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