SIZEZE

Let the festivities begin! Even though it is still ridiculously early to be thinking about Christmas, we have to. Because the schools finish before December even begins we have to fit all of the Christmas themed activities into November. At Injabulo we braved the paint for the first time (much more risky than crayons!) and my worries were confirmed – water was spilt everywhere, paints were wrecked, paint was splattered everywhere and it was a total disaster. I think the kids enjoyed themselves though!
They’ve successfully made stockings, Santa Claus on a wreath, cotton wool snowmen and Christmas baubles – quite impressive for a large bunch of easily distracted 3-5 year olds.

The people who work in PEP must be getting sick of us now, we’ve been back AGAIN for more shoes for soup kitchen, and we found they have a lunchbox/water bottle combination for about 60p so we bought up all the stock they had of them too!

We’re also becoming more and more Swazi by the day; the kombi that has been donated to Moriah Centre is now back on Swazi soil, and Ashley and I have been allocated as its drivers. You can’t get much more Swazi than driving a kombi around, however you do get lots of people trying to wave you over at the side of the road and then look at us confusedly when they realise that there are two white girls in charge of a kombi! Might pull into the kombi park next time and shout ‘MATATA MATATA’ for the banter, try and charge people for a journey, hahaa.

Soup Kitchen has been crazy this week; we’ve had an influx of new children and teenagers... Apparently word has been getting out that the two white girls at soup kitchen are buying everyone clothes and shoes, so people are starting to turn up thinking that they’re going to get some handouts. So our numbers have been bumped up from about 50-60 on an average day to around 80!
The tough decision is whether or not we actually do give them something, it would be nice if they made the effort to come to soup kitchen as regulars, but then again they might be looking after younger siblings at home and they can’t physically make it. Do we give them clothes and shoes even though they’re only turning up BECAUSE  they think they’re going to get clothes and shoes, or do we say ‘sorry, no you can’t have’?  Aunty Vina is well informed on people’s home situations, but then again we don’t have the money to clothe the whole of Mpolongeni community! However if Aunty Vina says they are needy (which most of them are), then I guess we buy for them... That’s what this work is all about, giving help to those who need it the most.
On the way to soup kitchen on Tuesday we were pulled over by police for the very first time! It was just a random maintenance vehicle check, but we were pretty nervous because we had Sisekelo students in the back of the truck... Luckily Ashley had her licence (sometimes we forget, but you’re meant to carry it everywhere with you when you’re driving) and everything was okay. She did get a little bit flustered though and when the Policewoman asked for her to test the indicators she accidently flicked on the windscreen wipers! Easy mistake.

Friday was the first day that we started handing out our wares at soup kitchen; we decided to shift all of the second hand clothes that we had been collecting from the Sisekelo students so we had more time to hand out the nice things that we had actually bought with money. 

The girls were really civilised about taking the clothes, however they got embarrassed when we were handing out the bras that we’d been given, none of them wanted any! Ashley and I thought that it was really strange because surely teenage girls would be grateful for a bra, but it seems that that isn’t the case.
The boys were the opposite of the girls, they were mental. Pushing, screaming, fighting, snatching... everything. We’d even explained that everyone was going to get something, but they just didn’t want to be polite about it. Every time I lifted up an item of clothing to have a look at the size about 20 hands all came up and started grabbing and pulling the clothes; it wasn’t nice at all.
Sometimes when we try to do something nice for soup kitchen I still don’t feel good about it; giving out the clothes should make me feel happy because we’re giving the children something that they don’t have something that will benefit them... but it makes me feel awful. The way they desperately snatch clothes from you and from one another makes me realise they’re in such a dire situation they’re willing to do anything to gain. Larger boys pull clothes off the smaller boys, clothes that won’t even fit them, JUST so that they have something. It breaks my heart and makes me wonder what sort of effects poverty really has on a person. Just how far would they go to try and improve their own situation? Here they are pulling clothes off each other like wild animals, even though they are all friends and they all know how hard they have it, how tough their lives are. Something takes over them and they aren’t the same children I know and love and see every week, which is a shame because I want to feel good when we give them surprises, not feel shocked.

Injabulo Christmas party was also this week! We had so much fun with the kids, they all made little party hats to wear and then they all sat down at their little tables to have some party food; cheese and ham sandwiches, crisps, biscuits and icing, jelly and lolly pops... Lots of really healthy food obviously. Shoprite  doesn’t sell straws and they wouldn’t  donate us any of the free ones you get when you buy a drink so Ashley and I had stolen loads of them just to make a point that we couldn’t be defeated and we used them in a sucking Jelly race at Injabulo. It was the funniest thing ever watching 50 kids all with their faces in plates of jelly trying desperately to finish first, and the SOUND, wow.

This Saturday brought the Swaziland vs. Botswana National Rugby match! We caught a kombi to Manzini and walked to the Mavuso Sports Centre – our friend Mike is the Captain of the rugby team and his two brothers are also part of the team. It was Swaziland’s first National home game in 6 years, and we started off with high hopes for them. Then we saw the Botswana team... they dwarfed Swaziland’s team with their massive guys and we became more doubtful of how the game was going to go.
Unfortunately Swaziland were creamed by Botswana, but they’re a young team and it was the first time they had all played together, so there’s room for improvement!
Mike’s parents gave us free ‘Sizeze vs. Botswana’ t-shirts though, so that was pretty awesome! Sizeze is the rugby teams nickname, and also the name of the Swaziland spear.

Looking fat but whatever... This is Mike (on the right) and one of his brothers.

The Dos Santos Family! Mikes family, they are actual legends.

Next week is going to be stressful as hell, but it’s almost the Christmas holidays so it’s time to really knuckle down before we have 6 weeks of travelling!

Kate xx

Bombaso's

The truck in still in a bad way, so we’re still using public kombi’s to get to Injabulo; the absolute worst part of this being that it means we can’t take water with us. To make matters EVEN worse Big Bend is still doing the thing it is famous for; being so hot we might as well be at the Earth’s core. 

So we have 60 sweating kids in a tin roofed building all asking us for water to drink, water that we don’t have. No work gets done, they all strip their clothes off and run about whipping each other with rolled up t-shirts; it is a complete disaster. 

Nelsiwe our translator is also ill, so she just doesn’t turn up to school meaning that the kids mess around and don’t do a thing we ask them to, even if they understand. I hate all of them this week, all I’ve done is scream my head off at them because unless you actually get visibly angry with them they don’t do one thing you want them too. Nelsiwe says they don’t listen because they’re not scared of us; they listen to her because she used to hit them as punishment. Threatening to take stars off their star chart and making them stand with their arms in the air clearly doesn’t discourage bad behaviour well enough.
The highlight of my week at Injabulo has to be at one point during my lesson on Monday morning; Nelsiwe’s baby girl Ciara (Sierra) turned up in my classroom stark naked and screaming her head off! She’d walked from their house (which you can see from the preschool) and caused my whole class to kill themselves laughing for 10 minutes. It’s never easy at Injabulo, but it is entertaining.

I’m sick of the heat here in Big Bend, it has managed to get to a point where my discomfort is visible to everyone. I was cooking for soup kitchen on Tuesday afternoon and Aunty Rose turns around in the kitchen and says “Katie Katie Kate, what is wrong with your bum?” I have no idea what is wrong with my bum at this point, and quite frankly couldn’t be any more confused.
So I have a look and it looks like I’ve wet myself; there’s a massive dark patch at the back of my shorts which I conclude to be sweat as I feel that I am still too young to be incontinent. It’s disgusting, I know, but for you all to get a real picture about what it’s like living in Swaziland that’s one for the books! ‘Swaziland – so hot you’ll sweat from your ass.’   

I’ve also added another vehicle to the list of things that I’ve driven in Swaziland! Seeing as the truck is out of action and we can’t get a kombi to soup kitchen, we had to find another way. Sisekelo has a battered old truck called ‘The 89’, so we talked to our host, sorted out the paperwork and we’re now fully legal to drive it! It’s a speedy little thing, much easier to drive than Butch but has no radio and is a shell of a truck; you feel everything, it shakes and makes a hell of a racket!  

Saw some more of the post office this week; sadly I wasn’t receiving anything but I was sending! Sent a letter to my friend Chris who is in Ghana with Project Trust, he has virtually no internet access so we’re going to be talking the old fashioned way. I really respect him for that, it’s tough as it is being out here doing the work we do but I have the luxury of being able to see my family and friends pretty much whenever I want to. He’s doing an amazing job, don’t think I would be able to manage that!  Shock at the post office though, the letter to Ghana cost me E15, when a letter I sent to England a few weeks ago was only E7 – something is wrong here SwaziPost.
Ashley also managed to scam E3 off the postal worker because she was E3 short on sending a letter; nice work my friend.

Now for Bombaso’s!

This weekend we escaped the emptiness that is Big Bend, jumped on the school bus (for free) and set off across the other side of the country to the capital city Mbabane! 

Sat on the school bus sweating like a fat kid at a disco with all the Sisekelo students fighting each other for books to fan themselves with; I felt pretty sure of my decision not to bring my Project Trust hoody with me on our short excursion. People had told us that Mbabane was colder than Big Bend, which I knew could only be true as it is impossible to get hotter (also Mbabane is in the Highveld area of Swaziland, whereas Big Bend is in the Lowveld area)... However, when an African tells me that somewhere is cold I instantly assume that because they’re African it’s not going to feel ‘cold’ for me, the well accustomed Brit. I was mistaken. The two hour journey to Mbabane left behind the sweltering heat of Big Bend and delivered us to the top of a mountain range, to weather that was cold by British standards and rain.
After catching another free lift with one of the Sisekelo girls we turned up to our backpackers to find that they were fully booked for the first time EVER. The owner, Jason, and the staff were all sound and they set up mattresses in the living room for us and said that they would only charge us camping rates E80 (£5.70) for the night.
In the end we got beds anyway because someone wasn’t using their booking – score, they kept it at a camping rate too!

In typical backpackers style the hospitality was amazing, from the minute we walked in it was like we were old friends; Jason the owner invited us out for drinks in Ezulwini (the ‘elite’ area in Swaziland) with him, his girlfriend and her friends. His girlfriend Emma has a MASSIVE HOUSE, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, never mind only in Swaziland – I’m pretty sure we only saw 10% of it and there’s only her and her sister who live there, they are completely loaded.

In Ezulwini at Pub and Grill; Emma’s friends are two Vietnamese girls, one called Jen is actually mental, doesn’t stop talking and is still drinking on top of being drunk from the night before. She drinks vodka pretty much straight. The other girl didn’t know much English so just kept shouting ‘cheers!’ and we all clinked our glasses together... I think this happened about 20 times throughout the course of the night! There are some interesting people out in Ezulwini on a night, so we enjoyed ourselves... Until the bill came and we realised that the drinks were twice the amount we paid in Big Bend and we were now running pretty low on money.
Back to the cheaper bar at the backpackers!

We had only originally planned to say the one night, but we were loving Bombaso’s so much we spread out all our remaining money on our beds Saturday morning, and made the logical decision to stay another night but not go back to Pub and Grill!
We went into Mbabane town and had a walk around the Plaza and the Mall, something that I never thought I would be doing in Africa! It was still pretty small (as everything in Swaziland is), but it was THERE, which is something we don’t see very often in Big Bend. Neither of us felt like we were in Swaziland anymore, we felt like we were on holiday in Europe in a shopping centre. The wealth in Mbabane is apparent, and we notice it so much more now since we live rather rural... we also didn’t get stared at as much! There were plenty of white people walking around, so we attracted less attention than we do when we’re walking to work and in the local shop. That was a nice break; even though the Swazi men think they’re being friendly, charming and serenading you, in reality they’re more often than not harassing, annoying and stalking you.

African Santa Claus in the Mall!
Love the Ray Ban's.

As we were literally scraping out our pockets in order to stay in Mbabane another night we sadly couldn’t engage in any retail therapy. So we bought meat. Saturday night was braii night at Bombaso’s! So we stocked up on some chicken, beef, boerewors (basically sausage), rolls, salad, fanta grape, Doritos and chakalaka relish – I was already excited. 

The braii did not disappoint, the meat was good, the chakalaka was spicy and the company was hilarious! Jason the owner invited some friends over and a bachelor party staying at the backpackers joined in when they arrived back from a day of manly activities; fishing and paintballing. We liked them; they were handing out free Jager shots.

Sunday we decided to get out and see some of Mbabane that wasn’t a bar or a mall, so we took a walk down the hill behind the backpackers and caught some amazing views of the Sibebe Mountains – the largest exposed solid granite pluton in the world.
It was a lovely scenic walk down, but when we reached the bottom we turned around and realised we were at the bottom of a valley and the backpackers was at the top... Absolutely killed myself getting back up that hill, and of course there were no kombis that passed us! They’re always trying to get you on them when you don’t need them, but when you really do they’re nowhere to be seen – typical.

Sibebe Mountain Viewing

The beginning of the long long loooong way down the valley!

We really enjoyed our visit to the capital, and we will definitely be back! Now I feel like we’re getting a better picture  and understanding of what Swaziland is like as a country, yes there are the rural poor areas that we all believe Africa to be like, but there’s also a surprising amount that is very similar to being back home. The people are westernised, they dress differently from others in their culture and don’t share the same traditions even though there are 100% Swazi, just like the farmers on the sugar cane fields...
I’m learning more and more about Swaziland every day, and a year is the perfect amount of time to fully understand this country, its traditions and its people!

Much love...

Kate xx

P.S. On Sunday we found a Tandoori restaurant for lunch, had the most amazing peri peri chicken! But let’s just say that the next day I decided that it’s a good job I’m not on a project in India... I’ll leave that one as food for thought ;) 

Jason Foss, the owner and manager of Bombaso's!
Travelled the world and has some hilarious stories about drunk driving mini mopeds in England in the snow and getting pulled over by the police.

Belated Halloween, Baby Birds and Bust Tyres

This week has been a true Big Bend scorcher; it’s so hot I’m sure that I sweat even as I shower – there’s a nice image for you all. The kids at Injabulo have taken to stripping off in class, so they all run around in basically no clothes and I’ve taken to fanning them with sheets of A3 laminated paper. Air-con Swazi style!

On Tuesday we took the Americans to soup kitchen with us, however I should probably stop referring to them as ‘The Americans’ because they all have names. We took the ‘young ones’ along with us; Kahlie (pronounced as Kayleigh), Blas (pronounced like the ‘blos’ from blossom) and Kent (nice easy name!) all in their twenties. They absolutely loved hanging out with the kids at soup kitchen and we handed out blankets that had been donated by their church years ago to The Moriah Centre... but had never been used! Aunty Vina was chuffed with the blankets for the orphans, and they all sang a thank you song to us, bless them.

On the same night we decided that we were going to join in on something that the Missionaries were doing, so after soup kitchen Ashley, Kahlie, Blas, Kent and myself all piled into a small bucky with a South African man named Eurie (who is an absolute legend and possibly one of the funniest men ever) and we drove out to some community in the middle of nowhere. It was dark, cold and the community was half way up the side of a hill, so it was windy as anything. Not knowing this previously I was sat there in cut-offs, a t-shirt and wearing no mosquito spray – I was in for a treat tonight.  The Missionaries were projecting ‘The Jesus Film’ onto the side of a building for the community to watch, luckily it was a remake of the original (the original is over 3 hours long), so I only had to endure being a mosquito’s midnight snack for around 1 hour and 30 minutes. It was interesting to watch though, and since we’ve been attending church every Sunday and one of the preschools we teach at is a Christian preschool there was quite a hefty amount of quotes that I could recognise for everything we’ve been teaching... I’m learning and I didn’t even realise ;) 

This week was also Halloween! Okay, Halloween was ‘officially’ last week, but we’d punctured the truck tyre so we missed the 31^st October at Injabulo. But we’d put so much effort into the lesson plan; we had printed off 60 masks, bought apples and oranges and ‘borrowed’ black bin liners from the kitchen so that we could black out the windows – couldn’t let all that work go to waste. Plus, as I’ve made you all aware Swaziland isn’t exactly a massive Halloween celebrator, I could tell them that Halloween runs alongside Easter and they’d probably just believe me ;)
We had so much fun with the kids making masks, playing ‘Stick the Spider on the Web’, apple bobbing and colouring pumpkin faces onto oranges... They loved it and Ashley even hid in the corner of the classroom with a scary mask on and jumped out on them all! There’s a fantastic video of it and they are reduced to screaming wrecks and all pile on top of one another on the floor.

Halloween masks and pumpkin oranges! Grrrrr.

Nelsiwe and Baby Ciara (Sierra), and Ciara looks happy!
She never looks happy, clearly loving Halloween :D

APPLE BOBBING!

The drive back from Injabulo turned a brilliant day slightly less brilliant; the previously punctured (then fixed) tyre decided to blow. We had to rope in some Swazi men to help us jack it up and try to pump the tyre; unfortunately the tyre was a complete goner and they said we’d have to change it. Shame that the spare tyre under the TOYOTA hasn’t seen daylight for a good few years, and they had a right hassle trying to free it! Richard and his Gardner came to the rescue after we’d called him and explained the situation... he wasn’t too happy about the wrecked tyre.

Whaaaaaaaaaat.

After we crawled back on the newly attached, old spare tyre at 40km/h we decided that we should wash the truck. We’d broken it again so the least we could do was make it look presentable. Right on time the Swazi weather kicked in and a thunderstorm and rainstorm hit us at full pelt – it was warm rain though so we had fun being out in the rain washing the truck. Ashley didn’t want her hair to get wet though, so tapping into her Swazi roots she took a bright yellow Shoprite bag and tied it around her head, sexy look! 

True Swazi right here....

Friday and Saturday were shopping days! We have finally bought all 60 Christmas presents for all the children at Injabulo, and we’re now popular customers in PEP (Swaziland’s answer to Primark, but it’s even CHEAPER). There’s not a new tyre for the truck yet, so we had to take a public Kombi to Injabulo on Friday, therefore when we did our shopping on the way back there was no way we could fit into a Kombi again with 60 backpacks and 60 pairs of shoes! Luckily the manager of PEP was lovely to us as we were big spenders (around E4000 between us, nearly £300), and she wangled us a lift back to Big Bend with someone she knew. She also let us have E100 worth of free stuff each from the shop as a thank you for pretty much clearing the shelves, haha... So we both got new pillows to replace the lame excuses for pillows that we have at hostel, and I chose some new sandals. Pretty decent, that would never happen back home.

Only 1/4 of all the shoes we bought - CUTE

Saturday we were back in PEP, all the staff said hello to us and I’m pretty sure we will be remembered in that shop from now on. This time we were buying the clothes for the children, it was so fun choosing out all the cute little tops for the girls and there are some gorgeous little shorts and vests for the boys!

Back in Big Bend we bought toys and sweets for their presents too; every £10 donated bought a child a new backpack, a pair of shoes, clothes, toys, sweets, a pencil case (with pens, colours, ruler, scissors, rubber, sharpener etc) and a folder for all of their work to go in. LIKE I SAID, SWAZILAND IS CHEAP.

So I would just like to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone who donated to us, you are going to make these children very happy – and I’ll make sure we get lots of pictures of them with their new presents for you all to see!

After a busy weekend we had Saturday night out to have some fun! £6, 7 drinks and two bars down we rolled up to a house party – don’t ask me who’s I have no idea. There were massive speakers in the garden blaring out African House music and there was food on, it was perfect. I tried out my African House dancing in the garden with some of the friends that we’ve made here, luckily it was dark and I’m sure people’s memories are a bit blurry, so I don’t think I embarrassed myself too much!
The late night food was salad, pap and beef – typically Swazi; the beef was spiced and it was amazing, I cannot stress how good this beef was. Everyone keeps telling me how I was going on and on about the beef, but compared to hostel beef it was heaven. It was heaven regardless. We got back around 3:30 and tucked into a doughnut that I’d bought earlier that day, and some salted crackers that were floating about my room... Need to get some decent food in for such occasions!
Either way it was a great night and took some of the stress off from our busy week, if you look really hard there are things to do in Big Bend :P

Ashley, Idumiso (works at Sisekelo) and Myself :)

ALSO MY PARCELS ARRIVED. YAY.

2 out of the 3 that should be here - result for the moment ;)

Buzzing when you find Christmas Presents from your Grandparents <3

THE AFTERMATH

I feel like I should explain the title of this post; the only mystery now is the ‘baby bird’ section of the title. At Moriah Centre on Thursday one of the boys had something in his hand, Ashley walked over to see what it was and he threw what was in his hand at her face! Turns out it was a traumatised baby bird and it flapped frantically, causing Ashley to absolutely soil her pants, scream the place down and leg it to the other side of the room. Apart from suffering only a minor heart attack she was okay, but I couldn’t believe how mean they were to this tiny bird; they kept picking it up by its wings and chucking it on the floor. So I saved it and went to hide it away from their mean little hands – there’s definitely a different attitude to animals here than there is back home.

Evil Children :( Traumatised and half dead bird.

Also this week I caught a few our boys at Injabulo throwing rocks at passing herds of cows; one it’s mean, and two it’s dangerous! The cows literally walk right through the playground area and if one of them spooked we could have a dead child on our hands. They knew I wasn’t happy with them, you should see their faces when they’re getting told off – they look like butter wouldn’t melt.

Love to you all, start sending my Christmas presents now ;)

Kate xx

P.S. I regret to inform you all that I’ve become a true Swazi and gone to the toilet out in the open. Ashley and I were desperate at Injabulo and the toilets themselves are vile, so we had to wee around the back of the toilet block. Some of the kids followed us around too (they never leave you alone!) and I’m pretty sure one of the little girls has now seen my white bum exposed to the world. How embarrassing.
It’s not even like I’ve never had a wee outside before, I have, plenty of times. But you hide to do it! There’s nowhere to hide here, and the toilet block is right next to a homestead. People might walk past and any moment and if someone looked out of their window at the right moment I’m sure they received a lovely eyeful!

"Crazy Like A White Chick"

This week Ashley and I have been on a little bit of a destructive path; we've managed to break the school laminator (the only one) and we punctured a tyre on our truck. Okay, the laminator wasn’t completely our fault, it had been on its last legs for a long time we just pushed it over the edge with our copious numbers of preschool sheets. So we meekly walked to our host and representatives house with the broken laminator and handed it over hoping they would be able to fix it... Unfortunately that didn't happen but the words ‘it’s not your fault’ definitely came out of our representative’s mouth, so we breathed a sigh of relief that we weren't in trouble and made ourselves scarce! 

Just as we had dodged any trouble with the laminator we managed to break something even more expensive, the truck tyre. The day had been a montage of thunder, monsoon rains, lightning and miserable weather; but like the good people we are we packed all the soup kitchen things into the truck and set off in the lashing rain. Forgetting that Swazi’s cower in their houses even when there’s only a spitting of rain, we were heading to soup kitchen in vain. We arrived to locked gates, no children, Aunty Vina sat chilling in her house and lots of slippy wet mud to drive through – brilliant. We gave the food to Aunty Vina for the orphans who live with her and then set off back home again, there was a bit of a hairy moment when we got the truck stuck on the soup kitchen track and Ashley had to jump in to give it some fearless revs! This resulted in wet mud spraying EVERYWHERE, up the sides of the truck, at me (but I jumped out of the way screaming) and it even managed to get inside the truck through the open window onto Ashley, hahaaa. We made it back alright though, only to make it to Shoprite (a 1 minute drive from our hosts’ house) to have a man point at our truck and say ‘puncture, puncture’... I jumped out and found the left back tyre as flat as a pancake, DAMN. We know we shouldn’t drive on a flat, but we clearly hadn’t noticed all the way home and now we were almost back so we carried on. Richard (our representative) wasn’t too impressed with the tyre and told us we have to check all of the tyres before and after we use the truck :( Luckily we managed to pump it back up and plug it, so we won’t be feeling bad that Richard has to pay out E2,000 for a new tyre!

This week there’s been more white people about the place! A group of American Missionaries are over here from Colorado for 2 weeks, their church sponsors the Moriah Centre and they’ve come over to make some developments and build inside the school. They’re building a flat to fit two people, the idea is that hopefully next year there will be room for two more volunteers to live and work permanently at Moriah Centre! They’ve made so much progress already, and they’ve only been building for two days! They cleared out the office, knocked through a wall, constructed a separating wall to corner off the flat area from the church and put it up, made concrete steps to join the  new ‘bedroom area’ to the old office which will be a kitchen/lounge, they cleared out a junk room and moved everything from the office into it, put up shelves, made desks and basically have created a brand new office with all the old resources organised, inventoried and labelled! There are only 7 of them as well! Ashley and I have been helping out in the afternoons, so it’s been really great to be a part of something different – we’ve also managed to get loads of free stuff out of it for Injabulo and soup kitchen because there were lots of resources that had been donated to Moriah and never used, so the missionaries donated them to us... Now our bedrooms are really full and look more like junk rooms with a bed squished into the corner! 

The Missionaries are really lovely people, and we have some great conversations about accents and listening to the way we say words – they definitely can’t talk properly! They say ‘Mom’ instead of Mum, aluminium sounds like ‘aloo-minum’ and oregano comes out as ‘or-egg-ay-no ‘, we’re currently teaching them how to talk properly, and I’ve told them to stop missing out the ‘U’  when they spell colour and favourite. Our educating never ends ;)

This week I’ve also had the pleasure of people suddenly deciding that it is socially acceptable to display their private bodily functions in front of me. I can tell you right now that it is not okay. At soup kitchen Aunty Vina leaned against a wall while talking to me, lifted up her dress, squatted a little bit and took a wee right there. I was totally shocked and was screaming ‘Aunty Vina no! Why are you doing this to me! Stop weeing when I’m talking to you!’ She didn’t see a problem with it and merely said ‘But I needed to pee-pee’, we’ll that makes it fine then. I didn’t notice any knickers round her ankles either, and Ashley has literally just informed me that on Friday Aunty Vina told her that she never wears knickers, and tried to shove Ashley’s hand down her dress so she could have a feel! Crazy woman. 

One of the ladies from Moriah Centres little boys took a poo in front of me as well. I looked up to see him totally naked from the waist down, squatting on the floor with a growing pile of poo beneath his bottom. No such thing as privacy being sacred in Swaziland!

On Saturday we helped out at an inter-schools swimming gala at Mayaluga, a 10 minute drive from Sisekelo. We were helping out on the tuck shop; we got free food and it was actually quite good fun! Took a while for my mental maths to warm up though, counting on your fingers at 18 years old is embarrassing, but was definitely necessary for that first hour. The kids here are infuriating though, they ether don’t talk or they talk so quietly you think they’re miming. Don’t just hand your money to me and expect that I know what you want! They also do this annoying thing where they ask for chips; chips here mean crisps (urgh, Americanisms!), on the tuck shop there were about 6 different types of ‘chips’ on offer, however no one seemed to think it was necessary to ask for the type they wanted, they just ask for ‘chips’ – THAT DOESN’T HELP ME IDIOTS. I think I’m probably over reacting, but even so, it annoyed the hell out of me. The worst ones were the kids who handed you the money, pointed at something behind you and expected you to know what they were pointing at, not one word. Someone needs to teach these kids that pointing is rude, and there wasn’t one thank you uttered that day. Disgraceful, hahaaaa.

It has been a fairly busy week! Successful though, as we have also managed to get all of our kids at Injabulo sponsored for a Christmas present! Now the hard part, shopping for 60 children... that’s going to be a fun day.

Kate xx  

Swaziland Facts!

Hopefully I will continue adding to this list as I find out more and more about this fascinating country:

• If you have western money, Swaziland is pretty cheap!
• Everything is slow in Swaziland - internet, service, waiting for food etc :P
• Everything has so many additives! The jam is bright red, the yoghurts are bright green and bright yellow and they have a drink called Cabana which is basically Sunny D - yeah, that was banned in the UK ;)
• The custard creams here are amazing! You can get so many different flavours on the inside; mango, strawberry, orange, lemon, peach... basically anything. NOM.
• There are literally no road rules. You get where you want to by driving however you want to. Kombi's (public transport minibuses) are the fastest thing on the road, and they have the most passengers. Also, don't trust the power of zebra crossings. They mean nothing.
• Cows and goats really like being on the road, you gotta slow down or you'll be eating beef/goat for a year!
• Pap is nice. I actually like it. It looks like mash potato but is made from maize.
• Everyone will talk to you!
• THE FRUIT JUICE IS AMAZING. So many flavours, so good.
• 'Excuse me' doesn't really come into it that much, if you want to get something or move somewhere just push yourself through... If you don't you're getting nowhere! SERIOUSLY there's not even a word in SiSwati for 'excuse me'.
• Eat peanut butter. You need the energy.  
• The Swazi's love TOYOTA. If you see a truck that isn't a TOYOTA you've done extremely well. It's like being in Cornwall and spotting VW camper vans - they're everywhere.
• Apparently the mesh bags that you get oranges in are really good to use when washing up. Cheaper than buying a cloth I guess!
• Socks and sandals are a common fashion choice :(
• 'Boy racers' are virtually non-existent in Swaziland, low cars and body kits mean that you're not going to get anywhere fast on these roads/tracks. 
• Ladies use towels to strap their babies to their backs, and they tie the towel at the front! I'll have to get a picture of it, it really is funny; from the front all you see are these two little feet sticking out on the ladies hips, cute. 
• After our trip to Manzini I concluded that Kombi's are the quickest, cheapest, most efficient and probably the best public transport I will ever use, no matter where you are you can always find one to where you need to go, and if you can't you just stand by the side of the road and flag one down to hop on. Yes the experience is slightly terrifying at times, but you get used to overtaking cars at 120km/h over speed bumps into oncoming traffic. 
• In Swaziland KFC's (not very African I know, but don't judge me) they have chilli salt. It is amazing. 
• Regional Slang - everyone here says 'shame', it can mean; what a shame, cute, aww etc, I really don't know if they're being positive or negative :/
  'Is it' is also popular - e.g. 'Did you have a good day?' 'Yes thanks, we were teaching at Injabulo and put 30 kids in the truck!' 'Is it?' I think it means 'oh really' or 'did you really' or something.
  When organising times -
  'Just now' - sometime in the near future, could be an hour, could be this afternoon, could even be the evening, it's not very clear!
  'Now now' - is right now, if I'm on my way 'now now' it means I'm walking to your house at that moment in time, whereas if I'm coming 'just now' I probably haven't even showered or dressed yet :P
• Pretty much every car in Swaziland is white, which doesn't make sense because they're all absolutely filthy all the time. Why don't they just buy darker cars? Turns out that it's cheaper to buy a car in white than in any other colour... fair enough. 
• Experienced a Swazi version of a mean playground trick at Injabulo. Remember when the boys used to chase the girls with worms and everyone screamed their heads off? Yeah, here the boys do that with dead snakes on sticks! Never heard such a noise in my LIFE. 
• I was really surprised when I saw little girls at Moriah Centre taking baby dolls, putting them on their backs and tying the dolls to themselves with strips of material around their waists! It seemed like such a sad and grown-up thing to do, because they were copying how all the women carry their babies around. Then I realised it is just like little girls back home with push chairs and dollies, but even the smallest actions these children do they keep reminding of the scale of the cultural differences! 
• After talking about the above fact Ashley and I realised that since being here we have NEVER seen a man with a child. Not carrying one, not even with one... just never. 
• Men and women don't really go around together, I've only ever seen one couple holding hands. The people here tend to be alone or in a group of people of the same sex. 
• A rainy day is a day off. Swazi's don't do ANYTHING when it rains, all they do it put the fire on in their house and sleep. This is even for a little drizzle. One day at soup kitchen the kids decided that because it was raining they weren't going to sing, even though they had to stand in the rain anyway... just, why.
• Hostel Slang - 'churfs' refers to the boy you are 'seeing', or refers to hot boys in general. For example 'how's churfs?' asking about the boyfriend, or 'look at those churfs over there!'
  L.O.G means 'low on guava', which in turn means that you haven't kissed anyone in a while! Don't worry, I don't really understand it either.
• 'Cherry' is a girl. 'If that cherry comes anywhere near my boyfriend I'll go crazy!'
• 'Pawpaw' is what the Swazi's call papaya for short.
• THE KING IS EVERYWHERE. He is on the traditional clothes that the Swazi's wear, his name is everywhere and without fail every shop/bar/cafe/restaurant that you go into (anywhere) there will be his picture up on the wall for everyone to see with 'King Mswati III' written on it, just in case anyone is nipping into Spar for their milk and bread and they forget who runs their country. I mean he is the King, I understand that - but we have a Queen, and she's not mounted on the wall in Sainsburys'. 
• Drinks cans are deceivingly heavy :( You think you've got about a quarter of a can left but it's totally empty, I think they must make the metal thicker on the bottom. CRY.
• Kuteka (pronounced goo-tec-ah) is a Swazi tradition which basically involves tricking a girl into marrying your son! What happens is when the girl is 'sleeping over' with your son, the parents gather all the family, neighbours and community outside the house. They pull the girl out of the house pretty early (around 4am) and they taunt her, say horrible things and call her names until she cries. Once she cries she is 'accepting' everything that has been said and is now married to the son. If she is strong willed and manages not to cry, she is put in something called a 'kraal' (pronounced like crawl). It's a wooden enclosure (basically a cage), and the taunting is carried on until the tears eventually appear... Don't worry! I don't really understand it either! Apparently you can't run away either, because all the gathered community grab you and keep you there. The moral of the story is, don't risk the sleeping at the house part.    
• When you're driving along the road and you smell burning, it's normally because you're driving past a field that is totally on fire. The first time I saw this I was like 'WHAT THE FUUU----'! But it's a controlled fire, the workers on the sugar cane plantations burn the fields before harvesting. 
• When sugar cane is being transported on massive cane trucks, they normally fill them to the point where they are overflowing. A bonus to us is that you can pick up sticks of sugar cane from the side of the road, strip the bark with your teeth and chew as you walk! I made the mistake of thinking you actually swallow it though, and resulted on me choking on bits of bark in my throat :( You only chew the bark, then spit it out... There's a handy tip for anyone thinking about visiting Swaziland. Don't swallow sugar cane. 

2013

• Everyone in the rural areas in Swaziland appears to have this problem - not being able to apply 'she' or 'he' to the correct gender. When talking about their husbands women generally refer to them as 'she', and when talking about their female children then refer to them as 'he'! Can't get it right. 
• These Africans go crazy for Tupperware, they love the stuff. Nelsiwe our other Injabulo teacher has a cupboard full of it, all on display. 
• I've noticed that Swazi women don't appear to shave their armpits.
• Instead of 'spreading' butter on their sandwiches, they 'paste' them! As Nelsiwe once said to us, "these sandwiches haven't been pasted", no Nelsiwe they haven't, peanut butter is not glue and I don't intend sticking them to the walls! Hahahaaa.
• The Swazis love their litchi fruits! 
• Many of the older Swazi men have their smallest fingernail REALLY long, and all of the others are short. I don't know if this is a cultural or traditional thing because the security guard that I questioned about it said "I don't know, I just like looking at mine. It's nice." 
• For some reason some kombi drivers attach bottles of Fanta and Coca Cola to the outside of their minibus, maybe they don't have cup holders... I really don't know, I still haven't worked this one out. 
• When giving or receiving something (e.g. money) it is polite to put your left hand onto your right forearm while accepting the thing into your right hand (or vice versa). 
• 'Umlungu' means white person, the original meaning comes from the white foam off the sea that collects along the beach! Hahaa, kids shouted this at us as we got onto a kombi, brilliant.
• 'Shisa Nyama' - literally means 'burn the meat' but can be used to describe cooking meat, having a braii or literally just means hot meat!
• According to what the Grandparents used to say (and old Swazi myths/stories); when it rains at the same time that the sun is out... it is when the monkeys get married. 
• Lebola - when a young man wants to marry a young girl he must get permission from the girl's father and pay him 'lebola' - this is traditionally a certain number of cattle, but now tradition has changed at it can also be the monetary value of a certain amount of cattle (or a bit of cattle and a bit of money!)
• 'Cheese girls' and 'cheese boys' - a way of describing the richer kids who are on the 'soft' side, i.e. those that have maids/cooks and don't really do anything for themselves. 

“Remember, it’s a racist dog. It bites white people.”

This week has been a pretty uneventful week for us; some local news from this week is that on Monday a leopard had been spotted running around on the loose just outside of Big Bend. It had been having the time of its life on a cattle murdering spree, so apparently the local farmers were pretty angry.

We've also been introduced to Wandile, the son of Siphewe a teacher at Moriah Centre. Siphewe is rather fond of the idea of Wandile marrying Ashley, and is now always telling her that she can’t wait to put red paint on her cheeks (something Swazi to do with marriage I'm guessing!)

Ashley received her first packages from home this week (so I'm really jealous because mine are still nowhere to be seen), so we had a stroll up to the Big Bend Post Office. In Swaziland nothing gets delivered to your house or homestead, you have to go and collect it yourself; packages, letters, bills... EVERYTHING. Her Mum had sent out footballs and football strips for the kids, so she counted them out and set about the hard task of picking who was going to get one.
Getting the kids into their new football strips at soup kitchen was actually hilarious; this one poor lad was trying to pull on his new shorts over the top of his trousers, which then prompted Aunty Vina to go over to him, keg him in front of everyone (wasn't wearing any pants, bless him!) and pull the new shorts onto a now very embarrassed little boy. They all looked so happy in their new kits though!

All week Ashley and I had been looking forward to this weekend because the plans were to have a weekend away in Durban! We’d been forward planning on the internet what we were going to do, and were excited (and apprehensive) about visiting the boys at the Boys Town project. Unfortunately the plans fell through and we couldn't go in the end, which is probably for the best because on Thursday night I became ill for the first time of being here in Swaziland; this included sleeping on the hostel toilet floor because it was too risky being in my room as I didn't fancy clearing sick up off my things the next morning. 

Ashley managed to go to Injabulo by herself on Friday to teach with Nelsiwe while I was sprawled out in bed trying to keep my stomach inside my body. I also woke up to a really cute phone call from Ashley and the kids at Injabulo; she got them to shout “Hallo Aunty Kate” and “get better soon” which put a little smile on my face!
As well as being told to drink lots of water, take rehydration packets, drink energy drinks and drink lots of black tea, Aunty Rose concocted some disgusting mixture of water, sugar and salt for me to ingest. Apparently it’s some sort of home-made rehydration drink, safe to say it didn't taste too great; but feeling as bad as I did I downed it with the same enthusiasm as downing a dirty pint and then went back to sleep. Some weekend.

I’m looking forward to this coming week though, hopefully my package from home will arrive (I check our pigeon hole for the Post Office slip in vain every day), and on Wednesday we’re having a Halloween themed day with the kids at Injabulo! We've been collecting apples for apple bobbing, oranges for drawing pumpkin faces on, printed off Halloween masks, ghosts and gravestones and we’re going to cover the windows with black bin bags! Unfortunately we’re not too sure that the kids will understand what is happening, even though it is apparent that there’s a lot of superstition over witchcraft in Africa, no one actually seems to have heard of Halloween. Aunty Rose assured us that she understood... “I know Halloween, when the children’s all do a play, yes. I know I know!” We’re pretty sure that she doesn't understand, and I think she’s going on about a Christmas Nativity... so it looks like it’s time to introduce some Swazi’s to the concept of Halloween! 

This currently includes Ashley putting on the masks we printed off for the kids, calling hostel girls to her room and scaring the crap out of them. It’s pretty damn funny, and we've already had one girl drop her carton of juice all over the floor only to end up down there herself milliseconds after!

Trick or Treat

Kate xx

Christmas Box Appeal

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151117239557562.446457.651857561&type=1

If you can spare £10 you can sponsor one of these little children for a Christmas Box! Words cannot describe how much they will appreciate it as they literally have nothing at all. Make a kid's face light up at Christmas by liking/commenting on their picture on this Facebook album at getting £10 to my lovely Mum some way, somehow. Even if you don't have Facebook please feel free to still sponsor, all you have to do is get the £10 to my Mum and we will do the rest to make sure they get a little something this Christmas :D

Thank you so much! xxx

Aunty Rose

Aunty Rose is one of the cooks in the kitchen at hostel, she is so amazing that I have to do a post about her! She's absolutely stark raving crazy and has the most insane laugh I've ever heard in my life, I'll have to get it on video at some point, it doesn't even sound like it comes from a human.

• She has twin daughters; their English names are Debbie and Debra. Aunty Rose doesn't understand that Debbie is basically a nickname for someone called Deborah, and both her daughters technically have the same name. We can't make her see sense!
• Aunty Rose completely lied to us and misled us about her 'son'. Here we were thinking that she had a 5 year old son, only to be told by the other Aunties that she doesn't. Who was this kid we were introduced to calling her Mum? Turns out that it's her Grandson, but because she brought him up he sees her as a mother figure, Aunty Rose - why you so confusing!
• She calls both me and Ashley 'baby', which I love! Well, she calls lots of people baby, but still <3
• She doesn't just call me 'Kate', it usually comes out as 'Katie-Katie-Kate', with baby thrown on the end! She is so cute. 
• When we cook for soup kitchen we sing with Aunty Rose, her favourite song is Adele's Someone Like You so we absolutely belt it out while we're sweating like fat kids in a disco cooking our massive pot of soup. She always shouts at us at the end to stop though, because we'll make her cry (she sings it with her daughters as well), but then she sets us off on round 2, and we sing again!
• She has a small dog at home, which she named 'Teddy-bear', she sleeps with it as well. This is just Aunty Rose all over, she's beautifully mental.  
• Aunty Rose (and most Swazi's) aren't too familiar with the concept of Halloween; most are up-front with their lack of understanding, but Aunty Rose was adamant that she knew what it was - a play that children perform and the adults all watch. I really don't think she does understand as her idea of Halloween sounds like a Christmas Nativity! 

Aunty Rose 2013!

•  Before we left for our travelling Aunty Rose was off sick from work for a few days; we found out that the reason she was off was because she ate red meat even though she was allergic! She was at Kathy (our hosts) leaving dinner and everyone had red meat, she was jealous because it looked so good and she ate some! Silly woman.
• Debbie and Debra her twin daughters were telling us that at New Years she went to some car races and kept phoning them only to scream loudly and say no words. Apparently she couldn’t talk for two days afterwards.
• Aunty Rose keeps telling us how we can turn morvite (porridge) into Umcombotsi a Swazi beer. She walks around the kitchen brandishing a cup or porridge singing ‘Umcombotsi umcombotsi the swazzziii beeeeeer!’
•  Aunty Rose has a new granddaughter! She was telling us how Sego (her grandson) reacted; “Sego’s crazzzzy! No one can touch my babay, s’my baby! Bought it from the shop. It’s expensive!” “How much Sego?” “Heeeeey I don’t know!” They are a pretty hilarious family.
•  Aunty Rose was talking to us about Swazi beer (again) and then suddenly started saying “backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards... ahhh the banana’s sticking!” Yes, this is an euphemism/innuendo.
• We walk into the kitchen one day to find all of the Aunties absolutely killing themselves laughing, so Aunty Rose shows us what all the fuss is about... On her phone she shows us a naked picture of herself sleeping! It was taken by her daughters and bluetoothed to her phone; “Ey I was so tired, was lying there like I was drunk! I had the baby here (imitates tucked under her armpit), I nearly killed the baby!” 
• Since seeing Aunty Rose naked in the shower at leadership camp all those months ago there was one thing that I didn’t see...  Unfortunately I have now been presented with it (the photo was taken pretty much between her legs), and there’s not one inch of Aunty Rose that is a mystery to me. She’s not even embarrassed, she’s shown basically all the staff the picture!
•  Ashley and Aunty Rose:
  “Hey Aunty Rose, do you want to learn some Chinese?” “No I don’t want to karate.”“I mean the language...”“All Chinese is karate!” 
• Ashley was chatting to Aunty Rose about when she went to the casino in Durban with her Mum and Paul... "Yeah the chips are only R10!" (10 rand is the equivalent of 70p), Aunty Rose was then appalled at this because she thought that Ashley was talking about chips/crisps that are sold for R1 (7p) in Swaziland, rather than gambling chips. "Ey this thing! Too expensive!" Hahahaaaa bless her.  

The Inedible Cake.

“It’s all fun and games until someone shits themselves and has to walk home naked.”

I’m getting pretty good at handling large numbers of Swazi children by myself now; on Monday I had 53 to myself again! We also had a little accident at Injabulo; one of the little boys was crying but we couldn’t understand why... Then just as we were tiding up after teaching Nelsiwe comes over and tells us that he’s upset because he’s wet himself, great. So we give her some water so she can splash him down... Then Nelsiwe asks us for some soap and a cloth because ‘it’s all down the back of his legs’, this doesn’t fit in with the wetting himself story.
Turns out that there was a slight miscommunication and this poor boy had actually pooed himself! We went outside to find him stood in a bowl of water, completely starkers, embarrassed and still crying. Nelsiwe gave him a good wipe down and then we sent him on his way; for some reason he chose not to put back on his top which was un-soiled and went home wearing nothing but his birthday suit! Shame.  

It’s now about 7 weeks in and we’ve only just discovered that the radio in our truck actually works! We’ve found a half decent East Coast South African station that has some really weird adverts, but they play decent English and American music. So we’re having great fun cruising along in the African sun with our windows down, belting it out to some songs!

We also took Tracey and Agnes (teachers from Moriah Centre) along with us to soup kitchen; we had a lovely time with the kids all in a big circle chanting ‘DANCE BABY DANCE, DANCE BABY DANCE’ to which they all took turns going into the middle of the circle and they danced their little hearts out. We also played this game where they all ran around screaming ‘there’s a fire on the mountain, run run run’ which ended with about 30 kids throwing themselves on top of Ashley and myself in a massive pile on... I still don’t understand the aim of the game, all I know is that when it was finished I was covered in dirt, children and aching everywhere!

There’s also been another one of Swaziland’s frequent and impressive thunderstorms, only this time with the side effect that I can now access the school wifi on my laptop! I then had a skype session with Lucy, and spent the first 10 minutes looking really confused that I even had access to the internet.
The second side effect of the thunderstorm is that when we came to drive to Injabulo on Wednesday the bridge that we cross the river on was completely non-existent. Ayanda was with us in the back of the truck and she hates crossing the river at the best of times, so she was freaking out and shouting that if we tried to cross it she’s strangle Ashley with her bare hands (who was driving) and get out to walk home! Hahaa, we literally couldn’t see the bridge, so crossing wasn’t an option... We had to go back into Big Bend and go the long way around.

Normally a bridge here, oh maaaaan.

This weekend is mid-term for Sisekelo, so everyone in hostel goes home for a long weekend, apart from Ashley and I. Hostel is so creepy when there’s no one around! We felt a bit lonely without the girls there; but Selma had asked us to dog sit for her, so we got to sleep at her house and cook for ourselves which was pretty cool, however it made us realise that if we had to fend for ourselves all the time we probably would struggle! There was also one day where we had cooked our lunch and sat down outside in the sunshine to eat it before realising that the dogs were nowhere to be seen. S**t. We’d lost them.
We looked all over the grounds before asking a security guard if he’d seen anyone drive down; turns out that Selma’s sister had come along in her car and taken them for a walk or something, we were so worried that we were responsible for 3 lost dogs. We also found out that while we’d been looking after them they’d viciously murdered a cat one night when we’d been out, but we hadn’t realised. Worst dog sitters ever.

Kathy and Richard took us to Hlane on Saturday! Hlane is a Nature Reserve up country, and it was so muddy we were skidding everywhere; sometimes we were horizontal to the tracks we were travelling on... If it hadn’t been for Richards impeccable rally driving skills I could’ve easily seen myself up to my ankles in mud pushing a truck for the second time in as many weeks. We saw rhino’s, crocodiles, hippo’s, giraffe, impala (impala are everywhere, I’m sick of the sight of them!) and dung beetles, which are the most hilarious beetle I think I’ve ever seen in my life. They push along balls of dung 3 times the size of them like children rolling up snow at winter to make a snowman. They choose to roll their dung balls right along the middle of the tracks, so Richard was playing a dodging game to try and avoid flattening them to the floor. 

Dung Beetle!

The Queen Mother was also meant to be having lunch at Hlane, so there were large numbers of security men walking around admiring the hippos and waving around massive guns. We also had an argument with a group of men in Swazi cultural dress over whether or not the crocodile next to the watering hole was in fact a crocodile or a large lizard. It was a crocodile, it was obvious and there’s no doubt that fact; but they seemed to think that it was only a lizard. I really worry about these Africans sometimes, no wonder loads of them get eaten by crocodiles, they’re walking around thinking that they’re harmless lizards!

Sunday was a calmer day; we spent the morning baking a birthday cake for Mary at Moriah Centres birthday, only to discover that after our first attempt we are rubbish bakers. It probably didn’t help that I’d accidently used a ‘Microwavable Recipes’ book without realising, and that the gas oven we were using seemed only to have two heat settings, on and off. The first cake I made was so hard I actually took it outside and snapped it over my leg into little rock sized pieces all over the grass!
Attempts 3 and 4 were much more successful and we managed to make a pretty decent cake after about 4 hours in the kitchen. The only downfall was that it was so hot outside the icing ran everywhere and the ‘Happy Birthday’ that Ashley had piped on top was illegible by the time we actually got to Mary’s house. It tasted good though! 

We decided that we couldn’t face another night cooking for ourselves, so we walked to the club for dinner. The country club is a really nice place, but compared to the westernised prices we’re familiar with it is still dirt cheap! You can get a steak dish for £4, and I’m pretty sure the most expensive meal on the menu was no more than £6. It was a good night, however at about 9:40 we were rudely told by the bar man “let’s go now”, because they apparently close at 9 (oops), but no one told us! It was pretty hilarious though, and we couldn’t believe that those were the words that actually came out of his mouth... He obviously had only basic English, but even so, “let’s go now”... c’mon man, throw us a ‘please’ in there.

Time is going so fast, I can’t believe we’re 7 weeks in already!

Loving life in Swaziland 2K12 ;)

Kate xx

Looking Like a Tourist

So this week has been a bit hectic. Started off on Monday with me being in charge of 60 squealing kids at Injabulo; Ashley and Nelsiwe had to make a trip to MATATA (an out of town shopping area, there’s not much there though) to sort out graduation payments so that left me behind in charge! To make matters worse, not only can I not speak very much SiSwati, but the floors had been polished over the weekend. Here in Swaziland the Swazi women take a lot of pride in their homesteads being clean and tidy, one of the things they do is polish their floors... their concrete floors. This is a recipe for disaster in a preschool! Even after dropping like flies time after time, these kids do not understand that running on these floors in their socks IS going to hurt them, I can’t even count on my hands how many times I’ve seen a little head bounce off the floor, shortly followed by the biggest scream and longest crying session. They’ll never learn.

We’ve also taken on tennis coaching for UPS (Ubombo Primary School) for a few weeks, so now every Monday and Tuesday we walk to the Country Club and make a group of unwilling 12 year olds run around on a tennis court. Ashley is hilariously strict on them, and gives them push-up forfeits all the time – they looked a bit shocked after their first session with us, I don’t think they’re normally made to work that hard. This now makes Tuesdays a really busy day for us with Moriah Centre in the morning, the club for soup kitchen afterwards, back to hostel to cook the soup, back to the club for tennis coaching, back to hostel to finish cooking the soup and then finally off to soup kitchen! We’re on the go from 6:30am until 6:00pm when we finally sit down for dinner, no time for being lazy here.

Another lesson that we’ve learned this week is that Swazi stall owners will try to squeeze you for as much as possible, if you’re white of course. Ayanda (an ex-Sisekelo student) came with us to Injabulo to help out on Wednesday and afterwards we swung by MATATA to buy a few things. Ashley went back to one stall to buy a replacement bracelet... The first time she bought it she’d payed E10 (70p), but this time being with Ayanda when the stall owner asked for the money it was only E3! We must have looked like proper tourists that first time, so from now on I’m going to make sure I find out the real cost of things so we can’t be cheated again ;)

The Matrics (A-Level students, and pronounced ‘Metrics’) had their leaving dinner at hostel, this was a formal affair so obviously Ashley and I had not much appropriate to wear. Feeling under dressed next to the Matrics in their prom dresses and sky high heels I couldn’t help but wonder what these girls pull out of the bag for their prom! Some of the dresses were way more extravagant than anything I wore to my prom and this was only dinner at hostel, and I doubt that any of these girls will recycle an outfit.


Another ‘Only in Africa’ experience happened on Saturday; we were crossing the bridge from having a parent’s meeting at Injabulo and pretty much all of the local community were down at the river doing their weekly wash. This doesn’t sound strange, apart from the fact everyone was completely naked. Obviously because they don’t have that many clothes, when they wash them they don’t have anything else to put on; safe to say that Ashley and I were driving along not too sure of where to look!

Saturday night was one of the best nights we’ve had so far since being in Swaziland! We went for what we thought was an uneventful stroll to the shop, but actually ended up with us being stuck in deep mud, in the pitch black in the middle of the local nature reserve! Nick (a teacher at Sisekelo and a reverend) offered to give us all a lift back from the shop to hostel, but we ended up on a little bit of a detour. Ashley and I were having the time of our lives riding on the open back of Nick’s bucky (truck) and the wind was crazy in our hair, we soon realised that we’d gone past the turning for hostel and that Nick was heading towards the nature reserve. A nice little twist to the night! What we didn’t realise was that Nick’s bucky was only 2 wheel drive, plus it had been raining and he was planning to take us on the track 2m away from the dam. So it was inevitable that we were going to get stuck. All 5 of us (there were two other people from hostel as well) tried for about an hour to push this truck out of the mud; only to realise that it wasn’t going anywhere and we would have to call someone to tow us out. Thankfully one of the teachers came along in their 4 wheel drive and dragged us out of Nick’s mess, it was close though, because one of the ropes we used to secure the truck snapped after the first try, so we were down to just the one! But now I can say that I’ve survived being stranded in the wilderness of Africa, with wild animals around any corner ;) Well, sort of.

We also had a meeting at the Royal Crawl in Mndobandoba on Sunday with the community leader, Injabulo still isn’t receiving any food for lunch times, and Ashley and I are trying 24/7 to find some way to feed these children. We didn’t attend the main meeting at the Royal Crawl because it was in SiSwati, but the community leader came over for a talk and we have him our letters to try and sort something out. It was really interesting being at the Royal Crawl because we were able to see more of the Swazi’s culture and how they do things. Everyone sat on the floor at the meeting, and if you sit on a chair then you have to give the Chief a cow! Nelsiwe told us that once you’re at a meeting you aren’t allowed to leave before it is finished – if you do it is a great offence to the community.

I’m exhausted after this week! The weekend was hardly a weekend, but at least we’re being productive. I really hope that we can make headway with Injabulo some time soon.

Kate xx