Five shoots in the field

Shiselweni Primary School, Hhohho district
My first shoot was at a primary school in the far north of the country. We drove for more than two hours to get there, climbing up into the mountains past the capital, through pine forests and finally along a dirt road that took us through the high pastures near the South African border. The landscape was beautiful... rolling green hills crisscrossed with ribbons of red dirt road. Everywhere little homesteads with their corrals made of twisted sticks, tiny maize fields and little round huts with thatched roofs. They look so charming from a distance, it’s hard to imagine the horrors I hear about at work and read about in the newspaper happening in them.
The school we visited, like most of those in the rural areas, has a high number of “OVCs” – orphans and vulnerable children. So SWAGAA’s education team had been planning to get out there for a while, but hadn’t because of the distance.
The children were already out of class when we arrived, milling about in the yard with plastic plates waiting to get fed. The government gives some schools food money to make sure that orphans get at least one meal a day. This school, like many others, opted to feed all the children rather than discriminate against those who did have living parents. And they did so, on a limited budget.
We sat in the car for a while waiting for one of the head teachers to tell us where to go, but I decided to get out and get a few shots of the children playing in the yard before the SWAGAA sessions began. I got out and set up my camera, and as I did so a semi-circle of gaping children formed around me. They stared at the strange, gawky white woman with her little camera as she babbled and smiled nervously at them. I tried to say hello, ask them their names, but only got the faintest whispers in reply. Fair enough, I was weird and maybe even a little scary. And at any rate I had a job to do. Children staring at a camera doesn’t make for very good footage, so I moved my camera to try to get some shots of a group of boys tearing around the yard. But the children moved too and before I even got a chance to roll the semi-circle had re-formed around me. I moved a second time, and once again they followed me. Eventually they all ran off. It seems that the food had arrived, and I managed to get some shots of the kids lining up for lunch, eating and running around.
After lunch the kids were divided into two groups, big ones and small ones, and led off to two classrooms for the SWAGAA educational sessions. They teach the kids how to identify abuse and where to report it. And also, as SWAGAA educator Busi tells me, not to blame themselves if they are victimized.
The kids gathered in large classrooms lit only by the sunlight flooding in from the windows. Busi talked to them for about 45 minutes, and managed to keep their attention the entire time in spite of a lack of props or any other kind of resources. She also managed to keep it light, in spite of the seriousness of the topic, so the kids were laughing a lot.
I also went into the classroom where Acorn was talking to the little ones. He taught them a little chant where they rubbed themselves in inappropriate places, saying: “this is a baaaad touch, this is a baaaad touch.” They thought it was hilarious. At least they aren’t likely to forget it.

Self-Help Group, Mpembekati , Manzini district
The women had been warned that I’d be coming, but that didn’t make them any less curious about me. They looked me over, whispered to each other, and asked why I was still not married. But they also gave me the biggest, warmest smiles, so I felt quite comfortable shooting them.
These ladies were members of the Mpembekati Self Help Group, and they live in the hills just outside of Manzini. Self Help Groups are yet another one of SWAGAA’s many programs, and this one aims to empower women economically. SWAGAA recognizes several forms of abuse, among them “economic abuse.” That may sound a bit exaggerated until you consider just how crippled a woman can be when her husband is the breadwinner and she has no access to cash. In the worst-case scenario a woman might be stuck with an abusive man because she doesn’t even have the little money she’d need to take a bus to a safe place. And even when women are working, some husbands will take away the women’s earnings and make her ask to have some of it back for school fees, groceries, etc.
The women in these groups save a few emalangeni every week and pool it to provide micro-loans to group members. They also meet weekly to discuss their problems, to decide who’s to get the next loan, and sometimes for workshops with SWAGAA staff or guest speakers from other organizations.
The meeting I attended began with a prayer followed by some singing. Gospel, of course, in siSwati – a joyful tune that translates into something like, “You are my rock, let me climb into you.” These ladies are born to groove, and soon enough some of them were dancing back and forth across the room, the gogos (grannies) rockin’ out the hardest.
Then they began the meeting, going around from woman to woman to talk about their problems and other issues. Dazie, who heads up the Self Help Groups, listened carefully and kept the meeting flowing. She has 38 of these groups scattered all across the country, and will often go to two or three meetings in a day.
After that they pulled out their purses and account books and put their weekly savings into the pool. Then came the fun part – most of the women had brought vegetables from their gardens to sell to each other, so there was a busy half-hour of commerce before the meeting broke up.

Male Involvement Workshop and March, Nhlangano
The male involvement program is SWAGAA’s newest and, in my opinion, most innovative program. The goal of it is to sensitize men to the problems of gender-based violence, and its links to gender inequality and the HIV epidemic. It began last year, headed up by Bheki Vilane, who spent a few months in Canada visiting organizations that counselled male abusers and doing other research into male violence and programs that address it. But in spite of his research he pretty much made up the program here in Swaziland as he went along. Other countries have programs with goals that overlap with this one’s – such as the “Men as Partners” program in South Africa, which addresses gender inequality – but this program is otherwise quite unique.
Bheki calls a meeting in a community to talk about the program and more generally about what SWAGAA does. At the end of the meeting they select one man who will go to a SWAGAA male involvement workshop with men from other communities later in the year. In order to get the men to come out to these meetings, though, Bheki had to get the chiefs on board. (In Swaziland there are regional councils headed by hereditary chiefs in many of the rural areas.) Not an easy task. He tells me he was chased away by a few chiefs before he convinced them that SWAGAA only wants to help communities build healthy families.
I went to one of these meetings in the drought-stricken Lebombo region, and was surprised to see that about 30 men, young and old, came out, and almost as many women. About 6 of the men said they wanted to attend the upcoming workshop, so they had to take a vote to decide who would go.
In early December I went down to Nhlangano to shoot one of the workshops. The workshop itself was not terribly interesting as I couldn’t understand what they were saying. But one of the speakers was a local World Vision representative who works around HIV/AIDS issues. One thing that I’ve noticed here in Swaziland is that all the non-profit organizations work really well together, both in referring clients to one another and in pooling their energy and resources.
The last day of the workshop the men got together with some of the community members to have a march through town. They carried a SWAGAA banner and placards that read “where are the real men?” and sang and danced all the way. A group of majorettes lead the way, prancing in their little blue, white and red uniforms. Nhlangano residents, out doing their Sunday shopping, looked perplexed.
The march stopped at a square in front of the main shopping plaza, where Bheki and the mayor made speeches. Then a white banner was placed on the wall and the men were invited to make a pledge to never raise their hands in violence. They sealed the pledge by dipping their hands in yellow and orange paint and placing them on the banner. It was a powerful symbol, and all the men from the workshop participated. Bheki also opened it up to men from the community, but only a few stepped up.

TASC field work, Ekudzeni
Last week I made another trip out into the Swazi hinterlands, this time with a nurse and two counsellors from The AIDS Information and Support Centre (TASC), another NGO based here in Manzini. TASC is another a partner organization to Canadian Crossroads International, so they wanted me to get some footage of TASC staff at work.
Like SWAGAA, TASC has a variety of programs, but its main focus is on HIV testing and counselling. I got to tag along with the outreach group on their monthly excursion to a town called Ekudzeni. Our first stop was at a gogo centre next to the chief’s house. Gogo centres have been popping up all over the country over the last few years in response to the AIDS epidemic. They serve as a sort of community centre, run by volunteers (usually grandmothers, thus the name “gogo centre”) where orphaned children can go to get one meal a day. Some basic schooling is also provided for kids too young to go to public school. The centres get some support, usually in the form of food donations, from various NGOs and government agencies.
The gogo centre in Ekudzeni is also the regional VCT (voluntary counselling and testing – have I mentioned that NGOs love acronyms?) centre, and it’s also where TASC holds meetings with its peer educators. These are volunteers who are trained to give out basic HIV and AIDS information, and to encourage members of their community to come out for testing. This group was a collection of charmingly frumpy middle-aged women in red and white aprons and funny hats, and one young man in his twenties. I shot the meeting, then one by one they went to the nurse to get an HIV test. Because a lot of the maize in the area was being harvested that week, nobody else had come out for testing.
I shot one of the tests, framing out the woman’s face so she couldn’t be identified. She left the room and the nurse and I watched the single line slowly appear on the test strip. Negative. Phew. So I continued shooting as she got her post-test counselling. But it suddenly occurred to me what a difficult job the nurses and counsellors have. Imagine having to tell people every day that they’re HIV positive.
We left behind a mountain of condoms – both male and female – and a few jugs of bleach at the centre.
After that we went on a few home visits. During the home visits the outreach team makes its rounds to various homesteads where people are or have been sick to check up on them. They do not necessarily have to be HIV positive to qualify for these visits… anyone referred to TASC by the peer educators is eligible. They also visit homes where grandmothers are raising orphans. That part of the program gets funding from the Stephen Lewis foundation.
At the first house we visited I met an ancient woman and her equally ancient husband. The old woman gave me permission to shoot, and I did so as TASC staff checked her blood pressure and questioned her about her health. Then they did the same with her husband. A small boy climbed up on the old woman’s knee and whispered in her ear making her laugh. A grandchild, or a great-grandchild? Chickens clucked at our feet while a young woman tended to some cooking that smoldered over an open fire.
At the next home we visited a woman and her husband who are raising their young grandson who’s mentally and physically disabled. The boy could neither walk nor talk. TASC staff weighed him so that they could get him some more medication when they get back to town. Since his grandparents don’t have a car he rarely gets to see the doctor.
I couldn’t help but wonder what will happen to the child when his grandmother dies.
Being on those homesteads was a bit of a comfort for me. Working at SWAGAA I have only heard horror stories from the countryside, and have come to think of the rural homesteads as virtual prisons for women and children. But seeing the love and respect between family members in those houses showed me what a homestead should be… A small family farm where several generations of family members live peacefully together.

Lihlombe Lekukhalaela shoot, Mankayane (Rounds 1 & 2)
This country has tens of thousands of orphans, a result, of course, of the AIDS epidemic. A few years ago UNICEF started a program called Lihlombe Lekukalaela (“a shoulder to cry on”) that trains volunteers from each community to make sure the orphans are getting the basics of food, shelter, clothing and access to education. A lot of NGOs and government agencies provide these things specifically to orphans, but it doesn’t always reach them. So the volunteers refer the kids to the appropriate organizations or agencies. They also talk to the children about abuse, since orphans are often the most vulnerable. Here’s how Doreen, one of the SWAGAA staff members who trains the volunteers, explained it to me:
“They don’t report these matters, they fear to report. Even if... when someone comes and says, ‘I’m your uncle, I will give you bread now, I will give you food.’ They always think that person is right, even if he is abusing them. They say, ‘He is right, because we are needy. If he gives us bread, at the end of the day we should give him what we can give him.’ You find them being abused in that way.”
During the first shoot we met one of the volunteers, Richard, who took us to meet some of the orphans he was working with. As I walked down to the homestead I felt a bit like I was walking into a World Vision ad. Half a dozen kids of every size, from infant up to teenaged, came out wearing ill-fitting clothes. Then their mother came out. Mother? Yep, these orphans were “single orphans”, not “double orphans”, as they are described by the NGOs. I had just assumed we’d be meeting double orphans, since in Canada we don’t refer to a child as an orphan unless he or she is parentless. The family, however, wasn’t doing very well. The mother didn’t have a regular job, but grew maize and gardened. Hardly enough to sustain 5 kids.
I interviewed Richard, then tried to ask the oldest girl a few questions. She was so shy she couldn’t even look at the camera. After that I got some shots of the kids skipping, then I put down the camera and joined them. Thandi, the staff member who’d set up the shoot, screamed with laughter as I bounced awkwardly up and down.
After reviewing the footage, I asked Thandi to set up another shoot. I just didn’t have what I needed from the first one. Richard had been almost monosyllabic in the interview, and I still didn’t have the voice of a child in the video, which I’d been hoping to get from one of the orphans. So we went off to Mankayane again a few weeks later.
The next time I met another volunteer called Sibongile, a gregarious mother and grocer’s wife. She took us to a homestead where 6 children had been living alone for several years. After their parents died in a car accident 11 years ago an uncle took over caring for them, but then he fell sick and died as well. The oldest was in his mid-teens at the time. Now he’s 18, a high school dropout who went to work on a chicken farm to maintain the family.
I interviewed the youngest boy, Sebenele… shy but with a quiet confidence about him. He says he wants to be a teacher when he’s old enough. I also interviewed Sibongile, who says she checks in on 30 different homesteads where orphans live. She could point to several other orphans homes from where we stood on the side of a hill.
Again, I wasn’t completely satisfied with the shoot, although I’ll have to use one or another since it’s too late to get anything else. But I can’t understand why, in a country with hundreds of child-lead households, I couldn’t seem to find one? This is not to say Sebenele and his brothers weren’t having a tough time, but I’ve read about households being run by children as young as 8 or 9. Would certainly make for more compelling footage.
But it feels strange, too, measuring up people’s hardships to try to decide which makes the saddest, and therefore “the best” story.