Swaziland - by Charlene

Our family took a little Christmas holiday by going to the Kingdom of Swaziland for night this week. Yes, it really is a kingdom that is ruled by a king that the Swazi folks seem to be very proud of. The HIV/AIDs rate is the highest of anywhere in the world and hovers somewhere around 50%. There is much publicity around HIV prevention, abstinence and faithfulness in marriage but the king claims he is doing his part by remaining faithful to all 13 of his wives! The legalized polygamy can’t be helping the HIV rate.

We got to meet some fellow MCCers, Thembelihle Mavimbela (known in Canada as Julie Stauffer) and Hlobi Nxumalo (I can’t begin to describe how this name is pronounced except to say the “x” is a clicking sound). Hlobi and Julie are doing HIV/AIDS prevention work in school and the community at large. We enjoyed talking to them and we also had a chance to visit their homesteads. It was interesting to see how extended families all live together on the same property with lots of clusters of little buildings complete with a wood-fired stove and no running water.

We had a nice time seeing what we could of the beautiful green mountains – it was foggy and overcast and most of the mountaintops were in the clouds but it was beautiful just the same. We did some shopping as Swaziland is known for its beautifully crafted local products. Okay, maybe the shopping was a big drawing card for me and I was happy to use some Christmas money to buy a batik wall-hanging for our living room wall. We did some market shopping and Erin realized that if everyone is offered a “special price for you”, maybe the real prices aren’t so real to begin with – that’s my girl!

I’m sure we’ll be back again in the future with some of our visiting guests as the Swazi border is only about 2 hours away.

Happy New Year everyone!

The Christmas Blog - by John

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the veld… Uh, no, we’re not going there. Instead, we reflect on the year and the grace of God that brought us to this most un-Winnipeg like place, and send best wishes to all our friends and family.

• We think of our families at home, and thank them for their thoughts, gifts and prayers.
• We remember our fellow MCC Trainees, who are also experiencing Christmas in a different place, but in the same spirit.
• We think of our friends at home, who we miss, and we wish they could share our experience more fully.
• To everyone who is reading this blog, whoever you are: Thanks for taking an interest in our lives. If we can ask one thing, please send us a chatty email filled with the details of your lives.

It’s been less than a year since we first felt the tug to go do something different, and look where we have ended up! We encourage all of our friends and family to continue to server their brothers, sisters and neighbours wherever and whomever they are.

Today we have already opened our presents, and are going over to Chuck and Heather’s for lunch. Chuck and Heather have invited a number of other families, should be fun! We had a big thunderstorm last night after a hot day in the 30’s, but it’s a little cooler today, with mist in the valley. Now, a few updates on our recent experiences:

Skype

We have been using Skype over the last few days to talk to our families back in Winnipeg, and it works great! For the uninitiated, Skype is a program that allows you to talk computer to computer, for free. We have found that the voice quality is better than the telephone, although there are delays. Funny thing is, even though it costs us a little bit because of the internet service we have (2 Rand/Megabyte), it’s actually cheaper to talk to someone in Winnipeg with Skype than to make a local call, and it’s even more ironic when you realize that we are using our cell phone as a modem to get to the internet. We would encourage you to download Skype at www.skype.com and give it a try. Our Skype ID is wielerfamily. Talk to you soon!

Christmas Eve at the Mega Church

Last night we went to the Christmas Eve service at the local Mega Church. It was…something else. The program started with the praise band cranking out extremely loud and non-traditional arrangements of carols, some to a reggae beat. This was followed by a drama, but before the drama began, an announcement was made that they couldn’t find enough kids to participate, so the kids parts were being played by adults. OK, this should be interesting. The stage was dark, when suddenly eight rather older ladies, dressed like teenagers from the 50’s, bounded out on stage and started dancing to the music. Then they started singing, or rather, lip-synching along with a pre-recorded soundtrack. The whole show in fact was played off of a CD, with everyone lip-synching. It was one of those American made, ultra-poppy Christian kids drama/all-dancing/all-singing/Jesus-affirming/ultra-commercial/over-produced/Britney-meets-Mother Mary-meets Barney types of shows, you know the kind. Could be cute in a kind of diabetic-coma-inducing way if actually played and sung by live children, but way, WAY over the top the way it was presented here. The oddest part was the fact that the soundtrack had children’s voices singing and speaking, but it looked like everyone on stage was 50 and older.

In any case, the ladies shook and wiggled while “singing” about humility, a troop of “solid gold” dancers dressed in sequined vests added a certain Vegas touch, and it was all wrapped up with two guys in a camel costume, a very brief manger scene and a faith affirming voice-over message. It was a long, long way from a Christmas Eve service in our tradition, that’s for sure. Nonetheless, the audience…er… congregation seemed to eat it up, and when the balloons fell from the ceiling at the end (really), there was tumultuous applause. We’ll chalk this one up to cross-cultural differences.

Here's a picture of our tree, with actual presents under it, and more decorated.

And here our our beautiful girls in their new clothes.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Years to all, please email us and let us know what Santa brought. We wish for peace and health for all, no exceptions.

Camp Murphy and the MCC Retreat - by John

Camp Murphy

It’s been almost two weeks since my last blog entry, and those two weeks have been as different as possible. First, let me describe the week before this last one. I will call it the “if something can go wrong, it will”, or the “Camp Murphy” week. The week started with the start of the kid’s camp, and everything started well. However, there were two important things that you had to know. The first was that we had a terrific thunderstorm a few days previously. The thunderstorm brought with it some bad lightning, and one particular bolt hit a nearby pole, and took out the power for about five hours, all the telephones on campus, the security system, the fax machine, and unbeknownst to us, one of the two water pumps. The other thing to note was that camp brought the number of people on campus to a new level, never before seen. There were about 40 campers, 25 young leaders, 25 caregivers, five or six Canadian camp volunteers, and all of the staff (including us).

Well, the thunderstorm also announced the beginning of a week of rain and cool weather. The tents started leaking (we suspected that they would), we dug drainage ditches around the tents to prevent them from floating away, and whenever it wasn’t raining everyone hung out their sleeping bags to dry. Because one of the pumps was burned out, the other water pump decided it was bearing too heavy a load and decided to burn out its controller, and suddenly we were without water. While this was happening, the septic field decided that too many people were using it, and overflowed, while at the same time the kitchen drain, which attached to a different septic field, decided that it too would add to our troubles and get itself plugged up. The new toilets for the camp, which we had just finished installing, decided to start leaking, as if to mock our efforts. Oh, and we also had a big important meeting happening in a few days, for which we wanted the campus to be in top shape. And the rains continued for four out of seven days of camp, causing all our best plans to be altered on the fly.

Nothing to do but roll up our sleeves and attack the problems! I personally dug out and fixed the sewer (with help from one of the local guys) (Yeech), the electrician fixed the water pump problem, which took two days of very intermittent supply, the security system guy came in and diagnosed the security system (a total meltdown, complete with burned out motherboard), etc. etc. and by the end of the week we were in pretty good shape.

What was amazing that everyone kept up their good spirits and didn’t really complain, and by the end of the week camp was deemed a success.

The MCC Retreat

All of last week we were at a regional MCC retreat, which was held near White River at the Ekukaneni (yes, just like in the song “Siya Humba Ekukaneni Kweiko”) Retreat Center. In a word, it was great! We met the MCC people working in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Swaziland and South Africa.
What a great bunch of people! We really connected to everyone, and found a number of interesting and surprising connections (i.e. oh, I know your cousin). It was really good to find out what everyone else was doing, particularly because most of the folks were veterans and could offer us all sorts of insights into how things worked. Perhaps the most interesting and moving sessions was when the Country Reps from Zimbabwe described the difficult situation in their country, and some of the underlying racial tensions between the Shona and Ndebele people, seemingly egged on by the government. Dear Readers, I’m not generally into political statements, but I would encourage you to look into the situation in Zimbabwe and pray for the country, it looks like another Rwanda in the making.

The Retreat wasn’t all serious discussion however. We had a very moving Christmas service
some wonderful worship times, and a hilarious talent night, complete with (so bad it was good) disco dancing, a complete recitation from memory and with authentic accent of “A Childs Christmas in Wales”, Christian Rap, two teenage boys wearing dresses and lipsynching the “Barbie”song and Limbo dancing. A good time was had by all. At the end of the week everyone was sorry to see everyone else leave, and I can say that our family made a bunch of new friends. I was very impressed with the dedication and spirit of all of the MCC volunteers, especially those in difficult circumstances and remote locations. Mind you, they all described South Africa as “not really Africa”, so we are planning a number of visits to other countries to see what they mean.

Christmas is only a week away, and today we bought our Christmas Tree. Actually, it’s a palm, we have potted it, put it in our living room, and hung it with a few decorations. It’s in the mid thirties today, and hard to get into the Christmas spirit. My thoughts have been drawn to remembering Christmas past, going to Oma and Opa’s in Niverville, eating Halvah from the white Camel box, and going home under a very cold and crystal clear night sky, when the snow would squeak underfoot. That’s not going to happen this year, but we are creating interesting memories none-the-less.

Charlene's Christmas List

I confess that I’m a bit of a list fanatic, I think some of my family members must be as well because usually by this time of year I have written a Christmas Wish List for my mom and my mother-in-law (who I’m sure are long finished with their shopping) and in another week or two, I would be asked for one from John. This year is different from any other year as there haven’t been any lists made and we are barely aware that Christmas is right around the corner but our children have been reminding us. MCC has more than met all of our basic needs but here are a few things (in random order) that MCC is unable to provide for us:

1. A steaming hot Tim Horton’s large double-double
2. A copy of the Saturday Free Press complete with all the flyers and color comics
3. A bag of La Cocina tortilla chips
4. Manitoba Farmer Sausage
5. Oma’s borscht
6. My mom’s platter of Christmas cookies with lots of shortbread
7. My cat purring next to my pillow
8. A night out at Earl’s (or anywhere) with my best friends
9. A cure to the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa (but we’re working on it)
10. World peace!

We’ve already had our first booking at the Wieler African Guesthouse and John’s aunt is coming from Ottawa for a week in April. We’re thrilled to have company to show around the place we now call home and we’re already thinking about what small taste of home we could ask her to bring in her suitcase for us (possibly a bag of chocolate chips?).

Camp Starts Today - By John

Well, today is the momentous day that the orphan kids start arriving for their week of camp. The physical preparations are pretty much in place, with the exception of some last minute painting and plastering and food buying. Last night, Mavis, who is in charge of the food, told us that after a very major grocery buying trip she had forgotten about bread, so this morning we drove down to the Pick-and-Pay and bought 30 loaves of bread (pretty much cleaned them out of sandwich loaves), after delivering them she said that should cover it for lunch and she’ll let us know if she needs more before breakfast tomorrow!

The camps theme is “I have a future”, because the kids who are attending come from very difficult circumstances and most think that they don’t have a future. Typically, the girls will turn to prostitution and the boys to crime, so this camp is an attempt to show them that they have potential and hope.

The counselors are eager and I think a little nervous, as this is the culmination of a training process that started last January. They have been at camp for the last week, working out the details of the activities and setting up the tents and so on. We had a big rainstorm a few nights ago, and found out that the tents hadn’t been set up correctly, and so a man from the local Boy Scouts came and gave us some good pointers (Thanks Jerry!). The basic problem was that the tents roofs weren’t “tight” enough. Since then, “Tight” (pronounced “TAAIEET” has become the new buzzword around here (meaning “good”) so everything from the tents to the singing to the food is “Tight!”. On Thursday night we had a big send-off for the Canadians who came and helped with the camp construction. A local gospel band came to play, and before you knew it (actually during the sound check) everyone was dancing (except our girls, who had embarrassed and terrified looks on their faces to see their Mom dancing with an African man). There were some very interesting moves shown by both the Africans and Canadians. The band was great, five guys singing, drums and keyboards, and it was a LOT of fun. Here is a link to the video (about 2 Meg)

Here are some pictures of the camp. This is a picture of the registration,

the next is of the completed climbing wall (yay!)

and the third of the tents. There are 10 tents in all.

This week Chuck is out of town in Mozambique, so its our responsibility to finish off some construction and getting ready for a big meeting that’s happening of the 12^th. We are also looking forward to our upcoming MCC retreat which also starts on the 12^th, so it should be a really busy week of supervision and preparation.

Today I made buns according to my Mom's recipe. I haven't been able to find Lard or Shortening, but used something called "White Margarine", and they still tasted pretty good. Hmmm... I'm starting to have thoughts about reviving the "Wood Fired Mud Oven".