{"id":1396,"date":"2011-03-18T19:04:55","date_gmt":"2011-03-19T00:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/2011\/03\/18\/swaziland-recap\/"},"modified":"2011-03-21T13:21:34","modified_gmt":"2011-03-21T18:21:34","slug":"swaziland-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/2011\/03\/18\/swaziland-recap\/","title":{"rendered":"Swaziland Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am sitting on the couch in what will be our new Swazi residence come July.\u00a0 It is a humble duplex-style place: tile floors, two bedrooms, a small kitchen, and a bathroom with a shower stall.\u00a0 Nothing fancy and maybe 700 square feet (at the most).\u00a0 But, it is comfortable and I already feel at home here.\u00a0 I am scheduled to fly back to the states later today after a bit over a week of working with Cabrini Ministries doing some long-range planning, problem solving and networking.\u00a0 And while it was great to get some work done and to prepare a few things for our move, the most important part of my time has been the feeling.<\/p>\n<p>If nothing else, spending a week at Cabrini, working in the bush of Swaziland, has given me a feel for what to expect.\u00a0 Obviously it is just a glimpse and I am sure there will be many &#8220;surprises&#8221; in store for us.\u00a0 But, just experiencing these things helps us to plan for the transition.\u00a0 This week I experienced:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Power and water outages<\/li>\n<li>110+ degree temperatures<\/li>\n<li>Major storms and serious dryness<\/li>\n<li>Difficulties in communication (phone lines down, no cell coverage)<\/li>\n<li>Lack of internet<\/li>\n<li>Crazy roads and crazier drivers<\/li>\n<li>Long drives to get anything<\/li>\n<li>Difficulty in coordinating overseas conversations due to time differences<\/li>\n<li>Constantly having &#8220;the system&#8221; be down, preventing things from getting done<\/li>\n<li>Abject poverty and even death<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>While in my current life in the States, I may experience one or two of those things in a year, having them all come at once didn&#8217;t bother me.\u00a0 All of the difficulties were overshadowed by the other things I experienced:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>People dedicated to Cabrini&#8217;s vision of &#8220;Restoring Life&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Playing soccer with the children at the hostel and hearing them sing<\/li>\n<li>Seeing true &#8220;local empowerment&#8221; such as the woman who manages the database that hadn&#8217;t even seen a computer until 2 years go; professional office staff who grew up on homesteads in the area; all the managers being local and fully competent; continuous training for all staff; a standard-setting clinic run by mostly local nurses and support staff<\/li>\n<li>Participating in the larger system of support in a country with great need<\/li>\n<li>Working with dedicated staff who know all the details of patients and children they work with<\/li>\n<li>Getting to know my neighbors who are deeply rooted in the local chiefdom<\/li>\n<li>Visiting former students across the country who have graduated from Cabrini services<\/li>\n<li>Seeing the incredible amount of work and extensive services being completed in this tiny village deep in the bush.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We certainly have a lot to learn and the transition is going to be tough; but, after spending a week here I am more confident in our decision than ever before.\u00a0 July will come quick and I am certainly looking forward to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am sitting on the couch in what will be our new Swazi residence come July.\u00a0 It is a humble duplex-style place: tile floors, two bedrooms, a small kitchen, and a bathroom with a shower stall.\u00a0 Nothing fancy and maybe 700 square feet (at the most).\u00a0 But, it is comfortable and I already feel at [&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":[665,608,251,666,668,664,667,610],"class_list":["post-1396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-swaziland","tag-bush","tag-cabrini","tag-contentment","tag-difficulties","tag-empowerment","tag-heat","tag-leadership","tag-move"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396","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=1396"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1489,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions\/1489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}