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”.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Saturday, June 20, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, June 15, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Rhinos and Other Hlane Highlights
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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.
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.
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