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

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 

Umlungu

It’s getting to that point now where we’re well settled in on the projects and everything we do comes as second nature. There’s no stressing out about how to do things or fighting with language barriers that you don’t understand. We can now pretty much comprehend most of the SiSwati that the children use when talking to us, and their English is coming on very nicely so they can ask us for things and we actually know what they mean!

My class at Injabulo are coming along in leaps and bounds, I have the crocodiles (the older class) therefore I have some of the children who were with us last year too. This makes my life 10 times easier because the ones who know the answers always repeat them and the new children copy – so when it comes to teaching there’s a lot less work that I need to put in on some topics. Maths however is disappointing; they don’t understand simple addition so that’s going to be something that I’ll need to work on!
The original plan for Injabulo was to use an immersion method with the children; i.e. we speak English and only English, and if you can’t ask for something in English you don’t ask for it at all. However we came to realise that this wasn’t feasible; trying to run a classroom totally in a language that none of the children really understand is impossible, you achieve very little and become highly stressed. Either way they are still picking up the language very quickly, they’re like little sponges! They know all the shapes/colours/body parts/numbers/animals/days of the week/months/seasons/clothing in English and they’re picking up some helpful sentences and phrases too; they all ask to go to the toilet in English, ask for a drink in English, say they’re hungry and ask for food in English... and this is only the beginning.

We’ve had a little bit of drama at Moriah this week; on Wednesday one of the little boys’ poo’d himself and somehow Ashley and I ended up to be the ones dealing with it! We had to get him to take all his clothes off and put him in the outside shower to wash down, Ashley was hilarious because as soon as she got one whiff as he stepped out of his pants she ran off to a nearby tree coughing and spluttering with streaming eyes and ‘chundered everyyywhaaaar!’ It was pretty bad, I had to get a medical glove and poop-a-scoop his soiled clothes up into a bag to send home as a lovely surprise for his Mum.
Just to make the whole ordeal less embarrassing for the poor lad his teacher decided to bring his whole class out to the garden in full view of us washing him, and two workmen on break on the other side of the preschool fence decided that this was an interesting watch and basically perved on the entire thing. Weirdos.

Everyday we’re constantly trying and trying to come up with new ways of improving things at soup kitchen; so we’ve taken it upon ourselves to sell snacks to the girls in hostel so that we can give Aunty Vinah the money to help out with feeding the children/bus fares to school. We’re selling crisps and ices, which are only bringing in a small profit but I’m sure it will soon add up!
This week at soup kitchen we also handed out some baby clothes to the Mothers who come with their little ones; the clothes had been kindly donated by one of the female teachers at Sisekelo, and I’m pretty sure they were brand new and had never been worn. There’s nothing else to really say on this subject but OMG LOOK AT HOW CUTE THE BABIES ARE... awwwwwwwww.

On Friday night Ashley, three prefects from Sisekelo and myself had been summoned to UPS (Ubombo Primary School) for the honour of helping out at their annual camp-out for their Grade R to Grade 3’s (in terms you will understand, that’s reception to year 3).
Our assigned task was to make sure that all the kids were having fun, supervise them and make sure no one died... which was an incredibly difficult task seeing as I was supervising the bouncy castle (or as they call it in Swaziland – the ‘jumpy’ castle). All of these children can speak fluent English, so either; they couldn’t understand my accent (not very likely) or they completely ignored me, which is definitely more realistic.
There were about 20 kids all on the bouncy castle and they all wanted to come down the slide at the same time – this resulted in large Grade 3 boys landing on the heads of petite Grade R girls, and there were a fair few tears. Due to the congestion at the top of the slide, the sides of the castle started pulling in and became soft, so a boy and a girl tumbled head first from the top of the slide and narrowly missed impaling themselves on the electric pump attached to the castle, but they managed to scrape themselves on a few wooden barrier poles. Well done. And I had to scrape them up off the field; luckily I was prepared for the next two to do it, and I caught both of them... saving my reputation with the parents, ha!

Later on that night there was a braii for all the kids and parents; in preparation for this Ashley and I carried a 5 foot long cooler box packed with steak for the equivalent of 100m, but with added stairs. This thing was HEAVY – I swear that there was a full cow in there... and thanks to information provided afterwards we found out that a cow actually had been donated for the braii at the campout. So yeah, I bet you’ve never carried a cow.
After the braii the kids put on a talent show for everyone to watch; this involved groups of girls around the ages of 5-7 shaking everything their Mamma gave them in a more provocative way than 19 year olds do when they’re ‘oot on the toon’ in Newcastle. Rather disturbing but I have to give it to them; I wish I could do that.
Our main job description was to ‘make the children tired’; we might as well have been told to make pigs fly. CHILDREN DO NOT GET TIRED. They’ve been eating sweets all day, drinking fizzy drinks and they’re covered in face-paint pretending to be spider man – they’re on a constant sugar rush, and the later it gets the more hyper they become. Their unyielding love and enthusiasm for Gangnam Style means that it is basically played on loop for the whole night and every time that tune reaches their ears it turns them into a screaming, invisible horse riding frenzy.

Glorified Babysitters ;)

Getting into the spirit of things!

It’s 1:30am and they’re still playing a mass game of musical chairs; the three prefects have given up and gone to sleep in the tent, Ashley somehow still has energy to conduct the game of musical chairs and I’m struggling to press pause and play on the iPod... finally they’re told to go to bed and we crash on the floor of our tent around 2am to the screams of the still awake children.

On Sunday we had another farewell braii for a couple that attend the church we go to; they’re retiring and moving to South Africa so we were all invited round for a braii in the garden and a short service. They had a trampoline inset into the ground which some of the children were playing on; then Ashley went over to have a go... this trampoline had many springs missing, the remaining ones were brown with rust and the actual trampoline itself was sun bleached and threadbare. You guessed it, she went right through! Tore a hole in it the heifer.

On return to hostel we found out that we’d missed out on the most dramatic dinner ever; a girl had thrown up on another girls’ food. Always missing out on the banter!

We have a long weekend this week – looking forward to it!

UNIVERSITY OF YORK ACCEPTED ME – too happy. Had a little cry on the phone to Mum when she rang me and told me, ha, what a baby I am.

Hope you’re all enjoying life :)

Kate xx

P.S. ‘Umlungu’ means white person in SiSwati; two little boys shouted it as us as we were getting on a kombi at Matata. It’s not offensive though. 

“What’s it doing now?” “Spraying urine.”

This week has been a busy but fun week! Last Sunday Ashley’s Mum Jane and Step-father Paul arrived in the country so since then it has been a hectic mash-up of showing them our projects and trying to give them a real Swazi experience!

The day they arrived we went in the hire car to Malolotja Nature Reserve which is past Mbabane and right up in the highvelds of Swaziland. It was COLD; I had goose bumps and I was shivering. The Tree Top Canopy Tour’s base was on the top of a hill in the reserve; the wind was blowing, it was overcast and I hadn’t brought anything warm – I keep forgetting that Big Bend is the hottest place in Swaziland; you basically wear the least amount of clothes that’s socially acceptable.
We were so high up that when you looked out over the mountains the clouds were literally sitting on the summits, it was beautiful.
Ashley, Paul and I did the Malolotja Tree Top Canopy Tour; which was a series of zip lines that took you from the top of a valley in the game reserve to the bottom. It was great fun! You could go seriously fast on the zip lines and when you were hanging over the valley you could look right over the carpet of treetops beneath you and hear the river gurgling below.

Cloud Level!

After the Tree Tops we headed to ‘Swazi Candles’; Swazi Candles along with some other independent shops come together to create a lovely Craft Market in Malkerns near Manzini. The place is full of hundreds and hundreds of handmade candles all with a Swazi/African feel to them; there are 2 or 3 people who sit in the shop itself to make the candles for shoppers to watch, but in total there are 12 candle makers in a small workshop elsewhere. We saw one man make an elephant from a ball of wax in about 5 minutes flat, the craftsman ship is amazing and the candles really are beautifully made!

Monday brought Injabulo into the lives of Jane and Paul; the kids went absolutely crazy (as they do when we get any visitors) and carried on their new obsession of stroking manly arm hair... They really are fascinated, I think it must be because black people have less body hair than white people – they must think we’re some sort of animal! 

Jane and Paul had brought out 3 30kg suitcases from the UK, and about 50kg of their luggage was toys, presents and clothes for the kids. So at Injabulo on Monday they had a whale of a time throwing bean bags around and dressing up as princesses, ladybirds, Woody from Toy Story and a Little Miss from The Mr Men!

(Jane and Paul's Pictures)

(Jane and Paul's Pictures)

Tuesday was the Moriah Center; the day started out great as we were reading a story that included making popcorn for all the kids to eat... They loved watching the popcorn maker spit out the popcorn; however they had to wait a little while longer to try some because the teachers were more interested in eating all of the popcorn their selves rather than handing it out to the children, haha! 

Unfortunately at play time the day took a turn for the worst; one little boy came up to us in the playground crying and he had a plastic truck toy sticking out of his side. Two of the wheels had came off and we presumed that there was an exposed metal spike which had lodged itself into his skin. We’re still not sure how it happened; we thought he had fallen on it, but the rest of the kids said that someone threw it at him and it got stuck... no one is sure how it happened.
Luckily Jane and Paul had the car there so we managed to get him to the private hospital down the road in 2 minutes of it happening. The doctors weren’t sure how deep the metal was so they had to give him a full anaesthetic to knock him out in case he wriggled when they were removing the truck. Thankfully the metal wasn’t deep enough to puncture anything and all he needed was a few stitches and some medicine.
Everything turned out fine; but if Jane and Paul hadn’t been there we don’t know what would’ve happened, the kombi we usually drive was in South Africa because the missionaries had been taken to Pongola in it. Inevitably we would have been in a horrible situation if it wasn’t for their car, we wouldn’t have been able to pull it out because we wouldn’t have known the extent of the damage so we would have had to carry him 20 minutes to hospital.

After the drama at Moriah on the morning we headed off to Hlane the Royal National Park for a sunset safari! We saw loads of rhino, impala (obviously)and warthog; we also saw elephants for the first time! I couldn’t have been any more excited and I was not disappointed, there was a herd of about 8 elephants and the bull was MASSIVE. It was walking directly behind our truck and at one point I’m pretty sure it started charging at us because it picked up some speed, started flapping its ears and our ranger put his foot down pretty hastily to get us away. Amazing.
After what I now call a hideously expensive dinner (E140 - £10), we watched all the staff of Hlane do a traditional Swazi dance, the third proper one that we have seen... and by far the longest. I love watching them dance but it is rather repetitive and when it goes on for about 40 minutes you start to get a little bit bored. But at the end everyone got up together and had a bit of a stomp around with the staff before retiring to their paraffin lit huts. There’s no electricity in the accommodation at Hlane so you have to put paraffin lamps everywhere to create some light, personally I love it as I feel that electricity kills the atmosphere of sleeping in a hut even if it has a kitchen, bathroom, living room, two double rooms and a platform in the rafters with four single beds! This was a party hut for sure, it was brilliant.

Perfection.

Swazi Secrets

The next morning we left Hlane and went to a factory called Swazi Secrets; Swazi Secrets produce beauty products from the oil extracted from the Marula nut.    

Every year in March the people of Swaziland celebrate Marula season by drinking the traditional Swazi beer ‘buganu’, I have spoken about it before on this blog. After the women have used the actual fruits to ferment and make the beer they take the nut from the fruits and dry them for weeks in the sun. During March/April time the workers of Swazi Secrets go out into the rural impoverished communities of the lowveld areas of Swaziland to buy the marula nuts from the local women who have made the beer; they weigh the nuts/kernels on the spot and pay by cash per kg.

Marula Tree

They then take these kernels to the Mpaka factory to be crushed by hand and the oil to be extracted and made into beauty products. Instead of having one large mechanical machine that crushes the nuts Swazi Secrets have opted for a number of smaller man-powered machines that crush smaller quantities of nuts. For every 40kg of nuts crushed 11kg of pure marula oil is gained.
The smaller machines make the extraction process much more sustainable as each machine has the community name written on it; therefore only the nuts from that community may be crushed in that machine. Therefore if there’s a bad batch of products the workers can trace which machine the nuts were crushed in and then know which community the nuts were bought from; this allows them to pull the rest of the communities batch for testing before shipping and they can go back to the community and find out what caused the marula nuts to be contaminated.
Whereas if all of their nuts were crushed together they would have to destroy larger batches of products without knowing the problem, so the smaller machines prevent cross-contamination, promote sustainability of the factory’s process and they save money!

Crushing the kernels for natural oil

The visit really was very interesting and we were shown around the production room where the products are actually made. It couldn’t have been any larger than a store room and there were 3 workers in there doing everything by hand; one lady was painstakingly heating up and measuring out ingredients for marula lip-balm by hand (this allows higher control of the temperature so that the oil doesn’t degrade at a too high heat), and man was packaging the lip-balms into their containers while another lady stamped on the date of expiry. 

After seeing this production on such a small scale I wasn’t expecting the company to be large or well known; therefore it surprised me when they said that they export to the UK and Germany and their products are very popular in Europe, they have even been given a ‘Product of the Year’ award by Elle! 

The company is also co-funded by the WK Kellogg Foundation, that’s right, the very same Kellogg that brings you your cornflakes in the morning. 

I really enjoyed our visit to Swazi Secrets and it is fantastic knowing that they are supporting the rural women in the communities who harvest the raw materials; these communities include places that we are very familiar with... For example Mpolongeni where we run our soup kitchen is one of the areas that provide Swazi Secrets with marula kernels for crushing, and I think that it is fantastic that there are some companies out there who are dedicated to providing fair business to the Swazi population.

www.swazisecrets.com

Thursday brought soup kitchen with Jane and Paul! The first thing that Aunty Vinah said to them was along the lines of ‘where are the surprises?!’, although what she was getting wasn’t really a surprise because she had been asking for chocolates ever since we arrived in the country.
Either way she was happy with her gifts and there were even more clothes that had been brought for the kids to wear; I’m pretty sure that we’ve clothed these children about 3 times over in the time that we've been here!
One of the little girls at soup kitchen, SiSi pleasantly surprised me this week; she’s the one in the pictures that always wears the white and blue chequered shower cap. She never smiles, is really timid and gets scared really easily, but this week is was like she was a different person!
She was smiling, laughing, letting me tickle her, hugging me rather than sitting rigid in my arms and gripping on like a little monkey. I even started jiggling her around in my arms (which normally terrifies her) but this time she stared throwing herself into it, laughing and waving her arms around.
I know that this probably doesn’t make sense to you but after knowing someone for 6 months and suddenly seeing a personality change for the better just made me feel so proud and happy for her, it’s like she’s a new little girl and I don’t know what has happened to make the change but I am grateful that it has happened.  I just hope it carries on and she doesn’t go back into her shell.

We finished off Jane and Pauls visit with a trip to Manzini to see Kathy and Richard and eat at our favourite Portuguese Manzini restaurant, Gil Vicente (one that we have been seeing quite a lot of lately!)

So now Ashley, Jane and Paul are gallivanting around South Africa, they’re currently in Durban before going to Cape Town and finally Johannesburg. 

So for a week I am alone on project and running everything by myself, hahaaa let’s see how this goes shall we?!

I am interested to see what this week brings, hopefully there will be no more drama otherwise I will have a lot on my plate... Wish me luck!

Kate xx

P.S. The name of this blog is a quote from our ranger on safari at Hlane; Paul asked him what a rhino was doing now and he bluntly replied ‘spraying urine’. His accent and the way he said it reduced Ashley and I too immature fits of laughter for about 5 minutes straight and I almost chocked on my Hunters Dry. It’s a memory I will cherish forever. 

“Do you want to learn Chinese?” “No I don’t want to karate!”

THE AMERICANS ARE BACK.

Big Bend has been hit with yet another wave of incorrectly pronounced words, glorious gifts and goodwill; all courtesy of Loveland Colorado. Two of the men who came out last year are back and they have a new couple in tow; it was lovely seeing them again however it was shocking how it seemed like we’d only just said goodbye! I blinked at 4 months shot straight out the window.
We dragged them along to soup kitchen with us (well, we didn’t drag... they came willingly and brought peanut butter sandwiches) to meet the kids and Aunty Vinah. They helped serve the food, danced with the kids and generally got stuck in! Soup kitchen love having visitors and Aunty Vinah was out to milk them for donations, and she wasn’t bothered about coming across subtle!
Soup kitchen seems to be growing all the time, we see new kids every week and this week there have been some new animal additions; Aunty Vinah’s dogs haven’t been ‘for the snip’ so they keep having litters all over the place. So this week I was introduced to 8 tiny puppies still blind and rolling in the mud, they are cute as hell and I want one. Aunty Vinah is happy to give them away free as well because she struggles to feed them, now I just have to work out where I can hide one in hostel...

WANT IT

Again the missionaries came along with tons of toys, clothes and presents for the children at Moriah, and once again there were plenty left over once everything had been handed out. So in steps Ashley and I; we’ve become pretty good at positioning ourselves in the way of free stuff over the last 6 months, you just need to surround yourself with generous people! 
Just kidding; the missionaries are always HUGELY kind to us and shower us with things to hand out at our other projects, and for that I am eternally grateful. This time around we must have been given about 50 odd dresses made by a charity called ‘Dress A Girl’, so we took them all to soup kitchen so that all of the girls there could have a pretty dress. Here’s two websites, they really are great people and are just trying to do a lovely thing!

http://www.dressagirlaroundtheworld.com/
http://buildingchildrenofpromise.org/

Even after handing out dresses to all the girls at soup kitchen (who they would fit!) we still had a lot left over so we decided that on the way back along the road we would stop if we saw any women or girls and hand them a dress. A selfless and kind thing to do, right? Well, the police officer that pulled up behind us didn’t think so...

We had pulled over at the side of the road and I was handing a woman and her daughter two dresses out of the suitcase in the back of the truck when another vehicle was coming up behind; Ashley was shouting at me to hurry up but it was too late. I hadn’t realised the vehicle was a police truck. So the driver pulls up behind us and wants to have a chat with Ashley who is driving. She goes to his truck for about a minute and then gets back in ours with a stony look on her face, and then she says; ‘he wants me to pull up in a space ahead so he can arrest me.’
So we pull in and this bent police officer is saying how we shouldn’t stop on the road bla bla bla, we needed to pull in more bla bla bla, what were you doing, what is in the suitcase etc. We tell him all about soup kitchen, being volunteers, the dresses and that we just stopped for one second to do a nice thing. At which he says ‘I have three orphans at home, I want dresses’. Yeah, like hell you do.
He obviously wasn’t arresting anyone otherwise he would have done it straight away the first time he stopped us, so we begrudgingly gave him two dresses (folded up so he couldn’t tell we hadn’t given him a third), jumped in the truck and drove off. Some people are just evil.

I’m sorry, I haven’t really painted an accurate picture of this guys personality but he was seriously a bast*rd.

Moḉambique!

So, on the day that we were ‘almost arrested’ we stopped by a place on the road coming back from soup kitchen called Lituba Lodge. We were chatting to the owner, a guy who has lived in Swaziland for 15 years but is from Lester, England – and he was telling us how he needed to go to Mozambique to replenish his stock of seafood. As we have been wanting to go to Mozambique since getting to Swaziland we were delighted when he said that we were welcome to come along with him for the day if we were interested in seeing Maputo! Obviously we said yes we were, and so we found ourselves leaving hostel at the ridiculous time of 5:00am on Saturday morning to begin our trip to Mozambique.

Mozambique is a filty, dirty, hot, smelly and rubbish filled city, but it has an intense history which makes it an amazing place to visit. For 15 years the Mozambican population were victims of the Cold War; one million people died from fighting and starvation and over 5 million civilians were displaced. The country was speckled with landmines and many people became amputees during the time of the war; the landmines remain a legacy from the war and there are still hundreds of live landmines that continue to plague the people of Mozambique.
Mozambique finally came to peace in 1990 with the end of the cold war and the crumbling of apartheid in South Africa; but even on a day trip to Maputo you can clearly see that it is a country fighting to develop again and break away from its past and write itself a new and brighter future. Unfortunately the war scars are still fresh; you can see the amputees and victims of the war begging on the roads by traffic lights when the cars stop. Dirty ragged clothes hang off their wiry tired bodies, hurting eyes bore into you as  you sit impatiently in your air conditioned car, and you avert your own eyes while hoping for the lights to change so you can speed off and forget the torment you have just seen...

Even today Mozambique isn’t really at peace; corrupt police officers walk around with rifles strapped to their hips, their hands teasing the hilt, they make it obvious to all that they have no hesitations about using them. We experienced their corruption first hand; the Mozambican police officers are infamous for slapping outrageous fines on people (especially tourists) for things that you don’t even understand. Two officers stopped our car and tried to fine us 5,000Mt (Meticais is the currency of Mozambique) because the driver didn’t have a seatbelt on; firstly it’s not even a massive offence, secondly it is due a fine but 5,000Mt is pushing it, thirdly the officer didn’t know what he was talking about as he was shaking and unsure of himself while his partner just stood by. No fine was paid because if you know the right things to say you can pretty much talk yourself of anything.

Despite the run in with the police (again) we had an amazing day! We saw Maputo’s central train station which was designed by Eiffel himself; most of you will be more familiar with is work displayed in Paris, a little structure called the Eiffel Tower... those same cross over metal bars can be found all the way down here in Mozambique, amazing! 

Eiffel's famous style!

Next we head to central market; a crowded, dingy, buzzing hub of businesses and people who are buying, selling, haggling, cooking and basically doing everything to get by. We try a strange looking local fruit called ‘Atta’, which we have now learned was an Artichoke (I was thinking an artichoke was an anchovy, but I now stand corrected) and the sight of my camera offended one man so much that he started shouting at me in Portuguese and quite violently came at me with a flying hand to push my camera away. Wasn’t even taking a photo with it, over the top reaction or what.
Being in central market with two Swazi’s (who came along for the trip as well) felt really strange as we were now all out of our comfort zones; normally in a situation like this in Swaziland you would just get the Swazi’s to speak Siswati to the stall owners if you wanted anything, but now we were all in the same position; not understanding the language and not having the faintest clue what was going on. I was also surprised by the lack of English speakers in Mozambique; in Swaziland you are taught English from 3 years old so everyone speaks it, but in Mozambique we were getting a lot of blank stares...

'Atta'

It looks disgusting, but it was really nice! Tasted like a mix of marula, litchi and watermelon. 

After central market we hit the fish market! Not normally one of my favourite places due to the smell and all the dead fish everywhere, but because this market was open air it wasn’t quite as repellent as the Indoor Market back in Darlington. I cannot stand that place. 

So we walked around and chose our lunch; a bag full of very alive clams still squirting water over everyone, one large feisty crab and some large prawns. We then carried our own mini aquarium like children carry their ‘goldfish-in-a-bag’ at fun fairs around the corner of the fish market to ‘Costa Dol Sol’, Mozambique’s best seafood restaurant. It doesn’t look like much with the plastic garden furniture sitting on the sandy floor, old food sacks strung together as shelter and half of Mozambique’s population trying to sell you tourist junk at your table... but hell, they know how to cook seafood. 

Obviously you’ve already paid for your food at the market, so you only pay the restaurant for actually cooking the food, and all the side dishes. I’ve never been adventurous with seafood, the furthest I’ve gone is fish finger sandwiches and a good old battered fish wrapped in newspaper from the greasy chippy on the corner. So I took on the saying of ‘when in Rome’ and jumped on the Maputo seafood lovers’ bandwagon.

I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the food; I didn’t gag on the clams, the crab tasted lovely and I was even sucking the mush out of the prawns heads (not sure if that’s brains or what, but I really don’t want to know), and I touched it all with my hands! Touching it with my hands doesn’t sound like a massive achievement, but if you knew me before I came out to Africa you would know that I wouldn’t have been able to do that. You should see me now, ripping meat and bones apart every day with my hands! However I still haven’t faced raw chicken. 

Anyway, now I’m off subject. The seafood was great and I’m definitely going to be more daring with my menu choices from now on, maybe get rice instead of chips... hahaaaa, joking.

A little more sightseeing of Maputo led us to a buildings ruin on the beach; the story is from the film Blood Diamond. I film I haven’t seen, but apparently in the film a bar blows up... That bar was built on Maputo beach solely for the reason it was going to be blown up in the film, however I have also been led to believe that in the film it isn’t actually Mozambique where it is meant to be ‘set’ but that’s where it happened! What a waste of a fully functioning bar. So if you are familiar with Blood Diamond, I’ve been there.

To finish the day off we had a swim in the Indian Ocean, a little sunbathe and waited for 1:30mins for the worst pizza you have ever tasted in your life.  

I’m having a great time in Africa; hope you’re having fun too!

Kate xx

P.S. Name of the blog is another Aunty Rose special, check out the ‘Aunty Rose’ post for the whole thing!