I bless the rains down in AAAAAFRICCAAAAA
Welcome back. We’re in Swazi (Swaziland/Eswatini). That’s a lie. We finished in Swazi already. I know. I’m behind.
I definitely have a ministry story or two that I’ve got, but if I’m being honest, the ministry itself in Swazi was neither the most active or consistent… but I’ve come to this point where I can look back over the last 7 months of the race and actually see in myself a lot of the things I’ve learned and places I’ve grown. I’ll talk about Swazi a bit for sure in this one and maybe the next one, but I think I’m going to start switching up the style of my blogs from here on out – instead of doing mostly stories to try to share a bit more of the things I’ve learned through the experiences throughout the race. There’s layers to this thing you know… like an onion.
But yes, Swazi, let’s see…
Fun (and not so fun) facts:
- Swazi is the last absolute monarchy left in Africa
- Swazi has the highest HIV/AIDS rate in the world
- There are 32 carepoints throughout the country. Each is run by a shephard, who’s a local (at this point, usually an old carepoint kid) who got raised up, trained, and discipled by AIM to run the place
- The carepoints are safe places in the villages where the kids can just go and hangout and play games after school and get a meal
- It is simultaneously the greenest and most dry desert place I’ve ever been. There are some mountain roads we drove through on which you could’ve convinced me I was in Switzerland… and then there was the East side near the border where we stayed that was so dry your clothes would go from freshly washed to wearable in barely an hour of sun
- Their language uses clicks with your tongue that are actually really hard to make. They also got a couple others sounds I’ve never heard before
- They got some sweet snakes… saw a few black mambas… they got spitting cobras…
Logistically:
- We’re back with the whole squad (wahooooo!!) it’s been a good time
- We’re staying at this AIM base in Nsoko, which is actually really rural – no wifi or anything, so I couldn’t even really have gotten a post up if I was keeping on time 😬
- We had carepoint ministry four days a week (Tuesday to Friday), and we were split across four different spots: one girls team and half a boys team at each
A Day in the Life
We would typically show up around 9:30. We would pray with Happiness (she was the shepherd), sometimes spend some time in the Word, and then get to work. The kids didn’t show up until after school, which most days ended up being around 2-2:30 unfortunately, so we had to figure out what to do until then. Some days we went out into the village and did house visits, which were awesome, and the rest of the time we did work around the carepoint cleaning up and landscaping. A couple of the girls would spend the time helping or sitting with the Gogo’s (the grandma cooks), but our mornings were pretty chill most days. Sam, Clay, and I decided at the end of Cambodia to memorize the book of 1 John by the end of the race… weeding was prime time to do that.
A consistent highlight of mine especially through the first couple weeks though was talking to Happiness. She was well-named, and had a cool testimony and she was just great.
The kids would show up in the afternoon, we would play some songs and dance with them, and then they would get their rice for the day. After that we just hung out and played with them… Sam and I mostly played soccer on their little dirt parking lot and the girls braided hair and stuff like that.
The driving schedule was a bit unfortunate cause usually we only got an hour and a half at most with the kids each day. The van showed up around 3:30, and we’d be home by 4:30 after picking up the other group.
Team time, dinner, and then card games was the quick succession of events after that, and then bed time.
That’s the basic day in Swazi. It was a really relaxed schedule most of the time, but it allowed for a lot of potential intentionality with the way you use that freedom.
On the next episode…
We have a guest speaker!! Yes, that’s right, you’ll get to hear from someone besides me (exciting right??). Who? You may ask. That, my friend, you’ll have to stick around to find out.
Gallery
In Christ,
Jackson
WhatsApp: 678-448-7943
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