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

Africa Unite

Tuesday morning this week I was hating life. At 1.00am we had a fire drill in hostel. Even though I knew that it was coming someday soon, I was still hoping and wishing that it would never happen. Since being here both me and Ashley have built up some kind of superhuman deafness to the bell in hostel, this is fantastic because we can quite happily snore away as the 5am, 5:30am, 6:00am alarm bells scream (and I mean scream) through the hostel corridors. Not so good when that same alarm is the alarm to wake you up and save your life when you’re in danger of burning to death.

So at this ridiculous time I was sleeping away and only vaguely aware of a noise in my head, 10 minutes later and it’s still going and I realise what must be happening... So I put on some more clothes because we’ve heard teachers laughing about this one time a boy ran out fully naked, and I didn’t want to give them anything to talk about in my short jammies, haha ;) 10 minutes later after being informed that we’d all done a terrible job and were now (hypothetically) dead, I returned to my warm bed as happy as could be.

Tuesday did improve considerably after work though. We met up with some boys who had pulled up outside the Moriah Centre while we were working on a dirt bike. Obviously attracted to the idea of making new friends with expensive things to have fun with (which is a rarity in Big Bend, as there is basically nothing here to do) we ventured outside to them and Ashley managed to persuade them to wait for us after work so we could have a go on their bikes and quads!
We went down to the sand by the river at Game 5 and had some great fun on their quads, we were meant to be getting back to start cooking for soup kitchen, but you know... easily distracted!
Covered in sand, dirt and sweating under the African sun with no sun cream on I knew it was only a matter of time before my ginger gene kicked in and I developed an instant case of skin cancer. (Honestly, I’ve burned here even when the days have been cloudy and there have been no shadows on the ground. Thanks DNA.)
The boys decided they were too hot and were going for a swim in the river. Now, here’s the thing about water in Swaziland; unless it is coming out of a tap it has probably (more likely definitely) got crocodiles living in it. But because these lads had grown up in Swaziland and were well informed on the whole crocodile situation we decided to trust them and began jumping off the bridge into the water below. Although the water was murky brown and warm it was great fun, the crocodile issue was on my mind but I took comfort in the fact that there were 3 boys there with us, each with considerably more fat on them than I had on myself, I went with the logic that we all leave the scrappy chips until last!
All of us being pretty much in our underwear we had attracted quite a lot of attention from the on looking locals, most of them watched us from a safe distance from the water, probably betting on us all in SiSwati who would get eaten first... silly white people.
Back at hostel we told the Aunties about our exciting day; Aunty Rose went absolutely ballistic at us and told us that if we were ever to go in the river swimming again she would beat us with a big stick; because if we died then she would cry, and she doesn’t want to cry. I love Aunty Rose but I don’t doubt for one second that she would beat me with a big stick if I went in that river again!

On Thursday at Moriah we were told that after we had been swimming in the river on Tuesday a large crocodile had been spotted just where we were jumping off the bridge (news travels fast in Big Bend). Apparently the noise attracts them, and this story prompted more of the teachers at Moriah Centre to tell us stories of dead children and one legged children. I think the moral of the story was to stay out of the river, and stay the f**k away from the crocodiles!

On the plus side, Injabulo is getting slightly better as the weeks go by. We already have so many great memories from the preschool and we never have an uneventful day there! After we had handed out peanut butter sandwiches on Friday one child decided that he was going to throw up all over the front steps at the school. As Nelsiwe was not yet here and my SiSwati is still only on the level of “hamba en toi” – go to the toilet, and “tulani” – be quiet I had no idea how to ask this child what was wrong. I took the high fever, shaking, ragged breathing and throwing up instantly as malaria or something deadly and began to freak out in a professional ‘teacher’ manner. All I could do was lay him down at the back of the classroom, give him water and put a cold compress on his head. He didn’t die right then and there which was a relief, and was back the school the next day after we had dropped him home. I think it was just the flu. But all the diseases and infections in a place like this just play on your mind and I was terrified for this kid! Overreaction of the sniffles I think.  
Ashley also made this tiny toddler cry like nothing I’ve ever seen before! She tried to hand them a peanut butter sandwich only to have them immediately scream in her face and burst into tears for about 10 minutes! Nelsiwe said it was because they’d never seen a white person bend down really close to them before, haha! So Ashley gave the sandwich to the kids friend who wasn’t crying, score for them.

Kate xx 

Chucked in at the Deep End

We've moved in! Yesterday we moved into our new rooms in the hostel and spent our first night there, it was a bit eery because obviously school hasn't started yet so it was just me and Ashley in this massive building.

Yesterday afternoon we had a meeting with the ladies from the Moriah Center, they're mental. They made me and Ashley dance for them and taught us some SiSwati. Sawubona!

We went to the nature reserve for a walk with Kathy and Richard on the night and saw a warthog, some impala (basically deer/gazelle type animal), a massive bird of prey and some giraffe tracks! Sadly no giraffe though. Afterwards we had a lovely dinner with Kathy and Richard and some of the staff from Sisekelo; they told us lots of stories of people who have been dragged away by crocodiles in the river we have to drive across to get to Injabulo pre-school (eek!) so that's slightly terrifying. Plus, judging by our first drive in "The Almighty Butch" we're not yet at the dodging crocodiles stage with our truck driving skills!

We're fending for ourselves at the moment though, Kathy and Richard left for England this afternoon to visit their daughter in London so we're packed off on a leadership course at 6am Monday morning with the seniors of the Sisekelo High. We'll be trekking and swimming in mud pools until Wednesday, so that should be pretty fun! This is how they choose their prefects, slightly different from the one interview that we had... but I guess it's the best way to separate the strong willed from the weak ;) 

Laters, Kate xxx

My Room!

 Messy desk, doesn't look like that now :P
And the cute sign on the wall from my cousins <3

Wardrobe with all my 'Hunz 2K12' on ;)

'The Almighty Butch!' at the Nature Reserve

Impala at the Nature Reserve