Sweating and Swearing

Addy’s last blog post brought you up to speed with some of the projects and trips we have been on. We haven’t updated this blog in a criminally long time. Ncesi. One of the things she mentioned was that I was working on some pretty manly stuff like renovating a library. Truth.

Manly is one way to describe it. But the project, in fact, only has little to do with men. Most of it involves women, children and a couple of dudes doing most of the grunt work. Sweating and swearing a lot. Most of it in languages I don’t understand, but with a few choice expletives that cut across any language barrier.

 To bring you up to speed in the camp lies a derelict building that contains three rooms. Two small ones designated for a pre-school and nursery and a larger one designated for a library. UNICEF has promised to fund the running and operation of the pre-school pending renovation of the buildings. They have partnered with Swaziland’s acting partners Department of Home Affairs and their acting counterparts CARITAS. A E6,000 grant was approved to purchase some of the supplies to renovate the buildings. Jenny Hammond, a local businesswoman and former refugee agreed to kick in any additional funds.

Here is where Peace Corps comes in. Due to our extensive time and relationship investments at the camp we are pretty good at mobilizing the community to do the hard work. Replacing broken windows, painting, mortaring cracks, constructing a fence, replacing doors and building shelving (to come). This has been a unique and ultimately rewarding experience for us. The other day while installing the fence around the perimeter I looked around at the guys working. Somalians, Rwandans, Burundians, Congolese, two Swazi professional builders who are working only for in-kind food donations and the ubiquitous American twenty-something working together to construct a fence that, due to the refugees transient stay at the camp, may not be of any direct benefit to them in the present. Instead, for nothing but a scant meal of samp and beans they were working in the dead heat of a lowveld December afternoon.

This is, I think, where the Peace Corps shines. We are able to mobilize communities by integrating into them. I was sweating and swearing along with the refugees instead of sitting behind a desk trying to raise “awareness” about literacy or early childhood education.

I asked one of the residents early in the morning if people would come and work. He said, “if they see you, they will come”. That was cool.

After we finished I sat under a tree and played Scrabble with some Rwandans. It was a lively game although I killed with Kuwait on a triple letter space.

Merry Christmas!