{"id":1269,"date":"2010-07-18T15:23:24","date_gmt":"2010-07-18T20:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/2010\/07\/18\/its-all-connected\/"},"modified":"2010-07-18T15:23:24","modified_gmt":"2010-07-18T20:23:24","slug":"its-all-connected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/2010\/07\/18\/its-all-connected\/","title":{"rendered":"It&rsquo;s all connected"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We are about halfway through our \u201cfact finding\u201d trip to Swaziland and things are going exceptional.&#160; We really have had no problems to speak of.&#160; There have been a few surprises, but most of them have been pleasant (like realizing most of the places we are going are closer together than we expected).&#160; The coolest thing so far is our discovery of just how interconnected everything is:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>One the way in from Jo-burg we met a gentleman at the petrol station we had been trying for weeks to set a meeting up with.<\/li>\n<li>We met with Bulembu Ministries first, and then it turns out three other groups we are meeting with also have ties there.&#160; In fact, the guy we we stayed with last night, stayed in Bulembu the night after we did.<\/li>\n<li>We met a girl at a brai (BBQ) on Friday and then ran into her on Saturday at a restaurant and again on Sunday church.<\/li>\n<li>The people we stayed with last night go to church with one of the guys we were trying to schedule a meeting with later in the week.<\/li>\n<li>On Saturday we visited an AIDS clinic and I met a random Peace Corp volunteer whose blog I had been following.<\/li>\n<li>At the same clinic we also met the gentleman whom we had scheduled a Monday meeting with (he then took us to a game park and to lunch \u2013 very cool).&#160; He also introduced us to a person at the US embassy.<\/li>\n<li>While driving through town we pulled up next to one of the missionaries we had already met with.<\/li>\n<li>One of the ladies we met at the schools went to the church we attended this morning.<\/li>\n<li>One of the schools we visited previously employed a pastor we are scheduled to meet with later in the week.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The list goes on\u2026 and, we haven\u2019t even gotten into the bulk of the meetings.&#160; For the most part, we made connections with each of these groups independently, but it is obvious there is a whole lot of coordination between all these people.&#160; It has allowed us to feel very connected even in a short period of time.<\/p>\n<p>Now\u2026 just for fun\u2026. here are a few pictures:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Africa023.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px\" title=\"Africa 023\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Africa 023\" src=\"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Africa023_thumb.jpg\" width=\"492\" height=\"370\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">[<em>Banking for the airport over South Africa<\/em>] <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Africa029.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px\" title=\"Africa 029\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Africa 029\" src=\"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Africa029_thumb.jpg\" width=\"499\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a> <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">[<em>Sunrise over Bulembu<\/em>] <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Africa037.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px\" title=\"Africa 037\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Africa 037\" src=\"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Africa037_thumb.jpg\" width=\"509\" height=\"336\" \/><\/a> <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">[<em>Eucalyptus trees line the road from Bulembu to Piggs Peak<\/em>] <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Africa074.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px\" title=\"Africa 074\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Africa 074\" src=\"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Africa074_thumb.jpg\" width=\"513\" height=\"386\" \/><\/a> <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">[<em>My view this morning in Hawane<\/em>] <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\n<p align=\"center\">\n<p align=\"center\">\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Africa080.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px\" title=\"Africa 080\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Africa 080\" src=\"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Africa080_thumb.jpg\" width=\"518\" height=\"390\" \/><\/a>&#160;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">[<em>The sunset tonight overlooking Mbabane<\/em>] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are about halfway through our \u201cfact finding\u201d trip to Swaziland and things are going exceptional.&#160; We really have had no problems to speak of.&#160; There have been a few surprises, but most of them have been pleasant (like realizing most of the places we are going are closer together than we expected).&#160; The coolest [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[142,326,581,242,580,582,173],"class_list":["post-1269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-swaziland","tag-africa","tag-bulembu","tag-connections","tag-driving","tag-hawane","tag-ngos","tag-people"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}