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.

When the Polokwane Girls Came to Stay

This week we've had the pleasure of the 4 Polokwane volunteers coming to stay with us and help us out on our projects! Nicola, Daisy, Amelia and Kim have been our first Project Trust visitors and they were absolutely lovely to have around, can't wait to see them again at Christmas!

On Friday we took them up to Injabulo with us; and on the way when we were crossing the river bridge we came across a man with a massive gun. Fair to say we were shitting ourselves slightly until we explained that he was there for safety reasons, there was a HUGE crocodile sunning itself in the shallows of the river - the first one we have seen!
Soup Kitchen on the evening was also a success, the kids absolutely adored the girls and we're running around with all 6 of our cameras taking pictures of anything and everything. Ashley also taught Aunty Vina how to dance to the Waka Waka song!

The girls at Soup Kitchen!

Over the weekend we organised to go over to Mantenga Cultural Village in Ezulwini to give the girls a bit of an insight into the Swazi culture! So at 9am on Saturday morning all 6 of us crammed ourselves (Swazi style) into the girls' hire car, plugged in the iPod to the AUX cable and set off for the beautiful Ezulwini Valley. With Nicola's crazy driving we arrived at our backpackers in record time, however we did have a few bumps and bruises from flying over speed bumps at 120km/h, but we were alive. 

Due to the help of a borrowed Sat-Nav we found ‘Legends Backpackers’, the insanely cheap place where we were staying! For the price of E120 per night (£8 per night!) I wasn’t expecting much... Therefore I was surprised to find that we had a dorm room all to ourselves, there was free wifi, a decent bathroom and toilet, mosquito nets over the bunk beds and free tea and coffee in the morning! Can’t ask for much more than that, and if I’m honest with you, the free wifi pretty much made everyone’s day. I’d sleep in a shed if there was free wifi!
After finding the backpackers we set off on the short drive to the Cultural Village that was literally around the corner. Unfortunately for Nicola and the hire car the road couldn’t really be classed as a road, and she found herself dodging over bumps and driving down into what could only be described as gully’s the entire way to the Cultural Village. One pretty big bash to the bottom of the car made us all slightly concerned, but I’m pretty sure that the metal pipe I saw on the road out of the rear windscreen had already been there before we passed over ;)
Once at the Cultural Village we paid the E100 entry fee (£7.10) and found our way around... We were in time for the first Cultural Dance performance of the day, which meant that we had an interesting 45 minutes worth of watching muscly Swazi men dance around wearing nothing but sheepskin leg warmers and tiny stripy skirts. There was a lot of stomping around, a lot of drumming and a lot of shouting really loudly; there were also many many impressive high kicks above the head (men and women alike), kicks so high I’m pretty grateful for the Nike orange sports shorts that they were wearing under their mini skirts...  There was also this one guy who was making bird noises, at first I thought he had some sort of whistle in his mouth, but I soon realised that it was just him making the noise, I really want to learn! 

One of the dances was a high paced threatening dance (I’m not overly sure when you would dance in a threatening way, but you know...) which involved the group of men in short skirts stomping away while another guy walked up and down the line shouting insanely fast in SiSwati; the best way for me to describe how he sounded would be for you to imagine someone with tourettes attemping to rap to Eminem at twice the normal rapping pace, in SiSwati. It really was something I can tell you that for sure!
At the end of the performance the dancers came into the crowd to separate a Chinese couple from their fancy cameras and tripods and involve slightly hesitant tourists with the dancing and singing! The slightly angry tourettes guy from before took my hand in his seriously sweaty one and pulled me out of the shade into the sunshine, thrust a Swazi spear into my hands and shouted out the steps for me to join in with. Luckily the dancing was only stamping your feet; 4 with the right, 2 with the left, 1 with the right, 1 with the left and repeat; this was a bonus for me because my dancing skills back in England are pretty below average, but here all you do is stomp! It’s brilliant. Safe to say I had the dance pretty much cracked after the first 2 rounds of the sequence, however the tourettes guy must’ve thought I looked pretty confused by the whole thing because he continued to shout out loud at me “4 on right! 2 on left! 1 right, 1 left! 4 on righ-----”, I felt bad telling him I was a pro at his cultural dance already, so I continued to stomp, bob my head and smile at him with an attentive look on my face... I’m making it sound like I didn’t enjoy myself, but I really did! He was a lovely guy and when we’d finished dancing I returned his spear, gave him the Swazi handshake, received a really sweaty hug and said “siyabonga” (thank you) only to be laughed at when I walked back to my seat. These Swazi’s find us trying to speak SiSwati absolutely hilarious, it’s not even the wrong word! Must by my pronunciation, I’ll get there eventually, and if I don’t, I’ll be a source of entertainment for many a Swazi person.  

Having a bash at the Cultural Dancing :D

After the Cultural Dance a man called Paul led us around the cultural village and explained the Swazi traditions and beliefs to us. Now, Paul was his Christian name, not his birth name – I can’t remember his birth name but there was a lovely story behind it... One day his father had been travelling home from hunting out in the mountains and a storm struck, in order to get home quickly he had to swim across a dangerous river (as a short cut). Then he arrived home to find that his wife had given birth to a baby boy, so he named the baby after the name of the river he had successfully crossed. The Swazi people have such lovely reasons for choosing names for their children!

Paul

Traditional Homesteads 

Here’s a few things that I learned about old Swazi Culture:

·         When a child reaches the age of 6 they move out of their parents hut and move into another with unmarried people of the same sex who are also over 6 years of age.

·         The girls hut is placed at the very front of the village, that way when intruders come and storm the first hut in the village they find it full of unmarried girls. This creates a distraction for them and while they are busy telling all the girls that they love them and asking them for their hand in marriage (having forgotten their original reason of being there, i.e. killing the boys and men and taking all of the women) the youngest girl runs to the men and informs them of the intruders so that they can come prepared to defend the village!

·         Women and children under 6 sleep on the left hand side of the hut and men sleep on the right hand side of the hut, this separation is kept even when someone is man and wife, however if the man feels ‘in the mood’ and the children are all asleep he will bang on the wooden supports inside the hut and call the wife over to his side!

·         If a man’s brother dies he is entitled to his wife, and can take her as another wife of his own. If he doesn’t wish for another wife then he sends her back to her family.

·         When a girl gets married the father of the intended husband has to pay the father of the girl with cattle, normally around 15 cattle are given for a girl’s hand in marriage. However if the girl isn’t a virgin the price is open for discussion.

·         If a man has committed a crime such as adultery or worse he is taken to the execution rock; he must stand at the edge of the rock and throw himself off the edge to fall to an ungraceful death. If he is feeling slightly nervous of the edge all he has to do is turn around to face the unhappy village entourage pointing their sharp spears encouragingly at him – he then turns around again to jump.

·         A woman may not cook the heart or brain of an animal; she may also not eat the brain of an animal. It is believed that if she tastes the brain she will then become more intelligent than her man, and they can’t be having that ;)

There are many more facts but I can’t remember them all! This should give you an idea of the old Swazi culture and traditions though.

We then had a rough walk through the woods to Mantenga waterfall, it is an absolutely beautiful place and even though we hadn’t brought our swim-wear we decided that it was too good an experience to pass up! So we stripped to our underwear and jumped in for a swim. It was gorgeous. I managed to get my toe stuck in a rock though and pretty sure I broke it when I pushed off to swim again, ouch. It wasn’t until after our swim that we thought about crocodiles and snakes etc! Luckily none of us were eaten and we spoke to a park ranger who informed us that there were no dangerous animals in the falls, so that was lucky. 

We waited about an hour and a half for our lunch in the restaurant (the Polokwane girls first experience of slow Swazi service!) and witnessed some monkeys run inside, steal some straws and run off again looking pretty guilty.

On the evening we decided to go coning at KFC! For those of you who don’t know coning, please, allow me to introduce you... You order a cone with no flake at a drive-thru, when the ice-cream is handed to the driver at the last window they put their hand straight into the ice-cream part and grip the cone by the top (not the bottom), look the confused staff member in the face, say thank you and drive off. I HAVE NEVER SEEN A SWAZI MAN LOOK SO SHOCKED IN MY WHOLE LIFE. Hahahahaaa we were absolutely howling and Nicola was covered in ice-cream, it was fantastic though and we got it on camera! Back at the backpackers we went for a pizza and some drinks, it was a really chill night just getting to know the girls better.

Legends Backpackers with some cheeky drinks!

The Sunday was equally as good, at the Ezulwini shopping area after a delicious cooked breakfast for only £1.50 some guy approached us and started chatting. Turns out he was one of the Prince’s of Swaziland’s ‘bitches’ to put it correctly. He came grovelling over to us asking for numbers and everything, to then introduce us to the Prince and inform us that the Prince was going home for a bath before he wanted to take us all out later. Que the usual story of not having mobile phone numbers! We got given the Prince’s number though and were told to phone him later ‘if we didn’t then we would disappoint him’, so later on when we were relaxing by the hot springs, more commonly known as The Cuddle Puddle we rang the Prince. Didn’t pick up though, surprise surprise ;) 

The Cuddle Puddle is also very aptly named, we attracted quite a lot of attention from the boys of all ages there and I’m definitely going to make up a boyfriend for the future! I’ve never had to give a valid reason and explain why I am single before, they just can’t take no for an answer here! :P

The girls were intending to leave on Monday afternoon, but Kathy managed to persuade them to stay for dinner (achieved by terrifying them about driving in South Africa in the dark!) and we took them to the nature reserve in the truck that evening. We saw a giraffe about 5 meters away! It was stood in the middle of the road just staring at us in the truck! I honestly haven’t given giraffes enough credit on the animal front, you really don’t appreciate them until you see they in the flesh and in the wild – I’m gradually becoming fonder of them, they really are lovely.

On the whole it was an amazing weekend and it was fantastic to have a break from Big Bend, Ezulwini is such a gorgeous place and we will definitely be returning. We’re slowly but surely seeing more and more of this exciting country and pretty soon we will be able to say that we’re familiar with the whole of Swaziland!

Kate xxx