As I promised, here is a wonderful and humorous story about fetching water in rural Swaziland. To make things easier for myself, I've decided that I'm going to attempt at keeping the 100 L barrels full and use only the 20 L buckets. This way if I'm ever sick, need to travel, or if the water isn't available on any given day I will be fine. The first time I attempted at filling up my buckets, I borrowed my family's wheelbarrow, and over confidently, brought 3 buckets to fill. On my walk down I made sure to thank God that it was overcast. I mean, what better luck to get water for the first time and not have the scorching sun baring down on you? I thought I was blessed. As I took my place at the back of the line, I stared at the bomake (mothers) and bosisi (sisters) just sitting there chatting. The woman in charge of the pump would get up, leave for some time then return, fill up 1 bucket then leave again. I thought it was out of pure laziness and my patience was already running low. Then, I realized something. Something very important for future reference. The hidden sun (which I was SO ecstatic about) is HOW we get our water. The tap works on solar power. (A foreigner donated it to this community- and I definitely prefer the borehole which is not easier but it's definitely faster.) The sun pumps up the water from underground and when there's no sun, there's no water (or very little). I sighed at this realization 1) because it took me so long to figure it out, 2) because I was so thankful for the weather and it ended up being the worst circumstances, and 3) it would be my luck, right? haha. So, by this time most of the people left to...well do whatever they do (which I haven't been quite able to figure out) but they left their buckets there to be filled in their absence. The Make running the tap felt so bad for me, she let me skip the whole line and fill up just 1 of my buckets. It took a good 30 minutes to fill it up. On my walk back I discovered that 1 bucket in a rusted, crappy, old, broken wheelbarrow was more than enough. In total it took me around 2.5 hours to get water, and I was thankful I didn't get all 3 buckets filled. That 20 liter bucket lasted me a week. Most of it going to drinking, and a minimal amount for cooking, cleaning, and bathing. Let me just emphasize that bathing has become an art. I can now bathe with 1 L of water and I'm proud of it. I also get maybe 2 baths a week, 3 if I'm lucky. Which would also be fine if I wasn't constantly sweating and caked in sand and dirt. Good thing my skin's already brown. shoot. Anyways, the 2nd time I fetched water, it took 3 hours but I was able to fill 2 buckets. Hopefully it will last 2 weeks? It's looking like it :)
There has been 2 funerals since I wrote the last entry. One of a close neighbor, and the other a community member. How depressing. It's just another confirmation on how emotionally difficult this is going to be. In other news, I got a much needed "vacation"! During integration we are allowed 1 night away per month. I used mine to visit a good friend and see what life was like down south. It is definitely the suburbs of Swaziland down there. While I was a bit jealous of the easy access to water, beautiful and big huts, reliable transportation, proximity to town, how close other volunteers are to each other, how much cooler the weather is, that they have a KFC and a produce market in town, etc. I did walk away with an appreciation for my site. There aren't many volunteers who get to experience life in this way: homesteads spread out, untouched land, lots of walking, the rarity of electricity (at night it is beautiful with barely any house lights and with wildfires lighting up the mountains), working for water, and all the perks that come with living so removed from civilization, where our biggest shopping town isn't even on the map! haha. The next day I went to the PC office to use the internet, check any snail mail that may have come in, and pick up books to read. Definitely got lost and spent 1.5 hrs aimlessly walking around, hoping I'd stumble upon it. A local got me in the general direction of it and boy, was I far off. I should have paid more attention when they showed us around after swear in! Although I do have a legitimate excuse for that. I had some sort of weird allergic reaction to something, my body welted and swelled up and I was on heavy amounts of medication. I'm still not sure what the reaction was to, but a friend from Kenya joked, "It's Africa. You become allergic to everything here!" haha. In any case I found the office, spent 3 hours uploading 3 pictures, picked up 8 books to read which will hopefully last me through the month, got a letter from my mother and Kashie Kash!, ate a chicken sandwich and ice cream both for the first time (from KFC), got sick from the ice cream and chicken sandwich because it was so rich (not used to having flavor), and lastly, ATE A BURGER! Successful trip? I'd say so. :) But to make a long story short, I almost didn't make it back to my homestead. I gave myself 3 hours to get back, which should've been more than enough. Sadly, it took 4.5. The truck I caught back kept on breaking down and the driver had to work on it multiple times in the darkness- as I had mentioned earlier, very few lights in my community. There was one point where the truck almost stalled as we were heading for a bridge (with no barriers on the sides of the bridge). It was a great feeling. But, I'm alive and well, and that's all that matters!
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