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.