First, I should probably mention that when I said I would be here until February, what I actually meant was July. Sometimes I confuse those months. I want to make very certain that 2010/2011 remains as winter free as possible. I think I'm still traumatized by snowpocalypse. (aka snowmageddon, aka snOMG, aka Snowtorious BIG).
Second, you want to talk about culturally relevant narrative forms making a difference to HIV in southern Africa? I present to you porn with condoms. In SeSotho.
Third, I have my very own internet connection again. Yay!! It very much happened on Swazi time, which means I had to spend two days sitting in my apartment and getting hung up on by Swazi telecom employees, while being told that the person would be there to install it "soon" and so I should be sure not to leave the apartment so as not to miss him. Obviously it was not fully set up until about 6pm on the day after they told me that it would certainly be set up by. And then there was a giant thunderstorm and the connection went out almost immediately following but...you know. I have internet.
Still no letter from the ethics committee saying that I can interview people ("I'm sure by the end of the week" = "I hope you've got plenty of Glee reruns to keep you busy.") but on some level I'm sure its good for me to be adjusting to Swazi time. Probably. Unless I pull all my hair out and come back to Baltimore just in time for my scalp to be horribly frost bitten by whatever god awful thing winter decides to throw at me in revenge for skipping out on him for a year.
While sitting around on Swazi time with the internet installation dude, waiting for somebody from the internet installation office to call him back with a password I needed to access the internet (because why in the world should he be expected to have one of those in advance? I mean, he only drives around all day setting up internet connections all of which need a password) I got to talking about my project with said internet installation dude. Well, that and why I wasn't interested in cheating on my (fully imaginary) stateside boyfriend with him. But I found stories more interesting.
I told him the story of Rumplestiltskin. People. Have you listened to that story lately? Or told it? It is damn weird. We are a strange, strange society that we tell our children these things. In return, he told me a story about jackal and lion. And so, I present to you my very first (fully non-usable for my project) Swazi folktale:
So. This story is about jackal and lion. Jackal is a big white dog and lion is very scary but also very stupid. Jackal and lion were talking, and lion was complaining that he was very, very hungry. After going around for a bit, they spot some prey animals. Lion knows that if they go right up to them they will run away, so he tells jackal to go up and pretend to be their friend so that they will stick around. Jackal approaches the prey animals, lets say they're Steenboks. He says that he and Lion want to come and talk to them, but that they shouldn't be afraid of Lion. Lion is actually Jackal's servant. The Steenbok are understandably skeptical of this. Jackal says that to prove it, he will go and get Lion, and come back with Lion carrying him on his back, proving that Lion is Jackal's servant. The Steenbok agree, and Jackal goes back to explain the deal to Lion. Lion is less than excited about this idea, but he is still very hungry. So Jackal climbs up onto Lion's back and they parade up to the group of Steenbok. Then everybody laughs at Lion for making an idiot out of himself, and all the prey animals run away anyways.
Draw your own conclusions.
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