Nicole Keen, a May 2007 CU grad and former CW Program Staffer, is spending the better part of the academic year serving as a missionary in Africa.  Following is her latest entry from Swaziland, where she will be serving through the spring.  Please keep Nicole and others serving in Africa in your prayers...along with the people of that beautiful yet so often broken land.  CLG

Hey Everyone!

This week has been my first official one as a cook for our team, but I am only assisting.  This means that I did not pick the meals, but I help cook every night. Let me tell you, we have had some pretty tasty meals! Tuesday night we had teriyaki chicken, corn, steamed broccoli, rolls, and peach cobbler for dessert.  Wednesday night was chicken pot pie and fruit salad with congealed salad for dessert.  Thursday night was pork chops with a mushroom and sour cream sauce, peas, carrots, and rice.  Friday night was roast beef marinated in Worcestershire, salt, and pepper (my idea!) with mashed potatoes (literally potatoes that I mashed with a fork), green beans, and homemade biscuits.

This week has also been interesting at school!  We have a new rule that we are supposed to be out of the house from 10-3, so I cannot come home until 3 even though we leave the house at 7.  This is per AIM apparently.  We are still walking the little girls to school, but now there are about 5 of them that we walk.  And they do not speak English! Their new favorite thing is to be held, so we spend much of the time trying to explain that we do not have enough arms to hold them.  Each time they see us, morning and afternoon, they smile and run into our arms…it's so cute!

My students are still pretty bad. It is hard to make them care when the adults and teachers in their lives do not care.  I work at the worst of the worst school, it is very corrupt and even the teachers do not send their kids to this school. What makes it worth doing every day, no matter how much my throat hurts from yelling or how tired I am of trying to make them do their work, is connecting with them.  They are not used to someone caring and wanting to get to know them, and it has been such a blessing to see them open up.  Outside of class they all say hey and want to talk to me…in class is a different story.  Some of the boys like to call me "Nicole Keen."  It is hard to balance between being a friend and being a teacher.

One little boy gave me a letter the other day wanting me to pay his school fees because his parents cannot afford it.  It is hard to tell who is being legit and who is just trying to get money from white people.  Just one more reason that being here is very difficult…sometimes it seems that relationships are based on what the Swazi is getting out of it.  The difference in this little boy, his name is Vukane, is that he is very smart and wants to learn and finish school.

Thursday afternoon was one of the highlights of my time here in Swazi.  Since we were not allowed to be home until 3, Allison and I walked the little girls home from the care point around 1.  There are 5 of them that walk with us now because their mothers work at the Mahlanya market.  We came back to school to watch running, and the students were practicing for a track meet.  They have a competition on March 14.  I struck up a conversation with the coach, and told him that I ran track in high school.  He said, "Okay! You can help with the girl's team."  So apparently I am coaching the girl's team at Mahlanya Primary School!  It is so funny, they do not have proper running attire and they do not run in shoes.  Most of them do not even own tennis shoes!  I am really excited to get started in helping them and then going to the meet.

After track practice, Allison and I walked home with some students from the school.  The walk was about 20 minutes down a dirt road with the most beautiful scenery I have seen in Swaziland yet.  I did not get any pictures this time because it was hazy and about to storm, but I hope to the next time we walk home with students.  The girls took us to their homestead where all of their relatives live.  We met their mother, aunt, grandmother, uncle, and other siblings.  They gave us some corn to take home with us! I felt bad because we could not stay long (and Swazis like to visit) because there was a storm coming and we had to get home to cook.  It was cute because the next day at school the girls told us that their grandmother just loved meeting us and wanted us to come back! I think we are going to try and walk home with students more often in the afternoons.

Saturday was family ministry day and we bought a tarp and made a slip-n-slide for the kids at my school! They LOVED it.  We brought soap and kept pouring water on the tarp and they were tireless of running and sliding down the tarp.  I have some great pictures and video of it.  We also painted nails with the girls (and some boys) and made masks and colored with them.  They never do crafts of anything of that sort in school, so being able to make masks out of paper plates, markers, and popsicle sticks was incredible to them.  The boys played soccer and we threw Frisbee with some of the boys and girls.

This week has been pretty good, very tiring, but good overall. Working with these students at this particular school has been much more challenging than I ever thought it could be, but at the same time it has been worth it.  My kids are really funny, they will try any excuse to leave the classroom.  One boy, named Philani, wanted to go to the office the other day and he was like, "Nicole, I have a headache. My mother will cry if I die, please let me go get some tablets."  He was laughing while he said this and there were like 10 minutes left in class, so I said no.  He was relentless!  He kept telling me that his mother would be sad and cried if he died.  I said, "Philani, you are not dying, go sit back down." Meanwhile the other students were like, "This boy, he lies!"  It was funny.

The same day, one boy named Samkeliso wanted to go get some water.  I said he could when another student came back, and he started fanning himself and said, "But Nicole, I am faint. Please let me go get some water." 

We went to church on Sunday and it was really good, Pastor Ken continued the series on Abraham.  I think we are joining a Bible Study on "How to be a real disciple" that is on Wednesday nights at a couple's house that we have met. 

This morning (Monday) Carrie and I woke up to do Tae-Bo and then we showered.  Allison got up a little later and showered, and when we three were in the kitchen eating and getting ready…a bird flew in one of our windows! Allison immediately hits the deck on the tile floor, and Carrie and I start screaming.  The bird hit our kitchen window and dropped into the sink, and we thought it had died.  Allison ran to get her camera and the bird flies out of the sink and hits our living room window and falls behind the couch.  So Allison begins filming this scene on her camera, Carrie tries to find the bird and it flies and hits another window.  We finally got the bird outside, but it was so funny being the only 3 in the room and having all of this happen.  I have a funny video of the entire thing as well! Never a dull moment in Africa.

I hope you all have had a good week…I am headed to South Africa on Thursday and staying until Monday for a mid-semester debrief at Alabanza (where we stayed last semester).  Swaziland has been really hot this week, but we have had some rain.  My tan lines are really nice, I can't wait for you all to see them when I get home!

Hope you have a great week!

Nicole