Driving in Swaziland

I’ve coined a new phrase (although I’m probably not the first to make this observation): If you can drive in Swaziland, you can drive anywhere. Someone once told me that traffic accidents are the leading cause of death to travelers in Southern Africa. I’m not sure if this is true, but I could certainly see how one would come to this conclusion. That every time I get behind the wheel of my Fiat Station Wagon in Swaziland I risk death (don’t worry Mom), but it certainly is an adventure.

In order to get a license to drive in Swaziland you first must take driving lessons. Driving schools are sprinkled around the capital city where I live in Mbabane and other regional cities across the country. They usually consist of a wood shack or in swanky cases an old shipping container, on which rudimentary road signs are painted and the word’s “Lola’s Driving School” or “Sipo’s Driving School” or “Whoever’s Driving School This Is.” Each driving school usually has access to a learners car, distinguishable by a large sign on its roof that proclaims which driving school it belongs to, a large red “L” on the back of the car, and the fact that it stalls repeatedly at every stop sign, traffic light, intersection, and cow and the road.

One driving school I’ve noticed is situated in a dirt lot next to the Anglican Church outside of the city center. Although this school does not have a shack or a sign, its students can usually be found congregating under a large tree in the center of the lot. Next to the tree are a series of tall, thin sticks wedged into the dry dirt or sludgy mud, depending on the time of year. The sticks are set up in two rows and often there is a car, sputtering and jerking slowly between them. I’m not sure if the sticks are there to help drivers practice staying in their lane, but I would encourage this idea.

The main peril of driving in Swaziland is that people often don’t stay in their lane. It’s not that they swerve dangerously from side to side, but it seems that in Swaziland lane markers are more of loose guidelines to be followed at will. When driving up the main highway between Manzini and Mbabane it is imperative that you cut every corner. The person in the lane next to you certainly is going to, so if you stay in your lane, you’ll get hit.

Additionally, the main highway has two lanes, and only two speeds at which it is acceptable to drive. In the slow lane you have huge, black smoke spewing trucks inching their way up the infamous highway to Mbabane or overloaded minibuses making the same trek packed full of commuters. In the fast lane you have flashy BMWs and Mercedes, often belonging to government officials flying by at 150 km/h with their police escorts. Those of us who drive at normal speeds face a conundrum. Usually I drive in the slow lane until I need to pass one of the incredibly slow trucks so as to not lose my own speed and having to down shift and overheat my poor Fiat. But switching into the fast lane is perilous as I must already be going dangerously fast in order to avoid being obnoxiously tailgated. Inevitably I piss someone off on my way up to Mbabane, and about twelve other drivers piss me off.

Add to this the added excitement of winding mountain roads leading past the park up to Piggs Peak. And the cows and chickens and goats crossing the road at will. And the tiny uniformed first graders playing around on the road’s shoulder. And the all encompassing fog that reduces visibility to a few feet. And the sheer amount of pot holes on the roads. And the inability of many drivers to maintain the brake lights on their cars. And driving a shitty stick shift Fiat on the opposite side of the road than I am used to.

But with all this said, Southern Africa does have an endearing set of rules for road etiquette: When you want to pass someone, tailgate them. They will pull over and you can fly by. To say thank you, the passing driving will turn on their hazard lights for a quick “Thank you” blink to which the passed driver will respond “You’re welcome” with a quick flash of his lights. Often slower drivers or trucks will pull over to the shoulder to facilitate passing, which is highly appreciated on a winding two lane road. My favorite part about driving in Swaziland, however, aside from the adventure aspect of it all, is the frequency with which have reason to use my horn. I’ve been driving for about eight years and I think in my seven years in driving in the US I honked the horn a quarter of the times I’ve honked it in my year in Swaziland.

Into the Field

The absence of blog posts can only mean one thing: I’ve been working hard! As the third and final phase of my research project I have been going out to “the field” and surveying local communities. With my trusty research assistant, Nonhlahla, in toe, I set out in my barely functioning Fiat criss-crossing the back roads of Swaziland with a folder full of surveys translated to siSwati and a box of pens. Here is the survey of what happened in Luve.

Luve is about an hour’s drive from the Swazi capital of Mbabane, where I live. A satellite of the larger town of Mliba (which itself is too small to have its own traditional court and is serviced once a week by the Manzini circuit court), Luve is small and lovely. Luve is on the edge of the low-veld, so its sprawling farmland played perfect compliment to the Mario-Cart clouds floating overhead.

When we arrived in Luve, we picked up the community organizer we had been in contact with from the main bus rank. Then we left the paved road for good. We arrived at the Chief’s homestead about 30 minutes later. We were led inside the compound and made to sit under the tree with the community elders while we waited for the Chief. Nonhlahla showed me how to sit with my ankles crossed and feet off the edge of the reed mat we were given. Then the chief arrived.

We spoke with the chief and explained why we had come to Luve. The elders debated and I sat nervously on the reed mat, uncomfortable in the skirt I was wearing and hoping Nonhlahla could hold her own against some seemingly ornery elders. After what seemed liked ages, we were granted permission by the chief to survey the community who would be meeting shortly to bring their grievances to the Imphakatsi or Chiefdom level conflict arbitration (for example, if you impregnate an unmarried girl, you must pay a fine in cattle – or – cash, and these types of issues would be decided upon at the Imphakatsi).

As the community gathered in the wall-less concrete structure, Nonhlahla distributed our survey and assisted the illiterate Gogos (grandmothers) in completing the survey. I stood by quietly, handing out pens and collecting completed surveys and staring out across Swaziland’s low-veld on the beautiful blustery day. I feel incredibly grateful that my “day at the office” involves sitting under trees with Chiefs!

When the surveys were completed, we had left some biscuits and juice as a “Thank you” gift and the more serious matters of the day got underway, including a child-support battle in which a father was ordered to buy milk for his ‘baby momma.’ We stood outside, speaking with the community organizer and the Chief’s assistant talking. We did the obligatory promises of marriage and phone number exchanges and then we were on our way, back to Mbabane, to input the survey into our Excel spreadsheet. Another great day in Swaziland!

The New Ambassador

Recently a new US Ambassador arrived in Swaziland. The State Department held a reception for him at the Royal Villas, an extravagant housing complex officially owned by the King which as previously hosted the recently ousted President of Madagascar as well as Robert Mugabe. The dress code was “business casual” so I threw a dress I’d bought five years ago at a thrift store in LA on over my jeans and put on some earrings. I arrived late and underdressed.

Once at the site of the reception, I had to present my invitation, a gold embossed and calligraphied piece of card stock that granted my entrance. They offered us pens with “US Embassy Mbabane” written on the side. I took two. Then my bag was searched and I passed through the metal detector without it going off. After the metal detector welcome arches, a line had formed to shake the new Ambassador’s hand. I was waiting in line with my fellow Fulbrighter, Sarah, when our pseudo-supervisor at the Embassy found us and declared that she would introduce us to the Ambassador.

I’m not sure if this happened to everyone, but it certainly made me feel important. We approached the Ambassador, Sarah looking poised and professional, and me terribly underdressed. Our supervisor introduced us and our research projects and then, as a way to make a lasting first impression, I interrupted the Ambassador, mid sentence, to exclaim, “I heard you’re also a Cal grad; right on!”

The Ambassador laughed awkwardly. I stood there awkwardly. A terrible silence descended. Our supervisor finally took pity on my social inappropriateness and shuffled us along. I was oblivious to my misstep and headed to the open bar in the reception room.

Once inside, I bumped into a group of Embassy staff members I had just met the previous weekend. I had spent the weekend in Ponta do Oro in southern Mozambique surfing, building sand castles and barbecuing prawns. A few Embassy staff members were part of our colossal twenty-five person caravan and I had enjoyed drinking beers around the fire and jumping into the blown out Indian Ocean waves with them. But here they were, not in their red and white striped beach trunks but in crisp white shirts and suit jackets and stripped ties.

Its weird how when you meet someone for the first time you associate so much about where you met them, or how you met them, with who they are. I met my friend Michelle at a costume party seven months ago and to this day she calls me Wonder Woman.

Umhlanga

Its impossible to be in Swaziland during this time of year and fail to mention the Umhlanga. The Umhlanga, or Reed Dance, is one of the most important events on the Swazi calendar. Traditionally, the Reed Dance is a time when Swazi's virginal maidens pay homage to the Queen. In this week long event, the maidens gather at the traditional capital of Swaziland in Lobamba at the Ludzidzini royal residence. Historically they gather on foot, but these days huge flat-bed lorries assist in the process. The maidens make their way down to the rive to gather reeds for the Queen Mother. Then they walk, singing in their traditional garb, to the Queen Mother's residence in order to reinforce her kraal walls with the freshly plucked reeds. What follows is two days of singing and dancing before the King and the Queen Mother.

Despite some jaded ex-pats telling me I would get bored as soon as I arrived, I decided to attend both days of dancing. Although both days were essentially the same, they were an incredible spectacle. This is what I saw:

Tens of thousands of maidens, bare breasted except for thick yarn sashes with pom-poms draped over one shoulder, standing in a neat semi-circle around the stadium's field. The King arrived, preceded and flanked by a troop of warriors in traditional dress. Some of his protective escort carried guns on the belts and spears in the hands. The maidens were organized in groups, some more polished than others, and each group made its way around the field singing. They danced in unison, the hallow seed pods tied to their feet beating to the music.

The procession went on forever, there were so many girls. The voices and the beat and the colors and the sea of maidens all blended into one. When each group had paraded in front of the King, he and his warriors took to the field. They jumped and pranced across the field in order to lower their sticks in front of particularly admirable females to show their appreciation. Often the King chooses a new wife from the assembled girls so anticipation was high.

I sat on the field, inadvertently among a group of warriors whose bleary eyes and enthusiasm indicated they'd been enjoying themselves. The girls paraded past, from barely walking to questionably virginal. It was an incredible experience to see so many people come together to celebrate their culture and put on a magnificent aesthetics experience.

Fading Suntan

Tofo (pronounced like the meat substitute) is a beautiful stretch of crescent sand along the Indian Ocean. Its only a few hundred kilometers north of the Mozambican capital Maputo, but the treacherous potholed road between the two ensures that those who are willing to put in the effort will be rewarded. So, after a 12 hour cashew filled journey we bumped along the sand road into town. In Tofo, the sand extends from the beach throughout the entire town, the roads, the market, the bathtubs of Tofo, are full of sand.

Tofo is hemmed in by dunes on the north and south (which offer wonderful vantage points to watch the breaching humpback whales or to build a sand tree house of sorts, away from it all). To the west is a marsh and, to the east is, of course, the clear and warm blue waters of the Indian Ocean. Most people go to Tofo to see what's in those warm blue waters and Tofo doesn't disappoint: Humpback whales, coral reefs, manta rays, other types of rays whose name escapes me, but they are the biggest in the world, and of course, the whale sharks.

Tofo was simply too incredible to tell you all about it, so rather I'll tell you about the whale sharks:
We took a tiny boat, which, to me, was barely a step up from the inflatable rafts we use to float down the rivers of Northern California in July. After fumbling over the waves, we broke into stride over the sea, with one man perched above the boat in a lifeguard type chair which ironically came equipped with a seat belt, to keep him from plummeting into the ocean as the wind-swept waves rocked our little boat.

A few times during this adventure, the calm of drifting over the swells was mixed into a frenzy. A whale shark would be spotted; we would don our masks and snorkels and our over sized flippers and hurl ourselves awkwardly into the water, much like beached whales ourselves. Then there would be a frantic swim toward the shark and flippers would flip and expensive underwater cameras would snap and bubbles would blow. But the shark would swim on.

His extreme length (16 meters-ish, I hear, although I don't use that crazy metric system) and subtle movements dwarfed the frantic limps which clambered above and beside him. He was truly a majestic sight, with the power to destroy you with one slap of his tail, but not the desire for destruction. His peace and serenity was matched only by the deep blue depths of the water he would dive to, when the flipping and the snapping and the blowing were enough. Then we tourists would sit awestruck in the churning sea. A little bob on the horizon of Tofo, meaningless to those depths below that hide so much more life.

And somewhere between the life-size humpback whale sand castle and watching the sunrise and dinners of heaps of rice and fish and birthdays and new friends and white sand and waves and surfing and mosquito zappers and houses in the dunes and walks on the beach I fell in love with Mozambique.

Superstitious

Today, soccer practice was canceled. So instead of running around for an hour, I sat in my Fiat station wagon and talked with Simphiwe. Simphiwe is the "first born" (read, "oldest") in her family. And, as the saying goes, its her job to chase away the thunder storms. Some Swazis believe that:

When it is raining, the First Born can chase away the storm. To do this, he or she must strip naked and go outside into the rain. Then, he or she must bend over, sticking his or her bum into the air. As the rain falls, the First Born waits for a drop to fall either "into her butt hole", as my friend explained, or "onto the anus" as an informative pamphlet explained. Then the storm will go away.

And Swazis have lots of great superstitions, at least according to what I've learned. Like if you jump over a fire, you'll pee blood. Or, if you eat directly from the cooking pot, it will rain on your wedding day.

A few months ago, I went out to rural Swaziland for a community school fundraiser. A group of us, part Swazi, part American, sat around a fire that evening at the school sharing different superstitions. The Swazi men had lots of great examples, like the ones above. When asked to share ours, we Americans just sort of looked at each other. Of course we have the old seven years bad sex -- or whatever it is -- for breaking a mirror, or walking under a ladder, but compared to pissing blood, they all seemed so meek. The only example I could come up with was the tooth fairy, which seemed to do more to confuse my new Swazi friends, than bridge cultural divides.

Article Published on Glimpse.org

In case anyone is interested, I've had an article published on National Geographic's Glimpse.org. The article is accompanied by a wonderfully cheesey picture of me and my friend Jose. The article is called: "I Finally Met a Swazi Guy Who Didn't Hit on Me." Feel free to comment on the article on the site, it makes me look popular!

Thanks faithful reader,
Mallory

Here Comes the Bride

In light of my upcoming article for Glimpse.com on the theme of constantly being proposed marriage, I have decided to delve into what actually would be entailed in a Swazi wedding. Everyone I’ve spoken to concerning the matter has given me a slightly different version of the process, but in keeping with my high research protocol standards, I have just averaged it all out and made up things when I don’t have facts. So here, for all you love birds thinking of a destination wedding, is how to get married in Swaziland:

Step `1: Boy meets girl. They fall in love, they want to get married.

Step 2: Girl visits boy’s home.

Step 3: Boy visits girl’s home.

Step 4: Boy’s family and girl’s family make an agreement that marriage can take place.

Step 5: Boy takes girl home and introduces her to his parents. This happens a few times and on the 3rd or 4th visit, the in-laws will tell the girl she must marry their son.

Step 6: Girl goes to visit the boy’s family one last time. Early in the morning, perhaps at 3am, the boy’s family will knock on the door to wake up the girl. The women of the family will accost the girl about her impending marriage until she cries. At some point during all of this, a goat is killed.

Step 7: Sitfaba—this refers to the process of putting the traditional goat skin on the girl.

Step 8: The boy’s family then takes the girl to the family kraal (place for keeping animals and traditional place for problem solving and important events). Here the family sings songs in siSwati and eats the freshly killed goat. The girl, however, is not permitted to eat.

Step 9: Around 10am the family leaves the kraal to go to endlini kagogo (Grandma’s house).

Step 10: The bride-to-be is painted in red okra, called libovu (not sure on the spelling).

Step 11: Then the girl is sent home and the family sees that she is painted in the red okra. This is a sign that it is time for lobola (dowry, usually pain in cows).
Step 12: Things get a little unclear at this point, but I’m pretty sure something called msimba occurs, which involves a lot of dancing, and if you’re my family, a lot of drunk relatives, although I’m pretty sure traditional Swazi weddings don’t involve booze at all.

Just a word of caution, however: Swazi’s are permitted to marry in the above “traditional” style as well as the “Western” style. The “Western” weddings are the only type of marriage which allow divorce. If you choose to get married with the red okra, you’re stuck forever!

Morocco

Dear Faithful Reader,

Due to some extenuating circumstances (aka I was on vacation) I have not been blogging. For this, I apologize. However, as I am now back in the Kingdom please look forward to more frequent posts, including this ditty about Big Mommas in Morocco:

My trip in Morocco was wonderful. With a ten year old Lonely Planet and a clueless San Franciscan to guide me I spent three weeks avoiding being ripped off, sweating, buying things I can’t afford, hiking, haggling, sinking sail boats, riding camels and drinking mint tea looking for the authentic Moroccan experience, like every other tourist.

We ended out journey in Fez, whose media, a wobbling labyrinth of narrow alleys and aggressive shop keepers, had just been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We spent two nights here among the smell of tanning camel and goat hides and the sizzle of tagines (conical clay cooking dishes placed over a fire and filled with meat and vegetables). Nearing the end of our trip, there was still one truly Moroccan activity I had hoped to experience: the Hammam.

Hammam’s are communal steam baths that date back to Roman times and have evolved in Moroccan society and an integral part of female society. In this Muslim country where men often sit in cafes chatting and drinking coffee until three in the morning, I hardly remember encountering women at all. I was eager to go to Hammam to catch a glimpse of the hidden society of Moroccan women, but also wash three weeks of sweat out of my hair.

The Hammam is open to both men and women at different times. I waited until the afternoon, the time designated to women, and then wandered through the medina gate, past the mosaiced public drinking fountain and up to the unmarked doorway which led to a white and black checkered hallway.

I walked in tentatively, paid the $0.12 to enter and through hand gestures and two languages I don’t understand, French and Arabic, understood to rent a cockroach invested locker for $0.07 and strip down to my underwear. To avoid being as bewildered during my experience, I paid $5.50 for a “massage.”

The Hammam is set up in different chambers. The disrobing chamber in which I entered was lined with benches for relaxing on after a wash and had a high white domed ceiling for letting steam escape. The room felt warm and wisps of steam and women in different states of dressing and undressing lounged about. The next room was significantly hotter and most of the women were congregated here, in front of rows of buckets of hot and cold water, scrubbing each other and combing their hair. The next room was similar, but hotter and less crowded. The last room was unbearably hot and literally steaming. A hot water tap filled up a tiled trough and women dunked buckets into it and hauled them out of the room.

After sitting in the steam room for as long as I possible could, I was led into the first washing room and pushed by a Big Momma, with ample sagging breasts fact first onto the tiled floor. She slipped here soft hand into a Brillo pad pot scrapping mitten and went to work on my body. The harsh mitten scrapped against my skin painfully and the powerful Momma spared no inch, even giving me a “wedgie” to better access my butt checks. I was then rolled over and the process continued.

When the scrapping was over (praise God), the soaping began. Another, even bigger Momma came to help with the process. My face was stuck somewhere near her thick hairy ankle and my joints were pressed into the tile floor and the big Mommas yelled out things to various women and manhandled me on the floor. Finally I was released from the death grip and doused with water. Then, my hair was untangled and washed and I was doused again. I was practically dragged into the steam room where I sat, delirious for a few minutes before seeking refuse in the now cool disrobing room.

It surprised me how free and confident the women at the Hammam were when on the streets they only appeared as silent citizens. It surprised me how much water was available And flowing through the Hammam when at my hotel 100 yards away the shower could barely muster a cold trickle. It surprised me that I was able to be around twenty women whom I could not communicate with, yet did not feel out of place. And it surprised me how quickly, in the hot Moroccan sun, I was sweaty and dirty again.

Sonneyboy

A few days ago I interviewed my soccer coach, Sonneyboy (yes that’s his real name) for a potential article for Glimpse.org. Although the article has since taken a new direction, I think that Sonneyboy is a real community hero, so I thought I’d share a bit of that with you!

Our coach, Sonneyboy, drive my team to every game. Recently, he arrived behind the wheel of the team Kombie in a white Gilligan’s hat. He’s energetic and smiling as usual. Sonneyboy took over the team seven years after its inception in 1994. He first witnessed the Ladies playing in a friendly match against a boys team and “saw they had such a talent.” When the Ladies beat the boys team for a second time, Sonneyboy knew “there was no query” about these Ladies’ talent.

Since then he’s been fighting the Football Association of Swaziland to take women’s football seriously. He’s proud to have created a real soccer program out of the Kappa Ladies, especially the fact that he established a bank account for the team, although he admits, “I don’t know where the money comes from.” And, in fact, filling that bank account, to fund petrol to get to games, to buy equipment, and to renew the visas of the international players on the team, has been his biggest challenge.

Sonneyboy works as a panel-beater and inspector for government vehicles. After work he joins the girls for trainings and when he has to work late, his wife makes sure the team gets the practice equipment they need. Sometimes he gains sponsorships from local businessmen and even one of the King’s daughters. But usually he pays for much of the expense of running the successful team out of his own pocket.

But Sonneyboy feels like the scrambling for funds to support this Swazi soccer team is his “social responsibility.” He sees the team as a way to build women’s confidence and give women the opportunity to explore their talents as athletes so that the women can know that “with sport, they can go far.” The same sense of community responsibility that keeps Sonneyboy working so hard, he tries to instill in his players by taking them on community building projects, such as building houses for underprivileged Swazis. These community projects and all the hard work and effort the players and the coach put into Kappa Ladies has made the team, “not just football players, but family.”

I Am, in Fact, a Researcher

So, you, Joe Taxpaper, may be reading this and wondering why your hard earned money is going to fund Fulbright Scholars such as myself who traipse around Africa on horseback and marvel at Rhinos and how oddly male lions pee. Well, I can’t really help you understand that. You’ll have to ask Mrs. Clinton. But I can reassure you that I do, actually, sometimes do research.

In fact, I am currently in phase two of my tri-phasal plan to understand the Swazi National Court system. I’m trying to learn three things:

1. How does the Swazi Nation Court System work ?

2. How does today’s National Court System differ from what it was initially set up to do?

3. What do people think about the National Court System?

I spent the first phase of my research in the library, reading old newspapers, Swazi laws, and student thesis. Now, I’m moving on to the interview stage. Like any good researcher, I spend time looking for contacts to help open doors and introduce me to the people I’d like to speak with the understand the system, mainly Court Presidents. And, like any frustrated researcher, I also go to bars. So serendipity would have it, that I would meet my best contact in Café Lingo, a newly opened restaurant/bar in Mbabane.

I met Pretty (named changed) with some of her Swazi socialite friends one evening. She studies law. She suggested I come to her office to meet her boss. Her boss is friendly and helpful and also happens to be related to the Judicial Commissioner, the head honcho of all the National Courts in Swaziland. Her boss sets up a meeting and before I know it I’m laughing with the Judicial Commissioner himself in his office about how tall his secretary is. Therefore, I will catalogue the cost of the beers I drank the night I met Pretty as “research costs”.

Tuesday Night is Game Night

It is Tuesday night in Swaziland and for me that means Game Night. In a country of less than a million people, many of whom live below the poverty line, most entertainment here is of the DIY variety. But being an ex-pat in the Kingdom of Swaziland is by no means boring and anyone who stays here for any length of time soon learns that Swaziland, like most Southern African nations, has a lot more going on than the money-extolling missionary television commercials would have you believe.
The social calendar of an ex-pat in this tiny Kingdom, snuggled in between north-east South Africa and Mozambique, is bustling. On Mondays and Wednesday there are yoga classes are the home studio of a hippie Norwegian couple. On Fridays there are quiet drinks at the fledgling restaurant, Café Lingo. Sundays are the Natural History Society’s hiking trips in the hills of Malolotje or Miliwane. And Tuesday night is Game Night at Veki and Dave’s.

Veki and Dave boast living in “the only log house in Swaziland.” Situated on a hillside near the Dalraich suburb of Swaziland’s capital Mbabane, getting to Game Night is no easy feat. From where I live in Ezulwini – the Valley of Heaven – I must head north towards the MR3 Highway. On this road that slashed through the belly of the verdant valley, speed limits drop suddenly from 100 to 40 kilometers an hour and cow crossings and monkey road kill are not uncommon. After merging onto the highway, an endeavor which is challenging given my American driving education devoid of traffic circles and left-hand driving, I begin the ascent to Mbabane.

Mbabane sits on top of the infamous Malagwan hill. The Malagwan is rumored to at one time have been the Guinness Book of World Records’ most dangerous road in the world, and with good reason. There are two lanes going up the Malagwan, and three types of drivers: First, there are the BMWs, Mercedes, and Landrovers, -- usually carrying an international organization’s insignia or official Swazi flags denoting government officials or royalty – which barrel up the hill at breakneck speeds, dangerously tailgating anyone who dares slow their pace. Second, there are the overloaded trucks, often carrying lumber, which inch up the hill, struggling against gravity and gear boxes. Third, there are the ubiquities Kombies, the loosely organized public transport system, which the US Embassy warns “fail to meet minimal safety standards … and travel at excessive speeds;” the Embassy fails to mention that these vehicles also swerve and stop without warning and often create lanes where none exist.

After surviving the highway and navigating through Mbabane’s small city center, I head into the suburbs and final turn up the giant hill to Veki and Dave’s house, burning up the clutch and bouncing over potholes. Despite the harrowing journey to get to Game Night, people have been making the Tuesday night trek for more than 4 years. Veki and Dave started game night one Tuesday some friends were visiting. The power had gone out, so Dave lit some candles, and found an old Monopoly board. Little did the corrupt electrical monopoly know that their mismanagement of the electrical supply had led to the creation of a Mbabane tradition that has survived longer than any single Minister of Energy.

The group of players on any given Game Night is a rotation of anyone who happens to be in the country mixed, with some old regulars. I greet everyone in turn, each according to his own. Pete I kiss once on the lips. I’m not sure if this is simply because he is old and can get away with it, or because he is from the Netherlands, but my American naivety precedes me and I pucker up. The Frenchman gives two kisses, the Greek and Dutch three. My Peruvian friend gives a warm hug and the Serbians are too busy organizing chocolate cake to pay any attention. The Mozambiquen architect greets me with a hand shake, and our Zimbabwean host is eager to show off the new fountain he is sculpting for the King’s 41st birthday. We open some bottles of wine, usually grown in nearby Stellenbosch in South Africa, and decide on a game. Today we are playing Actionary, my personal favorite, using a Pictionary board to play charades.

We organize into teams, making sure that at least one person on each team speaks English well, as the Actionary clues are all in English. We sit on white wooden furniture made by Dave from scrapes of wood or on brightly colored pillows on the floor. I squish in between the French volunteer working for the World Food Program and the wife of the Finnish musician who has come to Swaziland to jam with local bands for two years. And then the game begins. Competition is rife and Veki shriks

“Time!” at the top of her lungs every minute and thirty seconds.

“Addicts,” my teammate calls to the chain-smokes on the porch. “Get in here we need some help!”

It’s my turn to act. My clue is Switzerland. I try to act out mountains by forming a triangle with my hands above my head.

“Chinese rice worker!”

“Hut!”

I act out Lederhosen by holding onto imaginary suspenders and dancing a jig.

“Leprocon,” yells the Irishman, ironically.

“Russian?” guess the Serbians

I try to act out blowing into a fog horn a la the Ricola commercials but all I get is, “Bong?” “Michael Phelps?” and then Veki shrieks “Time!” It always amazes me which parts of American news reach the outside world, especially in this tiny Kingdom at the bottom of Africa. The local Times of Swaziland usually reports detailed headlines about Chris Brown and Rhianna’s domestic disturbances, and will show evidence that a British man captured a ghost on film, but anything about economic stimulus packages take the back seat to headlines such as “King’s Lion Sold By Mistake” and “Man Wants to Divorce Horney Wife.”

It’s getting late and the game comes to an end. My team has lost, sadly. I look around for the keys to my Fiat as the rest of the guests gather on the porch for the proverbial “last cigarette.” When I get to my car I find it’s not working, which has become almost as regular as Game Night itself. Last Tuesday I ruined the clutch runner and this week it looks like an electrical problem. I don’t know anything about cars – a severe handicap given the state of many of Swaziland’s roads – and everyone else is either too tired or too drunk to be bothered with the banalities of a Fiat’s sub-standard design. I decide it would be best to simply leave the car until morning and ride back to my house in Ezulwini with Pete. This way I can avoid the hazards of the Malagwan, which this time must be faced in the blackness known only to those places on Earth which are familiar with the darkness of an unreliable electrical supply. I relax as we head down the highway and Pete regales me with stories of his adventures hitch-hiking to Tehran and driving from Cape Town to Holland with his two young children. Before I know it we’re at the bottom of my driveway and I say good-bye to Pete.

“See you next Tuesday,” he calls with a wave out the window.

Lesotho or Snow in Africa?!?!?!

The road from the capital of from the capital of Maseru to Semonkong, “The Place of Smoke,” is 120 kilometers long. 70 kilometers of that road is unpaved, swirling around hills, trudging up mountains and barrelling down valleys. The road is impossible: where it is paved, it is more potholes than pavement; where it is dirt, it is chunky rock. Rolling hills pleated with agriculture, alternatively brown and green, flank the road. Mideval homesteads dot the long yellow grass, houses of stone with perfect cabbage patches and precariously stacked stone enclosures for the horses grazing near by.

We took a walk to the nearby waterfall. Everywhere are men wrapped in woolen blankets on horseback, on donkey back, herding sheep, goats, cows or leading donkeys loaded with sugar from the frontier town of Semonkong back to their villages. I stopped to talk to a herd boy and his two younger companions on the hill near the waterfall. They were all plaid blankets and Wellingtons, seemingly held in place by their herding stick, veLesotho, Semongkongrtically erect and clung close to their bodies. Fifty-four head of “cattles” and I got to pet one.

“Ki ya liboha.” Thank you. The cow’s fur is thick keep him warm in the cold alpine mountians in this Kingdom in the Sky. A nearby bull lets out a long urgent note.

“Is he hungry?” I ask.

“Yes,” replies the herdboy. “He want sex.”

We decide, despite the snow flurries already at eight in the morning, to go on an overnight pony trek into the mountains. We set off on barely tamed horses into the freezing hills. It is very haunting, very beautiful, very cold. We galloped through a rose and gold medow fringed by frosted hills. We passed over countless hills: steep cliffs, sheep grazing on impossible faces; rocky hills, homesteads perched on unreachable places. The hills are of full of livestock that surprise you with their camoflauge and the air is full of the tinkle of sheep bells and the clang of cow bells. Young herdboys run across the hills in the distance, grey blankets billowing like a cape behind them. Children, naked except for their blankets and boots, yell “bye-bye” and wave enthursiastically as we ride by. I try to smile but just manage to grimace back in the cold.

When we reach the village where we will spend the night, two boys slip-slide us over rock, billy goat style, to a heartstopping view a waterfall. Our host’s hut was so smokey it made my eyes water, but my feet were so cold, I toughed it out. We slept in the village’s health center/school/community cventer. We cooked some MSG laden soup and pasta and slept in every available articlue of clothing.

Letsotho was amazing. It was cold. It was beautiful. The fresh baked bread, cooked in a witch’s caludren over a fire, was delicious. The local “Luwala” brew was potent. And even the Grandmas are snorting tobacco and smokeing weed. Anything, really, to stay warm.

Rhinos and Other Hlane Highlights

Yesterday I finally got the opportunity to check out Hlane Royal Nature Reserve. After driving for an hour through Manzini toward Siteki on a poorly sign-posted road, we finally turned onto the dirt road to the main camp in Hlane. We decided to take a drive in my old Fiat before the safari tour started. The first thing we saw was a momma and baby white rhino running through the bush. The preverbial “they” say that you can tell a black rhino from a white one by the way they treat their babies. Black rhinos, like many black women in Swaziland who tie their children to their back, will run ahead of their babies in the wild. On the other hand, white rhinos, like white women in Swaziland who hold their babies on their chest, will have their babies ahead of them.

Some of yesterdays Hlane Highlights include:

1. Learning that lions’ balls hang backwards behind their legs rather than down between their legs. This not only looks odd, but causes them to pee backwards.

2. Watching a herd of prehistoric white rhinos relax next to the watering hole while eating a tasty cheese and tomato sandwitch.

3. Seeing the most beautiful sunset on the drive home. It looked like the illustrators of South Park found Jesus and, instead of making paper cutouts of fowl mouthed elementary school students, decided to cut out black and blue layers of mountain and laid them on top of an electric purple sunset.

4. Seeing a ginate python slither behind a termite hill. We only saw a small segment of it but, judging by the thickness, it was a formidable snake!

5. Watching a baby elephant sloshing through the verdent green ground crawlers of the muddy wateringhole surrounded by the dead dry grasses of Swaziland winter. Excitement added by the fact that the Big Momma elephant doesn’t appreciate anything coming close to her baby.

6. Did I mention the rhinos? These amazinginly large beasts were laying around in the dust and mud, docile and magestic. Apparently they can charge at forty kilometers an hour, but I can’t imagine anything being so important to get these lazy guys off their backs and out of the shade.

7. My camera running out of batteries was also a highlight. Lets face it, the only reason to take photos while in a game park is to “prove” you were there and you were close to the animals to make your friends jelous. The pictures on the postcard they sell at the gift shop, which are taken my professionals with unlimited access and patience, are definitely better than anything I can take on my point and shoot digital camera. So by not even having the option of viewing the game reserve through the smudged screen of my digital camera, I actually enjoyed the park. I watched the wrinkles crease in an Old Man elephant’s skin; looked at lion prints and birds and piles of poop and all the fun things that don’t make great photos. I”ll Google-Image pictures of white rhinocerus when I get home. You can always find a good picture, but it’s the stories of the smell of rhino dung that count, that’s what you’re grandchildren will be impressed with when they have 3D PSPs loaded with Google Earth.

A Note About Bribery

Dear Blog Reader,

Thanks for reading the blog. It validates the time I spend writing my posts and gives me another website besides Facebook to neurotically check. As you may or may not know, I have been asked to write a few articles for National Geographic's young-people-living-abroad website Glimpse.org. And... my first article has been published! So please, make your way over to my article called How to Bribe a Swazi Police Officer. Feel free to leave a comment on the site telling me (and Glimpse) what you think.

Also, more blog posts to come soon as I'm moving to the big city of Mbabane, playing in my first Swazi soccer game and going to Lesotho for a week. Stay tuned dear reader...

Best wishes,
Mallory
Your Favorite Swazi Hipster

The Nerd in Me

Although my life is incredibly laid back and I enjoy having adventures, I do sometimes pay homage to the American tax payers and actually do some research. I particularly like going to the University of Swaziland Library and digging through the Swazana section. Its stoked full of all old students’ theses and books and papers, published and unpublished, about Swaziland. I was really interested to find a few books/documents written by fellow Fulbrighters to Swaziland. One book was written by a fellow Berkeley student. I was quietly excited by the coincidence of this, being miles away in a restircted section of a little known library reading the acknowledgement section of a book which thanked my roomate’s old anthropology professor, Laura Nader.

The Swazana section of the Mbabane central library is an adventure. There is file upon file marked with stickers that say, HIV, Justice, Economy, UN Publications. Sometimes the files are empty; sometimes they’re jammed with newspaper clippings. I’m not quite sure who gets to decide which newspaper articles make it into the library and which don’t, but it is always an adventure. I’m still not sure how the Swazana section of the Mbabane library actually works though, because every time I go to this tiny, eight foot by eight foot room I get scolded for not following the proper protocol.

The most impressive nerd structure in Swaziland has to be the National Archieves. A beautiful building being refurbished, it stands behind the Parliament building, just past the sign that says “Drive Slowly Parliament in Session,” (which is there permentently, regardless if Parliament is actually in session). No one is in the building and the employees lead you through a maze of hallways, doors, passageways and offices for no particular reason.

In order to access the docements and books in the National Archeives you need clearence. To get clearence you must fill out, in duplicate of course, an “Application for Access to the Swaziland National Archives,” which asks basic questions about you and your research.

Question 11 reads:
“Are you going to deposit a copy of your completed research to the National Archives?”

Question 12 reads:
“If not state the reason of violating Act No. 5 of 1971.”

Then you get an official stamp and someone will help you find what you need. Unfortuneately, do to refurbishments, not all the books/documents are in any particular order, so sometimes It takes a while to look through the rollable stacks of books (like the main stacks at the UC Berkeley Library) to find what you need. Eventually I did find what I was looking for: The Government Gazzette covering all acts and proclamations from 1907 to 1913. This book was actually published in 1913, and I felt very much like Tom Hanks in Angles and Demons when rifiling through it.

So, while any normal visitor to Swaziland would spend very little times indoors, given the beautiful landscapes and endless choice of hikes, valleys, mountains and streams, some of us will always be nerds and will always find the library, no matter where we go.

Country Western and other Music in Swaziland

It’s true that outside of primitive djs spinning pre-mixed CDs of House or cliché hip-hop the live music scene in Swaziland is severely lacking. However, given the infrequency of live performances here, when there is a live band, I go. And usually I’m not disappointed.

Back in May there was the One Love Swaziland Reggae Music Festival, which despite low attendance, was quite fun. I enjoyed sneaking snacks in from my car and dancing the night away to various South African, Mozambiquen and other African reggae artists. But the past week at House of Fire was particularly good.

House on Fire is in the middle of nowhere. Actually, its in Malkerns, a lush and fairly affluent farming valley about 15 minutes from my house in Ezulwini and about half an hour from the capital of Mbabane. It’s a cross between a little kids imagination and a big kids wallet. It combines Burning Man with Africa and is truly a site to see. There is a stage with amphitheater seating, balconies with wooden chain banisters, mosaics and quirky statues; details abound. There’s a bar in one corner and out back there is a turret for the Repunzles among us.

Last Thursday the US Embassy sponsored a performance by a jazz band with an amazing pianist. After the main act came another band and just as the crowd was about to thin, on came Stones and Bones (or something like that). Two cheery Swazi men in flannel shirts tucked into tight jeans over cowboy boots. They wore Western style ties, had big belt buckles and enormous hats. One was wearing a jean jacket. And then they began to play.

In one of the most entertaining shows I’ve ever seen, an eager audience couldn’t help but jump up and stomp their feet to a mixture of old Country favorites like “Ring of Fire” and “Bad Moon Rising” mixed with some siSwati country songs. My stomach hurt from laughing. The guys in the band seemed to enjoy the peculiarity of their act, cracking jokes about horses and the Wild West. If they weren’t such good musicians, it would have been a joke.

On Saturday, the Country Western act was no where to be seen. Instead the prison guard band opened for a visiting brass band from Benin who danced about in matching outfits and spoke in broken French/English. This week is a Latin Revolution billed as “fiery,” “sexy” and just plain “hot. In Swaziland you learn that when it comes to live music, there’s no point in having discerning taste. You’d better learn to just dance to the beat – be it Latin, Country, or West African – or you won’t be dancing at all.

When the Man’s Tired, the Forest Gives

Being hit on is absolutely unavoidable in Swaziland. I would like to think that I’m sought after for my good lucks, charming wit, or unique personality, but the truth is I could be covered in warts with a crocked nose as long as I’m white and female I will have African men coming on to me. What at first may have been flattering has become increasingly irritating and its omnipresence is taking its toll. Here are a few recent examples:

1. I’m sitting at the internet café where I always go to do my interneting and a man comes up to me and begins speaking French. “I don’t speak French,” I say, not lifting my eyes from the screen. I hope my subtle I’m-preoccupied hint will cause him to desist. He proceeds to tell me he’s from Congo, has seen me at the internet café before and loves my eyes. “Mmm hmm,” I mumble, focusing all my attention at the email I’m writing. He wants to go out sometime, he wants my phone number. I tell him I have a fiancé and that I’m pretty busy (both of which is completely untrue). He wants to meet my sisters, my friends. He asks me how many white friends I have and when he can meet them. And then, he gets my number.

The problem with giving a man your phone number in Swaziland is this: you can’t say no. First of all, they use your phone to call themselves, ensuring that the number is correct. Second, it is totally normal to exchange numbers with almost everyone you meet, so to deny such an exchange would be a gross societal error. The next day he calls me nonstop until I finally have to turn off my phone.

2. Often I go to the offices of an attorney friend, for help with my research. One day when I’m pulling in the parking lot, I stop to let another car out. The car stops ahead of me and my lawyer friend gets out, waves and walks into the building. The driver of the car then pulls forward to let me pass, stopping by my window. I roll down the window to greet him, as is standard protocol in this incredibly friendly Kingdom.
“Kunjani,” (How are you) he asks?
“Neyapela. Kunjani?” (I am fine. How are you?)
“Neyapela.” (I am fine.) Are you married? I would like to marry you.
Just like that. We have literally only said “Hello” and I have never met him before in my life. I just shake my head and pull into the parking lot. Thankfully he drives off.

3. One of the first nights I was in Swaziland, I went to the new Café Lingo for some music and a bit of dancing. I’m sitting at a table laughing to myself as a American girl, about my age, attempts to politely get rid of a persistant suitor. The next thing I know, she has left, and her suitor is sitting next to me, coming closer, whispering “I’ve loved you since the day I was born.”
There are many things wrong with this statement. There’s the fact that he just said these same things to the other white female who had recently left. There’s the fact that he just met me, thus was unable to love me previously because he didn’t know of my existence. And there’s the fact that he was born before me so its literally impossible. I tell him I’m married, but he doesn’t care. The rest of the night he finds ways to poke me on the shoulder or nudge me under the table and mouth the words, “I’m thinking of you.” Creepy!

Its frustrating that no matter which tactics I try and use – preoccupation, engagement, marriage, disinterest, straight refusal – there’s no way to slow the advances. My Zimbabwean friend summed up the attitude nicely in an old Shona saying which goes: When the man gets tired, the forest gives. In Shona it’s a hunter’s saying to encourage hunters to keep going even when they are tired, for it is then when they will find their prey. But I think it is easily transferrable to the persistent attitude of African men. Somehow they feel that if they just keep pestering you, you’ll give in.

A Three-Hole-Punch and Other Research Hurdles

In my state of fear, disorganization and disillusionment before leaving California for Swaziland, I attempted to fool myself into thinking I was ready by making some superficial preparations. Because the US State Department allows Fulbrighters to ship two boxes of “education materials” to themselves through the diplomatic mail, I loaded up a box with anything I could find: old text books from college on African history (none of which proved to be useful), two books on botany for general interest, and a Scrabble board. I also packed a three-ring binder with some articles on traditional justice in East Africa.

Now that I’m in Swaziland reading “educational material” that is actually useful for my research, I wanted to organize them in my binder. So, I went to look for a three-hold-punch. I checked the school supply section of the three main supermarkets in Mbabane and Ezulwini to no avail. Likewise, the two book stores also did not carry this elusive device. I decided to drive to the industrial side of town where you can find most anything that is sold in Swaziland from under-the-table mechanics to bulk garden tools. I tried two bulk stationary stores and left disappointed. In the third shop told me they didn’t have three-hold-punches, but they had four-hold-punches.

“Okay,” I said, “do you also have four-ring binders?”

They didn’t. They had two-ring binders. I bought a two-ring binder and doubled back to the supermarket to purchase a two-hole-puncher. Now that my organizational infrastructure was complete, I was ready to begin accumulating relevant articles from the Swazana section of the University library, but this too, proved difficult.

The Swazana section of the library is off limits to casual browsers, can only be accessed by a librarian, and its books are considered “Reference” and cannot be checked out. Therefore, in order to take information of this kind out of the library you must make a copy. The only way to make a copy is to use the copy machine that is inside of the Reference Section. The only way to use this copy machine is to purchase a copy card, with which to pay for the copies. The only way to purchase a copy card is to pay for it at the accounts office.

I walk to the accounts office. The sign on the window tells me the hours of the accounts office are Monday through Friday from nine in the morning until five at night with an hour for lunch at one. It is twelve fifteen and the office is closed. The security guard tells me the accountant will be back after lunch. I am annoyed and leave. I return the next day at eleven. The accounts office is closed. The security guard tells me the accountant will be back in fifteen minutes. At one, I leave, annoyed and without my copy card. I arrive the next day at nine. The account is there (praise Jesus!) and I purchase my card. Then, I take the receipt to the librarian who stamps the receipt and gives me my copy card. I can now make copies.

So now I have a tow-ring binder full of copies of articles on the traditional justice system in Swaziland. I just have to get around to reading them.

The King’s Birthday and Other Political Matters

Swaziland is an anomaly politically. Indeed it is this very reason that I am able to do research at all. I found Swaziland particularly interesting because it has a state sanctioned dual court system of formal Roman-Dutch style magistrate’s courts as well as traditional Swazi National Courts which arbiter on smaller matters as well as matters of the euphemistic Swazi Law and Custom. But the dual court system is the least glaringly intriguing aspect of Swaziland’s government. Going around Swaziland this month it is impossible to ignore that it King is celebrating his 41st birthday.

Although less extravagant than last years “40/40 Celebration” which commemorated the King’s 40th birthday as it coincided with 40 years of Swazi independence, this year’s celebration also was quite an affair. On every light post (working or not) between the airport at Matsapa, the industrial center in Manzini and the capital in Mbabane hangs a banner with the King’s face smiling out alternating with the traditional Swazi shield and Spear. The newspaper on Friday included a 52 page “King’s Birthday Supplement” that followed the king from birth through his recent meeting with Mugabe and the recently ousted president of Madagascar, Ravalomanana.

The entire newspaper is littered with large ads by various Swazi and foreign companies and organization expressing fond birthday wishes for the King.
But despite the adoration, the King doesn’t really seem to be the greatest guy. Despite his expensive taste in cars, his affinity for polygamy and ability to take advantage of every photo opportunity with foreign leaders (including a constant parade of businessmen from Kuwait and Dubai) the King doesn’t seem to be too involved in the country’s politics, which seemed to have steamed up of late.

The King signed a new constitution into effect in 2005. There is a 30 member Senate, 10 of which are elected by the House of Assembly, 20 of which are appointed by the King. The House consists of about 75 members, 10 of which are appointed by the King. Of note, the constitution also provided from free primary education by 2009. Well, here we are in 2009 and the protestors (some being beaten by police and some beating the police) on the streets are a good indication that this has yet to be achieved. A union took the government to court over this discrepancy and the High Court ruled that the government indeed legally did need to provide free primary education. The government responded by issuing a press statement in the newspaper effectively saying, “We’re trying. Hold tight ‘til 2015.”

Another issue that tends to make the news are the sinister activities of various groups outlawed by the Suppression of Terrorism Acts. This includes every political party. Although we joke about the destructive behavior of politicians, very few can be deemed terrorists – unless you’re in Swaziland. Here outlawed parties’ leaders are jailed, and as one case currently being heard at the High Court insists, tortured. It sounds faintly reminiscent of an old party called the ANC and a man named Nelson.

Despite all the political hiccups, the stadium at the trade fair grounds in Manzini were packed with people baking in the sun to celebrate the King’s birthday. Men showed enough thigh beside there animal skin loin cloths to make this girl blush and every other woman wore brightly colored cloth tied around her shoulder, usually with the King’s face on it. I stood in the sweltering heat, pressed against several other sweaty bodies listening to the King, in full military uniform, make promises to his people.

How to Run a (Half) Marathon and Get a Private Tour of Robben Island without Even Trying

Cape Town in beautiful. The coastline curves, loops back on itself, points, bends, and does its best to obscure your sense of direction. Majestic Table Mountain rises up behind the city – or is it in front – and keeps the encroaching urban areas in check with forbidding gorges and overwhelming inclines. And Cape Town is indeed the “Rainbow City”. The colorful slag of the coloured community rings out in thick accents from the beeping minibus taxis careening dangerously towards town. The clicks of Xhosa rattle off of the flicks of fingers braiding invisibly small brides outside the bus station. Afrikaans ankles, sturdy and sun burnt plod along the Waterfont. White-robed men streaming from the mosque stand out against the pastel pallet of rows of Bo-Kaap houses. And always the mountain stands watch over the city and the sea beyond.

We came to Cape Town to run the Two Oceans Marathon, billed as the most beautiful in the world. There are two options: a 56 kilometer ultra marathon that is indeed beautiful and does indeed offer views and salty air of two oceans and a 21 kilometer race which snakes through the suburbs, never seeing an ocean. I participated in the latter after months of not training. In fact, since signing up for the race I ran a total of two times, both for less than 40 minutes. As I had hoped, youth, arrogance and the need to use the bathroom pushed me to the end. I completed the race, despite the lack of bathrooms along the route. I am not a runner.

The museums of Cape Town were interesting: we saw huge gold earrings from West Africa at the Gold Museum and haunting ash portraits at the National Gallery; we learned about the snow sculptures in Hardin, China at the Jewish museum. We climbed Table Mountain, scrambling up rocky Skeleton Gorge, up ladders, and across the table which reminded me of a boardwalk through wetlands. We bargained for jewelry in the market, swam with penguins, kayaked with a seal and had Turkish coffee with an old woman. It was all very pleasant.

We also went to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela, Walter Sissou and other ANC leaders were incarcerated for almost two decades. Having just read Mandela’s autobiography, I was eager to see the places he had described in his book. Once on the island, tourists are supposed to proceed to buses for a 45 minute bus tour of the island where they are locked in close proximately to a babbling guide who talks more about how South Africans love Abba than about the island. After about 10 minutes by courage companion risked embarrassment and proceeded to disembark, just as the tour guide was explaining that in Mexico they speak Spanish and in Mozambique Portuguese. We began to walk back toward the prison on foot, when a white pick-up truck with “Agriculture” stenciled on the side stopped to ask what we were doing.

Before we new it, the driver of the truck, a brick layer and plaster worker who has lived on the island for over 11 years, was driving us through the bush on the island. We sailed past the airfield and snuck underground into the loading hold for ammunition for a World War I era gunship. We spotted reindeer as we rode down Lover’s Lane where wardens’ wives would come get their kicks with other wardens’ wives’ husbands. We saw the primary school which is still in use, the lime quarry where Nelson Mandela’s years of toil under the harsh reflection of sun against lime dried out his tear ducts and thousands of abalone shells strewn along the jagged coast and among the various ships’ wreckage.

Lastly, we walked through the prison and saw the cells where the political prisoners were held for their time on the island. Nelson Mandela is a tall man, and even I could not have lain down in the cells except for diagonally. It all seemed so surreal, a fresh coat of paint on the prison walls and a line of tourists all stopping at one cell, like all the others in the hall, to snap a photo of a woolen blanket on the ground. It seems ironic to pay tribute to the ANC, PAC and other political leaders as South Africa’s elections draw near. The ANC is still around, and will probably have its leader, Zuma, win the election just as it had Mandela before. But a cloud of haze hangs over the elections, the party and the man and more and more South African’s lament the political situation and the slow crumbling of a nation that stood so proud to hear Nelson Mandela’s speech when released from the island in the nineties.

My feet are tired and my clothes are dirty. My wallet’s lighter and I’m further from accomplishing my research goals. But I’ve seen Cape Town from the top of Table Mountain, more than 9,000 miles from home and for that I’m grateful.

I'm with the Team

On Sunday I went with my new soccer team, Kappa Ladies, to their game at Mhlambayatsi. Although I’m not yet registered to play (although hopefully will be soon), I went along as a spectator.

We met in front of Wild Wingzz in Mbabane. Some of the girls wore their white Kappa Ladies polo shirts with blue track pants with a thin yellow piping down the side. Others were in long blue shorts with yellow trim. One forward came in J-lo-esqu zipper overalls and a blue Kappa Ladies shirt. One player brought her son.

Our coach arrives behind the wheel of the team Kombie in a white Gilligan’s hat, blasting music about thirty decibels louder than the Kombie’s speakers can handle. We all climb in. My legs don’t fit, no matter how I maneuver, between the back of my seat and the back of the seat in front of me, so I sit hugging my knees like a frightened child. I have one hip pressed against the outside right defender and the other against the blaring Kombie speaker. We start off, making a quick stop at the Spar grocery store (why we don’t just meet there and skip the unloading and re-loading process as it is just across the way from the Wild Wingzz is beyond me) and are then on our way.

Mhlambayatsi, our destination, is 27 kilometers outside of Mbabane. To get there, the Kombie struggles over hills, down valleys, across rivers, past the dam and between the beautiful rolling vistas of this mountainous and unruly Kingdom. The temperature drops a few degrees as we enter the vast manmade pine forest and finally arrive at the field, about two before the game is set to start.

We sit under a tree to eat lunch. We are each allotted two hot-dog buns and some soda, which my teammates drink from discarded water-bottles found around the field and washed at the tap. After lunch, our coach gives us our pre-game lecture. Using empty water bottles for our team and old beer bottles for the other, he goes through the role of each position on the field. Then, he announces the line up. Each girl stands as her name is called and, as there are only eleven players present today, all the girls (or women, rather) are standing.

Change into uniforms brought by the manager in a plaid plastic tote. Warm-up. Check in with the referees. Whistle blows: game on. Heat, sweat, cheers, half-time, hear sweat, kicks, saves. Whistle blows: game over. The final score is zero/zero. The girls change out of their uniforms and we carry our injured captain to the Kombie. We drive back, blasting music, just as we came.

The coach, who isn’t paid and funds the entire running of the team out of his salary and commitment to social responsibility, is going to help me get a permit so I can play. I can’t wait.

A Joke About Rape

I’m attending UNISWA’s first annual Law Week. I enter the hall and, because I’m white and severely underdressed, people assume I’m some sort of honored guest and attempt to seat me at the high table. It takes me a while to explain, “I’m nobody.” I attempt to be discreet and take a seat in the back. While we wait for the distinguished guests to appear (already they are more than an hour late by the time table I received) some photographers roam through the students and punctual guests taking photos on sophisticated DSLR cameras. A camera man comes up to me as I’m concentrating on my SuDuKo. I am tired and looking like crap from driving all over Swaziland on a hot day in a car with no air-conditioning. He sticks the huge lens in my face and I look up surprised.

“I really don’t want you to take my photo,” I say, scowling.

*Click*

I now noticed that periodically they take the memory card to the computer which is projecting a HUGE image onto the wall above the speaker’s platform. He sinks the photos and then displays them right then and there on this HUGE wall above the speaker’s platform. Everyone is looking at the photos, firstly because they are HUGE, secondly because they are right in front of everyone and thirdly because there’s nothing else to do at the moment. Just as the speeches begin on the platform I notice a GIANT figure of me, scowling, horribly underdressed and chewing on my pen. My head is the size of my dinning room table and my scowl is as large as my arms’ length. It is mortifying.

After speeches by the Presidents of the National and University’s Law Societies, the local Member of Parliament and various school officials (all of the welcoming variety) we now have a break for a performance by a local opera singer – which, in fact, has been the most enjoyable part of the event so far. After the operetta concludes the MC takes the stage to loosen up the crowd for the next speaker by telling the following joke:

A woman was accusing a man of raping her. The victim points to the man in court and proclaims, “This man raped me last Friday night.”

“It was not me,” exclaims the man in an attempt to defend himself.

“But it was,” insists the woman.

This goes on, back and forth as no one can provide evidence or alibi to move the case along. Finally the defendant tries a new course.

“Alright,” concedes the man, “I did indeed rape a woman last Friday night. But I am not so sure it was this woman here who is accusing me. You see,” continued the man, “The woman I raped that night passed gas – that is to say farted – during intercourse. Could that be this woman.”

The woman leaps up shouting, “Ah that was not me, that was not me.” And the man was acquitted.

The audience burst into laughter and the speaker on Human Rights and the Law took the stage. He opened with the question “Do Gays have rights?”

The Police are Hitting on Sarah

Sunday afternoon saw Sarah and I at Veky and Dave’s for a braai. I enjoyed the meat, the guacamole and hearing about Peter and Hilda’s eight month drive from Cape Town to Holland with their two small children. I was a bit annoyed, however, that some time between leaving my house and eating at Veky’s I had lost my cell phone. For those who know me, this will come as no surprise.

Sarah and I set off at about 8 o’clock and I was driving. We wheeled up and down the hills leading from Veky’s as I expertly maneuvered gears manually. As we created the intersection into Mbabane city center, I tried to down-shift too low, heard a crunching of gears, quickly rectified the problem and came to a stop at the red traffic light.

When the light turned green, I couldn’t put the car in gear. Something had gone terribly wrong and we were stuck. We decided the best thing to do would be to push the car to the side of the road. I rolled down the window through which to steer, and we began pushing it backwards toward the curb. Suddenly, the car gained momentum. Sarah and I had underestimated the power of our strength combined with inertia. I ran after the car, jumped in the front seat and slammed on the brakes just before it hit a white sedan parked behind us. Needless to say the car was still sticking out halfway into the lane.

The next step was to find someone to come help us. As my phone had recently been stolen, Sarah was our only hope. Sarah did not have the number of anyone who had been at the braai. Luckily, she had met someone working in HIV for PSI. She’d jotted down his number as a possible contact for her research. She called him:

“Uh, hi Dom? This is Sarah…..we just met, like 10 minutes ago.”

Dom had gone home and didn’t have Dave’s number, but walked over to Dave and Veky’s and had Dave call Sarah back. He was on his way.

While Sarah was arranging this, a police van had pulled over and three officers gotten out. I assumed they came to inspect why a Fiat Station Wagon was parked halfway into the traffic lane with its hazards blinking. But that wasn’t the case:

“So where are you from? Are you married?”

I concocted an elaborate story that I was married for five years and lived next door to Sarah and her boyfriend. When asked about the whereabouts of my wedding ring, I pointed to my tattoo and explained my husband and I had matching tattoos. I don’t think the officers bought it, but at least they determined that I was too strange to pursue. To make the story more believable, I knew Sarah and I both couldn’t be married, so I mentioned that Sarah had a boyfriend, a large over sight I later had to apologize for. The police swooped in on her like hawks. It was rather uncomfortable and the imaginary boyfriend did not even faze them.

“I don’t care if you have a boyfriend,” one officer stated. “I asked about a husband. I want to be your husband.”

Eventually the officers got the hint. Went into the shop, bought some beers and drove off. They were immediately replaced by a crazed, fasting Roman Catholic named David who cased us up and down the sidewalk with wild hand gesticulations. Finally Dave arrived to rescue my car, diving it in forced first gear, dripping clutch fluid, to the mechanic and then giving us a ride home.

Miliwane By Myself

This weekend, as my housemates were all in South Africa on various errands – running a marathon, buying flowers for a wedding, and getting drunk – I was left to my own devices. And, now that I have a car, I decided now would be the time to explore. After plucking through the Swazi tourist magazine I’d received from the Embassy, I decided to head over to Miliwane Nature Reserve, the oldest nature reserve in Swaziland.

Miliwane is not too far from my house, just down the main road through Ezulwini, on the right hand side before getting to the Malkerns turn-off. I turned off the road onto a dirt road, littered with pot-holes. Entrepreneurial young boys stood with shovels, filling in potholes in return for a few coins. After three kilometers of bouncing down the road I reached the entrance, paid a two dollar hikers fee, and proceeded to the Rest Camp, where the hike commence.

Just on the drive in I was stunned. The planes open up at the base of Execution Rock, and Zebra, warthogs, Springbok, Kudu and other four-legged grazers looked up nonchalantly as I passed. I crossed over a narrow dirt damn with a sign reading “Fishing Prohibited. Stay Away From Edge. Crocodiles.” At the rest camp, I put a dollar deposit down on a map, chose the two and a half hour Hippo Trail, and set off. Just me, my water-bottle, a map and the nature reserve.

As I walked along, I surprised a family of warthogs along the trail. Mom and her four children stopped, and stared at me. I stood still. I was so close to the family that I was both excited and nervous. I have seen the YouTube video where the warthog beats the crap out of a lion, and was keenly aware of how alone I was. But as I took a step forward, the warthogs skirted away through the tall grass.

Walking by myself through the reserve was exhilarating. To be so vulnerable, far from any one else, alone and among strange beasts was frightening. I walked over streams and through thick vegetation, taking down at least a half dozen spiders’ webs with my face. I surprised some Guinea Fowl along the trail and a crocodile surprised me, sunning himself of the banks of Hippo pond.

About halfway through the hike I got lost. This time I was legitimately frightened. I wondered back and forth along the trail for about half an hour, trying to find which way to go. Finally, I had a revelation: I was not walking around the circular trail in a clockwise direction, but rather, counter clockwise. Luckily, I was alone, and avoided embarrassment at this mistake.

When I finished the hike, I returned the map and got in my car just as clouds were gathering dense and foreboding over the valley. I drove out through the gate, trading the zebra and impala for goats and cows. By the time I got home, darkness had fallen and the sky had opened up. Rain sloshed down in unrelenting baseball sized drops as thunder deafened and lighting flashed, lighting up the whole yard. I say in the corner of the glass-walled living room, watching the lighting touch down in the valley, and then watch the electricity slowly flicker back on.

Morning Commute

Now that I have a car (a soccer-mom Fiat Station Wagon), I am going to miss my morning commute. Usually, I will walk down my road to the bottom of the hill where is intersects with the main road slicing through the Ezulwini Valley. I position myself between the puddles to avoid getting soaked in murky water and wait for a Kombie. The Kombies are easy to spot from a distance as they are incredibly slow and are usually belching thick black smoke.

I never have to wait long, and, as Mbabane is a major destination, usually the first or second Kombie that stops is – as they say – going my way. It cost me just under 60 cents to get into Mbabane and after struggling up the hill on the main highway, we descend into the city, circle the bus station and enter on the far side.

The bus station is a feat that defies physics. The long, lumbering Kombies weave with surprising agility through each other. People snake through the honking giants, unhurried. I try to imagine an aerial view of the station, in fast-forward. Like an alien Tetris game or a child shuffling cards rudimentarily for “Go Fish.”

The public transport system n Swaziland – and many other African nations – is quite ingenious. A true student of the free market, the Kombie-system is holey privately owned, moderately regulated, for Keynes’ sake, by the government. The Kombie-system works of the simple supply and demand model: Kombies choose their route, obviously going to where they make the most money and thus where most people want to go. It behooves the driver to be efficient, as the more passengers the Kombie delivers, the more money they make.

However, the system is not totally flawless. The US Embassy, in the “Welcome Kit” I received, rates the “Safety of Public Transportation” as “Poor.” Under a section titled “Post Specific Concerns,” the Embassy states:

The use of public transportation by Americans is not recommended. Mini-bus taxies [Kombies]…should be considered unsafe. Many of these vehicles fail to meet minimal safety standards and drivers frequently overload the vehicles and travel at excessive speeds. Fatal accidents involving these conveyances are very common.

Swazi Socialite

On Friday night, the two Cypriot boys and I went off to Café Lingo, a recently opened spot in town that boasts live music on Friday nights. Tonight a special “Guitarist Extraordinaire,” Nanando, was billed to play. I had seen the advertising banner hung by the main intersection in town. Because of the special performer, we had to pay a cover. As the doorman stamped the back of my hand, I noticed a small brown dot, about the size of an eraser on the back of my hand. As I tried to flick it off I discovered that some unseen body part – teeth perhaps, or claws – was stuck in my skin, extracting, like a tiny American Red Cross nurse, drops of my blood. I pinched it and pulled it off my skin, a bit disgusted, and entered Café Lingo.

At some point in the evening I met Sky, a journalist from the Swazi Times and her group of fashionista friends. I suspect they are part of the royal family as they wore Channel, carried Gucci bags, drove new Mercedes and went shopping “all over the world.” They drank shots of tequila and bottles of wine. Their droopy, drunk eyelashes and petite frames soon convinced my Cypriot companion that, at one in the morning, the night was still young.

We drove the 25 minutes to Manzini and pulled into a crowded parking area, littered with tipsy or downright hammered revelers. Mention this infamous spot to anyone in Swaziland and they’ll have a story to tell. Tinkers. A sweaty outdoor dance floor crowded with those who party and those only sober enough to lean against the wall, bleary-eyed. My companion joked, “Let’s see who gets stabbed first.”

As we’re getting ready to leave, at a quarter to four, Stella decides we all need hot dogs. DRUNK FOOD – the ubiquitous, great bringer together of partiers around the world. In Scotland we went in search of a late-night kabob shop to satisfy our bellies swimming in booze. In San Francisco, as club goers are evacuated from dingy hipster bars in the Mission at two in the morning, they gather again at sizzling carts to pay four dollars for a hot dog wrapped in bacon. And at Tinkers in Manzini, they order four sausages, covered in condiments and chilies and stagger back to their car.

The next evening I went with my land-lady’s son to a braai (barbeque) for a friend’s birthday. The son had shot an impala a few days earlier and it would be roasted over a spit in celebration. To prepare the Impala, its head had been removed as had its innards. To kill any adrenaline built up in the animal, about three liters of Coca-cola are injected into the carcass over a few days. Then, holes are cut in the fleshy parts and stuffed with garlic. The outside is covered in olive oil, spices and – in this case – apricot jam. Not salt is used as it sucks the moisture out of the meat.

We arrived around eight and at this point the impala has been roasting, spread across a large iron spit over two barrels of coals, for just under ten hours. A knife is stuck in the flesh and those of us hungry enough can help ourselves to a piece of juicy thigh or crispy apricot skin.

Some of the guests, volunteers from a nearby backpackers, remark that it’s hard to eat meat when you can see the charred animal right in front of you, turning on a spit. But I disagree. I think, to know where your meat is coming from – instead of some faceless ground beef, frozen at Safeway, from an auction block of some factory farm, force fed grain and prodded into a pen – is much better. This impala was an adult male who’d been grazing on bush grass and running freely across the National Trust Land. It died quickly, albeit shot in the head, and was roasted with care and enjoyed! Very much enjoyed.

The Battle of the Butter

Yesterday morning I accompanied my hostess to her usual morning coffee date in town. “There is nothing else to do, so why not have coffee with my friends,” she explains in a thick Greek accent, fumbling for her cigarettes. Her ‘international’ coffee circle consists of two Greeks, a Turkish woman and an Israeli woman, all who have lived in Swaziland for almost 30 years. The women sit a foot lower than me at the table, with ample bosoms resting on the table-top and a veritable rainbow of dyed hair.

The Turkish woman is dripping in gold and crystal jewelry and the Israeli has a self-diagnosed “sickness” for diamonds. She reaches into her bag to produce her latest acquisitions: two diamond and white-gold rings (one square-cut and one baguette) that were recently brought back from Johannesburg. The conversation turns to safe deposit boxes in Israel, Turkey, Cyprus, where jewelry is stored for future generations.

The women smoke and drink cappuccinos. My hostess has ordered some toast. “Sissy,” she calls to the waitress, “Half an hour! I order toast and it has not yet come.” The waitress explains they are out of butter.

“I can’t believe it,” the women exclaim. “Why has she not told us when we ordered,” “Why has she not gone to buy some at the other shop,” and “We must tell the owner his servers are useless.” The waitress is brought back and lectured on the faults of not having butter.

Then the Israeli, who has been in the bathroom, returns and the situation is explained to her in heavily accented English. Each woman in turn adds an explanation of disgust in her mother tongue.

“I don’t believe it!” exclaims the Israeli. She calls the waitress back. Another lengthy lecture and an explanation is demanded.

“The shipment has not come,” the waitress explains.

“Let it be,” sighs my hostess, lighting another cigarette. Five minutes later, two thick slices of toast appear with jam and – what looks to me like – butter.

“Margarine!” The women gasp. An outrage to say the least. They have sworn off the coffee-shop and vow to take their coffees somewhere else. The rest of the breakfast is spent comparing the inadequacies of margarine to butter. Today, we went there for coffee again.

First Impressions

I flew to Manzini on a 30 passenger plane that swayed down the runway and took off into drizzling clouds. From the air, in peek-a-boos in the clouds was green, sparkling fresh-from-the-rain green. Valleys of bright green flowed down from mountains of deep green; mountains that don’t come sharply to a peek, but amble at the altitude lazily; mountains dotted with rocks, the ancient geology’s last stand against the new blanket of green vegetation. We landed in the drizzle, an hour late, and I was met by Andreas and his dotting Greek mother’s Mercedes.

T Minus One Week

For the next 10 months I’ll be living in Swaziland, trying to complete a research project of which I have only a vague outline and attempting to justify giving up my sweet life in San Francisco surrounded by friends, public transportation and a constant supply of electricity.

Swaziland is a small kingdom about the size of New Jersey found in southern Africa. Although it has never been a part of South Africa, it is almost completely surrounded by the county, with a small border with Mozambique as well. The CIA World Factbook tells us that Swaziland’s main exports are “soft drink concentrates, sugar, wood pulp, cotton yarn, refrigerators, citrus and canned fruit,” but a more thorough search may tell you that the export that generates the most income, is marijuana.

Swaziland has been independent (from Britain) for 40 years, is ruled by a King, and has a dual justice system of courts and traditional justice systems. It is the latter that the United States Department of State deemed worthy for me to study for the next 10 months at their expense.

With a week to go, I have yet to secure a letter of affiliation from the University of Swaziland, on which my entire grant hinges. I have yet to ship my research materials to Swaziland, and I have yet to consider packing. I have, however, acquired a fashionable pair of tie-dyed sneakers, so at least I’ll arrive in Swaziland in style, if unprepared.