"Fake Plastic Trees"

10.22

Hulled down in my cell, curtains closed, I'm lying in bed starring up at my new thatch roof. I try to bring it tumbling down around me so I can see the clear sky and clear my head. "Why?" I ask myself. "Why has Peace Corps put me here?" I tell Stella, "No teens. No conterpart AGAIN. One high school. A thousand NGO's and electricity- what I did not want." No jacuranda's a ton of current and recent PCV's and so many so many.. so many NGO's. I was literally put right on top of two other PCV's in my group who have politely asked me to stay away and not to take all their work. I walk to my dirt road outside my homestead, to the right- one volunteer, to the left- another. I am constantly watching my step and trying to understand what is exactly MY territory. It's particulary challenging that my homestead just had a PCV from group 5 and many others recently. A PCV and I go to the ONE high school in the area to see what exactly they need help with. Blank stares follow. Help? They tell us of the volunteers who were just here, "Put in that library over there. They helped us so much."

You can't imagine how frustrating it is to everyday get phone calls from my old community asking me where I am and for my help- while I'm stuck in a community that is being served left and right by NGO's and Peace Corps.

Peace Corps Swaziland- We'll burn that bridge when we get to it.

I ask current PCV, "OK. Surveys, assessments, interviews. What have you done at this school?" I throw some ideas at him. "Wow Mere. I think your motivation can help me with mine. Please don't take all my work though." I assure him I'll be serving Nkiliji as well, "I'll be busy with them too." He exhales with relief.

Day 2: Lukhetseni
I email Stella. "Please consider how unfair it is that every volunteer was put at a site based on what they had asked for. I understand you thought putting me in a home that just had a female volunteer would be safest- but everything else that makes up a site was not considered. A volunteer's happiness is crucial to their effectiveness. This is not only the next two years of my life- but my life dream. I didn't come here to analyze data with NGO's or fight over the youth of the ONE high school in the area with other volunteers. I did not want to be put somewhere I am not needed- fluff and filler." I won't be the Princess Diana of the African Poor. Peace Corps for me- not a reume booster filled with inflated facts. I didn't do Peace Corps for John fucking Hopkins University- they love PCV's. This is it. This is it.

Stella hears and agrees with what I have to say. But assures me if she shares this with the CD- she'll send me home. "But my heart is with you Meredith."

So here I lie in bed- thinking of all the communities in Swaziland- who have never seen an NGO or a PCV- who actually need me- and not this homestead that JUST had a volunteer. "Fikile!" "Fikile!" The kids shout. Previous peace corps volunteer's name. I see the tally marks on the doorway inside her hut. Showing the growth of her little "chickens"- what she called the kids i'm guessing- over the two years. I'm constantly called and compared to her. I'm an imposter. Her hut, her children, her family, her community. Her memories. Her two years. The eldest girl, Nobandile, my first night there, laughs and says to me, "You won't last the two years..." Nine giggling children in my hut constantly. Rooting through photos and journals with their fingers that have just been up their noses. Filthy feet on my bed. My favorite photo of my mother- in her twenties sitting on top of an old cadillac- I hear it tear. I jump into panic mode. "OUT!"

Day 3
I break out the cards and homemade popcorn I learned to make when I was vegan for about thirty minutes. I decide to minimize destruction by keeping their hands and mouths busy. I swagger over to the eldest girl, Nobandile, and say, "Bet Fikile didn't make you popcorn." She smiles a smug smile. "No. She microwaved bagged popcorn for us everynight and we watched movies on her lap top. Where's your lap top?" "I don't have one." I say defeated as I walk away.

Day 4
Nothing like hand-washing diry period underwear with nine giggling children watching and hovering over you.

Day 5
I take my bag of trash to the trash pit- to burn it. Nine giggling children follow close behind. One grabs it from me. I watch nine children tear open my trash and root through it like a pack of dogs. Eating bits of not so rotten perishable items. Old batteries and pens go into pockets. A girl pulls out a scraped out bottle of mustard. I know where this is going. I watch fingers go into it. I don't warn them- I'm going to enjoy their discomfort. Fingers in mouths.. quickly retreat and spit.. "Blah! What is this?!"

Day 6
I sit, exhuasted, staring at them wrestling on my hut floor. Catching their breath only to ask me for things. But Fikile bought us this.

Day 7
I visit other PCV, who I'm rubbing territory corners with. She shows me her work at Cabrini- an orphanage/clinic/school run by two American nuns. Fikile used to work there a lot. PCV shows me all the assessments, surveys, home visits she has done. She is an incredible hard worker- I feel like a fucking joke compared to the work she's been doing. Her work and the work of these nuns. What they've seen. PCV tells me about the home visits she and Cabrini have done to those living with TB and HIV- too sick to come to clinics.

There are some people seen only once, that live forever in your memory. PCV tells me, "I get to one homestead. A woman, a skeleton, lying on the floor. Every bone shooting out. My arms the size of her theighs. She has become drug resistant- living with TB- and of course AIDS." God this PCV has been doing REAL work- she is in it. She continues, "This is Lubombo. The poorest of the poor come here. Here where homesteads are made of stick and mud. Here where the HIV prevelance rate is over 50% Where HIV positive women tell us they cannot go on ARV's because their husbands want them to die and want to marry another. They are their husband's property. Where a child with a clubbed foot is tied to a tree and left to die. A Swazi child- the property, the cattle, of a family with a farm." I can't finish my sandwich. She goes on, "The self entitlement here is outrageous. A culture soaked with NGOs for so long. Giving them everything. A PCV works hard to get the funding to build the community a new NCP. She gives the materials to the community and asks them to build. There the materials sit, in a bundle for a year. Someone else comes along and takes them. Then the community asks the PCV if she can get the funding to get them a new NCP and new materials."

We come to the end of the tour at Cabrini. PCV wants to introduce me to an Australian volunteer. An accountant here to train a Swazi to be Cabrini's accountant. The Australians have an organization, similar to Peace Corps, that brings in professionals to train Swazis- sustainabile. "He's here for two years like us. But I wouldn't compare him to the Peace Corps- he doesn't like that." She explains that he and the nuns feel Peace Corps is kind of a joke. "Sending untrained kids into areas of crisis." Australia- sending trained professionals into areas of crisis. I walk into his air conditioned office. I shake trained professional's hand, at his computer sorrounded by the comfort of his numbers. I pull out my avacado sandwich from my ziploc bag and begin to munch. Mouth full, legs spread out- sitting in very "dude" manner, I shout to him, "So you're here for two years eh? Just like us?!" Bits of sandwich fly onto my shirt. "Oh, ooops- didn't mean to compare you to us." I wipe the avacado off my fingers onto my pants. "You, trained professional and me- hugging orphans and handing out hershey bars..." I decide to stop being a dick and brush off my rudeness with a "just kidding".

Day 9
Curtains drawn. I'm trapped in the belly of this machine. Aid work is about effectiveness. Compassion- a given. Compassion- easy. Am I effective? I'm afraid my Australian professional is right. I'm wasteful overlap on my sorrounding PCV's turph. Turning Lubombo into competition.

Is this my last straw I think. What more has to happen before I open this window and jump. Peacecorps/Swaziland: taking me over the edge and you won't come with me. I'm walking in water today. A devil driving me. I step outside and push my way through the extended hands and gawking eyes. I start to run. Why am I here? PCVs have told me, "No one else was supposed to be put in Lubombo- they don't need the help." Fikile wrote me, "I told them not to put anyone else at that site." But why are any of us here? What are American 20 something year olds doing here exactly? Fetching water, bowing to chiefs, watching the sick die. Wanting to be punched in the face. Wanting to feel something again. An escape from our mundane lives. Bringing ourselves closer to our feelings. Alive again.

I run faster.

A bankrupt country. A crooked King. Tourism and wildlife cornering welfare and neglect. This is the every day they have tried to escape and you mhlungus want this?

I hear my name called. I can only ignore and continue to run. What can I, the untrained the untalented, this 20 something year old American do?

Blood fills my head and I can feel again. I'm on fire. The fat Lubombo sun, his round face wheezing with his smoker's laugh, lingers up above. He tells me, "This is Lubombo Meredith- open your eyes." Sweat climbs down my ribcage like fat beetles- resting on the lower part of my back. I'm a god damn joke. What did I think I could do with my little youth clubs and support groups? I hold back the tears as I continue to run- making it difficult to breath. Head down- defeated. I'm walking through water today.

I look up. Where am I? Like something out of "Where the Wild Things Are"- I am deep in forest. A dried up river bed filled with low hanging bloated trees. My feet drag my body back "home". I push past the "Please may you borrow me's" and the dangling children on my hut door. I fall fall fall into bed. I look up at my new thatch roof and wait for it to fall down around me- showing me the clear sky and clearing my own head.

Dad says to me, "So you're learning something about beuracracy." This grasshopper- always learning.

I roll over, close my eyes- sleep to look forward to. Eyes open- shit, I forgot to take my malaria pill.