Trigger Happy

Okay, so this week on Monday we were at Moriah Centre and they received a massive delivery of free (going out of date) food, drinks and other items from Matata Spar (Spar is exactly the same here as it is in England, so no confusion there). This rather pee’d Ashley and I off because we’ve been asking for donations for soup kitchen and Injabulo from them for ages, and they give us nothing! Then when they do decide to donate, they donate to the one preschool that has loads of sponsorship already... priorities?

Back at hostel they’re having a small redevelopment, they’re spending some of the budget and building a second kitchen and doing some maintenance. This also included throwing out all the old shelves, sofas, pillows, mattresses and anything else that didn’t have a use anymore. With soup kitchen in mind we threw ourselves into the crazy frenzy of workers all scrabbling for mattresses and managed to bag ourselves one mattress and seven pillows to give to the orphans who sleep on the floor at Aunty Vinah’s place.

This weekend was Easter weekend; basically everyone in Swaziland is Christian and Easter is the most important holiday in the Christian calendar... therefore once the schools had broken up on Thursday afternoon, hoards and hoards of people were out and about lugging massive bags with them and getting piled into huge lorries to be taken to church for a 3 day celebration of Jesus Christ. The whole of Swaziland must have been in those lorries, I swear it. Never have I seen so many people all rushing to get to the same place at the same time! Then again, I haven’t been on the London Underground at rush hour – but I’ll bet you that the Swazi bus stations on Easter weekend come pretty close.
At Injabulo on Thursday we only had 24 children in total! This was strange because it wasn’t raining or overcast, and usually the reason for kids not coming to school is that it’s raining or it looks like it is going to rain. Turns out that the primary school down the road broke up for Easter on Wednesday, so the parents assumed we had closed too. No. We’d planned a whole Easter day! Bought and boiled 80 eggs for an Easter egg hunt, dragged felt tips with us to colour in the eggs and printed off and cut out 80 rabbit masks and rabbit ears... and basically no one turned up. It was strange having such a small amount of kids and 4 teachers; it was like we were at Moriah Centre! Small classes, manageable activities and everyone had a chair and a table.

Luckily the leftover 56 boiled eggs didn’t go to waste; we had finally collected up all the tins of food that we had asked the Sisekelo students to donate for soup kitchen and Mrs Dlamini the Head of Catering at hostel had donated us 10kg of rice to cook. Therefore we actually cooked REAL food for soup kitchen for once; rice with a sauce made from gravy, baked beans and pilchards (it sounds dubious I know, but they loved it) grated boiled egg, bread and a jam sandwich for pudding! It was so lovely to see the kids properly enjoying their food, and not just eating it because they have to if they want to eat that night.

Someone enjoyed the food!

Round of applause :)

Easter weekend Ashley and I escaped from Big Bend and headed off to Shewula Mountain Camp; we set off by public kombi to Siteki, swapped kombi to Simunye and then fought our way onto a kombi destined for Shewula at the Simunye bus station. There must have been about 25-30 people with large bags trying to fight their way onto this tiny rickety kombi; the doors opened and people were pushing, shoving and throwing their belongings into the kombi, they were standing on old ladies and children in their efforts to grab I seat, even babies were going flying, I’m sure of it. Somehow we managed to find a seat and both squished into it with our bags, sleeping bags, pillows and tent (how we fit I do not know) and we started the slow and bumpy one hour journey to the rural community of Shewula. The kombi broke down twice on the way, and I honestly thought we were going to be left stranded in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully the kombi driver tweaked the engine a few times, and miraculously this beat up old piece of junk restarted.
Unfortunately for Ashley and I we were misinformed on where we should get off the kombi by the driver and we ended up at the 5km sign post for the Shewula Mountain Camp in the midday heat. Brilliant. So we began our long and unsure trek along the rural dirt road asking everyone we passed if they knew where the Mountain Camp was... “oohhh I know it”, “how far is it?” “it’s faaaar faaaaar that way, go over the hill, faaar.” So we walked and we walked, we walked for an hour uphill and finally we saw another Shewula Mountain Camp sign telling us that we were 2km away. I don’t trust road signs in Swaziland, the distance on them is more like the distance to the next sign rather than the distance from your destination!

We eventually arrive at the Mountain Camp and we’re the only people staying there that night; we pitch up the tent and the views are beautiful. We can see into three different valleys, and on a clear day you can see right over to Maputo in Mozambique. The Camp is a really lovely place and the best thing about it is that it’s a community project; all the money that is gained from the Camp goes towards running the camp (obviously) and any profit from that is used in the community. The camp has been established since 1999 and in the last 14 years they have provided three schools in the community with full kitchens, and other smaller projects such as building a small house for an old Gogo (Grandmother) with no home. 

Views from our tent over the mountains!

Jaw-dropping.

We go with one of the guys who works at the camp for a guided walking tour, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before but we do learn some new facts. He walks us through long grass, fields and through barbed wire fences; I don’t think we used a proper path at all! We saw where the community get their water, saw the forest in which they only bury the late Chiefs and we picked and ate fresh guava. I also learned that when you go into someone’s homestead as a mark of respect you remove your hat (or anything from your head), unless you are a married Swazi woman who wear scarves around their hair to show that they are married. Another fact I didn’t know is that when a homestead has made Swazi Beer they prop up a long stick with a white flag/plastic bag on the end to indicate to the community that they are selling Swazi Beer, alternatively if they are selling meat they raise a red flag/bag. So from the side of the hill you can look out across the homesteads and see who is selling beer and meat!

Shewula Homesteads

As there’s no electricity at the Mountain Camp we didn’t have much to do once night fell, so we played cards in the kitchen where there was one electric bulb and then went to sleep in the tent hoping that we didn’t die due to the tent being half collapsed and the zip being broken on the door so we couldn’t actually close it. I was terrified we’d get a snake in the tent, but we were still alive in the morning so everything was fine.

Shewula Sunset

Eating our dinner watching the sun do down!

At 6:30am we got up and packed the tent; we then walked 2km back to the road and waited to catch a bus back to Simunye. Thank god it was a BUS this time, because that battered old kombi would’ve definitely died!

We manage to get on our way back to Big Bend fairly quickly and uneventfully and then head to the sugar cane fields for some Easter clay pigeon shooting!
Watching the men do the rounds of the shooting at the stations made me quite nervous, the shotgun was pretty big and the recoil on the shoulder looked pretty tough! We were allowed a go at the end and it was awesome! Neither Ashley or I hit anything but it was just a buzz to actually shoot a real gun, the recoil wasn’t half as bad as it looked and the shoulder bruise that it left just makes you feel like a badass.
We also did target practice on some drinks cans (again not really hitting anything apart from the wooden stand) with a revolver, a pistol and a glock. The handguns were much easier to use than the shotgun, and the target wasn’t moving so you could focus better. I have to say that going from never shooting a real gun to learning how to load, shoot and unload four types in one day – it’s pretty interesting.

Happy Easter Everyone!

Love Kate xx