"The Ubuntu Club"

3/12/2010

"Why is HIV so high in Swaziland?" I ask my students. "This tiny country carries the world's...THE WORLD'S.. highest HIV rate. Why?"

A brave one raises her hand. "I think it is because of poverty."
"Yes. Good answer. I'm sure that has A LOT to do with it. But why then do other poor African countries, some poorer than Swaziland, carry such a small HIV rate? What is happening here?"

They scratch their heads and think. I jump down to the ground and give them their five promised push ups. My ploy in getting the sheep to speak out. I challenge the boys in my class who can do the most push ups in one minute. "If by the end of the school term I can beat him in push ups I will throw all of you a party. But you have to help me get there. I need practice. The more push ups I do the more likely I'll win and the more likely you'll get a party." They think I'm nuts, but agree to play along.

People ask me, "What happened in Uganda?" Uganda once carried the highest HIV rate and in a matter of just a few years it dropped significantly low. 60% lower. They ask me how did THEY do it.

"During the early 2000's, many AIDS experts traveled to Uganda to try to find out why the HIV rate there had fallen. Billions of dollars in funding for global AIDS programs were at stake, and the question soon became mired in controversy. Most public health officials attributed it to government commitment and condom programs. Evangelical Christians attributed it to abstinence programs in schools and churches. World Health Organization officials attributed it to new bureaucratic structures designed by WHO consultants, and so on. While all of those factors certainly mattered, they didn't seem to fully explain the decline, and eventually I would draw my own conclusions."

Writes Helen Epstein, author of The Invisible Cure. I continue to read Helen's words, with my injured foot, stuck in Mbabane, the capital of Swaziland, for a week. I'm on the edge of my seat asking myself: WHAT IS THIS INVISIBLE CURE?! I had no idea then but Helen's findings on pages 160 to 167 would shake my little Peace Corps soul to the core.

"It seemed to me that what mattered most was something for which public health experts had no name or program for. It was something like "collective efficacy."

AND THERE YOU HAVE IT. Helen had found the invisible cure. "...the ability of people to join together and help one another." I had just recently read an interview with South Africa's Archbishop, Desmond Tutu, on what he called, "Ubuntu". A person is a person through other people. Interconnectedness. Communal Harmony. So then what am I doing here Helen...Desmond? How do I teach Ubuntu?

Just seven pages had me so angry. It got me thinking. What am I doing here? Volunteers are teaching in a country where their students ask them, "Which country does America get its food from for free?" Where the abnormal becomes normal. As I'm writing you these words, SWAGAA has called me. "Simphiwe, we have a donor. A woman from America. She wants to help. She has asked for a child with no parents who needs help with school fees." I think of Thuli. "We thought you would know someone who needs this kind of help." I tell her I know someone. SWAGAA and I talk. Thuli's fees will be paid for. But not by her remaining family members. Not by her aunt who has only left Thuli with a scar above her left eye and taken EVERYTHING, including her two little brothers, from her. Don't worry Thuli, this ones on America, a complete stranger, because your family doesn't know Ubuntu. How do I teach them this? Where is their sense of compassion?

I'm angry. I'm pissed off.

Lets get back to Uganda. I mean they did it. How. People ask. How. How did Uganda beat AIDS. "During the 1980s and early 1990s, while people in most African countries were ignoring the AIDS crisis, hundreds of tiny community based AIDS groups sprang up throughout Uganda to comfort the sick, care for orphans, warn people about the dangers of casual sex, and address the particular vulnerability of women and girls to infection. World Health Organizations provided funding, but much also came from the pockets of the poor themselves. Their compassion and hard work brought the disease into the open, got people talking about the epidemic, reduced AIDS related stigma and denial, and led to a profound shift in sexual norms. The process was very African. The Uganda response to AIDS was vastly different from that taken in southern Africa. However, people in southern Africa have the capacity to respond to AIDS just as Ugandans did, and governments and foreign-aid programs can support them. However, they can sometimes undermine them."

So why can't Swazis do this? Why can't they ban together?

Swaziland does not know war. Because of the Apartheid, millions of South African parents were forced to abandon their children with their own parents, aunts, and uncles in the rural areas to search for work in the city. This left children vulnerable to the abuse neglect and exploitation of their extended family members. This then turned them into the hardened adults of today. This tiny country offers no jobs. Families are uprooted. Family members are shifted around while the healthy go look for work in South Africa. This causes a lack of communication and a loss of a sense of community. And maybe, just maybe, all this is not their fault. This lack of communal harmony may not be their fault. This is what keeps me here. Helen goes on to statistically prove that countries that have experienced war, or are currently enduring warfare, have a much lower rate of HIV infection. Could this be that warfare shocks the hearts of the people and encourages the Ubuntu way? Is this what this country needs?

"The open discussions led by government field workers and in small groups of women and churchgoers, the compassionate work of the home-based care volunteers, the courage and strength of the women's rights activists--helped people see AIDS not as a disease spread by disreputable high risk groups or 'others' but as a shared calamity affecting everyone. Behavior change then became a matter of common sense. IT IS A SPIRIT THAT FLOURISHES WHEN PEOPLE COME TOGETHER TO FACE A COMMON THREAT. IT IS NOT SOMETHING THAT CAN BE PACKAGED AND PAID FOR AND THEN SHIPPED AROUND THE WORLD."

So when my students tell me HIV is the highest in Swaziland because of poverty; I must teach them the facts, I must teach them "Ubuntu".

In 2003 the HIV rate in Botswana was six times higher than in Uganda- a much poorer country. Botswana did not talk about AIDS. Botswana had all the packaged elements though. It had the condoms, the testing centers, the things paid for by outside help. "Uganda's campaigns built upon the personalized, informal, intimate, contingent, reciprocal nature of African society, while Botswana mainly focused on mass media campaigns, the distribution of condoms and other commodities, and HOSPITAL based services. These services failed to stir the nations conscience. HIV was everyone's problem."

"Development is good, but we have to ensure we don't lose the ability to care for one another. Down the line, we will realize that development is not only about how good your infrastructure is; it's also about the heart."

I sit on these words with my right foot elevated and iced. "It's not something that can be packaged and paid for and then shipped around the world." I feel like such a commodity. Was Helen referring to us? I have to give them something more than just a library- I have to give them fire, inspiration. I have to teach them ubuntu.

Torn ligaments. Mbabane for a week. I stay at a nice cozy bed and breakfast with other Peace Corps Volunteers. Between us we have: torn ligaments, scorpion bites, ulcers, and parasites. At first I find anxiety in this world of toilets, tvs, cafes, and just another white person in the city. Here I am no one. But now I'm finding comfort in this place. Which I know will make it harder to go back to site. The longer a PCV stays away from site the harder it is to go back. You hear the story of the volunteer who had just a few months left of service. He goes to spend a few weeks in Spain before being tied down to his site for the next two months. He never comes back. It's easier to forget the outside world and live in your routine roundavel hut surrounded by the Sawbonas and Unjanis. Naked in a crowd. You have to forget. You have to forget your old comforts and make new ones.

While in Mbabane, I visit a friend I had made from the Baylor Camp. She is one of the Swazi camp counselors: Thembi. She's been in the hospital for weeks and would not tell me over the phone why. I'm afraid its domestic abuse. Last time I was in town she was walking around with egg yolks in her hair. His retaliation to her accusations. She feared he was cheating on her. I find her at work behind her desk. We embrace and go for a walk. She shows me pictures of her swollen discolored face in the hospital. "I looked through his cell phone to see who he had been texting. So he got angry." She tells me he's moved out for now. She grabs my arm. "Meredith I think I'm pregnant. We were trying for a baby before this all happened. And now I'm two weeks late." She's been too afraid to take a test. We pace outside the pharmacy. Back and forth, back and forth. "I can't go in there. I can't." She says. I walk in and buy two tests. "We'll do it together." I assure her.

One shared carton of Lichi Juice later, we sit on our seperate toilets. Stalls apart...worlds apart. For her, this will be the longest minute of her life. I sit tapping my feet. A flash of some weird adult feeling creeps inside me. A life I am not ready for. Delaying as long as I can, ignoring that clock that just gets louder and louder with age and my nagging mother, "I want grandbabies!" You're never completely carefree when you pee on that stick. Doesn't matter how much sex you're NOT having. Your heart always stops for a split second as you stare at the stick and quickly grab the box again fumbling with the instructions that you ve read and re read over and over again. One line is good? Two lines....is that TWO LINES? OH SHIT..WHAT?...No..ok..exhale. She slides her stick under my bathroom stall. "I can't look Meredith. What does it say?"

I step out of the stall, her stick in hand. A co worker walks in. We quickly hide the evidence behind our backs. "Sawbona Ma?" "Unjani Sisi?" "Ngiyaphilia Ma." OK. She's gone. Thembi stands in front of me. "Well?" She asks. "You're pregnant Thembi." She puts one hand on her belly and slides down the wall to the floor, tears in her eyes. She won't look at me. Her head tilts to the side as tears collect in her eyes. I sit next to her holding her hands.

"I'll be right here with you no matter what you choose to do." I assure her.
"What I choose to do? I don't have a choice Meredith. This isn't America. This is Swaziland. It's illegal here. I could get ten years in jail. No. I HAVE to do this now."
We continue to sit holding each other. We both know this baby, this lump of cells, is going to bind her to this man. This will be his and so will she.

I return to the bed and breakfast. Another tragedy. Another solution out of my volunteer reach. Silly little white girl. The owner of the bed & breakfast asks if me and the other volunteers wouldn't mind sharing dinner with two new guests of hers tonight. "They are doing work like you. They are working for an NGO." She beings to pull out her fancy dinner plates and fancy wine glasses. It won't be cheeseburgers tonight. No. The VIPS are here and they've asked to dine with US.

We are moved from the kiddy table.

A woman and man take the heads of the table. My twenty something year old brain tells me they are over their mid thirties so I cannot compute their age. After the mid thirties it all seems to run together for a mid twenty year old. Red wine tonight. I inhale my food and watch as the adults eat.

The woman is Shantha, working with UNICEF. The man seems to just be along for the ride. They aren't married. They have a wife and a husband back home with their kids. She is living in the US and he is South African. Today they were shown what it was like "out there". They visited a community some what close to where I stay. "We saw such horrific things." They tell us. We explain what it is we do. We explain what it is we have seen. They seem very interested in...us. Shantha points at the man. "THIS ONE, he is an AMAZING photographer. He's done some amazing work. He wrote a book...." She talks as he humbly keeps his head down chuckling. "Can we find it on Amazon?" I joke.

"It's called The Bang Bang Club." She tells us. "Wait a minute!" PCV shouts. "My friend is reading that book right now." She texts her friend who immediately calls back, "You are eating dinner with the author of The Bang Bang Club?! He's kind of a big deal!"

Greg Marinovich is his name. Greg is one of two surviving members of the four photographers that were part of The Bang Bang Club. Called this by the South African Government because of the high risk situations they put themselves in in order to capture amazing photographs during the apartheid between 1990 and 1994. It was Kevin, Greg, Ken, and Joao. In 1994, crossfire kills Ken and seriously injures Greg (shot three times). The book was later written by Greg and Joao. They describe the difficulties of how far one person can and should go to capture an image for others to see. Kevin goes on to take a world famous photograph of a starving Sudanese boy being stalked by a large vulture. He wins a Pulitzer Prize for it but later commits suicide. Greg also received a Pulitzer for his photography. His book was turned into a South African documentary and now, 2010, is going Hollywood. Ryan Philippe will be playing Greg.

I, of course, have excused myself from the table and am in the bathroom googling Greg's life through my little internet phone. I come back to the table and take a seat....speechless...for once. "What do you want to do after Peace Corps?" He asks me. "Ahh..." The famous Greg Marinovich, Pulitzer Prize winner, author, shot three times, has seen death and more, going to be played by the gorgeous Ryan Philippe is asking ME what do I want to be when I grow up?! "Ahh....There's life after this?" I laugh. "It sounds silly. It sounds like common sense at this point, but I want to teach people how to treat each other. I think it would be fun to create a nationwide curriculum for American children. It's ridiculous we're taught algebra. EVERYONE is taught fucking algebra but never are we taught how to treat each other. Something Montessori like. The Scandinavians, I'm sure, have got it figured out. They're always one step ahead. Or maybe I'll just do like everyone else...go back to school." Peace Corps, a two year long study hall. A two year prep for taking the GRE MCAT LSTAT. He asks us what we studied. "Psychology, Art, Environmental Science." "Sociology and chose Kiswahili as my language. Which got me a swat over the head and my dad yelling, 'Be practical you twit! Spanish...social work!" "Your dad's a lawyer? A doctor?" He asks. "Public relations actually."

Greg asks about the Peace Corps. We spend hours explaining to him what it's like to work for the US government. The papers you have to sign the promises you have to make. The only benefit is the benefits. "Wait a minute. You have to sign something saying that you will ALWAYS use condoms?! You could get kicked out for not?!" He shrieks. We laugh. "AND you have to take antimalria drugs for TWO YEARS!? That's insane!" We ask, "So if my PCMO asks why I have stopped taking my antimalaria pills I can just tell her dude with a Pulitzer told me it was INSANE to continue taking them?"

I think about the reports we have to write for the government. Counting children. Volunteer Report Files. Don't worry...we're spending PEPFARs money wisely. The government wants numbers. How many children have you helped?!

Peace Corps: Numbers, Rules, Files

"So much regulation, so many rules." He continues. (I would say more but as a Peace Corps Volunteer our words are monitored and checked. Which is ironic that I'm mentioning this now. I should emphasize, US embassy, I am still taking my doxy.)

We have a good time with Shantha and Greg. The next day they leave and it's time for me to go back to site. The anxiety creeps up. I sit out by the road waiting for a kombi to pass. A van pulls over with Greg and Shantha inside. "Hop in." He and the Swazis who visited some homesteads the previous day are discussing what they saw. "A young girl living with an uncle sexually molesting her. She got out of that homestead but is now living with her older sister." Shantha explains. "Hardly adequate accommodations." Greg replies. The Mbabane Swazis nod their head in agreement. Mbabane Swazis, like these, might as well be living in South Africa or America. They have no idea, that this sad story has a happy ending. This young girl is still with family. Has been taken in by family. Is not living under a tree eating garabage. Sleeping with older men for food and security. This girl has a chance because of a family member. To me, this is rare.

They look at me. "These are my neighbors." I tell them. I tell my sad stories. I tell them about Nonjaboliso and her grandfather and Bhule and Thuli and all the others whose names I no longer remember. Kevin was given a Pulitzer for his world famous photograph of a Sudanese boy being stalked by a vulture. Here we don't have vultures stalking our children. We have humans. Their family members preying on the orphans left behind- turning them to slaves. We have dogs. A two year old boy left to die outside an abandoned homesetead was found just as a pack of dogs were surrounding him. PEOPLE left him to die. Our people are our vultures. The people who break into the homes of orphaned children with no security and steal all their food. Who rape our young girls.

Here, WE are the vultures.

On my way back to Manzini now. Back to the filth and grime. The old man pissing in the street. The legless people dragging their bodies across the piss and filth covered roads, hands outstretched begging. That complicated human smell I once found so comforting. No more crystal glass filled with wine. No more talk of how horrible it is "out there".

I'm there. I'm here. I'm home.

I get a call from my neighbor PCV. His voice is shaking. "Someone I knew." He tells me. "Was receiving help from Save the Children. They noticed he was loosing lots of weight. They think he found out he was positive. He hung himself last night."
"Oh god. I'm so sorry." I interject. He continues, " I went with Save the Children to his house. Mere his body was still hanging from the rope." He pauses and exhales. "I've seen corpses before Mere. (His family...all in the medical field) But I've never seen a BODY. There's a big difference between a corpse and a body. Hanging there and then cut down. His hand. I've shaken that hand before." I can hear him trembling. "I'm on my way home. Just hang on. I'll be there soon." I tell him.

The kombi can't get there fast enough. I fidget, shaking my foot up and down. It's Sunday morning which means the the drunks from last night are still drunk. I hear them yelling in the back of the kombi. I sit amongst the other women starring straight ahead. I hear the shouting stop and then gasping. They have spotted me. Two of them grab empty seats behind me and an elderly woman. They shout loudly amongst themselves, "I like a white pussy!" They gurgle. "I don't like a black one..loose and a forest. A white pussy has money and it is so tight!" They laugh. None of the sober men in the front say anything to these loose cannons. The women stay looking forward, unphased. It's incredible the things you being to tolerate the longer you're here. You become THEM. The silent. The accommodating. The submissive. They grab the woman's shoulder next to me and spray their drunken filth on her. "I want to fuck Obama's wife's pussy!" His friend interjects, "Wait. She's black!" The other one laughs, "OK then. I want to fuck Bush's wife's bush! Ha ha ha!" They continue to grab the woman next to me. It's incredible what OTHER people begin to tolerate the longer they are here.

I stand and turn, "I feel sorry for these Swazi women. All they have to choose from are you Swazi men: Twiddle Dumb and Twiddle Dumber!"
"Hello white pussy! I AM a man!"
"You are an embarrassment. I hope you never reproduce."
One of the men stands face to face with me now. I stare at the pool of spit resting on his large lower lip. Disgusted.
"You know it's unfortunate. The fastest way to Heaven is only through Death. We're stuck here until then."
The kombi stops and we are here. One tries to touch my cheek as they climb out. "Take care of your tight pussy, neh?" They laugh and leave. An old gogo grabs my arm as she climbs over me. "Mandla Sisi. Mandla."

One more kombi ride to go. I'm almost there. A packed kombi yelling: Umlungu! Greets me. "No no no....I am Simphiwe." I correct them. I sit next to a woman with an infant in her arms. She burps her drunken, slurred words all over me. "Sisi, umlungu...Ngicela...Ngicela umlungu," She is asking me to feed her child. I look down at her baby. The drunken woman's sagging wrinkled breast flops on top of her baby's tiny head. Her unloved body. Wrinkled and puckered: elephant like. dried apricots. Her baby: Bone thin. The skin sagging off every limb. The light brown hairs and bloated belly indicates she is iron deficient and malnourished. The mother takes her two fingers and wraps them around the child's upper arm. Her baby won't live long. For twenty minutes she begs me, in SiSwati, to give her money to feed her dying baby. She begs me with every drunken breath. I clinch my face hard and try to stay focused on something outside..holding the tears back. That familiar lump in my throat, I search for something pleasant in this mess. But this is home.

Then I feel something light and soft brush my arm. Her baby looks up at me. I'm surprised. She is smiling....at me. Instead of crying in horror, like most infants, at something that, to them, looks like someone turned inside out..this baby is smiling..no laughing at me. She grabs my finger hard and smiles big. But you're dying..I think. I tell her I'm sorry. You were born in the wrong country baby. Hang on. Just hang on.

"When the Americans come, we sing, we dance, they take our picture, and they go back and show everyone how they are helping the poor black people. But then all they do is hijack our projects and count our children."

Peace Corps. Rules. Numbers. Files. How many children have I helped. I don't know. I so long to be apart of Greg's "Club". To see the horror and tragedy without the files rules and regulations and my constant concern IS MY WORK SUSTAINABLE?! I so long to capture the horrors of this world, risk my life, and show those back home what it is like "out there". I asked Greg, "How do you do it? How do you manage the two dreams? Family and adventure. Travel and home." He tells me, "You've got to find someone who's down for the ride. Who will do it with you. You take turns with the family part and the adventure part." His parting words to us volunteers," Always use condoms!" He laughs. "Don't quit. Don't you DARE quit. Stay for the two years, or you'll regret it for the rest of your life."

Sometimes I wish I could be a journalist or a photographer. Stay behind that expensive glass. The published pen and paper. Just a little more detached from it all. Show you what is happening OUT THERE. Let YOU decide what to do with it all and how to feel about it.

But I'm not. I'm a VOLUNTEER. It's up to me. It's up to us. Yes. Every three months we count those we've "helped". Yes. We write reports for the government. Yes. Sometimes our "help" comes down to the material worth: a library, a bore hole, school supplies.

But we are volunteers. We ARE Ubuntu. And all we can do is show them that.

"Show them who YOU are...and you can change the world."