I took the public transport back to Mbasheni, near our Ngonini training site, to spend New Year’s Eve with my Swazi host family from our Peace Corps training period. I wish I had sufficient literary skills to describe the area, the homestead, the people- what they mean to me now. It is in my skin, this African experience. KaSimelane (the homestead of the Simelane’s) sits on a hill overlooking a valley framed by mountains that border South Africa. The view is breathtaking.
I got off the Khumbi (a khumbi is a van tightly packed with people trying desperately to get somewhere- Travel by Khumbi is reckless and dangerous and generally the only way to get around) at the stop to kaSimelane and am immediately greeted by calls of "Nozipho (my Swazi name), Unjani?! (How are you?). As I walk down the dirt road to the homestead, I am welcomed back by every member of every household on the way. Half-clothed children run to the road, wave, and ask repeatedly, "how are you, how are you?" They ask this routinely and repeatedly as it is the extent of english for pre-school kids. As I get closer to the homestead, the welcomes become more enthusiastic- these are my neighbors, my makhelwani, the people who will watch for me and watch out for me, who have ownership of me.
The Shabangus live directly across from kaSimelane and symbolize what is good about this place. He is striking looking- a powerful African face, strong hands, chisled frame, very dark. He drives for the govt and is away from home 2 weeks at a time. The two weeks he is at home he works constantly- weeding, plowing, tending to his few head of cattle. He asks for nothing that he is unable to get or build for himself, in stark contrast to many Swazis who have, unfortunately, fallen into the trap of learned helplessness. He is a proud and good man who bears himself like a warrior. He has no electricity or running water but I never get the sense that he thinks he is poor. He is regal in his tattered clothes and I am awed by him. Likewise, his wife, who is tall, slender, and hauntingly beautiful- not in some whitewashed sense of what an African woman should look like, but with a dark mixture of fierceness and vulnerability, a look of wildness barely contained. In a land where, tragically, if adult women are not sick, they are generally markedly obese from the high starch diets, makhelwani Shabangu stands out.
My Similane bosisi and bobhuti (the children- my bothers and sisters) run to the road screaming my name. I even get hugs, done with some awkwardness- not something Swazis are accustomed to- this hugging thing, although I am breaking them down slowly. There are the two girls, Nondumiso (11) and Nonduduso (13), and the boys: Wandile (18) , Linda (15), Terrance (9), and Gcina (6). These are beautiful children for whom my words cannot do justice, so I will post pictures. Make Simelane, who silently wishes she had another life, takes a break from ironing her husband’s clothes to greet me. But she must hurry back to the ironing because he is to go off with his brother in law to spend New Year’s Eve elsewhere and must have nice clothes. He is relatively well off by Swazi standards and may end up the subject of an entire diatribe on my part, saved for a day on which I am feeling much less generous of spirit.
I learn that Zero is in South Africa but Z will be by later. Zero and Z????? I have left out too much and, again, words fail me. Zero and Z are both ~20 who, without much family of their own, spend most of their evenings kaSimelane- they are family in a way that transcends blood. Both had to stop school at the end of Form 3 (secondary school ends at form 5) because there was no one to pay school fees for them. Zero is exceptionally bright, quick, articulate, and clever, and there may be a way for him to go to South Africa to enroll in post-secondary training, even without finishing form 5. Zero is one of those people who will survive anywhere and do well evenutally. Z is another story. Z holds my heart in his hand. From the time I began working with kids in the mid-70s, my experience has been that there is always that one kid that you fall in love with, that one kid that keeps it new every day. Z is that kid. He is tall, slender, quiet, with a grace and tenderness that is beautiful to watch. There is such a stillness to him sometimes that, watching him, I forget to breathe. He has an extraordinary gentleness with children that makes me think he would be a great teacher if he had the chance to finish school. He and his mother live 2 homesteads down the hill from the Simelanes. Their homestead is quite different from the rest in the area- simply two run down mud huts. They have nothing. Makwa Z (pronounce magwa Z- mother of Z) is frail and often sick. She is alone in every sense of the word. There is one brother I know of, who lives in South Africa, who is generally drunk and of no help to the mother. I asked Make Simelane about other brothers or sisters of Z. She says there are many grown children, all with different last names. She says of Makwa Z, "they (meaning many men) have loved her too much." Love is different here. Z works whenever he can, for what little he can get, to help out. There really is no work. I will make a way for him somehow because someone should and because I can .
Z finally appears kaSimelane- I hear his voice before I see him and my heart sings at the sound of it. He sees that he has this effect on me and it clearly delights and surprises him. We all, the Simelanes, Z, the makhelwanis, and I, saw the new year in under the African moon, and it was good enough simply to be there in the presence of these people and at this place that is in my skin.
The clinic 1/14/05
I am staring at a skeleton- black skin stretched over bone, eyes bulging, mouth agape. Can he possibly be alive? He blinks and I am startled. I look at him. Directly. I want him to know I see him, I know he is there. We are in a sea of people, so congested I struggle for breath at times, and yet he is invisible. He lurches forward and I am caught by the immediate thought that he is either dying, right now in front of me, or he is going to be sick. I grab a bucket to hold under his chin, but he neither vomits nor dies. He makes a hissing noise and I understand he is trying to speak. I put my ear to his lips and catch a few words. In English- thank god- He is young enough to have taken English in school. Something about his feet…he wants to put them up, motioning as though there should be a foot rest on this rusty old wheelchair. I try to tell him there is no footrest, on my hands and knees now, peering as though, if I look hard enough, a foot rest will magically appear. I find a thin piece of frazzled rope tied between the wheels. Ah, I get it. I take the misshapen, swollen thing that used to serve as a foot, that now is a reservoir for all his bodily fluids, and lift it onto the rope. His foot is heavy, clubbish and sweaty, and I imagine that his two feet combined weigh more than the rest of him.
I am at the ARV (antiretroviral) clinic in Hlatikulu. I brought a young neighbor woman, S, here at 8:30 this morning. She tested positive some time ago and has been pretty sick for abut a month. Mrs. Dlamini down the road was concerned about S and took me to see her yesterday. She stays in a small, dank mud hut on her mother's homestead with her two prepubescent children. Her husband has been dead for a year. She came to the ARV clinic a month ago but was refused because her CD4 count was 400. The norm is about 1200 and they generally don't treat until the decline has dipped to 200, or unless someone is very sick. They have told her to come back in March. I explain to the nurse that, if we make her wait until March, Swaziland with have 2 more orphans to contend with. The agree to see her.
The clinic is only open on Wednesday. The crush of people waiting to be seen is something akin to being jammed into a crowded elevator, multiplied by a factor of ten, with sweltering heat thrown in. And they are all sick, very sick. The overflow spills out into the yard. It is like this all day and I wonder that more people don't die simply waiting to be seen. "Clinic" is a misleading word- this is a scant waiting area with probably more than 200 people, who have to get past the admitting nurse, a staff of one, before they can go to another similarly dismal area to wait to be seen by the doctor. If they weren't horribly sick when they got here, they will be within a few days of breathing this air. TB is rampant here, and even more so in HIV populations.
We are finally seen around 3:00. The doctor open S's shirt to feel her abdomen and I am struck by the sight of a 6" wide band of herpes zoster sores traversing her midline. "Libandi." "The belt." A classic symptom of HIV here. Between the zoster, oral thrush, a chest x-ray that looks none too good, and the fact that this woman cannot get out of bed by herself, it appears as though she will qualify for ARVs. That coupled with the fact that she has a rapid Peace Corps Volunteer at her side.
As we are leaving, the young man in the wheelchair has just been examined and is being sent home. There is no room in the ward. The nurse says he is actually getting better, responding a bit to the ARVs. "Relative to what," I wonder. I give his brother my contact info. As though I could do anything. Perhaps the gesture counts for something. The nurse also says she is quitting- the demands of this job, this constant press of desperate people all day long, has taken its toll on her as well. And we are just beginning the death knell.
The young man in the wheelchair died Wednesday. His brother called to let me know, in broken English, the he was "late". Thought I would want to know.
Nokuthula, the first young woman I took for testing, died yesterday.
We will drown in a tsunami of tears before this is through.
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