Tragic Realizations

I generally think of myself as a good person, at least a decent one. That's probably why the Hunger Games intrigued me so much (just the books, the movie hasn't made it here yet), because I was thinking about what I would do in a situation where I would have to kill to preserve my own life.

As it turns out, you wouldn't have to put my life in danger to get me to act like an animal. On Thursday I went to the government offices to pick up my residence permit. First I had to wait in one line to get a reference number, then bring that to another office where they gave me the paper that is my permit. Then I had to wait in two other lines for two offices that stamp the permit. After an hour waiting in a dark hallway with a half-dozen other people, I was no longer behaving out of an ingrained sense of right and wrong. If someone had convinced me that all I had to do to finish everything was be the last man standing in that hallway, I probably would have pushed everyone to the ground. It was a sad realization.

Anyway, I now have my permit. Yesterday after work I helped out with sound for the youth group meeting. Tonight we have young adults, but I just attend that.

Hope all is well with you,
-Ben

And we're back

I hope everyone had a great Easter Weekend. Celebrating Easter here was a different experience, and I felt like we didn't make a very big deal about it. We did have a worship night on Saturday, and that included communion, which I had been missing very much. Sunday we had our typical two services (one in English, one in SiSwati). I stayed for both because I was on sound, but I spent the second service training an apprentice, so I was sitting second chair to deal with feedback loops and such. For some reason, the stage lights stayed off Saturday night, but worked Sunday morning. No one's really sure why.

So after a 4-day weekend (Monday is off here too), we're all back to work. Below are some pictures from the training last week.

Some farmers loading up on the sandwiches we made. This is tea time, approximately 11am. Lunch is at 1pm.

Pastor Daniel talking to one of the Ministry facilitators while the farmers are queuing for sandwiches.

Another government employee giving a presentation. We had presentations on budgets, vaccinations and feeding, biosecurity, marketing, etc.

Farmers being attentive. The feedback was very positive and I think it was a good thing to do. We'll see how much it helped performance, but I think it at least encouraged the farmers.

Good Holy Week

Well, our training finished up yesterday. It was a very good thing, and I think our farmers got a lot out of it. Most of the training was in SiSwati and wasn't for me, so I helped out as much as I could. It turns out that hosting an event means a lot more here than it does in the US. We were responsible for the farmers transportation up here, their tea break (we made sandwiches. We cut them into quarters, but I'm not sure why, because everyone took at least 4), and their lunches. I don't want to calculate how much it cost, but I made a number of grocery runs to keep us stocked. And Bonisile and I had an interesting conversation about what would happen in the US if a host provided generic tea and the guests demanded that they go to the store and get name-brand tea.

Right after work, I headed down to church for worship practice. We're doing a worship night on Saturday, and I'll be running sound. I spent the first hour at the top of a very tall ladder, turning off the strobe feature on the lights. But something in the system is fried, so they just stay on, whether the light board is set to on or off. But a short while into practice, our new pastor and his wife showed up. They basically asked me how to improve things. They're American, and I'm not sure how I feel about shipping American pastors to pastor an established church in Swaziland. Nevertheless, I am definitely a personal fan of theirs. I started making recommendations, mainly about sound. The church is basically in a concrete warehouse, with a metal roof. Terrible for acoustics, but the main problem is that the sound board had very little control. The drums are an electric set, but are controlled independently from the stage, and basically drown out everything else. That set off a figurative arms race, with everyone wanting themselves louder just so they could hear. Before it's done, 75% of the sound in the church comes from the monitors on the stage.

So we started changing things. I started talking and Pastor Adam just said, "Ok, let's do it." So now the drummer hears himself through headphones, and the sound board controls how much he comes through the speakers. Then I cut everyone else down to half volume, and now only a small portion comes through the monitors. The singers aren't very happy, because they don't like the sounds that are coming through the monitors. But we've assured them over and over that it sounds infinitely better from the rest of the sanctuary. My next step is to hide some foam panels behind the curtains on the stage so that the monitors don't reflect directly into the first row. We'll see how that goes, but I'm very hopeful that we're making positive changes.

Be blessed this Good Friday and Easter,
-Ben

Ministry Training

Those of you who read my blog daily may have noticed that I took a break during the latter half of last week. Most of what we were doing was preparing for this week's training by the Ministry of Agriculture. That meant printing out documents (the government here can't afford to do much printing) and organizing tea, biscuits, and lunches for the farmers. Apparently, if we host a training for them, we are expected to shoulder all costs for a fairly luxurious event. I'll try to write more about the training on Wednesday.

We are also trying to deal with the new VAT here. It's a 14% tax added at every step along the value chain. So prices everywhere are going up, which is a pain. It means that our farmers will be paying more for their chickens, so they'll need to charge more and pay taxes on their sales, and by the time our chickens get served, the government will probably make more than the farmers. If you're asking whether a 14% tax is really the best thing to do to a struggling economy, I would not want anyone to infer from my baffled state that an economist could not find a good reason to do something like that.

-Ben

What's inside

Because it's Monday, I have small group tonight. So I thought I'd write a bit about what we've been talking about at small group.

My small group is 6 guys about my age. One of our leaders is the worship director at church (or the worship director's husband, I'm not sure who really has the title, but they both do a lot of work). He's from Zim, and our other leader is an American married to a doctor who works at Baylor Clinic. We're talking about character and, because we're young men, how that relates to sexuality. It's been a very good and provocative group, and our discussion is always interesting.

Anyway, one thing we've been talking about is how we need to develop an inner strength to deal with the pressures of life that press on us from the outside. Basically, we need to be strong enough to do the right thing even when all the pressures of life are pushing for other things. This isn't easy, but Psalms says, "Great peace have they who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble."

I think all eight of us would appreciate your prayers as we learn together and grow.

-Ben

March Madness

Some things really are crazy in March. For one thing, I'm actually second in our family bracket challenge. I've lost Michigan State and Duke from my Final Four, and I was counting on Wisconsin to beat Syracuse, but apparently most everyone else is getting shaken up even more. I'd say that it's because I haven't seen a basketball game all year, but even when I'm in the states, I only catch a couple.

This morning I met a couple farmers from Oregon. They're stopping here with the AfricaWorks crew on their way out to Zambia. They partner with some farmers out there, and have been doing so for something like fourteen years. So not only did I get to meet fellow Partners Worldwide people (they were doing it before it really existed), but for about 48 hours, the CRC was statistically overrepresented in Swaziland. I've heard best estimations put the number of Americans in SD at about 300. So if 3 of us are CRC, that makes 1% of the American population here CRC. If it was that high in the US, we would quadruple the size of the denomination. It's also just fun to be connected to people I've never met before and who show up in Swaziland.

Anyway, have a good weekend,
-Ben

Game Night

Last night, I did something I haven't done in seven months. I ate a taco. You may think this is a strange thing to write home about, but let me tell you, when your diet has been pretty bland for half of a year, something like home cooking is pretty amazing.

Where, you may ask, did I find this taco? It wasn't at a restaurant, because latin cuisine is impossible to find here (even, ironically, at the restaurant named "Latin Cuisine"). One of the missionaries here had a game night at her house last night. She made taco meat with seasoning she brought with her from the US. It was a primo treat.

The second treat of the evening was the game playing. First we tried to play Pit. Between explaining the rules and trying to explain a bear market and a bull market, I was almost driven to drink. But we shut that down after a few hands. I don't want to say Africans are less competitive than Americans, but I don't think they all enjoyed the yelling and aggressive attitudes that Pit requires. So we moved on to spoons. Being a simpler game, we didn't have too many rules issues, and played a good game. There was lots of screaming and pushing when the spoons started flying, but no biting, kicking, or punching. I think it was one of the better-behaved games I've participated in, which may explain how I didn't get any letters.

Anyway, it was a fun time and I thought I'd let you know that sometimes, my life here looks a lot like my life in the US.

-Ben