The Rock Lodge

This past weekend, we went with 14 friends to a local getaway called, ‘Rock Lodge.’ It was definitely appropriately named as the entire residence was built around enormous boulders. We just went for an overnight including a couple of hikes, a braai, an awesome fireside sing-along, and a crazy thunderstorm (which fortunately stayed on the other side of the valley for our viewing pleasure). It was extremely ‘Robinson Crusoe-esque.’
The entrance

One of two ‘bunk rooms.’ Mine was the one with the tree in it.
Here’s the view of the bunk room from the outside.
The kitchen
The dining room
The stairs to the bathroom
The bathroom
The view from the toiletHiking
The river
Doug, Michelle (Baylor Doc and owner of cursed Honda CR-V), and Tao (Swazi and Manager at Computronics – for whom I taught the computer course) playing in the rapids
Uri and Jessi (here for 3 years running a circumcision clinic for PSI)
Ariadne and Jessica (‘visiting scholars’ at Baylor – remember when Doug went to Botswana for a month last year? That’s what Ariadne and Jessica are doing now in Swaziland)
The view from the roof
A blue lizard

Certified

Last week I returned from completing my PADI Open Water Scuba Course in Tofo, Mozambique. Mallory, Joe, and I made the ten and a half hour trek to Tofo on a Friday and then participated in the 4-day course before returning the following Wednesday. I have always wanted to learn to scuba dive, but have never wanted to waste 4 days of a vacation in order to complete the course. That’s the beauty of Africa though; all I have is time. Doug has been diving since he was 18; therefore, he stayed behind to work (somebody has to do it). Tofo was paradise. We stayed in a bungalow on the beach, ate a ton of seafood, met some great people, and learned to scuba dive! Pretty much, the only sad part was leaving! Well, that and the 500 Meticash (Mozambiquan currency) bribe that we paid to the police Captain just outside of Xia Xia in order to get my driver’s license back. But, for driving 21 hours in Mozambique, only having to pay one bribe was pretty darn good. Oh, and the small matter of a rat in our dresser (but again, our own fault for using it as a food pantry). We chose to complete our course in Tofo (and not somewhere closer) because Mallory had been there before (and let’s be honest, because of a certain scuba instructor named, Ben). The entire first day was theory and then a culminating test, but on the remaining days we did ‘confined dives’ in the pool in the morning and then ‘open water’ dives in the ocean in the afternoon. The pool dives gave us an opportunity to practice the ‘skills’ that we needed to master in order to be certified in the open water like buddy-breathing, different ascents, clearing and taking off your mask, switching regulators, regulating your buoyancy through breathing, etc. Our instructor was awesome; but, I’m pretty sure that we liked him more than he liked us by the end. We endearingly named him ‘Scuba Dan’ although his official nickname was, ‘Grillman Dan’ (we never got enough beers in him to hear the full story behind that one). For our first two open water dives, we went to a dive site called, Clownfish. Given the perceived ‘safety’ of diving in the pool, Mallory, Joe and I were anxious to see how we’d fare in the ocean. Despite holding hands for the first part of our first dive, we all adjusted quickly and in our own minds, were ‘professionals’ (obviously). The only challenge we faced was sea sickness…a lot of it. On the first day we took turns throwing up over the side of the boat as we endured a neverending ‘surface interval’ (the amount of time that you have to stay on the surface between dives in order to regulate your nitrogen level from the first dive). It was grim. Then, on the second day, we thought that we were much wiser by not eating anything…unfortunately, this just meant heaving stomach bile over the side of the boat, instead. But, I guess that just shows how awesome scuba diving is; we were amped to get back out there, every time, even though we knew it meant endless nausea and vomiting for all three of us! All-in-all, it was a blast. We even swam with a sea turtle! Doug and I are already making plans for a return trip. It really wasn’t fair to go without him since there is diving, surfing, and kite surfing all from the same beach in Tofo (as previously mentioned, ‘Doug Heaven’). The underwater world is pretty cool.
Once we left the mountains of Swaziland and entered Mozambique, the drive to Tofu was completely flat. This was our view for 9+ hours.
There were many ramshackle ‘towns’ along the way.
It always amazes me how people can carry anything on their head in these parts.
After many hours of ‘This American Life’ NPR podcasts, we finally arrived! Here’s our home for the week.
A few pictures of the dive shop
And our classroom
Mal and Joe getting kitted-up for our first pool dive
Our first pool dive
We are so EXCITED!
Dan using his musical talents to brief us for our last dive
The infamous dive boat
Paradise

My Nephew

For those of you who miss me walking around the office with pictures of my adorable nephew, here are a few updated shots of darling Henry. He likes to stare at people and to stick out his tongue when he’s concentrating. He definitely belongs in our family…

Yom Kippur

The high holy days were celebrated in Swaziland! While we did not attend any services, we were hosted by an Israeli couple on Roshashana and then Doug and I hosted the ‘break the fast’ on Yom Kippur. There was only one other person who actually fasted (besides Doug), but nonetheless, we used the special day as an opportunity to celebrate with our friends (pictured above). Surely this will get us into the Book of Life for one more year…

'Nationals'

As I've made reference to, Doug and I have been playing ultimate frisbee two nights a week. The team was started by a couple of PAC doctors back in the day and has been sustained by a constant stream of expats in Mbabane. We practice on a field at a local private high school called, Waterford. Last weekend, our team entered the Rocktober National Ultimate Frisbee Tournament in Johannesburg, South Africa. There were 8 teams from Mozambique, Lesotho, Durban, Cape Town, and Johannesburg – some cities had more than one team represent. Since this was the first time Swaziland has fielded a team of its own (in the past we’ve banded together with Mozambique because neither had numbers for a complete team) we were a bit nervous about our chances at the National Tournament. To be honest, there were a good number who thought we’d never win a single game. Since we weren't going to contend, we tried to win the 'spirit award.' Our team name was Mbabanas and 'yellow' was our theme. Alas, we went 2 and 3 and got 6th place. We lost the final game by one point and it was cut short because the field was needed for the championship game. I still maintain that had we played to regulation time, we would have won and gotten 5th place! All-in-all it was a great weekend and a lot of fun to be in an actual competition.

Jordan (in his Birthday crown) taking on the Giant

Jenny playing strong defense as Doug looks onDino making a diving effort

Matt making an awesome catch
And Doug taking out his own teammate while going for the score

HIRED!

As the saying goes, when it rains, it pours…I spent my first 8 weeks in Swaziland accepting every invitation that was extended (including an invitation to run at 5:15 am which requires getting up at 4:55am and I don’t even have anywhere else to be when I get home at 6:15am)! My point is that I feel like I have been taking the concept of ‘networking’ to a whole new level with the hope that eventually, all of the people that I meet through accepting said invitations would lead to a job. While that wasn’t exactly true, I have established many positive and friendly relationships, for which I am thankful because in Swaziland you have to create your own entertainment. Anyways…after cold calling, randomly e-mailing, ‘dropping by’ with my resume and any number of shameless job searching tactics (muffins might have been baked), I am happy to report that I have a job! Actually, three jobs (hence the pouring part). My primary employment is with the European Union. I have been contracted by the EU as a consultant to the Ministry of Education’s In-service Education and Training (INSET) department. My contract stipulates 4 primary roles: 1) helping the Director of INSET to create a cohesive strategic plan for the four regional Teacher Resource Centers, 2) assisting with the administration of a country-wide primary math and literacy assessment for grades 1-4 and analyzing the results, 3) supporting the Director in coaching the facilitators of the on-going teacher training workshops, and 4) building capacity. With the exception of #4 (because let’s be honest, it’s seriously vague) I couldn’t be more excited about my new role. I will be back in the land of strategic planning, teacher training, and data analysis and tackling these from a national perspective (which represents a new scale for me). In addition to the work that I’ll be doing with the Ministry of Education, I was also recently subcontracted by a local computer company named, Computronics, to teach introductory computer courses. Two weeks ago, I taught a group of 16 new hires for the phone company the basics of Microsoft Office 2007. It was a 5-day course including 2 days of Excel, 1.5 days of PowerPoint, and 1.5 days of Word. I thoroughly enjoyed being back in the classroom and hope that additional contracts come my way! Lastly, I am volunteering with a non-profit called, Vusmuntfo and will be responsible for writing pre-school standards, assessments, and for creating an aligned curriculum so that community pre-schools (which are not supported by the Ministry of Education) can get organized. I will also be helping Vusmuntfo to plan and facilitate monthly workshops to train the pre-school teachers. After visiting 5 rural pre-schools in the north of Swaziland last week, my heart hurt; but, it was also completely inspirational to see a group of 20 children sitting on a dirt floor in a windowless hut trying to learn their numbers to 50. The community pre-school teachers are truly ‘making do’ within their reality and trying their best to provide a foundation for the children in the rural areas.

Ponta D'Oura, Mozambique

Over the last weekend in September, twenty-five of us squeezed into our 4-wheel drive vehicles and headed for the beach in Mozambique. It was about a 6 hour drive and the last 20 kilometers were on a sand road, which made for lots of fun driving but a little less fun riding if you were one of the unlucky ones squeezed into the backseat!

The road to Ponta…

Driving into Mozambique we saw this fantastic sign welcoming us to the Maputo Nature Reserve, but if you look closely at the images on the bottom of the sign, you’ll see a little less ‘welcome’ and a lot more ‘warning!’

We made it to Ponta around 7:00pm on Friday evening and quickly divided ourselves between the two houses and got down to making dinner and drinking a few beers. A ‘barbeque’ in southern Africa is called a ‘braai’ and that’s just what we did.

Here’s the view of the Indian Ocean from our patio.

On Saturday morning, we woke-up to a glorious beach day. About 1/3 of the group headed to the dive shop to go scuba diving, and the rest of us spent the day on the beach. The only exception was Doug…he got up at 7:00am and scurried to the closest board shop to rent a surf board for the weekend. He was in Doug heaven and spent the better part of Saturday surfing. By late afternoon, he did share his board and spent an hour or two giving pointers and pushing others into waves.

Beach view: right point

Beach view: left point
We played frisbee…Mallory and Jordan are pictured here…
Sandcastles were built…Mallory is being eaten by her sand spider as Allison looks on in terror
Waves were caught…almost…
And Doug cried a little when the kite surfer he borrowed had a puncture and wouldn’t fly…next time…
Saturday was such a good one we stayed at the beach until sunset
After another braai and way too many beers, we got up on Sunday for more of the same: scuba diving, surfing, and beaching it. Ponta D’Oura is a tiny little beach town that is largely populated by vacationers, so on our way out I took a few pictures of ‘town’ to illustrate the size.

This is the ‘main drag’
This is the market
This is one of the three beachside restaurants
On our way home, the sand road was a little less forgiving and Michelle’s car got stuck on multiple occasions. Here’s the crew pushing the car and then catching a ride on our hood because Michelle often drove away once her car was freed.
And of course, what would a road trip be without the CR-V overheating? This is becoming a familiar site on our blog!