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September 18, 2005
Birthday UN fun
Not to worry people but, I have been have some major problems lately. I will be spending my birthday in Mbabane, the capital, under surveillence for depression and other medical/health reasons. I am not too happy as of late and not sure what I am doing here and what my goals are supposed to be. There are times where is it fun to be here and not, this is one of those NOT times. I have wasted away to 135 lbs, down 20-25 lbs before i left. I live a very lonely life on my homestead and I am looking into moving sites but the soonest i could do that is by the end of october. So i have to decide if i can last that long and lose less of my sanity. BUt i was able to see some of the volunteers and we braii'ed, or cooked and grilled here for an early bday get together.
I got a kitten to try and help keep my sanity, and that has not helped. I called her Mabala which is Siswati for Freckles even though she doesn't have freckles, she has stripes though.
I taught at the orphan school the other day. Some orphans live with relatives and most live with siblings all alone. This is for pone part of the community. It has 30 students, but my area has over 800 orphans. NGOs pay for the creation of the school and food for the orphans. Their ages are 6-16. Sadly the chairman of the school is corrupt and steals blankets and food for the children. BUt he has been suspended and can't go near the school for a undetermined amount of time. I taught maths(yes they call it maths, plural here) and i taught english. Well sort of. I would hold up a pencil and say this is a pencil, then all the kids would repeat after me. Then we would do that for 20 minutes. It helped a little not much though. I have been writing letters home and writing in a journal and reading lots. Even with my thoughts of maybe wanting to come home, i just read "Dude, Where's my Country" and still want to come home sort of, ha.
Some of the other things i am planning on working on here are to bring another orphan school (they are called Neighborhood Care Points, NCP) to a different area in the community, I want to start a type of gym class for the schools. Jimmy in a few weeks I will seriously be talking to you about donating some dodgeballs for the gym class. It was funny I stopped by the NCP before they went on school break and they were playing this form of dodgeball with plastic bags as the dodgeballs. It was more like dodgeball meets running bases, funny though. So yeah I really want to bring dodgeball here, I'll let you know in a few weeks.
Another thing is working with the youth group and their vegetable garden and candle business, so some income generating programs.
Since so many have asked here's My address:
Colin McAuliffe, PCV
PO BOX 1093
Siteki,
Swaziland, Africa
(you don't need the H100 code)
My cell number is 001-268-631-6083
1.www.nobelcom.com Rate:16 cts a min
2) www.add2pin.com. Rate:12 cts a min. 1-877-800-2556.
you can text me an email on my phone at: 2686316083@mtnconnect.co.sz
nothing big but like two sentences can be sent. sometimes is takes a long time to get to me, so maybe date it too.
ok well I will update soon and hopefully have much better updates for everyone.
Posted by colin at September 18, 2005 09:47 AM