On Friday we took them up to Injabulo with us; and on the way when we were crossing the river bridge we came across a man with a massive gun. Fair to say we were shitting ourselves slightly until we explained that he was there for safety reasons, there was a HUGE crocodile sunning itself in the shallows of the river - the first one we have seen!
Soup Kitchen on the evening was also a success, the kids absolutely adored the girls and we're running around with all 6 of our cameras taking pictures of anything and everything. Ashley also taught Aunty Vina how to dance to the Waka Waka song!
Soup Kitchen on the evening was also a success, the kids absolutely adored the girls and we're running around with all 6 of our cameras taking pictures of anything and everything. Ashley also taught Aunty Vina how to dance to the Waka Waka song!
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| The girls at Soup Kitchen! |
Over the weekend we organised to go over to Mantenga Cultural Village in Ezulwini to give the girls a bit of an insight into the Swazi culture! So at 9am on Saturday morning all 6 of us crammed ourselves (Swazi style) into the girls' hire car, plugged in the iPod to the AUX cable and set off for the beautiful Ezulwini Valley. With Nicola's crazy driving we arrived at our backpackers in record time, however we did have a few bumps and bruises from flying over speed bumps at 120km/h, but we were alive.
Due to the help of a borrowed Sat-Nav we found ‘Legends
Backpackers’, the insanely cheap place where we were staying! For the price of
E120 per night (£8 per night!) I wasn’t expecting much... Therefore I was
surprised to find that we had a dorm room all to ourselves, there was free
wifi, a decent bathroom and toilet, mosquito nets over the bunk beds and free
tea and coffee in the morning! Can’t ask for much more than that, and if I’m
honest with you, the free wifi pretty much made everyone’s day. I’d sleep in a
shed if there was free wifi!
After finding the backpackers we set off on the short drive to the Cultural Village that was literally around the corner. Unfortunately for Nicola and the hire car the road couldn’t really be classed as a road, and she found herself dodging over bumps and driving down into what could only be described as gully’s the entire way to the Cultural Village. One pretty big bash to the bottom of the car made us all slightly concerned, but I’m pretty sure that the metal pipe I saw on the road out of the rear windscreen had already been there before we passed over ;)
Once at the Cultural Village we paid the E100 entry fee (£7.10) and found our way around... We were in time for the first Cultural Dance performance of the day, which meant that we had an interesting 45 minutes worth of watching muscly Swazi men dance around wearing nothing but sheepskin leg warmers and tiny stripy skirts. There was a lot of stomping around, a lot of drumming and a lot of shouting really loudly; there were also many many impressive high kicks above the head (men and women alike), kicks so high I’m pretty grateful for the Nike orange sports shorts that they were wearing under their mini skirts... There was also this one guy who was making bird noises, at first I thought he had some sort of whistle in his mouth, but I soon realised that it was just him making the noise, I really want to learn!
After finding the backpackers we set off on the short drive to the Cultural Village that was literally around the corner. Unfortunately for Nicola and the hire car the road couldn’t really be classed as a road, and she found herself dodging over bumps and driving down into what could only be described as gully’s the entire way to the Cultural Village. One pretty big bash to the bottom of the car made us all slightly concerned, but I’m pretty sure that the metal pipe I saw on the road out of the rear windscreen had already been there before we passed over ;)
Once at the Cultural Village we paid the E100 entry fee (£7.10) and found our way around... We were in time for the first Cultural Dance performance of the day, which meant that we had an interesting 45 minutes worth of watching muscly Swazi men dance around wearing nothing but sheepskin leg warmers and tiny stripy skirts. There was a lot of stomping around, a lot of drumming and a lot of shouting really loudly; there were also many many impressive high kicks above the head (men and women alike), kicks so high I’m pretty grateful for the Nike orange sports shorts that they were wearing under their mini skirts... There was also this one guy who was making bird noises, at first I thought he had some sort of whistle in his mouth, but I soon realised that it was just him making the noise, I really want to learn!
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One of the dances was a high paced threatening dance (I’m not overly sure when
you would dance in a threatening way, but you know...) which involved the group
of men in short skirts stomping away while another guy walked up and down the
line shouting insanely fast in SiSwati; the best way for me to describe how he
sounded would be for you to imagine someone with tourettes attemping to rap to
Eminem at twice the normal rapping pace, in SiSwati. It really was something I
can tell you that for sure!
At the end of the performance the dancers came into the crowd to separate a Chinese couple from their fancy cameras and tripods and involve slightly hesitant tourists with the dancing and singing! The slightly angry tourettes guy from before took my hand in his seriously sweaty one and pulled me out of the shade into the sunshine, thrust a Swazi spear into my hands and shouted out the steps for me to join in with. Luckily the dancing was only stamping your feet; 4 with the right, 2 with the left, 1 with the right, 1 with the left and repeat; this was a bonus for me because my dancing skills back in England are pretty below average, but here all you do is stomp! It’s brilliant. Safe to say I had the dance pretty much cracked after the first 2 rounds of the sequence, however the tourettes guy must’ve thought I looked pretty confused by the whole thing because he continued to shout out loud at me “4 on right! 2 on left! 1 right, 1 left! 4 on righ-----”, I felt bad telling him I was a pro at his cultural dance already, so I continued to stomp, bob my head and smile at him with an attentive look on my face... I’m making it sound like I didn’t enjoy myself, but I really did! He was a lovely guy and when we’d finished dancing I returned his spear, gave him the Swazi handshake, received a really sweaty hug and said “siyabonga” (thank you) only to be laughed at when I walked back to my seat. These Swazi’s find us trying to speak SiSwati absolutely hilarious, it’s not even the wrong word! Must by my pronunciation, I’ll get there eventually, and if I don’t, I’ll be a source of entertainment for many a Swazi person.
At the end of the performance the dancers came into the crowd to separate a Chinese couple from their fancy cameras and tripods and involve slightly hesitant tourists with the dancing and singing! The slightly angry tourettes guy from before took my hand in his seriously sweaty one and pulled me out of the shade into the sunshine, thrust a Swazi spear into my hands and shouted out the steps for me to join in with. Luckily the dancing was only stamping your feet; 4 with the right, 2 with the left, 1 with the right, 1 with the left and repeat; this was a bonus for me because my dancing skills back in England are pretty below average, but here all you do is stomp! It’s brilliant. Safe to say I had the dance pretty much cracked after the first 2 rounds of the sequence, however the tourettes guy must’ve thought I looked pretty confused by the whole thing because he continued to shout out loud at me “4 on right! 2 on left! 1 right, 1 left! 4 on righ-----”, I felt bad telling him I was a pro at his cultural dance already, so I continued to stomp, bob my head and smile at him with an attentive look on my face... I’m making it sound like I didn’t enjoy myself, but I really did! He was a lovely guy and when we’d finished dancing I returned his spear, gave him the Swazi handshake, received a really sweaty hug and said “siyabonga” (thank you) only to be laughed at when I walked back to my seat. These Swazi’s find us trying to speak SiSwati absolutely hilarious, it’s not even the wrong word! Must by my pronunciation, I’ll get there eventually, and if I don’t, I’ll be a source of entertainment for many a Swazi person.
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| Having a bash at the Cultural Dancing :D |
After the Cultural Dance a man called Paul led us around the
cultural village and explained the Swazi traditions and beliefs to us. Now,
Paul was his Christian name, not his birth name – I can’t remember his birth
name but there was a lovely story behind it... One day his father had been
travelling home from hunting out in the mountains and a storm struck, in order
to get home quickly he had to swim across a dangerous river (as a short cut).
Then he arrived home to find that his wife had given birth to a baby boy, so he
named the baby after the name of the river he had successfully crossed. The
Swazi people have such lovely reasons for choosing names for their children!
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| Paul |
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| Traditional Homesteads |
Here’s a few things that I learned about old Swazi Culture:
·
When a child reaches the age of 6 they move out
of their parents hut and move into another with unmarried people of the same
sex who are also over 6 years of age.
·
The girls hut is placed at the very front of the
village, that way when intruders come and storm the first hut in the village
they find it full of unmarried girls. This creates a distraction for them and
while they are busy telling all the girls that they love them and asking them
for their hand in marriage (having forgotten their original reason of being
there, i.e. killing the boys and men and taking all of the women) the youngest
girl runs to the men and informs them of the intruders so that they can come
prepared to defend the village!
·
Women and children under 6 sleep on the left
hand side of the hut and men sleep on the right hand side of the hut, this
separation is kept even when someone is man and wife, however if the man feels
‘in the mood’ and the children are all asleep he will bang on the wooden
supports inside the hut and call the wife over to his side!
·
If a man’s brother dies he is entitled to his
wife, and can take her as another wife of his own. If he doesn’t wish for
another wife then he sends her back to her family.
·
When a girl gets married the father of the
intended husband has to pay the father of the girl with cattle, normally around
15 cattle are given for a girl’s hand in marriage. However if the girl isn’t a
virgin the price is open for discussion.
·
If a man has committed a crime such as adultery
or worse he is taken to the execution rock; he must stand at the edge of the
rock and throw himself off the edge to fall to an ungraceful death. If he is
feeling slightly nervous of the edge all he has to do is turn around to face
the unhappy village entourage pointing their sharp spears encouragingly at him
– he then turns around again to jump.
·
A woman may not cook the heart or brain of an
animal; she may also not eat the brain of an animal. It is believed that if she
tastes the brain she will then become more intelligent than her man, and they
can’t be having that ;)
There are many more facts but I can’t remember them all!
This should give you an idea of the old Swazi culture and traditions though.
We then had a rough walk through the woods to Mantenga
waterfall, it is an absolutely beautiful place and even though we hadn’t
brought our swim-wear we decided that it was too good an experience to pass up!
So we stripped to our underwear and jumped in for a swim. It was gorgeous. I
managed to get my toe stuck in a rock though and pretty sure I broke it when I
pushed off to swim again, ouch. It wasn’t until after our swim that we thought
about crocodiles and snakes etc! Luckily none of us were eaten and we spoke to
a park ranger who informed us that there were no dangerous animals in the
falls, so that was lucky.
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We waited about an hour and a half for our lunch in the restaurant (the
Polokwane girls first experience of slow Swazi service!) and witnessed some
monkeys run inside, steal some straws and run off again looking pretty guilty.
On the evening we decided to go coning at KFC! For those of
you who don’t know coning, please, allow me to introduce you... You order a
cone with no flake at a drive-thru, when the ice-cream is handed to the driver
at the last window they put their hand straight into the ice-cream part and
grip the cone by the top (not the bottom), look the confused staff member in
the face, say thank you and drive off. I HAVE NEVER SEEN A SWAZI MAN LOOK SO
SHOCKED IN MY WHOLE LIFE. Hahahahaaa we were absolutely howling and Nicola was
covered in ice-cream, it was fantastic though and we got it on camera! Back at
the backpackers we went for a pizza and some drinks, it was a really chill
night just getting to know the girls better.
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| Legends Backpackers with some cheeky drinks! |
The Sunday was equally as good, at the Ezulwini shopping
area after a delicious cooked breakfast for only £1.50 some guy approached us
and started chatting. Turns out he was one of the Prince’s of Swaziland’s
‘bitches’ to put it correctly. He came grovelling over to us asking for numbers
and everything, to then introduce us to the Prince and inform us that the
Prince was going home for a bath before he wanted to take us all out later. Que
the usual story of not having mobile phone numbers! We got given the Prince’s
number though and were told to phone him later ‘if we didn’t then we would
disappoint him’, so later on when we were relaxing by the hot springs, more
commonly known as The Cuddle Puddle we rang the Prince. Didn’t pick up though,
surprise surprise ;)
The Cuddle Puddle is also very aptly named, we attracted quite a lot of attention from the boys of all ages there and I’m definitely going to make up a boyfriend for the future! I’ve never had to give a valid reason and explain why I am single before, they just can’t take no for an answer here! :P
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The girls were intending to leave on Monday afternoon, but
Kathy managed to persuade them to stay for dinner (achieved by terrifying them
about driving in South Africa in the dark!) and we took them to the nature
reserve in the truck that evening. We saw a giraffe about 5 meters away! It was
stood in the middle of the road just staring at us in the truck! I honestly
haven’t given giraffes enough credit on the animal front, you really don’t
appreciate them until you see they in the flesh and in the wild – I’m gradually
becoming fonder of them, they really are lovely.
On the whole it was an amazing weekend and it was fantastic
to have a break from Big Bend, Ezulwini is such a gorgeous place and we will
definitely be returning. We’re slowly but surely seeing more and more of this
exciting country and pretty soon we will be able to say that we’re familiar
with the whole of Swaziland!
Kate xxx
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