The Adventure Home Day 2-7 (Working Still)

So I spent 3 days in Mbabane doing some PC business, just hanging out and waiting.

On Saturday,  18th, I headed out to Mpaka Refugee Camp to help their camp for a clean up campaign.


 

 2 PCV's, a young married couple, have a created & received funding from the PC to teach this Refugee Camp about recycling, HIV, health & the importance of keeping the camp clean.  One of the first things we did was build "Tippy Taps", which is basically a hand washing station that doesn't require running water. 

Tippy Taps being used.

One problem this program is going to fix is to bring in new trash cans.  The camp is missing them pretty much completely which is one of the reason the camp has accumulated so much trash over the years.  A typical problem of Swaziland is just lacks places to put trash other then tossing it on the ground or burning it.  (In Nhlangano, we had regular trash picks up on Thursday, so the towns have it just the rural areas don't)

So on Monday, the program ran sessions on Reduce, Recycle, Reuse & then on cleanliness washing hands, etc.

Then on Tuesday, a PCV came to demonstrate a bunch of different options that "trash" (ie everything from plastic bags to regular paper) can be used.  Some things for profit, some things to just be used around the homesteads.  Like turning regular paper into charcoal, fusioning plastic bags together to make sheets of plastic, to cutting up milk cartons (not plastic jugs) and making them into wallets.  Cool stuff that just shows off how creative humans really can be with recycling & reusing the crap we make.

 

The Swaziland Waste Management Department came to talk about the trash policies in the country in general and the new public trash pit they are creating in the area.  All very informative to the attendees.  They will be coming to pick up all the trash the project collects on Friday.

Then as the final session a fun HIV/AIDS & Malaria (Swaziland has very little malaria but the area of the camp is one of the few that has had a reported case, but its rare) where the participants did some fun games to learn about these health problems.




And Wednesday (which I am unable to attend because of PC leaving business) is the people from these two training session, most from the camp will be then going out into the camp to translate what they have learned into their native languages.

The majority of the camp is from Somalia, then Ghana, Rwanda and few others many have lived there for a few years, their status is generally in limbo and as well as their lives but they will be improving because of this camp clean up.

Thursday, which I will go back for, is the major clean up day and will be the next part.