Don't you forget about me...

So I’m sat in Johannesburg OR Tambo airport and I can’t actually believe that I’ve left Swaziland for the last time (in the foreseeable future). The last few days have been the most emotional time of my life; my heart has been dragged through happiness and sadness alike, memories have been made that I will cherish for the rest of my life yet the pain of leaving those that I love is still fresh, and I know that it will only heal with time.

Swaziland has made such a huge impact on my life in such a short space of time; 1 year seemed like forever when I was preparing to come out here, but now I realise just how short this time is in the grand scale of things. The culture, the people, the country and my children have all taken a special place in my heart and in my soul... they have changed me for better and I am never going to forget the experiences I have had here.

1 year is so short and fleeting and the children I have worked with are so young that the majority of them are going to grow up and not remember me, even if they don’t remember me I will always remember them and everything they taught me about loving others unconditionally. Despite everything that they go through (things that even adults shouldn’t be expected to handle) they still have the energy to express their love to you in every moment they are in your presence...

I am going to miss the hugs, the kisses on my hand as they leave the classroom, the hugging of my knees as I’m trying to walk and the playing with my hair. I will miss the cheeky smiles across the classroom and the giggles as they press my skin to watch the colour change, I will miss them calling me Aunty Katie and I will miss the pride in their eyes when they are confidently speaking English to me. I will miss the joyful singing and the energetic dancing, I will miss the unnecessarily loud talking and the bright colours, I will miss the dirty faces at soup kitchen and the thank you’s that we really don’t deserve, I will miss speaking in SiSwati and watching people’s reactions when they realise we understood them. I am going to miss the sun shining every day and I will miss Swazi time, I will miss the hard workers, the cheeky children, and the shy ones who you have to invest time in over a few months before earning their trust. I will miss making a sad child smile and I will miss the laughs with the happy ones. I will miss my African life. 

I am scared to go home. You know when you come back off holiday and sit on your bed and it doesn’t feel like you were sunbathing on a beach in Spain only yesterday... it feels like a dream, it feels like you were never away. I am afraid that when I get home my time in Africa will feel like a distant memory, like it isn’t real. This scares me because this has been the most REAL year of my life, I’ve experienced real lives and real people for the first time ever and everything that I have learned I want to keep with me, I don’t want to let it slip out of touch.

This year I have been blessed with a second home, second families, Swazi mothers, new brothers and sisters and too many children of my ‘own’ to count. Leaving Swaziland is difficult as I don’t know when I will be coming back; I don’t know who I will see again. Tears have been shed but it is time to move on, I have to step aside to allow someone else to begin their journey into what I hope will be the first real year of their life. I am so grateful to have had this opportunity; it has been an experience that only comes around once in a lifetime...

You are born and then you die, but in between you can do anything you want. You have to grasp life and shake it by the shoulders, make every mistake possible and learn from them, take risks and mess up... but most of all make sure you have fun. Make sure you never waste a day. Go to sleep with no regrets.

This HAS been the best year of my life, but now it’s in my hands to create more great years.

Kate xx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdqoNKCCt7A

Napoleon the Safari Legend

Plans to take the kids from Injabulo and Moriah to Hlane Royal Nature Reserve on school trips had been underway for quite some time; and finally the time came and we had two weeks filled of children, nature reserves, wild animals and stress.

Injabulo School Trips

To make things even more difficult on ourselves we decided to do something nice for the kids at Injabulo; I do enjoy doing lovely things for them, it’s just that you have a really great idea and then you realise that you have to repeat that really great idea at least 60 times. So, we hit PEP once again (the shop workers in there are basically our family now) to buy 60 blank t-shirts on which we were going to write ‘Injabulo Preschool’ and ‘Hlane 2013’ – yes, that’s right, PRESCHOOL TOUR T-SHIRTS!
After a full weekend of nothing but writing these exact words on t-shirts over and over again I was so sick of it that I would be happy if I never have to see another t-shirt again in my life... however that would be rather impractical.

Hard work paid off!

Teacher t-shirts ;)

To make everything easier on ourselves we stayed over at Nelsiwe’s house on the Tuesday evening to cook the food and get up early for the first trip on Wednesday! We were up at 6am to dish the food into take away boxes and then it was time for another naked basin wash, squatting in a large plastic tub of water in Nelsiwe’s bedroom... at least this water was hot as it had just been boiled in the kettle, which is more than can be said for the showers in hostel on a morning.
So we pack all of the kids into the hired kombi and head off to Hlane! Hlane is a small nature reserve when you compare it to the likes of Kruger (well, compared to the likes of anything as Swaziland itself is tiny!) but we saw Lions, giraffes, elephants, impala, kudu, nyala and even had our road blocked by a herd of white rhino. One Lion we actually saw lying with a dead impala, so we had obviously just missed a kill! Probably for the best really, some 4 year olds might have walked away slightly traumatised after seeing a Lion murder a small impala in front of their eyes.

Crocodile Class

HLANE 2013!

We also took them to Swazi Secrets where they process the oils from the marula nuts to make beauty products, unfortunately they weren’t doing any production while we were there, but the kids seemed to have fun pushing the crushing machines around and wearing marula lip balm.  

The second Injabulo trip was pretty much the same as the first; apart from the fact that Hlane was so busy with about 4 school trips we had to wait hours for our safari. In the mean time we took the kids down to the reception which was teeming with American tourists and we had them all singing and dancing! Yes, we actively paraded our cute preschoolers in front of tourists for entertainment, but it meant that they weren’t getting up to any mischief and the tourists now have lots of pictures and videos of our awesome kids to show people back home.

'Thishela' - teacher in SiSwati.

Ashley’s Birthday!

Friday 19^th sees Ashley joining the land of 19 year olds! To celebrate we had planned to have a joint preschool party for Ashley and Nelsiwe’s daughter Ciara; what we didn’t realise is that Nelsiwe’s plan was to have the party ‘after’ preschool hours, which she failed to tell us. So we muddled through the day with no other teachers and random people in party dresses and presents turning up around 12 o’clock. Failure in communication and Swazi Time... obviously the day was never going to go as planned. 

In the end it was really great fun and absolutely crazy! Nelsiwe had made enough food to feed all of the kids at preschool, all of her children (who stayed off school for the occasion) and all of the guests she invited. There was also a huge birthday cake for Ashley and Ciara, and after the cutting of the cake and making a wish Ciara nearly took off the face of one of the preschoolers as she started jumping up and down with the gigantic knife still clutched in her destructive little hand. This is the girl who can completely wreck my classroom with her bare hands in 10 minutes, rips up worksheets, chews on laminated resources and sucks on the blades of scissors... she should never ever be given anything weapon-like!

Little devil!

We head to soup kitchen with another huge cake that Ashley bought from Matata Spar to hand out, everyone’s eyes (especially Aunty Vinahs!) light up when they see the massive black forest gateaux and everyone gets a slice. 

Mmmm, licking the box clean.

When we arrive back to hostel the girls have a little birthday surprise for Ashley... they drag her outside armed with ketchup bottles, they absolutely COVER her in it before they take a bucket of cold water and dump it over her head. They then proceed to turn on the tap that is used to fill the pool and drench her past drenched! I’m so glad I was in Botswana on my birthday, these girls are merciless!

Ketchup attack

Water attack

Moriah Centre School Trips

With the small Moriah kombi that we drive we were only able to take one class per day... so that’s 4 classes, add that to our Injabulo trips and we would’ve been to Hlane 6 times in 2 weeks! No. We took opposite days for some light relief from driving around all the time.
On both days that Ashley went to Hlane she returned with photos of the watering hole with elephants, giraffes, hippo, rhino and basically everything else all together drinking in a really African scene. When I went there was either nothing at the watering hole, or a few rhinos. Looks like she had the luckier days!
However we did see a Lion and two Lionesses running through the grass towards our kombi, and when they slowed down the Lion basically brushed himself along the back of the kombi... safe to say I was pretty nervous in the driver’s seat!

Moriah Crocodile Class

Other developments at Hlane with Moriah Centre revealed that Aunty Sphiwe (the other teacher of my class) had the hots for Napoleon our safari guide! I could totally tell that they were flirting in SiSwati and then the next trip I went on she told us that we had to get his number for her... PULLED!

Things are crazy as ever here, but I’m going to miss it when it ends.

Kate xx

P.S. At soup kitchen this week Aunty Vinah’s Mum was wandering around with 3 kittens in a bag begging us to buy them for E5 each. That’s £1 for 3 kittens to you. Unfortunately we couldn’t as we have nowhere to keep them, and I was heartbroken leaving them there... but the great thing is we were talking about it at Sisekelo and one of the sports coaches decided he wanted to buy them!
So the next time we were at soup kitchen we bought 2 of the kittens (the 3^rd apparently disappeared or was eaten or something) and brought them back to hostel for him! They’re called Ashley and Kate. Score. 

N'AAAWWWWW <3

Kruger National Park, The Dow Family in Africa and Projectile Vomiting on Whales

Hazyview/Kruger

So being reunited with the family was great! Mum cried, Dad had tears and as expected Ross showed no emotions what-so-ever cause he’s ‘hard’ now... but god is he HUGE.  I’ve been away from them for almost 10 months now, but as soon as we were all together again it didn’t feel like we had been apart for any time at all. Especially when we were all packed into the hire car, driving to Hazyview and arguing over the Sat Nav... it felt just like old times, some things won’t ever change.

Now that the parents are out it’s time to be treated! After weeks on end of travelling around different countries on unreliable public transport lugging a gargantuan backpack, sleeping in bunk beds and surviving on instant noodles it was a lovely change to be staying in an actual Safari Lodge! We had luxuries such as a double bed, a shower that we didn’t share with 30 people, a maid who MADE OUR BED and fancy meals to introduce the family to such as crocodile tail. FYI, if you ever get the change to try crocodile tail I strongly suggest that you do it, it is amazing.

Our first day of our ‘African Holiday’ together was spent driving around the Panorama Route; a beautiful scenic area that boasts some of the most breathtaking views you could imagine. We visited waterfalls, potholes, God’s Window and even had pancakes at a pancake house – fantastic! We even saw elephants by the roadside a mere 5 minutes drive from our Lodge, which was surreal but a brilliant way to get us ready for the main event of the next day... SAFARI IN KRUGER PARK! Wooo!

Route to Blyde River Dam

Kruger National Park is literally the creme-de-la-creme of nature reserves, it is the size (if not bigger) than the United Kingdom and is home to many of the Big 5. Ashley and I have been wanting to go to Kruger ever since we arrived in Africa as it is a MUST SEE of this continent, however on our mere backpacker funds and limited transport we were struggling to make it happen – so thank god the Dow’s did come out! ;)

We hauled ourselves out of our warm beds into the freezing cold morning at the ridiculous time of 5:00am for the sunrise safari; this made the first hour or so slightly bittersweet as my excitement was tainted by my body rejecting the early morning! Amazingly we were only 20 minutes into Kruger before we saw a pack of wild dog and two lions by the side of the road, which really boosted my spirits and got everyone into the spirit of the day and ready to spot some animals.
The safari day was absolutely amazing; we saw millions of impala, kudu and nyala (as expected, they are as common as pigeons in London), bushbuck, waterbuck, mongoose, buffalo, wildebeest, hippo, rhino, warthog, hundreds of herds of elephant and then 4 more lions!(Rubber dingy rapids bro.) Never in my life has 11 hours sat in a vehicle gone past so quickly.

Safari! Driver Bernard :)

LION IN THE WILD, LION IN THE WILD!

The next day saw us on yet another scenic drive to the dam at Blyde River Canyon; I’ve never been to America so I don’t know what it is really like, but driving on the roads up to the mountains made me feel like I was in an American movie on my way to summer camp or something!
The dam was a vast sparkling pool of blue, the place was untouched and one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited. It’s so untouched that the wildlife are free to roam around as they please, so it’s safe to say that Ross was more than surprised when he went to investigate the woodland and stumbled across a group of fully grown baboons... he ran back to us pretty sharpish! Don’t blame him really.

Swaziland  

Having the family at the projects was brilliant but surreal at the same time; this place is home for me now but it is brand new for them, and seeing them actually there in the flesh meeting the people we’ve been working with for 10 months was absolutely crazy. I imagine that it was just as strange for them because they’re so used to seeing photos of the places and the children, and then all of a sudden they’re there at the preschool getting mobbed by 30 kids all at once! Mum brought out some gifts for the children at Injabulo; new books and a parachute! Safe to say that they enjoyed the stories we read to them, but they absolutely bat-crap crazy when the parachute came out! It’s a fairly small parachute, and for some reason all they wanted to do was to stand underneath it and scream... which is exactly what they did. So I think they are very pleased with the new addition to activities that they can play, and it’s my mission to actually make them understand how the parachute games work, instead of just gripping onto the material and screaming for 10 minutes.

As we’d just got back off holidays there was no hostel food to cook for soup kitchen, so Mum and Dad bought 10kg of rice, beans, gravy and chackalacka so that we could make the children a lovely fresh meal. They also decided that they wanted to donate loads of fruit to the kids so we ended up taking with us about 100 oranges, 100 apples and 150 bananas! It was one of the best meals we’ve ever served at soup kitchen, and every child walked away with 2 bananas, an apple and an orange which left me feeling ecstatically happy because it’s not often that we are able to take up treats for the kids and I love seeing their faces when we do!
However, the biggest surprise of the whole day was that Mum didn’t cry at the projects; I was slightly disappointed because I’d been looking forward to seeing just how open the flood gates would be! Round of applause to her for keeping it together though.

I think they all really enjoyed spending time with the children, and the only downside of the whole thing was that Ross wore a white wife beater vest and it got dirty... and we ALL heard about it, quite a lot. May that be a lesson to all for the future; when people tell you not to wear white clothes around mischievous African children, DON’T DO IT. Especially if you’re going to complain about it afterwards ;) Told you so.

Lovely candid shot there. Sorry, re-uploading a different one takes too long, waa.
But AUNTY VINAH!

Durban

Hotel view of casino and stadium.

We spent two days in Durban as a pit stop on our travels after leaving Swaziland; our hotel was a stone’s throw away from the Moses Mabhida Stadium and Ross took advantage of this and signed himself up to do the Big Swing! Basically he climbed up to the very top of the stadium and then threw himself off it again. Standing with Mum and Dad watching him do it was torture because Mum was freaking out the whole entire time, and all I could think of was how glad I was that she hadn’t been with me all this year while I had been doing bungees, gorge jumps etc! She’s such a worrier.

Moses Mabhida Stadium Sunset

Durban Beach!

Buzzing after the jump!

St. Lucia

A tiny titbit of information that I have failed to mention in this blog so far is that ever since my family came out my body decided to swap its ‘fight or flight’ response. So far I had been cruising through day to day life absolutely fine (because I had to), but when the family arrived it’s like my body decided to crash and it needed a rest. Unfortunately that meant that I was pretty ill when they were out visiting, so we had to change our travel plans from going to the beautiful Port St John’s and we stayed a little closer to Swaziland... St. Lucia to be exact. This wasn’t a total disaster as St Lucia turned out to be absolutely beautiful!

We drove ourselves through a gorgeous savannah nature reserve (a completely different experience to Kruger, which is dense bush land and you don’t really see much scenery) to Cape Vidal. Cape Vidal is a breathtaking beach that reminded me of the Mozambican coast, and from a viewpoint we were able to see rhino at a watering hole in one direction and then breaching whales in the Indian ocean in the other!
Driving back to the lodge Mum finally did her first stint of driving the hire car; everything was going fine until we came across 2 huge rhinos in the road! All of a sudden Mum was a quaking mess, forgetting how to drive, unable to put the car in gear and screaming all sorts of obscenities at us for just sitting and laughing at her. So we now have two funny stories about Mum on safari; the other being when she expressed her opinions on how there weren’t many people on bikes or motorbikes in Kruger National Park “surely it would be a nice place to have cycle routes”, yeah sure it would Mum, if you wanted to be eaten by a lion or trampled by elephants!

Cutest baby monkey next to our car!

 In St. Lucia we also fulfilled one of Ross’s African Dreams; to play with some wild cats. We went to a cat project that introduces cats back into the wild and we got to play with cheetahs, servals and wild cats. They were the cutest things ever!

Caracal

Cheetah

Drama Queen of a Cheetah, not wanting a photo.

Baby serval! BFF's.

Since we saw all the whales breaching at Cape Vidal we decided it would be worth it to go whale watching, so we hurtle out towards the whales on the boat through the surf with Mum screaming her head off and gripping onto her seat... so loudly that the captain turned around and said “well I hear that we have a screamer on board”. Seeing the whales was absolutely amazing, they came up so close to the boat, went under the boat and were even throwing themselves straight up out of the water. We even had one singing whale, however it was too quiet for me to hear on the top deck, but Mum and Ross apparently heard it. As amazing an experience as it was the whole 2 hours at sea was overshadowed for me by gut wrenching sea sickness, during this period of being ill I’ve obviously broken my sea legs too. Luckily for me this was the first day  I had been feeling a little bit better, yet unluckily for me this was just another day where I ended up chundering everywhere. This time it was from sea sickness rather than sickness, but it doesn’t change the fact that I hurled luminous orange chunks overboard (thanks for that Vitamin C tonic Mum and Dad) and ended up waiting for Mum to find a tissue while I stared at the water moving past my eyes with salt, sick and hair plastered to my face. Probably not one of my most dignified moments.

After the whale watching we were issued with free tickets for a crocodile and hippo boat tour – fantastic. It was on a barge type boat and on an estuary so luckily my stomach stayed settled and I didn’t end up expelling any more bodily fluids overboard.

Our last evening in South Africa was spent much like any other, going to a restaurant to watch Dad and Ross eat massive steaks. I really don’t think they’ll be happy leaving the meat behind when they leave this country, they’ve basically eaten fillet steak everyday for 2 weeks and been as happy as the cat who got the cream. The butchers back home isn’t ever going to be the same again.

Swaziland

I returned to Swaziland to find that I had been thrown out of my room at hostel; not the best welcome home surprise that you could wish for. A high school in Swaziland closed down so now all the other schools are taking on their students; Sisekelo took on too many students in the hostel than they had room for so we (the interns) caught the short straw. We’ve now been squished into one box room, which isn’t so bad if it is what you arrive to, but after 10 months of having some space to actually stand on the floor of your room you start getting a little bit nostalgic for what you lost.

I can’t believe that it is only 6 weeks until I see everyone again! Six weeks left of Africa means six more amazing weeks filled of memories, but it also means that there’s only 6 weeks until I will suffer the worst heartbreak I’ve ever felt... leaving this place will be like tearing off a plaster that takes a chunk of my skin with it, there will be pain and the scar of Swaziland and everyone that I leave behind will be an experience that will remain with me forever. The amazing memories will never leave me, but neither will the ache of turning my back on the people and children I have come to know and love. Being here has changed me as a person, and these are the people who have taught me the lessons; they have taught unknowingly and I have learnt unknowingly. I just hope that these changes will always stay with me and keep on influencing the person that I am and the person that I am still to become.

Kate xx

“This is a disaster, Debonaires aren’t delivering.”

So we’re back on holiday for some more travelling! Ahhh I love to travel after a long stint of hard work. Instead of trying out some place new we decided to revisit one of our favourite stops from our Christmas travels down the coast. COFFEE BAY.
This time around we managed to stay in Coffee Shack; probably one of the best known backpackers in all of South Africa and we were reunited with a fellow PT friend! Sally works in Mthata (about 1 hour away) so she came down to Coffee Bay for a bit of a party with us on the Friday night before she had to go back to work. The night was joyous, with flowing drinks and many pool challenges; I was even so lucky to find R300 on the floor of a toilet cubicle, but in my stupidly truthful drunken state I insisted in finding the owner of the money instead of just spending it on drinks... which was the worst idea ever looking back now because I’m pretty sure the girl I ended up giving it to was just lying. I think I should just stick with the mantra of “finders keepers” in the future, for I have never been so lucky.

Anyway, the next morning was actual hell, we woke up early in order to get ready for the ‘beach day’ we had booked; a fun filled day of beach activities, surfing and toasties, which was just the perfect thing to be doing with a massive hang over. Despite our less than fit states we actually had a really great day sunbathing, napping and surfing! We really did surf too, stood up properly and everything!

After our great weekend in Coffee Bay getting reunited with the locals and their colourful business pitches, haha, we headed off to Mthata to meet Sally on her project! Bethany Care Home is an orphanage for babies and children and provides them with education and a safe place to stay. THE BABIES ARE THE CUTEST THINGS I HAVE EVER SEEN ON THIS PLANET. I know that I say it all the time, but I really really really would steal one of them back to England if I could get away with it.

So we stayed with Sally for a few days and helped her out on project; it’s basically a room filled with babies and toddlers and you just get to play with them! And obviously wash them, feed them, sniff them for bad smells and change diapers. So this was my first experience looking after babies as an ‘adult’ and I have to admit that the diaper thing was pretty disgusting the first time, and the second time... actually, it was disgusting every single time but once you’ve started getting to know the babies you don’t mind as much because they are just so adorable! Now I know that it’s probably bad to have favourites but I couldn’t help it; one little girl completely stole my heart with her Asian looking features; she apparently has no Asian in her what-so-ever so I don’t know where the look comes from but she was totally irresistible. She was gorgeous but always looked sad; until the evening where I helped Sally on night shift, for some reason at 3:00am in the morning she was the happiest little baby ever and that was the only time I ever saw her smiling... well, and the time she sharted on me but that was probably more of a grimace than a smile.  (And for anyone who doesn’t know; a ‘shart’ is the word for when someone farts and follows through, i.e. a shit-fart. Just clearing up any confusion).

See, look how happy she is!

...but this is what she normally looked like. So sad :(

And this was after the 'shart' - tactically holding her away from my body here! Hahaa.

The girls at Bethany have their hands full all of the time, it felt like being a full time Mother to about 11 babies all at once, so many demands! I now feel like I’ve had an introductory lesson into how to be a Mother, and I can tell you right now it does not seem easy – thank god this is far in the future for me! Being with the babies kind of reminded me of when we used to take the neighbour’s dog for a walk... they’re cute and you want to play with them but as soon as they go to the toilet you can’t wait to pass over the poop bag and the responsibility to someone else. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I loved being on the project for a short time, but I don’t know if I could handle the puking, pooping and crying every day... yeah, the girls do a fantastic job.

So now the visit is over, and it’s time to go and meet my family to Johannesburg!

Kate xx

“I just had s-s-s........” aaargh!

Good things never last forever, and now that our departure date is coming ever closer I am more and more aware of just how much I am going to miss this place when we do have to leave. I’ll just be contently working on project watching as my kids work away and all of a sudden the thought of the last day here hits me... The moment where I say bye to them for the last time, the moment where I’ve hugged the last child and put them down, the moment I turn around and have to walk away, and the moment I lose sight of them as we drive around the corner; my heart is breaking at the thought of these things and stopping impromptu crying in front of children has become quite a regular occurrence in my daily routine.

All our work at Injabulo is going great and the kids are even better, I actually feel like a proper teacher! The best thing is that we’ve had someone else instil their own opinion in us which has boosted our confidence of how brilliantly we are doing on project. It might seem obnoxious of me to say that we’re ‘brilliant’ but when we take a look at the progress we have made this year; the improvements to the school, the increased knowledge of the children and the more advanced English that they are learning there’s really only one word for it! Being at Injabulo makes me glow with pride, it is literally our school and we can do whatever we want with it, which means that it can go two ways; you either constantly make improvements or you let standards slide. I absolutely love being there and you get out twice as much as you put in, and we’ve really been throwing ourselves into the place, and the children are absolutely wonderful because of it. Their level of knowledge is wonderful, not their behaviour though! Haha.
Two workers from the Lutheran foundation came for visits to Injabulo and they congratulated us on the job we were doing there; they said that we were one of the smallest and least supported care points that they had visited but we were also one of the best! They thought that we did a fantastic job with the children and that their English was some of the best they had seen for their age group; we couldn’t have been happier.

I’m afraid this is another short one; I’ve just been so busy educating young minds ;)

Don’t hate on me :)

Kate xx

P.S. The title is from a rather unfortunate event at Injabulo; the Lutheran workers were over and holding a meeting with parents from the community. We had all the children playing outside and were playing music from my laptop for them to dance to... ALWAY BE WARY OF SHUFFLE. Anyway, a rather inappropriate song by The Lonely Island popped on the shuffle list and began to play out full blast in front of children, parents and well, basically everyone. I have never hurled myself at the pause button so fast! I made it just in time.

A Scottish Visitor

My pretty regular visits to Facebook keep me well updated on how warm it is getting over there in England, I can tell that the short shorts have been donned and the shades have been dusted off from a long hibernation. Down here in the Southern Hemisphere things are a little different; Africa is now experiencing winter, and it is not what I expected at ALL. In the early days of this year I scoffed and laughed when the Swazi’s were talking about winter; all their worry about acquiring thick blankets, fires and woollies seemed unnecessary to me as I couldn’t believe for one second that this heated hell-hole could actually cool down. Oh how wrong I was.
Not only does it cool down in Big Bend, the nights are now freezing cold! Okay, maybe not freezing by thermometer standards, but when you’ve been used to ‘low’ temperatures of 20 degrees for 9 months it comes as a shock to the system when temperatures fall to 5 or 7 degrees and you can see your breath as you walk to the bus rank on a morning.

I came to Africa completely unprepared for any cold temperatures as my naivety and ignorance of this diverse and wonderful country led me to believe that it is hot all year round, and that the African people have no idea what it is like to be cold. Talking to the teachers we work with about winter makes me feel guilty for not wanting to get out of my cosy bed on a morning; these women (like many others) sleep snuggled up with their children in tiny breeze block and tin roofed houses to keep warm, they rise at 4:00am to boil water and wash outside in the freezing cold before they and their children prepare for the long walk to school or work at 6:00am... and I used to get cold anxiety when it came to getting out of the shower on a morning before college. Don’t lie; we all get it, ever stood in the shower for a good 5 minutes longer than you need to just because you can’t face opening those doors? Shame on us.

I’ve talked too much and strayed off topic. This post is about Ashley’s best friend Jodie coming to visit!
Jodie visited for about 3 weeks and for that time she came with us every day on project and helped out with the kids; it was like having a 3^rd volunteer! When Jodie arrived it was like Christmas had landed in Ashley’s bedroom at hostel; with a 37kg suitcase she had brought everything but the kitchen sink to Swaziland and probably put some airport workers back out in the process. There was everything in that suitcase; football tops, shoes, toothbrushes, sweets, games, books, clothes, toys and I don’t even know what else! Needless to say Ashley’s class at Injabulo were more than happy when they all tottered off back home wearing brand new football tops and had their mouths full of Tangfastics.

Coincidentally Jodie’s visit and Swaziland’s biggest Arts, Music and Culture festival overlapped; which meant that the 3 of us packed up the minimal amount of clothes, took a tent and a kombi to Manzini and set ourselves of for an International weekend of culture at MTN BUSHFIRE! Bring your fiiiirree!
Bushfire attracts large numbers of people not just from Africa but from every corner of the world; we were camped next to some Spaniards and South Africans, camped opposite some Germans (one of whom we had already met on our Christmas travels!), heard numerous Australian and American accents, met a fair few Brits and even bumped into a topless Scotsman leaving the porta-loo wearing only shorts, a tartan flat cap with the ginger wig inside and the Scottish flag as a cape. As I said, INTERNATIONAL.

Jodie, Ashley and I

The MTN Bushfire festival is held every year at ‘Malandelas - House on Fire’ in Manzini; it boasts the Swaziland Fair Trade Market where independent businesses come from all over Swaziland to sell their wares, and an International Food Market – my favourite place, obviously. You could eat; Portuguese, Chinese, Spanish, English, African anything you wanted, all within 30 seconds walking distance of each other. Safe to say I ended up at the Chinese stall in the early hours of one morning ordering spring rolls back to back with a girl from Joburg, judging by the rate that we were scoffing the scalding hot rolls we were equally as starving as one another. Definitely better than a dodgy kebab, although the English stall didn’t even sell those.

We camped for 2 nights at Bushfire and the acts were fantastic; after being in Swaziland for 9 months we finally understand the African House music, which is just as well because that was the main genre! We felt much more confident about cracking out our African dance moves this time around than we did back in October at the Simunye Fair. 

So we’ve now been introduced to a few new artists in our lives and it has broadened our minds to different kinds of music, great music that hasn’t even reached the UK yet! If you’re interested get yourself onto Youtube and check out these guys; Veranda Panda, Toya Delazy, Jeremy Loops and Euphonik.

Sunday morning saw us dropping Jodie off at the airport and making our way back to Big Bend on a kombi. I was still drunk from the night before, smelly, dirty and lugging around a poorly packed up tent; everyone knew where we had been.

MTN Bushfire... been there, done that, got the t-shirt. No really, I actually did buy a t-shirt.

Always bring your fire.

Kate xx

Watch out Polokwane, the Swazi’s are here...

SOUTH AFREEEEKA AGAIN. So we’re having another pit stop in Pretoria the ‘student city’ before hitting Polokwane. After a terrifying ordeal of our taxi not turning up and fearing we might miss our bus the staff at the backpackers find us a ride and we make it to the bus station on time with minimal shit in our pants. Obviously a saying, Ashley and I aren’t incontinent.

View over Pretoria

The bus pulls into Polokwane at ‘Mall of the North’, the BIGGEST shopping centre I’ve seen since the last time I was at the Metro in Newcastle, which was a long time ago. This shopping monstrosity is only 2 minutes walk from where the girls work; Mitchell House. No wonder none of them have any money, they’ve all developed an addiction to a shop called ‘Factorie’ which I admit is fantastic as it is on the level of Topshop, but when you convert the price tag you’re paying more a New Look price... and if you shop on the sales rack (haha, me) you find yourself paying Peacocks prices for awesome clothes!  Needless to say Ashley and I treated ourselves to a little bit of retail therapy while we were in Polokwane.

Mitchell House is a private Primary School and High School with an Enrichment Centre for children with disabilities; the Enrichment Centre is where the girls are working. They have a Junior class, a Senior class and a Life Skills class for the older students; the girls have a really full on day and work from 7:00am until 5:30pm with incredibly challenging children.
They have small classes as the children need constant one on one attention so there are a lot of hands on deck; the children themselves are lovely, no matter what their disability is it doesn’t  affect how friendly, funny, witty or loving they can be!

Our last day in Polokwane was spent at Mitchell House and then going for pre-drinks at Spur Steak Ranches with the best waitress ever – Dudu. Ashley and I also joined in with the new rule that the girls have set up; everyone who visits them in Polokwane is expected to go and get a piercing. Not too sure where this originated, but we obliged and Ashley braved the tragus whereas I just settled for the second hole in the lobe. Nicola also joined in and had her tragus done too, just the thought of it makes me want to be sick, I don’t know if I could handle it!
So after our visit to the jewellers some pain relief was in order... we hit the liquor store just before closing time and then made our way back to the girls apartment to get ready for our night out!

In true British style we braved the cold African winter night in dresses and skirts, determined to look good even if it meant suffering. We then hit one of their regular bars called Ngunies (which came as a shock to Ashley and myself because it was very white, something we haven’t experiences in a loooong time!) and proceeded to dance embarrassingly. We all had a good time, but I regretted it the next morning when we woke up at 6:00am to catch our bus to Johannesburg. 

We must have looked pretty worse for wear because as we sat on the concrete parking lot of a petrol station wearing last night’s makeup waiting for our bus a man approached us with a loaf of bread asking if we were okay... we assured him we were okay but he insisted that we take the bread anyway. After taking bread off a stranger I realised that I felt the lowest I’d ever felt in my life, in turn  this made me feel awful because this must be what homeless people feel like on a good day when someone is actually being kind to them.
To make the story even more unbelievable the same man returned 5 minutes later with two portions of MacDonald’s fries and insisted that we take them as well, he’d driven to MacDonald’s to buy them especially for us. This is the single most crazy thing that has ever happened to me; technically I felt like I should be mortally embarrassed, obviously we looked such a mess we appeared to be either homeless, in trouble or attack victims (or a combination of the three), but it’s hard to take a moral high ground when you’re sat on concrete with a hangover and your hands have just been filled with a portion of steaming hot FREE fries. Silver lining, yep, I see it.

So after the rough journey back to Swaziland via our favourite Park Central Station in Johannesburg we spend a comfortable night in Manzini at Kathy and Richards house, complete with homely meal, warm shower and actual bed before arriving back at hostel to throw ourselves onto our beds, sigh relief, wash our bag full of stinking clothes and sleep.

Holidays, you are wonderful. But is sure is good to be home.

Kate xx

BOTSWANA! “I know it’s video.”

First things first, Botswana is a HUGE country yet it seems there’s not all that much there. Apart from the delta, amazing National Parks and the odd few largish towns the rest appears to be full of sand, donkeys and annoying compulsory road blocks. At these road blocks you have to open out all your possessions, be declared ‘meat free’ and then proceed to dip all of your shoes into a white chemical substance. Something about trying to prevent the spread of foot and mouth... but it’s a right pain in the arse. Plus they confiscated and orange off me, an orange, not very life threatening – they probably just get the munchies and abuse their position of power. :(

Anyway, after a tedious 7 hour journey on a public bus that stopped at every microscopic village and only had 40% of the seats actually attached to the chair frame we arrived in Shakawe. Shakawe is a small village one hour and a 10minute ferry ride away from the boys project, they met us there in a massive pickup truck with Ben the German (another volunteer at their project), and quite severe sunburn. Even though it had been nearly 5 months since we had last seen each other we picked up from exactly where we had left off, basically ripping each other about everything and I just knew that the next 5 days were going to be hilarious and brilliant.
After a hairy drive in the dark to Bana Ba Metsi we were greeted (or rather not greeted) by a group of nervous boys sat in the kitchen and then proceeded to meet Mr Peter Dow the boy’s host and shown to where we would be staying.

Ferry Ride

Unlike Ashley and I the boys live in their own little house; they cook, clean (or not) and braii by themselves and have a shower outside. It really is a lovely little place and you can feel the Project Trust presence from the years of writing on the walls and sticking up letters, messages and photos. Ben lives in a fancy tent set up on a house on stilts on the very edge of the school compound; you can sit on an elevated balcony and watch the sun set over the bush. Ben chivalrously gave up his beautiful home to us for the 5 days to go and sleep with the boys in their house and we had the place to ourselves, also equipped with an outside shower. I have to say, I love taking outside showers, you feel free... however, showering in the early mornings in the freezing cold with cold water isn’t ideal, so best to wait until midday! 

The Sam’s (and Ben) do a really great job on their project, they’re teaching at a primary school level to teenage boys around their own age and from sitting in on them teaching they have a really difficult job with it! Keeping the boys attention and motivating them to do work seems near impossible and they don’t get much appreciation in the classroom from their students. However watching them do manual with the boys is another story – in the afternoons they are split into groups and set physical tasks to do, mainly maintenance and improvement of the school and its facilities. They’re currently making urinals, and they’ve constructed a building complete with a traditional thatched roof, what they’re teaching the boys in invaluable, workmanship skills that will help them later in life and they are undoubtedly learning just as much in return.
They also do sports with the boys at the school; swimming, football, table tennis and volleyball – I sat and watched on a ‘swimming lesson’ and it seems to be 45 minutes of boys throwing each other into the pool and wrestling in the water, but they seem to have fun and that’s what it’s all about.

Bana Ba Metsi school is also well known in Botswana for its marimba band, they travel to Maun and Gaborone (the capital) to play concerts for people, and they really are fantastic. If you don’t know what marimba is imagine the colourful xylophones that we all had as children... okay, right, now image that it’s larger, made of wood and actually sounds nice. The boys come to the school and learn marimba from the other boys who are there, there’s to music to read, they just learn off one another and work by ear. They play typical African marimba tunes but can also play renditions of some chart favourites such as Waka Waka by Shakira and Whistle by Flo Rida!

Luckily I was at Bana Ba Metsi for my 19^th Birthday and even more luckily for me the 1^st May is some sort of African Independence day and is therefore a national holiday! That means so school, no teaching for the Sam’s and we get to go out on the delta on the schools boat!
It was the most insane birthday ever, we cruised along the Okavango waters for 4 hours or so with drinks on board, sunbathing on board, driving the boat, stopping off at a lodge along the river for more drinks and getting off to explore an island that the boys know. We spend a decent amount of time swimming in its pools while on constant lookout for hippos and crocodiles as they’re known to be in the area... Luckily we didn’t have any unfortunate run-ins with any dangerous animals while on the water however we did see a massive crocodile on the sand banks and stumbled upon a herd of 15 hippo up out of the water within the reeds! It was an incredible sight and we doubled back for more, unfortunately they had scarpered and the humongous bull hippo had slid into the water pretty close to our little boat... so then we scarpered!
We had a lovely lunch at the Dijo Deli, one of Shakawe’s best kept secrets off the beaten track and then hitchhiked back over from the ferry to Bana Ba Metsi.
Definitely one of my most awesome birthdays to date, and what an amazing place to have it! My 19^th will be forever unique. Making things even better Ashley and the boys had made me a birthday video which they showed me before we went out on the boat... hilarious and I will always have it as a reminder!

After another hellish public bus journey back from Shakawe to Maun we camped at the Old Bridge backpackers for 4 nights. Old Bridge has to be one of the most idyllic places that I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting, perched on the banks of the Okavango you can literally sit on a sofa less than 1 metre from the water or lie on a hammock half dangling over the water! I spent many glorious hours prostrate on that hammock, happily filling myself with copious amounts of salted peanuts and raisins while watching episodes of How I Met Your Mother. Everyone’s idea of perfect. 
Oh yes, I feel obliged to inform you of my very sudden and incredibly violent peanut addiction; I’m really not sure how it came about between travelling on buses and jumping off gorges but it has appeared. I can’t get enough of them; I’ve taken to destroying a 150g bag in less than 10 minutes which drives Ashley crazy because she hates peanuts and can’t stand the smell. I’m addicted, what can I do. They are simply delicious.

Most of our time in Maun was spent relaxing and putting off travelling to the next place; apart from one day when we went on another boat trip. Animal spectation wasn’t really the aim of this trip... rather it was alcohol, and sort of harassing locals. We were with a crazy guy we met at the backpackers who called himself ‘Captain Bob’, and we were now part of ‘Captain Bob’s Drunken Safaris’ where he sets off into the beautiful African landscape to get completely smashed and make mental videos. We had a wild time with Captain Bob and the rest of our crew! Ashley jumped ship to take control of a mekoro boat (dugout canoe) full of Motswanan children, we made a slight scene at a family gathering when Captain Bob decided to don a pair of bright red bikini bottoms he found in a bush and our boat driver got do drunk that he went arse over pecs and ended up half out of the boat, so Ashley and I drove to boat back to the lodge to ensure that no one died. No one died, we were brilliant. 

After leaving Maun we had a pit stop at the best hidden backpackers in the world (honestly didn’t think it even existed after our fruitless search with a pretty peeved off taxi driver) in Gaberone before heading to South Africa the next day.

Before I came to Africa my expectations of what it would look like are exactly like how Botswana looks; covered in sand, minimal vegetation and animals roam everywhere. Botswana has definitely got a donkey problem (I think I mentioned the donkeys already, oh well); I have never seen so many donkeys in my life.

What I have come to realise is that my initial impressions of Africa were incorrect; yes, Botswana is hot and covered in sand and wild animals but it is so far the only place I have visited that is like this. I’m sure other countries are similar (Namibia I’ve heard), but Africa also has its fair share of lush green areas! Prime example is Swaziland itself... we’re defiantly under informed about this continent in our Westernised countries! BBC, sort yourselves out and get over here, I’ve heard David Attenborough recently took the trip, so I hope all you British people at least have a better idea about what Africa is like!

Crack onto the internet and educate yourselves, Africa is a collaboration of literally every climate and landscape in the whole world, it’s awe-inspiring.

Kate xx