December 4, 2004

Dear Parents and Friends,

The African Foreign Studies Program of 2004 has ended and the students have scattered across South Africa or headed for the States. In fact, by the time you receive this note, your student is likely to be home with you. In the note, I will brief you regarding the completion of the academic part of the program and also tell you about our culminating field trip.

As you know from a previous letter, the end of the term was fully occupied with the completion of the ENVS 84 course. This seminar course focused upon water and its scarcity in southern Africa. Each student wrote an individual paper and then the group was charged with writing an introduction and conclusion to all 16 papers. In a way the writing and the individual oral presentations were similar to what the student will begin to encounter upon going into the work force, especially, if they enter the academic or consultation arenas. In approximately six weeks, this volume will be edited, copied and bound. I hope that your student will share it with you.

On 27 November, we completed the academics of the program. On this Friday night, I hosted a feast for the students at a very fine Chinese restaurant. It was both a belated Thanksgiving dinner and a real graduation dinner for Anne Peick who, with the completion the Africa FSP, is now an alum!

I promised the students that the Swaziland trip would be non-academic and it was mostly that except you cannot help but learn from such a trip. On 28 November, we drove to Swaziland (about 7 hours, by bus) and met our host, Myxos, at the market in Manzini. After a brief tour of the market, we drove for two hours into the mountains southwest of Manzini to the cluster of farms that constitutes KaPhunga village. Without stores, electricity, or other modern amenities, this village is simply rural Africa as it has been and continues to be for countless millions of poor, black Africans. Myxos takes tourists to a traditional compound for a different cultural experience. On the red-dirt hillside that overlooks the lowlands of Swaziland, he has build a traditional compound of three beehive huts and two square stone and mud huts. Additionally, there is an open cooking hut and a long-drop toilet. All meals are cooked over an open hearth using wood gathered in the surrounding hills. Cooking is a rather long and smoky affair. Much to the dismay of some, I simply had to snatch the opportunity and lecture on acute respiratory disease which claims the lives of so many infants, very young children, and women of the developing world. Of course, the men mostly do not get involved in cooking.

Some students attended a church and others helped our host plant perhaps an acre of crop. The planting was supervised by two old farmers of the village. We planted corn, beans and squash in the same holes. This was the rainy season and we were blessed with two large thunderstorms. Blessed, for Swaziland has been in the grips of nearly a three year-long famine because of poor rains. On Monday, we visited two schools and played soccer with the local children. It is sobering to visit schools without modern resources and yet we still see eager students. Some of our students visited a World Food Program food aid distribution warehouse.

On Tuesday morning we departed the village and returned to the Manzini market. This is a very large market where local Swazis can have dresses made, buy fabric or a chicken (alive or freshly killed), or have custom-designed tinware fabricated. This is as traditional as markets are in Africa. We departed Manzini and returned to the thoroughly modern world of Pretoria, South Africa.

On behalf of Prof. Doug Bolger, Dr. David Mbora, and Prof. Ross Virginia, I thank you for entrusting us with your student. We all, both students and faculty, learned and grew together.

Sincerely,

Bill Roebuck, Ph.D.