The Swaziland Book Project

We are blessed to have "Rejoice," a young man from Swaziland, living in our home through the end of June. Rejoice has shared with us that access to print media, especially books, is very limited. It's very difficult for a person to get a library card, and libraries are hot, crowded and inadequately supplied. He would like to build a personal library to share with others in his village. We would like to help him by gathering these books and shipping them to his home in Swaziland.

Below, you'll find a list of specific books that Rejoice would like to own as well as a few suggestions from me.

If you would like to help Rejoice build a library, there are several ways you can help:

• You can send any extra copies of these or other appropriate books that you might have;
• You can locate any of these books through Amazon or some other book dealer and have them sent to Rejoice here at our home so that we can compile batches and send them to Swaziland;
• You can donate money to help others locate and purchase these books for Rejoice as well as postage to ship the books;
• You can donate or suggest other books that you feel would be of interest to Rejoice. If there are books that you feel are important for a person to have in their personal library and you have additional copies of those books, donations of those would also be appreciated.
• Once monetary donations have been made, you can help locate copies of the books Rejoice has requested.

If you would like to help in any of these ways, please contact me at books4thoksATgmailDOTcom (replacing the words with the appropriate symbols). If you would like to donate specific titles, please send me those titles so they're not duplicated by others.

Thank you for helping with this project, and I welcome you to spread the word to others you think might be able to help.

My suggestions:

Anything by C.S. Lewis
Pilgrim's Progress
Hind's Feet on High Places
A Wrinkle in Time
Anything by George McDonald
Anything by Max Lucado

Rejoice's List, according to his priorities:

1. Christian books

• Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life - Donald S. Whitney
• Spiritual Leadership - Oswald J. Sanders
• Spiritual Discipleship - Oswald Sanders
• A Biblical Theology of the Holy Spirit
• Planting and Growing Churches for the 21st Century- Aubrey Malphurs
• What everyone Should Know about Leadership and Church Structure- Denis Moses
• The Power of Prayer and Fasting
• The Spiritual Keys to Spiritual Growth
• Launch: Starting a New Church from Scratch

2. Business related.

• The Bankable business plan
• Start your own business 4th edition
• Bankable business plans for entrepreneurial ventures
• Everything start your own business
• small business start up kit
• excel for dummies 2007 or 08
• marketing for dummies
• public relations for dummies
• marketing tool kit
• competitive strategy- Michael E. porter
• strategic marketing management - Richard M.S. Wilson
• Financial accounting
• book keeping basics- Debra Rueqq
• starting and building a non profit- peri Pakroo
• cash flow for non profits - Murray Propkin
• quick books

3. Miscellaneous

• The 25 best time management tools and techniques- Pamela and Doug Sunhedem
• any book about writing resumes e.g. Expert resumes for managers and executives
• Job searching
• career guidance
• Beef and dairy cattle - Heather Smith Thomas
• Raising milk goats
• raising poultry

Note from Rejoice: "Please be informed that I would like to have any other suggested book that you think could be helpful in developing young adults and some teens into matured people who are well established in their faith in Christ Jesus. May God bless you as you are working on this book hunting process."

An Obsessive Interest in Swaziland

It's amazing how quickly one's interest is engaged in a thing when there's some personal element involved. For instance, if you would have asked me a year ago to tell you everything I knew about Swaziland, I'd have said, "Um...I've heard the name before." Other than that, I could not have told you anything. I'm being embarrassingly honest here when I say that I would not have been able to tell you what continent it's on. And I'm also being embarrassingly honest when I tell you that I wouldn't really have cared all that much.

After having been introduced to our Swazi guest, who I am calling Rejoice here on this blog, I became interested in Swaziland. Almost obsessively interested, you might say.

Rejoice is here as part of a voluntary exchange program where he is both learning about our culture and teaching us about his culture. He spends his days working at the local thrift store which is run by the organization that organizes the cross-cultural program. There, he is learning skills that he can take back to Swaziland so that he can better use his existing university education to secure a job, start a business and serve his country.

When I began grabbing snippets of time talking to Rejoice here and there before he came to stay with us, I became more fascinated with his culture, the struggles and challenges of his country, the uniqueness of the Swazi government and tradition, and the desperation they are dealing with as a result of the highest prevalence of HIV and AIDS in the world.

There are many things about Swaziland and its people that make it unique and captivating. Swaziland, a landlocked country that is surrounded by Mozambique and South Africa, is the only absolute monarchy left in sub-Saharan Africa. It's about the size of New Jersey and is home to 1.1 million people, 80,000 of whom are children orphaned by AIDS. It's estimated that over 100 children per month are stolen from Swaziland and Mozambique. There are reports, like this one from BBC News, of young girls being stolen and stockpiled for prostituion during South Africa's World Cup in 2010. The average life expectancy in Swaziland is 32, the lowest life expectancy in the world which is not surprising, since 42% of pregnant Swazi women are HIV positive, in addition to the prevalence of malaria, polio, yellow fever, cholera and more. The average Swazi lives on .63 cents a day and many of the people survive thanks to the World Food Programme. Because of these hunger and disease issues, there's much controversy about the fact that the ruler of Swaziland, soft-spoken King Mswati III, lives with his fourteen wives in relative luxury, his eldest daughter, Princess Sikhanyiso, attending a Christian university in California. While the people of his nation were starving and dying of AIDS, his attempt to use government money to purchase a private jet for more than double the annual health budget for all of Swaziland was thwarted.

And yet, there is so much about the Swazi culture that's appealing and admirable. Beauty, tradition and culture struggle against the push for democracy and technology. They're one of the only African nations to avoid civil war over the last thirty years. Rejoice, who had to endure many disappointments in life, specifically in his effort to secure a University education (Swaziland has only one university, and it's extremely difficult to get into), is so intelligent, well-spoken, Godly and respectful. His English is amazing, his grammar and handwriting impressive, to the extent that his mastery of the English language is superior to most of the American teens I know. He is grateful and conscientious, kind and thoughtful, has a wonderful sense of humor and a strong desire to improve himself through reading, listening, studying and gaining wisdom. He is mature yet childlike, knowledgable yet not opinionated. He has a firm grasp on the realities of his country, yet he's able to remain analytical about what he sees here in the U.S.

So here I am, an American woman approaching forty, who is learning about this amazing, controversial, heartbreaking culture for the first time in my life, and, in the process, learning much about myself, seeing American culture through the eyes of my new friend and short-term son. The questions he asks, like "Why are rabbits associated with Easter in the U.S.?" and "Why do children say 'yeah,' or 'what' when a parent calls them?" (which would be considered rude in Swaziland) or "Why do churches speak against gluttony as a sin yet have their outings at large buffets where so much food is present, eaten, and wasted?" are questions that lead me into a new or sharper perspective of who we are, what we have, what we take for granted.

On one hand, I feel that I should be ashamed of taking so long to care so much about Africa, especially, as a child of the 80's and a big-time teenage fan of U2, I heard so much about the plight of the African nations, but I also feel that this is the right time for me to learn. God is doing some incredible things in my mind right now, and I certainly welcome Rejoice as an instrument of that process.