los Angeles that helps us make arrangements in Swaziland.  They are an all-volunteer group that focuses mainly on providing medical supplies and expert medical services in Swaziland.  http://www.projectafricaglobalinc.org/

Change Lives: A former student of mine, now trying to raise money to support education and other projects in Swaziland and Rawanda.  Some of the money given to them comes directly back to the projects that my classes do in Swaziland.  http://changelivesfoundation.net/

Youth Education Farms: This is a new group we are just exploring working with (found by my former student at change lives).  They aim at supporting sustainable farm projects that can provide ongoing support at risk children in rural areas.  We met with a local farm in northern Swaziland supported by this group, and it was inspiring to see how much they had accomplished in a short time.  They are doing very much what we hope to be able to do at McCorkindales, and we hope that we can support them (and maybe them us?!?) in the future. http://youtheducationfarms.com/

On a lighter note, I thought my wife loved Bananas.  It turns out she is just a tease.  She really, really loves mangoes.

We both lost weight and got into pretty good shape doing yoga around Bali (a class every day will have that effect).  I think we are both back where we started after two weeks in Swaziland.  Too much Dust Chicken (BBQ chicken you can buy at the roadside) and Pap (cornmeal porridge that has the rough consistency of dry, thick paste – that doesn’t sound good, but believe me, it is delicious!).

Sorry, no pictures this time.  We promise to have some of the kids in their new uniforms before too long!

We made it to Cairo!  First day a success, next up: THE PYRAMIDS!

Sorry for the infrequent posts the past weeks, internet was not so reliable.  We should be able to get back on track now!