First Trip to Mbabane and Site Placements!

Through the magic of the iphone I am posting this from my hut. So since my last post kind of a lot has happened. I'm really going to try to post more regularly from now on just so I don't have to do these big posts. The big things were our first tests, our first trip to Mbabane, and our site placements.

The tests were really just practice tests on everything we've learned so far: language (a biggy), culture, health and some others. Our final tests are at the end of Pre-Service Training in a few weeks and if you don't pass those you don't get sworn in. It wasn't anything too hard, but I could always use some more study time. You also get to sit down with a couple of the directors to talk about where you're going go be placed permanently for the next two years. You rank what kind of work you want to do, how close you want to be to a big city, weather, electricity and anything else, then they try to make the best match with the sites they have chosen. I told them I really wanted to work at a bigger clinic or hospital, I wanted to be somewhere close to a big city where it was relatively cool, and I really wanted electricity (of course). All of those were pretty popular requests so I didn't really get my hopes up. We had to wait a whole week after that before we actually found out where we were going to be.

In the mean time, we took our first trip to the Capitol, Mbabane. We were only there for a few hours and didn't get to see much but it was really nice to get out of our little town for a while. The highlight was probably getting our cell phones, finally. I won't post the number, but if you want to spend the money just ask and I'll probably give it to you (Skype is pretty cheap). We went to a museum and a cultural village where we saw some traditional Swazi dancing. Pretty impressive. We all spent the night at a hostel. Food, pool and beer. I don't remember the last time I stayed up past 10:00 before that. There were some zebras wandering around during breakfast, which seemed oddly appropriate. On the way home we stopped at what might be the best stocked grocery store in Swaziland. Olive oil, soy sauce, cheese. AMAZING! I'll definitely have to be making the trip there pretty often.

So now to the best part: site announcements were yesterday and right now it looks like I get to spend the next two years in what might be the best site in the country (for me at least). Some of the volunters from Group 6 (the ones that have been here a year) made a giant map of Swaziland with a rope with little flags to mark where all of the new sites were. When they called our names they would walk us to our flag. You could instantly see how close you were to everyone else and the big cities. I will be in a town called Zombodze, pretty close to the center of the country. It's supposed to be about 15 minutes from Manzini and less than an hour from Mbabane, the two big towns. This part of the country is in between the hot and cold areas so the weather won't be too bad. There's enough work at this site that they could've put a married couple there, but the housing wasn't large enough, so there will be pleanty for me to do. I have electricity and my building is painted two-tone pink, so I have that to look forward to. I know nothing about my host family, but so far what I know couldn't be any better. Next Saturday we leave for On the Job Training. I'll spend 5 nights at my site and get to see the area for the first time. It's a lot of meeting people I may or may not be working with and seeing what they do, but I'll know more next time I post.

All in all, I'm super excited. It's nice to finally be able to have some idea of where I'll be for the next two years, even though I don't know what I'll be doing exactly. I'm sure Ill have a better idea in a week or so. Anyways, I'm off to dinner with some people in celebration of the amazing event that was my birth (yes, so amazing it takes a week to celebrate properly). Talk to you soon.

-- Post From My Hut