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.