annie in swaziland

Day 2 with the Bendix’s:

First and foremost – Lungelo, our college student who was afraid he’d contracted HIV from his father before he passed away, is TB free!! We took him to the clinic this morning for his results and were thrilled that he was not exposed to the often deadly MDR (multiple drug resistant) TB.  Great news…

Today we found out that we were the “Peace Cops”.  The Regional Educational Officer (part of the ministry of education) had to write a letter for us to be able to withdraw some money on behalf of the school and the letter stated “Please allow Annie (American Peace Cop) to withdraw from the New Hope account”.  Bruce mentioned that he felt like he was part of a movie and his role would be “Peace Cop extra”. 

We had a million meetings and performed logistical duties today to ensure that the New Hope school and Gogo’s house didn’t experience any hiccups in construction. We also purchased brand new desks, chalk boards, and chairs for the New Hope Primary School new classrooms.  The builders needed supplies – the stores didn’t have the proper supplies – and thus we ran around like chickens with our heads cut off all day.  We then went to purchase 10 bags of cement (1,200 pounds worth) and the store worker told us that our car could not handle that much.  We have a huge Toyota Fortuner truck.  I told him to load the truck up and mentioned that he should have seen our tiny Chevy Aveo last week loaded up with just as much!  Our vehicles work as hard as our Gogos here!! At the end of the day after everything that could possibly go wrong did (while taking forever doing it), I asked Peyton if this made her interested in starting her own nonprofit organization working in a developing country.  She laughed.  I’m used to it.  Everything here takes 3 times as long and will cost 3 times as much as you anticipated… but it will get done.  Swaziland has taught me patience… but I still have a long way to go!