Back on the Horse

I guess it's been 6 months since I've written anything.  That seems like too long a break, but with every passing day/week, it gets harder to write. So here goes.  Wish me luck, and keep up the not-so-subtle reminders that I need to write more.

The view north into Pine Valley toward Mbuluzi from our house in Mbabane

This is the view from our front lawn in Mbabane this afternoon, taken at about 5:15 p.m. or 55 minutes before the sun went down.  Strangely, the last two days here have been rainy and gray, which isn't really supposed to happen in the winter here.  Earlier this week we had near-freezing temperatures at night, but it does seem like it is starting to warm up as the days get longer.

It's been an interesting time to be in Swaziland the last few months.  The country is experiencing what the government calls a "cash-flow problem," but more and more appears to be a failure of budgeting accompanied by (or perhaps the cause of) an inability to get a loan from anywhere.*  Accurate figures are few and far between, but the government employs about 35,000 people, which the International Monetary Fund and others say is far too many for a country with just over a million people.  The government has introduced potential austerity measures, and each month threatens to implement a 10% reduction in civil servant salaries, but so far protests or threat of protests have prevented that from materializing.

Recent months have seen significant delays in payments of nearly everything.  Salaries have been routinely late, though so far have been paid.  Government vehicles that break down are unable to be fixed.  Non-essential government ministries have been prohibited from refueling cars.  Health and education spending are theoretically "ring-fenced" from the austerity measures, but it seems to be an all-out brawl to get funds each month when the revenue comes in, and civil-servant salaries have been at or near the front of the line, followed by other things including health and education.

That last piece, of course, impacts what we are trying to do on a daily basis with HIV treatment and Anti Retroviral medicine.  The Minister of Health and others have said publicly that we are currently drawing down our buffer stock for ARVs and that we need to buy more, but so far it's been difficult to ensure the financing is there to do it.  It's something we've been paying close attention to and trying to rectify, and it's an ongoing effort.  We haven't been successful yet, but we will keep trying.  In many ways it's admirable and fairly unique that the government wants to fund its own ARV procurement, so we all hope that funds will come available soon/immediately.

So that's the update for now, I still have a long list of things I'd like to write about from my request several months ago, and I'm hopeful that now that I've written something, the writers block will come to an end and I'll be a more regular correspondent

More to come...

G

*Just this week apparently South Africa has offered the government a E2.4 billion loan (~350 million USD), so it's possible that things aren't quite as bleak as they seem.  However, the IMF is here this month to review things, and by most accounts, that review isn't going to be pretty.