August 18: Another great day!

Wednesday morning showed up nice and sunny. Everyone had a good breakfast and then headed off to work with our driver Muzie (an amazing source of info into Swazi culture and all around nice guy!!!). We stopped on the way at the local garden supply in Mbabane to buy some seedlings and supplies to build the cold frame. We couldn’t find poly for the life of us and ended up settling for some hefty, clear plastic bags which we duct taped together (yet another of the many uses for duct tape!). We brought some of the seedlings on outreach and the garden crew took some to their site as well. More bricks were laid at the construction site… the gardeners planted all the starts and those of us on outreach built the cold frame. We picked up a young man from the SOS Village who wanted to help us out. He worked alongside us as well as served as translator. Caisa is 14 years old and quite an amazing young man. He discussed basic economics and world politics with me on the ride! I asked him if he liked Canada to which he replied “Yes, I will go there one day. Notice I did not say I want to go there… I said I WILL go”. He is a very determined and positive person. While walking the path through the mountain village later in the afternoon I noticed, among all the other trash, a used condom wrapper. At least we know there is some access to harm-reduction supplies in these outlying communities. Personally, being in the village really gives me a sense of the tribal nature of their communities. The children all know and play games that appear to be based on tribal chants and dances. Every one of them seems to know the appropriate call and response as well as the movement to go with it. The children seem to really look out for on another. It’s not uncommon for you to see a 10 or 12 year old girl carrying a 2 year old baby on her back. These young children commonly walk the dirt tracks of their village with not an adult in sight but I feel certain that the rest of the community is looking out for them. As the old saying goes “It takes a whole village to raise a child” (very loose paraphrase there… lol).

We all met up at the end of our work day feeling tired out and ready to let loose a bit. Back at the Legends Lodge we hit the restaurant for dinner where the “rowdies” (not mentioning any names here Kira, Bob or Harp…) got the energy started and we all hit the courtyard for some socializing and winding down. Another great day for team Swaziland!!!

DWC Participant
Dan McGowan
Swaziland 2011

August 17: Off to a great start!

Tuesday morning we were up bright and early and on the road at 8:15 to head out to our various work sites. While we still had heavy cloud cover the weather was certainly nicer than Monday. We all finally got to hit the job sites and get some work done. Bob, Ken, Rob Parker, Kira and I were on the outreach team. Carmen, Harp, Kristy, Ryan, Angie and Tammy were on the construction crew. Rob Plowright, James, Cheryl, Jason, and Bruce were all on the garden crew. We (outreach) got dropped off at the SOS Children’s Village to wait for our contact there while the rest of the crew continued on to their respective work sites. We headed up to a small village in the hills outside of Mbabane called Mpholonjeni where we were introduced to an awesome woman named Jabu who does outreach in a children’s centre there. After breaking the ice by introducing her to Frisbee (which she had a natural affinity for) we got rolling to meet some local families. Our first stop was with a single mother with four children (two girls and two boys) ranging from about 3 to 12 years old. The kids were awesome. So full life and joy even though the do without so many things we never all take for granted. Balloons, suckers and a Frisbee had them beaming and then our girl Kira kicked in with the face painting… they just loved it!!! The youngest girl was literally strutting with her face paint, looking like a little model. We helped out mixing some concrete and pouring a few fence posts, pushed a truck that was stuck in the mud and were off to our next stops. Next we met a family with no parents. They are what is called a sibling-led family; where the head of the family is a 29 year old brother. Their youngest sibling was the cutest little 2 year old boy that I had the pleasure of playing balloon with. He was just loving tapping a balloon back and forth. I literally had to tear myself away from it because it was so cool to see him having such a good time, I could have played with him forever. We came to the realization that, although the older brother had a beautiful garden happening; the younger brothers and sisters didn’t have any vegetables to plant in their garden (the older brother has his own little, and I mean little, house behind the stick and mud hut the younger ones still live in). As a team we came up with the idea of building this family a cold frame to start there seeds and seedlings in during their winter months. Next we were off to the only single dad family that Jabu works with. The father and son were off across the valley collecting firewood to keep warm. We visited for a bit with the rest of the family before heading off to meet a mother-led family of 5. There was a group of teenage boys sitting in a corrugated steel dugout burning milk crates for heat… As you can imagine we were taken aback to say the least. We played some hacky sack with the boys and had to head off. Back at the children’s centre we had a crew of probably 40 children. The little girls face painting and playing an improve balloon game; the boys, Bob, Dr. Rob and myself playing soccer… What an awesome time!!!

The garden crew got off to a great start. They came up with the wonderful idea of giving away some fresh cabbages that, for some reason were about to get thrown out. They also planted a couple of hundred cabbage starts before they headed over to the construction site to help out over there as the sacks that are used for planting at the site were not delivered on time. The crew all reported having a great day, meeting some of the locals and coming up with the great idea of building a couple of compost boxes to help with long term soil improvement; both there and at the new care centre site (otherwise referred to as the "construction site").

As for the construction crew, they laid 250 bricks on the first day (with as I said, some help from the garden crew)!!! They got 4 or five full courses of the care centre done and not a complaint from one of them. Everyone had a great sense of accomplishment after all the travel and getting rained out on Monday. It was nice to finally be on the job site and get something done. They laid all the bricks on site and were hoping the next shipment came on time so they could continue on Tuesday.

All-in-all it was a great day for everyone. All the teams got a lot of work done and we got to interact with people from the communities we are working in. We finally got to experience some of what we all really came for. Personally I`d have to say it was both heart wrenching and heart-warming all at the same time. The heart-warming certainly won the day for me although emotions were definitely high…

Dan McGowan
DWC Participant 
Swaziland 2011

August 17: Project Update

I have a minute at the SOS Village so I thought I would send a quick update about the projects and what we have done to date.

Garden project : planted 100 spinach & 100 cabbage plants in a large plot. Then filled and laid out 111 large planting bags and planted 500 onion, cabbage, & spinach plants. We are returning to build a compost box next week, Bruce is writing instructions for them.
Preschool: walls will be finished today, so we are donating 400 vegetables that we will plant.
Outreach group: Bob is trying to teach then how to use cold frames so they don't have to buy starter plant. Kira is off to an SOS Camp for two days.

Tons more to report soon!!
 

Cheers,

Rob Plowright
DWC Team Leader

August 15th: Hello from Swaziland!

Howdy all, I meant to be in touch much earlier but low and behold internet connections aren’t up to the standards we take for granted at home. Because of cloudy, rainy weather we have had very sporadic internet access over the past few days. So after arriving safely on Saturday we made the drive from Johannesburg to Swaziland. It was somewhat of an eye-opener as we left Jo’burg right on the outskirts we passed a township of thousands of stick frame, mud bricked houses. Most of them were roofed with corrugated steel held down by cinder blocks, old tires or anything that would be heavy enough to hold the steel down in a wind. There were also quite a few thatched roofs which I have ofte4n read about in historical literature but have never before actually seen. This was a good introduction to the serious contrast we are seeing all over here. We had some beautiful weather with temps between 25 and 30 for our drive which kind of set us up for a shocker when the next couple of days were rainy and cold… Anyway the rest of the gang had the chance to check out a local crafts market and some cultural dancing on Sunday (I unfortunately was suffering from serious jetlag and slept for 18 hours). By all accounts,the pics and video footage I saw shows that this was an awesome experience!!! They got to experience and participate in some traditional Swazi dancing and drumming. The show stealer was a 7 or 8 year old boy who was a virtuoso on the hand drums. I finally woke up after everyone got home at about 5 pm that evening.

Monday morning amid pouring rain and very chilly temps we got the opportunity to meet with some of the folks from SOS. They took us out to the construction site and the gardening site that we would be working at while here. We also had a chance to tour the SOS Village grounds and one of the houses there. They have 10 children and a house mother in each house (as well as a woman who is the house aunt). The house mother explained to us how she just tries her best to teach the children the basic skills like house cleaning and personal discipline that they will need as they grow older and go out into the world on their own. The children’s rooms were immaculate (we asked if maybe the house mother would come home and give some of us some help with these skills…lol). Even with the rain and cold everyone really grateful to get the chance to see some of the country side and some of the children we would be working with.

DWC Participant
Dan McGowan

August 2011: Time to go!

So, it’s time to go!!! The first members of our group are boarding their flights today!!!! Fly safe Bob, Kira, Bruce, Tammy and Jason…. We’ll see you all in Johannesburg in a couple of days. James and Carmen will be leaving from Kamloops tomorrow. The rest of us are driving down to Vancouver tomorrow to catch our flights to Heathrow at about 8 tomorrow evening. The whole crew will meet up in Johannesburg August 13th at about 8:30 to board our ride to Mbabane, Swaziland!!! Excitement is super high around here!!! A little bit of nervousness thrown in there for certain but that’s to be expected. Hard to believe this thing that started as a little idea is actually happening, less than one year later. We’ve all done some really hard work to make it happen but I’d like to give a special shout out to Bruce and NRI for their donations and support (they are our title sponsor) as well as the insane amount of effort and planning put in to this by Cheryl Doolan and Kira Gosselin and, last but not least the rest of the staff at ASK Wellness who will be here in Kamloops making sure the magic we do every day keeps happening even though nine of us will be gone. You guys rock!!! This has been a tremendous effort on all our parts and I expect the dividends paid from this experience will well outweigh the work we have had to do.

Talk to you all from Africa,

DWC Participant
Dan McGowan

August 2011: Only 11 more days till departure

So, just a quick update... we're off to Swaziland in 11 days!!! We're all getting super-excited about the trip. One or two of us are losing some sleep worrying about details (not that I'm mentioning any names Cheryl...) but the general atmosphere is one of anticipation. For my part (and I know a couple of others) the worst fear I have is being cooped up on a plane for sooooo long. I mean, if memory serves, between our two flights we end up spending about 19 hours in the air!!! Thank the powers that be we actually have a lay-over in London to break it up a bit. I know we are all in for what will be a life changing adventure and that we will create some wonderful memories and friendships that we will carry with us for the rest of our lives. I think if I can make just one of those children smile and laugh I'll have gotten more out of the trip than money can buy... and I'm pretty sure we'll have a lot of laughs, myself and the little ones that is. On a more serious note I expect that we'll all gain some serious perspective on how lucky we are to be Canadian and how silly some of our day-to-day worries are. I mean we might worry about what we're going to have for supper and whether we'll enjoy it on a given day whereas; they may worry about if they'll have supper on a given day. We, as an agency, may work with the relatively small (albeit still too high) percentage of people in our community who deal with HIV/AIDS whereas; we will meet children who have lost their whole families to the epidemic. Please don't mistake this as my belittling the plight of those in Canada and here in Kamloops who live with or are directly affected by HIV/AIDS. I am only speaking of how we, as professionals who work at an ASO and as human beings in general, will gain perspective and compassion and empathy through our experience abroad which I feel certain will improve the work we do here at home...

DWC Participant
Dan McGowan