Farewell to Summer

It's been cold and rainy here for the past couple of days. Scott and I spent last weekend in Durban, South Africa, where it was warm and sunny, but when we returned it seemed as if the seasons had definitively changed. The seasons here are the opposite of those in the U.S., so we are well into fall here. I didn't expect it to get quite as cool as it has (in the upper 50's F right now), and I miss the warm weather already. We live on a high, windy plateau, and everyone tells us it will get even cooler over the coming months. Before summer becomes too distant a memory, here are some photos from around the farm where we live taken this summer.

Scott on the road leading from town to Mabuda Farm.

More of the 1 km road leading to the farm. You can see some of the farm's vast cornfields to the left.

Walkway leading down to our house on right.

Scott standing in front of our house. Kitchen windows to right, living room/Scott's room in middle, and bedroom/my room (w/chimney) to left.

A view of one of the farm's pastures taken on one of our evening walks. The farm is huge -- about 10,000 acres -- and we still haven't explored all of it.

One of the grass pastures where the farm's dairy cattle graze. The old bathtub is used as a trough.

A view of the main house, where our landlords, Dr. & Mrs. Pons, live. In the foreground is one of the two dairies on the farm. You can also see some of the Pons's horses grazing in the field in front of their house.

Another view of the main house. We live several hundred yards distant in the farm's old "lodge."

Me on one of the dirt roads on the farm.

Scott in one of the pastures they started harvesting for hay back in late January (mid-summer here).

Another evening view of same pasture.

Karen Wong and I at the farm's lily pond, which also serves as a source of drinking water for the farm.

Scott on the way home from an evening walk, gorgeous African sunset in background.

Scott and I walking through some cornfields ready for harvest. Much of the corn is used to make corn meal, so they leave it on the stalks to dry completely before harvesting and grinding.

It feels odd to be heading into winter as everyone at home heads into summer -- another mark of the great physical distance between us. Remember us as we settle into the winter months here!

Where Have All the Swazis Gone?

Here is a link to an excellent newspaper article from the Toronto Globe and Mail documenting the unprecedented population decline in Swaziland caused by HIV/AIDS. The article does a great job of outlining the factors that have led to Swaziland's sad record as the country with the world's highest rate of HIV infection. Though the article is over a year old, nothing has changed, and it does a good job of elucidating the situation we see on the ground here every day.

The author of the article, Stephanie Nolen, has also written a great book called 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa, which tells the stories of 28 AIDS patients from different countries across Africa. The book's introduction provides a fascinating overview the genesis of the AIDS pandemic in Africa (and the world). I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in learning more about how AIDS is affecting the developing world.

Thabiso: An Update

It's tough being a kid in Swaziland.

It's difficult tell how Thabiso, whose mother, Busisiwe, died four weeks ago today, is actually doing. (You can read Busisiwe's story here.) In some ways he seems fine, perhaps even better off than he was when his mother was alive: he has a stable home with his aunt, and he is now attending school regularly. But there have been some bumps along the way, and he definitely faces some big obstacles. He resisted going to his aunt's at first, preferring to remain at his mother's homestead with the young male cousin who took it over. His aunt's homestead is in the same community where he was living with his mother, but significantly further from the main road into town, and thus from town itself, including his school. I don't think he was too worried about being farther from school, but the additional distance certainly cramped his style as budding man-about-town in Siteki.

His aunt's homestead seems like a more stable, well-run home than what we saw of his life with his mother. (This is not a judgment on his mother; the poor woman was trying to hold it together for herself and three kids as she was dying.) One of the good things about the Swazi culture is the strong extended family ties which function to absorb orphaned children like Thabiso. There was no question of him or his siblings going to an orphanage or being left to fend for themselves on the streets. Though both of his parents are dead, Thabiso has two living grandmothers and a network of aunts and uncles on both sides of his family. They came together after his mother's death to decide who would care for the kids. Unfortunately, no one was in a position to take all three of them. Thabiso's older sister was already living with her grandmother, so she will now live with her permanently; Thabiso's younger brother was taken in by an adult male cousin and his girlfriend who as yet have no children of their own; and it was decided that Thabiso would live with one of his father's sisters. Though Thabiso's aunt is by no means wealthy, at least her husband has a steady job with the local electric company, and it appears that they are able to feed and clothe their own several children along with the addition of Thabiso. Other of Thabiso's extended family have pitched in to help with additional support for school fees, school uniforms, new shoes, etc., so that the full financial burden doesn't fall to his aunt alone.

That said, Thabiso still seems lost. In the United States we would expect that of an eleven-year-old who has just lost his mother. But here it seems that children are simply expected to move on as if nothing unusual has happened. Perhaps that is precisely because early encounters with death are not at all unusual here. Just last Friday, Thabiso's entire class was excused from attending school so that they could attend the funeral of one of their classmates who had been "sick since birth," as the official notice put it.

Thabiso's mother was buried the Saturday after she died. The following Monday Thabiso was expected back at school. He didn't go. He put on his uniform and acted as if he was headed to school, but instead he headed into town and hung out there playing with other children either not enrolled or skipping class like himself. He kept up this charade all week. Scott and I caught onto him pretty soon, since Siteki is such a small town it's hard to hide there, and we'd see him ducking out of sight when he saw us in town. On Friday of that week, he and his partner in crime, Senzo, showed up at our house first thing in the morning, with a confused, scarcely understandable tale of being kicked out of their respective homes, being chased by the police all night, being beaten by town thugs -- on and on it went. We've experienced these tall tales from the boys before, and though both Scott and I felt sorry for their predicament, we didn't want to be taken for yet another ride by these eleven-year-old con men in training. So instead of the sympathy and warm breakfast they were probably hoping for, we packed them into our car and took them to school.

As serendipity would have it, just as we arrived at Thabiso's school, the headmaster was exiting his office with Thabiso's aunt. Their jaws fell open when they saw us walk up with Thabiso, since his aunt had gone to the school to file the equivalent of a missing child report -- Thabiso had not been home in days, but, as we soon found out, had been running wild night and day with Senzo. Both of the boys took quite a tongue-lashing from both the headmaster and Thabiso's aunt. (It was probably only Scott's and my presence that prevented them from receiving a physical lashing as well.) Scott and I got embroiled in a de facto parent-teacher conference about what to do about Thabiso. The upshot was that Thabiso was sent home that day in his aunt's care, and told to come to school on Monday only if he wanted to. There would be no more forcing or coercion. Essentially, the school washed their hands of him unless he decided to attend of his own free will. He was given the weekend to think about it. Scott and I told him he could not visit us or expect anything from us until he had proved that he had attended school every day for a week.

For the last two weeks, everything seemed fine. Thabiso went to school religiously every day. After the first week, he showed up at our house to show us his school work. I visited the headmaster the following day, and he confirmed that Thabiso had been attending school every day. Thabiso's teacher even bought him a new pair of sneakers to wear for P.E. By the end of last week (when he showed up to show us the note excusing him from school on Friday to attend his classmate's funeral), Thabiso seemed very proud of attending school every day for two weeks.

Unfortunately, events took an abrupt turn for the worse over this past weekend. I sensed something was wrong on Saturday when Thabiso told us that he was spending the weekend at Senzo's house. (Senzo's is another sad story, which I won't go into now. Suffice it to say that he comes from a desperately sad, chaotic household, where he lives alone with a less-than attentive aunt.) I couldn't imagine Thabiso's aunt letting him stay with Senzo, so soon after trying to establish a stable home environment for him at her homestead. Nonetheless, Thabiso assured us that everything was fine and that his aunt knew and approved of his weekend with Senzo. It turns out she didn't.

Yesterday afternoon (Sunday), as a reward for attending school for two weeks straight, we took Thabiso, along with our two "good" kids, Nosipho and Mancoba, for pizza and a swim at the country club attached to the sugar cane company town of Simunye, which is about half an hour from where we live. The kids had a great time playing in the pool and gorged themselves on pizza and french fries and cokes. It was great fun seeing them frolic in the pool and have such a rare, care-free time. On the way home at dusk, we dropped off Nosipho and Mancoba first, and were on our way to Thabiso's home, when we encountered his pal Senzo crying at the side of the road. Another long, twisted story ensued, about beatings and police and threats of what sounded like a lynching. I have to admit I soon lost interest, and Senzo's tears, which flow frequently, didn't move me. Thabiso, however, jumped out of the car and said he was staying with Senzo. We said no, it would be best if he went home to his aunt's, especially after being away all weekend. But Thabiso was adamant that he wouldn't return home, most likely because he was supposed to have been there all weekend and would now face stiff punishment upon his return. It was getting dark by this point, and I was getting impatient with all the stories and stubbornness on their part. We admonished Thabiso to return home on his own, knowing that he wouldn't, and then left them on their own.

This morning (Monday), on his way in to the hospital, Scott encountered both Thabiso and Senzo hiding up in a tree by the side of the road, where they'd apparently spent the night. They were both exhausted, but Scott delivered Thabiso to school so as not to spoil his attendance record from the past two weeks. We intend to visit Thabiso's aunt this week to get her point of view on what's happening with Thabiso, and to work with her to prevent a recurrence of this weekend's events. Unfortunately, it seems that Senzo, as sad and charming and needy as he is, is not a good influence on Thabiso, and we'll have to address that situation as well.

I write this long description of events to illustrate the myriad problems caused by the overwhelming number of AIDS deaths in this country. Thabiso's is just one story among thousands upon thousands of AIDS orphans who are rapidly becoming a lost generation in Swaziland. Yes, Thabiso is receiving basic support from his aunt and extended family, but is he really receiving from them the same level of love, discipline, and attention that his own parents would give him if they were alive? And what about the psychological trauma of not only losing both parents but being separated from siblings as well? Such questions are rarely addressed here. The extended family network which has traditionally worked so well for Swazis is being taxed to the breaking point by the continual onslaught of AIDS. Such families are already overstretched in trying to provide for their own children, which often already include other orphans they've had to take in. I don't know what the answer is -- it certainly seems like an insurmountable problem as long as AIDS continues to devastate the population here. Long-term, large-scale solutions which can only come from better education, increased economic opportunity, and improved health care are what are needed. In the meantime, we're just trying to help kids like Thabiso who are right in front of us.